The continual existence of botting

Rzok · March 2018

Although botting is forbidden, it seems to continue to occur on a daily basis. (For the record, this incident was reported.)

https://youtu.be/SkPD4q7sDBg

Is botting really that hard to detect? Why had this not been addressed?

Nestor · March 2018

I am taking a character through zone quests recently. I have hit a few spots that were Bot Nests as they are instanced areas that phased based on the whether you have done the quest. So, an end game player would never see the bots in these cases. Anyway, I did not see any bots in these areas, so that tells me ZOS is doing something about it.

But, I still see Bots in the game in other usual places, like say, Shadowfen. For some reason, Bot Runners really like Shadowfen, and Greenshade.

Ihatenightblades · March 2018

they rely too much on the kicked for inactivity system. Standing still holding heavy attack should also count as inactivity imo.

In all honesty though bots dont bother me because they are usually in areas i dont bother to go

Rzok · March 2018

Agreed. I was doing zone quests in Coldharbour when this group came through and jumped into combat with a few trash mobs I was engaged in. I followed this group around for a bit, but I've also run across several of these bot trains in various other zones (Shadowfen being one of them too). Apparently though after searching the forums for "botting" and getting over 1000 hits back, I guess this has already been discussed to death with little resolution.

It would be nice if there were more that the player base could do about it when spotted. Some sort of craigslist automated cleanup process where if an account gets reported more than X times by players, it gets automatically temp banned and goes to an admin for review. That would be a nice interim solution until better server side logic could be put in place to detect and temp ban accounts automatically.

strangeradnd · March 2018

I ran into a group last night farming resources in Gold Coast, I reported them and they were gone within an hour. Sadly, The same group was back this morning so I reported them again. It would be nice if the system would recognize a bunch of level 3 toons all standing next to nodes in the same zone is a little fishy.

I was able to disrupt one of them, I pissed off a wolf and walked around one of the bots until it finally got pushed off a cliff after a few minutes.

JungleBoot · March 2018

The problem is these "leveling companies" (http://www.mmorpgpowerlevel.com/teso/ESO-Power-leveling.html). They probably have "hacked" consoles on which they are able to "run scripts" undetected. The code sends actions to each console which keep them from being detected and don't "break" the rules. It's really hard to "detect" without making life hard on actual players. Because what you are really doing is complaining about not being able to do what the bots are --- which is farm bears. And if another legit player came along, you would most likely invite them to join the "farming group". if they refused and attempt to farm on their own, one of the farming group would follow them around and try to disrupt their activity.

There is always someone around trying to act like the ESO playground is their personal territory and that everyone must "join" the farming group or go away. I've experienced it myself. And how is that fair to solo legit players?

I've seen players gathered around the dolmen in Auridon constantly firing their heavy attack like they have the trigger held in place with a rubber band while they are in class or whatever. How are you suppose to detect all these "rule breakers" without harming gameplay for legit players? It's harder than you think. And you can only do so much with the "tattle-tale" system too.

Seraphayel · March 2018

Glenumbra - Camlorn and the cemetery on Betnikh are crowded with bots as well. For days, weeks, months now. ZOS is doing nothing.

Elsonso · March 2018

JungleBoot wrote: »

The problem is these "leveling companies"

I have seen a few accounts on PC/NA that I think have used this sort of service.

However, the rest of what was described... the farming group... never encountered that.

Agrivar · March 2018

JungleBoot wrote: »

The problem is these "leveling companies" (http://www.mmorpgpowerlevel.com/teso/ESO-Power-leveling.html). They probably have "hacked" consoles on which they are able to "run scripts" undetected. The code sends actions to each console which keep them from being detected and don't "break" the rules. It's really hard to "detect" without making life hard on actual players. Because what you are really doing is complaining about not being able to do what the bots are --- which is farm bears. And if another legit player came along, you would most likely invite them to join the "farming group". if they refused and attempt to farm on their own, one of the farming group would follow them around and try to disrupt their activity.

There is always someone around trying to act like the ESO playground is their personal territory and that everyone must "join" the farming group or go away. I've experienced it myself. And how is that fair to solo legit players?

