Elderbots Online - Do the bots affect the enjoyment of the game? for me, yes.

MetaKozmos · May 2014

To what extent does the current bot environment affect your enjoyment of the game?

The current level of botting in the game is so intense that it takes a lot of enjoyment away from my experience. So far, at every turn, and I do mean every turn, I'm faced with a veritable army of bots. It has changed the way I play. I waste time reporting them, I can't harvest nodes they are camped at, droves of autonomous bots, many still in soul shriven rags, traipse across the landscape in their perfect pathways full of 90 degree turns and perfectly synchronized attack moves. Some of them stop at locations where a monster should be and perform their attack moves anyway.

Maybe I shouldn't let it bother me so much but I don't want to play ESO anymore because there are so many bots. Every time I log in I can't believe there are so many and there doesn't seem to be much being done about it. Perhaps I'll re-up my subscription when it clears up.

Loxy37 · May 2014

Well personally, ive not had much issue. I did when they were in the dungeons because sometimes it was neigh on impossible to get a kill and equally they were an annoyance when gathering mats in the lowbie areas but since progressing to VR levels on 2 character, they are only a minor annoyance but saying that, overall I know they are destroying this game via lowering prices, people leaving and various other things. I know Zenimax will never kill them all off and they are going to have to change some core element of their game to keep them at bay.

Blackwolfe5 · May 2014

When half the public dungeons I visit have small bottrains, when bot trains run rampant all over stonefalls and deshaan annihilating everything in their path. Yes, they annoy the hell out of me!

michaelpatrickjonesnub18_ESO · May 2014

It completely affected the difficulty of the game. With all the players and bots running around, I never needed to group up to finish any of the content to level 50.

Less bots in each phase, and less players, the overall difficulty would have gone through the roof.

I enjoy tough games. But never got to experience it in ESO because of their dreadful game design failures.

kmorganlfcb16_ESO · May 2014

I predict in less than six months a bot will be crowned emperor. :'(

Doctoruniverse · May 2014

Well for one every nerf directed/designed for bots has hit the general player more.

Lets look at the motif farming they did. Now the drop chance is so low that the only people that can get them are bots.

The dimishing return on containers completely ruined any food making. Bots are not effected by this because they will just add a few bots too the chain and once again they will attain all the power in the game.

At vr10 I have run wayrest about a 50-70 times now. gotten nothing because of the nerfed drop tables.

In the beginning this game was fun, now its a total snoozfest. Thanks zenimax!

Dita · May 2014

kmorganlfcb16_ESO wrote: »

I predict in less than six months a bot will be crowned emperor. :'(

/Thread

Valfaroth · May 2014

The non-bot grinding trains that happen in Coldharbour and VR Content are worse to me. Huge group of people running circles through a public dungeon...

It's ok though....They got theirs, and that's all that matters.

kevjon74_ESO · May 2014

Yeah, of course it ruins things, bots *** suck and it's ridiculous that they're allowed to do what they do.

I'll catch hell for saying this, but Zenimax should just *** disable gold and item trading between players and be done with it. I'd gladly suffer through that just to know that gold farmers are getting the shaft. Only thing worse than them are the players who actually give them money.

Jim_McMasterub17_ESO · May 2014

That'd be an awesome poll. "When will our first BOT emperor be crowned?!"

epoling · May 2014

So far they haven't really affected me in a major way. I use Spamfilter to get rid of most of the advertising. I have yet to have a harvesting node stolen by a bot. (A few times by other players who were quicker on the "E" button by me, but they were real people.) In dungeons even when there are a lot of bots on a boss I usually manage to get enough damage in to loot it. I just imagine, with their weird random letter names, that they are the spawn of some Daedra who is harvesting soul gems for his own ends. So far, I have just enjoyed the game.

steveb16_ESO46 · May 2014

kevjon74_ESO wrote: »

Yeah, of course it ruins things, bots *** suck and it's ridiculous that they're allowed to do what they do.

I'll catch hell for saying this, but Zenimax should just *** disable gold and item trading between players and be done with it. I'd gladly suffer through that just to know that gold farmers are getting the shaft. Only thing worse than them are the players who actually give them money.

Desperate measures may be called for unless they pull some amazing rabbit from their hats soon.

Lox · May 2014

For me, personally, they have very little impact on my game currently.

Having said that, the impact was far greater a few weeks ago where they were rampant in every dungeon I went in. I am only lvl 33 (having played since early access) and I rarely see any bots now.

I do, however, religiously report every single bot I come across.

j.frank.nicholsb14_ESO · May 2014

Yes, it is getting less and less fun dealing with the constant competition from the bots to just run quests. My wife and I are not end game PVP'ers, we are PvE players and it is hard to enjoy the game when the Bot trains are constantly killing the quest NPCs and the Gold Spammers are scrolling the zone chat so you can't follow the conversations or try to help anyone.

Nox_Aeterna · May 2014

Nah , not really.

Only down side of bots to me were the dungeon bosses, but now with the timer , it just does not matter anymore.

BCBasher · May 2014

I'm a real person I enjoy crafting and am finding less incentive to keep playing(paying) with ever step they take to fix this problem. Last night I got a mail that looked just like a raw material mail and it was a bot mail trying to sell me stuff I'm paying zos to harvest mynself but the diminishing returns have made that more and more difficult. I want the bots and gold sellers gone and the ability to get my own loot back as I'm quickly loosing interest in having to play the way the bots want me to play.

Handbone · May 2014

The bots have ruined this game, some content is completely flooded with bots. If they don't make stronger measures soon I will take my business elsewhere.

sylviermoone · May 2014

My lvl 24 char is in Deshaan, and I'm still coming across bot trains in public dungeons.

