STOP BUYING GOLD FROM THE BOTS: BAN ANYONE WHO DOES!

TheGrandAlliance

Banned on the basis of violating Terms of Service.


Blizzard doesn't care about bots. How do you think they come up with the "7 million+ active sub" numbers anways? Most of them are bots, (because having an account for one month counts as "one sub", the rest are chinese-based accounts.


Any sub-based game has a disincentive to banning botting... not only because it makes them a ton of money but also the money from cheating accounts. The 50USD revenune they get for every banned bot account more then bankrolls an army of GMs to engage it. It is like traffic fines and police departments. They issue tickets which fund their operations: LIke Red LIght Cameras.


Here... the bots make ZeniMax money. Thus the will to "ban" them is only exists if their core player base revolts and quits over the issue.

Exivus1

I love this. I absolutely love this.

Everyone has become an Edward Snowden, Jack Bauer or a billion-dollar MMO designer.

Absolute gold.

TheGrandAlliance

@Exivus1‌

....or Global Warming denier. Your forgetting that one too.

Exivus1

Doctoruniverse wrote: »

Its in zenimax hands.

LMAO. Yes - yes, it's in *their* hands.

TheGrandAlliance

...I am starting to think some of you may be bots... as you continue to defend them for some reason...

Thechemicals

Even if they did, the bans are not permanent and can be appealed with a phone call.

GreySix

TheGrandAlliance wrote: »

...I am starting to think some of you may be bots... as you continue to defend them for some reason...

The devil doesn't need an advocate, yet many still rush in to fill the role.

TheGrandAlliance

Thechemicals wrote: »

Even if they did, the bans are not permanent and can be appealed with a phone call.

Appealed? Yes? Reversed decision? A whole 'nother matter.

ttwinklerub17_ESO

as I said before this won't work

people pay real currency for gold OR mats or items (ie Motifs,recipes,gear).
not just in-game gold buying stuff

you proposing we ban anyone who gets gifted gold or anything else?

ZOS cannot tell whether someone paid money directly to a gold seller website
and in return something is sent to their inbox in game

what your proposing is the most draconian thing Ive ever heard
because to implement we be catching a lot of innocent people

and stop before you say well we can target those with gibberish name
they use gibberish names for their mules and transfer stuff to the other accounts
and some of the transfers happen with in game apps (allowing anyone including mules to send to a second account)

im assuming it uses trade with other function or ingame mail gift as it goes along

so what would happen anyone using that app would get hit as well

As I said the only way is GET RID OF IN-GAME TRADE

you can still have an auction house and you still have stores and guild stores
that's plenty of ways to earn in game gold

GreySix

This (pulled from a botter forum - they're not hard to find) is old (late March), but shows (to me anyway) that botters are not necessarily Chinese slave workers and the like:

The viper bot does not and will never have teleporting in it. So if you see people teleporting, its not viper. They just banned thousands of people that were teleporting, so you wont see many of them still doing it.

Viper will only grind and gather at the moment, with radar.

There are only a handful of pre-made patrols setup so far uploaded by members. But this will increase over time. Its usually better to make your own anyway, since its a mega server with everybody in the same place, dont want to compete for mobs/resources.

dinges

So... just to get this straight : lets assume you own a company that makes computer games and you have a system setup where you get 45 euro when they buy the game + additional monthly revenue for playing it...

Every bot means a copy is sold, every bot is a paying "customer". Banning bots means the goldfarmer will have to buy a new game and a new subscription. Solving the actual problem where bots cant be used would mean the goldfarmers stop buying the game and dont buy a subscription...

Are you feeling me ? $$$

TheGrandAlliance

What you do is target all high dollar transactions, either gold wise or item value. YOu see where they come from. YOu see how the seller got the gold/items from. IF traced back to goldselling then you ban all accounts in-line. Very easy to see. Especially if there is a chat log that goes with it.

Or you can start from the bottom... see where a "unit of gold or item" goes. In theory individual items such as motiffs should have a unique ID for the item (for that particular instance of the time). Simply follow where the item goes.

You can even buy the gold from the goldseller, see how they do it, and then shut them down when they deliver.


There are many solution to the problem... to claim it is "impossible" is like saying NSA cannot trace money IRL.

