Living in the Era of Robots

It's as if the gaming companies don't care anymore; hey, Microsoft and Zenimax, I am talking about you! The bots are running rampant, as the in-game-video I shot back in Aug shows... only now it is even worse than it was when this video was shot, two months ago.



Since I published Welcome to The Elder Scrolls Online: Home of the Scammers, Cheaters and Bot Farmers, back in July, in which I outlined the problems of bots in great detail, prices for a large number of the raw materials farmable in Tamriel have seen a sharp decline. Kutas, Tempers, Ore, Ancestor Silk and even alchemy reagents like Bugloss have plummeted in the last two months.

Yet when I made the post and share it with the community, the community lashed out at me, called me a whiny bitch (as well as other, even less appropriate, names). Yet the things I outlined as long term problems with the Bot Farmer advancement (bots becoming mobile, farming other nodes once considered harder to come by, becoming combat ready, and even expanding their farming areas, saturation of the market, prices falling, etc.) are now starting to ruin the game for everyone, as I predicted.

I love this game. It is one of the rare games that I have actually played for such a long period of time, so consistently and even sunk some money into it without balking about microtransactions. But let's be honest... the game isn't really flush with fresh, new content for those of us who have been playing since the week the game dropped.

To make my point, consider that the Summerset chapter took only about two weeks to play through. New dungeon releases are done the day they drop, and the upcoming Mirkmire DLC will likely only take about a week to complete (it's so, so very small). Even PVP in Cyrodiil is repetitive, take a keep/lose a keep, take a farm, mine, mill/lose a farm, mine, mill...

If this game isn't repetitive, I don't know what is. And they way they combat this lack of new content is to make some achievements in the game repetitive. Take the Summerset Dailies; you have to do the Summerset Delve Dailies 20 times to get the achievement so you can buy a stupid waterfall housing item. So what are they doing to "extend the gameplay"? More repetition.

Making any given task be something that you need to do many times over a long period of time doesn't make it interesting, it just makes it boring.

So really, for a Tamriel Veteran, like myself, and the many other Tamriel Veterans, all with just about every possible class/race combination we can fill our max number of character slots up with, we habe two options; one play repetitive end game content until the new content is finally released. Or we can farm resource nodes to make gold in the game. Gold that is needed to spend on the really expensive stuff that is constantly being released in the game. These are our two options for filling the long periods of time between DLC, chapters and dungeon dropping.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... events... they give us events. Those seasonal events are just more repetition. How many plunder skulls does one need? How many times does it take to breathe fire before the novelty wears off? How many Hollowjack motifs does the average denizen of Tamriel need to feel complete?

Zenimax has proven time and again that they are not interested in protecting the community from toxic elements in their world. If it doesn't hurt them in the only place they really care, their financial bottom line, then they are not going to fix anything. They are actively trying to ignore the problem we face every day, not showing an iota of care for the community; something I call Active Ignorance.

And yet I'm the one still being laughed at by the community for not appreciating being treated so poorly by a company I have financially contributed to over the last three-plus years.

So before I put the controller down and walk away from Tamriel forever, I am calling on the community as a whole, no matter how unlikely it is to happen, to take action in two parts:

Part One: The Social Media Campaign:

It's time to let both Zenimax and Microsoft know that we want them to correct the problems with BOTs once and for all. Automation belongs in Clockwork City... and nowhere else in Tamriel. Reach out to both Xbox Support and Zenimax through you social media connections; use TESOnline and XboxSupport to post your disdain for BOTs in the game and hashtag your post with #EndBotsNow  #EBN  #TESO  and #ESONOBO (for Elder Scrolls Online November Black Out; detailed below).

Part Two: The Elder Scrolls November Blackout

This part of the action is to perform a month long blackout in Tamriel for the entire month of November. What does this blackout mean? It means the following;

• No purchases of crowns
• No purchases of items from the crown store (houses, costumes)
• No purchasing from the luxury furnisher and golden every weekend
• No purchasing bag and bank space
• No purchases or renewals of ESO Plus subscriptions
• No purchases of items from other players
• No purchases of items from guild stores
• No listing of items to sell in guild stores
• No grabbing Zenimax's piddly daily login bonuses; how many poisons, foods and potions does any one character really need?

Basically, if we can show that enough of us are done with their active ignorance regarding the BOT problem in Tamriel, then maybe, just maybe, either Microsoft or Zenimax will take action against the 

BOTs in Tamriel. Or maybe they won't. But we won't know if we don't try.

But then... Maybe... Just maybe.

But then again, maybe I will just garner more ridicule from the community I am quickly falling out of love with.

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Welcome to The Elder Scrolls Online: Home of the Scammers, Cheaters and Bot Farmers

Most online games have problems with scammers, cheaters and automated (scripted) bot farmers and The Elder Scrolls Online is no different. But, one of the main differences is that according Zenimax, some of this activity is not actually against their Terms of Service (ToS). 

