How much is ZoS getting owned... yeah.. its THIS bad..

Spiritreaver_ESO

nazgull2k1ub17_ESO wrote: »

I watched an ACTUAL GM show up today in a dungeon.. suddenly the 10 templars in tutorial gear named AASJDSHF spamming spears were all banned. A bunch of us cheered. FINALLY seeing some real balls out of ZoS GM's..

My wife and I, along with about 4 other people.. got our boss kill the following spawn (about 5 minutes later.)

As we turned to leave the room... 10 more templars in tutorial gear named AHDGCCSS ran in and took position next to the boss spawn.. and sure enough.. instant spear spam the second the boss spawned.

That was when my wife and I cancelled our accounts.

ZoS is getting completely owned by chinese farmer bots.. and the tiny drop in the ocean they just stopped was replaced within 5 minutes. (Bet me it was the SAME farmer who had probably another 30 templars parked outside ready to form spear spam groups.)

Absolutely pathetic.

Its not just on ZOS you know? IP perma-bans for the sellers AND the buyers is the only way to really put a dent in the RMT business. And let's not forget you, me, and the rest of the playerbase aren't seeing what is happening to the buyers atm.

I personally think that ZOS should be focusing more on fixing all the bugged quests atm than rousting the gold farmers before they are ready to really play hardball with them. Matt Firor said in a recent interview that 85% of their customer service tickets are about botters atm. 85%. I really think they should leave off messing with it for the first month. Then in month 2 just hit farmers and the buyers hard.

Rough and simplified way to curtail RMT activity:

1) Automatically track any deliveries of large amounts of gold without corresponding items being transferred.

2) Contact both parties ingame and investigate.

3) If the situation is fishy, issue temp suspensions pending full investigations.

4) Re-instate suspended accounts if investigations turn up no RMT activity, with apologies and a bit of comp time. Permanent IP banning if a gold sale did go down.

Its not like there are no records of transactions between accounts. Do it this way and it hits both sides of the issue with allot less hassle on ZOSs part. Freeing them up to stabilize the rest of the game. People would be much less likely to buy knowing that bans are a distinct possibility. No buyers, the farmers will move on.

revanghost

htoncic wrote: »

You're right, the GM should have used their clairvoyant powers to ban all those future bots, too.

BTW, can I have your stuff?

Insulting someone is probably not a good way to get their stuff.

Darzil

The only way Zenimax and the players can win is to make it uneconomic for the botters to farm and economic for Zenimax to stop them.

There are many ways this can happen, but unfortunately a number of design decisions make it hard. Essentially they have to maximise the length of time before a bot can start farming, whilst minimising impact on real players, and minimise the length of time before the bot is then banned.

Allowing skipping of the starter zone massively reduces the time before a bot can start farming, because there is no longer a quest chain to complete. By not checking character positions and thus allowing teleportation bots spend minimal time between creation and arrival at farming location. By allowing mailing of items bots don't have to leave the farming locations. Essentially this game has a design that maximises bot efficiency, which will make stopping them that much harder.

The only good thing is that the requirement to complete the main quest will probably stop bots reaching the VR1+ content (if I understand it correctly, I'm nowhere near there yet).

Blackwidow

Calaban wrote: »

nazgull2k1ub17_ESO wrote: »

THEY ARE CAMPING EVERY BOSS IN EVERY DUNGEON this game has. You cannot find ONE dungeon in this game right now without 10 templar bots in tutorial gear spear spamming the boss. NOT ONE.

This just isn't true.

In fact, I just went through a dungeon in Stormhaven - the name escapes me at the moment - and there were NO bots and barely any players camping the boss. I killed the boss 3x, got a blue, and got out of there.

You're being slightly dramatic, imo.

I call B.S.

At least for 30 and below dungeons there are always bots.

Ulsterman

Arsenic_Touch wrote: »

What's funny, every time I see a group of bots, there's someone complaining in zone and when you ask if they reported them you get "I don't know how" or "It's not worth it" or "It takes too long" and they wonder why there's nothing being done.

I fully understand your point, but on the other hand you have to admit that once you consequently start reporting bots you'll quickly come to the point when you aren't doing anything else anymore. Reporting bots can easily become a full time occupation.

Blackwidow

The solution is so damn easy.

You kill the boss once, he does not spawn for you again or at minimum, you get no loot after that.

Ulsterman

Blackwidow wrote: »

The solution is so damn easy.

You kill the boss once, he does not spawn for you again or at minimum, you get no loot after that.

With that you'd get the bots out of the dungeons, but not out of the game. They'd simply look for (and find) other ways

Juponen

To squash the demand i.e the buyers is the only way. The botters and spammers are in for a profit and vanish only if it becomes uneconomical to stay.

Concentrate everything on rooting out the buyers.

Blackwidow

Ulsterman wrote: »

Blackwidow wrote: »

The solution is so damn easy.

You kill the boss once, he does not spawn for you again or at minimum, you get no loot after that.

With that you'd get the bots out of the dungeons, but not out of the game. They'd simply look for (and find) other ways

I'll take it.

