Have the bots won?

starkerealm

Yes

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

Farham wrote: »

You have to be seriously delusional not to see that ESO has some of the worst and most blatant hacking BOTs I have ever seen in over 10 years of playing MMOs.

Yes, every game had it share but no main stream MMO, as I would categorize ESO, has ever been just so unable to stop such obvious and massively scaled hacking/botting.

Honestly, I really get the feeling they can't stop it without major changes to their "instanced/phased" server model. You almost get a sense of panic from Zen with their silence and complete inability to stop what is now comically bad.

Games have bugs, games need time to fill in some gaps that were not included with release and games need time to steady themselves....we all understand these things come with new MMOs. This is nothing like other releases...nothing.

This ship might not be sunk but it has taken on a rather sizable hole and the water is starting to gush in. The captain and crew? No where to be found or heard from.

Unfortunately I think you are correct. I really want this game to be a huge success but at this point I fear it will require a major relaunch after massive changes have been made.

Most MMOs use something akin to a "dumb terminal" configuration. The client is an untrusted entity out there, petitioning to the server to be acknowledged, and begging for breadcrumbs as it tries to follow your commands to the character. I'm massively oversimplifying here, but that's the basic idea.

TESO trusts the client, meaning, the server accepts basically everything the client tells it, without question or hesitation. From a security standpoint, this is a very, very bad thing. It also means, without completely overhauling major elements of the server and client architecture, the game can't be secured.

steveb16_ESO46

Yes

starkerealm wrote: »

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

Draaconis wrote: »

Nope. I think the forum whining about bots is at a record high for no reason though. To be honest, I don't know where to look in the dungeons for some of the bosses. Then I see 10 unmoving people in one area and I know I've got it.

As you amble through past the trail of corpses unchallenged to the main boss the bots are the 2 or 3 templars running a loop killing anything that respawns.

I hate "fixed" posts... but, give me a second.

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

As you amble through past the trail of corpses unchallenged to the main boss's dead body the bots are the 20 or 30 templars running a loop killing anything that respawns and everything in their path.

Better, no?

Same thing but yes. Occasionally you get lucky and get to do some fighting if things respawn before the bots get them. It's the narrow corridor/cave ones that are really infested.

I'd much rather just go into a solo/group instance of these dungeons where enemies didn't respawn. You just had to fight your way through and defeat the boss. As it is if you're lucky enough to get an empty public dungeon you get hit be constant respawns, especially if you are a mobile fighter in an open space.

If there are people around you just rampage through with no chance to enjoy anything.

So many ill-judged design decisions.

steveb16_ESO46

Yes

starkerealm wrote: »

TESO trusts the client, meaning, the server accepts basically everything the client tells it, without question or hesitation. From a security standpoint, this is a very, very bad thing. It also means, without completely overhauling major elements of the server and client architecture, the game can't be secured.

Yep. If you go for that implementation, which plenty of games do, you HAVE to build in exploit detection from the start. And you have to test it.

I'm in the archage alpha and that has this stuff built in already. I'm in the Elite Dangerous beta and testers are uncovering hacks so they can be stopped.

But for ESO I have to wonder what the hell went on in the PTS process? It looks to me that way too much emphasis went on how things played within the design and there was not enough attention paid to testing exploits or whether the implementation left he game open wide to exploitation.

My guess, from my experience testing the LOTRO Helms Deep expansion, is these things were said but the devs didn't want to know.

starkerealm

Yes

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

Draaconis wrote: »

Nope. I think the forum whining about bots is at a record high for no reason though. To be honest, I don't know where to look in the dungeons for some of the bosses. Then I see 10 unmoving people in one area and I know I've got it.

As you amble through past the trail of corpses unchallenged to the main boss the bots are the 2 or 3 templars running a loop killing anything that respawns.

I hate "fixed" posts... but, give me a second.

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

As you amble through past the trail of corpses unchallenged to the main boss's dead body the bots are the 20 or 30 templars running a loop killing anything that respawns and everything in their path.

Better, no?

Same thing but yes. Occasionally you get lucky and get to do some fighting if things respawn before the bots get them. It's the narrow corridor/cave ones that are really infested.

I'd much rather just go into a solo/group instance of these dungeons where enemies didn't respawn. You just had to fight your way through and defeat the boss. As it is if you're lucky enough to get an empty public dungeon you get hit be constant respawns, especially if you are a mobile fighter in an open space.

If there are people around you just rampage through with no chance to enjoy anything.

So many ill-judged design decisions.

