ZOS Please Read; Number of BASIC methods to tackle Bots

BeerWolf

1) Quests - Minimum level

Give quests a minimum level requirement. Currently, there are countless freshly made bots rapidly farming these quests, such as the main storyline in Windhelm, to acquire gold from them.

2) Zones - Minimum level

Give zones a minimum level requirement. This would prevent freshly made characters from just teleporting to whatever zone to spam on.

3) Resource Materials - Make them vendor for ZERO gold

This would effectively kill off botters VENDORING said Mats purely for Gold.

Currently, every mat vendors for 400 per stack... aside from provision mats, runes and solvents.

Do this, and it would EFFECTIVELY kill botters farming nodes. Sure, there'd probably be some trying to sell the Mats directly to players after - but this would be a much slower process of them acquiring gold overall, so they'd seek out other forms of easy gold.

Let players determine the cost of Mats, supply and demand - what people are willing to pay for them there after.

Chatoyancy

1. I agree with this, I don't seeing how setting a minimum quest level would hurt, and it would at least stop some of the quest farming.

2. I don't really like this one -- something that is especially fun to do on alts is wander into much higher-level zones to screw around and try to not get killed. Being blocked from doing this would be disappointing. If it would keep bots out, it might be worth sacrificing, but still disappointing.

3. Really don't like this one -- some people just don't like to talk to other players, even if it nets them more money in the end. If there was an AH or some more anonymous way to buy/sell without using chat or joining a guild, this could be more acceptable, but as-is, it's just going to annoy people and be another example of "the bots ruining it for everybody."

I also don't think it will slow the mat farming on the bots -- as you said, they can still sell the materials to other players, and they can do this both in-game and out. I wasn't under the impression that the bots were mass-farming items then selling to a vendor -- if they were, they wouldn't really be hurting the player economy as much because they wouldn't be pumping a bunch of crafting materials that shouldn't be there into the system, lowering the prices all around.

But by all means, 1. sounds great, and 2. could also be a good possibility.

felixgamingx1

They don't know how to code all that stuff it's gonna break the game even more!

vicviper0_ESO

the only thing that they need to do is start banning the domain the bots are coming from

felixgamingx1

vicviper0_ESO wrote: »

the only thing that they need to do is start banning the domain the bots are coming from

It doesn't work anymore it's the proxy era

Avidus

The easiest way to stop bots is simple, don't buy their services, but people are too stupid to do that.

sociald100ub17_ESO

Chatoyancy wrote: »

1. I agree with this, I don't seeing how setting a minimum quest level would hurt, and it would at least stop some of the quest farming.

2. I don't really like this one -- something that is especially fun to do on alts is wander into much higher-level zones to screw around and try to not get killed. Being blocked from doing this would be disappointing. If it would keep bots out, it might be worth sacrificing, but still disappointing.

3. Really don't like this one -- some people just don't like to talk to other players, even if it nets them more money in the end. If there was an AH or some more anonymous way to buy/sell without using chat or joining a guild, this could be more acceptable, but as-is, it's just going to annoy people and be another example of "the bots ruining it for everybody."

I also don't think it will slow the mat farming on the bots -- as you said, they can still sell the materials to other players, and they can do this both in-game and out. I wasn't under the impression that the bots were mass-farming items then selling to a vendor -- if they were, they wouldn't really be hurting the player economy as much because they wouldn't be pumping a bunch of crafting materials that shouldn't be there into the system, lowering the prices all around.

But by all means, 1. sounds great, and 2. could also be a good possibility.

Actually I have a quite differing view. Im fine with the quest min level. although I don't think that that has much of an impact on the bots. I could be wrong. Im fine with a min level on zones but I wouldn't make it extremely strickt
I like the idea of not vending the mats. What legit player is going to vend a whole stack of mats? 400 gold isn't really much anyway unless you are just out botting over and over you aren't going to make much.

BeerWolf

Chatoyancy wrote: »

3. Really don't like this one -- some people just don't like to talk to other players, even if it nets them more money in the end. If there was an AH or some more anonymous way to buy/sell without using chat or joining a guild, this could be more acceptable, but as-is, it's just going to annoy people and be another example of "the bots ruining it for everybody."

I also don't think it will slow the mat farming on the bots -- as you said, they can still sell the materials to other players, and they can do this both in-game and out. I wasn't under the impression that the bots were mass-farming items then selling to a vendor -- if they were, they wouldn't really be hurting the player economy as much because they wouldn't be pumping a bunch of crafting materials that shouldn't be there into the system, lowering the prices all around.