Osi

Blackwidow wrote: »

Calaban wrote: »

nazgull2k1ub17_ESO wrote: »

THEY ARE CAMPING EVERY BOSS IN EVERY DUNGEON this game has. You cannot find ONE dungeon in this game right now without 10 templar bots in tutorial gear spear spamming the boss. NOT ONE.

This just isn't true.

In fact, I just went through a dungeon in Stormhaven - the name escapes me at the moment - and there were NO bots and barely any players camping the boss. I killed the boss 3x, got a blue, and got out of there.

You're being slightly dramatic, imo.

I call B.S.

At least for 30 and below dungeons there are always bots.

I call BS on your calling BS. I have seen almost no bots. I'm not saying they don't exist, but phasing makes seeing these large groups of bots almost impossible.

Saying you saw 10-20 bots on a single location... No, impossible. Every boss I am able, with a handful of others that by their name and actions do not appear to be bots, get the unique blue drop after 5-10 kills.

Blackwidow

Osi wrote: »

I call BS on your calling BS. I have seen almost no bots. I'm not saying they don't exist, but phasing makes seeing these large groups of bots almost impossible.

Prove it. Go to ANY low level dungeon and film you being at a boss with no bots. Until then, you are full of it, sorry.

Gaudrath

I'm level 34 right now and did every public dungeon I came across - about 2/3 of them had obvious bots inside, and once I found a bot train running around in a dungeon (you can easily spot those by the way they move - each one is turning at right angles and following the exact same path without fail).

ZOS is not going to fix this by banning bot accounts. The ONLY way to fix this is to introduce diminishing returns for loot drops across the entire game, dungeons, overworld, everything. Basically what GW2 has - it makes it impossible to stay in one area or dungeon and just farm stuff.

The price to pay is that you nuke farming, period. Nobody can farm then anymore. But personally I think it's a small price to pay for nuking bot farming in the process.

Blackwidow

Gaudrath wrote: »

The price to pay is that you nuke farming, period. Nobody can farm then anymore. But personally I think it's a small price to pay for nuking bot farming in the process.

That is not a price, that is a glorious side effect.

Sharee

Osi wrote: »

Blackwidow wrote: »

Calaban wrote: »

nazgull2k1ub17_ESO wrote: »

THEY ARE CAMPING EVERY BOSS IN EVERY DUNGEON this game has. You cannot find ONE dungeon in this game right now without 10 templar bots in tutorial gear spear spamming the boss. NOT ONE.

This just isn't true.

In fact, I just went through a dungeon in Stormhaven - the name escapes me at the moment - and there were NO bots and barely any players camping the boss. I killed the boss 3x, got a blue, and got out of there.

You're being slightly dramatic, imo.

I call B.S.

At least for 30 and below dungeons there are always bots.

I call BS on your calling BS. I have seen almost no bots. I'm not saying they don't exist, but phasing makes seeing these large groups of bots almost impossible.

Saying you saw 10-20 bots on a single location... No, impossible. Every boss I am able, with a handful of others that by their name and actions do not appear to be bots, get the unique blue drop after 5-10 kills.

For what it's worth, the only time i was in a small dungeon that did not have a bunch of bots was just after early access started.

I have 3 alts that im playing actively, all in the low levels (highest is 28) and no matter which alt, no matter which zone(Glenumbra, Stormhaven, Rivenspire), no matter which out-of-the-way cave i go into, there always is a group of bots camping and insta-killing the boss mob. Without fault.

Darzil

Are the people not seeing bots in large trading guilds? Just wondering as they won't include bots, and the game will attempt to place you in the same phase as guildies ? I am not, just a small guild, and see huge numbers.

Gaudrath

Blackwidow wrote: »

Gaudrath wrote: »

The price to pay is that you nuke farming, period. Nobody can farm then anymore. But personally I think it's a small price to pay for nuking bot farming in the process.

That is not a price, that is a glorious side effect.

Depends on who you ask. Personally I think farming is a shallow activity that diminishes the game overall, so I wouldn't mind seeing it go away altogether.

Regardless of some players complaining about it, it is the only way to permanently deal with bots, and gold-sellers to a large degree. I have no idea how their game architecture is set up and how easy/difficult would be for ZOS to implement diminishing returns, but if they want to fix this, that's what they have to do. Nothing else works.

Zolyok

The idea i've seen ( dont' remember the author sorry ) :
When you kill you get a 10 min debuff, while in the debuff you cant loot or xp from the boss, every time you hit the same boss within the 10 min the debuff is refreshed.
Problem solved in a week bot will leave.

This the best idea i think

Robbiejuve

No, you disliked the game for whatever reasons and decided to get dramatic about it by using this as an excuse.

Think about the impact they have, you have to wait an extra 45 seconds (calling BS on 5 mins) for a public dungeon boss respawn, seriously, thats why you quit?

Blackwidow

Zolyok wrote: »

The idea i've seen ( dont' remember the author sorry ) :
When you kill you get a 10 min debuff, while in the debuff you cant loot or xp from the boss, every time you hit the same boss within the 10 min the debuff is refreshed.
Problem solved in a week bot will leave.