One of the most valuable things a player can acquire in the game, second only to experience points, is gold. Gold equals wealth and wealth can get you just about anything in this game. As of the Summerset release, ESO wealth can even buy you items from Crown Store for about 100g per crown.

That's right, now the mostly aesthetic items (mounts, pets, costumes, etc.) that you would have had to pay real cash in the form of crown exchanges, can be purchased with gold. Gold that you can honestly acquired in the game or gold which can be purchased from nefarious sites that run bot farms to harvest and sell resources to get gold to sell for real world cash. I wouldn't recommend the second source of gold, as that can lead to a ban, described below.

And Zenimax does nothing to stop this, because selling gold for cash, nor bot farming is not in violation the ToS. But, do you know what does violate the ToS? If you go buy gold from one of these websites, or directly buy resources from a Bot Farmer, this is considered a violation of the ToS and can lead to your account being banned, known as ZOS dropping the Ban Hammer; something they are infamous for.

Let me explain bot farmers to you in case you don't get the concept.

A person creates multiple Xbox accounts, a relatively simple task.

This person then creates multiple TESO accounts using their Xbox accounts.

This person then uses an official Xbox emulator for Windows, from Microsoft (yes Microsoft actually released an unlicensed tool to the public that allows for this exploit to happen), to run multiple instances of the game on one computer, say ten or twenty instances (whatever the PC is able to handle) in small windows.

This person then trains their bots to run nodes in a given area, or sets them up to farm a known location (Bear Farm, Tiger Farm, Dolmens (for XP), etc.) The farmer sets their bots up to run individually for resource nodes in different instances, or as a group for various animal farms as running animals farms as a group gets a  higher hide drop rate.

The sell their items for gold, then sell the gold for real money through their websites.

So that is how the bot farmers work; basically speaking.

How big is the problem? Well, the problem and its impact are both huge.

Bot Farmers are the reason Hide Scraps and Dreugh Wax are up to the 50% cheaper than their black smith and woodworking counterparts. And this really, from a basic economics perspective, should not be the case. Woodworking materials have a very limited use; make bows, shields or staves. The most any one character would need of these would be two items (two bows, two staves, two shields), one for each the front and back bars while the clothing materials (cloth and leathers) can be used to make chests, head, shoulders, hands, legs, and feet.

This means that for each character, there is a 3 to 1 ratio between what the demand for clothing and woodworking materials should be. Looking at this, again from an economics point of view clothing materials, like leathers, should be 3 times higher in price than woodworking.

And guess what; Ancestor Silk is nearly 2x much more expensive over woodworking and yet hide scraps are not. See, until recently bot farmers had not figured out how to farm resource nodes so they weren't flooding the ESO marketplace with Ancestor silk, which is why it remains between 18k and 22k a stack. But they have been farming bears, tigers, wolves and other animal farms for years. Which is why Leather materials are nearly half the price of their cloth counterparts. And while bot farmers had not figured out how to farm resource nodes in the past, they have now, in just the last few months, so the market place is about to change, drastically over time; and, you may already be seeing that change.

For the past three months, bot farmers have been figuring out how and where to farm resource nodes and they have fine tuned this ability. As a result, they are beginning to devalue the entire marketplace. Ore, Wood, Runestones and even clothing materials are beginning to drop in value, some of them rapidly; Bugloss, once the creme of the crop in the market place, 300g to 400g each, is now down to 200g each and falling right along with other alchemy materials.

I wish fixing this issue was as easy as everyone stopping their buying from Bot Farmers, but Bot Farmers are everywhere. They are online, they are wandering advertising insanely low prices in the different realms, they are even in guild stores; yes, guild stores.

And I'm not talking about one off guilds that are out in the middle of Nowhere, Tamriel. No, I am talking about guild stores in Daggerfall, Wayrest, Mournhold, Craiglorn and yes, even in Elden Root. I have seen these bot farmer's account myself, first hand, in some of the biggest and best known guild traders.

The thing is, guild traders aren't motivated to boot the bots either. They have received assurances from ZOS that they won't be punished for providing bots a channel to sell in and the bots, with their sales, bring money to the guild bank via the house cuts and dues. But the guild traders who allow bots in their guilds are hurting their members and the community as a whole. That needs to sink in to the minds of the Guild Owners across Tamriel. Your acceptance of bots into your guilds is hurting the game, the community and your members. Please consider that.

