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Why we need GMs - With Visual.
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Reenlister✭✭✭I am glad I found this thread. The bots have got to go. Last night, I was in a dungeon for 20 minutes trying to out score the bots for my loot of the boss. I then took the time to report all 8 bots, yes 8 of them, and then, no joke, 2 more spawned as soon as I finished the report. Now today I am in another dungeon, once again facing bots. 5 in this spot.
This is just ridiculous.
The bots have got to go. They need some serious proactive policing of the areas, even taking volunteer GM's would help. I know of a game that uses a system of volunteers, they provide you an account, that is non playable, but you work on your time to help keep the areas running and are there to help out with people and issues. I for one would be happy to volunteer some of my time to help out on the game issues, and police bots.
Not to sound like a whiner, but I cant really say I will be happy to continue in a game that I have spend longer trying to outscore on the bots than completing the dungeon takes. They just set up to much for failure to allow them to continue. To many people upset over them, and then the fact they try to manipulate the economy with the items they get. These bots just simply have to go.2 -
The easiest way to stop gold sellers is that tainted gold (aka gold that get sold or in other ways gained trough bottling or trough hacked accounts) Gets removed or restored to the original account. The accounts that have been involved in cleaning the money or in other ways handled.
aka track the money and BAN accounts that handle tainted gold.0 -
michaelpatrickjonesnub18_ESO wrote: »AlienDiplomat wrote: »This isn't a game, it is a sick joke.
It's disgusting.
And so poorly designed.
To think that they all sat around a table, for years, discussing issues, before and during the development of this game, and not once did this cross their mind.
BAD MANAGEMENT.
And this is why the issue is so severe - it's being mainly caused by insanely stupid/naive design decisions by ZOS that make botting/hacking etc exponentially easier than it should be. How they managed to convince themselves that a clientside model with little or no server verification was a good idea just boggles the mind.
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babylon✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭This isn't a f2p MMO - it's AAA which means we need to be looked after properly. If that means bot bans done by hand then do just that.4 -
pjt15253✭✭✭I don't know one way or the other whether visible, in-game GM's would help more or less with the bot problem - I simply don't have data (though I would guess an automated system would be much more efficient if tuned and maintained properly). However, I do expect that at the very least, in-game GM's would help customer morale if we could see them bring down the ban-hammer on some of these bots. It's one thing for ZO to say "we've banned lots of bots and spammers!" It's something completely different to report a bot and see a GM respond and take care of it.
What I'd suggest is maintain the auto-banning back end stuff, as that's likely much more efficient than an army of GM's - but when a player reports something, send a GM to deal with it in game. Sure it's not as efficient, but at the very least it'll make us feel like something's being done.0 -
michaelpatrickjonesnub18_ESO wrote: »AlienDiplomat wrote: »This isn't a game, it is a sick joke.
It's disgusting.
And so poorly designed.
To think that they all sat around a table, for years, discussing issues, before and during the development of this game, and not once did this cross their mind.
BAD MANAGEMENT.
Well, it isn't like they weren't warned about making sure they had something in place for these issues....specifically the gold spamming because every time I was given the opportunity to fill out a survey during beta I tried to make sure I mentioned this. I'm certain I wasn't the only one either that asked Zenimax to make sure they were ready for this....and if they lose subs because they didn't see it as a priority then that's on them.
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Thanks for the video. What zen needs is a scanner built into the patcher that scans for bot programs and instaban those that have them.1
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+1 Great post.
ZoS could do this at very little cost to them.
Volunteer GMs !
Offer to take in 100 VGMs
If said VGM "works" 4 shifts of 4 hours in a week (16 hrs a week)
For 3 weeks (30 day cycle) then he/she has free play time on their player account.
ZoS is out what $1500 in subs? They just got 4800 hours of labor
They would be paying out 3.2 cents per hour for GMs.
plus they would have around 10 VGMs on at any one time.
Sure numbers would need to be adjusted but it could easily be doable.
You will have bad seeds "helping" buddies and such but a ban to their GM account and to their personal accounts plus a ban to the "helped player" would make that a very rare thing.
I promise you would have people standing inline to do this. Just ask other games that have used the model before.
