And the Bots Get Braver

Sarenia

Let me say beforehand, this isn't some angry, trollish post. I like this game, and for the most part I like ZOS's efforts. But clearly they don't fully comprehend how irate the playerbase is about botting, so I think maybe we need to speak at a louder volume until greater efforts are made to counter it. Please keep your responses civil, as you explain just how furious you are about the lack of effective anti-botting measures that we see.

Botters aren't even bothering to just camp bosses anymore. Just saw a pile of them running around on top of each other, insta-killing everything in Crosswych. They're now officially everywhere. They have no fear whatsoever. And why should they?

I know ZOS is planning to limit frequency of boss drops to deter boss botting, but if what I just saw is any hint of the future, that is just going to spread them out to other areas of the game. It's not even safe outside dungeons anymore. And guess what? That "boss loot fix" won't actually reprimand the people who are botting bosses right now. They'll walk away from this with their pockets lined with gold, and a smile on their faces.

Zenimax, announcements of good intentions to kill botting is not good enough, if we can't even play the game properly due to how prevalent the botters are. Why is there no Zenimax GMs online checking for obvious bot activity, and banning for it on sight? ZOS has 600+ employees. None of them can log in and ban the 15 people named "sdalhkda" and so forth who are standing in a pile, instantly killing everything, in the most flagrantly bot-ish way possible?

I have some technical knowledge. Not a lot, but enough. I've dealt with hackers, been the target of DDoS. I know blackhats are not easy to counter. But other companies have managed to mitigate botting to a point of near non-existence. If they can do it, ZOS should be able to as well. Even if it means temporarily, completely, shutting down the public API and having GMs manually banning obvious botters 24/7 until they take a hint.

We need to see more than just chipper posts about banwaves. We need to see clear and present FURY from Zenimax at the degradation of their work by blackhats. We need to see GMs porting into public dungeons and banwaving the piles of bots on sight so we can get loot again. We need to see API exploits that allow instant warping and sundry plugged within days of discovery.

There's a war going on right now, and ZOS is not winning it from where I'm standing.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Hi @Sarenia - We hear you and we're just as frustrated if not more by the botting and gold seller combo that's hitting ESO right now. We play the game too (many every day/night) and see exactly what you're seeing. It's safe to say this issue is our number one priority right now for all teams who aid in botting, hacking, and gold seller problems. We're actively doing what we can, and working toward increasing efforts to do more every day.

Elsonso

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ Can you tell us how often they are banning gold spammers that get reported? How long it takes from report to ban?

Jadeviper1974

lordrichter wrote: »

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ Can you tell us how often they are banning gold spammers that get reported? How long it takes from report to ban?

Not to speak for Jessica, but their own TOS pretty much prevents them from discussion action taken against another "player/account". So basically she could give you generalities but that would be all.

awkwarrd

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi @Sarenia - We hear you and we're just as frustrated if not more by the botting and gold seller combo that's hitting ESO right now. We play the game too (many every day/night) and see exactly what you're seeing. It's safe to say this issue is our number one priority right now for all teams who aid in botting, hacking, and gold seller problems. We're actively doing what we can, and working toward increasing efforts to do more every day.

I love this response, it gives me hope.

Sarenia

awkwarrd wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi @Sarenia - We hear you and we're just as frustrated if not more by the botting and gold seller combo that's hitting ESO right now. We play the game too (many every day/night) and see exactly what you're seeing. It's safe to say this issue is our number one priority right now for all teams who aid in botting, hacking, and gold seller problems. We're actively doing what we can, and working toward increasing efforts to do more every day.

I love this response, it gives me hope.

They say hope is the last thing to die. It's supposedly still trapped in Pandora's box. Clearly anybody with a name like Pandora is a liar though.

Really though, I am happy to see a ZOS representative respond so quickly. I figure 10:1 odds it's just riot control, but a response is better than none, and there's always that *:1 to consider.

Thesiren

I'm glad to see *something* finally said publicly at any rate. If anything it's getting worse every day.

If that Curse gold spam mod actually works, I wish Zenimax would hire that guy and incorporate his mod into ESO, as they aren't doing it themselves.

I'm so sick of /reporting then /ignoring every blasted new-spammer-a-minute, I have given up and disabled /zone chat altogether. And reporting them realistically does nothing to stop them. In fact, they create even more credit card fraud by buying more ESO accounts with stolen credit cards even faster than they normally would.

Zenimax just has to nip them in the bud, and suppress them as well as Sony has for ages now in Everquest 2- not one mail or /tell or shred of chat spam has been seen in that game for years now, and it's been F2P for years besides.

DYSEQTA

I too appreciate the formal acknowledgement of the problem but I also agree with the OP that the obvious lack of manual intervention is not really acceptable.

