Botting and maybe solutions for it.

Here are a few thoughts on botting and how to stop players from doing this action.
1: Make it so any changes done to the system required to log into FFXI makes the game unable to launch.
2: When someone is reported to be maybe using a botting system. Give the GM's enough power or the ability to watch said player or 'tag' them for an action and have said action monitored over the course of a week or more. If there is a pattern to the players actives that places them in botting or RMT category they get jailed or banned.
3: Look for a way to disable all third party software and coding from being allowed to operate in the system files it is installed in. (There are several ways of doing this, one is posted above.)
4: Listen to your players and people paying your checks... If your player base isn't happy about certain activities, change them!


Making gil in FFXI can be easy for some but if you don't have a ton of time or you hate crafting, making gil can be the bane of your existence. Players like myself would rather spend a few hours farming NPC'able items and selling them to make enough money to scrape by but others may love crafting. Each player has their own way of doing things but the point in this game that most everyone agrees on is making money is always irritating or time consuming. RMT's wouldn't have business if players didn't struggle so hard to make money themselves.

Botting isn't a problem for just FFXI, but for every MMO and countermeasures are being made nearly every update, we just don't always see them.
But also keep in mind that bot programmers aren't sitting down on their fat arses either, every time a countermeasure is implemented they'll find another way.
It's an endless struggle.

Also, these days isn't as bad as it used to be.

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Originally Posted by Firesong

Making gil in FFXI can be easy for some but if you don't have a ton of time or you hate crafting, making gil can be the bane of your existence. Players like myself would rather spend a few hours farming NPC'able items and selling them to make enough money to scrape by but others may love crafting. Each player has their own way of doing things but the point in this game that most everyone agrees on is making money is always irritating or time consuming. RMT's wouldn't have business if players didn't struggle so hard to make money themselves.

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This is a matter of opinion, mine is that making gil is easier than ever.
Gil is almost thrown at you from every side of the game these days and unless you're working on a big project like a R/E/M there's hardly anything that takes truly large amounts.
This week alone I made about 1.5 mil simply by doing incursion and NPCing nearly everything that came from the boxes, and that does not include any serious gil making efforts.

That said; Making it even easier to make gil doesn't stop RMT from getting business by the way.
All that does is make sure that there's more gil in the economy, which in return makes prices go up, which also means extra business for them.

If they implemented his "1" or "3" suggestions, I can assure you a large chunk of people would quit over it, a large portion of xi players use the unofficial windower (which these would stop) and I feel rather strongly that a good portion of them would quit if it were unavailable, certainly many more people than would remotely rejoin the game because it had less botters and the like.

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Originally Posted by Selindrile

If they implemented his "1" or "3" suggestions, I can assure you a large chunk of people would quit over it, a large portion of xi players use the unofficial windower (which these would stop) and I feel rather strongly that a good portion of them would quit if it were unavailable, certainly many more people than would remotely rejoin the game because it had less botters and the like.

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They couldn't do it anyways. SE has no right to monitor or change any other software that is installed on your computer. They could require that you install something that performs those actions in order to play the game, but that would require the users permission to install and would probably be considered a gross violation of privacy even by people who don't use 3rd party software.

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

They couldn't do it anyways. SE has no right to monitor or change any other software that is installed on your computer. They could require that you install something that performs those actions in order to play the game, but that would require the users permission to install and would probably be considered a gross violation of privacy even by people who don't use 3rd party software.

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Check our WoW's Warden. It's been around since 200..7ish I think? It's pretty old news really, that's a more recent topic discussing it though.

Link tl;dr, part of WoW's EULA is to allow Warden to run on your PC, scanning your active processes, RAM, browsing history, and much more. In essence, it has full access to check and even modify (though I've never read of it actually modifying anything) anything on your computer. It got some news attention back when it was first added, but I was surprised to find something on it as recent as 2012.

I can understand Blizzard using something like this with over a million subscribers, competitive world first raid clears, competitive PvP, etc. There's a lot of reasons for them to keep things in check. Something like that in FFXI would be overboard though, and honestly more trouble than it'd be worth to them, at least if the recent Salvage vacations were any indication. I don't agree with botting, but tbh, the game has changed in such a way that what bots there are don't really cause any harm. When fish/cruor botting was a thing and there was dozens if not hundreds of millions of gil entering the game daily, that created a lot of inflation issues. When HNMs were a thing and claim bots made the same people/LSs claim on a consistant basis, that locked a large number of people out of content.

Anymore though? They give supply to the games demand, Skirmish pieces are usually stocked in the AH, valuable synth mats are stocked, and people are capping JPs. None of those things really cause direct harm. Are they wrong? Sure, but who cares anymore? These posts/witch hunts reek of the type of people who'd patrol a parking lot looking for cars parked in a handicap spot to report them, or other such nonsense that people partake in that makes you scratch your head and wonder "don't you have something better to do with your time?"

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Originally Posted by Malithar

Check our WoW's Warden. It's been around since 200..7ish I think? It's pretty old news really, that's a more recent topic discussing it though.

Link tl;dr, part of WoW's EULA is to allow Warden to run on your PC, scanning your active processes, RAM, browsing history, and much more. In essence, it has full access to check and even modify (though I've never read of it actually modifying anything) anything on your computer. It got some news attention back when it was first added, but I was surprised to find something on it as recent as 2012.