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Bollerlotte✭✭✭Since player complains about botting since weeks, and ZOS dont comunicate to ud forum users, even to deescalate or ease the flames i come to the conclusion for myself, they do not care anymore.
there was a tag in beta and preaccestime in forum posts, that zos people will take a look at that. havent seen this for weeks now.
what will happen next? f2p or worse.
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MasterSpatula✭✭✭✭✭
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The GMs don't have to catch every bot, they just have to catch enough of them, and often enough to make the penalties outpace the profits.
They wont' bot if it costs them money, the whole reason they're doing it is to sell gold for $.. if it costs more $ than they get, they stop doing it.
And as I explained, each bot runner that quits makes it that much easier for the GM to catch the same bot runners repeatedly.
No game has ever been able to do this even with sophisticated ant-botting system in place that proactively ban instead of reactively ban.
Sheer nonsense. Star Wars: Galaxies did it. Credit spammers got banned in a flash. AFK looting for crafting happened, but if it was reported, the AFKer would get kicked. If you had a major problem, a GM would spawn in front of you to deal with the issue then and there. And, from time to time, they would spontaneously have special events like Darth Vader and an attachment of Stormtroopers landing and interacting with players--just on the GM's whim.
And that was from Sony Online Entertainment, a company generally regarded as one of the cheapest in the business.Edited by MasterSpatula on April 23, 2014 9:44PM"A probable impossibility is preferable to an improbable possibility." - Aristotle1 -
Rantog✭✭✭✭philtrum_licker_ESO wrote: »Thanks for the video. What zen needs is a scanner built into the patcher that scans for bot programs and instaban those that have them.
Except that you can change the name of the process, add random elements to cloak it.. etc.
But more importantly, they won't risk the legal ramifications of a mountain of Privacy Violation claims by users who learn that the game is scanning their running processes.
Automated efforts have never been effective without an accompanying Live Presence to deal with these issues.
Most MMOs have Tried to find a software method, all have failed.
The few that didn't have not suffered for it, they simply took the Successful method others had already found - and used In-Game staff (GMs etc) to do the work.0 -
CrimsonThomas✭✭✭✭Amazing, thank you for the idea.
This game does not deserve to survive, nor does Zenimax deserve to succeed as a company should the rampant botting remain. It's as simple as that.1 -
Reykice✭✭✭✭✭I am leveling a new toon now and i can say i almost stopped due to the bot issue.. it just ruins the immersion and fun to see them in EVERY solo dungeon.
GM`s actively responding to player reports and teleporting to the exact instance/place where the report was made within hours would fix the problem... as the bots would be banned so fast they would not have time to make any money.
Why are they not doing it?3 -
Kyotee0071✭✭✭Honestly, at this point I'm not sure. I have never seen bots this bad, or hacks running rampant in my 15 years of MMO's... There are always a few bots no matter how many they ban - but hacks? Port hacks, speed hacks, invisible hacks? There is no excuse for those to be in this game.I didn't think my hangover was that bad this morning until I spent 10 minutes trying to log into my old Etch-A-Sketch4 -
Kyotee0071✭✭✭philtrum_licker_ESO wrote: »Thanks for the video. What zen needs is a scanner built into the patcher that scans for bot programs and instaban those that have them.
And hacks obviously..
Here is a bot speed hacking and not even trying to hide it..farming mats in a home (yeah they are moving out of public dungeons and into the open world). They are getting away with murder so they are getting braver and expanding.
Watch the video at :15 mark and the speed hack happens at :20
There is no excuse. A subscription based MMORPG should not have hacks of any kind...PeriodEdited by Kyotee0071 on April 23, 2014 11:42PMI didn't think my hangover was that bad this morning until I spent 10 minutes trying to log into my old Etch-A-Sketch2 -
Rantog✭✭✭✭Kyotee0071 wrote: »Watch the video at :15 mark and the speed hack happens at :20
There is no excuse. A subscription based MMORPG should not have hacks of any kind...Period
People will tell you this is just lag, and your client catching up.
They either can't understand that having Other characters in the area moving normally disproves that, or they don't want you to Know that.2 -
Great job! Agree with every point made. Wish I was so articulate in writing.
Thanks so much for a very eloquent post that addresses so many problems and solutions!
Martha
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MasterSpatula wrote: »
The GMs don't have to catch every bot, they just have to catch enough of them, and often enough to make the penalties outpace the profits.
