Smart bots are now almost impossible to de-rail by player base

Rittings · April 5

Previously, the "disruption" community has basically used their only tools to disrupt bots from stealing all the nodes (especially from newer players in the starter zones that simply quit playing when there is no fun competing with bots over nodes).

There is a social media and group that refer to themselves as "Sanctuary" that basically talk to each other and work in tandem to try and disrupt bots using player methods like - the trap memento, or methods such as dark/twisting/refreshing path from the nightblade skill line to help throw the bot off course. However, all these methods available to us are now redundant as the bots simply have smarter software (especially seeing this on PlayStation myself) whereby they correct themselves back to the right path, and still beat players to nodes whilst doing it.

This is the ruination of ESO... players being able to farm their own mats, especially in early game, is utterly vital to the sustenance of the community. Players rage quit early because of this issue, and never return. The loss of revenue cannot be calculated, but can be estimated to be a lot.

Players who buy from these bots their cheap mats, and feed them the gold that eventually ends up on a website being sold for real money will tell you that bots keep prices low for gold mats. And whilst that might be true, they also have a severe affect on the value of your gold too. It's basic economics. The more available a currency or commodity, the less it's value. This includes your gold.

The price drop of wax/alloy/rosin/chromium means that early game players get no incentive to farm mats - thus they have very few ways to make their early gold, other than to buy it from a website - one provided by these "bot farmers". The price of that gold has dropped a lot, and that's because gold is so readily available to buy, that the market must compete - and that devalues your gold - making other items a lot more expensieve.

For example, the price of motifs seriously drops during events that drop a lot of them - that's because of supply and demand, and gold works the same way. It means the exchange rate, for example, of gold per rare furning plan, will see the furnishing plan increase in value, since your gold means less.

So it might make mats cheaper, but the knock on is that everything else is more expensive. Bots don't make the economy better, they alter it and shift it...

Time for Zenimax to have a serious plan of action against bots - they are, like I said, the ruination of any MMO.

sans-culottes · April 5

Rittings wrote: »

Previously, the "disruption" community has basically used their only tools to disrupt bots from stealing all the nodes (especially from newer players in the starter zones that simply quit playing when there is no fun competing with bots over nodes).

There is a social media and group that refer to themselves as "Sanctuary" that basically talk to each other and work in tandem to try and disrupt bots using player methods like - the trap memento, or methods such as dark/twisting/refreshing path from the nightblade skill line to help throw the bot off course. However, all these methods available to us are now redundant as the bots simply have smarter software (especially seeing this on PlayStation myself) whereby they correct themselves back to the right path, and still beat players to nodes whilst doing it.

This is the ruination of ESO... players being able to farm their own mats, especially in early game, is utterly vital to the sustenance of the community. Players rage quit early because of this issue, and never return. The loss of revenue cannot be calculated, but can be estimated to be a lot.

Players who buy from these bots their cheap mats, and feed them the gold that eventually ends up on a website being sold for real money will tell you that bots keep prices low for gold mats. And whilst that might be true, they also have a severe affect on the value of your gold too. It's basic economics. The more available a currency or commodity, the less it's value. This includes your gold.

The price drop of wax/alloy/rosin/chromium means that early game players get no incentive to farm mats - thus they have very few ways to make their early gold, other than to buy it from a website - one provided by these "bot farmers". The price of that gold has dropped a lot, and that's because gold is so readily available to buy, that the market must compete - and that devalues your gold - making other items a lot more expensieve.

For example, the price of motifs seriously drops during events that drop a lot of them - that's because of supply and demand, and gold works the same way. It means the exchange rate, for example, of gold per rare furning plan, will see the furnishing plan increase in value, since your gold means less.

So it might make mats cheaper, but the knock on is that everything else is more expensive. Bots don't make the economy better, they alter it and shift it...

Time for Zenimax to have a serious plan of action against bots - they are, like I said, the ruination of any MMO.

While bots are frustrating, it is not clear to me that this has led to “rage quitting,” etc. It might be helpful to instead report the bot accounts.

Elsonso · April 5

sans-culottes wrote: »

While bots are frustrating, it is not clear to me that this has led to “rage quitting,” etc. It might be helpful to instead report the bot accounts.

I would be more surprised if it hasn't resulted in "rage quitting".

katanagirl1 · April 5

I agree that bots are a problem, but I have my doubts as to how many new players actually farm mats. When I started playing, I wanted to actually play the game. I did not have enough crafting skills to make my own gear, that was much later. I was doing quests instead.

Now I do a lot of farming and I almost always see bots and I am not in a starter area. Craglorn has lots of them. For a while the zone was cleared of them, but lately they have started coming back.

I don’t do anything to try to stop the bots, I just keep running ahead to grab the nodes in front of them as much as I can so hopefully they will get stuck or something. I reported some in the past but I continued to see them. I do not really want to take the time to report every single one either, I have other things to do.

