pretty please do something against this new clever bot scourge

D0PAMINE · March 2019

mocap wrote: »

D0PAMINE wrote: »

This is literaly the most ignorant statememt I've read in this thread.

more facts, less moaning pls. Any real problem with bots?

You're post I quoted proves previously indicates that you don't understand why bots are a problem despite the reasons given by others. You ask for facts, yet your post was weak with baseless statements.

"They ruin economy? No. Slightly with Dreugh Wax maybe (kindasorta)"

That alone is completely wrong. Botting is cheating and it most certainly affects other players by making legitimate farming less productive than the maximum potential allowed by the game. You clearly don't understand.

Elsonso · March 2019

mocap wrote: »

does anyone can tell me any REAL problem with bots? Except your jealousy i don't see anything.

They ruin economy? No. Slightly with Dreugh Wax maybe (kindasorta)
Ruin your game experience? No, they don't interact with quest objects
They lower your fps/ping... ok ok ) it's cuz i don't know what to say )

ZOS bans for it. To me, this indicates that the game is not intended to be played in this manner. They are cheating.

MajBludd · March 2019

Zos has had a problem with bots for several yrs now. If you are new, get used to it. Then ask yourself why YOU have to report bots for Zos to know they are there?

Turelus · March 2019

MajBludd wrote: »

Zos has had a problem with bots for several yrs now. If you are new, get used to it. Then ask yourself why YOU have to report bots for Zos to know they are there?

Because no MMO has yet to come up with a flawless auto-detection system, it would probably also be a horrible load on the system to constantly be running systems checking for bots.

FrancisCrawford · March 2019

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

You should really all download this addon (if you are on PC). Since installing it my emotional health is much better when encountering bots:

EZReport

You can set a keybind for the addon's report function and just spam it with the cooldown option enabled and be certain you will catch them all quickly and easily. Maybe 1 minute to report a pack of 10 as opposed to way longer following them around the clunky wheel-report way.

That's the best thing about it; you can report remotely. So long as you are close enough to get a mouse over target you are close enough to report. No annoying fiddling with the action wheel, no risking being reported yourself being too close.

Just point your mouse at the group and spam the report keybind you set in the addon, and send the reports (all the deatils are auto-populated including timestamp and location) until the addon doesn't pop up the report interface anymore and the bots all have the reported icon under their names.

EDIT: The addon also gives you a cool in-game app to browse previous reports by character name or account name or location reported, and when you encounter those bots later you will still see the last reported icon and (optional) timestamp under their name so you will always know if you are playing with a cheater!

If you hate bots, FIGHT BACK!

That's pretty close to bots vs. bots. BOT FIGHT!!!!!!

Mathius_Mordred · March 2019

You know, it's a shame these people who write the bots code don't put their obvious skills to better use, same for those guys who sell cheats.

Also, I noticed some of those bots were fairly high level and appeared to be normal players, that would be a lot of investment for a group of bots, so I am wondering if these are actually stolen accounts. You get your account hacked and stolen, the bot programmer buys the stolen accounts or maybe he/she is the one doing the hacking too, and then uses them for bots. This would be beneficial for the botter, his own account has nothing to do with it, his bots are more powerful and can deal with any unexpected tougher enemies, they look like players because they used to be players.

It's all very sad, and to the people who think there's nothing wrong with bots I suggest you do a basic course in economics, as well as some personal introspection as to why you think it's ok to cheat.

mocap · March 2019

D0PAMINE wrote: »

Botting is cheating and it most certainly affects other players by making legitimate farming less productive than the maximum potential allowed by the game.

relax, it's only Dreugh Wax. Nothing else. Gear, motifs, recipes, potions/food, ton of crafting materials etc - none of this affected by bots.

Cheating, yes. Unharmful cheating however (pve/pvp). So i still think it is jealousy, hidden somewhere in your soul that you can't admit.

And remember - it's just a game. You not losing real money, only wasting your time playing. Nothing is connected to real economy.

Elsonso · March 2019

MajBludd wrote: »

Zos has had a problem with bots for several yrs now. If you are new, get used to it. Then ask yourself why YOU have to report bots for Zos to know they are there?

