Botting and how it influences the economy

Love Wizard · October 2016

After the launch of tamriel one, there's been a HUGE increase in supply of raw materials, and the ammount of legendary materials being pumped into the market now is just getting ridicolous. I've been in contact with some suppliers earlier today which had over 60k iron ore and around the same topgrain scraps, I obviously reported them but it seems like they're easily able to do damage to the state of the economy this game currently has. With the recent patch, you could buy even less items for your gold, and we're now at a point where there's so much money in the economy, and there's very little to buy. I also know several big traders benefit of this, they buy the materials from these "botters" for a price that's roughly under 50% of the actual marketprice, and then refine to sell the legendary materials. As a known trader on the EU server, I've been several times offered such deals but always declined as I don't want to trade like this. Botting in my opinion is something that needs to be dealt with swiftly, and something that needs to be addressed right now before it completely destroys the balance of legendary materials.

These days I don't buy anything else than alchemy materials or potions, and legendary materials as EVERYTHING else is basicly bind on pickup, and right now I think the game needs a gold sink. When I started playing ESO I got a legendary healer ring from vDSA weekly, and sold it for 400k, and that was SO much gold, but now alot of my friends, and myself included is sitting with several millions of gold, and we have absolutely NOTHING to spend it on.

So, my question to you Zenimax is, how is bots being dealt with as of right now? Do you have any plans on introducing any money dumps to the game?

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_Finn

Thanks, and sorry for the frustration!

- @IWM

yvesfouquet4 · October 2016

I totally agree about the botting part. Lately the stores are completely flooded by lots & lots of raw materials & golden materials. They are clearly bots because they bring insane amounts daily for sale at ridiculous low prices.

ESO economy gets totally destroyed by this in any form and indeed there is a complete lack of golddump in this game atm.
Everything is also bound, the droprates are insanely high on any rare material / item so economy wise the game is a failure atm. It needs a strong change and a DECENT FOLLOWUP on the BOT BANNING. SO many get reported and they are still running around.

Regards

deadlock007 · October 2016

Player housing will be a huge gold sink

stevepdodson_ESO888 · October 2016

deadlock007 wrote: »

Player housing will be a huge gold sink

i think you've got the wrong end of this...they are not looking for a gold sink, they want ways to make gold at a decent and fair rate...the botting/dumping of huge amounts of mats is contributing to a slow down in the market and a crash in prices

if we want to afford housing then we need a way to make gold

deadlock007 · October 2016

stevepdodson_ESO888 wrote: »

deadlock007 wrote: »

Player housing will be a huge gold sink

i think you've got the wrong end of this...they are not looking for a gold sink, they want ways to make gold at a decent and fair rate...the botting/dumping of huge amounts of mats is contributing to a slow down in the market and a crash in prices

if we want to afford housing then we need a way to make gold

I understand what they are complaining about, and personally I feel that mats needed a good drop in price. (I am not condoning botting) Both posts mention the lack of a gold sink and that you have players sitting on millions of gold with nothing to spend it on.....well player housing will fix that problem.

Beepbeep · October 2016

I don't see how you know this if from botting? Resources are everywhere and a lot of players have returned to the game for One Tamriel. Also, people stock pile and dump when big content comes out. Sounds to me someone is upset they are not making money from the markets they thought they should be.

Voxicity · October 2016

Oh bloody hell, better keep an eye on the Tamriel stock exchange since this is definitely important and real life and all that jazz

Derra · October 2016

Is mr. itrytomanipulatecolumbineprices seriously complaining about the market? Oh the irony.

kargen27 · October 2016

It is a double whammy. Supply on mats is way up because they are now everywhere. Instead of competing with others trying to farm mats in a few locations you can now go anywhere in the game and find what you need. All the new sets and the current event also have many players farming for gear much more than normal. Anything they don't want gets decon'd and that leads to even more mats. All those new sets also means less people requesting crafted sets so we get less demand for the mats. More supply and less demand will almost always lead to drastic price decreases.
The only requests for crafting I have seen since the update has been low level gear for players trying to level and a couple of people that were curious about what the new gear types looked like.

