Anti-BOT measures/suggestions

ElliottXO · May 2014

Hi ZOS,

Face the facts: to fight bots efficiently you will have to break immersion and cut down players conveniences. You cannot make it right for everyone. You will have to make a sacrifice. You have lost the battlefield and you are not going to win it back by "playing fair".

[1.] Restore mandatory Coldharbour tutorial and/or mandatory starter islands
Additionally you can add random immersive "security questions" that require human interaction throughout the tutorial. Or some mandatory "lock-pick similar" events.

[2.] Disable mail/banking system before on the starter islands
There is no bank on the starter islands anyway I think? Just helps to prevent abuse in case the bots discover some new way to profit from it.

[3.] Limit character creation/deletion to e.g. 8 per day
This will take out the bots that are created to hand in one single quest and perhaps take load off the servers. I could imagine if some bot program creates 120 characters per hour it might take some server resources leading to higher loading times or lag.

[4.] Rehaul the gathering system by adding a lock-pick similar game
E.g. reduce the amount of nodes by 50%, but double the amount of materials you gather from it. You find a node, play the (annoying) mini-game and receive double the amount of mats to make up for the additional time you have to invest. The mini-game could be similar to the lock-pick game, but maybe just 3 pillars instead of 5. For mining it could be a pick-axe that you have to bring down to an iron ore, just like lock-picking.

[5.] Add random elite mobs that seldom spawn instead of the normal mobs
If you have a pack of 4 bots running circles and they hit the elite mob that spawned instead of the normal one and the 4 bots get their ass handed = bingo. Of course this would not work with a pack of 20 bots, but it would also not harm normal players since they can team up or just skip them. Those elite mobs could also "de-spawn" after 10 minutes or so.

[6.] Add diminishing returns on mobs/bosses (ZOS is working on this?)
Diminishing does not equal a timer! It means that if you farm the same kind of wolf mob for more than 30-60 minutes, then it should decrease drops. This will hurt bots, and this will hurt legit farmers. On the other hand I find it stupid that there are legit VR10 players running circles in a VR1 public dungeon for several hours farming wolf packs. I wouldn't mind if they have to move on to the next location after 30-60 minutes because of diminishing returns.

Especially the first 3 measures are easy to implement and would probably hit the bots very hard in the beginning. They will probably be able to bypass the lock-pick system at a certain point, but ZOS could test this in advance and put one of their own coders who might be able to contribute some knowledge what bots can or cannot do.

Please be informed that I do understand that these measures would be annoying or limiting to some players and I fully agree! The question is how much inconvenience you are willing to take in order to reduce the absurd amount of bots.

Or they could add Punkbuster and see how it plays out? But I don't see that happening very soon, so I am for the measures 1-3 and immediate implementation.

Dita · May 2014

Or - shut down the game, return the money and subscription we paid you.

ElliottXO · May 2014

Dita wrote: »

Or - shut down the game, return the money and subscription we paid you.

I'll keep that in mind as measure number 7 in case the first 6 fail ;-)

Crassius · May 2014

I've got a far easier suggestion. Read to the end if you please...

Create an option to report 'bot'. Just 'bot' nothing else. No other screens just that's it and done. Radial wheel to bot icon and done.

After a pre-determined number of reports that character is moved to a quarantine version of the megaserver. This is identical in every way to the regular game except the only characters there are ones that have been reported. They can already do this with 'overflow servers' so it should be easy to implement.

This way bots continue to harvest away with all the other bots, nobody "wrongly accused" is banned - they continue to play/chat/quest - and ZoS gets a nice environment to investigate and purge the proper game of these machines.

That's it. Simple and effective in my opinion.

Think about it, you see a train. Report the leader. The others don't have a locomotive and end up standing still. We don't see legions of flying/questing bots. They are doing it still but away from the real gamers. Nobody gets penalised in the slightest and everybody gets what they want.

Let's use the technology we have, not reinvent the wheel. Make this happen ZoS - It will work.

Baraz · May 2014

Scripts can be created to do mini-games, so I don't think that option is worth the effort.

Nodes spawning quickly in the same location non stop has always been something that can be exploited in any game. The nodes should be much more random (both for time and location).

Chomppa · May 2014

People shouldn't be affected by bots so I say no to diminishing returns , punish the bots not the player . What they should do is copy Final Fantasy ARR and actually just redo the whole game .