Yeah, I'm with you there. I'd actually love to see instancing for the delves and public dungeons.

isengrimb16_ESO

Mm, Crimson Cove was totally infested yesterday, but the bots would only be in one or two rooms, and leave you stranded in hallways between two packs of 4 or 5 mobs. Took me a long time to get my quests done and get out of there, died a lot, too.

I tried grouping with the only other human in there, but we couldn't reach each other.

Then, on the other hand, I completely soloed a delve called Harridan's Lair (it's all tigers) - there was absolutely no one else there, not even bots.

Razzak

Yes

Yes. When game devs are incapable of fighting bots without making changes that affect all players, they have won. It might change in the future, but so far, bots are winning.

AngryNord

No

ThreeEyedCrow wrote: »

I haven't seen a "bot" since the second week of the game.

Definitely haven't seen any in Vet zones or Cyrodiil

I am a little confused what you people are doing to see so many bots when I see none.

Maybe you are in the level 10-30 zones.

I'm in Eastmarch - a Level 30+ zone. I see bots there - Level 3, prison garb, et al, daily. Funny thing is I didn't see a single bot in Shadowfen, and extremely few in Deshaan...

AngryNord

No

srfrogg23 wrote: »

Agreed 100%. It's pretty rare that botters will use actual "names". In fact, it's probably the surest sign that it is a bot. In the unlikely event that someone just got lazy naming their character and decided to just type a bunch of random letters... Well, I hope you can get the issue resolved in a reasonable amount of time through Zos customer support, and make a note to be a little more inventive in the future.

I beg to differ, I did a quest in Eastmarch recently, one where you have to fight an enemy leader in a Pact fort. He was sorrounded - I mean literally surrounded - by characters named 'Freddy Li', 'Freddy Lee', 'Freddy Zi' etc...

starkerealm

Yes

AngryNord wrote: »

ThreeEyedCrow wrote: »

I haven't seen a "bot" since the second week of the game.

Definitely haven't seen any in Vet zones or Cyrodiil

I am a little confused what you people are doing to see so many bots when I see none.

Maybe you are in the level 10-30 zones.

I'm in Eastmarch - a Level 30+ zone. I see bots there - Level 3, prison garb, et al, daily. Funny thing is I didn't see a single bot in Shadowfen, and extremely few in Deshaan...

There's a race in Windhelm that the bots can cheat for instant gold, then they scrap the character and roll up a fresh one.

teox76

Yes

To all the people for which "I do not see many of them = So it's a non-issue": the huge problem is really that. The game client is so unsecured and hackable that bots can run at such a speed, fly, teleport or be underground that you don't even see them. What you see it's the node you were harvesting disappearing tough. What you (don't) see are the resources you are no more able to gather (I haven't seen an Aspect rune in ages).

kewl

Yes

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

Yes, the bots have won.
Skynet has become self-aware.
The end is nigh.

zaria

starkerealm wrote: »

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

Farham wrote: »

You have to be seriously delusional not to see that ESO has some of the worst and most blatant hacking BOTs I have ever seen in over 10 years of playing MMOs.

Yes, every game had it share but no main stream MMO, as I would categorize ESO, has ever been just so unable to stop such obvious and massively scaled hacking/botting.

Honestly, I really get the feeling they can't stop it without major changes to their "instanced/phased" server model. You almost get a sense of panic from Zen with their silence and complete inability to stop what is now comically bad.

Games have bugs, games need time to fill in some gaps that were not included with release and games need time to steady themselves....we all understand these things come with new MMOs. This is nothing like other releases...nothing.

This ship might not be sunk but it has taken on a rather sizable hole and the water is starting to gush in. The captain and crew? No where to be found or heard from.

Unfortunately I think you are correct. I really want this game to be a huge success but at this point I fear it will require a major relaunch after massive changes have been made.

Most MMOs use something akin to a "dumb terminal" configuration. The client is an untrusted entity out there, petitioning to the server to be acknowledged, and begging for breadcrumbs as it tries to follow your commands to the character. I'm massively oversimplifying here, but that's the basic idea.

TESO trusts the client, meaning, the server accepts basically everything the client tells it, without question or hesitation. From a security standpoint, this is a very, very bad thing. It also means, without completely overhauling major elements of the server and client architecture, the game can't be secured.

Are you sure about this? so I could hack the game and have it report 100000 in damage on all attacks and that my health regen was 10000? Bots don't do this.

Note that wow has have had long term issues with flying hacks who should be impossible on an dumb system if the server was smart enough to check if the flyer is on an flying mount.

starkerealm

Yes

zaria wrote: »

Are you sure about this? so I could hack the game and have it report 100000 in damage on all attacks and that my health regen was 10000? Bots don't do this.

Fairly sure. They don't control everything, but a lot of data gets passed back to the game unchecked. And, the result is the bots that can teleport around, as they're simply passing the location data of, "no really guys, we're over here now."

