twev wrote: »

Bots used to be paying memberships under the old subscription service, so they were tolerated by management to a certain degree for a long while.

Then we went f2p after buying the game.

I don't know whether the bots we're seeing now are ESO+ members, or not, but it makes me wonder whether they get a wink/nod as long as they keep chipping in the $$.

ETA:
I will admit that I really like not getting the spam mail to buy mats from those guys anymore, tho.

Bots was insane sometime after launch, totally insane as in streams of them, one day they was gone.
And this was then the game was expensive and required sub.
It was not tolerated ZoS simply had to find a way to stop it, bots back then was run by goldsellers using stolen credit cards so ZoS lost money on them.

Nowday its players running the bots, this probably make it less of an problem for ZOS, you see that the members has real names and diferent gear.

Have just seen one bot trains after returning this year on PC-EU, it was north east in stonefall, 6-7 players running around on an battlefield killing stuff. First I though they was normal players but it did not make sense as it was not an good farming location, confirmed bots then an dolmen spawned nearby easy visible and with the dolmen sound. I and another guy did it while none of the farmers joined.

Might have missed some other for farming groups at better locations.

The downside of B2P and $10 base game sales.

I just open a ticket and enter my map coordinates in the description along with "bots". There's way too many to report individually, and since they're ALWAYS moving, it's impossible to target them with the "report player" feature.

If it's really bad, I'll record video and attach it to the ticket from the website.

josiahva wrote: »

Belidos wrote: »

I've still yet to see one of these bot groups, i'd love to have a few weeks of bot hunting with a giant group of players, every night for a few weeks, zerging around killing everything before the bots can get to it, hopefully dent their income a little.

What would be fun is if they implemented a justice system, if a toon is reported as a bot(and verified as such by ZoS) then they get flagged as an enemy and are fair game for players and can be looted. That would end the practice in short order.

How do you figure? The "bounty" would have to be stupidly high to motivate players to go out and engage them, and if the admins have already identified them as a bot, there's zero reason not to just ban the account and move on. Silly little punishment games mean nothing to botters who are prepared to just throw accounts away when they're outed.

ZoS auto-response wrote:

Please also be aware that you can add players whose behavior you find objectionable to the ignore list.

We need an eyeroll emoji

On the off chance someone with Zeni reads this and decides to do something today, here's a few ticket numbers..

# 170705-000473
# 170705-000476
# 170705-000478
# 170705-000479
# 170705-000484
# 170705-000489
# 170705-000491
# 170705-000492
# 170705-000501

From last night in Glenumbra's Hag Fen quest area.
[Snip]

[Screenshot removed and handed to the appropriate team for investigation]

Smasherx74 wrote: »

We need the bot killers back!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bll9maEJtDA

ZOS was so diligent about this in the early days. I remember getting server-wide pop-up messages to the tune of "I am GM such-and-such, BOT KILLER! Report bots to me and they will be exterminated." All it took was a quick /whisper to that GM, and they would be there within minutes. Things have gone downhill a lot since then, sadly. Now, you can submit reports endlessly, and nothing ever happens.

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

josiahva wrote: »

Belidos wrote: »

I've still yet to see one of these bot groups, i'd love to have a few weeks of bot hunting with a giant group of players, every night for a few weeks, zerging around killing everything before the bots can get to it, hopefully dent their income a little.

What would be fun is if they implemented a justice system, if a toon is reported as a bot(and verified as such by ZoS) then they get flagged as an enemy and are fair game for players and can be looted. That would end the practice in short order.

How do you figure? The "bounty" would have to be stupidly high to motivate players to go out and engage them, and if the admins have already identified them as a bot, there's zero reason not to just ban the account and move on. Silly little punishment games mean nothing to botters who are prepared to just throw accounts away when they're outed.

The bounty could be zero and players would be motivated.

Further, banning bots cost ZoS money because they must verify the data for legal reasons. On the other hand, putting a system in the game that permits players to police their own server doesn't increase their headcount.

For a variety of legal reasons, game companies avoid punitive systems like these, so it's best to propose a system for different reasons that would sweep up bots. Perhaps an area melee-duel feature using the 'are you a bot?' system where you have to type in partially obscured lettering. If successful, you get 1 hour before you can be challenged again.

ZoS doesnt care. Im getting tired of the game so i was thinking of botting myself. Must be easy since I see so many doing it. Get gold while im sleeping, level a character or skill...why not? Its not like you're gonna get banned or anything.

