Have the bots won?

waylander48 · May 2014

Yes

they are winning in my book

they changed the public dungeons which stopped them farming bosses but they just switched to farming the mobs in there.

also forced the bots above ground into quest areas farming mobs I did the southern beacon quest chain and the queen quest line in aldermeri today both areas had chains of bots running round killing all the mobs.

which all in all makes the levelling of chars a bit off as you don't get to kill anything for the little xp they give.

Loxy37 · May 2014

No

Yes. They won the instant the game went live. ESO has some very bad game design decisions that will have to be reversed if we want to see any dent in the bots. Examples of bad design are: No level locked areas or quests, Gold is the primary currency and tradeable, Horse cost a lot of gold, collision and detections are client side and not server side (See 747 bots and heads sticking out the ground bots), high ticket mats cannot be gotten via a earned/bound currency, none random spawn locations for mats and I can think of many more.

Zenimax, unless they reverse some of the above will always be in damage control mode, any of the above changes would hurt all of us to some extent.

Oh and by bad game design decisions means that those decisions can be exploited via bots, what did they expect would happen!

lavendercat · May 2014

No

ozgod22_eso wrote: »

Even WoW had bot problems for years. At one point during Burning Crusade I remember seeing gold sellers "advertise" their websites by coming up with dead gnome bodies spelling out the website in all major cities in the game.

i remember that !! lol :P

kewl · May 2014

Yes

Jarvius wrote: »

When they change boss loot tables the small dungeons and amend the loot percentage in drawers, chests, etc. the bots already have won some battles.

If then the Bots go outside and play in i.e. Coldharbor and run around in circles in groups of 5 players ranging between level 44 and vet 1 (even that they had reported some time ago already), the bots again have won some battles.

When the bots fly around Bangkorai in large amounts, doing the delivery-quests, they have won a battle.

This.

nerevarine1138 · May 2014

No

By most of your definitions, the bots have won in pretty much every MMO ever. We should probably all just disconnect our PCs from the internet and go live in a convent.

silent88b14_ESO · May 2014

No

Brunhilde has not yet sung her Aria. I don't think the devs were ready for the opportunistic anarchists, the conscienceless entrepreneurs, or the competing saboteurs. That doesn't mean the war is over. Remember Pearl Harbor.

It does make me consider disconnecting my programmable game pad in case a countermeasure turns me into a collateral damage casualty.

Psychotius · May 2014

No

I'm going to say no. It is much too early in the life of this game to definitively say whether Zeni can fix this or not. I'm holding out hope that, soon, there will be a massive exodus of the bot characters. The biggest question here is:

Are the developers at Zenimax smarter than the bot developers?

This question takes much longer than a couple of months to properly explore, much less answer.

Urnbak · May 2014

YES, although i'm seeing less bots but i'm getting lots of in-game emails from goldsellers, and chat gold sellers.

GW2 don't get any goldsellers coz you can buy in-game gold via the shop,
and one game i can't remember the name, when you want to delete a charcter it takes 5 days,
they could also remove the value of farmable items ore/herbs etc so the farmers can't sell them to vendors, which you can make lots of money doing.

I've been playing MMO's for about 13 years and this is the worse i've ever seen it,
so yes they are winning.

Catches_the_Sun · May 2014

Yes

I am surprised to see so many of you voted "No" on this. It is true that bots are no longer camping dungeon bosses. It is also true that once you get into Veteran content, there are no bots. But if you think Zenimax has "won", I'm assuming you haven't been to "Botharbour" lately, or you haven't seen their new tricks.

Go to Stonefalls and look at the jute harvesting bots that are always there. Go right outside Davon's Watch at the spirit questing area & look at the bot train there. Go to Shadowfen and look at the speedhacking templar biting jabs spamming bots there in questing areas. On the Shadowfen issue, they did exactly what I feared they would do....they figured out an area where quest phasing makes them hidden to a large % of the playerbase. They are still there, but once the players advance the quest, the bots will ALWAYS be in the opening phase of it (i.e. the "never picked up the quest" phase). Go to Riften and watch the speedhacking sliding bots in town, a constant train of bots doing the in-town quest...and the same goes for Windhelm, albeit on a little bit lesser scale.

