And the Bots Get Braver

nerevarine1138

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.

Of course! It's so simple!

You do, of course, realize that every MMO that does this still has problems with botters, because they always find a way to re-program around the new security code. I'd be surprised if ESO doesn't already have something like this in place.

Selstad

Of course! It's so simple!

You do, of course, realize that every MMO that does this still has problems with botters, because they always find a way to re-program around the new security code. I'd be surprised if ESO doesn't already have something like this in place.

Other MMOs have far fewer boters though, and per example in WoW the amounts are close to none because of the catch system on the executable. In WoW, the system check they have is so strong that it even catches programs that are commonly used for machinima production.

One thing is catching, them, the other is making sure they are banned. That is however a far more problematic side as most use VPN and mask their IP, making IP banning or IP-range banning kind of useless.

nerevarine1138

Selstad wrote: »

Other MMOs have far fewer boters though, and per example in WoW the amounts are close to none because of the catch system on the executable. In WoW, the system check they have is so strong that it even catches programs that are commonly used for machinima production.

One thing is catching, them, the other is making sure they are banned. That is however a far more problematic side as most use VPN and mask their IP, making IP banning or IP-range banning kind of useless.

Someone should tell the WoW forums that they have no botters, because they sure haven't heard.

Selstad

Are we talking about the game or the forums? I've levelled close to 10 characters from 1 to 90 on both Horde and Alliance side, and the number of bots in WoW are far lower than in many other games.

nerevarine1138

Selstad wrote: »

Are we talking about the game or the forums? I've levelled close to 10 characters from 1 to 90 on both Horde and Alliance side, and the number of bots in WoW are far lower than in many other games.

Oh, you've leveled 2 characters in WoW? I defer to your superior knowledge.

Most bots are in BGs or farming nodes underground. You don't see them if they don't want to be seen.

The reason I mentioned the forums is that you will not hear people complain about bots in-game. You will, however, see plenty of people asking when Blizzard are "finally going to do something" about the botting issue. Just as people are already asking ZO this. As mentioned above, security is always reactive. There is no magic solution. As long as we are lax and allow unethical people to slide by because we don't think the developers are doing anything, we're encouraging bots.

Selstad

Oh, you've leveled 2 characters in WoW? I defer to your superior knowledge.

Most bots are in BGs or farming nodes underground. You don't see them if they don't want to be seen.

The reason I mentioned the forums is that you will not hear people complain about bots in-game. You will, however, see plenty of people asking when Blizzard are "finally going to do something" about the botting issue. Just as people are already asking ZO this. As mentioned above, security is always reactive. There is no magic solution. As long as we are lax and allow unethical people to slide by because we don't think the developers are doing anything, we're encouraging bots.

As with many other things, a broad sample is often better than a narrow one, having levelled a whole bunch of characters means I've been through the zones - all of them - several times before. BGs was a problem before, but it's not that problematic now because of the systems WoW has in place, it's more of a problem that people get flagged for boting when they're not because of how effective these systems are.

I've frequented on the forums as well for some time and the most written subject is that the game is too easy/hard and how to make it harder/easier. And trolling, of course, lots of that.

There aren't any magical solution but detecting is the first step. The next step is cutting of those that give life to these services - i.e those purchasing.

crush83

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.

You know what is most frustrating? This isn't some new epidemic to hit the MMO industry. As an MMO developer, and reverse engineer, I know exactly how these bots are created. We aren't simply talking about using Cheat Engine, editing the existing client, or using AutoIt scripts.

If I were going to create a bot, I'd create a custom console-based client. That client would simply send the packets I wanted to send, when I needed to send them. It would analyze incoming packets, and react accordingly to them. This is undoubtedly what sophisticated bots are doing.

You know why this is so frustrating for the players here? Because Zenimax is acting like this is some new epidemic gripping TESO. Hello. Botting has been around for decades. Creating custom console-based clients that serve as bots, has been around for decades.

What we, as your consumers, don't understand is how Zenimax can be so ignorant as to how to combat this. How are the thousands of other MMORPG communities combating it?

To a certain degree, you can't. If you guys are looking at installing more client side checks, stop wasting your time. I've explained this before.

If I completely replace your client with a custom client I've written, then all your fancy little algorithms that you are running trying to catch people running third-party software and what not are completely rendered void and null. Get it?

Rule #1 of Client->Server Model. Never, ever, under any circumstance, trust the client.

You can't change the fact that your client's have to communicate with your server via TCP/UDP over the Internet. That is the only link you have. You can't trust that link. This has been well established since the Internet was born.