Regardless, it is a problem and there should be a way to eliminate them. Those characters do nothing but fill their inventory with mats and never level up. ZOS has software to detect dirty words in private text chat so surely they could come up with something that is actually beneficial.

spartaxoxo · April 5

I don't think most new players are trying to farm. The bots aren't a good first impression but I think most new players are figuring out whether or not they even like the game before investing into mat farming.

Also the price of coin isn't the same as the price of mats.

Juomuuri · April 5

When I was a noob/beginner (in 2016-2017), I never had trouble with farming mats once I started doing it in order to level up my crafting and research etc. Yes, I have seen lots of bots over the years, but they never disrupted my gameplay. But, I'm on PC EU so I haven't seen what it's like on the console servers. However, even tho I saw bots while I was new, they just registered as a "normal" MMO thing to me - we used to joke about and laugh at bots with my friends and we also disrupted those pet sorc leather trains by killing the mobs before they could, that was fun. XD But I haven't seen these bot trains in years now.

ImmortalCX · April 6

Rittings wrote: »

Previously, the "disruption" community has basically used their only tools to disrupt bots from stealing all the nodes (especially from newer players in the starter zones that simply quit playing when there is no fun competing with bots over nodes).

There is a social media and group that refer to themselves as "Sanctuary" that basically talk to each other and work in tandem to try and disrupt bots using player methods like - the trap memento, or methods such as dark/twisting/refreshing path from the nightblade skill line to help throw the bot off course. However, all these methods available to us are now redundant as the bots simply have smarter software (especially seeing this on PlayStation myself) whereby they correct themselves back to the right path, and still beat players to nodes whilst doing it.

This is the ruination of ESO... players being able to farm their own mats, especially in early game, is utterly vital to the sustenance of the community. Players rage quit early because of this issue, and never return. The loss of revenue cannot be calculated, but can be estimated to be a lot.

Players who buy from these bots their cheap mats, and feed them the gold that eventually ends up on a website being sold for real money will tell you that bots keep prices low for gold mats. And whilst that might be true, they also have a severe affect on the value of your gold too. It's basic economics. The more available a currency or commodity, the less it's value. This includes your gold.

The price drop of wax/alloy/rosin/chromium means that early game players get no incentive to farm mats - thus they have very few ways to make their early gold, other than to buy it from a website - one provided by these "bot farmers". The price of that gold has dropped a lot, and that's because gold is so readily available to buy, that the market must compete - and that devalues your gold - making other items a lot more expensieve.

For example, the price of motifs seriously drops during events that drop a lot of them - that's because of supply and demand, and gold works the same way. It means the exchange rate, for example, of gold per rare furning plan, will see the furnishing plan increase in value, since your gold means less.

So it might make mats cheaper, but the knock on is that everything else is more expensive. Bots don't make the economy better, they alter it and shift it...

Time for Zenimax to have a serious plan of action against bots - they are, like I said, the ruination of any MMO.

Fishing for perfect Roe. All a beginning player needs is one, and then he is pretty much set.

zaria · April 6

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I don't think most new players are trying to farm. The bots aren't a good first impression but I think most new players are figuring out whether or not they even like the game before investing into mat farming.

Also the price of coin isn't the same as the price of mats.

Agree, an new player would rarely have the skill points or knowledge to craft better gear than random drops.
You also need to research the traits, training is the obvious one for new players but they don't know unless following an guide.
Best option is to join an friendly guild and they crafty you gear for free.

Now a month after launch bots was an very serious problem on pc, streams of identical low low level bots even in Reaper march who was an lvl 40 zone back then as zones was still level based. Then one day they was gone.
Seen bots some times afterwards on PC but it has been real players afk farming, they have stuff like skins, and outfits or styles who cost crows or effort. Some times over 8 years and done Cadwell gold 3-4 times and plenty of surveys.

S2RDK · April 7

Hi
This is not only hurting/annoying new players, I've had a lot of runins with bots, and like you say, there are nothing to do about it, but to leave the area. Unfortunately there are more and more bots out there, as nothing are done to stop it. For a long periode it has been almost impossible to farm in West Weald in the morning and the afternoon - strangely there are a way more nodes in the evening....

Rittings · April 11

Firstly, bots caused my wife and i to rage quit.... we quit for well over a year (and are both ESO+ subs). So from us alone, ZoS lost over $300 in subs/crowns. Not to mention, neither of us purchased Gold Road - so tack on another $100. That's just one household....

We have come back, but the bots, once again, haven't been dealt with, and in fact are smarter than ever...

And yes, mats and gold are both commodities thanks to bots. These bots feed websites that sell gold for real money - thus making gold another commodity, and also devaluing it at the same time.