Tips for reporting gold spam/bots - Feedback from Zenimax appreciated

Danicus12

Did a quick search, couldn't see anything similar.

Considering I'm raising one of these every minute or so in the starting areas at the moment, it would be nice to know if I'm doing it effectively. Some feedback regarding what information to include when reporting a bot/spammer would be great.

For example: when I report someone for gold spamming I ignore them first then try to include a screenshot of the chat that shows BOTH the spam and the ignore message so that the GMs can see both the character and account name (see attached)

Is this required or even beneficial? Can I get away with just the character name? Do I need the account name? Do I have to say anything in the ticket or can I just indicate it's for spam and provide a player name? Is right clicking on the name in chat sufficient to link the spam to the player when the devs investigate the ticket?

Cheers

merk

I think you're wasting your time. If they don't respond to the reports very quickly, then the bots win. They have enough time to farm gold or spam their message so enough people see it and maybe 1 or 2 stupid people actually pay them.

not to mention if their reporting system is so flawed that it requires us to jump through that many hoops, then their reporting system needs a serious over-haul.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/82523/i-am-not-reporting-spammers-anymore/p1

Danicus12

merk wrote: »

I think you're wasting your time. If they don't respond to the reports very quickly, then the bots win. They have enough time to farm gold or spam their message so enough people see it and maybe 1 or 2 stupid people actually pay them.

not to mention if their reporting system is so flawed that it requires us to jump through that many hoops, then their reporting system needs a serious over-haul.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/82523/i-am-not-reporting-spammers-anymore/p1

You may be right but I would like to hear from Zenimax first.

Until they upgrade their client and/or install automated processes/live GMs to clean things up we're all they have.

If we can get some help to provide tickets that help them burn through them more effectively, I'm happy to help.

Also, having worked in end user acceptance testing before, sometimes, what is required is some quantifiable numbers that can be used by the "gold spam problem dev" to justify their manager and their manager's manager allocating limited resources (read time, manpower and money) to one problem over another. Every ticket raised equals another chip in the gold spammer pile which might get it resourced over a bugged quest for instance.

Rytfield

If you report a player I think it's safe to say that they know which account is being reported, even if you only report the character name.

Zarec

Rytfield wrote: »

If you report a player I think it's safe to say that they know which account is being reported, even if you only report the character name.

Reporting a player phsyically (holding F to bring up the little circle minigame thing) reports their account name.

Only recently did the report function from zone chat start only reporting character names. Not sure if their system flags the accounts associated with those names even if the character is deleted after 30-60 min of spamming zone chat (which is common practice for gold farmers) but so far doesn't appear to do so but I can't see their backend system so not sure what metrics their system actually watches.

Robbiejuve

I wouldn't waste my time in the starting or first quest zone. Get into the 2nd or 3rd zone and the spam dies down, then you can start reporting the bots grinding in the open world, which are far fewer and it actually hurts them much more getting a level 30 character banned especially since they are botting 5 accounts at the same time.

Danicus12

I've tested a little.

If you report a player by right clicking the spam, the character name defaults in the ticket. If you ignore them THEN right click the account name in the ignore notification it defaults to the account name without the '@' in the ticket.

Not sure if this makes a difference on the dev's end. Would presume they can find an account based on a character name but don't know what happens if the character is deleted before they get to it.

Suppose report account name to be sure?

Vehadrah

If you have not noticed everything in eso is account based... even membership in guilds. It's safe to say they can figure out what account a character belongs to.

When I reported an in game mail that was from a gold spammers I got a message from a CS rep 4 days later... i know they have larger issues but I believe they need to hire a different agency for CS because this one is lacking in any ways and leaves much to be desired.

yenkin2001b14_ESO

I have been taking the time to report gold spammers in email and in game, as well as botters and farmers in dungeons, I have seen less dungeon grinders the last few days, so some change was made.

Easy solution to gold spammers, get the message out that don't buy gold, then there is no need for gold sellers. But because a certain segment of the population does not want to wait to save for a horse, or they want to have purple gear at every level, they buy gold.

Guilds who use guild banks should one be careful of the members you let in, and should support each other in game including equipment, Iam not saying you should give away equipment, but if you don't inflate the prices everybody wins. But the mentality of having to be rich, drives the few to inflate the prices. But hey it is a free market.

Danicus12

Vehadrah wrote: »

If you have not noticed everything in eso is account based... even membership in guilds. It's safe to say they can figure out what account a character belongs to.

I'm sure you're right but part of me wonders what might be horribly broken about their ticketing system, like does some poor office monkey have to Ctrl + F the character name into a giant spreadsheet to find the account?

Vehadrah wrote: »

When I reported an in game mail that was from a gold spammers I got a message from a CS rep 4 days later... i know they have larger issues but I believe they need to hire a different agency for CS because this one is lacking in any ways and leaves much to be desired.

I've never gotten more than the standard email and I think I've reported dozens so you're lucky. Honestly, I wouldn't expect more than that, they've got thousands of tickets to triage and it's not really worth it for them to individually reply with a "They've been banned" email, even if they were inclined to do so.

Geekgirl

I have reported every single gold spam/botting instance I've seen/gotten. It's a pain in my arse and for the first five minutes of game time I feel like that's all I do. However, it's my hope that by doing this we underline to Zeni that this is a big issue. I don't know how helpful it is, other than to remind the GMs that most players don't like this behavior, but I'm unwilling to just ignore it.