Too many bots, too few bans: The Shadowbringers edition.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

I miss the Aethersand bots on Balmung. They helped lower the price of Crystals. 9999 Lightning crystals for 3 gil each was nice while it lasted.

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I'm honestly surprised if they haven't come back yet there because I've been seeing aethersand bots for the past week or so on Cactuar.

I personally have no issues with crystal/cluster supplies due to gathering aethersands myself whenever my GP caps, but they really kind of twist the economy into something it shouldn't be by tanking the prices on mainstream materials/crafts to extreme lows. Things tend to start off normally while there's tons of DoL/H players supplying the market, but once interest wanes and people start quitting then they gradually take over.

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Originally Posted by alacruxe

The people in here jumping to the defense of players exhibiting bot-like behaviors are drawing my suspicions tbh. Almost like they've got skin in the game.

Anyway, if somebody asked me if I'm a bot, I'd just respond that I'm not a bot and ask why the accuser thinks so. There's nothing wrong with an honest concerned inquiry and I really don't think that counts as harassment. It's not like taking a few seconds to type a response to a tell is going to affect your gathering or FATE grinding substantially.

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Imagine if some stranger came up to you while you were out and about doing your own thing in a store or something, after watching you for 5 minutes, and just abruptly asked you if you were committing fraud or stealing.

That's what being accused of being a bot is like.

I would find it kind of rude if someone came up to me and asked if I was a bot, too.

It's less offensive and equally effective to try and get their attention with an off-hand remark about something or a simple greeting.

Still, just because someone talks doesn't necessarily mean they aren't using a bot. It's extremely trivial to script a bot to make it give a canned response if a certain keyword is detected in chat (Though they'll issue this response so immediately that it tends to draw more suspicion rather then it dispels), and if someone is monitoring their bot they may respond to try to get you off their back.

Ultimately, it's better to judge from their overly patterned behavior more then anything else.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I would find it kind of rude if someone came up to me and asked if I was a bot, too.

It's less offensive and equally effective to try and get their attention with an off-hand remark about something or a simple greeting.

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I don't mean to offend or appear to be "defending bots" as the person I quoted is suggesting, I just think there's literally no point in bothering anyone in a PM, bot or not.

Its not our job to police the game and interrogate people. If we see suspicious behaviour, then by all means report it. If you clearly state that it's a suspicion, and you end up being wrong, then I doubt anything will happen to you.

I just think this whole questioning someone if they're a bot thing is completely unnecessary. It was in every other game I played.

On the subject of "policing" people, I repeatedly find my cursor going towards the "Kick from Novice Network" option with how many mentors I routinely see pulling overnight gathering, crafting, or FATE farming routines using bots, but I know that actually doing so is ultimately only going to get me in trouble.

It's rather frustrating to be in a situation where I technically have the power to punish people for something, but can't; moreso when the STF and GM teams are continually useless about it.

Most of the gathering bots I've seen are usually farming Aerthersands. It's the same ones every time too. They're on 24/7 since I started paying attention and to my knowledge still there as of at least the end of Stormblood. There are also crafting bots that will sit in their houses and craft the end game items 24/7. Usually being in a bot FC based in a house so they can put up a bell and stuff and just sit there with nobody able to see them physically. The one I see the most has a bunch of naked level 20 mule characters he uses to list all the stuff he sits in his house making 24/7 under the same few crafter characters. None of which have ever been banned to my knowledge.

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Originally Posted by ElazulHP

The one I see the most has a bunch of naked level 20 mule characters he uses to list all the stuff he sits in his house making 24/7 under the same few crafter characters. None of which have ever been banned to my knowledge.

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Exact same thing is going on Cactuar. One omnicrafter bot, only has SMN/SCH at 80, is in a FC with three mule characters that constantly cycle log-ins to check their items and undercut if someone is selling lower then them.

I almost never actually see them in person so they either buy all of their materials from the MB or have someone supplying them constantly.

Some people believe it's some kind of large-scale Aether DC-wide RMT farming scheme, as it's been noticed that the players exhibiting this pattern are always online/offline simultaneously which suggests they're running everything from the same PC.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Exact same thing is going on Cactuar. One omnicrafter bot, only has SMN/SCH at 80, is in a FC with three mule characters that constantly cycle log-ins to check their items and undercut if someone is selling lower then them.

I almost never actually see them in person so they either buy all of their materials from the MB or have someone supplying them constantly.

Some people believe it's some kind of large-scale Aether DC-wide RMT farming scheme, as it's been noticed that the players exhibiting this pattern are always online/offline simultaneously which suggests they're running everything from the same PC.

