bots farming instant-respawn nodes, out of hand

Rantog

Seriously - I have been walking around an area in Stonefalls for a while now - you can't go 10 steps without stumbling over 2-3 Hiding characters competing for each of the jute nodes.

These bots - and Yes, Bots, because if you beat them to the node, they all respond the same way - are abusing the system to keep us from having Nothing to harvest in populated areas.
If what I'm watching is constant, this is something like 65,000 jute a day just in the little patch I'm watching.

At this point.. with the dupe bug, the bots farming everything under the sun, and bugs like this being exploited right in the open and no GMs responding -- there is No Chance this game will have a working economy.

AeliaVicusPlave

The bots in Stonefalls are now on each and every bugged Jute node, and not only one of them, On all nodes are groups of bots, sometimes 4 or more, with at least one of them acting from below the map, while 1 or 2 of the visible bots make actions as if they harvest the nodes. I'm really pissed about this and the obvious lack of interest, and reluctance regarding this issue from ZOS...

Stormynature

Yup - the war on bots seems to have stepped back from the flashy jump into a dungeon and insta-nuke. There is only one way to deal with bots and that is to shut them down as they appear. Leaving them up for even a short time gives them the ability to start the transfers which then multiplies the work out of hand.

OzzyNOR

Rantog wrote: »

Seriously - I have been walking around an area in Stonefalls for a while now - you can't go 10 steps without stumbling over 2-3 Hiding characters competing for each of the jute nodes.

These bots - and Yes, Bots, because if you beat them to the node, they all respond the same way - are abusing the system to keep us from having Nothing to harvest in populated areas.
If what I'm watching is constant, this is something like 65,000 jute a day just in the little patch I'm watching.

At this point.. with the dupe bug, the bots farming everything under the sun, and bugs like this being exploited right in the open and no GMs responding -- there is No Chance this game will have a working economy.

Hmm, lets say your estimated 65000 is correct. If that is sold directly to a vendor that's 100's of thousands in gold. Multiply that by the number of jute spawns and you're looking at millions into the economy every day when most people are struggling to buy bank-upgrades. I'd die before I buy in-game currency from bots in an MMO, but damn if there's not a lot of incentive to do so atm. From the prices I see quoted in the awesome in-game mails I get from gold sellers, it's pretty damn cheap too. Hopefully this means they don't actually have enough buyers and thus will move on after a while due to lack of demand, but what do I know.

otomodachi

OzzyNOR wrote: »

Rantog wrote: »

Seriously - I have been walking around an area in Stonefalls for a while now - you can't go 10 steps without stumbling over 2-3 Hiding characters competing for each of the jute nodes.

These bots - and Yes, Bots, because if you beat them to the node, they all respond the same way - are abusing the system to keep us from having Nothing to harvest in populated areas.
If what I'm watching is constant, this is something like 65,000 jute a day just in the little patch I'm watching.

At this point.. with the dupe bug, the bots farming everything under the sun, and bugs like this being exploited right in the open and no GMs responding -- there is No Chance this game will have a working economy.

Hmm, lets say your estimated 65000 is correct. If that is sold directly to a vendor that's 100's of thousands in gold. Multiply that by the number of jute spawns and you're looking at millions into the economy every day when most people are struggling to buy bank-upgrades. I'd die before I buy in-game currency from bots in an MMO, but damn if there's not a lot of incentive to do so atm. From the prices I see quoted in the awesome in-game mails I get from gold sellers, it's pretty damn cheap too. Hopefully this means they don't actually have enough buyers and thus will move on after a while due to lack of demand, but what do I know.

Your point is really solid, sorry to be pedantic, but it's very likely we're looking at a glut of SUPPLY.

BKTHNDR

Why do you all think that ZOS has no interest in taking care of the bot situation? That's absurd. You can enter any public dungeon as of late and see that the bots there have been eliminated for the most part.

Read the patch notes and State of the Game posts. They are working on it! They can't just wave a Wabbajack and have the problem disappear! This is a complex issue that plagues many MMOs. If you see bots, report them. And trust that the team does care!