I think the only way to get mat prices up some would be to allow players to change styles of dropped pieces and somehow incorporate materials into that process. Being able to take your preferred set and chance its appearances to your favorite style would cause a huge increase in demand for whatever it takes for that change.

Egonieser · October 2016

Woot, time to upgrade all my alts armours to legendary.

On a side note though, botting is not something so easily detectable by automatic means as bots these days are sophisticated, they change paths, movements, do random pauses, do silly random things every now and then like a human would like jump and swing a weapon in thin air to look as legit as possible and any automated detection system would not be able to catch it as the more sophisticated bots have all these detection methods covered and taken care of. Also they do not actually tinker with the memory like cheat engine etc would, it reads it, it doesn't write it or change it.

The only way for them to detect it would be to assign a GM to every report to spectate the botter for a period of time, which everyone knows is not possible as they don't have a thousand disposable GM's to police and investigate every single report.

KaiVox22 wrote: »

Oh bloody hell, better keep an eye on the Tamriel stock exchange since this is definitely important and real life and all that jazz

I know rite? This game doesn't exactly have a Wall Street to begin with...

Cryptical · October 2016

Zeni didn't create an economy. The players did. The players chose all pricing and supply and demand and bartering etc. And as such, Zeni has no obligation to be caretaker of anyone's standing in that economy. They are not the guardians of anyone's stockpile of wealth.

The_Legendary_Arya · October 2016

Ive seen these Bots too, really need to fix this. They are for 100% Bots. Report them when you see them!

BlackEar · October 2016

Personally I have not seen bots that I am aware of but it would be bad tto have another launch issue with bots and guild kiosks.
As for gold sinks I will keep calm until housing is here.

Love Wizard · October 2016

Derra wrote: »

Is mr. itrytomanipulatecolumbineprices seriously complaining about the market? Oh the irony.

Just because im buying low and selling high, doesn't that make me elgible to say what I feel is wrong and right about the market? I pushed it 100 gold, that's nothing.

AlnilamE · October 2016

I'm farming new sets. I usuall camp near a dolmen and/or world boss and harvest everything I see between spawns.

I don't think I'll need to buy mats for a while.

bantad87 · October 2016

Meh. I understand your view, but really, who cares whether a money sink exists or if legendary materials are cheap?

In a game where you may carry 5 different sets of armor in your inventory to change according to the situation, you need materials to be cheap and plentiful enough to enable players to experiment with different builds.

Your money sinks can be CP, attribute, and skill line redistribution, housing when it arrives, and including some way for people to maybe change a items visual skin or traits. Think, maybe you have 5 pieces of divines night mothers crafted in the dunmer style - incorporate some sort of option that (if you have the crafting skill/materials/traits/style) you could change the trait to impenetrable and remodel it to xivkyn. Then make it cost like 10K gold per piece. That way you could remodel and change your armors traits to adapt your build or change your style. Since there actually isn't THAT much incoming gold into the system (vendor money isn't actually that high, most players get rich from selling in the guilds) something like that allows for build flexibility, but also takes a lot of gold out of the system. Imagine, 70K gold to remodel/trait 7 pieces of armor, 3K for CP respec, 10K for skill lines. Players would be dumping gold by the millions each day.

Valethar · October 2016

So.. You 'contacted' some 'suppliers', and that makes them 'obviously' a bot?

LOL

Rohamad_Ali · October 2016

Not everyone is sitting on fat sacks of gold . Your opinion is from your experience . I know lots of players that can barely get a hour a day in and struggle getting purple gear . Venture out and meet people .

zuto40 · October 2016

People tryna sell sharpened spriggan swords for 1 mil on xbox, plenty of things to spend gold on and farm now

Elijah_Crow · October 2016

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Something really needs to be done about the bots. It's getting almost as bad as it was during the bot war after launch, but this time ZOS isn't taking action. You can read the details in the cheating and exploits thread that's stickied at the top of the general forums, but in one particular case I submitted several videos and reported one particular bot and it was ignored for at least 10 days. I still doubt any action was taken.

