Painfully obviuos bot farmers

etherin77 · February 2017

If you head out to the beach just north east of Haven in Grahtwood, your sure to come across the 4-6 bots farming crabs. I first noticed this one day as I went out that way, there is a group of 3, normally a templar and 2 sorcs with pets, headed in one direction and a lone (normally sorc) headed in the opposite direction, and they all follow the same pathing. This isnt just 4 rando's that are running around, if you sit and watch the 3, they follow each other in perfect unison unless one gets hung up. I sat there watching for a good 15 min, following the same pathing from point to point with the 4th following the same path but in the opposite direction. I would strongly encourage folk to head on over and go for a stroll with them... And yes, by the 3rd day I did send in a ticket about this.

Rohamad_Ali · February 2017

I've seen all kinds of bots farming crabs . ZoS knows too , people have been reporting them . Those gold farmers just keep buying new accounts so it's a never ending battle for ZoS . Accounts are cheap compared to the money they make . It is a nuisance when they do that in quest areas but if they are out of the way I don't bother to report because that would take up a lot of game time .

It's a sign the game is doing really well for gold farmers to put out this much effort . I wish there was a better way to auto report so we didn't have to write out everything , every time . Something faster and easier .

etherin77 · February 2017

Ive actually spent several hours the other day running ahead of the group and killing everything b4 they could get to them... all id did was spawn a new set of them

martinhpb16_ESO · February 2017

I've seen these too on EU as I sometimes farm there (non bot

)

I also ran in front trying to kill before they got there but it was too annoying after a while.

This botting gives unfair advantages to players and certain trade guilds.

Moorcrofts · February 2017

Bots, farmers, and/or grinders are never going to go away so long as they have an incentive to do what they do that outweighs the consequences of doing it. Finding the right solution that addresses only those few who are abusing the systems without penalizing the rest of the player base isn't easy or cheap. Ideally, for a RMT bots, the real fix is to stop buying their stuff. The devs can't code integrity into the player base.

Turelus · February 2017

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

I've seen all kinds of bots farming crabs . ZoS knows too , people have been reporting them . Those gold farmers just keep buying new accounts so it's a never ending battle for ZoS . Accounts are cheap compared to the money they make . It is a nuisance when they do that in quest areas but if they are out of the way I don't bother to report because that would take up a lot of game time .

It's a sign the game is doing really well for gold farmers to put out this much effort . I wish there was a better way to auto report so we didn't have to write out everything , every time . Something faster and easier .

There should really be a "report bot" feature that just sends an automated report directly with the account and a bot flag.

If it's abused by players the abusers get account sanctions as per other games handling these issues.

abuniffpreub18_ESO · February 2017

Here's a thought. Instead of telling people to send in tickets that never get answered why doesn't ZOS just log into the game and go see for themselves where the bots are.

Now I realize they would have to put their iPhones down for a couple minutes to do this but it might actually get something accomplished.

stevepdodson_ESO888 · February 2017

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

I've seen all kinds of bots farming crabs . ZoS knows too , people have been reporting them . Those gold farmers just keep buying new accounts so it's a never ending battle for ZoS . Accounts are cheap compared to the money they make . It is a nuisance when they do that in quest areas but if they are out of the way I don't bother to report because that would take up a lot of game time .

It's a sign the game is doing really well for gold farmers to put out this much effort . I wish there was a better way to auto report so we didn't have to write out everything , every time . Something faster and easier .

mmm...to do this automatically in a faster and easier way...I know...you need a bot for that

BlackSparrow · February 2017

abuniffpreub18_ESO wrote: »

Here's a thought. Instead of telling people to send in tickets that never get answered why doesn't ZOS just log into the game and go see for themselves where the bots are.

Now I realize they would have to put their iPhones down for a couple minutes to do this but it might actually get something accomplished.

They do log in and see for themselves, and they do clean up bots. As Rohamad_Ali said, this is a never-ending problem, because as soon as they ban one account, the botter just buys another and does the same thing.

Just keep reporting them when you see them. The reports will be seen; it's just hard to tell with how stubborn the botters are.

Turelus wrote: »

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

I've seen all kinds of bots farming crabs . ZoS knows too , people have been reporting them . Those gold farmers just keep buying new accounts so it's a never ending battle for ZoS . Accounts are cheap compared to the money they make . It is a nuisance when they do that in quest areas but if they are out of the way I don't bother to report because that would take up a lot of game time .

It's a sign the game is doing really well for gold farmers to put out this much effort . I wish there was a better way to auto report so we didn't have to write out everything , every time . Something faster and easier .

There should really be a "report bot" feature that just sends an automated report directly with the account and a bot flag.

If it's abused by players the abusers get account sanctions as per other games handling these issues.

I love that idea, but I can see it being abused, big time. And as slow as their support system is, do you want to wait four days just to get a person to look at your case, just because some jerk decided to report you as a bot for getting a resource node before he did?

Sygil05 · February 2017

If it's just one bot, I usually try to just drag other mobs over to them to kill them. It becomes pretty obvious whats going on when they continue to spam light attack at the fixed mob they're set up to attack, even though whatever I've managed to drag over is wailing away on them. Shame that probably wouldn't work on 2 sorcs and a templar, though.

Purrmaid · February 2017

It's common practice for mmorpgs that devs doesn't battle individual botters/hackers/goldsellers, but instead try to find a more permanent solution to the problem.

I mean, I understand why people get so caught up with the argument: It'd only take them a few mins to check out the report and ban that account.

However, that bot probably belongs to a goldseller that's doing this for a living, and banning that one account won't change anything, there will be a new set of bots there within an hour. Which is why every mmorpg has this problem, the only way to take down the practice is going to the source. Which is why they don't waste their time on a single tiny bot unless that bot hugely messes up things for us.

We, the players, need to stop buying gold. We need to stop enabling people to be able to do this.

Sprotch_16_ESO · February 2017

I noticed 4 bots in Greenshade, at the Drowned Coast Dolmen (south-west of the map) on PC-EU a couple of days ago.
They run around in a pattern, killing wisps and mudcrabs. They don't even care about the dolmen, even when it's active.

I tried to lead the deadra from the dolmen to the bots

GaldorP · February 2017

That's one of the usual bot hot spots. They keep using the same spots, surprised they don't get banned faster.

Xelrick · February 2017

In my opinion ZOS need to implement something that bots Can't react to. Like a Raid non-taunt boss shows up and kills them after awhile. Witcher 3 implemented something like that.

The easy thing probably for large bot groups is disabled group loot and xp, outside of Group Dungeons. Though this will impact those that are group farming/questing. Atleast in a group larger than 4.

second thing probably get some type of gameplay reader that detects inhuman input, like if it a scripted bot it'll likely exact same input timing in a length period of time which is inhuman to replicate. Which server boots them

Other thing Make it so if the last command been used more than X amount of times, engage the inactivity timer until a different command enter to stop Rubberbanding.

Purrmaid · February 2017

What we need is a strict diminishing returns making it so they cannot farm the same mobs over and over and over again and get the same loot.

Xelrick · February 2017

Purrmaid wrote: »

What we need is a strict diminishing returns making it so they cannot farm the same mobs over and over and over again and get the same loot.

That too like how bosses work, like if said group of adds were killed by you, or group in past 15 mins, they don't drop any loot and little to no experience.