price101610 wrote: »

Love how a thread requesting a comment from ZOS officials has had....0 responses from ZOS officials. It’s like pulling teeth to get them to respond to anything that is critical of the game or their handling of issues.

Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong, I have sympathy for the people that mediate this forum, having worked in customer service positions, myself. It's hard to walk that tight rope between reassuring customers and not saying the "wrong" thing. I just think it'd really behoove ZOS to have someone give at least a token response to the situation. Personally speaking, it'd assuage a lot of the doubts I wrestle with every time I boot the game up.

BNOC wrote: »

A minimum level to collect nodes - Slows them down a lot and adds extra work to level safely.
Disable rendering if you're <= level 30 - I see different nodes than you if I'm BS10 and you're BS1 for example, just don't render at all if they're not high enough
Same thing as above, based on your crafting levels
Remove collection until level 50 and just add sets of the mats (enough for a set or 2) in the same rewards you get as you level now.
Lower their crown prices to be more comparative and competitive to botters prices - Bots aren't that big of an issue, clearly.

"Dumb" bots are one of the hardest to track because with very little modification anything they do looks to a script like they are players. IE you ensure the bots are stupid enough that any automated action will result in hitting actual players. Then the bot makers actually win because security as a whole will drop for a while. Just because you see it bouncing from one place to another doesnt mean its inherently different from what any other human would do to a script. Scripts are stupider than bots remember.

Level limiting has never worked. Bots just level up then farm the nodes. It slows them down for a week tops.

Crowns can only be purchased with real money so any effect a bot has on crown:gold conversion is so far and beyond not a factor to the economy it isn't even funny.

As I said you limit them. They actually do limit them and clean up the reported bots regularly. The issue is a script kiddy from Russia can pop up 50 bots a minute. Even if you have an active human standing in the zone banning them they are banning against automation and will always fail because of this. The automation to create a bot is considerably easier and less expensive than the automation to purge a bot. It's always lose lose. If the bot gets banned oh well. If the human GM bans a player it could cost the product millions in backlash.

Eventually, every MMO reaches an equilibrium with the number of active bots.

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@price101610 If I saw mark cuban walking down the street and tried to stop him for a shark tank pitch what would he say?
Just because someone asks for a response doesn't mean they deserve or will get a personalized response.

Starlock wrote: »

I don’t think we’ve ever seen a response about the botting problem on the forum. That’s unfortunate.

volkeswagon wrote: »

i would like a response from Zos. Ignoring our concerns is suspicious. Is it even worth my time to report bots. Do you even ban those we report or do you just ignore.

Just a question for volkes. Are you aware of what ZOS has said on this subject? If you are, is this a request to repeat what they have already said, or are you looking for something different? They are on record and have said things like this:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3858917/#Comment_3858917
( @Starlock )

Notably...

On the Customer Support side of things, our Terms of Service team suspends and bans accounts daily. We review all TOS reports that we receive, and prioritize the investigations of accounts that have received multiple complaints. We regularly send our Support Agents in-game to watch high-traffic areas such as Dolmens, and take action on any violators we identify. We turn over identified “black marketeers” and repeat offenders to Sony and Microsoft, which sometimes results in a ban of the individual’s PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. We also do other secret things.

This is just one instance. They have said this sort of thing multiple times over the years. If you ask them for a response here in the forum, and they actually do respond, this is the sort of response that you are going to get. It would be nice if ZOS had a little higher profile in this matter. It has been a couple years since the above was posted. Experience tells me that when they periodically trot out a new statement, it is pretty much the same statement they have made in the past.

Personally, I think that ZOS actively investigates and bans bots, particularly ones that they can link to gold selling and other means to earn money off the game.