The best detection system is human, and the most common humans in the game are players.

mocap · March 2019

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

people who think there's nothing wrong with bots I suggest you do a basic course in economics

sure you can tell me where i can buy a BOT for my job. So i can sit at home, play ESO, while bot will do my work for me )

Ok, jokes aside, ofcuz you meain dumping. You must know that many legit sellers do it anyway for fast money, so they give a bit lower price than TTC-bottom line shows them.

Mathius_Mordred · March 2019

mocap wrote: »

Nothing is connected to real economy.

Wrong. Where do you think the gold sellers get their gold from? Bots farm gold 24/7, that gold is then sold, against game rules, to players, players that would otherwise have to grind it themselves or spend money for crowns which they can then buy items and sell legitimately, thus ZoS are losing potential sales.

Also as I indicated bots are often stolen accounts, so this certainly affects the victims economy, they may have spent years building their accounts and spent thousands doing so, only to have it stolen by some thieving cheating scum, the very people you're supporting. It makes me wonder what your agenda is here.

VaranisArano · March 2019

mocap wrote: »

does anyone can tell me any REAL problem with bots? Except your jealousy i don't see anything.

They ruin economy? No. Slightly with Dreugh Wax maybe (kindasorta)
Ruin your game experience? No, they don't interact with quest objects
They lower your fps/ping... ok ok ) it's cuz i don't know what to say )

Actually for me, is fun to see them. Kind of random 'LOL' encounter while overlanding.

What is there to be jealous of?

Bots make a measurable difference in the economy for certain items where it's far more effective for bots to gather the items than players. The price plummets, and bots effectively price actual farmers out of farming that item. Its asking real players to compete with 24/7 automation that isnt actually playing the game.

Examples: fleshfly larva and mudcrab chitin at the DB launch; clean pelts at housing launch.

Bots also ruin the questing enviornment for anyone in the area of a farm, as they are continually rushing around as a mob killing everything on a circuit. Oh sure, you can say that player trolls could do the same, except that again, those are at least players actually playing the game. Bots are just 24/7 automation that's not actually playing the game.

Examples: Silverhoof Vale in Rivenspire, Karthdar in Grahtwood

Finally, from ZOS' perspective, they want their game to be filled with real players, really playing, and hopefully spending money in the crown store too. Bots don't serve that purpose.

ItchyTheRat · March 2019

hating bots has nothing to do with jealousy, and i dont understand how someone could ever think of that *smh*
it has to do with playing fairly and following the basic rules of the game, and generally fouling the game with their mere prescence

Numerikuu · March 2019

lordrichter wrote: »

I did not watch the video, but yeah, if it shows player names, it is naming and shaming.

Implying that bots are players and not...well...'bots'. Honestly, naming and shaming of bots/cheaters should be encouraged. Every other MMO I've played did just this, with the Devs/GMs literally making forum lists once a week of everyone that was banned for cheating and exploiting

Regardless, I'm not surprised the bot/cheating problem is ramping up tbh. Increased signs of cheating is a sign your game is failing in areas. Who knows what some people/groups do behind closed doors (aka dungeons/trials etc). If jump/fly hacking is a thing in this game, then I wouldn't be surprised if wall hacking is either.

mairwen85 · March 2019

You forgot to put a cherry on top of that title.

ItchyTheRat · March 2019

mairwen85 wrote: »

You forgot to put a cherry on top of that title.

but i dont like cherries

ItchyTheRat · March 2019

Implying that bots are players and not...well...'bots'. Honestly, naming and shaming of bots/cheaters should be encouraged. Every other MMO I've played did just this, with the Devs/GMs literally making forum lists once a week of everyone that was banned for cheating and exploiting

Regardless, I'm not surprised the bot/cheating problem is ramping up tbh. Increased signs of cheating is a sign your game is failing in areas.

i can't do more than agree on everything

InvictusApollo · March 2019

VaranisArano wrote: »

So seriously, as a player in an organized raid, I put actual effort into my play. If I look like a bot, that's the result of hours of training and playing with my team so much so that I make it look easy.

