You have been marked as a bot - feature

Severia

I am not particularly bothered by the bots. They aren't any more annoying than the normal players. A captcha would be majorly annoying though.

arkanidous

needs to be a better way than marking someone as bot i could get very bad say you get in a argument with someone in zone chat to get back they mark you as a bot system could be overwelmed fast

Slash8915

It wouldn't matter if it's in the background or pops up flashing on your screen. If you're in the middle of something, you would still have to stop and input the captcha. What if you're in the middle of a boss fight? I sure as hell don't want to die because I had to just stand there and type in some stupid captcha.

kestrel_mpb16_ESO

ElliottXO wrote: »

Besides you have only read the topic I guess.

I read your first post, which is a suggestion rife for abuse. A kick from the game should always have someone in the loop, not a simple toggle for other players to use for grief.

ElliottXO

kestrel_mpb16_ESO wrote: »

ElliottXO wrote: »

Besides you have only read the topic I guess.

I read your first post, which is a suggestion rife for abuse. A kick from the game should always have someone in the loop, not a simple toggle for other players to use for grief.

So what is the worst thing to happen? You get a captcha and enter it.

Again you are already jumping to the disconnect.

ElliottXO

arkanidous wrote: »

needs to be a better way than marking someone as bot i could get very bad say you get in a argument with someone in zone chat to get back they mark you as a bot system could be overwelmed fast

Have you actually read anything further than the topic? Your post makes no sense.

Requielle

ElliottXO wrote: »

kestrel_mpb16_ESO wrote: »

ElliottXO wrote: »

Besides you have only read the topic I guess.

I read your first post, which is a suggestion rife for abuse. A kick from the game should always have someone in the loop, not a simple toggle for other players to use for grief.

So what is the worst thing to happen? You get a captcha and enter it.

Again you are already jumping to the disconnect.

You keep missing the entire point of the objection - why should any other player have the ability to force me to stop whatever I am doing or not doing to perform a meaningless task or be disconnected?

You keep harping on how it is no big deal. What you haven't made the case for is how this 'no big deal' brings such an amazing benefit to the game that it is worth the on-demand inconvenience of legitimate players.

Features don't get implemented because they "aren't that annoying". They get implemented because they do something (or at least the devs hope they do something). All you can list as a benefit of your scheme is that maybe some bots will get temporarily inconvenienced by being disconnected for a short while, until the bot program automatically logs them back in.

LimeFox

Some people, myself included, have very long loading screens from time to time. I've even had the connection drop in the middle of a dungeon and when I re-log I find myself dead, with damaged armor and a Dire Enemy of Whatchimacalit dancing on my head.

I would find this feature extremely irritating - my job involves playing this game and writing about it. I'm occasionally standing somewhere a good five to ten minutes frantically jotting notes and taking screen grabs and trying to get Boss names. I'm sure I look a lot like a camper to people at times, but I'm not - I'm simply afk or typing on my second computer. Even a momentary disconnect can sometimes take 5-10 minutes to get back in if it's a weekend and the phase of the moon is wrong.

So no, not in favor of this idea. I could see a guild or group deciding to use this as a grief factor on one person they didn't like - if all 100 people filed 1 ticket a piece, would the ticketers really get slapped on the wrist? Far more likely that the accused would be banned. And if you don't think 100 angry people can team up and persecute somebody for no other reason than it's a Monday, you haven't been on the internet much.

From a technical standpoint, the other hole in your theory is that those little check phrases DON'T actually stop some bots. People have developed better, smarter bots to read them - why do you think they get more and more complicated as time goes on? The bots get smarter.

Meanwhile, I, as an actual Human, can't even read the darn things sometimes they're so wiggly and weird looking. :P

Makkir

Look the simple solution is to report them, and a GM appear in game and investigate. Didn't any of you play EverQuest? Remember when GMs showed up?

Hyperventilate

I see this getting horrendously abused. Someone pisses you off? Mark them as a bot constantly! Want to prank your friend? He's a bot! Want to tease your girlfriend for AFKing? Bot bot bot!

No thanks. I'd prefer not to have my fate put in the hands of petty players.

ElliottXO

Requielle wrote: »

ElliottXO wrote: »

kestrel_mpb16_ESO wrote: »

ElliottXO wrote: »

Besides you have only read the topic I guess.

I read your first post, which is a suggestion rife for abuse. A kick from the game should always have someone in the loop, not a simple toggle for other players to use for grief.

So what is the worst thing to happen? You get a captcha and enter it.

Again you are already jumping to the disconnect.

You keep missing the entire point of the objection - why should any other player have the ability to force me to stop whatever I am doing or not doing to perform a meaningless task or be disconnected?

You keep harping on how it is no big deal. What you haven't made the case for is how this 'no big deal' brings such an amazing benefit to the game that it is worth the on-demand inconvenience of legitimate players.

Features don't get implemented because they "aren't that annoying". They get implemented because they do something (or at least the devs hope they do something). All you can list as a benefit of your scheme is that maybe some bots will get temporarily inconvenienced by being disconnected for a short while, until the bot program automatically logs them back in.

No. The main benefit is that people can actually finish their content. There are dozens of reports that they cannot get the kill on a mob because there are 15 bots camping them.

Anyone who does not see the major problem with bots is quite delusional. Check any low level dungeon and see it for yourself. It's horrible sometimes.

