Bot overload PS4 NA

SerafinaWaterstar · April 2022

It’s just ridiculous.
All starter zones are overrun with bots.

All level 3/4 sorcs with scamp pet. All gave the user name as two random words hyphenated & character name as string of random letters.
There are so many its impossible for anyone else to get a look in at ore points. Am levelling up new characters on NA server & its so much worse than ever seen it on EU.

Not good if someone trying out the game & sees this during free play time, hey?

Seriously, really not hard to stop. Just ban anyone with that combo!

redlink1979 · April 2022

There are so many bots on starter zones that they even compete among themselves for the nodes.

@ZOS_MattFiror @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_GinaBruno Can we have some Game Masters around to ban bots on console servers? Please?

Veinblood1965 · April 2022

I was wondering the same thing. TONS of them all around the place, all level three. I reported a few but gave up as the same bots with same names never disappear.

I'm wondering if it's just not worth ZoS's time to ban them when found as more will just pop right back up again?

Do these BOT accounts not have actual accounts and just hacking in somehow?

JanTanhide · April 2022

If you can, make videos and post them on social media. This helps a lot and will get the attention it deserves. I've made many and posted them on youtube. Bots are gone soon once they others get to see how bad they are.

Arthtur · April 2022

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If u ban them they will just create new account. U cant do much about that during free play.

Wolfpaw · April 2022

I'm good with them, money for ZOS & cheaper mats for us.

Arunei · April 2022

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

I was wondering the same thing. TONS of them all around the place, all level three. I reported a few but gave up as the same bots with same names never disappear.

I'm wondering if it's just not worth ZoS's time to ban them when found as more will just pop right back up again?

Do these BOT accounts not have actual accounts and just hacking in somehow?

The base game is super cheap these days. Most botters are also gold sellers, so they easily make back the money spent buying the base game over and over.

Wolfpaw wrote: »

I'm good with them, money for ZOS & cheaper mats for us.

Yeah, because Gods forbid the people legit farming actually get compensated for their time. Who cares if they're getting shafted by bots, so long as everyone can pay as little as possible for their mats they don't want to farm themselves.

SerafinaWaterstar · April 2022

Wolfpaw wrote: »

I'm good with them, money for ZOS & cheaper mats for us.

So, happy to support bots that are probably gold sellers & thus also are involved in other dodgy (or criminal) activities just to get cheap mats.

Nice.

I wasn’t even farming, I was questing. Just wanting to build my craft bag up for personal use. Would like to be able to do that without having to get in front of a semi-naked Khajiit (another mark against them).

MidniteOwl1913 · April 2022

Yeah the bots are really bad. At late night (when I play) they are 90% of the toons in the area. They only seem interested in jewelry mats, makes sense those are harder to get and sell for more gold. I've given up trying to farm those mats in any starter area, it is just a waste of time for me. And yes they are two random picked-from-a-dictionary word names and a string of monkey keyboard ids, low-level sorc.

I was thinking that one thing for ZOS to do might be to move the nodes every maintenance at random. This would force the botmasters to retool. At least make it harder for them. Or they could move the NPC's around a bit so there was no reliable safe path for them to run. I guess the thinking was that having a safe zone helped new players, but that doesn't work because the bots just take all of those easy-to-harvest resources. If that's the point of them, they fail. Might as well just get rid of the safe paths, that would limit the usefulness of those bots at least.

ZOS_Bill · April 2022

We recommend reporting these players so our support team can investigate and deal with these accounts.

How do I report a player on console?

USarmydrew09 · April 2022

They are everywhere and even if you report them sometimes I still see them a week or 2 later. All that needs to be done is for zos to get on the game a few times a day a clear them.in 8 years I have never seen a zos team member on ps4. It may make Matt's cheaper but it robs from the actual players.

demonology89 · April 2022

"I get cheaper mats" is a poor argument and it spits in the face of the players that actually dedicate time to farm and refine mats. You want free mats? Go farm and refine yourself. You're supporting people clearly breaking ToS and selling mats/gold for real life currency.

ZOS this is a huge problem on PS NA server. Reporting each bot I come across takes up my game time. I've done the multiple reporting many times to only watch these bots continue to grow in number.

Jester's Festival? Bots on display for all players to see traveling to the starter zones for the prank quest! Seaveil Spire? Beautiful home on Betnikh but with the horrible eyesore of bots everywhere!

Something needs to be done instead of suggesting us to waste our time finding and reporting each and every bot. What happened to Game Masters?

MidniteOwl1913 · April 2022

There are far, far more bots than players in many starter areas. Want to farm mats in an easy environment, forget it! Bots, bots, bots!

ThreeXB · April 2022

ZOS_Bill wrote: »

We recommend reporting these players so our support team can investigate and deal with these accounts.

How do I report a player on console?