And that's true of everyone I played with in my raids. If we look like bots, if we make it look easy, that's the result of hours of practicing and playing together until we work like a well-oiled machine. And that's in the changing, dynamic large scale fights of Cyrodiil.

If that's not your playstyle, so be it. But I find it ridiculous to dismiss the effort we put into practicing and playing together, learning to work as a team - the effort put in by real players really playing - as the same level of skill as "Some bots are spamming aoe heals and buffs while others simply wait to activate their aoe damage abilities and ultimates when the only real player sends them a command."

In reality, we're a lot closer to a sports team listening to the calls of our coach or team captain and executing well-practiced plays, including the benefits of having people that cover each role and let our leader concentrate on calls.

It's kinda sad that you need "hours of training" to do such basic things like following the crown, stacking, executing static rotation and activating an ultimate on command.
What is actually "ridiculous" is you comparing yourself to a sports team players. No sportsman or even an e-sportsman could ever be replaced by a non-AI bot like you could be. And I'm not talking about an "advanced bot". I'm talking about a simple bot that reads pixels and executes keystrokes. I wouldn't even need to implement QR codes reader and generator functionalities. No AI whatsoever. All I would need to do is write an addon that reads character position, team leader position, calculates which buttons and for how long need to be pressed and then shows an array of easily readable bitmaps. Pixel bot then reads them and turns them into keystrokes. Thats the functionality of following the crown and stacking. I could even add some randomnes to make the ballgroup look more like a group of humans.

As for sending commands from player to all bots I would simply copy the "share your dps" functionality that some addons have but use it to send commands instead of dps. Before the raid the player would just need to set the role for every bot from his group. For example: "Commander", "Healer", "AOE DPS" etc. The addon would show another array of bitmaps depending on what commands were sent by the player. For example: "sneak", mount up", "follow", stop following", "start healing" etc.

Only with this simple functionality we already have a bot powered ballgroup that uses aoes to roll through players and has enough healing to be invincible.
Adding functionality to attack the same person with light attacks/ranged skills would only require some basic trygonometry. I could even add a dashboard for "commander" that would show resources of group members and whether a specific combo is ready or not.

You wouldn't even need several PCs to run a whole ball group of bots since ESO can be run under Linux using Wine. And Linux can be set on Virtual Machine.

This is doable. This is super easy. A student could do it over a weekend and he would still have time to drink with his buddies.

Now could I do the same for a trial group? Hmm. Maybe for some easy trial like vAA but it would require a lot, lot, lot of work since I would need to program a lot of use cases. Every moment with teleportation pads would have to be taken into consideration and then splitting to subgroups... nope too much work to bother.

As you can see you can't even compare your "skill" to the skill of a trial healer.
I'm not saying that you are a bad player or that ball group members are bad players. Some of them might be great duelists, pve tanks or pve healers. All I'm saying is that running with a ball group is extremely easy compared to other playstyles. And it is so easy that a simple, crude bot could do it.
I'm sorry (not really) that you could be replaced with a bot. But thats the reality.

VaranisArano · March 2019

InvictusApollo wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

So seriously, as a player in an organized raid, I put actual effort into my play. If I look like a bot, that's the result of hours of training and playing with my team so much so that I make it look easy.

And that's true of everyone I played with in my raids. If we look like bots, if we make it look easy, that's the result of hours of practicing and playing together until we work like a well-oiled machine. And that's in the changing, dynamic large scale fights of Cyrodiil.

If that's not your playstyle, so be it. But I find it ridiculous to dismiss the effort we put into practicing and playing together, learning to work as a team - the effort put in by real players really playing - as the same level of skill as "Some bots are spamming aoe heals and buffs while others simply wait to activate their aoe damage abilities and ultimates when the only real player sends them a command."

In reality, we're a lot closer to a sports team listening to the calls of our coach or team captain and executing well-practiced plays, including the benefits of having people that cover each role and let our leader concentrate on calls.