This the best idea i think

Make 10 minutes into 24 hours and I'd agree.

redwoodtreesprite

Sinoby wrote: »

And as to "bots are everywhere" part - just outlived starter zones and you will see next to no bots. To be fair - while you are low level - you don't need all those blues from boss, which will be replaced in 1-2 levels.

And how many players might stop subbing before they get to the levels where dungeons are not camped 24/7 by bots? It would actually be nice to be able to fight those bosses at least once. Right now, it feels like the game is being run by the gold sellers. Can't even do a nice leisurely resource run without running into 3-4 of the cheating bots at the least.

We plan to sub for a while, but I am reluctant to do much in the line of questing on most of my characters. I would like to do the quests and such the way they were meant to be done, rather than just say, "Ah well, don't need to fight that boss, don't need to enjoy running through that dungeon." So I am focusing on crafting instead. Although with all the harvest bots taking most of the resources, that is difficult as well.

EQBallzz

Juponen wrote: »

To squash the demand i.e the buyers is the only way. The botters and spammers are in for a profit and vanish only if it becomes uneconomical to stay.

Concentrate everything on rooting out the buyers.

Agreed. Not saying they shouldn't ban the sellers but there needs to be a swift and decisive action against the buyers or there is little hope of removing these guys. Remove or severely diminish the demand by banning the players (who actually pay for and play their characters unlike the sellers who use stolen credit cards/accounts and don't care).

It's not like the sellers are hard to find so just investigate those known sellers and cross reference the accounts they interact with and temp ban the buyer for 3 days as a warning which flags the account. If that account is involved with a known gold seller again..perma ban. Once people realize they WILL be banned without question the demand for these bottom feeders will dry up. I would even support perma ban on first offense. Nobody should be trying to buy gold as it's an obvious breech of the TOS.

Zolyok

If it was me it will be :
You kill the boss > Kicked from the dungeon after 5 min > Cant come in the same for 4 hours.
But some player are farming boss also so some told me that it was too much

IdioticUlt1mara

Yes I do also believe that this is annoying. However ZoS has been trying to fix this problem. First they patched it so that they can't farm as easily making them wait a while now until they get gear again, I think this was to try and make it less "rewarding" to have bots.
The only other things I think they can do is either, as someone has said before on here, is have lots of GMs camp dungeon spots and ban every single bot they see - this however would take up far too much time and manpower and may prove too nonconstructive. Or they could make it so that you can only kill the mob once and then that should get rid of bots once and for all, however most people may dislike this as a lot of the drops will not be there for the first drop, if any sometimes.

Sometimes I like these bots tbh as they allow me to clear a delve in next to no time

GossiTheDog

Some screenshots of two GM's clearing a dungeon of bots.

Zolyok

Yeah we've seen that already
The real problem is to preventing them to come back.

IdioticUlt1mara

Zolyok wrote: »

Yeah we've seen that already
The real problem is to preventing them to come back.

Bots will always be a problem in an MMO but everything ZoS does like this is showing us that they are trying to help with getting rid of them, they will never fully get rid of them but every step they take helps IMHO

Osi

Blackwidow wrote: »

Osi wrote: »

I call BS on your calling BS. I have seen almost no bots. I'm not saying they don't exist, but phasing makes seeing these large groups of bots almost impossible.

Prove it. Go to ANY low level dungeon and film you being at a boss with no bots. Until then, you are full of it, sorry.

The burden of proof is on you. My POINT, was that people are SERIOUSLY over exaggerating their personal experience with bots. You don't have the "OMG 20-30!" bots in a single instance. Yes, they exist. Yes, they are in numbers. But instancing diminishes the effect they can have on any one group of players.

Oh, and I haven't seen someone I would clearly label a 'bot' since level 20ish. I'm level 40 to put that into perspective. So they certainly aren't in every dungeon, as OP claims.

Zolyok

You are totally right IdioticUlt1mara but for the moment there is way too many bot in game.
It will be a lot more enjoyable to play when there will be a lot less bot

Darzil

Osi wrote: »

The burden of proof is on you. My POINT, was that people are SERIOUSLY over exaggerating their personal experience with bots. You don't have the "OMG 20-30!" bots in a single instance. Yes, they exist. Yes, they are in numbers. But instancing diminishes the effect they can have on any one group of players.

Um, yes, you do, seen it many times. Have seen the bot army killing things before they spawn on my PC, because they detect it's arrival when the packet arrives rather than they game draws it, and have reaction times in the low milliseconds.

I'm starting to suspect that people get a varying experience depending on the phases they are placed in. If you are in several large guilds, you'd be phased with others in those guilds, and see fewer bots (assuming they aren't in those phases), but in one small guild you often get placed with bots.

IdioticUlt1mara

Idk I don't get many problems with bots tbh. I have been in many delves without any bots being there. And if they are all I have to do is get 1 shot in on the boss and vwala I have completed the delv without much trouble :P. But yes it gets rid of the immersion