TheGrandAlliance

@dinges‌

That is exactly what I have been saying on my thread. There is no financal incentive for a sub-based company to stop botting.

ttwinklerub17_ESO

just how does one determine it's a gold seller - by IP?
- or range of IP's you will catch innocents

that won't work Gold seller can use masking or different accounts or vPN or proxies to send thru

to say ZOS is NSA is riduculous
there are limits to what ZOS can do - they can't spy - that's illegal

they can't ban a person without proof - so what proof you have money was involved - you can mask trades with junk barters?

and if you do that to a bunch of people you have class action lawsuit

TheGrandAlliance

YOu determine a gold seller by whether they botted. If accounts linked to them are bots... then they are also bots. If you receive "gold", and the one sending you the gold is directly linked to known bots then you are buying gold from them. This isn't a criminal case... and TOS gives ZeniMax power to ban you as desired.

Sendarya

I don't know what the solution is, but flooding the game world with tons of loots isn't it. That would kill legit player trade and in-game economy as surely as nerfing drops into the ground.

And we don't know why bots are so rampant in this game. Remember, we are on a megaserver, and even with instancing, you are seeing a lot more people at a time than the traditional server/shard system. For all we know, there aren't more bots per capita than your average MMO, it just LOOKs like there is.

And it is players fault, 100%. Players who buy gold. And if it is profitable for there to be this many bots, you know a lot of people are taking the lazy route and buying gold, instead of, you know, playing the game! As I said in a different thread, I see more and more people openly admitting to buying gold in zone chat every day. They don't think it harms the in-game economy, or they don't care. They are the me me me instant gratification crowd that has basically ruined the entire MMO Genre, IMO. I wish they would all get banned. But I also understand why it isn't really feasible from Zenimax's pov.

Loligo

Soloeus wrote: »

Or:

Part of the reason people buy gold is because of increasing debt through rapid gear decay, low loot, high respec cost, inability to get loot from bosses/dungeons.

Partially true, but mostly not.

People buy gold because they assess that it is quicker to spend a few real dollars to get in game uber stuff than it is to actually earn the in game stuff.

Decay, and low loot have nothing to do with it. I've never seen an MMO that implemented a gear decay that especially punishing - even casual players could keep up in any game I've seen since the 90's.

Inability to get loot comes in when powerful guilds get a lip-lock on content, but in effect they're doing that to feed the after-market.

High respec cost might be an issue, but the correct way to fix that is to allow one, and only one respec per X level gain and Y (long) time. Make it free, but you can only do it every 15 levels gained, and once a year after that. The whole point of the skill tree mechanic is that you're supposed to make choices and live with them, not respec over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. A respec is allowed because nobody is likely to ever get the spec they want on the first try, so it's fair that there's a bit of wiggle room with a respec, but look at WoW, where the skill trees are just a joke because anyone respecs at will.

Soloeus wrote: »

Another part of the reason for an economy of Real Money Trade is because the number of hours it can take to get X gold versus the number of hours to earn X Dollars with which to buy X gold makes it more time economical to cheat.

This holds true with why people bot as well.

The best way to handle it is:

Un-nerf loot, and dungeons, cut respec costs in half, unified Auction House for entire faction. Ban players who buy gold.

No. Best way to handle it is keep loot the way it is, up respec costs and reduce the amount of respeccing that's even allowed by a lot.

I'll grant you a faction-wide auction house, as I don't think that makes a difference one way or the other, but I also don't believe that the guild-based system will stand up to the test of time.

Ban players who buy gold is a given.

Soloeus wrote: »

Ban accounts by every measure; each computer leaves a unique digital footprint. Ban them by that. Buyers and sellers alike.

Remove multi-boxing aka multi-clienting, the floodgate of all botting.

Umm, plenty of normal people like to pay for and play two accounts in their games. EVE online lives on that sort of thing. I don't see a problem with a regular person supporting 6 accounts. All your multi-boxing limitations will do is alienate paying customers.

And how could you tell anyway? I have 10 computers in my house... should I be banned if my friends came over for an ESO LAN party just because it would look like I'm 10 boxing from my IP?

ttwinklerub17_ESO

dinges wrote: »

So... just to get this straight : lets assume you own a company that makes computer games and you have a system setup where you get 45 euro when they buy the game + additional monthly revenue for playing it...

Every bot means a copy is sold, every bot is a paying "customer". Banning bots means the goldfarmer will have to buy a new game and a new subscription. Solving the actual problem where bots cant be used would mean the goldfarmers stop buying the game and dont buy a subscription...