It's kinda sad that you need "hours of training" to do such basic things like following the crown, stacking, executing static rotation and activating an ultimate on command.
What is actually "ridiculous" is you comparing yourself to a sports team players. No sportsman or even an e-sportsman could ever be replaced by a non-AI bot like you could be. And I'm not talking about an "advanced bot". I'm talking about a simple bot that reads pixels and executes keystrokes. I wouldn't even need to implement QR codes reader and generator functionalities. No AI whatsoever. All I would need to do is write an addon that reads character position, team leader position, calculates which buttons and for how long need to be pressed and then shows an array of easily readable bitmaps. Pixel bot then reads them and turns them into keystrokes. Thats the functionality of following the crown and stacking. I could even add some randomnes to make the ballgroup look more like a group of humans.

As for sending commands from player to all bots I would simply copy the "share your dps" functionality that some addons have but use it to send commands instead of dps. Before the raid the player would just need to set the role for every bot from his group. For example: "Commander", "Healer", "AOE DPS" etc. The addon would show another array of bitmaps depending on what commands were sent by the player. For example: "sneak", mount up", "follow", stop following", "start healing" etc.

Only with this simple functionality we already have a bot powered ballgroup that uses aoes to roll through players and has enough healing to be invincible.
Adding functionality to attack the same person with light attacks/ranged skills would only require some basic trygonometry. I could even add a dashboard for "commander" that would show resources of group members and whether a specific combo is ready or not.

You wouldn't even need several PCs to run a whole ball group of bots since ESO can be run under Linux using Wine. And Linux can be set on Virtual Machine.

This is doable. This is super easy. A student could do it over a weekend and he would still have time to drink with his buddies.

Now could I do the same for a trial group? Hmm. Maybe for some easy trial like vAA but it would require a lot, lot, lot of work since I would need to program a lot of use cases. Every moment with teleportation pads would have to be taken into consideration and then splitting to subgroups... nope too much work to bother.

As you can see you can't even compare your "skill" to the skill of a trial healer.
I'm not saying that you are a bad player or that ball group members are bad players. Some of them might be great duelists, pve tanks or pve healers. All I'm saying is that running with a ball group is extremely easy compared to other playstyles. And it is so easy that a simple, crude bot could do it.
I'm sorry (not really) that you could be replaced with a bot. But thats the reality.

"You can be replaced by a bot."

Yes. I'm a human player, replicating as best I can the precision possible using a bot.

That's what I'm pointing out - the human effort that goes into recreating that performance. You might consider what it means that actual players do that, not bots. Its a little like someone accusing a player of using macros when they aren't - its a wierd sort of compliment even though they definitely don't mean it that way.

In any case, I'm not planning on debating which playstyle is more or less "skilled" or whether my playstyle is indeed as easy as you claim. I enjoy it. You don't. That's fine.

So have a great day!

armeegrun · March 2019

Let me know if I am off base here on this. In order for a BOT, to perform a function, or set of functions, wouldn't that require the games executable file to be altered in some way?

Years back I played the Delta Force series on the PC, it's a first person shooter game with extensive PVP play. At one point numerous programs were created that allowed the user to activate mods such as a god mode, unlimited ammunition, etc. The program could be turned off and on at will, it go so bad that NOVALOGIC dropped a program on their servers that scanned all the game exe. files, when anything altered was found, the player was booted, warned and in some situations permanent banning from PVP servers occurred. I'm not a programmer, but it seems like a good solution to the BOT problem, maybe?

Elsonso · March 2019

Numerikuu wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

I did not watch the video, but yeah, if it shows player names, it is naming and shaming.

Implying that bots are players and not...well...'bots'. Honestly, naming and shaming of bots/cheaters should be encouraged. Every other MMO I've played did just this, with the Devs/GMs literally making forum lists once a week of everyone that was banned for cheating and exploiting

The problem lies, not with naming bot accounts, but naming innocent accounts as bot accounts. I don't have a problem with naming bot accounts. Actually, it would be much easier if people could just tell me the bot accounts so that I could find and report them faster. It is when people start naming innocents and labeling them as bots, or cheaters, that things start to go sideways.

We did have a situation here on the forum where someone did accuse an innocent of doing something against the ToS, and a member of the forum took that to an amazing level before everyone discovered it was a hoax. It was a very unfortunate event.