Or maybe you guys could get some game moderators for us console players and come check it out for yourselves , don't forget to bring your cp160 nirncrux banhammers with ya

Rinlan_Darius · May 2022

I play on all four console servers. Judging by the price of PS-NA gold materials, there are the most bots there. I am only in one trading guild on this server, but there are at least a few high-level people in the guild with me who sell 1000 or more gold materials daily and at the same time. And this, of course, is the BOTS OWNERS. They need to be banned, not hundreds of one-time accounts.

Rittings · June 2022

ZOS_Bill wrote: »

We recommend reporting these players so our support team can investigate and deal with these accounts.

How do I report a player on console?

I'm sorry but this advice is redundant. Don't get me wrong, I understand why you give it - but there are literally 100-200 bots in Bleakrock alone. It takes approximately 2 minutes to report correctly the account, but another 2 or 3 to actually catch up to them to being the report function... at 5 minutes per account that would be approximately 8 hours to report all the bots in a single zone - and the bots are currently residing in:-

1. Bleakrock
2. Kenarthis Roost
3. Bal Foyen
4. Betnikh
5. Rivenspire
6. Glenumbra
7. Craglorn
8. Alik'r Desrt
9. Bangkorai
10. Stros M'kai
11. Auridon

And these are just the prevelant zones. That's 88 hours worth of reporting... which is why we are suggesting that Zenimax start to enact a better bot/cheat prevention policy. This is affecting performance and the apathy of your customer base.

the levels of anger and frustration caused by bots is driving the consumers away. I don't understand why this isn't recognized. If a player were to cheat with nodes (which has previously happened) we get banned permanently and swiftly too... but these bots are allowed to make a mockery of Zenimax without recourse. We'll stand behind you as you tackle them - but leaving them without any strategy isn't something we can get behind.

opalcity · June 2022

ZOS_Bill wrote: »

We recommend reporting these players so our support team can investigate and deal with these accounts.

How do I report a player on console?

It is difficult to report them all when they are a swarm of bots and you can only target one or two.

I had to go to a different location because a swarm of bots was killing crabs so quickly I couldn't get a hit in, and therefore couldn't do an endeavour.

opalcity · June 2022

So it was great, the cluster of crab-farming bots was gone.

For a day.

Now there is a new bunch, with all different names, but running the same pre-programmed route.

Is there anything more eso can do, other than play whack-a-bot?

Rittings · July 2022

opalcity wrote: »

So it was great, the cluster of crab-farming bots was gone.

For a day.

Now there is a new bunch, with all different names, but running the same pre-programmed route.

Is there anything more eso can do, other than play whack-a-bot?

Yes there is. I've posted this list before - but here's another update of it:-

1. Impliment more Gamemasters to be readily available in the game. I haven't seen a Gamemaster since the bank/survey exploit days - that was about 5 or 6 years ago now. These could be employed to insta - suspend bots or ban them immediately.

2. Make it less worthwhile for bots to exist in the first place. Reduce the amount of mats that drop from sources until the player reaches a level (ie level 6, since that's when writs become available and mats are genuinely needed by players. This slows the bots down if you stay on top of banning them - it means an extra grind they have to do for each bot.

3. Make it so real players harvest more. This can be done via both the CP tree, and a new companion that can have a passive to increase harvest yields. Bots will not spend and invest money/time into getting these companions or high enough CP - knowing the'll get banned too quickly to make it worthwhile.

4. Track the goods. I know Zenimax have the tools to track where the harvested mats end up. As they go from the bots, they'll head to a bot handler - and from there they'll be sold to players who are regularly using the services of these bots to fill their own coffers. Ban them all... make it much harder for these materials to reach players. This will cut off the bots at source.

5. Work closer with Sony/Microsoft to shut down IP addresses of known bots. Some are so lazy they don't even use a VPN. Ban those IPs

6. Make it mandatory to sign up via Bethesda/Zenimax Online website when you want to register an account. Make it so the account must be verified via email - and make it a bit of a labourious task to register too. Don't streamline it... make it harder work for the bots to have to keep registering - this will also start to cause them to slip up even if they do use a VPN.

7. Give players a tool for bot disruption. We kind of had one with the crow merchant when it was useable by people outside your group. You could pull the crow out and bots would try to interact with it like it was a node - and end up selling their mats to a merchant for bottom end prices... plus it held the bot in place long enough for us to get the actual nodes. Taking this away and claiming it was a "fix" really took our only good method of bot disruption away...

Rittings · July 2022

Oh another thing... make it doulbe (or even triple) node values in DLC areas... It might be seen as hiding the good stuff behind a pay wall - but honestly, 1,500+ crowns is not much to have to pay for a better farming area than the bots have access to. They won't pay it... and we'll devalue the mats they are harvesting by real players providing them in much more plentiful supply....

