Bot Tackling

Mortelus

Firstly, reinstate the starter islands and make it impossible to get to the main island without finishing the starter islands.

Secondly, Make it so every alt has to go through the wailing prison ( i know some will disagree but it could just be temporary for now until the solution of the bot-horde is fixed)

Thirdly, as a temporary fix, stop mailing until you get to the first main city of your faction. As players we/I don't/didn't really need to mail anything to anyone before getting to here.

Fourthly, start aggressively banning spammers, get more GM's in game and on the report players (your end). By implementing the first and second conditions you will be increasing the work for the banned bot because they will have to go through everything again.

Not great solutions but at least most bots will be condemned to the starter Islands where the Zeni team will have an easier time managing them I guess.

Rapolax

Hello Mortelus,

good points, I would also send an automatic InGame prevention message to all users to explain that it is not allowed to buy gold (or items) with real money, and if a user buys gold (or items) then it will end to a permanent account bann. So there is not excuse possible.

Best regards,

bobsrevenge

I would also say in new areas like bleakrock wads of nodes there and small place is a reason why you get more bots there than in ad areas you get wads of food mats , its just what I have seen so far

KerinKor

Mortelus wrote: »

Firstly, reinstate the starter islands and make it impossible to get to the main island without finishing the starter islands.

Secondly, Make it so every alt has to go through the wailing prison ( i know some will disagree but it could just be temporary for now until the solution of the bot-horde is fixed)

Thirdly, as a temporary fix, stop mailing until you get to the first main city of your faction. As players we/I don't/didn't really need to mail anything to anyone before getting to here.

Fourthly, start aggressively banning spammers, get more GM's in game and on the report players (your end). By implementing the first and second conditions you will be increasing the work for the banned bot because they will have to go through everything again.

Not great solutions but at least most bots will be condemned to the starter Islands where the Zeni team will have an easier time managing them I guess.

1. Please research "Travel to Player" to see how this idea doesn't solve anything.
2. It takes 15 mins to complete this, barely a bump in the road to anyone
3. see (1)
4. for me spammers aren't the problem, bots are and they'll need a damned sight more than a few GMs.

infraction2008b16_ESO

I started playing on live yesterday, I read on forums about bots but never took any notice to it as most MMO's tend to have botters in them however since my live playthrough of stonefalls and deshaan it's clear that botting is a fundamental problem that is pretty much breaking the levelling experience.

I mean I'm used to running into the odd botter in an MMO but when every other group of players you run into happens to be a bot train mowing through an area it destroys the game a little.

Shiaxi

infraction2008b16_ESO wrote: »

I started playing on live yesterday, I read on forums about bots but never took any notice to it as most MMO's tend to have botters in them however since my live playthrough of stonefalls and deshaan it's clear that botting is a fundamental problem that is pretty much breaking the levelling experience.

I mean I'm used to running into the odd botter in an MMO but when every other group of players you run into happens to be a bot train mowing through an area it destroys the game a little.

well it does get better after the starting areas with way less bots (not no bots tho)

problem is that it becomes horrible again once you get to coldharbour where there are areas so infested by bots that there are no enemies alive for you to kill.

ed.radleyrwb17_ESO

Presently I am seeing 1 bot every 2 seconds run up to Thane Mera Stormcloak in East march...

According to zone 10 minutes ago a GM was here banning them... now there are so many identical bots they are virtually a solid line between the NPC and the wayshrine..

These exploiters need to be IP blocked

KerinKor

ed.radleyrwb17_ESO wrote: »

These exploiters need to be IP blocked

Please learn how the internet works.

Rotherhans

Yeah.
Every single one of these bots is supposed to be a payed for account.

So I guess somebody dropped the ball, from like out of orbit, with the authenticating of credit card codes.

My biggest fear is that Zeni in their unending quest for excellence will disable game-time cards (GTCs) next.

k9mouse

@Rotherhans
What is "GTC"? Thanks

Fentari

Good Start, seeing the growing exploits of quests in higher level areas, would be to make the NPC's level dependent. Like for Instance the Thane in Eastmarch shouldn't really talk to level 2's, and level them to 3 in the process of handing them money on the platter.

There was prior to the Maintenance a train of Bots coming from the Town Port walking up to the Thane leveling and waiting afterwards in stacks of 15-20 to be ported back out. They all were Argonian Default Characters made on the fly.

Falmer

Unfortunately the ideas that really would work the best are also the most punitive to actual players.

For me, (and MOST of you will likely disagree)... I could even go so far as making absolutely everything Bound to your character. There would be no buying or selling of equipment. You can only use materials you harvest yourself, etc. No ability to trade money between players.