JadonSky · March 2019

Mayrael wrote: »

JadonSky wrote: »

Just curious bc i don't really understand and before I ask the querstion i don't even know how to Bot. What is the issue of someone having a BOT? Does it cause other people harm in the game or cause performance issues for ZOS? or is it just the fact people hate someone is making their lives easier by using a program to farm xp and crafting nodes?

It's not made to make their gaming experience better, it's because they sell the gold, if nothing is going to change you will see massive inflation because of unusual amounts of gold pumped into market, just like with printing money. Yes those who bot or buy gold will have more of it but its value will be lower, so in general everyone else who's not botting or buying gold with $ will have lower purchasing power. That's why botting is bad and has to be punished with full force.

Thanks @Mayrael that makes since to me I understand now. I always forget about the economics systems of an mmo. I would never bot just because I think it's dumb to begin with. Just never understood why everyone hated seeing bots figured it caused performance issues or something but this makes more since to me now.

NordSwordnBoard · March 2019

Game Masters

Even if they were a rare as Mythical Ambrosia, they could have a profound ripple effect on the bots and zone chat toxicity.

Right now, if you see the [z] symbol in the game its on the load screen message.

InvictusApollo · March 2019

VaranisArano wrote: »

InvictusApollo wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

So seriously, as a player in an organized raid, I put actual effort into my play. If I look like a bot, that's the result of hours of training and playing with my team so much so that I make it look easy.

And that's true of everyone I played with in my raids. If we look like bots, if we make it look easy, that's the result of hours of practicing and playing together until we work like a well-oiled machine. And that's in the changing, dynamic large scale fights of Cyrodiil.

If that's not your playstyle, so be it. But I find it ridiculous to dismiss the effort we put into practicing and playing together, learning to work as a team - the effort put in by real players really playing - as the same level of skill as "Some bots are spamming aoe heals and buffs while others simply wait to activate their aoe damage abilities and ultimates when the only real player sends them a command."

In reality, we're a lot closer to a sports team listening to the calls of our coach or team captain and executing well-practiced plays, including the benefits of having people that cover each role and let our leader concentrate on calls.

It's kinda sad that you need "hours of training" to do such basic things like following the crown, stacking, executing static rotation and activating an ultimate on command.
What is actually "ridiculous" is you comparing yourself to a sports team players. No sportsman or even an e-sportsman could ever be replaced by a non-AI bot like you could be. And I'm not talking about an "advanced bot". I'm talking about a simple bot that reads pixels and executes keystrokes. I wouldn't even need to implement QR codes reader and generator functionalities. No AI whatsoever. All I would need to do is write an addon that reads character position, team leader position, calculates which buttons and for how long need to be pressed and then shows an array of easily readable bitmaps. Pixel bot then reads them and turns them into keystrokes. Thats the functionality of following the crown and stacking. I could even add some randomnes to make the ballgroup look more like a group of humans.

As for sending commands from player to all bots I would simply copy the "share your dps" functionality that some addons have but use it to send commands instead of dps. Before the raid the player would just need to set the role for every bot from his group. For example: "Commander", "Healer", "AOE DPS" etc. The addon would show another array of bitmaps depending on what commands were sent by the player. For example: "sneak", mount up", "follow", stop following", "start healing" etc.

Only with this simple functionality we already have a bot powered ballgroup that uses aoes to roll through players and has enough healing to be invincible.
Adding functionality to attack the same person with light attacks/ranged skills would only require some basic trygonometry. I could even add a dashboard for "commander" that would show resources of group members and whether a specific combo is ready or not.

You wouldn't even need several PCs to run a whole ball group of bots since ESO can be run under Linux using Wine. And Linux can be set on Virtual Machine.

This is doable. This is super easy. A student could do it over a weekend and he would still have time to drink with his buddies.

Now could I do the same for a trial group? Hmm. Maybe for some easy trial like vAA but it would require a lot, lot, lot of work since I would need to program a lot of use cases. Every moment with teleportation pads would have to be taken into consideration and then splitting to subgroups... nope too much work to bother.

