@ZOS May I make a suggestion?

Commonpain · May 2014

OK So we all know how serious that botting problem is. To really be able to stop bots from taking over tamriel we have to think about where we could hit them.

So whats the normal Bot making strategy?

Step one:
A guy from a company gets either stolen credit card data cheap fresh off the internet(~2$ for data, 13$ for sub), or gets a new prepaid credit card(~25$ for the game + 14$ sub).

Step Two:
One guy Made a program to create accounts for TESO automatically. (Maybe there's one captcha, so one account is two clicks instead of one) If there is no captcha for that (dont remember) MAKE ONE!

Step three:
A Fully automated Bot Creates Chars, logs in, gathers/farms/spams, sends things to mule account, logs off.

In Step three there's the first part where we could actually slow them down by:

1. Make a small captcha for char CREATION! (yes, only for creation) (I seriously doubt that this will disturb peoplre more than Elder Bots Online)
2. Make it that the Tutorial may be skipped only if one char has at least reached VR1
3. Make Mailing to other accounts only possible after a certain Level.
4. Limit /Zone Chat PER ACCOUNT to 1 Message per 5 minutes and disable /whispers until they reached a certain level.

The other thing is Rare Items. At the moment Daedric Motifs sell for 500k gold in extreme cases, or about 50!$ on the internet (ebay, goldseller sites, forums).

How to address this topic?

1. Raise the droprate
2. Raise the droprate
3. Raise the droprate

You are making those people filthy rich at the moment. - really.

AngryNord · May 2014

Commonpain wrote: »

4. Limit /Zone Chat PER ACCOUNT to 1 Message per 5 minutes,

No. Just, no.

Commonpain · May 2014

AngryNord wrote: »

Commonpain wrote: »

4. Limit /Zone Chat PER ACCOUNT to 1 Message per 5 minutes,

No. Just, no.

Very insightful, now if you could go into detail a little bit more? That would be great, thanks

dawnhawk · May 2014

Commonpain wrote: »

AngryNord wrote: »

Commonpain wrote: »

4. Limit /Zone Chat PER ACCOUNT to 1 Message per 5 minutes,

No. Just, no.

Very insightful, now if you could go into detail a little bit more? That would be great, thanks

Well for starters at this point you might as well shut down zone chat. Limiting to one message every 5 minutes shuts down all meaningful conversation as well as bots.

Not sure if you were around for the asynchronous BBS days, but what you are suggesting would make zone chat rather remicient. Or only being able to talk if you had the "talking stick" back at summer camp.

Squishy · May 2014

Limiting zone chat this way will only kill it further in low level zones, although, if there was a way to check if someone already said something in the past 10 minutes, and not allow it to be repeated more than once every hour or so, I'd be mostly fine with that.

Sorry peeps, we saw the boss or dolmen is up, there's just no need to tell us every 10 seconds : - ).

Commonpain · May 2014

Squishy wrote: »

Limiting zone chat this way will only kill it further in low level zones, although, if there was a way to check if someone already said something in the past 10 minutes, and not allow it to be repeated more than once every hour or so, I'd be mostly fine with that.

Sorry peeps, we saw the boss or dolmen is up, there's just no need to tell us every 10 seconds : - ).

Most Bots have a Message generator with a integrated random message count... so i guess that one wont work...

Squishy · May 2014

Commonpain wrote: »

Most Bots have a Message generator with a integrated random message count... so i guess that one wont work...

True, but most of the message is identical, I'm not really up to date with IRC/chat scripts these days, but back in the days, in IRC, they were already able to check if you were mostly repeating yourself (like 75% or so) was identical, you'd get a /kick. And we're talking 10 years+ ago now, so I'm assuming things got more advanced now, well I certainly hope so anyway

Phantax · May 2014

Commonpain wrote: »

@ZOS May I make a suggestion?

No ! ! !

Just kidding, but it does feel sometimes like that's Zenimax's attitude....lol

Monyan · May 2014

I agree the chat shouldn't be limited. Normal honest users shouldn't feel punished because of the stupid bots. But your ideas are mostly fine. Especially now, when bots can spawn with unnatural tempo. I saw yesterday like freshly spawning bots was came down from the ceiling, then was standing a while and was vanishing in a wall. 1-2 bots per minute! I was able to report just a few.

pronkg · May 2014

Although I like the way you're thinking. This will only slow down their progress instead of solving the actual problem.

Raising the droprate is okay if you'd ask me. Items will be worth more yes but sold less frequent so their income will probably be the same. The rarity of those items adds to the fun in game. It just ended this ridiculous login in and out farming from legit players.

However this botting will always have a negative effect on the players and developers. All obvious solutions come with other problems.

michaelpatrickjonesnub18_ESO · May 2014

Shut the game down.

Hire some people that know what they are doing.

Launch the game again.

Artemiisia · May 2014

lol 5 min replies in zones

so when I ask a Q there, and get the response, I cant even say thx before 5 min are gone, yeah thats not gonna happen

but hey love the creative thinking, they just need some tweaking

Noswell · May 2014

dawnhawk wrote: »

Only being able to talk if you had the "talking stick" back at summer camp.

Now THIS idea I like! Have a little open pvp area in each zone where you can claim the Talking Stick for 15 minutes. I bet it would be the perfect way to integrate the RP crowd into PvP

Chatoyancy · May 2014

1. Captcha for character creation -- not a bad idea! I would be okay with this.

2. I don't think the tutorial thing would help much. Would slow them down a little, but they can just make a bot that bots them through the tutorial -- doesn't take that long to complete. And this would punish legitimate players who like alts (I have four right now, and my main is only level 34, I think). I don't mind redoing the tutorial over and over, but I know some do.

3. They can just bot to level up to the mailing level, and it would be punishing legitimate players.

4. Yeah, this would make /z chat useless.

I don't have an opinion either way about the droprate (I'm bad with game economics), but increasing the droprate would decrease the price. However, they'd still farm it -- or find something else to farm instead.

Xnemesis · May 2014

I agree with somethings. A change to character creation or deletion is a must. Make the starter zones mandatory for any players under vet rank 2 because it's possible to be vet 1 before finishing the main quest line. Reduce the dependance on gold by reducing the costs for repairs, horses, respects, and selling fees. They should implement a better way to catch spammers in zone chat selling gold, revamp the report a player menu, restrict the ability to teleport to other players if you haven't physically unlocked the closest wayshrine, and increase the drop rates for rare motifs and food recipies. These are just a few changes that would really go a long way. If you couple this with a punk buster/warden type system, and in-game gm activity the quality of life would drastically improve in game.