And while Zenimax couldn't give two spits about this, this BOT activity is against Microsoft's ToS and while reporting it to Zenimax won't produce any results, I have seen evidence that reporting it to Microsoft will. I was watching a certain, very unique bot farmer, who ran around with Kallopi's Essence on, making the bot wearing it nearly invisible. I followed this bot for a short while across multiple days, and watched the patterns of a resource bot (mentioned below). I reported the bot to Microsoft and the very next day the bot was not there. And the bot has not been back to my farm location since. I have been successful reporting these bots to Microsoft with multiple bots in the location with the same outcome... a day later I never see that particular bot again.

Here is what to look for with BOTS before reporting every Tom, Dick and Jane in the game.

1. Most bots will have simple names; XVNIIW. And groups of bots, like the animal farm bot-clusters, will have similar names within the cluster; XVNIIW, XVNIIX, XVNIIZ.
2. Resource bots will look very similar; they will be within the 4-7 level range character wearing prisoners garb. This is 90% of the time, as I have found a few bots that were slightly higher levels, or slightly differently dressed, or in the case of one them, invisible.
3. Animal bots will all look the same, Lightning Form, flame staff and in large numbers (ten or more) all casting the same skills, having the same pets up, and in some cases all moving in the same directions at the same time.
4. Resource bots will farm in areas with low NPC enemy counts and high resource node counts; think beginner areas. 
5. Animal bots will be where there is a large quantity of animals (bears, tigers, durzogs, etc.) that re-spawn rapidly.
6. Resource bots important detail; the resource bots are running off a script, so that means they will run to a specific location a resource is known to be at, even if it isn't there, in an attempt to farm said node. Follow them for a minute and you will definitely see this pattern and so can Microsoft if you report them.
7. When you see this pattern bring up the radial dial, like you are going to trade with or report them to Zenimax, and instead look at their gamer card, like you are going to friend them. This will show you an abbreviated Xbox Profile... and look at their G Score. The G score represents their achievements and a score of zero means that they have never gotten a single achievement, in any game, ever. And G Score of 5 means they got the only achievement of getting out of the first area. Combine that information with the fact that they know where every resource node in the game is, even when it's not available, and this pattern screams BOT.
8. From this same screen, the gamer card, you can report them Microsoft, put a comment in the report, Bot Farmer, and submit.

Again, Zenimax won't do anything about this. You have to report them to Microsoft. It takes a few seconds to do this, but if we all address this, as a community, when we see them, we can begin policing the lawless land Zenimax abandoned long ago.

Scams are everywhere and yes they are here in Tamriel as well. Nobody likes to be ripped off so here is my advise to prevent and address scams and scammers.

Before you trade anything with anyone in the game; get an agreement between you and the other player via in game TEXT chat; "this item for this much gold, do you agree?" and wait for their response in text chat. Not voice chat, not a message via Xbox Live, but in game TEXT chat, via direct chat message to the person, a whisper. Think of the in game text chat as a written contract. If you do get scammed, Zenimax can use the text chat to confirm your side of the story and refund your gold or gear that you were scammed out of; they cannot do that via voice chat nor Xbox Live messages.

If you get scammed, do not give them a piece of your mind. Ask them to fix the situation and if they refuse, or as is usually the case, they just ignore you, go directly to report the incident to Zenimax. Capture a screenshot of the agreement you made in text chat with the person. If you have the agreement captured in the in game text chat, you will get your stuff back. Telling someone off, especially using swear words, racist statements an threats will likely mean Zenimax will punish you, instead of the other way around. Keep calm, cool and collected. This is the one area where Zenimax will actually resolve the issue.

This is especially true when dealing with paying gold for some to gift you a crown store item.

Here are some things you consider guidelines, thing I do, to protect yourself from being scammed in the first place.

1. Buy from/sell through guild traders whenever you can.
2. If the offer sounds to good to be true, it probably is.
3. Always use the C.O.D. mail system, send the item to the person with a request for gold in the same message.
4. Always check the attachments to all C.O.D.s you receive before you take the attachments, if they did not send you the item agreed upon, return the mail to sender.
5. Always verify the items they are posting in a trade screen; make sure it the right name, the right color, the right level.
6. Always count to five before you confirm a trade. Some scammers will use a quick switch trick, switching out the item just before you confirm.

Cheats in ESO come in many different flavors, but for the most part are simply players exploiting poor design by the developers. My only advise is:

DO NOT EXPLOIT THESE FLAWS IN THE GAME.

Doing so will result in the ban hammer falling on you. If you find a flaw in the game, stop exploiting it and report it to Zenimax immediately.

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The Elder Scrolls Online: The Daunting Task of Shopping Guild Stores

One of my biggest personal issues with the overall user experience in the game is not being able to search stuff in guild traders, you know, recipes, set armor items and motifs etc. I know that crashes, glitches and other problems with the games have a much more significant impact to the gaming experience in Tamriel, but not having an ability to search for specific things I need by just typing in Ring of the Red Mountain instead of having to scroll through 16 pages of rings would be a huge improvement to the user experience in the game.