As you can see you can't even compare your "skill" to the skill of a trial healer.
I'm not saying that you are a bad player or that ball group members are bad players. Some of them might be great duelists, pve tanks or pve healers. All I'm saying is that running with a ball group is extremely easy compared to other playstyles. And it is so easy that a simple, crude bot could do it.
I'm sorry (not really) that you could be replaced with a bot. But thats the reality.

"You can be replaced by a bot."

Yes. I'm a human player, replicating as best I can the precision possible using a bot.

That's what I'm pointing out - the human effort that goes into recreating that performance. You might consider what it means that actual players do that, not bots. Its a little like someone accusing a player of using macros when they aren't - its a wierd sort of compliment even though they definitely don't mean it that way.

In any case, I'm not planning on debating which playstyle is more or less "skilled" or whether my playstyle is indeed as easy as you claim. I enjoy it. You don't. That's fine.

So have a great day!

Just to clarify: by saying that someone can be replaced by a bot, I am by no means trying to suggest that a bot reflexes, perfection or apm is necessary for a player to have in order to do the same thing. What I am actually saying is that what ball group members are doing is so easy that even a mindless, devoid of any intelligence automaton could do.

I don't mind you playing on ultra easy mode... unless you are having an unfair advantage over other players who actually need to use a variety of skills (Im not talking about ingame abilities as in spells). If that was pve and you were just rolling around killing npcs I wouldn't even bat an eye.
But this is not pve - it is pvp, where you affect others with your gameplay.
Running around with four dedicated, stacked healers has basically the same effect as using god mode cheat. The only difference is that a ball group can be killed with a coordinated strike of several ultimates. And we all know that such coordination is almost impossible for grouped players who don't have a voice chat.

If we had ingame, default voice chat like in Overwatch, then I wouldn't have any issue. I would simply take command and coordinate even the worst zerg group to take out a ball group. It would be fun for everyone.
But we don't have this so only ball groups have fun while everyone else feels that the game is imbalanced or that some people are cheating or simply abusing mechanics to gain invincibility.

And I'm not even going into how ball groups decrease performance by increasing lag and decreasing fps. I have already provided a thourough analysis of that problem and many, many people have confirmed it with their ingame experience over a span of many years.

You may like ball groups, but most people hate them. Many people think that ball group members simply do not deserve the kills they are getting since they don't use any skill that would be hard to train. And no - stacking on crown, using static rotations and casting ultimates on command are not hard to aquire skills.

What you are basically doing is shooting fish in the barrel. Do you really don't want more challenge than that? Are AP and kill notifications on your screen really enough for your dopamine to make you feel good about yourself? Wouldn't you feel better if you knew that you did deserve those kills because you were actually better than others and not because you were being hard carried by your healers?

NordSwordnBoard · March 2019

ALL YOUR NODES IS BELONG TO US

ALL HAIL GALVATRON !!!
(The Sweeps were basically a "Ball Group")

VaranisArano · March 2019

InvictusApollo wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

InvictusApollo wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

So seriously, as a player in an organized raid, I put actual effort into my play. If I look like a bot, that's the result of hours of training and playing with my team so much so that I make it look easy.

And that's true of everyone I played with in my raids. If we look like bots, if we make it look easy, that's the result of hours of practicing and playing together until we work like a well-oiled machine. And that's in the changing, dynamic large scale fights of Cyrodiil.

If that's not your playstyle, so be it. But I find it ridiculous to dismiss the effort we put into practicing and playing together, learning to work as a team - the effort put in by real players really playing - as the same level of skill as "Some bots are spamming aoe heals and buffs while others simply wait to activate their aoe damage abilities and ultimates when the only real player sends them a command."

In reality, we're a lot closer to a sports team listening to the calls of our coach or team captain and executing well-practiced plays, including the benefits of having people that cover each role and let our leader concentrate on calls.

It's kinda sad that you need "hours of training" to do such basic things like following the crown, stacking, executing static rotation and activating an ultimate on command.
What is actually "ridiculous" is you comparing yourself to a sports team players. No sportsman or even an e-sportsman could ever be replaced by a non-AI bot like you could be. And I'm not talking about an "advanced bot". I'm talking about a simple bot that reads pixels and executes keystrokes. I wouldn't even need to implement QR codes reader and generator functionalities. No AI whatsoever. All I would need to do is write an addon that reads character position, team leader position, calculates which buttons and for how long need to be pressed and then shows an array of easily readable bitmaps. Pixel bot then reads them and turns them into keystrokes. Thats the functionality of following the crown and stacking. I could even add some randomnes to make the ballgroup look more like a group of humans.

