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· [COMPLETE] NA megaservers for maintenance – February 23, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EST (17:00 UTC)
· [COMPLETE] EU megaservers for maintenance – February 23, 9:00 UTC (4:00AM EST) - 17:00 UTC (12:00PM EST)
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Game full of Bots... and Zos lack of action...
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Sihnfahl✭✭✭✭
Here's what you do. Instead of trying to use class skills, everyone equip a dagger (fastest swing time of all weapons). Stand where boss spawns, swing endlessly. You may not do much damage, but you will get a hit in, enough to register for the quest.They are game breakers in the dungeons with quests that expect you the player to actually hit/kill the boss and you can't for the bots.0 -
steveb16_ESO46✭✭✭✭✭While i have seen a few suspicious behaviour next to bosses, where are all these bots, guys?
Is it a matter of server? On the EU server we arent overrun by bots.
EVERY Daggerfall EU dungeon this morning had over a dozen bots in one or 2 stacks at least killing the boss in nano-seconds. Every one of them. No matter what you did you could not get loot from a boss. It's worse than it's ever been.
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Gisgo✭✭✭✭✭Meh screw them, the higher you get, the less they impact your game.
Maybe they can farm iron, big deal, what really matters are veteran area mats.
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Yankee✭✭✭✭I only go in dungeons for quests and skyshards, so far have managed to wack the bosses enough to get credit for completion. Often not enough to get loot but I move on anyway.
I am afraid to stand there beside characters named "afafwe" and "abcdef" and risk some newly installed anti-bot script banning me.
We had several guild members banned for falling through the world or deleting the duplicate Imperial Edition items caused by another bug. I believe these people were not cheating. I do not trust the "automated" scripting I have seen so far.
And after all, they did install a "hotfix" today. I want the bots gone too, but I hope ZOS is careful about it.Edited by Yankee on April 22, 2014 4:58PM1 -
Ashtaris✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭At the beginning I could usually get a hit or two in enough to finish the quest or achievement, but it seems lately it's getting harder and harder because of the bots and farmers. And I feel sorry for my poor wife who doesn't have the reflexes. It's taking the enjoyment out of the game and eventually the frustration makes it so we won't go back in the game, subscription ends, and that's it. Too bad for you Zeni as you just lost two customers at once.1 -
Gisgo✭✭✭✭✭
Access to veteran zones isnt as easy as you make it sound.
If it was, veteran zones would be full of bots, and trust me they arent.
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Laerrus✭✭✭Koltiros1005b14a_ESO wrote: »There are numerous threads about this, ZOS knows it and issue and they ARE handling it, maybe not in the public outcry domination way that you'd like it to be, however banning bots is not simply done, it requires that YOU the player give detailed reports on the botters and that the ZOS team reviews these reports to determine if said botter was actually botting, they can't afford to ban people falsely based on loose information. How would you like to be banned because someone said you were botting, and provided little to no information that said otherwise. This isn't like getting rid of gold farmers, it takes time.
This is the reactive approach and will never work. To bot users it's like Zenimax opening the door and saying "Come on in!". Besides by the time Zenimax gets around to banning a particular account, the botters will have created another one.
Zenimax needs to get proactive and get in-game GMs like OP and others have suggested. They need to lock China out of the NA and EU servers too and start banning IPs from botters and gold sellers. This is how they can make progress on bettering the current situation.Koltiros1005b14a_ESO wrote: »It isn't even a game breaking thing, you hardly see any bots in the later areas, if they are farming common soul gems and below par blues, whoopee freakng do.
I can agree, not game breaking, but definitely immersion ruining.
Imagine having multiple bots farming Hogger from Pre-Cata WoW. Sure after the nerf to elites, he wasn't even a speed bump, but he was on every Alliance player's hit list that started out in Elwynn Forest. To some folks, killing Hogger was like a rite of passage. As insignificant as that may seem, it was still important to someone.
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I agree that these bots need to go (I report any I find). However, I don't agree with the assertion that Zenimax aren't doing anything about it. That's just plain jumping to wild conclusions without actually basing them on any hard facts.
Remember that we only see the results of their work (patches, hotfixes, announcements about bans, etc). But, BEFORE those results can be seen, work actually has to be done to get to that stage.