This is especially if you are looking for a Silken Ring Swords Motif... just filtering for Purple in motifs still leaves you with 10+ pages to look through, only to find that the guild trader doesn't have it. The incredibly long list of items in a guild store, pages and pages and pages of things you have scroll through to find what you are looking for is a daunting task; one I generally hate undertaking.

Hence my use of of the above gif... the complete overwhelming nature of of finding anything specific in a guild store is far too daunting of a task.

Let's be honest, we can search the crown store through the housing interface's purchase tab to find a chair, not just any chair, but an Breton Pew, Windowed and we don't have to scroll through all the chairs across all the different types of furnishing (praxis, plans, blueprints nor Dining, Parlor, etc.) but after three years we still can't search the guild traders? I mean housing is only a year and half old, guild traders came into existence a short time after the game launched.

I realize that Zenimax makes money, as in REAL COLD HARD CASH, off people buying crowns and using those crowns to purchase furnishings (and other crown store items), but seriously, can't Zenimax just copy and paste the search code from the Crown Store Furnishing interface and apply it to the guild trader interface?

Is it really that hard?

Wait... I just realized what I asked and how what I asked relates to who I asked it of.

Of course it is hard for Zenimax.

First; they don't have any incentive to develop it. They get gold in the form of tax with each sale in a guild store, but gold really means nothing to them since, unless you are bot farmer, has no real world monetary value.

Second; they have proven time and again that whatever they touch breaks everything else in the game. So if they were to develop this search capability in guild stores, it would likely make it so anyone who did damage in PVP would produce a message that the player is sending too many messages, kick them out of the game and crash them to the home screen, remove all player's character's an ability to weapon swap, change the stats of training gear to proc a 100% chance of 1000% weapon damage for any damage is delivered and give us all 17 minutes of "Unusually Long Load Time" screens with every 18th step a character takes.

Third; Zenimax has made it their mission since before Summerset to not make anything easy.

I want to talk about that last point a little bit more because it is an important point. See, Zenimax reads peoples comments regarding the game being boring and not enough new content to keep us busy between releases; this is about player engagement. But rather than work to deliver more value added content, deeper content, what they choose to do it read those player's comments and see them as things were too easy. And while some things remain easy in the game; grinding levels = easy, leveling alchemy/provisioning = easy, etc., but they their idea of more content is to make it harder to complete many basic things in the game.

Let's look at some examples. First, jewelry crafting research. They have made the jewelry crafting line without a skill bonus in Lapidary for increasing the number of items you can research at one time. This means you can only research one necklace or ring at a time, not a ring and a necklace at the same time, like you can Metallurgy Skill in the blacksmith skill line.

But with only 18 traits to research in Jewelry it's not that bad right?

It could take you four months to research all the traits in Jewelry without purchasing reduction scrolls from the crown store, or having an Orc as your master craftsman or having ESO plus with it's bonuses.

This isn't adding more content, or making it harder, it's just adding time to an already arduous time-consuming task; and this get more frustrating for those of us who were already Master Crafters before Summerset dropped.

Now let's look at another example; quests. Zenimax's idea of more content is making quests that require you to travel from one place to another and back and forth doing nothing but talking and conveying messages between two or more NPCs. The game was already a joke due to the lazy nature of NPCs in this game and this back and forth adding load times in a patch that was plagued with broken load screen. A problem we initially experienced in Morrowind.

<Quest>

NPC Farmer: "Run over there and talk to my pig, he'll tell you."

NPC Pig: "Yup, the farmer is right. Now go the bar back in town and talk to the drunk at the table."

NPC Drunk: "Yup, I agree. Now tell that farmer I agreed."

NPC Farmer: "See, I told you. And here is 100g, 3k experience and a green ancestor silk hat."

</Quest>

They took this to an extreme with Summerset. The quests to max out the Psijic skill line, the "A Book and its Cover" quest/no-a-quest/achievement and bouncing and loading to and from the same locations repeatedly. The achievements and housing items that come with the achievements that require player to enter the same three delves and destroy the "new dolmens" called Geysers, over and over and over again for 30 days to get it done.

This are not what players meant by more content. This is not the depth users were asking for. These are mundane, and frankly, boring filler and fluff. The same boring filler that players complained about with Morrowind and even more so with Clockwork City. Repetitive, rinse and repeat game fodder.

Don't get me wrong, the main story line of each of the above mentioned releases was fantastic. Good story telling. Epic adventuring. It was all the shallow side quests. Each release failed to match the quality of the side quests of the base game, not that all side quests of the base game are gold... they aren't, but there are some that were much more fulfilling than others.