Just because Zenimax has forced the bots to adjust, does not mean that they have won. They went from hacking locations on the client to harvest jute nodes to exploiting the respawn times of the nodes themselves. They went from camping dungeon bosses to running bot trains in overland questing areas, using phasing to their advantage in the process. I wonder how many instances of The Rift & Eastmarch could be consolidated if not for the dozens of bots in Riften & Windhelm doing town quests.

On another note...if my "Raw Materials" & "Item Purchased" spam mails are any indication, they also seem to have a huge supply of Daedric Motifs. Since they're not in veteran content, where do you suppose these are coming from? Duping?

sinjak · May 2014

Yes

AlienSlof wrote: »

I've voted yes for now - hoping I will be proved wrong.

Right now though, the bot situation is horrendous. They steal assets that we legitimate players want making it doubly difficult to progress - especially crafting. Sadly, they're just the symptom - if people didn't cheat, there would be no market out there.

I will never understand cheating in games. Why even play a game at all if one is too lazy to actually PLAY it? Why not just watch others play it on youtube or something? I play games to PLAY them, to enjoy my progression in them, to enjoy exploring. I've been playing every day since the 5 day early start and have yet to get a character to veteran level. I'm too busy enjoying the game - or trying to. I love this game, I want to keep on loving it and watching it evolve. I want my ridable guar! Etc, etc!

The bots and spammers are seriously spoiling that for me the moment they affect MY game, either by stealing nodes I want, or by spamming my game mail.

Alien I couldn't agree more and I hope that players that buy gold are being banned as fast is gold sellers and bots.

Savinder · May 2014

Yes

Had to vote yes.
The bots "won" the moment the game was programmed with all the security holes and lack of client-data verification that allows them to fly, clip through geometry and outright teleport between points.

pknecron · May 2014

Yes

david271749 wrote: »

Feel free to explain why you voted yes or no below.

Yes, because Zeni isn't doing enough to combat them while they work on a more permanent solution. If they are working on a back-end fix like they say, then there needs to be a GM presence in all the zones 24/7. Players see hundreds of bots but GMs show up for a few minutes in the evening to try an catch them.

THAT ISN'T ENOUGH!

nerevarine1138 · May 2014

No

pknecron wrote: »

david271749 wrote: »

Feel free to explain why you voted yes or no below.

Yes, because Zeni isn't doing enough to combat them while they work on a more permanent solution. If they are working on a back-end fix like they say, then there needs to be a GM presence in all the zones 24/7. Players see hundreds of bots but GMs show up for a few minutes in the evening to try an catch them.

THAT ISN'T ENOUGH!

And yet it's all that can be done, unless you want a GM (this isn't their main job, by the way) to stand around all day in the same area waiting to hit bots like some ridiculous game of global whack-a-mole. That does nothing to fix the issue, and the developers are only ever going to be able to react to the next move the bot designers make.

The problem with this thread is that ZO can't "beat" the bots. The only people who can do that are the players. That would be us. Because the only reason these things exist in the game is because we tolerate players who buy gold.

alanspurlock_ESO · May 2014

Yes

pavelcherepanskyrwb17_ESO wrote: »

I think they haven't. Lately I've stopped seeing as many bots as there were before.

1% lost somewhere! Yes - 46%, No - 53%

I thought so too... until I spotted a train of 15 bots flying in the air and under the map at light speed.

Its funny, cause you walk up to some ore, just before you can mine it, a damn head pops up from under the map, mines the ore, then speeds away at the speed of sound lol. Then can freely walk through ANY object in the game now.

Lodestar · May 2014

Yes

Dita wrote: »

Looking at the results now, feels like 49% - accepted the truth, and 51% - still in denial.