If you just eliminate the ability to acquire gold from any other source other than actually playing the game... then the sellers would all go away.

Now a lot of MMO players would also be put off by this, but is losing players to the endless waves of bots any different?

Rev Rielle

Falmer wrote: »

Unfortunately the ideas that really would work the best are also the most punitive to actual players.

For me, (and MOST of you will likely disagree)... I could even go so far as making absolutely everything Bound to your character. There would be no buying or selling of equipment. You can only use materials you harvest yourself, etc. No ability to trade money between players.

If you just eliminate the ability to acquire gold from any other source other than actually playing the game... then the sellers would all go away.

Now a lot of MMO players would also be put off by this, but is losing players to the endless waves of bots any different?

Personally I would love to see this in-game. It might slap people sane and make them remember why they play these games in the first place. Of course, it will never happen, but one can dream.

zaria

Falmer wrote: »

Unfortunately the ideas that really would work the best are also the most punitive to actual players.

For me, (and MOST of you will likely disagree)... I could even go so far as making absolutely everything Bound to your character. There would be no buying or selling of equipment. You can only use materials you harvest yourself, etc. No ability to trade money between players.

If you just eliminate the ability to acquire gold from any other source other than actually playing the game... then the sellers would all go away.

Now a lot of MMO players would also be put off by this, but is losing players to the endless waves of bots any different?

Horrible idea, you could still sell to vendors and that is that the bots do.
Guess that most who buy gold do it to buy horses, bank and bag space not to buy expensive gear from other players.

Far smarter to simply scan the transaction log for player trade.
look for players who receive or give out lots of gold, or have serious high number of transactions. you have now found the receiving bots who get the money from the farmer bots and probably some gold sellers.

This might not be good enough for an ban, however send an GM out and ban a single farming bot.
In the ban process find the player who received his items, ban this too, now list the other players who also interacted a lot with the receiving bot and ban them.
Bang a bot network is down, next you go inn and look who received the gold from the receiving bot and you either find a gold seller or the next level of the pyramid.
Now ban from top down.
Accounts who is shut down because of credit card fraud might initiate purges too.

gold seller bots has to operate in networks to get in enough gold, target is to take down the networks.

demendred

Seems the bot users are trying to be clever. Right now as we speak, in Dels Claim there is hi lazygirl, pop music, and lady firsts running around in bot formation.

rawne1980b16_ESO

ed.radleyrwb17_ESO wrote: »

These exploiters need to be IP blocked

Because that's not incredibly easy to get around.

rawne1980b16_ESO

demendred wrote: »

Seems the bot users are trying to be clever. Right now as we speak, in Dels Claim there is hi lazygirl, pop music, and lady firsts running around in bot formation.

Double post but.....

That would more than likely be a multiboxer, not a bot.

Sarenia

For new island harvest bots...

The start island has more resources, spawning more rapidly, to accomodate new players. That's understandable.

Still, it should not be a one stop shop for low level resources. My feedback was to limit players (on the start islands if nothing else) to 'n' harvests of a given node type within 'x' timeframe.

This would allow new people to gather plenty of resources in the time it takes to finish the island, but discourage hanging around for days just to farm nodes, and effectively break the profitability of botting those areas.

PF1901

Sarenia wrote: »

For new island harvest bots...

The start island has more resources, spawning more rapidly, to accomodate new players. That's understandable.

Still, it should not be a one stop shop for low level resources. My feedback was to limit players (on the start islands if nothing else) to 'n' harvests of a given node type within 'x' timeframe.

This would allow new people to gather plenty of resources in the time it takes to finish the island, but discourage hanging around for days just to farm nodes, and effectively break the profitability of botting those areas.

The only thing you'll harm with that will be the non bot players. I can't see how this should break profitability of bots if they just recreate new chars over and over again.

Was outside glenumbra again. Almost zero bots to be seen but also zero resources to be found, the s*** now operates from below the map.

pwnettle_ESO

I've been saying for years that the best way to deal with this issue is to remove the people who are cheating - because the reason bots exist is to fulfill demand from people who cheat. Ban them all. Permanently. Ban their CCs. Delete their accounts entirely. Make it unpleasant to get caught cheating.

As long as the punishments for cheating are light and/or enforcement is nonexistent, there will be demand, and there will be bots.

I also like the idea of reducing the impact of gold in these games - because losers cheat to avoid actually playing and because they can buy so much stuff with gold. The best stuff in the game should come from actually playing.