The bots themselves don't bother me as much (though it is terribly difficult to report them at times); what REALLY bothers me is the sensitivity of the system when deciding that you have completed the quest objective.

Like, I walk through the door and am still 5 rooms away from the boss, and BOOM! Up on my screen it says "You have killed so and so, and cleared this dungeon" even though I was no where near the boss, meaning that actually completing the dungeon is of no use to me because I will get ZERO loot, as the game thinks I have actually already defeated the boss.

I'm all for a boss timer and diminishing returns on bosses to help combat bots and players farming bosses (less so the players, if you really want to sit at your keyboard and kill the same dude over and over and over for that 2g, more power to you) I just wish the system was less sensitive in handing out those achievements so that everyone can kill the boss and get the loot drop at least once. As it stands, I've gotten a loot drop in 1 of 10 dungeons I've been in, and it was a pretty crappy loot drop (a couple gold, a low level glyph, some stamina potion, and like a white item).

I get better loot drops from the FFA treasure chests I find in the world than I do from bosses, itseems.

**edited for typo**

YourNameHere · May 2014

I am enjoying the game immensely even with all the bots.

Maybe because I'm used to them from playing MMOs for a long time, or I know that there are other things to do than twist my undies in a bunch cause a bot grabbed a jute node before me.

Bots are in every game. They'll be in WildStar when it comes out. Because they aren't stupid. They know how to do things. They learn. It's a huge business.

ZoS makes a measure against them and the bots learn to go around it. But I trust Zenimax will find a way.

FF14 went through this and still is. Yes people left because of the bots, but that game is still going strong. They're still in zone chat and whispering tells for gold sites, but it is significantly lower than before.

Keep reporting them. I'll put a link to an add-on that speeds up the process and helps pinpoint them. I use and love it.

I honestly think people leave for other reasons besides bots. Good luck if you do.

~~~~

Here is an add-on that was suggested to me by another forum user.

I got it, and it works wonderfully.

http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info181-FastReport.html

If you haven't already, get the addon client used Minion: http://minion.mmoui.com/

Then you can search there for FastReport by thelegendaryof

Once you install that in Minion, go into TESO then go to settings. You'll need to set up the report key (I used F5 in the key bindings).

So when you hover over someone, it will save the last name you captured, even if they disappear quickly. Hitting the key you chose for the report will bring up two windows, as shown in the screenshot http://cdn.eso.mmoui.com/preview/pvw554.jpg

Highlight and CTRL + C the information on the left hand window into the report window on the right hand side, then fill in the rest of what you saw, making sure to click from the drop down menu.

Hope this helps!

[Deleted User] · May 2014

The user and all related content has been deleted.

MetaKozmos · May 2014

YourNameHere wrote: »

I am enjoying the game immensely even with all the bots.

Maybe because I'm used to them from playing MMOs for a long time, or I know that there are other things to do than twist my undies in a bunch cause a bot grabbed a jute node before me.

Bots are in every game. They'll be in WildStar when it comes out. Because they aren't stupid. They know how to do things. They learn. It's a huge business.

ZoS makes a measure against them and the bots learn to go around it. But I trust Zenimax will find a way.

FF14 went through this and still is. Yes people left because of the bots, but that game is still going strong. They're still in zone chat and whispering tells for gold sites, but it is significantly lower than before.

Keep reporting them. I'll put a link to an add-on that speeds up the process and helps pinpoint them. I use and love it.

I honestly think people leave for other reasons besides bots. Good luck if you do.

~~~~

Here is an add-on that was suggested to me by another forum user.

I got it, and it works wonderfully.

http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info181-FastReport.html

If you haven't already, get the addon client used Minion: http://minion.mmoui.com/

Then you can search there for FastReport by thelegendaryof

Once you install that in Minion, go into TESO then go to settings. You'll need to set up the report key (I used F5 in the key bindings).

So when you hover over someone, it will save the last name you captured, even if they disappear quickly. Hitting the key you chose for the report will bring up two windows, as shown in the screenshot http://cdn.eso.mmoui.com/preview/pvw554.jpg

Highlight and CTRL + C the information on the left hand window into the report window on the right hand side, then fill in the rest of what you saw, making sure to click from the drop down menu.

Hope this helps!

I would love to buy into this but I've been playing MMO's for a long time as well. It's not so much that a bot got to the node before me - unless you count the super speed bots that run underground - it's coming around a corner and seeing 10 nodes as far down the beach as you can see and each one has a bot on it or several packs of bots moving in unison from mob spawn to mob spawn. Me personally, I've never seen the bots this bad. I have had a FF14 account since it's first release - was never like this.

What bothers me most about your add-on is how integrated it's become for reporting bots to be part of game play. We aren't paying ZoS so that I can spend my time reporting bots. I admire the people who say "I report every bot I come across" but if I did that I wouldn't be playing ES anymore. I couldn't even get all their names in a train and I tried.

To me it's like standing in line for something and there's a non stop stream of people cutting in line. You can see them but you can't do anything about it. You can complain but nothing seems to be done about it.

I don't have any other reason to leave. I actually like the game but the bots ruin it for me. You are right though, gold sales is a huge business. The only suggestion I've seen to fix it that seemed like it would work cold turkey is putting a stop to people trading gold and items. I'd be completely ok with that.

Blackwolfe5 · May 2014

In my 3.5 years of playing wow I encountered perhaps 3-4 bots total that were easily recognizable (there were a few old-school goldfarmers though but those were actually playing the game to make gold to sell). Then of course there were the goldsellers that used corpses to spell goldselling urls on the ground. Saw a bot train of 2-3 bots in gw2 perhaps one or two times. Other than that I cannot really remember seeing any bots in any other mmo's I've played. In ESO they are hard to miss, because outside of cyrodiil and veteran zones they are practically everywhere.