Well, maybe they just feel bots may be ahead, but, not won yet as tide may turn. Or perhaps that it is not such a big deal for them personally to impact their fun. Both are valid opinions and I can respect that.

But, I have to admit this was only a minor nuisance for me until last week or so. And I have not even seen the superbots display their incredible powers yet, as I was away this weekend.

And seeing as how this may have resulted in loot drops being affected to combat this, then yes, they are winning. And it is impacting my fun and therefore value for money.

reggielee wrote: »

i voted no, as its not the bots the problem but cheating players. People seem to think its some vague gold farmer running most of these bots but its that player next to you in pvp, standing in epic gear trash talking you. He used scripts bought off web sites to powel lvl his alts, farm epic mats so he can have the best gear. Its that pvp guild full of supposedly leet players all in epic gear and with a stable of vet 10 char trash talking and ruining pvp with their exploits. Its those players who tell others to quit whining and kick others out of groups for not having epic gear or who spam l2p in forums.

so no, the bots didnt win, but the lame impulse driven short term attention span loser player who may win by driving off real players.

Yes, but we have seen a majority of these players with names like a cat walked across a keyboard. Those are not the ones we see trash talking in PvP.

abuniffpreub18_ESO · May 2014

Yes

Anybody else getting mail on their personal email accounts. I don't mean ingame email I mean the email you use everyday. If so how did they get my address, are they hacking the game for personal info ?.

Dusty5 · May 2014

No

Bots won the war? no not yet but we do need support from the ESO team.The enemy has found an active defense in the ESO team and they work hard to keep the game clean.So they have adapted and formed new tactics so we need new defense tools.IMO the report tool needs a new 1 stroke report/screenshot ability to handle the new speedboat/group train attacks.There are 3 new class of hacks I have seen in use..underground/flying and the 4 or 12 man speed train that eats entire sections of the map taking both resource nods and all npc spawns.Together we can win this if we have the tools to help each other out.

RianaTheBosmer · May 2014

Yes

I think they need to hire outside help, someone who can help them set up security in their game. It doesn't seem like they can do this themselves.

nerevarine1138 · May 2014

No

abuniffpreub18_ESO wrote: »

Anybody else getting mail on their personal email accounts. I don't mean ingame email I mean the email you use everyday. If so how did they get my address, are they hacking the game for personal info ?.

No, they are not pulling your personal info from the game. ZO (like every other company) is required by law to report any compromise on their end that could even potentially lead to your data being seen.

Spam email goes to a lot of email addresses. I've gotten spam email from WoW gold-sellers on an address I never even associated with the game.

Lodestar · May 2014

Yes

hauke wrote: »

i haven t seen any bots in most places level 30+

Until a few days ago neither had I. Then I saw a group of them in Greenshade.

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

abuniffpreub18_ESO wrote: »

Anybody else getting mail on their personal email accounts. I don't mean ingame email I mean the email you use everyday. If so how did they get my address, are they hacking the game for personal info ?.

No, they are not pulling your personal info from the game. ZO (like every other company) is required by law to report any compromise on their end that could even potentially lead to your data being seen.

Spam email goes to a lot of email addresses. I've gotten spam email from WoW gold-sellers on an address I never even associated with the game.

Ah yes, me too and I never played WoW except for a few weeks on and off in Vanilla, and again during BC. And likewise I think games I never played.

Oh another one as well, telling me my WoW account was suspended and NCSoft account was suspended or something like that.

Rotherhans · May 2014

Yes

The client was obviously programmed with the closed architecture of consoles in mind.
Thus on the PC it´s like shooting fish in the barrel for any half-competent bot programmer/cracker.

abuniffpreub18_ESO · May 2014

Yes

Ok, I'm confused here. I sent a copy of the email to ESO. Their response was:

The message that you have attached is indeed a message from our forums alerting you that you received a message from another forum user. This does mean that the gold advertiser does not have any of your personal or contact information. We are sorry for the confusion this has caused.

Here is the link from the message I received:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/messages/17853#45604

So they are telling me it's ok to buy gold ?. Am I missing something here ?.