ElliottXO · May 2014

Crassius wrote: »

I've got a far easier suggestion. Read to the end if you please...

Create an option to report 'bot'. Just 'bot' nothing else. No other screens just that's it and done. Radial wheel to bot icon and done.

After a pre-determined number of reports that character is moved to a quarantine version of the megaserver. This is identical in every way to the regular game except the only characters there are ones that have been reported. They can already do this with 'overflow servers' so it should be easy to implement.

This way bots continue to harvest away with all the other bots, nobody "wrongly accused" is banned - they continue to play/chat/quest - and ZoS gets a nice environment to investigate and purge the proper game of these machines.

That's it. Simple and effective in my opinion.

Think about it, you see a train. Report the leader. The others don't have a locomotive and end up standing still. We don't see legions of flying/questing bots. They are doing it still but away from the real gamers. Nobody gets penalised in the slightest and everybody gets what they want.

Let's use the technology we have, not reinvent the wheel. Make this happen ZoS - It will work.

That won't help against the bots that only exist 60 seconds get deleted after they hand in their quest.

Besides, what do you do if I tell my guild to report you?

ttwinklerub17_ESO · May 2014

it be far better if the report bot did a 3D plot/map save and Identified the positions and names of each in the plot range in a file

then we wouldn't have to identify names and they could identify flying and underground instantly

it would also be a good idea to tag the highlighted bot(the one you tagged) with a tag and record 10-15 mins of gameplay during that time as a log file

then can can review it - it would also let them see the others (if we have a bot train) and they can tag and watch them or just ban them too

It be a good idea to remind people not to follow bot trains too long - as they might get caught up with the ban

as far as clipping goes - underground should be easy to sort out - put underground test/range barrier - that the server software test players position against known clipping range

this would catch people who go thru walls and ground and tag them for a 10min log file
if the player/bot exhibits continued going thru rock and ground - they can ban

Speedhack - there is a method to test last position against current position - every interval - if you go faster than what zeni designed - a 10 min log file is made and you are automatically suspended - pending further review

flying - only solution is to test TC flag - if server detect player has no TC flag then 10 min log (video) and suspension pending review
but this would solve underground too

resource and roaming battle bots
heuristic analysis of player actions - repeated patterns

an put a limit on characters per day created

Crassius · May 2014

ElliottXO wrote: »

Crassius wrote: »

I've got a far easier suggestion. Read to the end if you please...

Create an option to report 'bot'. Just 'bot' nothing else. No other screens just that's it and done. Radial wheel to bot icon and done.

After a pre-determined number of reports that character is moved to a quarantine version of the megaserver. This is identical in every way to the regular game except the only characters there are ones that have been reported. They can already do this with 'overflow servers' so it should be easy to implement.

This way bots continue to harvest away with all the other bots, nobody "wrongly accused" is banned - they continue to play/chat/quest - and ZoS gets a nice environment to investigate and purge the proper game of these machines.

That's it. Simple and effective in my opinion.

Think about it, you see a train. Report the leader. The others don't have a locomotive and end up standing still. We don't see legions of flying/questing bots. They are doing it still but away from the real gamers. Nobody gets penalised in the slightest and everybody gets what they want.

Let's use the technology we have, not reinvent the wheel. Make this happen ZoS - It will work.

That won't help against the bots that only exist 60 seconds get deleted after they hand in their quest.

Besides, what do you do if I tell my guild to report you?

So short-sighted. I never said it was foolproof. There is no magic wand to end it straight away. My way gets the main offenders out of the environment which is what annoys the genuine players.

No it doesn't stop the 60 second bots as you call them but that's a design decision for ZoS. They just change those quests to award XP not cash and then you won't see them.

I see you also went with the old 'reporting can be abused' line. Well yes, it can but I tend to err on the side of human nature not being wholly stupid and the fact that I deliberately left the number of reports open to interpretation. I never put a number on it because I knew somebody would play this card. You get to carry on playing while you go through the appeals process. Again, the details are something for ZoS to work out.

Dita · May 2014

How about we get UN Security Council involved ? There is an invasion after all . . .

etherin77 · May 2014

how about a dedicated GM on as apposed to once every few days might make a diff... i myself would be more than happy to pay my sub fee's if i knew i had the opportunity to nuke them every so often (mind you there would have to be quite a few stipulations to having said power, and equal consequences if abused)

JunkyardWolf · May 2014

I just want a side by side and some Rocksalt to shoot them bots in the butt as they run by