The trade-off: a captcha for a few legit players. Other than you I still think the majority will not be affected.

I would prefer a GM taking care of the bots, but it seems zenimax is blind on that eye.

Digerati

I absolutely hate any "solution" that can affect legit players in a negative way.

How to solve the bot problem is pretty simple... Have staff watching and banning common bot-spots. If staff can be diligent and consistent enough and ban enough accounts, botting will become less and less profitable and therefore less common.

Epona222

tbh I am paying to play this game and would not like this as a solution, there must be some way to sort out the bots that does not inconvenience me regularly as a legitimate (paying!) player. This just sounds like it would be more of an inconvenience to me than the bots are.

ElliottXO

Guys. I'm fully aware that there are better solutions. But we need a tool to allow us the handling of bots in zenimax's absence, since zenimax reaction time on bot reports is painfully slow or non existent.

If you go to a dungeon and see a swarm of bots that does not allow a legit player to finish the dungeon or destroys the experience, now how is that a convenience? All you do is talking about the inconvenience that a legit player might have to put in a captcha if some troll files a report, or even gets disconnected. But the inconvenience about the current bot situation is being ignored.

You see a swarm of bots. You file 10 reports about the obvious ones you would file a report anyway and they get disconnected allowing you to get your kill and slow down the gold farmers progress.

I would gladly pay the price if I can get rid of the bots at least temporarily. It would increase my gaming experience by a ton with a fairly small trade-off if you disable this feature in PvP and towns, and if you put a timer on getting reported to prevent frivolous abusing.

All you do is complain, but where is your alternative if zenimax seems not to put up a GM doing that job? And if the dungeon boss farming limit kicks in we will just have more bots spreading around to different areas.

starkerealm

ElliottXO wrote: »

mmob16_ESO28 wrote: »

Imagine the captcha spam in pvp

You have to file a legit report before that window appears. It's not like you do that just to troll because you are submitting your own details as well.

Besides: no windows in PvP and towns.

That would work right up until the moment someone managed to configure an addon that would instantly report someone. Bonus points, if they could also configure their query to not actually provoke the proper verification on the other player's screen, thus finally giving griefers what they've always dreamed of, the power to ban.

Loxy37

No way. Player Vigilant feature will be so much abused!

Granite

PK

Alphashado

This is a terrible idea. Not only would it get abused by angry/ malicious players, but it would be disruptive to gameplay which is a violation of the code of conduct. If you got reported while you were making a sandwich, you would be screwed. Plus amazingly most people still can't tell the difference between a bot and a player that is farming. There are already way too many false reports. Sorry, bad idea.

Corithna

ElliottXO wrote: »

My approach: give the community an effective tool to hunt down bots.

The idea: add a dedicated bot option to the report player options. If a player reports another player this way on the marked players screen a window appears to enter a captcha or answer a silly question. If the marked player fails to do so within e.g. 60 seconds he gets disconnected from the server.

This happens additionally to the report being sent to zenimax for further investigation. Life of bot farmers would be so much more annoying if they would have to reconnect every 5 minutes...

I am aware that developing such a feature is out of zenimax's scope, but I'm just dreaming a little bit. And yes there would be a certain troll potential for this feature, but I'd pay this price anytime looking at the current situation.

What do you guys think?

I think you'd end up with gaming keyboards programmed to trigger this with a single keystroke and the abuse would cause it to be shut down within hours or at best days after it's introduction. Such features are perfectly within the capabilities of this team, but for the reasons I've already stated it won't happen. It would be a case of the cure being worse then the disease.

Corithna

Epona222 wrote: »

60 seconds? Mate, I'm a middle aged woman with arthritis who sometimes has to take a loo break meaning I will be away from the computer for a good few minutes. Sure something needs to be done about the bots, but please give us older folks a bit more time than 60 seconds. Wait 'til you get old, you'll see what I mean.

Right there with you Epona. I may only be 43 but with all my health issues there's many days I feel closer to 70. Honestly I'd prefer a system where if I report a player the server then keeps me out of their instance for both chat and in game. The main problem with catching botters and spammers is that unlike the average player these guys operate on stolen accounts, or accounts purchased with stolen credit card information. So once you actually identify such an account and ban it, another account is already prepped and ready to sign in.

You have to go after the hardware, take note of the public IP address being used by these clowns. Couple that with the MAC address of the modem, router and Ethernet port associated with the offending party. Mark the client as inoperable both in the game files and registry. Make swapping to a new account a major project. While it's simple enough to make online purchases for a virtual account via stolen credit card information, far harder is swapping out the physical hardware that's identified as belonging to a malevolent party. Even with those stolen accounts these guys would have to physically swap out the entire set of hardware in order to get back up and running. That takes time, effort and access to hardware to replace what is no longer authorized to access the game servers.

Yes some hardware is able to mimic the MAC address of other hardware, specifically routers. However Ethernet ports and most modems do not include such functionality. And in the case of modems any change of mac address information/physical hardware swap out has to be entered into their ISP's systems via customer service. This is how ISP's control who may and may not access their bandwidth.

I say once you've identified this hardware as being associated with 5 or more banned accounts, then you ban the hardware. There are some instances where this system could trap innocent players behind shared equipment that might get such a ban. Such as college dorms, internet cafe's, etc. However such locations also have to be administered by some sort of management personnel and each location could deal with such situations as they see fit.