I've seen players gathered around the dolmen in Auridon constantly firing their heavy attack like they have the trigger held in place with a rubber band while they are in class or whatever. How are you suppose to detect all these "rule breakers" without harming gameplay for legit players? It's harder than you think. And you can only do so much with the "tattle-tale" system too.

Literally, every place you use double quotes they're being used incorrectly.

QuebraRegra · March 2018

Nestor wrote: »

I am taking a character through zone quests recently. I have hit a few spots that were Bot Nests as they are instanced areas that phased based on the whether you have done the quest. So, an end game player would never see the bots in these cases. Anyway, I did not see any bots in these areas, so that tells me ZOS is doing something about it.

But, I still see Bots in the game in other usual places, like say, Shadowfen. For some reason, Bot Runners really like Shadowfen, and Greenshade.

try CAMLORN... yes, even on XBOX.

dovakiin5574 · March 2018

Botting is at an all time low. Just check material and gold upgrade item prices.

itsfatbass · March 2018

The first person view is very painful.

Nestor · March 2018

QuebraRegra wrote: »

try CAMLORN... yes, even on XBOX.

I have not done that one yet on the PC/NA on this alt. But I have seen Bots there in the past. Esp annoying when its the part where you have to kill some to advance.

BuddyAces · March 2018

Gold selling/buying is just about the only thing that will actually get a ban handed down for doing. Instead of reporting as bots, report that they were selling gold for IRL money. ZOS may actually look at the ticket then.

BuddyAces · March 2018

JungleBoot wrote: »

The problem is these "leveling companies" (http://www.mmorpgpowerlevel.com/teso/ESO-Power-leveling.html). They probably have "hacked" consoles on which they are able to "run scripts" undetected. The code sends actions to each console which keep them from being detected and don't "break" the rules. It's really hard to "detect" without making life hard on actual players. Because what you are really doing is complaining about not being able to do what the bots are --- which is farm bears. And if another legit player came along, you would most likely invite them to join the "farming group". if they refused and attempt to farm on their own, one of the farming group would follow them around and try to disrupt their activity.

There is always someone around trying to act like the ESO playground is their personal territory and that everyone must "join" the farming group or go away. I've experienced it myself. And how is that fair to solo legit players?

I've seen players gathered around the dolmen in Auridon constantly firing their heavy attack like they have the trigger held in place with a rubber band while they are in class or whatever. How are you suppose to detect all these "rule breakers" without harming gameplay for legit players? It's harder than you think. And you can only do so much with the "tattle-tale" system too.

Holy good God almighty, ESO gold is expensive.

BTW, just a heads up (not to be "that guy") but I'd remove that link =\

KiraTsukasa · March 2018

What are they going to do? Add Captchas that boot you if you don't answer it in 30 seconds? Because that hasn't caused player anger in ANY game. "Oh, I see you're in the middle of a big boss battle, why don't you let me know you're not a bot and cause a party wipe so you don't get booted, mmkay?"

The only thing they could possibly do is hire people who just walk around the maps 24/7, which would be boring as hell for that person, and let's be honest, ZOS isn't going to spend money on that.

Priyasekarssk · March 2018

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

What are they going to do? Add Captchas that boot you if you don't answer it in 30 seconds? Because that hasn't caused player anger in ANY game. "Oh, I see you're in the middle of a big boss battle, why don't you let me know you're not a bot and cause a party wipe so you don't get booted, mmkay?"

The only thing they could possibly do is hire people who just walk around the maps 24/7, which would be boring as hell for that person, and let's be honest, ZOS isn't going to spend money on that.

Then reduction in player base. Good luck with your next MMO.

KiraTsukasa · March 2018

Priyasekarssk wrote: »

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

What are they going to do? Add Captchas that boot you if you don't answer it in 30 seconds? Because that hasn't caused player anger in ANY game. "Oh, I see you're in the middle of a big boss battle, why don't you let me know you're not a bot and cause a party wipe so you don't get booted, mmkay?"

The only thing they could possibly do is hire people who just walk around the maps 24/7, which would be boring as hell for that person, and let's be honest, ZOS isn't going to spend money on that.

Then reduction in player base. Good luck with your next MMO.

Oh, and what countermeasures to botting would YOU take?

Please, enlighten the class with your knowledge of MMO botting prevention procedures.