Malacthulhu wrote: »

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

josiahva wrote: »

Belidos wrote: »

I've still yet to see one of these bot groups, i'd love to have a few weeks of bot hunting with a giant group of players, every night for a few weeks, zerging around killing everything before the bots can get to it, hopefully dent their income a little.

What would be fun is if they implemented a justice system, if a toon is reported as a bot(and verified as such by ZoS) then they get flagged as an enemy and are fair game for players and can be looted. That would end the practice in short order.

How do you figure? The "bounty" would have to be stupidly high to motivate players to go out and engage them, and if the admins have already identified them as a bot, there's zero reason not to just ban the account and move on. Silly little punishment games mean nothing to botters who are prepared to just throw accounts away when they're outed.

The bounty could be zero and players would be motivated.

Further, banning bots cost ZoS money because they must verify the data for legal reasons. On the other hand, putting a system in the game that permits players to police their own server doesn't increase their headcount.

For a variety of legal reasons, game companies avoid punitive systems like these, so it's best to propose a system for different reasons that would sweep up bots. Perhaps an area melee-duel feature using the 'are you a bot?' system where you have to type in partially obscured lettering. If successful, you get 1 hour before you can be challenged again.

The ToS allows ZoS to ban your account for whatever reason they want. Not to mention it is not like they are paying customers.

Ah, to be young and full of pessimism.

The world is not so dark. If every term of a contract were enforceable, any company with a monopoly or virtual monopoly would take all your stuff.

Got a job today? You have to use MS Word to do the job and agree to the shrinkwrap license to use it? The license says that MS gets your house? Yeah.

I don't get what you mean by paying customers. You don't have to do anything to get players to kill bots. Seriously. Next time you log into the game, go to Cyrodiil and ask in zone chat who would kill bots if they were given the ability. Do the same in Craglorn.

First of all let me start by saying I don't bot!
But am I the only one not seeing how bots are "ruining the economy" of the game?
someone explain this "ruining the economy to me"

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

ZOS does not care.

I hope you are wrong and ZOS just unable to solve this issue at this time.
The botting is an exploit which needs to be taken care of.

peoplecallmeleo wrote: »

First of all let me start by saying I don't bot!
But am I the only one not seeing how bots are "ruining the economy" of the game?
someone explain this "ruining the economy to me"

The bots are able to farm Raw Material stacks 24 hours a day, non stop.
Just one of the trains of bots(about 5 players) at Karthdar, Grahtwood can farm like 1,500 Raw Material every hour, it is 1,500x24=36,000 Raw Material per day.
36,000 Raw Material is 180 stacks of Raw Material.
180 stacks of Raw Material equals about 1.5M gold direct sales.
If the master of the bots refine the Raw Material to get Dreugh Wax: 1 Dreugh Wax every 150 Raw Material scraps=240 Dreugh Wax on top of like 28k-30k Material and other stuff.
That's just 1 train estimate...There were many trains there.
So 8 trains of botsx36,000 Raw Material per day= 288,000 Raw Material, equals about 11.5M+ gold, 7 days a week=11.5Mx7=80.5M gold
The bots are doing this every day...
The master/s of the bots are lowering the price/s of Dreugh Wax, Clothing Raw Material and a lot of other items.
If a normal seller is unable to sell his goods due to the bots much lower prices, he is losing gold and time invested farming.
No player can compete with the bots, they have an uptime of 24 hours a day(or almost), 7 days a week...
The Bots Masters are getting filthy rich and they are manipulating the market as they want, buy & sell for the prices they wish.

This is the short story of it, I don't want to make this post TL;DR

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

There's also a ton of botters farming the crazy animals in between the Shattered Grove and Merormo's Tower in Auridon.

Xbox, NA. I have video but cannot post it here due to naming and shaming rules (I forgot to turn the UI names off).

The_Patriarch wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

There's also a ton of botters farming the crazy animals in between the Shattered Grove and Merormo's Tower in Auridon.

Xbox, NA. I have video but cannot post it here due to naming and shaming rules (I forgot to turn the UI names off).

Yes, the bots are on all platforms.
Something needs to be done ASAP.
It is a shame that such exploiting is happening and almost nothing is being done to stop it

last night,Stonefalls , Fort Virak, train of 9-10 "players". Tried to interupt them on different ways but it does not work