Idle timeout
 

How long can you be idle until you get kicked from the game? Also is it possible that this time is influenced by some factors?

I'm asking this because I was just idle for 22+ minutes. I think normally I was kicked after like 10 minutes or so. I know that it was more than 22 minutes because when I came back I had a group invite pending and checked how long ago it was sent with which returned 1335197.

Did maybe the pending invite prevent me from getting kicked, did ZOS rise the time or do I just have an even more terrible sense of time while coding than I thought? :D

PS: I was in the bank (not in any dialog/menu); ESO was not the active window; Computer was locked.

While making the idle timer for sidTools I did a few tests, but soon gave up because it is a pain to always wait for the timeout to happen. The results where not really conclusive, sometimes I got dropped after around 15 minutes and sometimes I stayed connected without a kick in sight.

There also seem to be some API functions that prevent the timeout from happening.

Timer is 15 min, it changed recently on login screen as far I know, but did'n't looked at it (i'm a real afker and I'm kicked ~10x/day from game)

If you were not disconnected, that was because you receive a buff which unsheate your weapons. It happens frequently.

And yes there is some functions which prevent you to being kicked because they send data to server. that's the condition. If you're curious enought you'll find which ones. But to @All, please don't write an anti kick please. It's a waste of lot of important things.

Thanks for the answers

Yeah, that probably was the reason, didn't know that this also is enough to reset the timer.

Check out my little add-on I hacked together: Anti-Idle :D

Your video is not available to play in germany :rolleyes:

idle time on the character selectino screen was changed in Orsinium
now it is like 5 min only

in game stayed the same

btw the real anti-kick addon will be nice

Damn, copyright protects you from Rick Ashley :D

I didn't actually make one

Would it be against the ZOS rules when we would use such an add-on?

everyone who needs it already using macroses for anti-idle

;)

Yeah, but that doesn't work when the game is in the background while coding :p

I made a "Dead man's switch" add-on: Idle Timeout Reminder

I'am not sure, but i believe you got a little noise, like a "clock tick" after 10min idle. I often recognize it, while coding with headphones on.

Pretty sure the game itself does not do that. I have a countdown in sidTools that starts ticking after 14 minutes for that purpose.

I am really interested in an anti-idle thing. I takes a long time for my game to load. There are also reasons why I want to not idle out. For example, when I hit v1 in blackwater and need to step away, but don't want to get kicked just yet. (I kinda hate vet pvp, so playing an extra day at v1 before rerolling is a lot. Especially since I get 10% bonus XP for being ESO Plus!)

I am currently sitting on a 3 day ban for "botting", and I (politely) asked wtf they were even talking about and got a canned response that threatening "permanent account closure" for future incidents, even though they haven't explained what I was doing wrong -- kindof afraid to log back in at this point.

I am under the impression that the game's lua addons are "approved" in a way, and if so if there's a way to avoid idling out without relying on a keyboard macro, I'd like to know it. If I bind the the space key to move forward and run into a corner, does the old trick of "leave a book laying on the space key" work as a low-tech solution?

I am seriously upset that I got a suspension, and even more upset they aren't clearly explaining why. I read the terms of service and don't know how circumventing the idle timer is a violation. There are actual bots out there (mostly for harvesting stuff), expensive gaming keyboards have sophisticated macros, and there are outright memory hacks that aren't public -- I use nothing like that. Lord knows my game crashes about every hour or so anyway, but I'd like to at least not get kicked off because I have to take a bio or phone call.

Of course maybe my account got flagged for something else. I run a lot of addons, and I use Sorien's launcher to remove fog, and I use Reshade for shader post-processing, I use Overwolf for teamspeak overlays, I use recording software for video capture and streaming. I am really not sure what flagged as botting. But I have a hunch it was my anti-idle measures.

Are there any clear forum responses that explain is it okay to do in the game and what is a violation? I actually DO want to play by the rules, but it seems like there is a lot of grey area.

this method is the same as macro
i mean technically ZOS cannot see the difference between them, by any way

Are you sure it was for botting? There are also other possibilities, e.g. there was (is?) a bug in an add-on function that made it possible to bank items that normally couldn't be banked. Some add-ons abused this deliberetly but other add-ons that used this function had this feature by accident and I think some users unintentionally got in trouble because of that.

No, I'm not sure, and it worries me. Customer support was extremely vague. I got one reply that as was vague as the initial suspension notice. I haven't gotten a second reply to my request for clarification. Without knowing exactly what got my account flagged, I don't know how to prevent it from happening again.

It would be sad if an efficient anti-idle routine gets flagged as botting, but spamming the server with move signals by laying a book on the spacebar might be allowed.

I don't bot or hack this game. I could, but I don't. I mean, it is our dirty little secret that Sorien's launcher enables protected functions. But as far as I know we all rely on the honor system not to use them. (At least not for malicious reasons!)

Though from Ayantir's post, it seems like you don't need protected functions (or a keyboard macro [or a heavy book]) to defeat the timer. Obviously I can't login to test right now, but based on this thread, I'll make a wild guess that sheathing and unsheathing your weapons every few minutes would defeat the idle timeout. Is that botting? Is ZOS seriously down for suspending ESO Plus subscribers over something so benign?

The login screen idle timer is a bit ridiculous. I'm not sure why they need to have a different time for login. Whenever there is a patch, I always idle out on initial login due to creation of shadercache.cooked taking longer than 5 minutes. Confusing when you get idled out before you even reach character select.

Just do a /bug