Sure, they could have a CS rep / GM manually going around ALL delves and dungeons throughout the gameworld, on all servers, asking questions and waiting for 10 mins for an answer. After all, it wouldn't be a good idea to end up inadvertently banning an "innocent" account who just happens to have gone afk the second prior to you send them a tell, or one that belongs to someone who can't respond very fast (for whatever reason). After all, then you'd end up getting bad press for "banning innocents" (hmmm...)
Also, it's probably just not cost effective to employ someone on TODAY'S salary to do that. Because that person (or people) are going to HAVE to do that for the entire life of the product unless the company takes extra measures to combat it in other ways.....
So, instead of that, wouldn't it be better idea if the devs (the coders of the gameworld) devised a means to prevent / discourage such activity in the first place? Unfortunately, a consequence to that decision is that whilst the devs are working on such things, there WILL be people in the forums claiming that they aren't doing anything about it.Edited by rioinsigniab16_ESO on April 22, 2014 5:02PMHow can you soar with eagles.....when you work with turkeys?1 -
Gisgo✭✭✭✭✭If you think banning IPs or a whole country (lmao) out of the game will help... well, think again.
Its a matter of demand and supply.
If there is a customer, there will be a seller, and the more the demand for buying gold, the more bots you will have on your server.
All we can do is being 100% legit, do not associate with buyers/sellers, and play our game.Edited by Gisgo on April 22, 2014 5:03PM0 -
Sihnfahl✭✭✭✭
No, no.Access to veteran zones isnt as easy as you make it sound. If it was, veteran zones would be full of bots, and trust me they arent.
My point was that it's really irrelevant for the bots to be going after the items for the base mats (iron / steel / etc) to sell.
The upgrade items are still the rare commodity, which you get regardless of area level. Item quality, OTOH, is. So a level 40 blue can provide the upgrade mat for a Veteran 10 green when deconstructed. Load up on blues, deconstruct, and you'll end up with a percentage of upgrade mats.
Send BOE items to a deconstruction toon from a farming toon...0 -
Gisgo✭✭✭✭✭
No, no.Access to veteran zones isnt as easy as you make it sound. If it was, veteran zones would be full of bots, and trust me they arent.
My point was that it's really irrelevant for the bots to be going after the items for the base mats (iron / steel / etc) to sell.
The upgrade items are still the rare commodity, which you get regardless of area level. Item quality, OTOH, is. So a level 40 blue can provide the upgrade mat for a Veteran 10 green when deconstructed. Load up on blues, deconstruct, and you'll end up with a percentage of upgrade mats.
Send BOE items to a deconstruction toon from a farming toon...
Ah yes you have a good point. I was just thinking to raw mats (iron, steel etc...)
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Hakuichi✭✭✭You all do realize that a ban of china is not even close to the solution. First, bots use proxies... and most of the bottlers in most games are Americans/Eu, the Chinese companies pay them for the gold and resell it at a higher rate.0 -
Gisgo✭✭✭✭✭You all do realize that a ban of china is not even close to the solution. First, bots use proxies... and most of the bottlers in most games are Americans/Eu, the Chinese companies pay them for the gold and resell it at a higher rate.
And where are the buyers from? Coz if it was for me i would ban them too.
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Holycannoli✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭That's my point. Manual cleaning in this game is a reaaally easy thing to do since bots are so limited in their interactions. In Ragnarok they teleported when you talked to them, disconnected, talked back, it was much harder to prove they were bots, yet I baned like 20 bots a day, and I wasn't even payed to do it.
Is it really that easy? They'd have to patrol each public dungeon, each instance of each, and try to pick out the names of the botters all grouped together and overlapping each other. I have a hard time trying to center on a bot's name to report it because it's moving around and all the other bots and innocent players keep getting in the way of the cursor. The last thing they need to do is start teleporting or banning innocent players. They start making innocent players prove they're not a bot and there will be an uprising. Look at the fallout from the false bans.
It's very easy for a GM to monitor the chat in all three city zones and mute/ban gold spammer and they don't do that. It's a little harder to ban all the bots; they're spread across dungeons and in different instances. Not impossible by any means but if they aren't even monitoring chat they certainly aren't watching for bots.
Anyway, they had much larger issues to deal with. Bank bug, false bans, critical quest bugs (some of which still aren't fixed). They have to deal with all that before they worry about bots.
Edited by Holycannoli on April 22, 2014 5:22PM0 -
Hakuichi✭✭✭You all do realize that a ban of china is not even close to the solution. First, bots use proxies... and most of the bottlers in most games are Americans/Eu, the Chinese companies pay them for the gold and resell it at a higher rate.