Gathered resource materials should never have been given a value to vendor with. This ALWAYS attracts botters to make direct ingame gold off. There are numerous mats that don't vendor at all, as the examples I've provided:

- Solvents for Alchemy
- Enchanting mats
- Various other crafting materials, like trait and style stones.

And people still buy those no problem.

Currently, most noticeable in lower level areas, there are bots just teleporting everywhere and grabbing nodes thus preventing people from gathering them themselves... or bots exploiting the respawning of nodes to permanently farm a single node every 3 seconds. Vending alone, this nets a single bot 72K PER DAY.

What normal player farms nodes just to vendor them... ?

Ackwalan

Also need to ban the buyers as well. If a lvl 3 toon (with a name like fsfsfsfs) is trading 10k gold to another toon and getting nothing in return, it is worth looking into.

dragnar12

"zennimax"

dont bann the bots there one of the only accounts still paying for subscription !

crislevin

Selling mat is one of the few ways to get some quick gold, it should not be banned.

Unless they raise the amount of gold you can loot from the enemies to 5-10 each.

steveb16_ESO46

sociald100ub17_ESO wrote: »

I like the idea of not vending the mats. What legit player is going to vend a whole stack of mats? 400 gold isn't really much anyway unless you are just out botting over and over you aren't going to make much.

I vendor whole stacks of outdated mats from 3 characters quite often and each 400gp adds up.

Xael

BeerWolf wrote: »

1) Quests - Minimum level

Give quests a minimum level requirement. Currently, there are countless freshly made bots rapidly farming these quests, such as the main storyline in Windhelm, to acquire gold from them.

2) Zones - Minimum level

Give zones a minimum level requirement. This would prevent freshly made characters from just teleporting to whatever zone to spam on.

3) Resource Materials - Make them vendor for ZERO gold

This would effectively kill off botters VENDORING said Mats purely for Gold.

Currently, every mat vendors for 400 per stack... aside from provision mats, runes and solvents.

Do this, and it would EFFECTIVELY kill botters farming nodes. Sure, there'd probably be some trying to sell the Mats directly to players after - but this would be a much slower process of them acquiring gold overall, so they'd seek out other forms of easy gold.

Let players determine the cost of Mats, supply and demand - what people are willing to pay for them there after.

I disagree with all of this.
There are much better ways to handle the bots. What you suggested would wreck/change the game for all of us. Again, there are better ways, particularly ZOS actually giving a damn, logging into their own game and just mass banning these ***. They don't police the game AT ALL. I saw the same spammer in Reapers March spamming for at least a 48 hour period. How damn hard is it to have active GMs handle this? Answer: Not hard at all, unless you are ZOS.

Catflinger

I disagree with 1 and 2; I'm neutral on 3. World of Warcraft operates on 3 -- raw materials vendor for next to nothing, which makes people more likely to sell them on the open market. However, WoW also has a central auction house for each server, which makes the process easier.

I think the compromise on #3 is, like everything else, adjust what mats sell to vendors for downward -- and before people jump on me, I also advocate adjusting all the incredibly inflated costs of everything in this game downward, such as the price of horses, bank and inventory space, respecs, gear repair - everything. Slash it all in half, if not more

There is a demand for gold and gold farmers are responding to it. Remove the demand, or at the least, lessen it, and the problem won't be as awful. This will give the dev team some breathing room to code in some actual things to stem their hacks.

BergisMacBride

Well I'm one of those legitimate players who sells stacks of materials for the gold. I'm no farmer but I do have 4 active alts and crafters at various levels and 3 bank mule alts for storage. When I'm out questing I actively harvest everything I see along the way and then refine it with the appropriate crafter alt. To keep my bank and bags from overflowing, I vendor the excess so that I maintain just a stack of 100 of each material in my bank for crafting purposes. The little extra gold helps me pay for horse upgrades and keeps my overall cash flow positive in the face of exorbitant repair and inventory upgrade costs.

So no, I would not support nerfing the sale of harvested and refined materials. Such a move would just hurt the little guy like me who uses it to get ahead.

BTW, I do actively report every bot I see farming nodes endlessly or bot- training enemy NPC areas. An addon called FastReport does wonders in this regard.

KerinKor

Catflinger wrote: »

I disagree with 1 and 2.

1. Why should a level 2 be able to get a quest intended for those at level 43 or so?

2. Why should a level 3 be able to get to Reaper's March?

I enjoy exploring at low levels but frankly there's no game reason for either these cases and many games would prevent both and their elimination would prevent much of the current abuse by RMT with little to no real impact on normal players.

beowulfsshield

The bots that I notice are extremely primitive and extremely easy to spot. There are areas on the map that are riddled with bots 24/7. One GM assigned to do nothing but zip around and snuff bots would easily be able to ban hundreds of accounts a day.