BuddyAces · March 2018

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

Priyasekarssk wrote: »

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

What are they going to do? Add Captchas that boot you if you don't answer it in 30 seconds? Because that hasn't caused player anger in ANY game. "Oh, I see you're in the middle of a big boss battle, why don't you let me know you're not a bot and cause a party wipe so you don't get booted, mmkay?"

The only thing they could possibly do is hire people who just walk around the maps 24/7, which would be boring as hell for that person, and let's be honest, ZOS isn't going to spend money on that.

Then reduction in player base. Good luck with your next MMO.

Oh, and what countermeasures to botting would YOU take?

Please, enlighten the class with your knowledge of MMO botting prevention procedures.

You could start by visiting like the 6 most populated places for bots and just manually ban them. It takes all of exactly 10 seconds for someone at ZOS to take a look at those spots and just ban them. They are not hard to spot. If they can not do this then they are SEVERELY over worked and need to hire just one freaking person to do this. How long would it take to even make an impact? One ZOS person even spending 30 mins a day would make a dent in their population.

They won't do anything because it's not costing them in any way either. It's not like people are cancelling their subs or not buying crown because of bots. This is why they won't take action.

Nestor · March 2018

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

What are they going to do? Add Captchas that boot you if you don't answer it in 30 seconds? Because that hasn't caused player anger in ANY game.

If they can code a Captcha, they can make is tell the difference between being in a boss battle and running a pattern harvesting nodes or mobs.

KiraTsukasa · March 2018

Nestor wrote: »

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

What are they going to do? Add Captchas that boot you if you don't answer it in 30 seconds? Because that hasn't caused player anger in ANY game.

If they can code a Captcha, they can make is tell the difference between being in a boss battle and running a pattern harvesting nodes or mobs.

All the ones that I've seen have been based on play time. I, and many others, have been booted from one game several times just because I went AFK in my player shop. I've also (in that same game) gotten Captcha'd during public raid events, even when I was actively communicating with other players (which really sucks when your tank stops pulling aggro or your healer stops healing for no reason). It's a very disregarding system that really doesn't care where you are or what you're doing, just wants to know if you're a bot or not and that's its only purpose. It's very intrusive and eventually does more to annoy legitimate players than prevent bots.

KiraTsukasa · March 2018

BuddyAces wrote: »

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

Priyasekarssk wrote: »

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

What are they going to do? Add Captchas that boot you if you don't answer it in 30 seconds? Because that hasn't caused player anger in ANY game. "Oh, I see you're in the middle of a big boss battle, why don't you let me know you're not a bot and cause a party wipe so you don't get booted, mmkay?"

The only thing they could possibly do is hire people who just walk around the maps 24/7, which would be boring as hell for that person, and let's be honest, ZOS isn't going to spend money on that.

Then reduction in player base. Good luck with your next MMO.

Oh, and what countermeasures to botting would YOU take?

Please, enlighten the class with your knowledge of MMO botting prevention procedures.

You could start by visiting like the 6 most populated places for bots and just manually ban them. It takes all of exactly 10 seconds for someone at ZOS to take a look at those spots and just ban them. They are not hard to spot. If they can not do this then they are SEVERELY over worked and need to hire just one freaking person to do this. How long would it take to even make an impact? One ZOS person even spending 30 mins a day would make a dent in their population.

They won't do anything because it's not costing them in any way either. It's not like people are cancelling their subs or not buying crown because of bots. This is why they won't take action.

You could do that, but how do you differentiate between bots and legitimate players? I tend to ignore everyone around me and go about my business. If I were to go to a "known botting location" and farm for mats, ignoring everyone else, they could easily say I'm botting and ban me. And the botters aren't stupid, they'll rotate botting locations as soon as one of them gets cleared out, or else wait for the mods to leave that area and go at it again.

Bots are a plague upon MMOs, for certain, but there's not much you can do against them that doesn't inconvenience legitimate players. And every countermeasure you put in place, the botters find a way around eventually, so the only real way to clear them out for good is to shut the game down. It's unfortunate, but that's the reality of the situation.

BuddyAces · March 2018

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

BuddyAces wrote: »

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

Priyasekarssk wrote: »

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

What are they going to do? Add Captchas that boot you if you don't answer it in 30 seconds? Because that hasn't caused player anger in ANY game. "Oh, I see you're in the middle of a big boss battle, why don't you let me know you're not a bot and cause a party wipe so you don't get booted, mmkay?"

