AFK script farmer down in Zainsipilu.

LordSkyKnight · October 2018

You constantly see the posts on this forum about bots and you constantly have the people argue over whether to report or just move on. A lot of times it really feels like they don't take a lot of action against the bots.

Now here is my little story that just gets me angry. So last week I was down in Zainsipilu. It's a delve right north of Seyda Neen. Server NA PC. Down in the little branch off cave where the skyshard is located there was a guy that was CP 388. A sorcerer with his two pets out. It was early Sunday morning when I found him. 4:02 AM PDT 10/7/18. Sadly I cant name him here because I would get a groin kick from the mods for posting his name. He is blatantly running a script program farming the couple of mobs that spawn in the room. Every so often he will drop a timed ground aoe spell to pull a group of cliff striders that are on the far side of the room. If you watch this guy you can clearly tell no one is home. I tried sending tells and everything to test it. He is running a timer script.

So I reported him.

I picked up a daily tonight for Zainsipilu. Saturday morning at 3:44 AM PDT 10/13/18. For the hell of it I ran down the side cave with the sky shard. Well guess what....... the SOB is still there in the same damn spot doing the same damn thing. CP 422 now.

I will tell you what. From this day forward I wont bother dropping anymore reports. I'm not wasting another second doing it because it's painfully obvious they don't crap about it.

From the bots on the newbie islands to the bots running path scripts in Craglorn to the afk sorc train mob farmers.....ZOS you guys are top notch when it comes to dealing with this. Stay classy.

Delta1038 · October 2018

Sadly I have to agree, I have been making some new characters to test some variations on builds mostly for the fun of it. Seeing the bots farming resources on the islands like Stros M’kai in particular is just annoying but it seems pointless to do anything about it as nothing ever come of it.

Mr_Walker · October 2018

It's on their servers, zos can literally track every transaction made in the game if they so wish. Every single message.

If they start finding legitimate "playing" accounts knowingly funnel money/mats from bots, ban all accounts involved, and publicise that fact. It'll soon stop.

frostz417 · October 2018

Doing nothing to affect your gameplay, not harming anyone or doing anything, not affecting servers or anything, bots have 0 negative impact. Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who take screenshots of cyrodiil chat and report it to zos because it’s
“Against TOS”

LordSkyKnight · October 2018

frostz417 wrote: »

Doing nothing to affect your gameplay, not harming anyone or doing anything, not affecting servers or anything, bots have 0 negative impact. Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who take screenshots of cyrodiil chat and report it to zos because it’s
“Against TOS”

If you honestly believe they have zero impact on anything then I feel sorry for you because that is a telling remark showing your limited grasp of the situation and the bigger picture.

Savos_Saren · October 2018

1,000,000 active accounts. 250,000 are bots.

frostz417 wrote: »

Doing nothing to affect your gameplay, not harming anyone or doing anything, not affecting servers or anything, bots have 0 negative impact. Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who take screenshots of cyrodiil chat and report it to zos because it’s
“Against TOS”

You should realize that bot accounts have two major effects:

1.) They allow people to buy pre-leveled accounts. You know that really *** DPS that just grouped up with you? It's probably his/her second day of actually playing the game... but he/she bought a CP790 botted account.

2.) They encourage gold farmers and mat farmers. Even if you PVP or PVE- you probably buy mats for upgrading gear. Bots ruin the markets.

Starlock · October 2018

frostz417 wrote: »

Doing nothing to affect your gameplay, not harming anyone or doing anything, not affecting servers or anything, bots have 0 negative impact.

Botting absolutely affects others’ gameplay in negative ways. This is a FACT. Those who deny this are more than likey botters themselves.

MajBludd · October 2018

Welcome to the club! The thing is, why do we, as customers, need to do a job that Zos should be doing? @ZOS_GinaBruno

frostz417 · October 2018

@stalock
@Savls_Saren
@LordSkyKnight

“Ruins the market” no they don’t ruin the market. They only do for greedy people who want to sell wax at 6k. Sorry everyone else enjoys buying wax at 3-4K, this is the most absurd complaint ever. Find something else to sell and Quit trying to rip everyone off with your over priced materials.