Fairydragon3

wow Is this what the lowbies are up too, I've notcies csome noes will automatically resawn once, if you leave them alone, but no lines anywhere in Malabal tor. Hell I'm half positive I'm the only one with all Keen eyes i find so much materials

Gwarok

@ZOS : A question that needs an answer

Rantog wrote: »

because if you beat them to the node, they all respond the same way - are abusing the system to keep us from having Nothing to harvest in populated areas.

Have you developed any or all of these harvest nodes to despawn after X amount of times, including but not limited to, Ore, Flowers, Rune Carvings, Logs? (this happens in EP's lands) because if harvest nodes are not suspose

with the dupe bug, the bots farming everything under the sun, and bugs like this being exploited right in the open

to despawn then you have a much more severe problem on your hands that you might not be aware of. I know I'm not crazy and yes, I've been laying off the Skooma for quite a while now but I'm starting to see things disappear right before my eyes. and frankly it's disturbing.

(edit) I can guarantee one thing, whether or not it (what I have tired to explain) is happening I am 100% certain this is one player that will NOT support let alone use a "global" AH ( if y'all crack under pressure from the "global AH" QQ'ers) for this very reason (among others I shall not get into, atm) and I am now starting to use my 3 out of 4 guild stores even less. Its pretty much straight bartering for me from now on.

AeliaVicusPlave

BKTHNDR wrote: »

Why do you all think that ZOE has no interest in taking care of the bot situation? That's absurd. You can enter any public dungeon as of late and see that the bots there have been eliminated for the most part.

Read the patch notes and State of the Game posts. They are working on it! They can't just wave a Wabbajack and have the problem disappear! This is a complex issue that plagues many MMOs. If you see bots, report them. And trust that the team does care!

Those infinite Jute spawns are known since Beta. THIS problem should have been fixed since a while, and no Wabbajack would be necessary. Driving the bots out of the dungeons in the open world is only a relocation of the problem, not a solution. And in this context the words "They are working on it" means to me, they are a bit clueless.

Sorry to be not that optimistic, but I worked in the RMT branch of customer support for a major MMO over some years. And so I think I can estimate what could be done to fix a striking issue like the one with the Jute, and the massive bot piles around them. It always depends on the qualification of the RMT support, the rights and also the limitations given to them to handle issues, f.e. regarding logs and backend access.

stefaan.de.wasch1b16_ESO

Yesterday it was a thread about active players farming insta-pop crafting nodes... now it's about bots doing it...

How about they just fix the nodes themselves and solve this issues and we can go back to playing ESO instead of War on Bots ?

Rantog

BKTHNDR wrote: »

Why do you all think that ZOS has no interest in taking care of the bot situation? That's absurd. You can enter any public dungeon as of late and see that the bots there have been eliminated for the most part.

Read the patch notes and State of the Game posts. They are working on it! They can't just wave a Wabbajack and have the problem disappear! This is a complex issue that plagues many MMOs. If you see bots, report them. And trust that the team does care!

Not sure who you are responding to, I haven't said they dont want to do anything - i said the issue is out of hand.

I will re-encode and post some video of this.. literally dozens of bots in within visual range, all parked to harvest nodes ,which because of this arrangement spawn instantly.. 24/7 -- or as close as 24/7 as the maintenances allow.

As to the BOTs that were farming bosses - their solution was to make ALL bosses drop nothing but gold for -what 20 minutes?- after you kill any one of them.
Problems? Some of us are bugged and after killing and looting ONE boss, have not seen loot from ANY bosses since.. Stuck in "just killed one" mode.

Result? Bots didn't leave, they just moved to more lucrative positions.. overland spawns like those near the vamp/wolf spawns in the Rift.. where nightly you can find packs of them camping groups of NPCs that respawn within 5 seconds of being killed.


When they had GMs appearning to ban them - it was a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, they seem to have abandoned that hope for something that Won't remove the bots, but makes them Slightly less obvious.

Rantog

Fairydragon3 wrote: »

wow Is this what the lowbies are up too, I've notcies csome noes will automatically resawn once, if you leave them alone, but no lines anywhere in Malabal tor. Hell I'm half positive I'm the only one with all Keen eyes i find so much materials

This is why it isn't getting as much attention as it should - people assume that because it is JUTE it isn't critical.

