They are taking good camps and stealing pulls that path within X radius of them. That is very disruptive. I've had a hilarious run-in with bots in Empyr: when I pulled ph's for the named our group was hunting, an SK would run from over a hill, aggro my pulls and run away with them, without saying a word! Turned out there was a bot group on the other side of the hill, and our pulls were within their 'radius' even though they couldn't possibly see them. If you have enough DPS, you can even use this to your advantage: let the bots tank and debuff mobs for you, the xp and loot will be yours as long as you outdps them.
There's a bot group that sits in middle of Mearatas on Fv 24/7. They have been reported multiple times by multiple people. They were still there yesterday..
When people /report them are they following that up with a Petition? Might be a silly question and its rather ridiculous as a player you really have to do both to get a response. Would be amazing if Daybreak would just lower the hammer on this garbage and ban those accounts. Sure the population might take a hit but overall I think the player base would be a lot happier.
There must be more accounts using it than not or they would do something and botters tend to run loads of accounts
https://www.bandicam.com/ Download that, find these bots then video tape them for 10min or however long the "free" version lasts THEN create a petition and show Woebot/whoever is in charge the video + tell him about the bots. So many people claim to report bot groups and claim nothing is done about them but they're probably the same people that submit a ticket saying something like, "I saw a group of bots in Frontier mountains at the goblin camp, they've been there for days and don't respond to tells" - if that's all you say.... Nothing is going to get done. It's like reporting someone who trained you without any evidence you were even trained. If you go there, video tape the bots and then submit a ticket and say "I have proof this person is botting, here is a youtube video that I made showing you that this group is being 100% automated." Then that changes things. The GM will take action if you provide actual evidence and aren't just submitting a ticket whining about it. Sadly though, most people would rather just whine instead of do anything. Whining is easier and you get more virtue signaling points for it. Actually changing things takes effort.
It's not just EoK it's everywhere, EoK just happens to be extremely easy and free. Sathir? 99% camped by botters PL-ing people for RMT. The other 1% is either people trying to finish Hunter or a solo Necro. Chardok? That spot where there are 3 PHs in a small area and one of them drops a fairly nontragic augment.. you guessed it camped 24/7 by a (new to the server) non responsive bot team. Made doing Hunter even less fun than it was already. Mearatas? Centre camp in the base zone almost always taken by botters. It's so popular that the bot teams seem to have a rota in place. The bug with Mearatas picks doesn't seem a priority so again good luck getting any of the named that share that spot. Empyr? Not really sure what is the big draw here but there's always some about. One guy with about 12 boxes including multiple Mages and Beastlords (an impossible amount of redundancy you would think) managed to lag the entire zone for a couple of ticks when they all died at once. I did a /who to see what was up and the RIP just scrolled right off my screen. Naturally, I had to see what was up but found nothing but a huge pile of corpses on a path next to the spiders with no clue as to what had happened. All you can do is pretend they don't exist and if you need to get creative to get stuff done then so be it. I did chuckle to myself when a botter (in a really well known on FV "family" guild) sent me a /tell for a rotting TBL aug. Nope.
My experience with the empyr botters is that they have done 1 smoke trial to get into empyr and none of the characters are properly flagged and they certainly wouldn't be doing the progression for them to advance further into the expac, plus the zone is far more friendly to a botter than stratos. I think those 2 things is all it is. And yes, the lag in empyr is redic with the botters. Lots of staggering/grinding.
/report is just for chat. Bots don't talk. Petition is the way that gets a GM reply. Still, nothing is done.
Been there, done that. I've submitted petitions with videos of the bot groups. Always the same standard reply from GM Woebot. And nothing happens.
It'd be nice if DBG had balls and just stole/reverse-engineered the botting programs. I'm no attorney, but I doubt IP claims hold to the botting software as every time the players/developers of said software log in- they accept a EULA. DBG could take and incorporate the software into the game. Could enable power players and solo groupers to play as they do while blocking or adding elements in that make the AFK aspect of the programs unusable. There are a staggering amount of AFK bot groups on every server, it's not simply limited to FV. People who run their own group ++ keep the lights on. This game is 20+ years old. It's sad, but these AFK botters add longevity to the game. Don't ban them, don't strain this beautiful 20 year old game any further, add steps that make AFKing impossible. Keep money in the game.