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I see mine regularly because the guy has a house directly next to mine. His mule characters visit the MB/Bell directly outside next to our two houses. I've talked to some people who think the guy does the same on other servers as when he's inactive on our server similar bots are active on other servers so perhaps its the same guy. I couldn't say for certain though so just speculation on my part.

Honestly, the thing that annoys me the most about this matter is that they revised the social aspects of the ToS to make them stricter and applicable to a wider variety of scenarios, presumably with the intent of trying to further discourage harassment, yet they can't be bothered to improve anything when it comes to the enforcement of illicit activity. The sole change we got was them noting how many bots are being banned each week in the wake of the same live letter where they had an interview with the head of the STF, but it really just comes across as them trying to say "Look, we're doing something!", but "something" isn't enough if it's not scaring people into stopping or avoiding illicit activity entirely.

I feel like someone needs to bring this up to their PR or in another interview or something because posts in the forums clearly aren't getting the message across.

I've also been contemplating getting a CWLS or discord together to see if a collective approach to reporting people could be more effective because the issue might partly be that I'm the only one even reporting most of the people I see.

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Originally Posted by CorbinDallas

Imagine if some stranger came up to you while you were out and about doing your own thing in a store or something, after watching you for 5 minutes, and just abruptly asked you if you were committing fraud or stealing.

That's what being accused of being a bot is like.

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You act like I've never been accused of botting. :P I've been playing MMOs for over 15 years. I've been there and done that.

And again, it's really not that hard to say no.

edit: As an addendum, if, say, an officer walks up to me and asks me if I'm doing something illegal, I'm not just going to stay silent and walk away. That's completely asinine and only makes it all the more likely I'll be arrested. Or shot, since this is American police we're talking about.

Obviously regular players don't hold the same amount of power, but they still have the ability to report you. And you're a lot more likely to get reported for botting if you stay quiet and continue acting like a bot. If you don't wanna get reported, do the thing that makes you not get reported. It's so easy.

I'm starting to wish they'd just permit looping macros if they're not going to bother enforcing the DoL/H bots.

The tincture spammers have gotten settled in on my server and are starting to flood the market. It's not quite as bad as it was in SB presumably due to the Cubus Flesh requirement presenting a bit of wall for bot farmers as the rate of acquisition from both direct drops and buying with FATE currency is rather terrible, but it's still enough to make trying to push sales legitimately extremely stressful as they'll keep undercutting at the drop of a hat until the profit margin becomes so low that it's scarcely worth bothering if you aren't automating it yourself..

My attempts to compete with them are really more like a spit of defiance then anything else because I can't keep up with people who effectively spend close to 12 hours straight crafting/gathering every night, at least not if I want to actually enjoy any other aspects of the game.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Conversely, if the owner of the bot is at their PC or comes back to see you sending them /tells, they can report you for harassment. So it's better to just not /tell at all.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

Thats a good way to get reported by someone who wants to gather in peace without you being a tool.

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I honestly don't think a GM would take action against a false-positive at all. That would discourage any report in future for almost all kinds e.g. "Was that flaming at all? Or just me being over-sensitive? Or a joke? Banter. Nah, let's move on, else I get punished".



My cousin had a similar problem in real life: The smoke detector went off in the apartment below but there was no smoke visible. Nobody answered the door. So he called the Fire Department nonetheless, and there was a guy in there. And the FD forced the door open - scolded the guy for having something in the stove that caused the smoke and neither turning off the smoke detector nor responding to the door. My cousin was fine though.

If you want to gather in peace, why not responding and be nice to a stranger that is concerned about the game's health (economically)? It does take no effort at all, it's not that you get spammed with /tells asking if you are a bot, probably once in several months, am I right - if at all? If player conversation is disrupting your peace in an MMORPG, sorry, "you are a tool" to say it in your words. There are good alternatives available. Like "The Witcher" or "Harvest Moon"? There you can gather in peace as much as you want.

Don't spread such weird conspiracy theories just because your friend's neighbours father's dog heard a story about some GM actually punishing something that is not even remotely comparable for this particular situation.

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Originally Posted by Doozer

You're not Cool or Edgy for ignoring people when they ask if you're a bot.

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It's also not cool waving your fictional police badge around being like "Respond to me, or else."

https://i.imgur.com/8qggx3N.jpg

It'd just be nice if reporting bots was easier. Like the RMT report option, but instead it opens a box where all the info like time and location are filled in and you just need to type out a description.

I honestly wish they just had a quick report function for it like the RMT bots.

They're generally so obvious from their abnormally long periods of activity, overly repetitive behavior and/or janky movement patterns that they really shouldn't need a detailed description of what it is that's making them seem suspicious.