As for sending commands from player to all bots I would simply copy the "share your dps" functionality that some addons have but use it to send commands instead of dps. Before the raid the player would just need to set the role for every bot from his group. For example: "Commander", "Healer", "AOE DPS" etc. The addon would show another array of bitmaps depending on what commands were sent by the player. For example: "sneak", mount up", "follow", stop following", "start healing" etc.

Only with this simple functionality we already have a bot powered ballgroup that uses aoes to roll through players and has enough healing to be invincible.
Adding functionality to attack the same person with light attacks/ranged skills would only require some basic trygonometry. I could even add a dashboard for "commander" that would show resources of group members and whether a specific combo is ready or not.

You wouldn't even need several PCs to run a whole ball group of bots since ESO can be run under Linux using Wine. And Linux can be set on Virtual Machine.

This is doable. This is super easy. A student could do it over a weekend and he would still have time to drink with his buddies.

Now could I do the same for a trial group? Hmm. Maybe for some easy trial like vAA but it would require a lot, lot, lot of work since I would need to program a lot of use cases. Every moment with teleportation pads would have to be taken into consideration and then splitting to subgroups... nope too much work to bother.

As you can see you can't even compare your "skill" to the skill of a trial healer.
I'm not saying that you are a bad player or that ball group members are bad players. Some of them might be great duelists, pve tanks or pve healers. All I'm saying is that running with a ball group is extremely easy compared to other playstyles. And it is so easy that a simple, crude bot could do it.
I'm sorry (not really) that you could be replaced with a bot. But thats the reality.

"You can be replaced by a bot."

Yes. I'm a human player, replicating as best I can the precision possible using a bot.

That's what I'm pointing out - the human effort that goes into recreating that performance. You might consider what it means that actual players do that, not bots. Its a little like someone accusing a player of using macros when they aren't - its a wierd sort of compliment even though they definitely don't mean it that way.

In any case, I'm not planning on debating which playstyle is more or less "skilled" or whether my playstyle is indeed as easy as you claim. I enjoy it. You don't. That's fine.

So have a great day!

Just to clarify: by saying that someone can be replaced by a bot, I am by no means trying to suggest that a bot reflexes, perfection or apm is necessary for a player to have in order to do the same thing. What I am actually saying is that what ball group members are doing is so easy that even a mindless, devoid of any intelligence automaton could do.

I don't mind you playing on ultra easy mode... unless you are having an unfair advantage over other players who actually need to use a variety of skills (Im not talking about ingame abilities as in spells). If that was pve and you were just rolling around killing npcs I wouldn't even bat an eye.
But this is not pve - it is pvp, where you affect others with your gameplay.
Running around with four dedicated, stacked healers has basically the same effect as using god mode cheat. The only difference is that a ball group can be killed with a coordinated strike of several ultimates. And we all know that such coordination is almost impossible for grouped players who don't have a voice chat.

If we had ingame, default voice chat like in Overwatch, then I wouldn't have any issue. I would simply take command and coordinate even the worst zerg group to take out a ball group. It would be fun for everyone.
But we don't have this so only ball groups have fun while everyone else feels that the game is imbalanced or that some people are cheating or simply abusing mechanics to gain invincibility.

And I'm not even going into how ball groups decrease performance by increasing lag and decreasing fps. I have already provided a thourough analysis of that problem and many, many people have confirmed it with their ingame experience over a span of many years.

You may like ball groups, but most people hate them. Many people think that ball group members simply do not deserve the kills they are getting since they don't use any skill that would be hard to train. And no - stacking on crown, using static rotations and casting ultimates on command are not hard to aquire skills.

What you are basically doing is shooting fish in the barrel. Do you really don't want more challenge than that? Are AP and kill notifications on your screen really enough for your dopamine to make you feel good about yourself? Wouldn't you feel better if you knew that you did deserve those kills because you were actually better than others and not because you were being hard carried by your healers?