They aren't stopping to consider what refining jute creates. Jute, obviously.. Trait stones.. not a huge deal yet... but.. also.... Improvement mats up to - and including- Legendary.

You are More likely to get a yellow mat from kresh yes, but when you can farm 60 or 70 Thousand raw jute in a day because "nobody cares, it's just jute" ,,,,,,,,,,

AeliaVicusPlave

Rantog wrote: »

This is why it isn't getting as much attention as it should - people assume that because it is JUTE it isn't critical.

They aren't stopping to consider what refining jute creates. Jute, obviously.. Trait stones.. not a huge deal yet... but.. also.... Improvement mats up to - and including- Legendary.

You are More likely to get a yellow mat from kresh yes, but when you can farm 60 or 70 Thousand raw jute in a day because "nobody cares, it's just jute" ,,,,,,,,,,

THIS!!! Exactly this!

Kyle_Roberts

On ebonheart pact in vet areas, people are selling bulk Wax 1.5k-2k each elegant lining 500g each due to the jute bug, completely ruined the prices for them.

stefaan.de.wasch1b16_ESO

So bleeding what ? Is people having more legendary crafting mats then you really such a big deal ? Seriously... I'd love to know if it's anything more then people just being jealouse and crying over the fact that someone else has more toys then they do...

Oh... but they sell them... so bleeing what ? Do you buy them ? I hope not... I know I'm not... so let them... the gold buyers "and" gold sellers will soon enough be flocking to the next game to hit the shelves...

Let them sit there for hours and hours and hours farming the same node... sooner or later they'll get banned anyway, and atleast they aren't screwing up the "but I can't hit the boss because of all the bots"-people out there, that have a much more legitamete claim then the "omg, someone's got 1000 yellows" crowd

This is no different then people "actively" sitting in dungeons "not" actualy playing the game to "find" botters to report...

Baogo

Yeah there are 5 nodes just east of Ebon city with bots, goldfarmers and a couple legit players. I cannot support this and since ZOS gives Zero f**ks I give zero f**ks about playing the game.

Rantog

stefaan.de.wasch1b16_ESO wrote: »

So bleeding what ? Is people having more legendary crafting mats then you really such a big deal ? Seriously... I'd love to know if it's anything more then people just being jealouse and crying over the fact that someone else has more toys then they do...

Oh gee, I don't know - maybe the fact that it is a massively MULTIPLAYER online RPG for a Reason.

That we play these instead of Single Player Games because of the Social interraction..
and that ESO already suffers a deplorable Lack of that ... to the point it actually seems like Punishment to try to PvE in a group..

And one of the FEW things left that involve interraction - trading/buying/selling - is being destroyed by these scum...

If you don't want to complain about it, that's your business.
But you have no business coming in here to rant at us for wanting one of the Few social elements of this game preserved from destruction through exploits.

ElliottXO

stefaan.de.wasch1b16_ESO wrote: »

So bleeding what ? Is people having more legendary crafting mats then you really such a big deal ? Seriously... I'd love to know if it's anything more then people just being jealouse and crying over the fact that someone else has more toys then they do...

Oh... but they sell them... so bleeing what ? Do you buy them ? I hope not... I know I'm not... so let them... the gold buyers "and" gold sellers will soon enough be flocking to the next game to hit the shelves...

Let them sit there for hours and hours and hours farming the same node... sooner or later they'll get banned anyway, and atleast they aren't screwing up the "but I can't hit the boss because of all the bots"-people out there, that have a much more legitamete claim then the "omg, someone's got 1000 yellows" crowd

This is no different then people "actively" sitting in dungeons "not" actualy playing the game to "find" botters to report...

Why don't we just drop all that crap and give everyone 5 sets of legendaries on each level?

Earning those items is people's motivation to play this game. If people want to compete in games where there is nothing to earn they don't have to play MMORPGs.

Jeez. You sound like you grew up in east Germany. Communism doesn't work. People need motivation to earn something or they stop working/playing.

Zhakim

I wouldn't be surprised if the instant respawning jute notes are honey traps.

Laura

Zhakim wrote: »

I wouldn't be surprised if the instant respawning jute notes are honey traps.