I've seen people claiming they can lock ultimate at 100%, which seems plausible, and can prevent mana and stamina consumption, which is also plausible given that stamina doesn't deplete while sprinting if you get disconnected. It also explains how the bots can afford to keep spamming their attacks without ever worrying about magicka management.

zaria wrote: »

Note that wow has have had long term issues with flying hacks who should be impossible on an dumb system if the server was smart enough to check if the flyer is on an flying mount.

I don't know what happened exactly with WoW, but what little I do know is the movement commands looked valid to the system parsing movement, so it accepted the data. In the case of TESO that doesn't seem to be necessary. I think Bliz responded by encyrpting some of their traffic, but, again, this is all third or fourth hand, I haven't played a Warcraft title since the WC3 expansion.

zaria

teox76 wrote: »

To all the people for which "I do not see many of them = So it's a non-issue": the huge problem is really that. The game client is so unsecured and hackable that bots can run at such a speed, fly, teleport or be underground that you don't even see them. What you see it's the node you were harvesting disappearing tough. What you (don't) see are the resources you are no more able to gather (I haven't seen an Aspect rune in ages).

Then why are we seeing bot trains as they are so fast we can not see them?
Why do we see bots doing stupid things like running against a rock if they can teleport? why don't they have 100k damage and health and why is this not used by cheating players? Why do we see bots who harvest if they are underground?

No reason to create imaginary bots. Nodes disappear because of phasing bugs, yes it can be an bot in another phase, however they happen inside cities to next to crafting stations, hardly an good place for bots to farm.

steveb16_ESO46

Yes

If the bots aren't flying, teleporting and tunneling by spoofing client-side data then they are hacking the server side coding. If that's the case ESO is in real trouble.

Client-side processing is common. Letting the client tell the server anything it wants without question isn't.

Turial

No

Bots are a part of all MMOs, pick an MMO, any of them, tell me that it does not have bots. Also they are actively working on the bot system, you can even see them doing it in game which you do not see in many other MMOs and have to just take the devs word if they bother to admit their game has bots. Instead of complaining about bots you should be just playing the game, I was in an area this morning which is pretty bot heavy for the last while but when I logged in at the usual time managed to play for 3-4 hours before work without seeing a single bot at all and I was playing at the same time, same place on that character. They are working on it and if people just focused on the game instead they might see that too.

zaria

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

If the bots aren't flying, teleporting and tunneling by spoofing client-side data then they are hacking the server side coding. If that's the case ESO is in real trouble.

Client-side processing is common. Letting the client tell the server anything it wants without question isn't.

If was a major killing of bot some time ago, might be that happened.
In short if the client start giving impossible data to server you treat this as an bug, log off the client and give an error message.

Yes it would be far smarter to log player and autoban if this was common over time. You would not do at once as this can also happen because of bugs and keeping the excact reason for ban hidden helps against countermeasures.

We have seen the bot trains in places like coldharbor with so many bots its not an cheating player but something organized.
My question is why are they not using underground teleport?
if they did nobody would notice and report and as doing quests don't affect players they could continue do it until ZOS started looking pretty closely on their logs. In short the perfect scam and it was not used.

Bhakura

Yes

steveb16_ESO46

Yes

zaria wrote: »

My question is why are they not using underground teleport?

if they did nobody would notice and report and as doing quests don't affect players they could continue do it until ZOS started looking pretty closely on their logs. In short the perfect scam and it was not used.

I guess because they simply don't care who sees them or not. If they cared they'd not have 'agghjrd' type names.

The word I'm looking for is 'contempt' I think.

Let's hope they have a big surprise coming at them.

isengrimb16_ESO

Contempt, yes, perfect word. These organized bot-goldseller people are nothing but contemptuous (and contemptible). They simply have no respect, and in fact, probably hate games and anything capitalistic (unless they're the ones making the bucks, of course.)

Tandowitz

Yes

At this point they are robbing a lot of resources (Nodes) I have a screen shot or 5 showing this happening. Please let us know you are working on resolving this ever present issue.

zaria

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

My question is why are they not using underground teleport?

if they did nobody would notice and report and as doing quests don't affect players they could continue do it until ZOS started looking pretty closely on their logs. In short the perfect scam and it was not used.

I guess because they simply don't care who sees them or not. If they cared they'd not have 'agghjrd' type names.

The word I'm looking for is 'contempt' I think.

Let's hope they have a big surprise coming at them.

No they don't care if you see them, they however care if their gold farming spot is shut down.
Using teleport they should also be able to cut down the time they uses on each round significantly as they used two minutes running from wayshrine to questgiver.

