Bullying/Harassment and Cheating/Exploiting in Imperial City

Vajax · February 18

Hi everyone,

Could I please have some assistance with an issue that I experienced in Imperial City? I submitted a player report ticket but they just gave me a generic response saying that the players broke no rules and that I could appeal the decision but they do not respond to any communication. The issue was as follows:

I entered Imperial City on my Ebonheart character to get Tel Var from the wandering bosses in the districts and was fighting with other Ebonheart players doing the same thing. Shortly a few of those players changed to Daggerfall characters to kill me so that their remaining friends on Ebonheart players would get a larger percentage of the Tel Var from the boss. They never attacked their friends on the different faction. There was nothing I could do as I was outnumbered. Even if I was in stealth, their friends on Ebonheart would tell them where I was so they always knew where I was.

Therefore I changed to a Daggerfall character so that their Daggerfall characters could not attack me. Upon seeing I was on a Daggerfall character, they changed to their Aldmeri characters and continued the same behaviour. They would also revive me to allow their friends on a different faction to immediately attack me upon revival to get my Tel Var. Naturally I stopped accepting their revives after that.

They did this repeatedly across two full days and they always seemed to be there whenever I went into Imperial City across different times during those days. They clearly were doing this to take control of Imperial City to farm Tel Var and to prevent anyone else from sharing in the Tel Var. I reported this as both Cheating/Exploiting and Harassment and Bullying. I provided the full details to Zenimax including pictures and I also had videos so there was plenty of evidence. However they chose to do nothing.

Can anyone assist with this in regards to what I should do to take the report further? Thanks for your time.

Thumbless_Bot · February 18

There is more than one instance of IC.

There are also ways to farm tel var without leaving the sewers.

You could also join and or create a large group to farm tel var.

You have options here. None of which require other players to change their M.O.

Vajax · February 18

Yes we all have options to avoid other people in breach of ToS but it is not fair for players to have to go out of their way to take options just to avoid such players. It would be a different matter if it was just a group of opposing players in a different faction controlling the Imperial City as it is intended for different factions to fight and compete. It is an entirely different matter for the same group of players to change some players' factions to deliberately target people not in their friend group while their friend group reveals their locations. Cyrodiil campaigns have campaigns where you cannot change alliances for a while to prevent such behaviour.

In any case, I am not interested in arguing this, this is meant to be a section of the forums intended to help and I was seeking answers about how to get someone from customer service to respond and investigate such as via appeals.

SeaGtGruff · February 18

Personally, if there were an alliance-locked campaign for Imperial City, as there is for Cyrodiil, I would choose that campaign to minimize the chance of running into this type of behaviorr. But I also don't think it would completely eliminate the problem, since the players who are engaging in this type of behavior could still coordinate with their friends in the other alliances.

I wasn't playing ESO back when the original version of Imperial City was around-- the one where (as I understand it) players couldn't even enter Imperial City unless their alliance had claimed emperorship of Cyrodiil-- but I wonder how that original design might have impacted the gameplay in Imperial City. The way I imagine how it might have been is that the alliance that claimed emperorship would go into Imperial City, try to hunt down and clear out any players from the other alliances who were still in Imperial City, and then basically have free run of the districts and sewers, allowing those players to farm Tel Var and-- perhaps more importantly-- complete the district quests and zone storyline without having to worry as much about getting killed by enemy players, at least until the next alliance claimed emperorship and gained access to Imperial City.

The way it is now, it seems like the original PvE aspects of Imperial City have been shoved into the backseat such that PvP is now the predominant mode. Yes, the districts and sewers were always PvP-enabled zones, but the PvE quests and storyline was were also an important part of Imperial City. Not only that, but Tel Var is not generated by PvP gameplay; it is generated by PvE gameplay. The Tel Var which players "earn" through PvP kills was not actually generated by PvP.

Anyway, I wonder how many newer players have actually played through Imperial City's storyline after the original design was changed to favor PvP gameplay at the expense of PvE gameplay?