At some point it has to become cost ineffective to bot farm. I doubt that any game will ever be able to stop botting completely, but ZoE must show greater dedication to removing them.

teox76

1. This is a sensible suggestion and I do not understand why it has not be like this from the launch.
2. Not sure about this: sometimes is fun trying to sneak in some high level areas and try to just survive/explore, i think this will limit too much the game and give a strong impression of theme park
3. I think this is very good too. It will not impact players much, the more lazy/shy ones could try to actually speak to some real people to sell/buy mats, they will see that actually it's not so bad, it's a social game after all ! Only consequence I can see about that is the raise of chat spam of mats sellers in addition to gold sellers.

Vanathi

Since I gather everything I come across and have one toon for each craft I end up with lots of extras that get vendored. As already stated, that 400g per stack adds up. Why punish regular players any more than has already been done?

Spiritreaver_ESO

BeerWolf wrote: »

1) Quests - Minimum level

Give quests a minimum level requirement. Currently, there are countless freshly made bots rapidly farming these quests, such as the main storyline in Windhelm, to acquire gold from them.

2) Zones - Minimum level

Give zones a minimum level requirement. This would prevent freshly made characters from just teleporting to whatever zone to spam on.

3) Resource Materials - Make them vendor for ZERO gold

This would effectively kill off botters VENDORING said Mats purely for Gold.

Currently, every mat vendors for 400 per stack... aside from provision mats, runes and solvents.

Do this, and it would EFFECTIVELY kill botters farming nodes. Sure, there'd probably be some trying to sell the Mats directly to players after - but this would be a much slower process of them acquiring gold overall, so they'd seek out other forms of easy gold.

Let players determine the cost of Mats, supply and demand - what people are willing to pay for them there after.

@1-No problems with this at all.

@2-Zones shouldn't have an entry level req, they should have a quest req if anything. There should be a running quest-chain in each zone that must be fulfilled before you can advance to the next zone in your alliance.

Example: Player X wants to enter the next zone, Zone quests A, B, C, D, etc., must be done.

Don't even need to make new quests for this, just flag the quests a normal legit player would be doing anyway as links in that zone's quest-chain. Revamp the 'teleport to player' function to incorporate these new quest-chains and you have a nice little series of blocks that a legit player won't even notice but will severely hamper some jackass trying to bring up an army of bots. Because at this point it would just stop being cost effective to have to actually level every new bot.

One exemption would of course have to be allowing players at certain quest-chain points near the end of the main storyline the ability to tele to ppl a step past them to bypass ZOS acknowledged glitched quests. And this exemption would only last until said quests are fixed and then be immediately remomevd/

@3-Totally against. They have done this already with provisioning mats, for example, and all it does is make ppl not bother looting them. Which in turn leads to legit players trying to level the skill having a rough time of it. Kind of ironic that, because the mats are everywhere, but a legit player can't be everywhere to loot them. If they had a price, ppl would at least hold onto them to npc them, creating a larger potential pool within the playerbase for legit crafters to obtain them from.

Instead of penalizing the legit players who use npc'ing mats as a revenue stream, ZOS needs to take the gloves off and ban gold buyers as well as the sellers. Change the TOS, make players aware that there is now a zero tolerance policy against being caught knowingly engaging with RMT. Period.

Tie this is in with 1) and amended 2), and while RMT won't be eradicated(it will never be eradicated 100% because there is always gonna be some guy who has more cash than sense), it will be drastically curtailed. This time because instead of just having to replace a bot, the seller has to replace a buyer, which is at that point much more difficult.

Anyways, my take on your ideas OP.

AlexDougherty

BeerWolf wrote: »

1) Quests - Minimum level

Give quests a minimum level requirement. Currently, there are countless freshly made bots rapidly farming these quests, such as the main storyline in Windhelm, to acquire gold from them.

2) Zones - Minimum level

Give zones a minimum level requirement. This would prevent freshly made characters from just teleporting to whatever zone to spam on.

3) Resource Materials - Make them vendor for ZERO gold

This would effectively kill off botters VENDORING said Mats purely for Gold.

Currently, every mat vendors for 400 per stack... aside from provision mats, runes and solvents.

Do this, and it would EFFECTIVELY kill botters farming nodes. Sure, there'd probably be some trying to sell the Mats directly to players after - but this would be a much slower process of them acquiring gold overall, so they'd seek out other forms of easy gold.