Could care less if someone buys a max cp account because i won’t care if they suck, I just won’t play with them. Simple solution.
Doesn’t mean squat of a max cp bought his account 2 days ago

Also you’re extremely immature to just assume I’m a bot farmer because I don’t cry about bots “ruining the market” no maybe I just don’t care for them because they don’t affect gameplay in any way. Make the market better actually for most people since they’re sick of greedy trader guild children who sit all day next to a banker playing with the guild stores instead of actually playing the game trying to rip others off for materials. It’s not a fact that botters ruin the game bud. You’re just mad you can’t sell wax for absurdly high prices.
There’s other things to sell other than matts.
Means nothing if a small minority of people who refuse to farm anything else complain about “market being ruined” because they can’t rip others off for wax, when literally everyone is happy about reduced prices.

So sure it may be against TOS, but it doesn’t affect anyone’s gameplay nor does it ruin the market. Go ahead and keep reporting them because botmasters just make new accounts every time their free trial runs out.
Also by no means am I a botmaster because personally I don’t have the time nor the money to invest in multiple xboxes and programs to pull of such a task.
I’m just not a white knight who complains about any and everything.

Elsonso · October 2018

frostz417 wrote: »

Doing nothing to affect your gameplay, not harming anyone or doing anything, not affecting servers or anything, bots have 0 negative impact.

It is cheating and against the Terms of Service. There need be no other reason to report them.

LordSkyKnight wrote: »

I will tell you what. From this day forward I wont bother dropping anymore reports. I'm not wasting another second doing it because it's painfully obvious they don't crap about it.

This just makes it harder for the rest of us.

My opinion: When it comes to gold seller bots, these seem to be taken care of very quickly. They can examine the logs, see the transfer of materials, and ban. When it comes to players that are abusing the system and running bots, they do not see the same level of transferring materials. The materials, and experience, stays with the account, and the account does other things besides run bots. It is not so obvious that they need to ban that account, and my feeling is that these will be allowed to run until a critical mass of reports come in.

I see PC NA, so I will take a gander.

Meesha1170 · October 2018

I don’t understand why they just don’t code some script that prevents you from farming the same node more than threee times in a row or something like that.

starkerealm · October 2018

frostz417 wrote: »

Doing nothing to affect your gameplay, not harming anyone or doing anything, not affecting servers or anything, bots have 0 negative impact. Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who take screenshots of cyrodiil chat and report it to zos because it’s
“Against TOS”

Toxicity,like that has a knock on effect. Some little ****stain gets toxic, and it encourages the other little screamers to join in. Long term, there's a real reason to shut that stuff down hard. And ZOS does.

Arguably, it's more important to shut that stuff down than it is to deal with botters. I know, bots suck, for reasons that have already been explained. But, toxic little ****s degrade the community. That's something an MMO cannot afford to have happen.

We can complain about how bots affect the market, but toxic players mean there are fewer people to play with. That harms us all, and it makes it less likely ESO will be around in the future.

Lord_Wrath · October 2018

I cant believe someone would defend bots LOL

I reported a bot years ago, and got a response that I can block someone if they bother me. So yea, *words that get me banned*

frostz417 · October 2018

starkerealm wrote: »

frostz417 wrote: »

Doing nothing to affect your gameplay, not harming anyone or doing anything, not affecting servers or anything, bots have 0 negative impact. Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who take screenshots of cyrodiil chat and report it to zos because it’s
“Against TOS”

Toxicity,like that has a knock on effect. Some little ****stain gets toxic, and it encourages the other little screamers to join in. Long term, there's a real reason to shut that stuff down hard. And ZOS does.

Arguably, it's more important to shut that stuff down than it is to deal with botters. I know, bots suck, for reasons that have already been explained. But, toxic little ****s degrade the community. That's something an MMO cannot afford to have happen.

We can complain about how bots affect the market, but toxic players mean there are fewer people to play with. That harms us all, and it makes it less likely ESO will be around in the future.

So because I list facts you reply with insults and call me toxic. So funny when there’s a group of people who just throw around the word toxic much like how the word racist is thrown around in the real world. Just further proves my point in your silliness to call anyone who disagrees with you toxic.

starkerealm · October 2018

frostz417 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

frostz417 wrote: »

Doing nothing to affect your gameplay, not harming anyone or doing anything, not affecting servers or anything, bots have 0 negative impact. Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who take screenshots of cyrodiil chat and report it to zos because it’s
“Against TOS”

Toxicity,like that has a knock on effect. Some little ****stain gets toxic, and it encourages the other little screamers to join in. Long term, there's a real reason to shut that stuff down hard. And ZOS does.

