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How to grief Bots?
godpuppet
Member Posts: 1,416
With Bots becoming an inherant irritation in this game, Ive been finding it more fun to try and find ways to grief or break these Bots then actually playing the game. Yeah im abit sad, I just know figuring out a way is going to end in an enduring amount of satisfaction!
So far ive tried:
Operation Do-Gooder!
- Report Bots via the Report Facility.
Problems:
- Bots not banned. Square root of FA achieved.
Operation Dragon Knight Pull!
- Using the pull ability repeatedly to pull the boss mob into terrain and/or towards lava. So that Bots follow get stuck or die.
Problems:
- Not many dungeons have lava.
- Boss mob returns after getting stuck.
- The bots just seem to spawn more bots to combat my nuisance and kill the mob faster then I can pull.
Operation Healer Aggro!
- Using a healer to pull tons of aggro onto the bots, forcing their stamina/magicka to constantly be low, stopping them using abilities against the boss mob. Eventually dieing, if not dieing outright from a full on train.
Problems:
- Surrounding players kill the mobs to help not knowing whats going on.
- Not enough mobs to train
- The bots just respawn after using their 1000's of collected soul gems.
Anyone else get anything to work?
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Comments
Running a dungeon the other night we ran into a collection of bots chilling just a DK chain pull away from the boss. Everytime the boss would spawn they would pull to their group and kill it. Apparently they did this for a while. It got to the point everyone just clumped onto the bots and killed the boss as it was pulled.
Finally 2 DKs came in and started yoinking the boss just as the bot pulled it, letting actual players kill it instead.
I guess whoever was running the collection of bots finally came back because one of them broke formation and kept pulling respawns over to the DKs I guess to try and train them or distract them. He/she did this a couple of times, dying each time because no one would help them. Finally after his 7th or 8th death the mobile one faded out and one by one the group of bots faded away.
We hung around for a few minutes waiting to see if they came back, but they never did. Went back in to the instance and the same 2 players were there watching people take out the boss, occasionally shouting "You're in a bot free zone".
Was kinda funny.
On another note, I was gathering wood in the outside Auridon when a bot spawned right on a node. I had just clicked on the spawn when she appeared, looted the wood and waited. I seriously think I broke her because she stood there for a while. I mean I ran off to find more wood, went afk for a minute to threaten the kids about staying in bed, came back and ran to the same spot. Sure enough, still standing there.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
All these bot stories are reminding me of the launch of L2.
Are bots really this rampant?
I got your Deliverance!
Where's my banjo?!!
Not so much anymore.
For a week there they were in pretty much every low level/mid level dungeon. As of Friday I ran into 1 dungeon bot group and Saturday 1 lonely farming bot. Now I could just have been lucky to have hit instances that were just vacant of bots, but the general consensus in AD chat has been a lack of botters aside from those spamming chat in the starter areas. Not sure on the other factions to be honest.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
I'm still new to the game, but I don't understand the need/desire to bot in a low level dungeon. You're going to out level that gear pretty quick. Unless I'm missing something just seems like a waste of time.
Are they bad in higher level dungeons?
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Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate.
FFA PvP.
The ONLY way players can effectively deal with Bots.
They aren't going to use the gear, just sell it.
Low level dungeons have the easiest bosses with relatively fast respawn rates, so bots congregate there. Enough kills over time add up to a lot of gold once they sell it. Their scripts are likely automated to teleport out to a vendor to sell everything once their inventories are full, then teleport back in to the dungeon. The scripts automatically attack the boss and any minions in the area, and then use autoloot.
Consider that any boss going 24/7 is going to acquire a lot of gold over time. What they acquire in any single fight isn't important.
ZOS needs to fix the exploits that allow teleporting (there are players using the hacks, too), eliminate autolooting, and limit the extent to which scripts can be used to automate bot actions.
But I don't see it happening. Maybe ZOS needs the subscriptions the botters pay for to stay afloat.
No, they don't exist in high level dungeons.
In fact, once you get into VR content the community changes quite a bit. No longer are Dolmens flooded with 30 people just insta killing everything, world bosses require groups and you'll actually wait for other people to show up to take out a public dungeon boss.
I have to say, VR mobs encourage grouping. A group of 3 mobs can make quick work of you, I routinely dismount and help people who are low on health and have pulled an extra mob or two. I've also had people save my bacon quite a few times. I dunno, it feels markedly different than 1-50 did.
I seldom agree with DMKano, but this time I agree 100% !
I believe the goldsellers are basically using "brute force" tactics in ESO atm, i.e. they're creating new accounts just as fast (possibly faster) than the detected ones can be banned. Each reported/detected account has to be investigated to make absolutely sure it's a bot before the final ban. That takes time. It takes maybe an hour to double-check the validity of an account, but only 5 mins to create the account, so quite easy to stay ahead of the banhammer.
I was watching an endless stream of prison-garbed L4 characters teleporting in to accept a quest from an NPC. Each one had a unique name, and they were appearing every 30 seconds or so. that quest was being done 120 times an hour at least by bots. That was just one instance and one quest giver, there's probably hundreds in existence on the megaserver at any given moment.
If one stolen credit card number costs the goldseller $2, the account bought with that cc number only has to generate $10 or $20 worth of sellable game currency/items to yield a handsome profit. Assuming that the entire account creation, character generation and ingame bot routine is all done with automated scripts, there is very little effort involved once the initial setup of the scripts are complete.
Very sophisticated game design is the only way to counter these scripted bots. You can only win by curing the disease, not by treating the symptoms.
Bots and gold sellers are generally a huge problem after release for any game. Hackers compromise fan sites (or use the usernames/pw's from their gold selling site, or create the fansites themselves...), then wait until the game releases and use the same username/password to attempt to gain access.
Once the accounts are compromised and banned, the hackers/gold sellers usually aren't left with as large a supply of accounts to use.
On topic though, the best way I've seen to grief bots is to go into a low level dungeon, find mobs with an AE attack, then stand in the middle of the bot pack and turtle up while all the low level bots die. Unfortunately, not all dungeons have AE mobs withing leash range of the boss.
Luckily however, this seems to be a problem that is mostly under control.
The above is my personal opinion. Anyone displaying a view contrary to my opinion is obviously WRONG and should STHU. (neener neener)
-The MMO Forum Community
Ignore the man behind the curtain, nothing to see here, we don't need to see his identification....move along. Man if you are going to try and disparage any thread that seems negative toward your game you could at least be more subtle. OP is at least trying to turn a negative into a positive.
went into 3 dungeons last night, 3 had bots in, thats 50%. I'd call that alot.
There may be less, but theres still too many.
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Just relaying what I saw during my time in game with my own eyes there Mr. Wizard.
-Prior story writer for MMORPG.com
I dont get why new MMOs dont get ahead of the curve on this. Have a team ready to look for and ban boters and gold sellers. Make a easy report system so players can help. Like right click name in chat to report. Glad they are getting things under wrap but I still dont get why this has to wait a month to be fixed in any MMO now days.