Let players determine the cost of Mats, supply and demand - what people are willing to pay for them there after.

1. Minimum levels for quests, not a bad idea, the only problem is if you are underlevelled. I have struggled several times to get my levels up, if you start closing quests off, then some people will be cutt off completely.

2. Zones Minimum Level, same issues as minimum levels for quests. Making certain quests mandatory before you can advance might be better.

3. Vendoring Mats for Zero gold. This won't solve anything, people are desperate for mats, all mats. I have seen people asking to buy Jutte/Water/ Iron, these are basic mats and people want to buy them. You just make it so they sell to us rather than to vendors, with the number of bots around getting the quantities would be no problem for them.
Yes it reduces the problem, but it won't be popular.

Estivara

I sort of agree with #1. There already is a minimum level on some quests, they just need to increase it on some others.

I don't particularly like #2, as it discourages exploring, but I could learn to live with it.

Unfortunately, #3 would accomplish nothing. Bots would just use the materials to make gear, and then vendor the gear. On top of that, this has been tried with Provisioning already, and that has resulted in a mass shortage of materials for people who actually want to level the craft, because nobody loots worthless items.

norrisnick

beowulfsshield wrote: »

The bots that I notice are extremely primitive and extremely easy to spot. There are areas on the map that are riddled with bots 24/7. One GM assigned to do nothing but zip around and snuff bots would easily be able to ban hundreds of accounts a day.

At some point it has to become cost ineffective to bot farm. I doubt that any game will ever be able to stop botting completely, but ZoE must show greater dedication to removing them.

This is the simplest solution. All the other things listed would negatively impact legitimate players. Bots are ridiculously easy to spot. I'm sure ZOS is getting inundated with reports (though I'm sure they're slowing because people are getting frustrated that these bot trains are still out there). The bots are in the same places. All. The. Time.

Send someone there and nuke 'em.

Catflinger

KerinKor wrote: »

Catflinger wrote: »

I disagree with 1 and 2.

1. Why should a level 2 be able to get a quest intended for those at level 43 or so?

2. Why should a level 3 be able to get to Reaper's March?

I enjoy exploring at low levels but frankly there's no game reason for either these cases and many games would prevent both and their elimination would prevent much of the current abuse by RMT with little to no real impact on normal players.

There's a good case for #1 and this thread is helping to persuade me (after all, if you can't survive fighting the mobs in the zone, then there's no reason to be able to pick up quests there), but I strongly feel that #2 limits legit players from exploration, real gathering, and the entire open-world feel of the game.

SuperJChat

Isn't it simple enough?

1. Remove gold rewards from quests that don't require fighting (the quests the bots farm don't have fighting, just goto "point a and talk to npc z")
2. Flag players that use 1 skill only to get kills, send them an auto-warning, and if they don't bail issue a ban (90% of bots farming dungeons/enemies in group are templars using the piercing javelin ability)
3. 3. Random events! (yay runescape...)
4. code some protection against tele/noclip/ghost bots (like if they aren't touching the ground and aren't in the falling animation and are moving along the x/z axis they probably aren't playing fairly)

Soloeus

BeerWolf wrote: »

1) Quests - Minimum level

Give quests a minimum level requirement. Currently, there are countless freshly made bots rapidly farming these quests, such as the main storyline in Windhelm, to acquire gold from them.

We already have this deterrent. If you at level 8 try to do a level 30 quest you get level 8 experience and reward, thus screwing yourself out of completing a quest later for proper reward.

BeerWolf wrote: »

2) Zones - Minimum level

Give zones a minimum level requirement. This would prevent freshly made characters from just teleporting to whatever zone to spam on.

So you want to limit where I can go? This is stupid. Your idea might contain all botters to one zone; until they rush-level. You make no impact.

BeerWolf wrote: »

3) Resource Materials - Make them vendor for ZERO gold

This would effectively kill off botters VENDORING said Mats purely for Gold.

Currently, every mat vendors for 400 per stack... aside from provision mats, runes and solvents.

Do this, and it would EFFECTIVELY kill botters farming nodes. Sure, there'd probably be some trying to sell the Mats directly to players after - but this would be a much slower process of them acquiring gold overall, so they'd seek out other forms of easy gold.

Let players determine the cost of Mats, supply and demand - what people are willing to pay for them there after.

Now I want to murder you. You want everyone to bot? You want botting to be the only way to advance? Vendoring refined materials is one of the few ways to make gold. You want socialism! You want players to only have a limited ration of gold given by quests with no other ticket into gold.