By all means work on your permanent fixes but right now ZOS, you should have support personnel manually seeking and destroying these bots to ensure quality of service to your customers until the problem is solved.

It's not like it's difficult either, it will just cost you money in the short term. Have people with "God powers" scanning through the various dungeons/delves/whatever-you-call-them in the early zones like Glenumbra looking for the obvious pile of bots and cheaters sitting on boss spawns and suspend them, immediately, without question, as they are blatantly obvious after watching for no more than a minute. This will at least go a long way toward allowing legitimate players to enjoy their play time.

rager82b14_ESO

Who cares about the bots when the core game play itself is bugged?

nerevarine1138

DYSEQTA wrote: »

I too appreciate the formal acknowledgement of the problem but I also agree with the OP that the obvious lack of manual intervention is not really acceptable.

By all means work on your permanent fixes but right now ZOS, you should have support personnel manually seeking and destroying these bots to ensure quality of service to your customers until the problem is solved.

It's not like it's difficult either, it will just cost you money in the short term. Have people with "God powers" scanning through the various dungeons/delves/whatever-you-call-them in the early zones like Glenumbra looking for the obvious pile of bots and cheaters sitting on boss spawns and suspend them, immediately, without question, as they are blatantly obvious after watching for no more than a minute. This will at least go a long way toward allowing legitimate players to enjoy their play time.

The "obvious lack of manual intervention"?

They just banned enough players to cause a minor uproar on the forums. What would you like them to do? Nuke Vulkhel Guard?

The fact is that security is reactive, not proactive. The developers will always be playing catch-up once the botters/gold-sellers find the new loopholes in coding/filters. This is not their fault; it's how things work. Look at WoW. 10 years going strong, and they still see gold-seller spam, bots, and account compromises.

It's not just unrealistic to place the onus on the developers, it doesn't solve the real problem: the players. If players in our community are buying gold or botting, it's up to us to help get rid of them. Without buyers, the sellers disappear.

damaged

They would not even have to pay for any GMs, all they have to do is offer some players free subs and create a controlled system for them to report and travel in game (with characters that are not the players characters, so they cannot take advantage of such powers), and I'll bet they'd get all kinds of volunteers, there's tons of people who'd work just for the sake of being able to say they are "Official Bot Seekers" or whatever, of course there would be a requirement of ID, and age verification (to avoid accusations of child labor abuse :P)

nerevarine1138

damaged wrote: »

They would not even have to pay for any GMs, all they have to do is offer some players free subs and create a controlled system for them to report and travel in game (with characters that are not the players characters, so they cannot take advantage of such powers), and I'll bet they'd get all kinds of volunteers, there's tons of people who'd work just for the sake of being able to say they are "Official Bot Seekers" or whatever, of course there would be a requirement of ID, and age verification (to avoid accusations of child labor abuse :P)

No.

Player enforcement does not work. It's like asking regular citizens to arrest muggers. Power corrupts, and real GMs would need to review every single player decision.

Andy371

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi @Sarenia - We hear you and we're just as frustrated if not more by the botting and gold seller combo that's hitting ESO right now. We play the game too (many every day/night) and see exactly what you're seeing. It's safe to say this issue is our number one priority right now for all teams who aid in botting, hacking, and gold seller problems. We're actively doing what we can, and working toward increasing efforts to do more every day.

I'm glad to see that said. I was curious why I hadn't seen any ZOS staff running around at all. I'm now assuming there is nothing that distinguishes them from other players or i'm just missing them all.

It is still early days, we can't forget how young this game really is. ZOS will as soon as they can implement features to eradicate these bots permanently, but they need some time. I like to think that they will take a bit of extra time ensuring that the implementations work on a large scale.

Also being that it is early days, I expect that there will be large scale bans which will weed them out for a while, then the programmers will create different methods of botting, at which point more large scale bans will occur. This will probably happen a good number of times until there is enough systems in place to completely stop them.

It is reasonable to be frustrated that it works this way, but that's just the way it is unfortunately. What MMO that offers cheaters a market to profit in the real world from has not had a problem with bots and cheating. Also think of it like this, the team at zenimax that is working to prevent bots go to work, figure out how to get rid of these bots, go home, get paid. They get paid either way. The cheaters are making these scripts to get paid, so naturally they will be a lot more cunning at finding exploits that ZOS staff will be.

Hexxagone

I would do that, I would instaban any goldseller I see in chat. I reported dozens of them, let me go one step further and get them permanently banned.

Censorious

I have no information about how the 'megaserver' technology works but I suspect that what we see as one public dungeon in Glenumbra is actually thousands of instances of the same dungeon.
Where we see three or four people running through with us, there are actually hundreds, maybe thousands of players all playing the same dungeon.