You're going to have to expend some previous server resources tracking player movements, analyzing movement patterns, analyzing tons of metrics.

This is going to need to take place on the server.

For all the kids crying about implementing a PunkBuster client or some such, guess what. PunkBuster clients can be emulated too. It's not enough to say "run this cheat detection program on the client".

Zenimax HAS to start doing more on the server side of things. Period.

Hire some outside consultants who've been here before. Zenimax, if you don't get this handled within the next couple of weeks, you are going to see people leaving in droves.

I'm not trying to fear monger or scare people. I'm trying to get you to open your freaking eyes before it is simply too late to recover.

nerevarine1138

crush83 wrote: »

(Holy wall of text, Batman!)

You act as though ZO doesn't already have people working on this. Yes, bots have been around forever. ESO, however, hasn't. So the code that they use to bot in this game is going to be different than the code they were using to bot in other games, no matter how similar the underlying programs may appear.

They've already been swinging the banhammer like crazy, and we're only 2 weeks in. WoW has been running 10 years, and they still have bots. What you expect is ludicrous.

crush83

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

You act as though ZO doesn't already have people working on this. Yes, bots have been around forever. ESO, however, hasn't. So the code that they use to bot in this game is going to be different than the code they were using to bot in other games, no matter how similar the underlying programs may appear.

They've already been swinging the banhammer like crazy, and we're only 2 weeks in. WoW has been running 10 years, and they still have bots. What you expect is ludicrous.

The code they use to bot is irrelevant guy. I know you want to act like you understand the scene, but you are clearly clueless.

There is one method to stopping botters, and it's not going to come from anything client side. Ever. Period.

Get a clue, hire people who've dealt with this before. Botting was taking place in beta. They shouldn't have waited until now to start trying to figure out how to stop it.

nerevarine1138

crush83 wrote: »

The code they use to bot is irrelevant guy. I know you want to act like you understand the scene, but you are clearly clueless.

There is one method to stopping botters, and it's not going to come from anything client side. Ever. Period.

Get a clue, hire people who've dealt with this before. Botting was taking place in beta. They shouldn't have waited until now to start trying to figure out how to stop it.

You act like they were sitting on their hands. You think they made the security changes for the first banwave after launch? They were probably preparing the first security changes after bots appeared in beta. Now we've seen a second wave. They're probably already working on a third.

For someone who claims to be an expert, you haven't really explained how a totally reactive system (security) can be proactively psychic about how the botters will next try and get around the blocks that have been set up.

You're right, there is no program on the client's side that will stop botting. But the server-side programs can only react to what comes next. Client behavior, like reporting bots (even if they're your bestest buddies), can have an impact.

Kyotee0071

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.

It warms my heart to know you guys actually play the game.

I'm sure you will get a handle on the problem. Will it ever be completely gone - No. But it can definitely improve once you guys do get it under control.

Eris

Server side methods are great, however, one of the most efficient tools to locate and identify bots is the player base. Simply reporting them and letting the GMs investigate works pretty well. There are plenty of players in the game that can do that. It is a little harder without name plates, and sometimes the bots are hard to tell from the real people but that's not our problem that is the GMs problem. So if the bots bother you, report them.

Faster, easier reporting methods would be nice too.

Elsonso

crush83 wrote: »

As an MMO developer, and reverse engineer, I know exactly how these bots are created.

...

Zenimax HAS to start doing more on the server side of things. Period.

Since you are an MMO developer and a reverse engineer, you already know that they are doing more things on the server side than you can probably talk about.

We have already had several of your peers in here that work for other companies basically tell us that.

You also know that, to a certain extent, every MMO has to figure this out for themselves. It is a right of passage and their peers are not going to be of great assistance. Do you think that Blizzard is going to cough up their trade secrets to help? No. The others are chuckling, but it is a reserved chuckle since they know they went through the same initiation rites.

You are correct in that you can never trust the client. All detection of a hostile client has to be done on the server and we are already seeing indications that they have server software in place to detect some of this.

But when so many of the "bots" in the dungeons are not "bots" at all but actual live people sitting at an actual console running the actual game, it is safe to say that the GMs are swamped with false reports. By creating an endless stream of false reports, the players themselves ensure that any bots that do happen to be there, however unlikely that would be, will have a long time to live because the staff is too busy pouring over the logs of actual players sitting at a keyboard looking for bot activity.

The problem with the dungeons is not the bots, it is that the game allows a player to just stand there and kill a spawning boss endlessly, all day long, by doing nothing more than mashing the "1" and "E" keys. Every so often they might have to reposition.