In some games, especially at endgame, you earn rep as you do stuff and that rep unlocks things you can buy from vendors. Take this a step further and make it so you get special rewards for questing and doing stuff - like karma in GW2 - or some token or currency - and make it so THAT is how you buy the cool stuff (for the stuff that can be "bought"). So instead of paying gold for a mount, you instead need this special resource - a resource you can only get by actually playing. A non transferrable, not cheeseable resource.

Stuff like cool drops that aren't bound and can be given/sold/traded/etc are nice, and having cool stuff come out of crafting is nice, but all of that kind of stuff is readily cheesed by gold (and as such, by cash). The only help here is to make more stuff be bound. Instead of BOE drops, maybe have bind on account drops so you can move stuff you find amongst your characters but can't do much else with it. Let crafting make uber pieces but make them be bind on create so the crafter can make themself really cool stuff but can't turn it into a business than can be influenced bots/cash.

No matter what's done though, it's still sadly a matter of supply and demand. Sadly there are so many scrubs playing these games who are perfectly willing to cheat. As long as there is demand, someone will supply it. The real key is to kill demand. Be it thru ruthlessly and completely removing cheaters (to the point that they need to buy a new copy of the game and start over if they want to try again) or completely gutting player economy to trivialize the impact of gold - you're not going to see less bots or spam unless something is done to curb demand.

Making it more difficult for bots to operate helps too and you kind of have to wonder at how easily the botters can fly thru accounts - it's almost like they're not actually paying for the game and don't care how many accounts are removed.

Selstad

In terms of banning, yes, they are, they are banning loops and loops of IPs out there, but if you're a boter, do you honestly think they'll go through their own IP? They're safe and sound behind their barriers of fake IPs, meaning that when one is banned, another is up in no-time.

And there is where the problem lies, banning through IP range or username is more or less futile as it only serves as a minor bump in the road for those who seriously use bot programs. They might catch one occasional small time botter, but the major botters are running free of this. So they have to figure out a way to stop botters from even getting online to stop the botters, and that's another major hurdle as what ever they implement has to be server sided and encrypted. Everything client based will just be reversed engineered and circumvented without too many problems.

demendred

rawne1980b16_ESO wrote: »

demendred wrote: »

Seems the bot users are trying to be clever. Right now as we speak, in Dels Claim there is hi lazygirl, pop music, and lady firsts running around in bot formation.

Double post but.....

That would more than likely be a multiboxer, not a bot.

Because their isn't jhdghdhg, yet they move like bots? If they get banned, they can plead their case then that they were mutiboxing.

Mortelus

KerinKor wrote: »

Mortelus wrote: »

Firstly, reinstate the starter islands and make it impossible to get to the main island without finishing the starter islands.

Secondly, Make it so every alt has to go through the wailing prison ( i know some will disagree but it could just be temporary for now until the solution of the bot-horde is fixed)

Thirdly, as a temporary fix, stop mailing until you get to the first main city of your faction. As players we/I don't/didn't really need to mail anything to anyone before getting to here.

Fourthly, start aggressively banning spammers, get more GM's in game and on the report players (your end). By implementing the first and second conditions you will be increasing the work for the banned bot because they will have to go through everything again.

Not great solutions but at least most bots will be condemned to the starter Islands where the Zeni team will have an easier time managing them I guess.

1. Please research "Travel to Player" to see how this idea doesn't solve anything.
2. It takes 15 mins to complete this, barely a bump in the road to anyone
3. see (1)
4. for me spammers aren't the problem, bots are and they'll need a damned sight more than a few GMs.

1. Travel to player should also be blocked until completion of the starter islands. The islands are small and not really hard to find other players.

2. If the GM team are actively banning bots then 15 minutes would be quite annoying, especially given that once they get to the starter islands they could also be banned and actually have no way to connect with the other areas.

3. See (1)

4. I actually meant to say bots, my bad...

Mortelus

SWTOR denies putting an IP block on China to combat gold sellers, but regardless I have never come across a blocked MMO in China yet, and I could originally play SWTOR from here for a while. But then all of a sudden I needed to use a VPN to get to the servers, once connected I could turn the VPN off. Think of it what you will.

IP banning doesn't work, VPN's are a pretty easy solution to the problem, even for a novice IT user.

I better solution is to put in game limitations so as to make the whole process utterly time wasting for the sellers.

It's not ideal for us ordinary players, but i would happily run any number of alts through the starting area and islands over and over if it meant I would rarely ever see a bot beyond those locations.

Most importantly Zeni needs to get rid of travel to player and forcibly make players do the starter islands. Then the GM's can focus their efforts on a smaller area.

Eventually it will become too much of a time sink to the sellers and the ratio of time spent to profit gained would lessen.