But doing nothing - means the problem only gets worse.

opalcity · July 2022

Tried the Haven mudcrab spot for the endeavour today. Once again, the cluster of farming bots made it impossible to do the endeavour.

Rinlan_Darius · July 2022

> 4. Track the goods.

Without any special programs, just go to several trade guilds and see the offers. Yes, yes, and here they are - sellers of thousands and thousands of gold resources daily - they sell as much as an ordinary player does not accumulate in the game and for 5 years of daily 8-hour play. And all of them - a low level of CP - 200-300-500 - is quite enough to refine the resources that their bots collect.

Rittings · July 2022

opalcity wrote: »

Tried the Haven mudcrab spot for the endeavour today. Once again, the cluster of farming bots made it impossible to do the endeavour.

Completing any resource based endeavour is always going to be a little trickier due to bot overload… Zenimax really are failing to realize just how much this is hurting their REAL customers…

SpiritofESO · August 2022

Rittings · August 2022

UPDATE to where bots are currently operating on PlayStation NA (and therefore more than likely every other platform and zone too)...

1. Bleakrock (Exclusively node farming - and now they are tripling and quadrupling up on nodes)
2. Kenarthis Roost (Exclusiving node farming - some doubling up on nodes witnessed)
3. Bal Foyen (Exclusively node farming - some tripling up on nodes)
4. Betnikh (Maindly node farming but some wolf farming too)
5. Rivenspire (Some node farming, but mainly farming skeevers and harpies for scraps)
6. Glenumbra (Node farming, and wolf farming)
7. Craglorn (Exclusively node farming, with some seeming to be exploiting speed glitches)
8. Alik'r Desrt (Primarily farming mudcrabs - but with some node farming taking place too)
9. Bangkorai (Bear farming primarily, but with some node farmers now appearing too)
10. Stros M'kai (Exclusively node farming - with tripling up witnessed)
11. Auridon (Bear/Wolf farming, but some node farmers can be found too)
12. Greenshade (Node and scrap farming)
13. Vvardenfell (seen some new ones... I'm suspecting since this was added to base game, the bots are taking advantage... mainly nodes at the moment)
14. Stormhaven (Primarily node farming, but seen some also farming bears to the east of the map)
15. Reaper's March (primarily node farming I think... just spotted a few out and about, this appears to be the next target to be mapped by their macros).

Honestly, it's completely out of hand. Zenimax appear to be clueless to combat this - and almost are encouraging it as the constant reproduction of bots means they can boast a greater player number... Seeing the active player list is nowhere near the millions of registered players - it's not hard to deduce that a vast majority of of the registered player base is likely to be bots... which is incredibly deceptive.

Is this the reason nothing is done to discourage future bots??? It's hurting your PAYING customers, Zenimax. You'd be very wise to understand and acknowledge that fact. The amount of performance issues the servers have, I'm sure getting rid of these bots would really help. I noticed that some of the performance issues tend to be gone directly after an update and/or maintenance. Just a minor patch that needs downloading etc.. and I can't help noticing that as the bots complete their downloads and get online - the lag issues return. It can't be a coincidence every single time.

Myself and others have made severl suggestions - and to see a few of them implimented to stem the tide of these bots would show at least some willing on Zenimax's part that they are attempting to resolve the issue. Because as of right now - NOTHING is being done... not a thing. The problem isn't just going to go away on its own. And whilst we appreciate that making zones free for the base game owners (like Vvardenfell etc) as time goes by is a really nice gesture and really helps provide more bang for buck in the store - it also means that there is a greater encroachment of bots to exploit and take advantage ...

opalcity · August 2022

Grahtwood - the cove east of Haven wayshrine has one of those packs of clones farming mudcrabs.

opalcity · August 2022

Also, I've tried reporting the psn account but playstation just tells me to report it to Zos

boi_anachronism_ · September 2022

I feel bad for new players tbh. I can hop on my mount and generally outrun the bots but its a huge pain. New players have zero recourse since the bots are so fast. They move like they have the cp bonus plus adept rider and ring of the wild hunt equipped. It's crazy.

opalcity · September 2022

I've not seen any fast bots, but definitely some fast players who are farming.

opalcity · September 2022

Actually, today I saw several bots in Bal Foyen who weren't moving at all. Just camping on the same spot and getting the one node. Anyone else seen that?

I've not checked the clone army clusters yet

opalcity · January 2023

@ZOS_Bill

Thought this needed updating, because I just popped in to Bal Foyen to do the daily endeavour and ended up reporting four different bots just between the Dhalmora wayshrine and the village of Dhalmora.

I'm not talking about a bot Train, like the ones that farm mudcrab, but four separate bots. And they didn't appear to belong to the same farmer either, its like they were competing. They didn't have the same names, like how I previously saw where they'd be "randomname2" and "randomname7" etc, but so different it made me wonder if they're from competing farmers.

Zos... What is going on?!