YOUR IDEAS ARE TRASH.

They would continue the trend of making the game harder for normal players without really impacting bots. 0 gold on jute? Jute will sell in town for 150 gold per stack. I shouldn't have to go through this barrier called "others" to sell my crap and get gold.

Just stop posting forever, seriously.

Soloeus

SuperJChat wrote: »

Isn't it simple enough?

1. Remove gold rewards from quests that don't require fighting (the quests the bots farm don't have fighting, just goto "point a and talk to npc z")

But what gold sinks do you remove? How do I repair armor or do anything now that requires gold? I can't get it from hunting so from where?

SuperJChat wrote: »

2. Flag players that use 1 skill only to get kills, send them an auto-warning, and if they don't bail issue a ban (90% of bots farming dungeons/enemies in group are templars using the piercing javelin ability)

Sometimes, you only need/want to use one skill. Now you want to punish me for not playing how you want me to play? Geez, you are a ***.

SuperJChat wrote: »

3. Random events! (yay runescape...)

No.

SuperJChat wrote: »

4. code some protection against tele/noclip/ghost bots (like if they aren't touching the ground and aren't in the falling animation and are moving along the x/z axis they probably aren't playing fairly)

This might be the only thing in this post that makes even a little bit of sense.

steveb16_ESO46

Soloeus wrote: »

We already have this deterrent. If you at level 8 try to do a level 30 quest you get level 8 experience and reward, thus screwing yourself out of completing a quest later for proper reward.

And that deters bots how precisely? Bearing in mind that the entire game is infested by low level bots farming and questing in much higher level areas?

SuperJChat

Soloeus wrote: »

SuperJChat wrote: »

Isn't it simple enough?

1. Remove gold rewards from quests that don't require fighting (the quests the bots farm don't have fighting, just goto "point a and talk to npc z")

But what gold sinks do you remove? How do I repair armor or do anything now that requires gold? I can't get it from hunting so from where?

SuperJChat wrote: »

2. Flag players that use 1 skill only to get kills, send them an auto-warning, and if they don't bail issue a ban (90% of bots farming dungeons/enemies in group are templars using the piercing javelin ability)

Sometimes, you only need/want to use one skill. Now you want to punish me for not playing how you want me to play? Geez, you are a ***.

SuperJChat wrote: »

3. Random events! (yay runescape...)

No.

SuperJChat wrote: »

4. code some protection against tele/noclip/ghost bots (like if they aren't touching the ground and aren't in the falling animation and are moving along the x/z axis they probably aren't playing fairly)

This might be the only thing in this post that makes even a little bit of sense.

Someone doesn't read well

1. I said removed gold rewards from QUESTS that don't require you to kill/fight/critically think. not removed the gold from mats.... lol

2. Did you skip the line about sending them a message (like "Please confirm you are human") that should flash on their screen (much like a "server is going down" alert) I promise less than 0.01% of players will miss that
Also my bad, I mean't if a player "has been killing mass amounts of enemies using only one skill"

3. #Sarcasm

4. It's probably the biggest hole in their system. Detecting a "player" as using no-clip is probably the easiest bit of coding ever...

Xelphos

BeerWolf wrote: »

3) Resource Materials - Make them vendor for ZERO gold

Or we could just do what GW2 did, and add harvesting tools that require a certain level to use.

rfpalmerb16_ESO

My ideas:
1. Write a back-end process that scours the inventories of players looking for a trigger amounts of rare and expensive items i.e. 1000 units of rosin on a level 5 character or 10,000,000 gold (these are just SIMPLE examples) then investigate the individual accounts -- since they are probably aggregation accounts for farmers then lock the accounts.

2. create a process to track player trades and flag players that are trading in the same items with a large number of different people. i.e. the level 5 player who has sent 100s of units of 100 stacks to 100 different people or the player sending 50,000 gold to several different players.

3. Open a real-money marketplace (and in-game marketplace) selling the items that bots are selling for less money then they are selling. I.e. wanna buy 10k in-game gold? A bot will sell it to you for $10, zeni will sell it to you for $5. A bot selling 100 rosin for 100,000g -- TESO store sells it for 50,000g or $25. Done right, with the proper monitoring and controls it is possible to keep a vibrant in-game economy while providing this service.

Take away the profits of running bots and there will be no bots. You can't beat them and you can't stop people from using real-currency to buy in-game items -- all you can do is become their preferred provider. Look at i this way: Would drug lords still be in business if the government started selling drugs at a lower cost than the drug lords could?