Major_Mangle · February 18

Not sure what platform you play on but you can find similar behaviour in NOCP IC on PCEU. There you've entire guilds who treat IC and telvar farm like a 9-5 and it's known that some of these guilds are involved in RMT (Real Money Trading) and is trading telvar (and goods you trade for telvar) for IRL money. The lenghts these people will go to prevent other people outside their circle to play in IC is insane tbh.
You can for sure report these people for "matchfixing" or similar behaviour if you've genuine proof of shady interactions.

Thumbless_Bot · February 19

Vajax wrote: »

Yes we all have options to avoid other people in breach of ToS but it is not fair for players to have to go out of their way to take options just to avoid such players. It would be a different matter if it was just a group of opposing players in a different faction controlling the Imperial City as it is intended for different factions to fight and compete. It is an entirely different matter for the same group of players to change some players' factions to deliberately target people not in their friend group while their friend group reveals their locations. Cyrodiil campaigns have campaigns where you cannot change alliances for a while to prevent such behaviour.

In any case, I am not interested in arguing this, this is meant to be a section of the forums intended to help and I was seeking answers about how to get someone from customer service to respond and investigate such as via appeals.

ToS? You said yourself zos found this to not be the case in so many words. Just because you do not like something doesnt mean it is against ToS.

Blood_again · February 19

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I wasn't playing ESO back when the original version of Imperial City was around-- the one where (as I understand it) players couldn't even enter Imperial City unless their alliance had claimed emperorship of Cyrodiil-- but I wonder how that original design might have impacted the gameplay in Imperial City. The way I imagine how it might have been is that the alliance that claimed emperorship would go into Imperial City, try to hunt down and clear out any players from the other alliances who were still in Imperial City, and then basically have free run of the districts and sewers, allowing those players to farm Tel Var and-- perhaps more importantly-- complete the district quests and zone storyline without having to worry as much about getting killed by enemy players, at least until the next alliance claimed emperorship and gained access to Imperial City.

Well, that old IC wasn't so heaven-like

AFAIR there were no emperorship requirements. Just have your 2 of 6 emp keeps held by your alliance and you're free to enter the IC. But well, making an emperor was meant to cut two other alliances access to IC for some time, it is correct.

Also cutting the entrance didn't mean your alliance had the whole IC for their own needs.
Every player, ally or enemy, who had already entered IC, was free to stay and play there. Got killed? You res on IC base anyway, independently IC entrance is cut or not.
The only advantage you got by cutting their access was: your alliance had a chance to overwelm with more players entered, theirs had not anymore.
In that term, a few experienced gankers near the enemy side entrance in Cyro could have almost the same effect on the IC population balance. And they did

Another trick with the population was the fact that IC players counted as a part of Cyro campaign population.
As a result, too many people in IC meant less keep protection in Cyro. That was followed by the entrance cut and over a half of campaign players kept staying in IC cos "we won't get back, if we leave"

So the entrance cut sometimes didn't mean the alliance minority in IC but the opposite.
The funny times.

Zodiarkslayer · February 22

Don't you love ESO PvP? These Stories only happen here. 😆

But joking aside. ESO PvP has one of the most exploitable PvP setups in gaming.
Faction choice should be accountwide, not per character. So many problems could be solved with that. But alas. At this point nothing substantial will ever change.

Vajax · February 22

Thanks to everyone who took the time to provide helpful responses. I still have heard nothing from Zenimax, I am unsure of how long they usually take.

SummersetCitizen · February 22

This happened to me, but worse. The guy harassed me, whispered toxic messages and then had his friends whisper on his behalf when I blocked him. They did the whole faction swap games on me as well.

No action was taken against the player or his co-conspirators.

cuddles_with_wroble · February 23

Congratulations you have just learned one of the many reasons no one goes into ic

Vajax · February 23

SummersetCitizen wrote: »

This happened to me, but worse. The guy harassed me, whispered toxic messages and then had his friends whisper on his behalf when I blocked him. They did the whole faction swap games on me as well.

No action was taken against the player or his co-conspirators.

I am sorry to hear that you had that experience. Not sure what more a player needs to do to get banned since that also sounds like harassment and exploiting.