Many of these bots are more than likely paid accounts. I'm not sure Daybreak will be too quick to shut them down. It's all about the $$.
Friendly reminder that none of this would be an issue with spawnable expeds. As a bonus, Daybreak could make money doing it. But apparently griefing and blocking is baked into their model, with Holly the Dolly Llama claiming that this toxic social interaction is the great benefit of playing this game. The great benefit of playing the game should be being able to play the game.
I'm curious what ngreth thinks about all this. As a dev (and not the project manager), he probably doesn't even get a say in the matter. I'm sure internally they've discussed this at length, and probably determined that it doesn't make financial sense to ban afk botters because there are simply too many of them and it would hurt profits. They can't exactly condone this behavior either, so they just ignore it. I don't blame them at all. They are a business and they make business decisions that make financial sense. My only concern is the integrity (and economy) of the game has been compromised. The fact that afk bots are absolutely everywhere and act with impunity is a testament to that statement. There is a guy selling 147 pyrilen flame in the bazaar right now. Ngreth, you can go to riftseekers sanctum and AE death touch the entire zone for days and probably not even have that many. I understand you give players the benefit of a doubt, but as a c++ dev, that isn't undefined behavior, that is a straight up DOS against the server. ...to add onto that point, all these AFK bots are probably wrecking havoc on your servers' cpu/ram etc. I'm sure you could save a significant of money on server resources if these players weren't constantly hammering away at them. Degraded performance and lag is probably already costing you subscriptions from legitimate players.
Just KS them if they're causing too much trouble? I don't really understand the big problem. I'm glad there's people farming items for the rest of us.
Just pull a couple dozen for yourself and his puller will surely steal them for you. Oh, when they die, make sure to be polite and offer them a revive.
I have heard that several devs for the program not to be named had multiple accounts banned after streaming on twitch.
Most of the time I just ignore it. Even so I have to admit it gets me down from time to time. Understand I work around it mostly, it is just the constant exposure to amoral and corrupt individuals is a real fantasy breaker. Like you are in a poker game with five other people and you are the only one not cheating. So many people just have no problem lying and violating the ToS on every level! I feel like I am riding a bicycle in the Tour de France whenever I play EQ. The worst part is the way they impose themselves on you. Specifically things like Truebox where there was a section of the population that thought what would be good for the game is an old fashioned grouping and personal interaction with other players. Frigging bot buffoons looked at it as an opportunity to cherry pick since they were willing to massively step up their level of cheating where your average cheater wouldn't go that far. Ditto for the whole RMT and 'power level my character' squads. I mean really! A group of people wants an honest server so lets go their and circumvent everything the players and DB games is trying to do. What the point? I mean do they sit their at their computer and it strokes their ego they managed to get a character to a level sooner then someone who didn't violate the ToS? Why oh why do you have to pollute everywhere possible? I mean can't there be a single spot in the game left untouched? Something very Gordon Gekko about it. Seriously disturbed people out there.
I'm on FV and I see some BOTS. One, for instance. I checked my hunter to see if there was one I was close to completing. I was only 3 from my Shared Landing hunter, so I went there. First 2 there was no problem. I had them both within 45 minutes. Just mass kill everything, including the PH's and I was good to go. The third one was way at the other end of the zone. So, I went there and there was a group killing right where the named mob was I needed. This was mid afternoon so I decided to come back later. I went back about 3:00 AM. The same group was still there, with a pile of mass bodies lagging up the area they were in. I suspect this group is one of the power level spam groups you see posted on the main chat 24/7. They advertise a PL from 80-110. Shards Landing fits the bill for that. As players, if we want to end BOT PL/RMT groups. There really is one way which will work. Don't buy a PL service. Level your character yourself. Don't buy stuff off of people who advertise 24/7. There's people who sell their old gear, or a few raiders who are geared up and sell stuff to make some PP. I have no problem with this. That's what the FV is for. The only problem I have, is the BOT groups who hog up an area 24/7. Don't buy their service. That's what will keep them to a minimum.
I went into some EoK zones today thinking something *may* have changed since this thread started. Nope, still full of AFK bots. To Ngreth (and any other EQ devs who read this forum), your silence on this issue speaks volumes.