And where are the buyers from? Coz if it was for me i would ban them too.
same place as the farmers....
Consider the system.
EU/US wants to make money playing games. Starts botting to make gold, sells to Chinese company, If the player gets banned the Chinese company does not take a loss, the Company then turns around and sells the gold to US/EU players and turns a profit with 0 risk. The companies are just the middle men. IMO Ban the Botters, Ban the Sellers, Ban the Buyers. Blocking Chinese IP, does nothing. Its within the threat comes from.
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dr_zed✭✭✭
If a player is killing a boss dungeon, then it's clearly not afk.rioinsigniab16_ESO wrote: »I agree that these bots need to go (I report any I find). However, I don't agree with the assertion that Zenimax aren't doing anything about it. That's just plain jumping to wild conclusions without actually basing them on any hard facts.
Remember that we only see the results of their work (patches, hotfixes, announcements about bans, etc). But, BEFORE those results can be seen, work actually has to be done to get to that stage.
Sure, they could have a CS rep / GM manually going around ALL delves and dungeons throughout the gameworld, on all servers, asking questions and waiting for 10 mins for an answer. After all, it wouldn't be a good idea to end up inadvertently banning an "innocent" account who just happens to have gone afk the second prior to you send them a tell, or one that belongs to someone who can't respond very fast (for whatever reason). After all, then you'd end up getting bad press for "banning innocents" (hmmm...)
I can assure you, a decent GM could ban 30 acconts per day and make sure none of them is innocent, 100% guaranteed.
I'd do it for free. How cost effective is that?rioinsigniab16_ESO wrote: »Also, it's probably just not cost effective to employ someone on TODAY'S salary to do that. Because that person (or people) are going to HAVE to do that for the entire life of the product unless the company takes extra measures to combat it in other ways.....
So, instead of that, wouldn't it be better idea if the devs (the coders of the gameworld) devised a means to prevent / discourage such activity in the first place? Unfortunately, a consequence to that decision is that whilst the devs are working on such things, there WILL be people in the forums claiming that they aren't doing anything about it.
You say "to do that" as if it was a minor issue. It's not a minor issue.Edited by dr_zed on April 22, 2014 5:22PM2 -
ZOS aint doing anything to combat the bots atm i been reporting several bots for week after week now and see the same charcters and accounts over and over again like those starting with xing and some more letters behind them.
If they even planning to do anything about the bots its probably after all the non-bots have left the game and they see they dont have normal players left at all
Hurry up ZOS before this really destroy the game!Edited by helgekhb16_ESO on April 22, 2014 5:34PM1 -
ZIKE✭✭✭I suspect ZOS wants to wait at least a month before banning the bot accounts. They not only collect $60.00 per account, but they get to collect additional monthly fees from them.
In the end, they just want your money and this includes the accounts used for botting. Of course they will slap some of these accounts on the wrist and ban a few to keep the masses at bay, but they have no real urgency to stop this activity.
ZOS gets their $$$ and the gold companies keep the accounts long enough to make back their $$$ in losses.Edited by ZIKE on April 22, 2014 5:43PM0 -
the bots probably using stolen/scammed credit cards anyway wixh ZOS probably will be obliged to pay back to the original owners0
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If a player is killing a boss dungeon, then it's clearly not afk.
I can assure you, a decent GM could ban 30 acconts per day and make sure none of them is innocent, 100% guaranteed.
Yes, I agree there are indeed circumstances in which it is blatantly obvious that there is botting going on e.g. multiple characters with names like "Uua, Ppa, Llb and AAb (Those are ACTUAL character names I saw). However, what you are saying is that you propose someone doing that indefinately. That is just not cost effective these days. It is far better to deal with the underlying causes that allow this to happen in the first place, and putting matters in place that prevent / discourage it.
Of course there's nothing stopping them from *also* temporarily assigning someone to go around banning accounts. But, as someone mentioned earlier, do they really want to risk that given the recent buhahaha over banning "innocent" accounts?"I'd do it for free. How cost effective is that?
You say "to do that" as if it was a minor issue. It's not a minor issue.
Whilst that is commendable, I doubt Zenimax (or any company for that matter) would really want to take the chance that a non-employee ending up abusing the powers they were given due to perhaps an "over zealous" usage of the infamous ban hammer.
