ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, so wanted to follow up after chatting with the team. We do regular sweeps for bots in-game. However, if you come across any. Please using the in-game report tool to report and if you can, include the bot name. We can use the in-game data to get rid of the bots you come across.

Well, you see, we do, however there’s waaaaay too many to keep reporting, that’s the problem you see.
I posted a ticket almost a year ago now, with a request for an ingame moderator visit to the location, you know the place, near the town where everyone’s turned to statues and all the bears, where there’s 20-30 sorcs mirror stacked upon one another…. Farming bears and wolves….
Or the starter zones, like khenarthis roost where they run in loops and somehow never aggro any adds.

This is on Xbox NA server. It’s a widespread issue, and it’s never been dealt with…..

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, so wanted to follow up after chatting with the team. We do regular sweeps for bots in-game. However, if you come across any. Please using the in-game report tool to report and if you can, include the bot name. We can use the in-game data to get rid of the bots you come across.

It’s completely free to make email addresses and it takes less than 5 minutes to make a completely free account to replace any accounts that were banned.

Solving this problem takes a better approach than randomly doing bot sweeps and banning individual bots.

New characters shouldn’t be able to farm materials that yield the most expensive materials, those raw materials can’t be refined by the bots as their skill lines aren’t high enough, so those materials are either sent to one central account for refining, or sold to others who can do it themselves.

Characters should generate more or less wealth based on how long they are into their progression, farming materials is a work-around for that.

To solve the bot problem, this specifically needs to be addressed, because if it takes a bot until level 50 to start yielding results, it would be a lot more discouraging to it’s creator when it gets banned.

I’d say it’s sent to a central account for refining more likely. I’ve noted on occasion bots stopping and opening bags/ maps.
Track the flow, find the main source account, slap it with a big stick.

WinterHeart626 wrote: »

The_Titan_Tim wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, so wanted to follow up after chatting with the team. We do regular sweeps for bots in-game. However, if you come across any. Please using the in-game report tool to report and if you can, include the bot name. We can use the in-game data to get rid of the bots you come across.

It’s completely free to make email addresses and it takes less than 5 minutes to make a completely free account to replace any accounts that were banned.

Solving this problem takes a better approach than randomly doing bot sweeps and banning individual bots.

New characters shouldn’t be able to farm materials that yield the most expensive materials, those raw materials can’t be refined by the bots as their skill lines aren’t high enough, so those materials are either sent to one central account for refining, or sold to others who can do it themselves.

Characters should generate more or less wealth based on how long they are into their progression, farming materials is a work-around for that.

To solve the bot problem, this specifically needs to be addressed, because if it takes a bot until level 50 to start yielding results, it would be a lot more discouraging to it’s creator when it gets banned.

I’d say it’s sent to a central account for refining more likely. I’ve noted on occasion bots stopping and opening bags/ maps.
Track the flow, find the main source account, slap it with a big stick.

On PC NA I tracked bots from the field where they collected material to Ebonheart where they interacted with a vendor NPC before returning to the field. I assume they sold the mats for gold rather than selling at the guild stores.

Same, never seen them at merchants.
See plenty around the starter zones, and during double drops, that number increases twofold, plus crags gets swarmed…..
I have noted that whenever there’s a change, usually updates, we get a two day period where they’re not there or barely present, soooo, maybe more of those once a week 😂

They can ban Hardware, [snip] so anything that reduces the ease of making new accounts on hardware will dramatically reduce the scourge.

[edited for baiting]

There are quite a few of the black-furred, white maned Khajiit bots with volatile familiars in Craglorn on PS NA. I don’t think anyone does sweeps on console from what I’ve heard, though.

They like the area around Shada’s Tear.

WinterHeart626 wrote: »

Forgot the ones that camp on resource nodes in Cyrodiil delves. Always nightblades

Bots in cyrodiil and no one is killing them. What a world we live in.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, so wanted to follow up after chatting with the team. We do regular sweeps for bots in-game. However, if you come across any. Please using the in-game report tool to report and if you can, include the bot name. We can use the in-game data to get rid of the bots you come across.

@ZOS_Kevin It would be nice if reporting system for bots improved. On PC we got add ons to fix this, but console is out of luck

On different social media platforms console players often complain about bots

Now I am certain the original poster is talking about real bots. However, sometimes, I think folks mistake real players for "bots." By that I mean: There is an actual person at a keyboard or controller obsessively-compulsively running around a well-known harvesting path . . . sometimes for an hour, or several hours. I, myself, have been mistaken for a "bot" in Craglorn (back when I still "farmed").