Arguably, it's more important to shut that stuff down than it is to deal with botters. I know, bots suck, for reasons that have already been explained. But, toxic little ****s degrade the community. That's something an MMO cannot afford to have happen.

We can complain about how bots affect the market, but toxic players mean there are fewer people to play with. That harms us all, and it makes it less likely ESO will be around in the future.

So because I list facts you reply with insults and call me toxic. So funny when there’s a group of people who just throw around the word toxic much like how the word racist is thrown around in the real world. Just further proves my point in your silliness to call anyone who disagrees with you toxic.

I never said anything about you. Just, about toxic players and why the moderation team needed to keep them under control.

Unless there's something you'd like to share with the class...

starkerealm · October 2018

Lord_Wrath wrote: »

I cant believe someone would defend bots LOL

I reported a bot years ago, and got a response that I can block someone if they bother me. So yea, *words that get me banned*

Yeah, that's a boilerplate:

"Oh, hey, we see you saw something ****ed up, did you know you can ignore them?"

*Looks at his maxed out ignore list.* "YOU DON'T SAY!?"

Cybercore_Death · October 2018

You can hand me my foil hat when I'm done but have you every considered this?

ZoS is behind the bots and use them as a means to increase revenue via non crown store means.

They employ people to run the bots (and advise them on how how to do this without triggering any flags on their systems) and collect all the gold / mats they get. These then get distributed to various sites under different names and have people employed to run these sites and charge varying rates.

By the end of all this ZoS has a massive revenue stream coming in through non crown store means and all complaints around bots are ignored /palmed off poorly and everything continues as if it's not a big issue.

Figured I'd add this angle seem as it's something that most won't tackle it.

Chances are the above isn't the case and the actual reason is that they just don't care. For this who don't know / have forgotten about the live response when challenged over the state of the game "you don't have to be here".

Given that the "support team" is there to tackle crown store issues and everything else is left to the forums it's pretty obvious why nothing gets and nothing will get done about this.

Oh and let's not forget about the crowns for gold trade craze that will also be making ZoS a small fortune.

starkerealm · October 2018

Cybercore_Death wrote: »

You can hand me my foil hat when I'm done but have you every considered this?

No... but I also didn't consider the possibility that the accounts are being operated by space lizards.

In fairness to you, no, it doesn't make sense. The game already supports a template system, meaning if ZOS wanted to sell maxed accounts under the table, there's no reason to bot them up manually like this.

I suspect that most of the bots we're seeing now are, "personal use." Either, someone's botting up an account for themselves (a major tip off for this is when the bot has a banker or merchant chasing it), or they're botting up an alt account to sell it. That's not ZOS's major concern with botting, it's gold sellers. When you have bots focused specifically on generating as much gold as possible, that's when they step in. Even small trains of bots that are financially inactive tend to avoid detection. A lot of the goldselling tracking seems to get picked up at the moment gold changes hands. So, if the bots are generating gold, it's when they start moving the money that they get slapped. If they're just grinding XP, they tend to avoid detection. I'm guessing that's an efficiency thing.

Elsonso · October 2018

I erect the spine of disappointment. I traveled all the way to Zainsipilu and no bot. Oh well.

Recremen · October 2018

A CP grinder? Gotta be someone who got banned and is trying to back to nonscrub CP on a new account. I wonder what social travesty will be revisiting us in the near future.

starkerealm · October 2018

Recremen wrote: »

A CP grinder? Gotta be someone who got banned and is trying to back to nonscrub CP on a new account. I wonder what social travesty will be revisiting us in the near future.

I'll put 500g on "screaming racist epithets in zone chat."

madchuska83 · October 2018

Many CP level bots in Camlorn. The instances are different for people who've completed the quest there so most people never notice. The trains there have been going for years.

Elsonso · October 2018

madchuska83 wrote: »

Many CP level bots in Camlorn. The instances are different for people who've completed the quest there so most people never notice. The trains there have been going for years.

