Whilst I am all for ways to mess with or remove bots I personally am always against making changes which would effect legitimate players.

This system would sadly have negative effects on newer players who are low level and still trying to level their crafting skills.

Turelus wrote: »

Whilst I am all for ways to mess with or remove bots I personally am always against making changes which would effect legitimate players.

This system would sadly have negative effects on newer players who are low level and still trying to level their crafting skills.

I dont think so, leveling the craft skills themselves are most driven by deconstructing items you get in the levelling process, not gathering resources or even processing them. The impact on lower level players I dont think will be much at all other than the bots who can farm the basic mats that can be processed into the highest grade upgrade mats at similar rate of return as the highest quality resources.

StormChaser3000 wrote: »

All they need to do is to unleash a GM squad onto those bots in game. But looks like they are too greedy to allocate salaries for that.

I would like to think ZoS are trying to identify the full gold trafficking network before ban waving - but that may require more resources than they have available or even systems they simply dont have - odds are gold is not serialised as we do with money in the real world. THere are reasons of not-guilty/ignorant accomplice collateral accounts to consider for ZoS as well. I can think of how I would go about botting and moving/hiding the gold trail, and part of it is using ignorant/oblivious guild members to obscure the activities and shield myself.

Yeah seems like your idea would punish the people that need those nodes the most... new players. Only solution is to actually look into reports of bots more thoroughly or make the node spawns much more random. I’m not a dev so don’t know how practical either would be to implement.

Lower level players have limited ways to make gold and I for one made a lot from selling mats. Would have annoyed me to have them harder to find.

There are four types of people playing ESO:

1) Those who run bots. These people are lazy and often don't bother to hide what they're doing very well. Some do, yes, but largely it's not that hard to find bots once you know how to spot them. While someone who gets scammed by a botter may decide to go about things the proper way, the botters themselves will never stop. What they do makes them money and there's no real deterrent - there are lazy people willing to give them money and they're happy to lazily set up some bots to make that happen just long enough to keep the money rolling in.

2) Those who don't run bots but care that bots exist. These are the folks who will take time out of their gaming to report bots when they see them - or even purposely hunt them down and report them en masse. There's no tangible reward for doing this so the people that do it are after that intrinsic reward or whatever. We all play the game differently and this is how they choose to spend their time.

3) Those who don't run bots and don't care that bots exist. These are your average legit player, content to experience the game without worrying about such things or, while aware that bots exist, are unwilling to report them or simple apathetic.

4) Those who profess to not run bots but feel strongly enough that botting is harmless (or that reporting them is such a waste of time) that they'll mock anyone who speaks out about it or attempts to report bots here on the forums or in zone chat. The opposite of those who report them, these people are either trying to discourage bot-reporting because it benefits them in some way (usually they'll argue about market values and so on) or get such an intrinsic reward from mocking the bot-reporters that they are willing to take time out of their gaming to do so.

#1 is simply against TOS but humans are often lazy and some appear to have loads of disposable income and there have always been others willing to exploit them. This will never end - we can only hope to discourage or minimize the impact they have on the rest of us. #2 is a rare breed and should never be compensated materially, elsewise the temptation to the Dark Side grow too great or the people exploiting the folks in #1 figure out how to exploit the system to get compensated. These folks aren't hurting anyone more than bots are, and arguably much less since they likely aren't taking the resources that the bots are but are, instead, clearing out the bots to free up resources for other players... like those in #3. No thanks are required here - they're reporting bots because they want to. #4s, however, are an interesting breed that defies all logic.

So first we define the problem: Bots are taking resources from players in ____ zone. Then we decide if this problem requires our attention - some decide it does, others don't (and the #3s don't care and the #4s try to discourage any action). If it does require action, we have to decide what sort of action to take. ZOS makes this easy because there's really only one thing we can do, which is report the bots. Then we have to verify that this works by finding bots, reporting them, and then checking to see how long it takes for them to disappear. We don't really care why they disappear, only that they do. If we find the reporting process produces an adequate turnaround time, we continue to employ it at our convenience. If not, we either a) stop reporting and come up with some other method - but there really isn't any (legitimate) alternative here, or b) continue reporting until it does produce the desired results, remembering that we can't stop them all and shouldn't try to - that's too big a scope for a single player. This strategy, of course, is for the bots farming resource nodes but it can be adjusted for other kinds.

And that's it. That's the whole thing. Very simple. ZOS will not, whether it can or not, spontaneously ban bots. They've given us a reporting system so players who are concerned can use it and then they'll review and take it from there. Not everyone chooses to report and some, mysteriously, actively discourage reporting altogether. There's no larger discussion to be had. Did you find bots? Report them.

Or not.

And move on.



As a footnote, to those who would ask how to spot bots - don't. At least not in zone chat or here in a public space. The folks that do this are watching and when we say something like all bots always wear red you can bet they'll switch to blue by week's end (the dedicated ones, anyway). It's their livelihood to be informed. There are resources available online that you can read/watch that will get you started on finding bots.