I hope so

Skirmish840

Fix the bots in stonefalls, there are too many to report, I'd spend all night just reporting if I got started again and I ain't because I already spent one night doing it. The OP is right, 10 steps report, another 10 steps report, their prolific, this is my second comment about them in 2 threads which means they are really common.

Estin

I love this game and wanted it to be great, but reading all these things are making me change my mind. So far, this game seems to be leading into the direction of being 100x better on consoles because it will be bug free by the time of its release. They probably have 80-90% of their team working on the console version while the rest are fixing what they see in their eyes as game breaking bugs like there is one too little leaves on a tree or a bent blade of grass hidden in a huge valley or a rock 2cm away from another rock. There is only one way to fix this now and it would probably have to be a complete roll back of all gold in the economy and all resource items and upgrade materials.

michaelpatrickjonesnub18_ESO

This is why I have no Potency Runes.

Been dog-leveling Enchanting because I can't collect enough of them. Can't compete against players and bots. The odds of finding stuff is surely cut dry to the bone with the bots.

And I refuse to buy from the Chat-Auction Hall. That just supports poor game design and crooks.

Scowler

Reported eighteen InstaJute farming bots in Stonefall today. I'm considering petitioning to have my argonian renamed to Hunts-for-Bots.

SirAndy

Two words: Bull Netch

They have a pretty good AoE poison attack. Just keep them aggro and walk them to a nest of bots. You can easily block their normal attacks and just walk out of the AoE when they cast it.

The bots will be dropping like flies, so much fun ...

vicstorm

This is what is happening, for those that haven't seen it

lioslinn

SirAndy wrote: »

Two words: Bull Netch

They have a pretty good AoE poison attack. Just keep them aggro and walk them to a nest of bots. You can easily block their normal attacks and just walk out of the AoE when they cast it.

The bots will be dropping like flies, so much fun ...

Its more efficient to harvest the jute yourself then leave the popup open as it locks the node. After a minute the bots will all disappear, they seem programmed to do so. The bots lock nodes like this all the time, if you click and don't get the 'this is in use' text then its locked. Often they're doing random emotes to look busy I suppose and not be logged out due to inactivity. I've seen bots pull aoe mobs on each other to steal jute from each other as a hit will close that popup window. Usually two bots, one pulls the mob and the other triws to lock it before starting to harvest. They communicate in chinese Pretty pathetic.

Suggestion: put a time out on the loot window so bots can't lock a node for hours!!!

Skirmish840

You'd think a GM would atleast investigate this area, seems to be of top importance to me

I love the Netch Idea, i'll give that a shot when I head out today. Oh and keep up the good fight Hunts'for'Bots lol

Mistamichal

I do the Netch thing. Works great until some do-gooder comes along and kills it because they don't know about the bots or they think I'm being attacked and try to help me

Phinix1

If I were ZOS, here's what I would do:

Set up some obvious "honey pot" exploits like these jute nodes,spread some "ZOMG check out these l33t exploitz on youtube/facebook/twitter" counter intelligence on the interwebs, then set up logging at these specific locations and ban EVERYONE they find exploiting it.

Bots and real players alike.

Then when the entitled little brats inevitably cry "farming is legitimate play, why you ban me nao?" they can point at the EULA where it says exploiting known bugs is bannable and /wave as their tears water the growth of a better ESO.

FWIW.

Stormynature

AlienDiplomat wrote: »

If I were ZOS, here's what I would do:
Then when the entitled little brats inevitably cry "farming is legitimate play, why you ban me nao?" they can point at the EULA where it says exploiting known bugs is bannable and /wave as their tears water the growth of a better ESO.

Except deliberately setting up an exploit like an everspawning jute, will likely be determined as no longer being an exploit but rather a feature as it was a deliberately introduced mechanic if it ever ends up in court, regardless of the intention to catch exploiters.

ZoS said the motif farming was not an exploit in their opinion...yet end result was too nerf the drop rate into the ground. ZoS said repeatable pvp (kill 20) quests were not exploits but then got rid of them (and are now giving them back lol). What is and isn't an exploit is very grey in their world. At the end of the day just ban the bots as they pop rather than waiting for Azura knows what.