Same thing happens around the fort in Stonefalls

Aurielle · October 2018

frostz417 wrote: »

@stalock
@Savls_Saren
@LordSkyKnight

“Ruins the market” no they don’t ruin the market. They only do for greedy people who want to sell wax at 6k. Sorry everyone else enjoys buying wax at 3-4K, this is the most absurd complaint ever. Find something else to sell and Quit trying to rip everyone off with your over priced materials.

Could care less if someone buys a max cp account because i won’t care if they suck, I just won’t play with them. Simple solution.
Doesn’t mean squat of a max cp bought his account 2 days ago

Also you’re extremely immature to just assume I’m a bot farmer because I don’t cry about bots “ruining the market” no maybe I just don’t care for them because they don’t affect gameplay in any way. Make the market better actually for most people since they’re sick of greedy trader guild children who sit all day next to a banker playing with the guild stores instead of actually playing the game trying to rip others off for materials. It’s not a fact that botters ruin the game bud. You’re just mad you can’t sell wax for absurdly high prices.
There’s other things to sell other than matts.
Means nothing if a small minority of people who refuse to farm anything else complain about “market being ruined” because they can’t rip others off for wax, when literally everyone is happy about reduced prices.

So sure it may be against TOS, but it doesn’t affect anyone’s gameplay nor does it ruin the market. Go ahead and keep reporting them because botmasters just make new accounts every time their free trial runs out.
Also by no means am I a botmaster because personally I don’t have the time nor the money to invest in multiple xboxes and programs to pull of such a task.
I’m just not a white knight who complains about any and everything.

@frostz417

It’s not just about the economy.

Bots grief legitimate players by blocking their access to nodes. Have you ever tried farming nodes in starter areas? There are bots camped on the vast majority of them. Farming in starter areas is the most efficient way to farm resource nodes. It’s not right that a person who is actively playing the game ends up forced to farm in less efficient areas because of people who are not playing the game.

Bots also grief legitimate players by depriving them of mobs for certain kill quests. It is SO frustrating when you have to kill, say, wolves or bears, and you can’t find a single mob because the bots that are running their against-TOS scripts are farming them faster than you can find them.

It is utter BS to insist that bots don’t affect other people. They do, and ZOS needs to curb this s*** already.

Gandrhulf_Harbard · October 2018

Well, give the bot kudos for taste.

Zainsipilu is just about the most gorgeous instance in the game.

All The Best

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO · October 2018

Savos_Saren wrote: »

1,000,000 active accounts. 250,000 are bots.

frostz417 wrote: »

Doing nothing to affect your gameplay, not harming anyone or doing anything, not affecting servers or anything, bots have 0 negative impact. Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who take screenshots of cyrodiil chat and report it to zos because it’s
“Against TOS”

You should realize that bot accounts have two major effects:

1.) They allow people to buy pre-leveled accounts. You know that really *** DPS that just grouped up with you? It's probably his/her second day of actually playing the game... but he/she bought a CP790 botted account.

2.) They encourage gold farmers and mat farmers. Even if you PVP or PVE- you probably buy mats for upgrading gear. Bots ruin the markets.

I think ur 2 stingy with the numbers...my bet is 500.000

Tan9oSuccka · October 2018

frostz417 wrote: »

Doing nothing to affect your gameplay, not harming anyone or doing anything, not affecting servers or anything, bots have 0 negative impact. Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who take screenshots of cyrodiil chat and report it to zos because it’s
“Against TOS”

You honestly believe this, huh.

Amazing.

Recremen · October 2018

frostz417 wrote: »

@stalock
@Savls_Saren
@LordSkyKnight

“Ruins the market” no they don’t ruin the market. They only do for greedy people who want to sell wax at 6k. Sorry everyone else enjoys buying wax at 3-4K, this is the most absurd complaint ever. Find something else to sell and Quit trying to rip everyone off with your over priced materials.

@frostz417

Whoa there skipper, you made the mistake of not going far enough in your criticism of the market economy. I mean why are you happy at 3-4k sales? This stuff should be free. After all you've already given up on currency as a signal for the subjective utility of a product, so you might as well go all in. Everything that isn't a handout is a ripoff! March on the bank in Rawl'kha and demand free real estate!

frostz417 · October 2018

Aurielle wrote: »

frostz417 wrote: »

@stalock
@Savls_Saren
@LordSkyKnight

“Ruins the market” no they don’t ruin the market. They only do for greedy people who want to sell wax at 6k. Sorry everyone else enjoys buying wax at 3-4K, this is the most absurd complaint ever. Find something else to sell and Quit trying to rip everyone off with your over priced materials.