Within a couple of days most of the people I gamed with had completed the main story, roughly 8 to 16 hours of game play. Within a week, most everyone I game with had the Psijic skill-line maxed out. Within two weeks, everyone had their Jewelry crafting to 50. Within a month everyone has their Summerset dailies and achievements done. Everyone seriously looking to complete their motifs has done so. After a month, of game play the only thing remaining with Summerset is researching Jewelry traits.. and the game is as boring as it was the day before Summerset dropped.

Okay, I have to admit that wasn't a fair statement. The game wasn't as boring as the day before Summerset dropped.

It is more boring than the day before Summerset dropped, because the day before Summerset dropped, we were excited for Summerset and we don't have that now. We get to deal with bugs, crashes, bot farmers and an extended free play period because the game we paid for, a game that many of us continue to pay for (with Chapters we plaid for now becoming DLC, ESO Plus and Crown Store purchases) is free for anyone with a Gamepass subscription through Xbox.

Now that's some bullshit. 

No, you see, Zenimax doesn't want to make any part of the game more usable, convenient or, dare I say, easy. They don't want that because if it takes an hour and half to find a Minotaur Chest motif, well in Zenimax's eyes, that just "content" to fill the hours while we wait for them to toil away at fixing the stuff they broke and wait for them continue to develop another release filled with repetitive quests, bugs, glitches, crashes and other drivel to keep us busy for a few weeks this fall. All before the next round of unbearable boredom sets in and we get to take another repetitious ride of frustration and disappointment.  

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The Elder Scroll Online - Damage Front Loading and Diminishing Returns

I recently just started a new character, Stamblade Sniper PVP build. And I was shocked when at Level 6 I was able to Hit with a Bow for 35k critical damage using two Skills; Snipe followed by Shadow Cloak. I was one-shot killing most NPCs and by the time I morphed them to Focused Aim and Shadowy Disguise by level 10, I was able to critically hit world bosses for 40k damange. I thought to myself that this was definitely going to be a over-powered build; and it was and remains so at level 30.

But soon I noticed that with each level I gain, I lose damage. So what was once an OP build, is now slowly falling into the range of normalcy and my expectations slowly sank to their normal low. I tested my damage with a similar MAX CP character and I found that I should expect my damage with those two skills and some buffs should be about 19k. Disappointing if you ask me.

In most games we have ever played, as you level up your character the character became stronger; dealing more damage and not dying so fast. But in this game it is quite the opposite... I really have to try to die with a low level character, but can easily be one-shot killed in a vet dungeon or trial with my Max CP Stam-Sorc and my damage, while at about 25k DPS, has never reached 38k like it has with my new Stamblade Sniper. So this confuses me.

What is the point of leveling a character up if you just see the character's damage output drop with each level? When did this happen and why?

The Problem:

When Zenimax decided in its infinite wisdom to release One Tamriel on the community it tried to find a balance between low level players and Max Champion Point (CP) players. But what it did was it created an imbalance and their decision to later front-load damage pushed the new character over the scales balance.

One day I was roaming around my farming location, one of many farming locales I have in Tamriel, and I noticed a Max CP player running around killing enemy NPCs. It would take two or three swings for the player to kill one and would take a fair bit of time for the player to kill two of them.

So then, as a level 20, I followed my new Max CP stalker victim, I mean Unknowing Friend, and would do my one/two combo (Focused Aim and Shadowy Disguise) on whatever my new friend was fighting, and I was ravaging the NPCs with one shots, while he would need time to kill them. This must really feels like a let down, to see a level 20 literally dropping NPCs with one shot while you, 730 levels higher, not able to do so.

My question to Zenimax is this; Sure you get a new players attention with huge damage, assuming they know how to build for maximum damage output, and then you let them watch as their damage drops with every level the achiev. Here is this very powerful character and you get to watch it diminish to half the damage by the time it reaches Level 50. Have fun!

The higher I level the less powerful I become. From the perspective of a new player, how is that supposed to keep motivating a player to keep playing the game?

Before One Tamriel, I always looked a Champ (and dare I date myself by saying Vet) level character as what I wanted to be when I grew up. Strong, powerful... a source of inspiration.... motivation to grind. And now there is no role model because if at Level 10 I can out perform a Max CP in dealing damage in normal dungeons or even against world bosses, why would anyone really want to level up?

The Zenimax Fix:
Zenimax needs to give power back to those that have earned it. And I mean truly "earned" it. Low levels should be knocked back to the stone age in strength and power. Take away their participation ribbons. PVE and PVP; neither should be balanced. A Max CP player should never run the risk of losing a duel to a low level.

My first character could not defeat the first quest boss I came across. I died four times trying to kill it before someone else came in and helped. That's what an MMO is supposed to be about. Community helping. Now I can actually level a new character to 20 using dolmens (formerly known as anchors; another phrase dating my gaming origins) without any help what-so-ever.