In the meantime, I'll keep losing sleep knowing a bunch of lazy do-nothings on my server are going to get their Amaro mounts before me despite spending maybe about half the time actually playing.

What about designing content in such a way that using bots is not an appealing option? I mean, as long as crafting, gathering and leveling are so time consuming and mind numbing, people will keep using bots, that's just how it is.
Wanna get rid of bots? Implement savage leveling dungeons that reward 2x the exp of normal dungeons (same hp for mobs and bosses, but more punishing mechanics/higher received damage) and do something similar for fates. Allow us to craft several items in one go just by using more materials. Stop making everything convoluted and time consuming, while also being repetitive and unchallenging.

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Originally Posted by Lastelli

What about designing content in such a way that using bots is not an appealing option? I mean, as long as crafting, gathering and leveling are so time consuming and mind numbing, people will keep using bots, that's just how it is.
Wanna get rid of bots? Implement savage leveling dungeons that reward 2x the exp of normal dungeons (same hp for mobs and bosses, but more punishing mechanics/higher received damage) and do something similar for fates. Allow us to craft several items in one go just by using more materials. Stop making everything convoluted and time consuming, while also being repetitive and unchallenging.

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Honestly, it doesn't matter how easy SE makes things because most of these botters are choosing to do it at hours where they normally wouldn't be playing anyways (Case in point, most of the suspects on my server would just log off at night for the first week of ShB instead of pulling overnighters at FATEs or gathering nodes due to the scripts not being updated).

It's strictly a matter of laziness and they want to be rewarded with no effort, which is going to come to a head with the Ishgard Restoration where they'll be depriving legitimate players of rewards by pushing them out of the top ranks.

The situation of the bots in the new servers is disgusting, it is something to see post in reddit like these where new players can not progress in the story.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...s_killing_the/

Or the instances in these servers have queues of almost 30 minutes by these same bots, a few days ago I saw in Twitch a boy in Spriggan who could not continue his mission history because Thanalan was a sea of bots.

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Originally Posted by Nayout

The situation of the bots in the new servers is disgusting, it is something to see post in reddit like these where new players can not progress in the story.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...s_killing_the/

Or the instances in these servers have queues of almost 30 minutes by these same bots, a few days ago I saw in Twitch a boy in Spriggan who could not continue his mission history because Thanalan was a sea of bots.

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That's absolutely crazy, I've never seen so many bots as I saw in one of the screenshots on that reddit post. I also had this issue when I first started they were teleporting under ground and killing mobs it took me about 30 mins to finish the quest, I was new and didn't know world visit was a thing at that point, there's probably others who are in the same boat.

SE must be the worst company I've ever seen when it comes to dealing with these things, I've pondered for awhile now why they haven't found out how they're teleporting and simply patched it to prevent them from using it again.

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Originally Posted by MrKusakabe

I honestly don't think a GM would take action against a false-positive at all. That would discourage any report in future for almost all kinds e.g. "Was that flaming at all? Or just me being over-sensitive? Or a joke? Banter. Nah, let's move on, else I get punished".

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Sending unsolicited tells saying "Are you a bot? If you don't answer me, I'm going to report you for botting" can be considered harassment or "nuisance behavior" quite easily.

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If you want to gather in peace, why not responding and be nice to a stranger that is concerned about the game's health (economically)? It does take no effort at all, it's not that you get spammed with /tells asking if you are a bot, probably once in several months, am I right - if at all? If player conversation is disrupting your peace in an MMORPG, sorry, "you are a tool" to say it in your words. There are good alternatives available. Like "The Witcher" or "Harvest Moon"? There you can gather in peace as much as you want.

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Why should anyone respond to unsolicited tells accusing a person of being a bot in the first place. Not exactly a friendly way to start a conversation, and no, it doesn't warrant a response. Telling someone to go play other games to be left alone isn't a solution. Heaven forbid someone wants to gather in peace!

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Don't spread such weird conspiracy theories just because your friend's neighbours father's dog heard a story about some GM actually punishing something that is not even remotely comparable for this particular situation.

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"Conspiracy theory"? Please. It's a valid reason to report someone if they send you tells saying they will report you for botting if you don't answer them. Threatening to report could be considered enough for GMs to take action. It would ultimately be up to their discretion, of course - but the tells alone are harassment and could border on verbal abuse if the sender is particularly aggressive.

Don't bring in scenarios about your friend and their smoke alarm to conversations where they have absolutely no relevance whatsoever.