Reivax · May 2014

No

They haven't won, I find them kind of amusing. I watch them sometimes and figure out their little "routes" and once I get a feel for it, I follow same route but in opposite direction as them and kill everything just before they get to it. Childish? maybe, but it gets me laughing whenever I do it.

I think the only real time they honestly ruined my experience was in Winterhold doing the footrace quest, and the quest where you search weapon caches all over town. They were literally everywhere in that one, like one after the other, and kind of spoiled my fun.

lavendercat · May 2014

No

Dusty5 wrote: »

4 or 12 man speed train that eats entire sections of the map taking both resource nods and all npc spawns.Together we can win this if we have the tools to help each other out.

wtf ?! i havent seen anything like that. that sounds terrible.

god i hate them.

Laura · May 2014

No

Rotherhans wrote: »

The client was obviously programmed with the closed architecture of consoles in mind.

except that it wasn't. A lot of people were testing before they announced consoles. one of the reasons they are taking so long to get it on the console is because the client simply won't work on it.

I agree it is frustrating but its usually a good idea to know what you are talking about before you post. Could you make the argument that they are incompetent? Sure.

I guess all the devs for all the MMOs I have played were too and they were also made for consoles. I still see bots in WoW... (yes I still play WoW) I see bots in EQ and EQ2. I think the reason you see so many is because its a megaserver and depending on the zone you will see all of what would normally be spread around many servers.

ZOS_JasonI · May 2014

Hey there, @abuniffpreub18_ESO. No, gold spamming and purchasing is not allowed at any time. This message was simply to inform you that you did not receive an email from the gold spammer. Rather, the email was sent as a notification that you received a forum private message. You can adjust your forum notification settings here. We hope this helps clarify.

xmistidawnb14_ESO · May 2014

Yes

Yes every low dungeon public one, especially crows nest is full of bots on follow. all connected doing same actions over an over. I HATE how they use Raw Material and Item Sold in the subject lines now to spam our mails. IT really needs to be fixed

JJDrakken · May 2014

Yes

I also love how they limited Motif drops, to penalize the honest folks. While a large portion of peeps duped the hell out of them, before motif drop nerfs. Even then they are finding ways to continue the duping.

Since playing. 3 toons now(VR1, 36, 28). I have never once found one Motif. All motifs I got on my 1 Armorer/Clothier were gifts or bought by me.(I still don't have Breton, Barbaric, Daedric, Ancient Elf, whatever other high lvl one is)

It's ridiculous.

thorntk421 · May 2014

No

The game is what? 6 weeks out of the gate. It's way to early to say bots have won.
I will say that the bots are out of control at this time though. The last couple days resource nodes have been few and far between.

freakasso · May 2014

No

Thalmar wrote: »

freakasso wrote: »

Thalmar wrote: »

Yesterday i got an email stating i got a warning because i used bad language in zone chat, and since the start of the game i used zone chat 2 times and one time was reading "xxxxxx bots". I can easily assume someone reported me for calling bots names, so it is definitely bots have won since they are running freely around, taking nods, flying, underground and frustrated players getting warning because calling them names. It is a big win for bots.

The bots won because YOU did not manage to use acceptable words to describe your anger...? They did not win.. they're just "loosing it" slower then you...

@freakasso And you always needs to say something against other's remarks because you have no valid opinion to make. It was my experience and i have rights to write it, i didn't ask your precious opinion about my post. It is a poll, you give your opinion either side, you can not change my mind or it is not making your point right and mine wrong because you think you find a great answer. Vote your poll, make the others hear your opinion, you don't need to respond to others.

And yet another time your anger took over didn't it...? FYI I wrote two posts, the first being my opinion and the second was me replying to your post.
I did not mean to insult you in any way, I am really sorry if I did. I was just under the impression that people comment on each others comments in a Forum. I was not trying to change your mind either. Just made a funny remark...
Once again, sorry if you felt insulted and have a nice and calm day.