Edited by rioinsigniab16_ESO on April 22, 2014 6:32PMHow can you soar with eagles.....when you work with turkeys?1 -
Baraz✭✭✭It makes me miss some PvP games where you can kill bots :P
Anyhow, I reported some, mostly those that are insanely efficient and steal the boss from real players.
ps: I agree it does not seem like the "ESO police" is very active, but then again we are tons of people playing.Edited by Baraz on April 22, 2014 6:30PM- Baraz, crewmember of The Shipwrecked Pirates0 -
I suspect ZOS wants to wait at least a month before banning the bot accounts. They not only collect $60.00 per account, but they get to collect additional monthly fees from them.
In the end, they just want your money and this includes the accounts used for botting. Of course they will slap some of these accounts on the wrist and ban a few to keep the masses at bay, but they have no real urgency to stop this activity.
ZOS gets their $$$ and the gold companies keep the accounts long enough to make back their $$$ in losses.
Your suspicions are without foundation. In some countries (e.g. UK) there are laws that force companies to pay back transactions that were taken from accounts that shouldn't have been. They won't get a dime from such transactions if they are caught early enough (either by the company / the original owners of the accounts or their bank). Banks are pretty quick these days to notice dodgy things going on, and they'll do a "charge back" on the company.How can you soar with eagles.....when you work with turkeys?0 -
Baraz✭✭✭In my opinion, too many "nodes" or spots can be exploited and so farmers and "power levelers" have it too easy.
Example :- resource nodes could be more random, spawn less often, be less predictable
- boss farming should not be possible (won't name one of the thousands of options named by the community)
- etc.
Edited by Baraz on April 22, 2014 6:33PM- Baraz, crewmember of The Shipwrecked Pirates0 -
crush83✭✭✭✭I started adding the bots to my friend list after I kept hearing people reply with crap likeBut they are banning the bots by the thousands.
Yet, many of the bots that I added to my list and reported are still online farming days later.1 -
Nordak✭✭While i have seen a few suspicious behaviour next to bosses, where are all these bots, guys?
Is it a matter of server? On the EU server we arent overrun by bots.
Its not overran on our side either. Its more of an occasional appearance. However American kids these days sure do love there whine. (they like the attention it brings)
BS, the server is overrun with bots1 -
Reignskream✭✭✭✭Koltiros1005b14a_ESO wrote: »There are numerous threads about this, ZOS knows it and issue and they ARE handling it, maybe not in the public outcry domination way that you'd like it to be, however banning bots is not simply done, it requires that YOU the player give detailed reports on the botters and that the ZOS team reviews these reports to determine if said botter was actually botting, they can't afford to ban people falsely based on loose information. How would you like to be banned because someone said you were botting, and provided little to no information that said otherwise. This isn't like getting rid of gold farmers, it takes time.
Someone posts their opinion and they're trolling all the sudden? One thing I'm getting sick of is being called a fanboy & a troll because we tend to backup ZOS when people come out and cry over something that THE PLAYERS need to take a stand against. /report is all you have to do and it takes less than a minute, but no, you don't "get paid" to do that.
That's your problem then, not ZOS, because like every job, not everybody can do every single thing with the flip of a switch. Us sending in reports is what helps the community out, and if you cant take a second to help the community out, then why are you here whining in the first place.
Your not even doing your part to make this game a better place, but you will sit around and cry about it, huh?
Just because ZOS doesnt inform you guys about what is going on, does NOT mean things arent happening. Oh but wait, i guess I'm a fanboy and im trolling now, and my opinion is bleak.
Edited by ZOS_UlyssesW on April 22, 2014 7:06PM0 -
stylernaku✭✭✭Yeah have to say, Bots on EU are most certainly not that bad at all.
P.S. you all know a bot is in game because a person has submitted an order for gold online right. It's that way around, not that the bots are there and THEN the gold is sold.
So the real issue is, why are people buying so much gold. Perhaps that's the real focus.
No more gold buying, no more bots. Something like EVE's plex system needs to comeinto it perhaps at competitive pricing.
This isn't easy to do of course because then you risk cries of pay to win etc.Edited by stylernaku on April 22, 2014 6:42PM1 -
crush83✭✭✭✭It's funny because most of the people saying there aren't many bots are people at the highest levels. What they don't realize is that the bots are ascending slowly. Last week, you didn't see the bots higher than about level 25. Now they are up in level 36-38 content.
Ask yourself how are they getting to level 36-38 content if they are being banned in a timely fashion after being reported.0