To the staff whom likely wont read this or respond: Would it help if we the community created canned reports in Japanese that describe what the particular glaring bot practices the person we're reporting is exhibiting and then allow people to just fill in the name/location/date? This is getting ridiculous that we can't get region based teams dealing with this. We NEED staff dealing with bots that are fluent in the languages for the regions reporting and have the ability to deal with these issues in real time. Need to study some to upgrade your detection tools? Make a function that allows staff to flag an account so the account's mb listings are not available to anyone but the user, they can no longer purchase mb items and they cannot trade gil so it stops affecting the economy while you're still collecting data.

It's not like it's not an issue on the JP side of things, either.

From I've heard it's actually worse on their end as far as things like DoL/H farm bots go as their craft prices are supposedly the lowest out of all the DCs, and the presence of numerous anomalous FCs in their FC rankings that have only a single digit numbers of members on DoL/H classes, yet are somehow keeping up with FCs packing several hundred players certainly suggests as much.

SE Plz

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._explain_this/
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...solo_instance/

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Originally Posted by Addicted

It has always been like this unfortunately, ever since 1.0 in fact. In 2.0 and 3.0, back when Northern Thanalan FATE grinding was a thing, you could see hundreds of bots happily clearing FATEs with impunity. I don't know of any ever being banned for it. I've also heard of Amdapor Keep being inaccessible to players looking to do the ARR relic quest due to the sheer amount of bots clogging up the instance server.

As far as I know, XIV has no automatic anti-cheat for this kind of stuff. It does make me feel like a sucker when I put in the "effort" to do mind-numbing content while someone else just bots away and gets off with no repercussions. I don't believe there is a conspiracy, SE just well and truly does not care. They haven't cared for 9 years and I don't see that changing.

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I stopped using the in-game reporting system and started using the website

https://support.na.square-enix.com/c...382&la=1&fty=2 (Very bottom. I choose third-party programs to report high level bots)

I honestly don't think SE does much with the in-game reports. I was reporting the same 2 level 70 gather bots for 7+ months using the in-game system. I would report them about once every 2 weeks give or take. Nothing, nadda, the bots kept gathering 24/7. I then used the website to report them a few weeks before ShB launched and BAM they were gone. Oddly though 1 of them returned about a week ago and I saw him back gathering lvl 70 aether reduction nodes. I reported him again but have not changed if it's still around

I'm already seeing and reporting lvl 80 aetherial reduction gather bots. I don't really expect much to be done about them.

I wouldn't bother reporting the ones you see teleporting around the cities. They are the ones with the keyboard face roll names. Just to many to report.

Supposedly, you can actually link the program that you suspect is being used with the "Provide a link" field in the online reports.

I already know which bot the vast majority of populace likely uses considering that I don't even have to try to search for it for it turn up in search results...

I feel like SE could probably sue them and/or issue a cease and desist on the basis that it's sub-based and thus profiting off of their product. "Could" being the key word.

I had been wondering, while on the 2 new EU servers, why I could walk into some areas and get a rush of 'background chatter' normally created by the game when there are a lot of players close by but see only 3-5 players around. Figured out it is triggering due to stacks of leveling bots hidden nearby. I've spotted some of them (liker under the Airship dock in Gridania where stacks of lvl 50 conjurors seem to be running strings of missions) but others still elude, perhaps are wholly underground (example: in conjurors guild).

There's usually a mass of gil farming bots hiding in the wall behind the FC chest at each Grand Company HQ, as that's where they wait after they go into farm mode and start spamming runs of Amdapor Keep for gil after they've finished the MSQ.

Those guys are just an afterthought to me as they don't exist on Cactuar currently due to the character creation being locked, though.

Today i watched a youtuber explaining to followers how download a third party program, an EXE, to translate text game to portugueses. the software its called tataru helper, a software inside ff14. the program not only trasnlate but also change fonts size. Is it ilegal??


heres the link of his video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s70qe9JusyM

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Originally Posted by Fellgon

Today i watched a youtuber explaining to followers how download a third party program, an EXE, to translate text game to portugueses. the software its called tataru helper, a software inside ff14. the program not only trasnlate but also change fonts size. Is it ilegal??


heres the link of his video <removed>

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It probably falls into the realm of other such modifications: bannable, but SE turns a blind eye so long as you don't talk about it ingame.

Willing to bet People selling Raid clears thru discord is making more money than any of the keyboard mashed named bots lol/aethersand bots combined xD.

I really hope that SE gets the finger out and starts nuking all these bots.

Make it easier for us to tell you about them like with RMT bots, issue bans for people who BUY the gil and ruin their customer base.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

-After mounting up, they almost always take flight from a complete standstill, sometimes running a short distance then abruptly stopping to do so (As opposed to taking flight out of a run as normal players are prone to doing).