The task of physically policing something like that would be immense. It would require a vast labour source and a lot of organisation. You can't just let any jack-the-lad loose on it so vetting a police force alone would be a mammoth task. It just isn't practical.

Let them get on with it in their own way. It's their game - it's their money at stake.

Lazarus_Long

I think it would be hard for the GM's to do their jobs if they were visible in game. People would be like "Pst! GM! Quest xyz is not working right. Fix it!" or "Pst! GM! Spawn this world boss for me?" or "Pst! GM! why aren't you banning botters?" If they were in game they would have to be as stealthy as the secret-ninja-squirrel ninja death squad that protects Sheogorath (like ninjas) on Tuesdays from 7 am to 3 pm.

LIQUID741

Lazarus_Long wrote: »

I think it would be hard for the GM's to do their jobs if they were visible in game. People would be like "Pst! GM! Quest xyz is not working right. Fix it!" or "Pst! GM! Spawn this world boss for me?" or "Pst! GM! why aren't you banning botters?" If they were in game they would have to be as stealthy as the secret-ninja-squirrel ninja death squad that protects Sheogorath (like ninjas) on Tuesdays from 7 am to 3 pm.

Yes..it would be like a bunch of 1st graders asking for another cookie from the teacher..keep the GM's under wraps.

MysticAura

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom Thank-you for the information on this thread and many others. It really is appreciated.

Dolenz

Sarenia wrote: »

ZOS has 600+ employees.[/b] None of them can log in and ban the 15 people named "sdalhkda" and so forth who are standing in a pile, instantly killing everything, in the most flagrantly bot-ish way possible?

DO you realize just how many different instances of a zone or dungeon probably exist? I doubt is it s simple matter of popping into Dels Claim and banning some botters if there are 100 different instances of Del's Claim (and every other dungeon) running simultaneously.

Personally I believe it is a priority for Zenimax. Unfortunately, I don't think it is nearly as easy to accomplish as every random person on the internet believes it should be.

Vivec

Botting was absolutely TERRIBLE in GW2 when it launched. They did small things here and there to limit botting, but were more focused on post launch bug fixes. After a couple months when they could devote more resources to dealing with botting, there was literally a period of two days where all of the bots just vanished, and became something that I went from seeing every day, to seeing only one time in a period of almost two years.

They'll get to it, just takes time. I haven't even really been that annoyed by them honestly.

Sarenia

Dolenz wrote: »

Sarenia wrote: »

ZOS has 600+ employees.[/b] None of them can log in and ban the 15 people named "sdalhkda" and so forth who are standing in a pile, instantly killing everything, in the most flagrantly bot-ish way possible?

DO you realize just how many different instances of a zone or dungeon probably exist? I doubt is it s simple matter of popping into Dels Claim and banning some botters if there are 100 different instances of Del's Claim (and every other dungeon) running simultaneously.

Personally I believe it is a priority for Zenimax. Unfortunately, I don't think it is nearly as easy to accomplish as every random person on the internet believes it should be.

Nobody said anything about this being an easy issue to solve. If it were easy, this thread wouldn't exist.

And people are never random. The same IT professionals who work in data centers also like to play video games. You bump elbows with database engineers, professional wrestlers, cartel members and war veterans on the internet. Nobody is random, and assuming everybody is ignorant is fallacy.

Players don't _need_ to be intimately aware of a server's backend in order to express concerns about a product. Why would they? I don't need to know that 'game_0000.dat' uses a modified ZLIB/Crunch compression algorithm in order to run the game. It just works.

Censorious

Vivec wrote: »

Botting was absolutely TERRIBLE in GW2 when it launched. They did small things here and there to limit botting, but were more focused on post launch bug fixes. After a couple months when they could devote more resources to dealing with botting, there was literally a period of two days where all of the bots just vanished, and became something that I went from seeing every day, to seeing only one time in a period of almost two years.

They'll get to it, just takes time. I haven't even really been that annoyed by them honestly.

this^^

Except for that last line.

Catches_the_Sun

This is the worst game for botting/gold spamming that I have played since Lineage 2. It's to the point now that a friend of mine, who I've played MMOs with for 15+ years has started botting himself. He laughs at me when I warn him he can be banned, and I'm starting to think he's right. It's one thing to acknowledge the problem, but actually taking action against your paying customers is a big step, and I'm not confident we'll see it.

Edit: Yes, I know gold spammers aren't paying customers. Referring to many of the afk botters in every dungeon in Tamriel.

Strontium-Dog

Actually Anarchy Online has for years used volunteers to help out the GMs etc. They dont have powers as such but they are able to support the staff and have them target the people who need to be targetted etc.