The only thing they could possibly do is hire people who just walk around the maps 24/7, which would be boring as hell for that person, and let's be honest, ZOS isn't going to spend money on that.

Then reduction in player base. Good luck with your next MMO.

Oh, and what countermeasures to botting would YOU take?

Please, enlighten the class with your knowledge of MMO botting prevention procedures.

You could start by visiting like the 6 most populated places for bots and just manually ban them. It takes all of exactly 10 seconds for someone at ZOS to take a look at those spots and just ban them. They are not hard to spot. If they can not do this then they are SEVERELY over worked and need to hire just one freaking person to do this. How long would it take to even make an impact? One ZOS person even spending 30 mins a day would make a dent in their population.

They won't do anything because it's not costing them in any way either. It's not like people are cancelling their subs or not buying crown because of bots. This is why they won't take action.

You could do that, but how do you differentiate between bots and legitimate players? I tend to ignore everyone around me and go about my business. If I were to go to a "known botting location" and farm for mats, ignoring everyone else, they could easily say I'm botting and ban me. And the botters aren't stupid, they'll rotate botting locations as soon as one of them gets cleared out, or else wait for the mods to leave that area and go at it again.

Bots are a plague upon MMOs, for certain, but there's not much you can do against them that doesn't inconvenience legitimate players. And every countermeasure you put in place, the botters find a way around eventually, so the only real way to clear them out for good is to shut the game down. It's unfortunate, but that's the reality of the situation.

Anybody who's not brain dead can spot the difference between a bot and a normal player

KiraTsukasa · March 2018

BuddyAces wrote: »

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

BuddyAces wrote: »

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

Priyasekarssk wrote: »

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

What are they going to do? Add Captchas that boot you if you don't answer it in 30 seconds? Because that hasn't caused player anger in ANY game. "Oh, I see you're in the middle of a big boss battle, why don't you let me know you're not a bot and cause a party wipe so you don't get booted, mmkay?"

The only thing they could possibly do is hire people who just walk around the maps 24/7, which would be boring as hell for that person, and let's be honest, ZOS isn't going to spend money on that.

Then reduction in player base. Good luck with your next MMO.

Oh, and what countermeasures to botting would YOU take?

Please, enlighten the class with your knowledge of MMO botting prevention procedures.

You could start by visiting like the 6 most populated places for bots and just manually ban them. It takes all of exactly 10 seconds for someone at ZOS to take a look at those spots and just ban them. They are not hard to spot. If they can not do this then they are SEVERELY over worked and need to hire just one freaking person to do this. How long would it take to even make an impact? One ZOS person even spending 30 mins a day would make a dent in their population.

They won't do anything because it's not costing them in any way either. It's not like people are cancelling their subs or not buying crown because of bots. This is why they won't take action.

You could do that, but how do you differentiate between bots and legitimate players? I tend to ignore everyone around me and go about my business. If I were to go to a "known botting location" and farm for mats, ignoring everyone else, they could easily say I'm botting and ban me. And the botters aren't stupid, they'll rotate botting locations as soon as one of them gets cleared out, or else wait for the mods to leave that area and go at it again.

Bots are a plague upon MMOs, for certain, but there's not much you can do against them that doesn't inconvenience legitimate players. And every countermeasure you put in place, the botters find a way around eventually, so the only real way to clear them out for good is to shut the game down. It's unfortunate, but that's the reality of the situation.

Anybody who's not brain dead can spot the difference between a bot and a normal player

Not always. I've been reported as botting several times just because I don't talk to people in-game, and I've never botted anything in my life.

BuddyAces · March 2018

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

BuddyAces wrote: »

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

BuddyAces wrote: »

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

Priyasekarssk wrote: »

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

What are they going to do? Add Captchas that boot you if you don't answer it in 30 seconds? Because that hasn't caused player anger in ANY game. "Oh, I see you're in the middle of a big boss battle, why don't you let me know you're not a bot and cause a party wipe so you don't get booted, mmkay?"

The only thing they could possibly do is hire people who just walk around the maps 24/7, which would be boring as hell for that person, and let's be honest, ZOS isn't going to spend money on that.

