babedenny wrote: »

The same bots. The same usernames. Every single day, at the dolmen in Vulkhel Guard. ZOS does nothing. Why is that? All you would have to do is have an employee log in for five minutes and go there to see what everybody else can see. It's pretty obvious. Yes, they are bots. They are not just AFK for hours. Am I not following the correct procedure for reporting obvious cheating?

Well, for starters, you only need to report them once. I doubt multiple reports from the same person gets anything done faster.

Also, would be helpful to know playform and server, so we can all go watch them.

I'll check this out as soon as I log back in. Probs get some footage.

Well...

The most obvious person cheating by using a repeating macro isn't even pictured

I would not get upset about reports for the guy on the right in the picture being ignored. There is a player there. He runs around, collects loot, and acts rather hyper between drops. I would not report this person, based on what I saw.

The guy on the left is holding down the mouse button to get a heavy attack whenever something gets in range. He could be using a macro or some other form of cheating. He got knocked by a mob and stayed on target, so my feeling is that someone is close by. I'd have to watch this guy for longer before I reported him.

The one guy you did not picture is doing a light attack ever second or so, which smells like cheating to me. I would report this guy. What he is doing is stupid obvious and deserves to be reported.

Baconfat79 wrote: »

It's especially sad if you've been around since day one. There were global popup notifications to the tune of "I am GM so-and-so, the bot crusher! Report bots to me and they will be eradicated"...and they were! I could send that GM a whisper, and WITHIN THE HOUR, those bots would be removed. Now it seems like they just don't care anymore. The GM presence is not there like it used to be. I get it...it's not feasible to have ppl on the payroll just sitting around waiting to police the population, but there should be some middle ground. Where are the GMs these days?

That was back when ESO was on the course of a AAA subscription game.

I have reported a lot of bots in the dolmen near Vulkhel Guard on PC EU. It is always the same variation. A player standing a little bit away from it using ranged weapons (fire or ice staff or bow) and heavy attacking (for staff) or light attacking (bow) at the position where the dolmen boss spawns. Some of them are a bit more "clever" and activate skills in between their heavy attacks, eg I saw a sorcerer bot activate dark deal, healing himself (just in case a mob got him? ) These were clearly not players as they did all those attacks and skill activation always in the same manner and timing and they just stand there for hours heavy attacking the dolmen boss position

The response is the same, regardless of whether you submit 1 ticket, or 50 tickets. Typically, with most held desk systems, multiple tickets for the same issue are all combined into one anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

Interestingly enough, the other day I spent a painful amount of time watching a group of about 6 bots farming on PS4 NA. First I reported them individually, and then I took a bunch of screenshots (including one of all the carcasses that had piled up lol) and video clips and added those to the tickets afterwards. The next day I went back to the area and the bots were gone. Not sure if coincidence or not, and I haven't gone back since to see if they stayed gone, so who knows.

I think the more details you can provide, ex., exact location, time, day, what they are doing and why it is wrong, etc., and the more evidence you can provide with screenshots and video, I think that makes it more likely that GMs will be able to do something. Just a guess though.

Try reloading your UI.

raidentenshu_ESO wrote: »

WuffyCerulei wrote: »

Recording such events gives some pretty solid evidence as to botting or using macros.

The problem with that is that ZOS protects bad players because if the video shows their name.... ZOS will remove your post for name shaming.

This is a new form of protecting bad players from being exposed in public.

No, this is how you protect people from being accused of being guilty before being proved innocent.

Without a naming and shaming policy there's nothing to stop someone from reporting another player that they have a beef with and accusing that player of cheating, botting etc. That then leaves that other player open to harassment, intimidation, threats and repercussions while being entirely innocent of any wrongdoing.

Having a naming and shaming policy avoids the witch hunts that would inevitably arise (and have arisen) from the toxic behaviour of people on the internet.

It might suck donkey balls when you know people are cheating or that you're dealing with bots, but it's there for a damn good reason.

DMuehlhausen wrote: »

babedenny wrote: »

The same bots. The same usernames. Every single day, at the dolmen in Vulkhel Guard. ZOS does nothing. Why is that? All you would have to do is have an employee log in for five minutes and go there to see what everybody else can see. It's pretty obvious. Yes, they are bots. They are not just AFK for hours. Am I not following the correct procedure for reporting obvious cheating?

Trust me they are gathering data just like they were at the start of the game. In a month or two there will be another Ban Hammer probably

Agreed. Most developers don't tackle bots on a single report/action basis, they accumulate the reports then have a field day banning hundreds in one go. I assume a couple of reasons for that are firstly that it's more time-efficient for staff who are primarily engaged on other stuff, and secondly that if you ban one bot account it's both cheap and easy to open another with no incentive to give up, but if you have dozens of your bot accounts closed in one go then it's more of a hassle and at a higher cost to replace all the accounts and with a greater likelihood that you will move on to another game instead.It's also possible that ZOS run a software tool every so often that searches the game and catches all the bots in one sweep. Pure speculation on my part, but it makes sense to me!

I also suspect that 20 reports from 20 players will be a lot more productive than 50 reports from 1 player. If I were a developer and 20 people reported the same player I'd think him worth investigating, whereas if one player reported another player 50 times I'd be more likely to think that it might be a case of harassment and I'd investigate the reporting player instead!

When the game launched I was certainly impacted by the bots because they stripped a lot of the harvesting nodes in ways I simply couldn't compete with, but while I'm aware of reports of bots these days I've not once felt impacted by them. I never hang around a dolmen, for example, long enough to notice whether I'm doing it with other players or bots, and have never failed to get a hit in unless I arrive just as it's all over. I loot the chest and move on, job done.