Teleporting bots and farming bots are in danger of having this game become a LAUGHING STOCK of the mmo community. Things like this stick and are hard to shift.

Put a vote system in place in dungeons to allow us to flag people pvp and we can kick the bots asses for you.

Thete

It needs to be made quicker and easier to report player who use bots.

Delte

Eve Online does regular mass bans on accounts. Some of my corp mates were caught in a few waves when their ice miners got banned along with the whole account. Perma locked out of the game.

Never botted in a mmo before and never intend to begin because its just not right. I report any gold sellers and bots I see in the dungeons or zone chat, even reported whole guilds who are set up exclusively to sell gold and will spam me mails in the game to buy gold from their web site.
Although reported these guilds still exist and still spam adverts out on the EU server.

There is an easy solution to this and in the public dungeons all that needs to be done is to have all the NPC's spawn at once at max level of 50+ and swarm to the boss npc to kill any player there at random times. As a legit player I wouldn't mind if I got caught in this wave. But my guess this would make sure it costs the bots time to travel back to the dungeon and set up again. And in a business time= money.

rawne1980b16_ESO

Forgive me for this "captain obvious" moment but what did you think would happen when they announced the boss change?

Did you think all the bots would just disappear?

No.

They would farm other things. Find other ways to make gold.

Changing the boss drops doesn't change anything in regards to botters. You people that wanted it changed didn't improve the game you just spread the bots out into other areas to annoy more people.

In essence, you made things worse.

Hate to say I told you so.

That's a lie, it feels great.

nerevarine1138

Catches_the_Sun wrote: »

This is the worst game for botting/gold spamming that I have played since Lineage 2. It's to the point now that a friend of mine, who I've played MMOs with for 15+ years has started botting himself. He laughs at me when I warn him he can be banned, and I'm starting to think he's right. It's one thing to acknowledge the problem, but actually taking action against your paying customers is a big step, and I'm not confident we'll see it.

Edit: Yes, I know gold spammers aren't paying customers. Referring to many of the afk botters in every dungeon in Tamriel.

Well, they just had a huge ban wave, and plenty of paying customers raised hell about it.

Report your friend, because they're ruining the game for everyone else. Also, reconsider calling them a "friend," because I don't know about you, but I tend to not stay friends with people who have no morals.

Selstad

What they should do, is have a check during start-up of the game whether or not there are programs in the background sending key command signals to eso.exe. Every BOT program depends on sending key commands to the game to execute the commands, regardless of how smart the program is, it still needs to convey the actions towards the game.

I know that other MMOs do it this way too, and easily catch most BOTers and ban them.

It is an ever growing problem, mostly because there are people paying for it. As much as it's a problem that people do it, there is also a problem that people use these services to gain advantages. They should therefore also ban everyone that purchases powerlevelling services or gold, and that ban should be quite severe as well, 3 months or more. To be honest I have as little respect for those purchasing gold and powerlevelling in an MMO as I have towards those offering it.

Lazarus_Long

Selstad wrote: »

What they should do, is have a check during start-up of the game whether or not there are programs in the background sending key command signals to eso.exe. Every BOT program depends on sending key commands to the game to execute the commands, regardless of how smart the program is, it still needs to convey the actions towards the game.

I know that other MMOs do it this way too, and easily catch most BOTers and ban them.

It is an ever growing problem, mostly because there are people paying for it. As much as it's a problem that people do it, there is also a problem that people use these services to gain advantages. They should therefore also ban everyone that purchases powerlevelling services or gold, and that ban should be quite severe as well, 3 months or more. To be honest I have as little respect for those purchasing gold and powerlevelling in an MMO as I have towards those offering it.

Building in a scanner like that can be a double edged sword. I don't want a company tracing what every program on my computer is doing just to make sure I am one of the honest majority. It would be better if ZOS got tons and tons of player reports together as well as doing some hands on testing with some botting software. They could then generate a profile based play behavior, network usage patterns, in game locations, party preferences, and all kinds of other data to automatically flag suspect players and deal with them all on the server side.

Selstad

Building in a scanner like that can be a double edged sword. I don't want a company tracing what every program on my computer is doing just to make sure I am one of the honest majority. It would be better if ZOS got tons and tons of player reports together as well as doing some hands on testing with some botting software. They could then generate a profile based play behavior, network usage patterns, in game locations, party preferences, and all kinds of other data to automatically flag suspect players and deal with them all on the server side.

Many MMOs have this, it's not to check what programs are running on your computer - such as a keystroke logger - but rather if a program is sending I/O key commands from an external program to eso.exe. This is a much more effective way rather than having pattern searches as they can be client based and not server based.