That's right take away their extra damage and boosted defenses; they haven't earned it. Take away their access to CP until they hit level 50. Make them earn there Tam-Cred, if they don't earn it we just end up with a community of snot-nosed-entitlement-brats.

Their damage should be proportionate to the level they are playing. They should struggle to fight a delve boss alone or take on a mob of zombies. They should look at Max CP players as the demi-Gods that they should be in the game... feared (so that a low level requesting a duel is foolish, not someone who actually might have a chance) and respected (thank you for helping me with that world boss, dungeon boss or quest boss).

Maybe Zenimax can create some new items (weapons, armor, glyphs, etc.), powerful items, for characters that are Max CP. Could you image a two handed sword that does 3700 damage, call it the Champions Blessing Set, Chest pieces that have 3000 armor, rune stones that that are 800+ tri-glyphs (800 Health, 800 Stam, 800 Magicka)? Make it craftable... and can only be made at whatever Max CP is at the time.

This type of armament would truly keep scrubs out of main Cyrodiil campaigns (Vivec), as it should be; leave that to the big kids, you go play in Sotha Sil and Kyne and earn your stripes there.

People don't get to join the Army as a General right out of High School. They have to earn that shit. Zenimax needs to let scrubs and pugs earn theirs as well. Hey Zenimax... why don't you quit handing everyone the world on a silver platter and then complain when the community gets board with the game because they can complete most of it in a month or two without hitting max CP... and grinding is boring with no real reward for hitting max. 

As a new player, it is a long grind from start to max CP, and there needs to be a reward worthy of the grind for first time players to reach the max. Today's culture, particularly in the culture of Tamriel, a culture of participation ribbons doesn't create devotion to the game, just a devotion to how low-level of a character can you use to defeat a Max CP character.... it's a shame really. 

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The Elder Scrolls Online: Lack of Moderation Equals Toxic community

If you have ever played any online multiplayer gamer, you know that communities around these games can get very toxic; to the point of being inhumane at times. The Elder Scrolls Online is no different than the other gaming communities.

The phrase toxic masculinity is one that comes to mind for me when thinking of online gaming toxicity. Toxic masculinity is used to describe certain behaviors that are considered the norm of masculine and these same behaviors are generally associated with harm to society and to the men themselves.

Unrealistic expectations of what masculinity is produces "toxic" effects like; violence (including sexual assault and domestic violence, verbal abuse, overt serialization, excessively risky and/or socially irresponsible behaviors including substance abuse, and dysfunction in relationships; especially online relationships, like those developed in gaming. And traits of toxic masculinity can be seen in our gaming culture and is not restricted to men. Women can partake and contribute to a toxic gaming culture as much as they are victimized by it.

The fact is that many people seem to forget this is just a game. The Elder Scrolls Online is just a game. Say it with me.

The Elder Scrolls Online is just a game.

Let that sink in for a minute... or an hour if you need that long.

Most mature guilds, ones that have been around for a while and are successful, especially those that make money off dues from their members, regulate their text chat and handle toxic gaming culture in their guilds, sometimes harshly. They do this to protect their micro-community; to provide a non-toxic place for their members to communicate, share and have fun.

But this is where the safety net ends. If you leave the safe harbor of a guild, it is the wild west of text and voice chat. Think of this region of the game's communications area as if it is Somalia meets 80s Homophobia meets 90s Porn, meets A Clockwork Orange meets Cannibal Corpse's "Hammer Smashed Face."

Anything goes and nobody gets admonished for it.

THE PROBLEM:
Lack of Zenimax moderators in public area chats (both text and voice) is the main source of the issue. The old saying, locks only keep honest men honest holds true. When people are provided a relatively anonymous way to verbally assault one another with zero moderation (as it is with the whole of the internet), the gloves come off and they usually stay off.

Today we have people, or bots, advertising gold for sale in the game, which is a direct violation of XBox terms and conditions. We have bot farmers clogging up quest areas, we have hate speech and racism being spewed across Tamriel and Zenimax is doing nothing to change it. The fact is, by not taking action to stop it, Zenimax is in fact supporting the hate, misogyny and racism as it provides a moderation free platform for it occur in.

Early in the game there were moderators, known as Game Masters, as seen above, but the last time I have heard of credible report (credible meaning a screen shot) of a Game Master was the 2014 Bot Cleansing. Not only would these Game Masters cleanse those exploiting new features, bot farmers and such, they would moderate the game chats (both area voice and text when it came available). People were kept in check; Game Masters were the locks that kept people honest. But now they are gone and the community has regressed to West World Status.