Are you feeling me ? $$$

who says they buy
you can use keygens, stolen CC and fake CC numbers

so the game is basically free to the unscrupulous people

dinges

There are limitations to their service upon other countries as far as i know. Same as with blizzard they do not offer the same payment option for every country. You can install this game by false keys probably but you will not be able to actually login to the real world servers. It's the same with WoW where there are illegal servers that can handle illegal clients where the real world server would just bounce you.

Stolen CC's is ofcourse an option but then again, if you have stolen CC's you think subscribing goldfarming accounts is the easiest money ? Why not just buy more valuable stuff with it ?

At the end it again doesn't matter HOW they do it, money (legit or not) comes into the game developpers drawer. Goal reached.

Pele

Agree. Ban the gold buyers as well.

Loxy37

I do agree that drastic measures need to be put in place but how do they know who is buying gold? Now I'm not 100% sure how it works as I've never bought gold. Let's say the gold seller sends the gold in small chunks. That wouldn't set off alarms or even trades for an item which would appear legit. I expect also that when gold is bought, a legit named player will send the gold to a person who bought it, this is how I would do it (Money laundering).

Also something that would catch innocents in the cross fire is them selling mats. Whenever you see someone selling a stack of 100 mats for 500g, you can bet your bottom dollar that they are RMTs. They do this because they get a fast turn over that's slightly over the vendor price. So basically, any one that buys from those people are now buying from RMTs, should they be banned?

Its not as cookie cutter as a lot of you make out or think it to be.

ShintaiDK

I am sure they already ban people doing transactions with bots. Thats standard practice in MMOs.

Loxy37

Doctoruniverse wrote: »

Solution is to increase to drops until items become so common that bots cant survive. Not increase demand by nerfing the drops to insane amounts.

Its in zenimax hands. Its their fault that bots are so rampant in the game. Not the players.

This... I've been saying this for ages. I've never worked out why, unless, Zenimax likes the Moola that bots pay them every month. Fact is that they may lose a 1000 players because of botting but if they lose 2000 due to a bot killing spree then that would hurt their bank balance!

RedTalon

Drop the ban bombs on anyone buying resources or gold from the bots, zero tolerance needs to happen please.

RedTalon

Niliu wrote: »

Why not just report the sites to the FBI Cyber Crimes Unit? I mean the gold spammers post the names of the websites. That gives the FBI an "in" on how to track the origin of the sites. They can shut the original site down, and block the creators from creating new ones.

Not that simple...

Uviryth

Thats a really old discussion. Its around since more than a decade now.

Fact is, you cant ban the goldbuyers or the goldsellers, because you cant proof that money has been flown in Real Life. And a character that gives another character gold is perfectily valid.
Thats a rocksolid fact.

You can only ban those who use cheats and hacks (which means the farmbots).

Vicodine

+1
If there would be consequences for buyers, many would think twice. 100% agree. Market would go thin and (after some time) the sellers will abandon the trade.

Second part of the solution is for a GM to jump on a gold-selling site, buy a tiny amount, and wait for those f*ers to deliver. Ban the *** out of that mule and ban everybody that ever traded with him on site. And repeat. Case. Closed. Has nobody ever thought of that? I see it all the time on TV where an US officer poses as a hooker and arrests willing clients I guess it could also be arranged with a bank so the charges don't go through to the site, which is illegal in US to begin with.

randomriffyrocksprerb18_ESO

If no one buys ESO gold, they are still other sources that will support the bots in ESO, which is people buying gold from other MMOs

KerinKor

ZOS have been asked point blank "Do you ban buyers", they refused to answer, read into that what you will, I choose to read it as "no but we're too scared to say so".

Braumeisterlein

Pele wrote: »

Agree. Ban the gold buyers as well.

As much as I agree, I'm skeptical that it's so easy.

How do you determine whether someone bought gold? How could zenimax tell someone paid real money to an external website?
You might be able to check whether someone received an unusual amount of gold without giving something in return, but what happens if the gold came from a clean account (in terms of money laundering)? Then there might be a considerable risk to ban also innocent Players.
Now you might add "everything is traceable to the bots", but I venture to doubt that seriously. I'm sure the professional botters have a number of intermediary accounts to clean their money over days. I mean I'm really no expert in IT, but wouldn't you need a gigantic datacenter to record (and analyse!) every single ingame Transaction over days and probably weeks