I can understand Blizzard using something like this with over a million subscribers, competitive world first raid clears, competitive PvP, etc. There's a lot of reasons for them to keep things in check. Something like that in FFXI would be overboard though, and honestly more trouble than it'd be worth to them, at least if the recent Salvage vacations were any indication. I don't agree with botting, but tbh, the game has changed in such a way that what bots there are don't really cause any harm. When fish/cruor botting was a thing and there was dozens if not hundreds of millions of gil entering the game daily, that created a lot of inflation issues. When HNMs were a thing and claim bots made the same people/LSs claim on a consistant basis, that locked a large number of people out of content.

Anymore though? They give supply to the games demand, Skirmish pieces are usually stocked in the AH, valuable synth mats are stocked, and people are capping JPs. None of those things really cause direct harm. Are they wrong? Sure, but who cares anymore? These posts/witch hunts reek of the type of people who'd patrol a parking lot looking for cars parked in a handicap spot to report them, or other such nonsense that people partake in that makes you scratch your head and wonder "don't you have something better to do with your time?"

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That was pretty much my point. It would cost them a lot of time and money to develop an app that did that and it would probably have far more negative effects on their bottom line than cheating does.

I think what people are failing to understand here is that WoW actually allows a large number of 3rd party addons so it's not really a valid comparison. The number of prohibited addons seems to be mostly limited to farming bots and things that would allow the warring factions to easily communicate with each other in game. So SE would be doing themselves a huge disservice to try to use punkbuster or some releated technology without first providing the addon framework themselves.

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Originally Posted by Firesong

1: Make it so any changes done to the system required to log into FFXI makes the game unable to launch.

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So you want to play alone?

Cat! You're turning furry!

They also do monitor or check people sometimes but I frankly doubt they have anywhere near the manpower to watch individual people for an entire week. Go thru logs sure but not sit there and watch

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Originally Posted by dasva

They also do monitor or check people sometimes but I frankly doubt they have anywhere near the manpower to watch individual people for an entire week. Go thru logs sure but not sit there and watch

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Yeah, they may have done so in the past, but what happens when both GMs are helping someone?

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Originally Posted by RalphTheGalka

I think what people are failing to understand here is that WoW actually allows a large number of 3rd party addons so it's not really a valid comparison. The number of prohibited addons seems to be mostly limited to farming bots and things that would allow the warring factions to easily communicate with each other in game. So SE would be doing themselves a huge disservice to try to use punkbuster or some releated technology without first providing the addon framework themselves.

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This is also a very fair point on the subject. Blizzard has always been very welcoming, even encouraging, of addon developers. They like people improving their game. And they're not so high and mighty to ignore situations where addons are required. They will take it upon themselves to create a stock option in that scenario, so that everyone has access to such a feature, then they build outwards from it, creating encounters with the knowledge that now everyone has the ability that x addon offers.

I do remember another addon that they purposely broke, claiming it made things too easy. I forget the name, but the addon allowed you to virtually draw on the terrain and areas, allowing you to, for example, draw off a circle in a corner and label it "SAFE ZONE" or draw a line to an ally of where to run, etc. I thought it was pretty unique, but it was quickly misused, not only for vulgarity and slander, but for making raid content too easy, since someone could map out exactly where to go and what to do, rather than relying on people knowing their rolls and how to handle the situations.

Blizzard is very unique in their position as developers though. I wonder what FFXI would be like if SE redesigned the system to be more addon friendly, and opened it up to the community to augment as they saw fit. And as someone else said, if there's a will, there's a way. Even with Warden, there are still loopholes. Blizzard is just fairly strict on countering/patching them ASAP.

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Originally Posted by Malithar

This is also a very fair point on the subject. Blizzard has always been very welcoming, even encouraging, of addon developers. They like people improving their game. And they're not so high and mighty to ignore situations where addons are required. They will take it upon themselves to create a stock option in that scenario, so that everyone has access to such a feature, then they build outwards from it, creating encounters with the knowledge that now everyone has the ability that x addon offers.

I do remember another addon that they purposely broke, claiming it made things too easy. I forget the name, but the addon allowed you to virtually draw on the terrain and areas, allowing you to, for example, draw off a circle in a corner and label it "SAFE ZONE" or draw a line to an ally of where to run, etc. I thought it was pretty unique, but it was quickly misused, not only for vulgarity and slander, but for making raid content too easy, since someone could map out exactly where to go and what to do, rather than relying on people knowing their rolls and how to handle the situations.

Blizzard is very unique in their position as developers though. I wonder what FFXI would be like if SE redesigned the system to be more addon friendly, and opened it up to the community to augment as they saw fit. And as someone else said, if there's a will, there's a way. Even with Warden, there are still loopholes. Blizzard is just fairly strict on countering/patching them ASAP.

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I'd imagine if SE did open up to officially endorsing addons (with some restrictions obviously) not only would be be getting a lot of qol stuff sooner but there would be less double work of the community making things and then SE doing it. And well they'd save a ton of time/money on developing them which given there skeleton crew they have you'd think they'd be all over that. I mean how much time did they waste making windowed mode to begin with which is the first thing the community did. Or the equip sets which the community did years ago