The influx of materials is going to have a huge negative impact on the economy and it's even being felt in the short term. Please pass this along to those who can take action.

geonsocal · October 2016

funny, we all take in information from our own perspective...I read tempering alloy is cheaper now - went around to guild stores - when you can find it - cheap is 18k a piece...hmmmm, let's see, takes 8 tempering alloys for each piece so that's - still way way too much...

rngeezus - wish them lazy bots would get to work on the ps4...

Elijah_Crow · October 2016

On PC NA you are lucky to get 9k a piece for them...because of the bot problem flooding the market.

Jim_Pipp · October 2016

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

Not everyone is sitting on fat sacks of gold . Your opinion is from your experience . I know lots of players that can barely get a hour a day in and struggle getting purple gear . Venture out and meet people .

So the bots are making lots of gold, but there is no point to having gold because there are no gold sinks. Those silly bots have wasted their time (but made essential items more affordable for the average player base).

zuto40 · October 2016

Elijah_Crow wrote: »

On PC NA you are lucky to get 9k a piece for them...because of the bot problem flooding the market.

On xbox before 1T 25k per temp was trader price, i wouldnt mind the bots flooding the market with 9k temps over here for a little bit

Bryanonymous · October 2016

From what I've seen, the botters do get banned, however they just make another account and start again. Apparently, selling gold is worth buying the game or who knows how they get new accounts. I also suspect they are from China. We had similar issues on the NA server recently, where officers of a certain trade guild were seen buying over 20 million gold worth of raw mats and basically increasing the kiosk bids in their particular town by millions of gold. While the consumers watch inflation of the currency slow down due to the influx of gold mats, top trade guilds start to fall apart because they can't compete with the 'cheaters' bids. So you are right that it is a problem, and I assure you they do get banned. What else can be done? And the buyers... I know that one of them is still active and benefitting from all those profits, even after many reports.

Derra · October 2016

Love Wizard wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Is mr. itrytomanipulatecolumbineprices seriously complaining about the market? Oh the irony.

Just because im buying low and selling high, doesn't that make me elgible to say what I feel is wrong and right about the market? I pushed it 100 gold, that's nothing.

You can express whatever feeling you want. I just think it´s ironic that it´s you complaining about pricemanipulation for whatever reason.

Also "pushed it by 100 gold, that´s nothing" is just a statement that either shows lack of understanding or you´re trying to underplay your role (and those of a few others) in what happened to potion prices on PCEU.

Of course 100 gold is not much for a single item. However if you look at it in a way that you increased the average price of an item that is sold thousands or maybe tenthousands of times a day by about 20 to 25% by creating an artificial scarcity in the market just for personal gains or because you could.
That´s something entirely different.
Ofc we both know that.

Lumbermill_Emperor · October 2016

every game have bots
nothing to worry about
its just a sign that ESO become more and more popular
and btw im glad i can upgrade my gear twice cheaper than before, thanks to bots down the prices

Woeler · October 2016

Derra wrote: »

However if you look at it in a way that you increased the average price of an item that is sold thousands or maybe tenthousands of times a day by about 20 to 25% by creating an artificial scarcity in the market just for personal gains or because you could.

Hey there, and welcome to real life! Where everybody works and lives together in perfect harmoney and everyone cares for everyone. There are also rainbows and unicorns everywhere! Nobody ever does something for their own personal gain and life is dominated by true altruism! Enjoy.

Derra wrote: »

Is mr. itrytomanipulatecolumbineprices seriously complaining about the market? Oh the irony.

It's mr. Isucceededtomanipulatecolumbineprices for you.

SquareSausage · October 2016

The only people complaining about low prices are the people who try to fleece us with high prices.

O.o

Dubhliam · October 2016

Farming bots will always be a problem.
It's like syphilis.
You may treat it, but it won't completely go away.
And you can bet it will come back sooner or later.

What actually bothers me is that botters are now able to farm items sets since all public bosses and dolmen bosses drop sets 100% of the time.

This is exactly why I advocated that Fighters Guild, Mages Guild and Undaunted delve dailies should reward set items instead of this toxic 100% drop rate.

Lumbermill_Emperor · October 2016

who cares? 95% of this item sets you already can buy cheaper than 10k gold each