No one needs to use a compromised client to farm bosses, you can do it with an unmodified eso.exe program, keyboard, and chair. The worst offenders might be using multiboxing to drive multiple clients.

Nope, despite what people might thing, I strongly suspect that a bot farming bosses, meaning an unattended compromised client doing nothing but mindlessly attacking the boss, is a lot more unusual than people think. It is so much overkill to do it that way when you can just do it with a person using an unmodified client.

Now, for something that has to follow a set path through the world to farm materials, that is a different story. There is a reason for that sort of bot to exist, but in all the outrage and attention that the boss farmers have, the materials farmers get far less attention. If there are any people running compromised clients to farm materials, they definitely appreciate the added attention the dungeon "bots" are getting. It makes it less likely to be detected.

Thete

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Someone should tell the WoW forums that they have no botters, because they sure haven't heard.

I'm not sure that any internet forum is to be taken as a trusted source of wisdom. I've not come across a bot in WoW in years. Not saying they don't exist, but they sure as hell don't spoil my gaming. Bear in mind that not everyone even knows what a bot is or how to identify one. I had someone think I was a bot once.

Mailmann

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

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.

Are you saying that ZOS employees witness these actions and do nothing or they witness these actions and can't do anything given current policies? I would think devs would be able to easily drop the ban hammer on these accounts the moment they are discovered by a ZOS employee... unless there are policies in place effectively tying their hands.

Sarenia

crush83 wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

You act as though ZO doesn't already have people working on this. Yes, bots have been around forever. ESO, however, hasn't. So the code that they use to bot in this game is going to be different than the code they were using to bot in other games, no matter how similar the underlying programs may appear.

They've already been swinging the banhammer like crazy, and we're only 2 weeks in. WoW has been running 10 years, and they still have bots. What you expect is ludicrous.

The code they use to bot is irrelevant guy. I know you want to act like you understand the scene, but you are clearly clueless.

There is one method to stopping botters, and it's not going to come from anything client side. Ever. Period.

Get a clue, hire people who've dealt with this before. Botting was taking place in beta. They shouldn't have waited until now to start trying to figure out how to stop it.

While I can't agree with your derogatory tone, I do agree that no client-side fix is relevant. Everything can be decompiled with enough time, interest, and skill. "Physical" access is full access.

Scene had 'eso.exe' and the '*.dat' files decompiled before launch, with many links to filenames already extrapolated from '*.mnf'.

SWIM observed that these files weren't useful for abusing the client-server communications though. At best one could make client-side changes to graphics (re: changing wood elf skin textures) which is existent in most MMOs really.

My concern is that the public API may need to be shut off entirely for the time being. I love my addons and sincerely doubt every exploit right now is linked to API abuse, but I know for a fact that many of them are. When people are publicly releases insta-warp addons you have to question API security (especially when said addons exist for a week after being reported on a public, major traffic site).

The ability to observe and use specific coordinates is clearly an issue. EQ2 made it work without any serious botting in it's later years of age, but right now coordinates are the cornerstone of the obvious bots. Without specific coordinates, they can't function with the sort of widespread efficiency they have now. Disable announcing of coordinates to players, shut down any API accessibility to coordinate information or manipulation, and do something to scramble current coordinates. That should break most of the bots for a time, forcing them to fall back on cruder methods.

Of course, this is all just the ignorant observations of a random internet-goer.

Svann

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Someone should tell the WoW forums that they have no botters, because they sure haven't heard.

Its way less than here. Not even the same ballpark.

Syzmicke

Some of these so called "Bots" may just be multiboxer's there is a huge difference.

Not sure what there stance is on that though.

Mercbird

Bots? As someone who almost exclusively played single player or co-op up to now I just thought most people who play MMo's are assh ... a very different breed

Sarenia

Syzmicke wrote: »

Some of these so called "Bots" may just be multiboxer's there is a huge difference.

Not sure what there stance is on that though.

Multi-boxing is entirely irrelevant to the discussion, which is why I didn't mention it in the OP. Multi-boxing is no more the cause of botting than SSH is the cause of server hacking. They're just tools.

It's pretty easy to spot automated avatars (re: bots) vs actively played avatars though.

Bots have _perfect_ response time. They stand in _perfect_ unison on a precise coordinate. They don't sleep. They don't AFK. They don't move from their pre-set coordinate path. They use the _precise_ same attack routine every time. They typically have names like "zkhga" because they can't be bothered to manually name hundreds of characters.

Somebody legitimately playing multiple accounts at the same time manually (re: multi-boxing) will not exhibit the above levels of precision and efficiency on a persistent basis.