Today the zone text chat and area voice chat is rampant with racist, sexist and rapist remarks, foul language (no I'm not a prude), threats of assault (including sexual assault), and harassment (yeah, this is where I call out a douche-bag named Ruby). I won't say his whole gamer tag because this is not about throwing shade at individual but Ruby is a real world example of toxicity in the community. People like Ruby are allowed to run around stalking people he feels did him wrong, even with an Xbox account block in place, when in fact he was the one that screwed over a lot of people, including:

• Bragging about stealing from a guild bank that wasn't his own 
• Going into someone's house and moving all his stuff under ground and outside the boundary of the house 
• Stealing guild members from former guilds that kicked him for stealing from their bank
• Misogyny towards female guild members 
• And openly racist remarks in voice chat.

And again, while a lot of the issues I have experienced involve men, women are not excluded from it. I have ran into some very toxic people on both sides of the binary gender line. One woman, who I will not name, but instead reference her as MS. M is known throughout the community for accusing men of trying to have sex with her and then saying she is going to kill herself and then ghosting the community (not just in Xbox, but in Facebook communities as well) leaving everyone to wonder, "WTF?"

While the rest of us try to have some fun, the Ruby's and Ms. M's of the game continue feeding the toxic culture and get away with it; time and again. Ms. M is still in the game, under a different name. Ruby is still in the game with no name change. Some people just want to see the world burn and Zenimax allows these people to roam free setting all the fires they wish to, unchecked by game moderators.

THE ZENIMAX SOLUTIONS:

1. Clearly publishing guidelines everyone has to accept providing what is unacceptable public area communications; anti-bullying, anti-racism, anti-misogyny, anti-hate, etc.
2. Having Gamemasters in the game would help enforce these community guideline and drive down on this behavior, not just by eliminating it, but by preventing it. A police car in the neighborhood cuts down on property crimes, traffic violations and violent crimes. We need a Gamemaster in the game to act as this police car. We need a lock to keep the honest people honest as it were.
3. Have a reporting mechanism in place. Realistically, Zenimax can't have someone online 24/7/365, even though I think it would be feasible given the money we have all paid them over the last three years. But they could put a reporting mechanism in place so that, for an example, if someone is behaving poorly in zone text chat, typing things racist things, bullying, threatening or otherwise harassing people, that text can be selected, just as it is now, with an extra option at the bottom of the Whisper, Travel To, Invite to Group, etc. options menu, to report that specific text to Zenimax moderators.

THE COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS:

1. Do not feed the trolls. We as a community need to stop engaging the toxic elements of our community as this added negativity just feeds the trolls and rewards their behavior; it given them what they want and encourages them to continue.
2. Until Zenimax puts tools in place to address these community issues, if you find the behavior of another individual violates Microsoft's terms of use; no harassment, threats, abuse, hate speech; Take a screen cap of the activity (hard to do with voice chat, and it is known that Microsoft can't act on things said in voice chat, unless you capture video evidence of their behavior that contains their voice, but they can when it is typed in text chat) report them to Microsoft.
3. And finally block them via Xbox live, which blocks them in game voice and text chat as well. Without an audience, they have nothing to feed from. If nothing else removing this negativity will greatly improve your personal experience in the game.
4. A good guild cuts down on your exposure to this. In the case of Ruby; when his behavior was reported to and validated by our guild, he was kicked out of the guild, a guild he had purchased a (500k) lifetime membership to. They did this because a good guild will not tolerate the Ruby and Ms. M personas of the world.

There are a lot of great people in this community. Hell, I hang out with some of the best, most helpful people in the game. There are some fantastic guilds that don't allow these behaviors from their members. ESO as a community is not all bad, hell it's not even in the top ten most toxic game communities, but the community is getting toxic and it has its toxic elements and those elements are just as bad at the elements in the top ten. There are some awesome people out there; I wouldn't be where I am in the game without help from an outstanding group of people. And it people like you, like the people I hang with in the game that can make a difference. It's not too late for us to clean it up now and prevent it from getting worse.

Let's get this fixed Zenimax. Make the community better and you will retain more members and recruit more... that means more ESO plus subscriptions, more crowns being purchased and more money for in your shareholders... because we know that really what you care about.

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Voice Chat Woes In Tamriel: The Elder Scrolls Online

Voice Communication is a critical aspect of this game. It helps teams communicate quick commands to each other during high tension battles, it allows new friendships to form, it enables long conversations to not have to be types out via Xbox's antiquated controller based keyboard. Without voice chat, much of the social aspect of the game is lost, and let's face it, outside of the main quests of this game, the rest of the game requires come socialization and team work to get through.

In a game where so many aspects of the game rely on a solid foundation of communication (guilds, questing, dungeons, trials and Cyrodiil) it is surprising that The Elder Scrolls Online built-in chat is as dysfunctional as it is and not conducive to a positive gaming experience from a user perspective.