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You can mount up while moving?? I guess I'll have to try this. (Ex-WoW, where movement interrupts mount cast)

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-FSH bots cannot distinguish tugs and will waste their time/GP reeling in everything they hook even if the target fish is readily identifiable from it.

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Distinguish fish from tugs? How?, and how not to hook? Just wait for the fishing cast to time out? Since I have no idea what I'm about to catch, I just pull everything and toss the ones I don't want. [/QUOTE]

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

Distinguish fish from tugs? How?, and how not to hook? Just wait for the fishing cast to time out? Since I have no idea what I'm about to catch, I just pull everything and toss the ones I don't want.

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Yeah, you have small tugs, medium tugs and big tugs. There are specific fishes for each tug, plus a time window. Going for a specific fish, you distinguish the tug you need and Hook.

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Originally Posted by alacruxe

You act like I've never been accused of botting. :P I've been playing MMOs for over 15 years. I've been there and done that.

And again, it's really not that hard to say no.

edit: As an addendum, if, say, an officer walks up to me and asks me if I'm doing something illegal, I'm not just going to stay silent and walk away. That's completely asinine and only makes it all the more likely I'll be arrested. Or shot, since this is American police we're talking about.

Obviously regular players don't hold the same amount of power, but they still have the ability to report you. And you're a lot more likely to get reported for botting if you stay quiet and continue acting like a bot. If you don't wanna get reported, do the thing that makes you not get reported. It's so easy.

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If a GM sent me a tell of course I'd reply, but I'm not obligated to reply to a no mark like you who has a chip on their shoulder who just wants to, as another posted so eloquently put it, wave their pretend police badge around. Get out of my face, if you want to report me for ignoring you then go right ahead I'm sure the GMs will get a good laugh out of it.

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

You can mount up while moving?? I guess I'll have to try this. (Ex-WoW, where movement interrupts mount cast)

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Nah, the moving then suddenly stopping thing happens after they mount up.

On its own, it wouldn't look that suspicious but coupled with the awkward, but consistent pauses it makes it really obvious that they're running a script.

Besides all the standard effects they have like pricing at the market board or gil/character selling, they also congest the servers. If I still get login queue in the middle of the night on a european server then something is not right. Even for an immensely popular game like FFXIV.

Considering that they pop up in groups, someone is likely multiboxing. Just stand next to the BLM NPC in Uldah and count the bots popping up out of nowhere and then vanish and not in the normal "I teleport away" manner. It's crazy these days and it is affecting my game experience.

I have to move my butt when fishing at one location for too long because the game wants to prevent botting but so far these measures seem to affect only normal players and not the multitude of actual bots.

The RMT/gil-farming bots are using a modded client that basically is only sending the signals needed to move their characters, which makes it possible for them to be running hundreds of accounts off just a single PC.

Makes me wonder why they can't have some manner of authentication to ensure that the official client is being used.

The amount of cherry-picking that seems to go on in terms of what the community reps do/don't recognize as something that should be relayed to the devs as an issue is...troubling.

The RMT bots are so insanely high in number on the new servers that they're clogging up the queues and making it impossible for people to progress the MSQ whenever a new wave is passing through each week.

The economy is slowly but surely being taken over by the DoH/L bots as legit players start to lose interest in selling items, while others are just AFKing their way to the Amaro mount using FATE/trust/PvP bots.


It's honestly getting maddening to me at this point, but I don't have any intention of letting this topic die until something productive actually happens (Which will likely be never).

I think part of the reason SE don't really crack down on it that hard is because crafter/gatherer mains are such a small part of the player base and they're really the only ones that get screwed over since it really devalues their time. Everyone else sadly benefits from it more than they would get screwed by it. Cheaper prices on everything, etc.. the whole thing.
Actually dedicating devs towards eradicating it is probably counterproductive for the business, especially considering it's a constant chase between recognizing patterns and then bots changing those patterns and so on and so forth. Instead they mostly focus on RMTs that do affect the game way more directly.

I could be completely wrong, but that's always what I thought when the topic of them doing nothing popped up. I figured they could put some measures that would keep third party software from attaching to the game but because FF14 doesn't have a good macro system and doesn't have an add-on system at all it would be detrimental to do that as it would lockout a lot of beloved 3rd party software.

There were so many blm bots sitting inside the company chest in Ul'dah at Sapphire Ave the other day that if you clicked anywhere near it, you targeted a bot. You had to hit your nearest non pc target button to get the actual chest.

I actually played around with it to see how far away I had to click to not target a bot and it was surprisingly far. There was some warping in and out but mostly they just sat there unmoving.