They wont' bot if it costs them money, the whole reason they're doing it is to sell gold for $.. if it costs more $ than they get, they stop doing it.
And as I explained, each bot runner that quits makes it that much easier for the GM to catch the same bot runners repeatedly.
No game has ever been able to do this even with sophisticated ant-botting system in place that proactively ban instead of reactively ban.
Sheer nonsense. Star Wars: Galaxies did it. Credit spammers got banned in a flash. AFK looting for crafting happened, but if it was reported, the AFKer would get kicked. If you had a major problem, a GM would spawn in front of you to deal with the issue then and there. And, from time to time, they would spontaneously have special events like Darth Vader and an attachment of Stormtroopers landing and interacting with players--just on the GM's whim.
And that was from Sony Online Entertainment, a company generally regarded as one of the cheapest in the business.
I LOVE AND MISS SWG! Good times, good times....
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People will tell you this is just lag, and your client catching up.
That's exactly what the bot is exploiting, ESO movement thresholds.
If you research bot programs, you'll see certain ones are talking about being prepared for when ESO updates the threshold, and moving the teleporting hack to exploit some kind of flaw involved with jumping, so unless they fix both problems, its not going away soon.
I remember the days of making applesauce in Asheron's call with a keyboard recorder.... back when it wasn't an overly abundant problem. Bot have evolved so much, its scary.
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Atreidus✭✭✭And thats the point why name signs shall be included to be enabled in the case you need it.1 -
Reenlister✭✭✭There are? Really? Where, I have yet to see or be able to contact anyone in game. Which is ok, as far as the contact, but where are they all at then?0
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Rantog✭✭✭✭Wrekkoning wrote: »You guys know there are GMs in game right?
If there were In-Game GMs, our help requests wouldn't go directly to Email regardless of the category.
If there were In-Game GMs, they would be able to See and immediately Remove the Gold sellers.
now, before someone tries these....
No - there aren't "GMs but they're too busy fixing the bugs and broken quests" or similar.
GMs are not Developers, they are not Programmers, and they don't Create or Repair any part of the game. They are Game Masters/Moderators - whos job is to deal with Player issues, eg - Bots, spammers, harassment claims, grieffing.. etc.
No - there aren't "GMs but there are so many requests they are busy with other people and you haven't seen them"
No One has seen them, or had their aide In-Game.
If there actually Are GMs, they all need fired immediately - since they don't actually DO anything - which equates to the same thing as not having any - and returns us to the original topic.
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Having been a "guide" in the EQ days, that was a great experience, we volunteered a few hours a week to roam servers to help. Now you never really see an in game presence. In EQ we often help GM with Zone events. I thought we really did some good in the game. I even caught botters and hackers. ESO will find a niche market, but with all the issues it has from the get go, long term liability is in jeopardy1
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Wrekkoning✭✭Wrekkoning wrote: »You guys know there are GMs in game right?
If there were In-Game GMs, our help requests wouldn't go directly to Email regardless of the category.
If there were In-Game GMs, they would be able to See and immediately Remove the Gold sellers.
now, before someone tries these....
No - there aren't "GMs but they're too busy fixing the bugs and broken quests" or similar.
GMs are not Developers, they are not Programmers, and they don't Create or Repair any part of the game. They are Game Masters/Moderators - whos job is to deal with Player issues, eg - Bots, spammers, harassment claims, grieffing.. etc.
No - there aren't "GMs but there are so many requests they are busy with other people and you haven't seen them"
No One has seen them, or had their aide In-Game.
If there actually Are GMs, they all need fired immediately - since they don't actually DO anything - which equates to the same thing as not having any - and returns us to the original topic.
Blah blah blah. There are GMs in game. They can't do *** to fix your problem most of the time if its a humdinger though. Message gamemaster moon if you don't believe me. I could upload a video of him not doing anything with my bugged quest but its to much effort. In the end... They are IG.0 -
Blu3d0gd3m0cr8ts✭✭✭I disagree with everything you have said , ESO is a good game. youre taking one incident and blowing it up the size of a mountain to make your self seem relevant. Shame on you sir.0
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dietlime✭✭✭✭I agree with you, but please learn to use correct capitalization. It's hard to take anyone capitalizing words for emphasis seriously.
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