THE PROBLEMS:

Since voice chat remains an ongoing problem that Zenimax seems to have done very little to resolve. I am going to focus on four main pain problems with in-game chat, things that just about everyone has experienced problems with. All four of the problem areas tend to contribute to the others problems as well. The four points I will address are;

1. Group Chat
2. Area Chat
3. Chat Controls
4. Chat Bugs

Group Chat
There are several problems with group chat, but I will focus on two main issues. The first problem is when loading into a dungeon, half the time (if not more frequently) you will get dropped from Group Chat, making group chat not very reliable, especially if running with the same four people for the Undaunted Daily Dungeons. This has been a problem for so long that many people either use Xbox Parties or Guild Chat.

This leads to the second problem with Group Chat, when you join a group, everyone in the group is automatically forced into the glitch-ridden, problematic Group Chat, whether everyone was already in a guild chat or not. Not everyone needs to be forced into Group Chat automatically. This issue is exacerbated by the number Chat Bugs discussed below.

Area Chat
Area Chat is trash. Nothing more, nothing less. People blasting their music (hint, your cheap ($9) Wish.com headset mic doesn't pick up any bass and your music sounds like the left Walkman headphone shoved in an empty spinach can; yes it sounds that shitty), people talking shit about everyone and everything; overtly sexual and misogynistic language used in degrading manners. If people wanted to ask for help in Area Voice Chat, they wouldn't be heard.

Area chat is not moderated. It is the wild, wild west of chat channels... and it is ridiculous. The only saving grace to Area Chat is the occasional auction, which is held in the remotest of area in Tamriel to prevent the issues described above from ruining the auction.

Outside of the action aspect, is area chat this even useful anymore?

Chat Controls
Zenimax has provided absolutely no chat controls. A group leader can't communicate the need to go to BRK in Cyrodil with a group of twenty-four people having ten different conversations at once in group chat and no option to mute all mics.

A group leader can't mute an individual that has walked away and left their mic next to a squawking bird or next to their television speaker. Group leaders lack any control around voice chat and this needs to change.

Players have to endure listening to others playing music in group/guild chat, or listen while stuffing their faces with potato chips/crisps or one of my favorites, when a player doesn't mute their mic when their significant other comes in the room to pick a fight with them or when they yell at their kids... that's always amusing. We have no way of muting another players except to mute or block via the Xbox Live interface and we may not want to have to resort to Xbox muting or blocking because they are just forgetful about muting their mic.

Chat Bugs
When a group forms and half the group loses their group chat and have to restart the game one or more times to get chat back.

The game forces a player from guild chat into group chat (but not 100% of the time because it glitches, see above bug), then if the players choose to join guild chat again, because group chat sucks (see issues identified above), guild chats disappear, requiring one or more game restarts to get the guild chats back.

If someone joins an Xbox Party Chat they have to hard reset their Xbox to get in-game-chat back, but not all the time.

How about the thing I call the "Domo Arigato Mister Roboto" Chat Effect; an effect that is specific to in-game-chat. Where packet loss causes the voices of everyone in a chat channel to sound fragmented, robotic or overly digitized. This is not a client-side issue, as everyone in the chat channel experiences it at the same time. I know it is specific to in-game-chat because not only do I hear it, but others in the party hear it and it affects everyone, regardless if they have fiber-optic, cable or DSL internet and if we move into an Xbox Party Chat voice coms are crystal clear. This is a MegaServer side issue. 

ZENIMAX FIXES:

Give us options...

• First and foremost... fix the Chat Bugs. 
• Don't force us into Group Chat when we join a group. Prompt us and ask if we want to join group chat, just like we are asked, giving us the option, if we want to travel to the group leader right after joining. DO NOT blend the two. Keep each prompt separate, ask if we would like to change to group chat, wait for our response, then ask if we would like to travel to the group leader.
• We have two unused radial menu options (Down and Left Hold) that could be put to use. Why not use one of them to add some Voice Chat Controls for players and group leaders. Just a thought; mute all mics (except the leaders), mute player, also adding a voice chat ready check requiring people in group voice chat to confirm the leader's need to for chat to be clear, especially in Cyrodiil, and only after they have confirmed or the group leader manually unmutes them can they have an active mic in group chat.
• How about giving all players the ability to mute others in the chat channel, say via the group interface; if someone is playing music in a chat during dungeon, or has an excessively barking dog, crying kid, squawking bird, talks non-stop (without take a breath) or just an annoying voice, we should be able to mute just that player via Voice Chat Controls without going to Xbox, leaving the game, to mute or block them.
• Do something with Area Voice Chat PLEASE. It needs to be moderated by Zenimax staff or turn it off altogether. 

What do you think? Does voice chat work fine for you? Did I miss some bugs or suggested features? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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