Could care less if someone buys a max cp account because i won’t care if they suck, I just won’t play with them. Simple solution.
Doesn’t mean squat of a max cp bought his account 2 days ago

Also you’re extremely immature to just assume I’m a bot farmer because I don’t cry about bots “ruining the market” no maybe I just don’t care for them because they don’t affect gameplay in any way. Make the market better actually for most people since they’re sick of greedy trader guild children who sit all day next to a banker playing with the guild stores instead of actually playing the game trying to rip others off for materials. It’s not a fact that botters ruin the game bud. You’re just mad you can’t sell wax for absurdly high prices.
There’s other things to sell other than matts.
Means nothing if a small minority of people who refuse to farm anything else complain about “market being ruined” because they can’t rip others off for wax, when literally everyone is happy about reduced prices.

So sure it may be against TOS, but it doesn’t affect anyone’s gameplay nor does it ruin the market. Go ahead and keep reporting them because botmasters just make new accounts every time their free trial runs out.
Also by no means am I a botmaster because personally I don’t have the time nor the money to invest in multiple xboxes and programs to pull of such a task.
I’m just not a white knight who complains about any and everything.

@frostz417

It’s not just about the economy.

Bots grief legitimate players by blocking their access to nodes. Have you ever tried farming nodes in starter areas? There are bots camped on the vast majority of them. Farming in starter areas is the most efficient way to farm resource nodes. It’s not right that a person who is actively playing the game ends up forced to farm in less efficient areas because of people who are not playing the game.

Bots also grief legitimate players by depriving them of mobs for certain kill quests. It is SO frustrating when you have to kill, say, wolves or bears, and you can’t find a single mob because the bots that are running their against-TOS scripts are farming them faster than you can find them.

It is utter BS to insist that bots don’t affect other people. They do, and ZOS needs to curb this s*** already.

Probably the only legit argument against bots, I commend you

frostz417 · October 2018

Recremen wrote: »

frostz417 wrote: »

@stalock
@Savls_Saren
@LordSkyKnight

“Ruins the market” no they don’t ruin the market. They only do for greedy people who want to sell wax at 6k. Sorry everyone else enjoys buying wax at 3-4K, this is the most absurd complaint ever. Find something else to sell and Quit trying to rip everyone off with your over priced materials.

@frostz417

Whoa there skipper, you made the mistake of not going far enough in your criticism of the market economy. I mean why are you happy at 3-4k sales? This stuff should be free. After all you've already given up on currency as a signal for the subjective utility of a product, so you might as well go all in. Everything that isn't a handout is a ripoff! March on the bank in Rawl'kha and demand free real estate!

Don’t assume I’m done air headed communist because I prefer only wax to be a 3k instead of 6k. In a market where most prices tend to raise majority of the time it’s nice having at least one or two things not be constantly skyrocketed.

Recremen · October 2018

frostz417 wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

frostz417 wrote: »

@stalock
@Savls_Saren
@LordSkyKnight

“Ruins the market” no they don’t ruin the market. They only do for greedy people who want to sell wax at 6k. Sorry everyone else enjoys buying wax at 3-4K, this is the most absurd complaint ever. Find something else to sell and Quit trying to rip everyone off with your over priced materials.

@frostz417

Whoa there skipper, you made the mistake of not going far enough in your criticism of the market economy. I mean why are you happy at 3-4k sales? This stuff should be free. After all you've already given up on currency as a signal for the subjective utility of a product, so you might as well go all in. Everything that isn't a handout is a ripoff! March on the bank in Rawl'kha and demand free real estate!

Don’t assume I’m done air headed communist because I prefer only wax to be a 3k instead of 6k. In a market where most prices tend to raise majority of the time it’s nice having at least one or two things not be constantly skyrocketed.

First, I didn't say anything about communism, we're talking about the use of currency in a free market as a means for signaling value. If you aren't willing to pay 6k for tempers but people aren't offering them at a lower price then that's not ripping people off, that's a completely normal market dynamic and you just don't value tempers enough to buy them at that rate. You couldn't possibly get a more textbook case.

Second I've never heard of the price of good skyrocketing in game. If anything prices tend to go down over time. What server are you on where that's happening ever?