Then reduction in player base. Good luck with your next MMO.

Oh, and what countermeasures to botting would YOU take?

Please, enlighten the class with your knowledge of MMO botting prevention procedures.

You could start by visiting like the 6 most populated places for bots and just manually ban them. It takes all of exactly 10 seconds for someone at ZOS to take a look at those spots and just ban them. They are not hard to spot. If they can not do this then they are SEVERELY over worked and need to hire just one freaking person to do this. How long would it take to even make an impact? One ZOS person even spending 30 mins a day would make a dent in their population.

They won't do anything because it's not costing them in any way either. It's not like people are cancelling their subs or not buying crown because of bots. This is why they won't take action.

You could do that, but how do you differentiate between bots and legitimate players? I tend to ignore everyone around me and go about my business. If I were to go to a "known botting location" and farm for mats, ignoring everyone else, they could easily say I'm botting and ban me. And the botters aren't stupid, they'll rotate botting locations as soon as one of them gets cleared out, or else wait for the mods to leave that area and go at it again.

Bots are a plague upon MMOs, for certain, but there's not much you can do against them that doesn't inconvenience legitimate players. And every countermeasure you put in place, the botters find a way around eventually, so the only real way to clear them out for good is to shut the game down. It's unfortunate, but that's the reality of the situation.

Anybody who's not brain dead can spot the difference between a bot and a normal player

Not always. I've been reported as botting several times just because I don't talk to people in-game, and I've never botted anything in my life.

We can sit here and argue back and forth but like I said before, anyone that's not brain dead can spot the difference between a bot and a normal player. There's no mistaking the 2 what so ever.

Trinity_Is_My_Name · March 2018

Rzok wrote: »

Agreed. I was doing zone quests in Coldharbour when this group came through and jumped into combat with a few trash mobs I was engaged in. I followed this group around for a bit, but I've also run across several of these bot trains in various other zones (Shadowfen being one of them too). Apparently though after searching the forums for "botting" and getting over 1000 hits back, I guess this has already been discussed to death with little resolution.

It would be nice if there were more that the player base could do about it when spotted. Some sort of craigslist automated cleanup process where if an account gets reported more than X times by players, it gets automatically temp banned and goes to an admin for review. That would be a nice interim solution until better server side logic could be put in place to detect and temp ban accounts automatically.

There is an addon called Bot Scanner 2000 that works great. All you do is put your Crosshairs on the Bot Train and let Bot Scanner do the rest. It will auto fill the Customer Report so all you do is click Submit. Only takes a few seconds to report an entire train of Bots. I reported 8 in one train the other day in under 30 seconds.

Trinity_Is_My_Name · March 2018

Addon called Bot Scanner 2000 that works well in reporting massive numbers of Bots. You can report a Bot Train in just a few seconds. It autofills the report for you so all you do is press Submit.

Nestor · March 2018

KiraTsukasa wrote: »

All the ones that I've seen have been based on play time. I, and many others, have been booted from one game several times just because I went AFK in my player shop.

Are you talking about this game or other games?

This game, you have to be Idle, no activity, for around 10 Minutes, to be booted. In rare instances, this can be a shorter or longer time frame, but 10 Minutes is the expected time. Log In screen is around 5 minutes. If you are doing anything in the game, even just maintaining a Merchant Dialog window, you won't be kicked.

mcdadeshauna · March 2018

Not sure if this will add to the conversation or not but I recently leveled a sorcerer, went through the Camlorn quests, and it was filled with sorcs in lightning form with pets heavy attacking everything in sight, and there was another character with a random name like 'ffhfigii' that runs a route between the stationary characters in lightning form jumping all the way and only pausing a moment when next to dead mobs, this is on Xbox NA. Is there a better way to report them through the console interface because it is a pain to try and track down that single character leaping everywhere in lightning form and also open the window 12-30 more times for all the rest of the crowd. And to be honest, it probably wouldn't bother me as much at all if I hadn't gone through the same quests bot free when it first came to console, but now I remember what fun it was to listen to the quest dialog and actually have mobs around that I and the other real players could collect for the quest instead of hoping that one of our attacks was strong enough to register for quest credit on the mob for the nanosecond that it is still alive between spawns.