The thing to remember is that blackhats - hackers, script-kiddies, gold spammers, etc -- are lazy. Very, very lazy. They want the easy route. They want quick money. Some of them are ingenious, but most of them are just consumers using other peoples' blackhat work to their own benefit. The bottom line is they are generally _very_ easy to spot -- because they're lazy and don't shift their M.O.

Spider4423

i just wish i could pk my own allies... simply murder their faces while they camp that boss

BETAOPTICS

Yeah it is kind of bad. I personally can still deal with it but the problem has to be dealt with regardless. Now only if the quests would work perfectly aside from the botters, I would not have anything to complain about personally considering all the other issues ZoS has already addressed and are onto the issues.

Cristiano

I have been surprised that the same gold spammer is able to spam chat over and over again. It doesn't seem that difficult to have employees monitoring chat and immediately taking action against that. It reminds me of how bad the chat got in the game Raiderz. The entire zone chat was just gold spam. It's not that bad yet, but multiline gold spam that is easily spotted continues over and over again.

There are also too many steps involved in reporting gold spam. It should be an option directly on the menu when you click the name instead of taking you into the ticket system.

Vagrant0

The problem is that for years now the standard practice used against botters has been to observe farming bots and wait till they transfer things to a bank character or be diffused between other accounts held by a given goldselling site. While this may seem like a smart tactic given that you can wipe out large amounts of botted money at once, it also ends up being slower and a tactic that goldsellers have figured out ways to stay ahead. Meanwhile players see the same bots constantly spamming, farming, and get quickly discouraged to the point where they stop reporting things or just quit playing.

To solve the problem, the best solution is to appoint people from within the community as player GMs who can swat down the individual bots running around and dry up the income that these goldselling sites depend on. Not only does this effectively clean up the public side of botting, but it also makes for fewer accounts that GMs actually need to keep track of for researching the holding accounts used by these sites. A single player GM can cost these sites several hundred dollars in an hour just by killing their supply and forcing them to purchase more keys or become more reliant on stolen accounts. As a player GM can deal with the individual bots, they can recognize behavior better, flag auto-generated accounts differently from accounts which were probably hacked and stripped, and regularly patrol areas frequented by bots. This is what MMOs did in days past, and it almost always solved the majority of the problem. If a gold selling site is spending several thousand dollars a month to keep their operation running in a MMO, they will move to another MMO or switch to downscaled methods.

There are likely many players out there who would happily take on the mantle of player GM for the sake of keeping a game world from becoming yet another bot-ridden mess. Many of them probably already have experience moderating, recording for reports, being accountable, and watching behavior trends to alert to possible exploits.

nerevarine1138

No.

Players do not have the tools or understanding to determine who is and isn't botting, and players cannot be trusted with banning power. Period.

lyndsayporterb16_ESO

Clearly the OP has never played Diablo 2

Sarenia

lyndsayporterb16_ESO wrote: »

Clearly the OP has never played Diablo 2

I have, and I'm aware they have a worse issue.

Not sure how this bears relevance or contributes to the conversation. Diablo 2 is a year or two older than ESO, FYI. Give or take a decade.

nerevarine1138

Sarenia wrote: »

lyndsayporterb16_ESO wrote: »

Clearly the OP has never played Diablo 2

I have, and I'm aware they have a worse issue.

Not sure how this bears relevance or contributes to the conversation. Diablo 2 is a year or two older than ESO, FYI. Give or take a decade.

And they still haven't got a handle on their botting issue. Remarkable, isn't it?

Sarenia

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

Sarenia wrote: »

lyndsayporterb16_ESO wrote: »

Clearly the OP has never played Diablo 2

I have, and I'm aware they have a worse issue.

Not sure how this bears relevance or contributes to the conversation. Diablo 2 is a year or two older than ESO, FYI. Give or take a decade.

And they still haven't got a handle on their botting issue. Remarkable, isn't it?

Not particularly. Diablo 2 is one of the most heavily hacked games in the history of gaming.

I recall having hacked battle competitions on Open Battle.net. The hex editor gurus tended to win.

Why stop at Diablo 2, if we're going to compare a AAA MMORPG from 2014 to ancient games, we may as well go all out and compare it to Pong.

Pong had collision with the player avatar (paddle) so why doesn't my ESO avatar have collision? And Pong allowed the player to interact with their environment (a ball), so why can't I kick over baskets on ESO?

Do you see where this is going? Thanks for playing.

lyndsayporterb16_ESO

Many of you love to whine and seem to forget the game was just released three weeks ago (officially anyway). Major bug fixes > people botting. Get your priorities checked.