Veinblood1965 · February 23

cuddles_with_wroble wrote: »

Congratulations you have just learned one of the many reasons no one goes into ic

Yes but now that it is being changed to not allow porting out to Cyrodiill and back people will flock to IC......

rhythmsuji · March 8

Vajax wrote: »

Thanks to everyone who took the time to provide helpful responses. I still have heard nothing from Zenimax, I am unsure of how long they usually take.

I am unsure of the comments claiming this isn't TOS.

This behavior is very clearly and widely accepted as exploiting/cheating and being unsportsmanlike zero integrity game-play in essentially every competitive multiplayer.

Now, as to if this is punishable or enforced at all in ESO? I have not actually seen evidence of that.

I would never participate in such behavior, cheating is anti fun to me and does damage to games and their community. But I know for a fact it's something people have done in ESO for a long time, it's been widely reported for many years.
Please report back with any feedback you get from a Dev please as I am curious as well. I have not reported this specific issue myself before.

WerewolfMoonHunter · March 8

Vajax wrote: »

Hi everyone,

Could I please have some assistance with an issue that I experienced in Imperial City? I submitted a player report ticket but they just gave me a generic response saying that the players broke no rules and that I could appeal the decision but they do not respond to any communication. The issue was as follows:

I entered Imperial City on my Ebonheart character to get Tel Var from the wandering bosses in the districts and was fighting with other Ebonheart players doing the same thing. Shortly a few of those players changed to Daggerfall characters to kill me so that their remaining friends on Ebonheart players would get a larger percentage of the Tel Var from the boss. They never attacked their friends on the different faction. There was nothing I could do as I was outnumbered. Even if I was in stealth, their friends on Ebonheart would tell them where I was so they always knew where I was.

Therefore I changed to a Daggerfall character so that their Daggerfall characters could not attack me. Upon seeing I was on a Daggerfall character, they changed to their Aldmeri characters and continued the same behaviour. They would also revive me to allow their friends on a different faction to immediately attack me upon revival to get my Tel Var. Naturally I stopped accepting their revives after that.

They did this repeatedly across two full days and they always seemed to be there whenever I went into Imperial City across different times during those days. They clearly were doing this to take control of Imperial City to farm Tel Var and to prevent anyone else from sharing in the Tel Var. I reported this as both Cheating/Exploiting and Harassment and Bullying. I provided the full details to Zenimax including pictures and I also had videos so there was plenty of evidence. However they chose to do nothing.

Can anyone assist with this in regards to what I should do to take the report further? Thanks for your time.

Wow! I feel very sorry for you. I know how annoying loosing Tel Vars can be and the way that you got bullied here is just awful. I had similar situation years ago. During the guild event, my team was running for EP in IC Sewers. One of the guild members was with us on Discord, but couldn’t play with us because his only PvP character was in AD. We allowed him to hang out with us and this turned out to be mistake. Because while watching our stream and listening to our plans, he was sharing this info with his AD team so the could attack us and farm all the Tel Vars we got during the run. We managed to deal with situation due to numbers and fact that we had exp. players. After that the guy was kicked out from the guild and everyone who took part in the event blocked any form of communication with him.
In your situation… well the best solution I see is either keep reporting them every time when they do it to you or avoid them by changing campaigns. You can also tell out loud in zone chat what they are doing. It won’t probably stop them, but might create an backlash from other players.

tsaescishoeshiner · March 10

Not sure if anyone can help you have action taken against these players.

But you can be as annoying, difficult to kill, speedy, tanky, teleporty, high recovery as possible and waste their farm time running around the districts.

Make a bomber and just wait to catch them all off guard looting a boss. Perfectly valid gameplay.

Farm in the Sewers where they can't faction swap and reach you easily.

Learn how to fight the Sewer banner bosses in cramped, winding passages so that anyone who tries to join can't see what's happening and dies to mechanics.

If the group is on EP and you're not, play with a friend on EP who can kill you if the group comes around and keep your Tel Var from them.

Or join them sometimes? Maybe they're recruiting zerglings/healers.