Maybe it's just the term "bot": I use that term only to refer to characters that are being controlled by a programmed routine, with no actual person controlling them in real time. I have not seen a gang of bots since 2014 (when one would see 6 to 8 characters running around in a choreographed routine). Annoying perhaps, but a very funny sight. Anyway, in recent years, I have not seen more than one avatar running a farming path. Has anyone seen multiple farmers on the same path recently?

A memory: Back when I would "farm," my poor little avatar would sometimes experience a violent SHOVE to the side. I always wondered if that was a GM (Gamemaster) mistaking me for a bot and shoving me to the side. At the time, I assumed such a shove was intended to disrupt a bot's pre-programmed routine. Of course, not being a bot, I quickly recovered, and continued farming. Does anyone know for certain if that was something GMs did back in the day?

Anyway, while the original poster clearly means real bots, I wonder if other posters might be mistaking real players for bots. Once that farming OCD kicks into high gear, a real (living, breathing) player might, indeed, behave just like a bot.

HumbleThaumaturge wrote: »

Now I am certain the original poster is talking about real bots. However, sometimes, I think folks mistake real players for "bots." By that I mean: There is an actual person at a keyboard or controller obsessively-compulsively running around a well-known harvesting path . . . sometimes for an hour, or several hours. I, myself, have been mistaken for a "bot" in Craglorn (back when I still "farmed").

A memory: Back when I would "farm," my poor little avatar would sometimes experience a violent SHOVE to the side. I always wondered if that was a GM (Gamemaster) mistaking me for a bot and shoving me to the side. At the time, I assumed such a shove was intended to disrupt a bot's pre-programmed routine. Of course, not being a bot, I quickly recovered, and continued farming. Does anyone know for certain if that was something GMs did back in the day?

Anyway, while the original poster clearly means real bots, I wonder if other posters might be mistaking real players for bots. Once that farming OCD kicks into high gear, a real (living, breathing) player might, indeed, behave just like a bot.

Just for the record, people do not behave like bots, no matter how hard they try, or don't try. Once a person learns to tell the difference, it is quite obvious. Sadly, I would agree with the premise that not everyone who reports bots has learned the difference.

I expect that there is a possibility that someone inside ZOS could "nudge" a character in the game. Bots will respond to this much differently than a human will. As I said, the difference is quite obvious. I would certainly like to be allowed to do that... It can take me 15 minutes to collect enough evidence to confirm so I can report them.

Yeah, saw one on Craglorn a couple of days ago, PS4 NA. Usually see them in the starter zones.

Jamie_Aubrey wrote: »

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

And they are fast as can be for level three bots. I tried following one a while back and they are super quick. Too quick for non-CP toons.

They must have Prisoner's and Cowards gear on, what I use when scroll running on a sorc

The ones I see are usually naked. I can't imagine anyone crafting them gear (I'm talking the grops of bots that mudcrab farm at ancestors landing for example)

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Bots are low level, level 3 or so, always have hyphenated usernames like squiggy-loop6 and long auto-generated names like AIFJWIGULDSNUDFUEK. I’m not confusing that with a real player.

Yup. And those username setups are the random default for PlayStation. When I went to make a second account for Red Dead Online (unlike ESO, you can’t have multiple toons on one account and I wanted a male character and 10 “new” horse stalls to level up after I did most everything on my original female character), the username I wanted was already taken, so PlayStation suggested other names and all of them were that sort of format like rusty-nail8. So when you see that format, it’s either someone who didn’t take the time or ran out of ideas for a username and took what Sony suggested or bots made as quickly as possible so they didn’t care about the username.

Rishikesa108 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, so wanted to follow up after chatting with the team. We do regular sweeps for bots in-game. However, if you come across any. Please using the in-game report tool to report and if you can, include the bot name. We can use the in-game data to get rid of the bots you come across.

Bots are underground, you do not see the bot character, you just see nodes that vanish.

While bots can be underground, and I reported one that I saw in Bleakrock, disappearing nodes can also be what appears to be a client-server communication gap. As near as I have been able to figure out, the client thinks there is a distant resource node and tells you about it. When the node is consumed, the client is supposed to get updated. It seems that sometimes the client does not get the message. Eventually, the client realizes that it is not actually there, and it is removed.

The thing to remember about underground bots is that they are not undetectable. The server knows they are there and the client knows they are there. The server is constantly telling the client exactly where they are. They can't take a node without 'surfacing' to a 'depth' where the server allows the node to be taken. This means that their nameplate will frequently appear when they do this, especially on nodes slightly elevated or with a smaller hit box.