In short they would be able to increase income 50-100% while keeping the operation many times more hidden using movement hacks.

Only reason to not use it is that either the gold farmer gang don't know about the exploit or it don't work anymore.

kewl

Yes

zaria wrote: »

My question is why are they not using underground teleport?

Because they don't have to. Bots move about the world with complete impunity.

Perhaps this is Molag Bal's real plan? Undead and Daedra are just a distraction?

DAMN YOU MOLAG BAL!

GreySix

Yes

As others have pointed out, think ZeniMax may have to take down the game long enough to transfer most permissions to the server-side.

So long as clients maintain most of the control, worthless scum-buckets will abuse the system with hacks, as exemplified by this popular botter forum post:

Yea, I've done similar in at least 1/2 dozen games over the last ten years.
When ever a dev is foolish/lazy enough to allow this in the client
Often times finding ways to get around server side checks/sync when they do have it (where you would normally "rubber band" back).
Why bother waiting to run, path, clear obstacles, etc., when you can just teleport?

zaria

kewl wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

My question is why are they not using underground teleport?

Because they don't have to. Bots move about the world with complete impunity.

Perhaps this is Molag Bal's real plan? Undead and Daedra are just a distraction?

DAMN YOU MOLAG BAL!

They don't do the hollow city quest bot run any longer as the quest was nerfed.
in short if you do goldfarming you don't want to draw attention to yourself.

And yes the long term solution to bots is to check player behavior against know bot patterns same way you do with spam filters for mails.
how many templars who grind only uses the spear attack just to give an vector.

isengrimb16_ESO

GreySix wrote: »

As others have pointed out, think ZeniMax may have to take down the game long enough to transfer most permissions to the server-side.

So long as clients maintain most of the control, worthless scum-buckets will abuse the system with hacks, as exemplified by this popular botter forum post:

Yea, I've done similar in at least 1/2 dozen games over the last ten years.
When ever a dev is foolish/lazy enough to allow this in the client
Often times finding ways to get around server side checks/sync when they do have it (where you would normally "rubber band" back).
Why bother waiting to run, path, clear obstacles, etc., when you can just teleport?

Yes, yes, that's the "why work when I can steal a gun and rob people for money, anyone foolish enough not to be armed deserves to be rolled" monkey mentality of too many humans who were allowed to breed.

Very anti-civilization, it's amazing a pack of stupid plains-apes made it as far as it did with so many having this kind of mindset.

Yes, any botters/goldsellers reading this, you're monkeys with monkey minds and ought to have the same legal standing as monkeys, and I hope you just got offended, you pack of slimeballs. I bet your fathers were all low-lifers, too.

zaria

GreySix wrote: »

As others have pointed out, think ZeniMax may have to take down the game long enough to transfer most permissions to the server-side.

So long as clients maintain most of the control, worthless scum-buckets will abuse the system with hacks, as exemplified by this popular botter forum post:

Yea, I've done similar in at least 1/2 dozen games over the last ten years.
When ever a dev is foolish/lazy enough to allow this in the client
Often times finding ways to get around server side checks/sync when they do have it (where you would normally "rubber band" back).
Why bother waiting to run, path, clear obstacles, etc., when you can just teleport?

Or even simpler, then the error rate between client and server position get so high that its 99.99% chance of exploit and not lag or bug disable the account.

In this setting you don't have to check the position too accurate just watch for and count impossible movements.

steveb16_ESO46

Yes

zaria wrote: »

Only reason to not use it is that either the gold farmer gang don't know about the exploit or it don't work anymore.

Well as they are on the ground and in the sky in huge numbers I guess they don't care. Who knows. They exist in droves and at the moment operate without consequences.

steveb16_ESO46

Yes

zaria wrote: »

They don't do the hollow city quest bot run any longer as the quest was nerfed.
in short if you do goldfarming you don't want to draw attention to yourself.

It's not a 'you'. It is one out of hundreds of a RMT's company's infinite army of bots. And as the videos of them falling from the sky in a continuous stream show - they don't care about your logic or about drawing attention.

This is a game so full of exploitable flaws it isn't funny. Just having public dungeons with infinitely respawning npc's and nodes in set locations means there's always a resource to bot harvest.

Drachenfier

Yes

Boneidle wrote: »

Bots are an issue in every game when it starts

I've only played two other MMO's that had this level of bot infestation, since 1999 - Aion and Lineage 2.

Rift, Warhammer, SWTOR, LOTRO I all played at launch and still play (except WH obviously) and don't recall ever seeing any bots, or even hearing about them. Of those games, Rift was the only one I ever even saw a gold seller mail ingame, and that was fairly rare.