I'm sorry. I did say I wasn't interested in discussing the skill levels of different playstyles, right?

Okay then. We've clarified the original comment over bots, which was more or less my whole point. I've got plenty of thoughts about your last comment, but honestly I think I'd just be derailing the thread with lots of thoughts unrelated to bots.

So have a great day!

Zweible · March 2019

The only thing I do in game is "Farm and sell". That's it. That's my whole game. Not everyones cup of tea, but I enjoy it. That said, when a farming bot or 3 hit an area, they pretty much wipe out the resources until they move on. There is no way a real "human" player can keep up with the computer controlled movements of these bots. And the amount of resources they gather and sell affects the economy in more ways than 1. I don't mind farming for hours at a time to get my wares to sell. It pisses me off that all these bots have to do is log in, push the start button, and gather more resources than I possibly could without even working at it. It greatly pisses me off that ZOS, after months and hundreds of reports have done absolutely NOTHING to counteract this behavior.

Mathius_Mordred · March 2019

Zweible wrote: »

The only thing I do in game is "Farm and sell". That's it. That's my whole game. Not everyones cup of tea, but I enjoy it. That said, when a farming bot or 3 hit an area, they pretty much wipe out the resources until they move on. There is no way a real "human" player can keep up with the computer controlled movements of these bots. And the amount of resources they gather and sell affects the economy in more ways than 1. I don't mind farming for hours at a time to get my wares to sell. It pisses me off that all these bots have to do is log in, push the start button, and gather more resources than I possibly could without even working at it. It greatly pisses me off that ZOS, after months and hundreds of reports have done absolutely NOTHING to counteract this behavior.

Do we know they have done nothing? I agree with your post but I'm not sure about this last point.

MajBludd · March 2019

I reported a group of 6 players, a bot train. They were in DeShaan near a group of zombies. I reported them 4x. Everyday after I repored they were still there and they were for another 3 days.

So, tell me this, why did they take no action and why do I need to spend my time reporting when zos, according to their load screens, has gm's. Where are they?

Mathius_Mordred · March 2019

MajBludd wrote: »

I reported a group of 6 players, a bot train. They were in DeShaan near a group of zombies. I reported them 4x. Everyday after I repored they were still there and they were for another 3 days.

So, tell me this, why did they take no action and why do I need to spend my time reporting when zos, according to their load screens, has gm's. Where are they?

But they were gone on the 4th day? I'm just trying to understand whether they are doing something but it perhaps take time to investigate an account before banning it, as it should, afterall we'd be pretty pissed off if our account was deleted with no attempt to verify it's an issue.

Elsonso · March 2019

MajBludd wrote: »

I reported a group of 6 players, a bot train. They were in DeShaan near a group of zombies. I reported them 4x. Everyday after I repored they were still there and they were for another 3 days.

So, tell me this, why did they take no action and why do I need to spend my time reporting when zos, according to their load screens, has gm's. Where are they?

ZOS does take action against the bots. As I have said before, I can see that the bot do disappear on PC/NA. I have not checked other servers, but I would imagine that it is the same on PC/EU, and similar on the consoles.

The time-to-action is more than just a couple days. Some bots disappear faster than others, and I don't know whether there is a difference between console and PC in this respect. In any case, it takes them a certain amount of time to get to the bot reports, and that might take several days.

There is no evidence that a player reporting the same bot daily, or multiple times, makes them disappear faster. What does make them disappear faster, according to a statement from Jessica a couple years back, is multiple people reporting the same bot. To that end, I am not sure if you actually said exactly where to go to see the bots you reported. Even when they do, most people forget to tell what megaserver they are on. It is harder for someone else to go observe and report when they don't know where to go.

They may not agree, or they may not be able to conclusively prove, that an account is botting. I am sure that not everyone reported for botting is actually botting.

I tend to "report and forget". I report the bots and move on. I might come back to check on the location in a few days to see if new bots have arrived to replace the ones I reported. In Bal Foyen, reporting bots can be a daily quest. Seriously. There are are almost always new bots there. It is like shooting fish in a barrel.