Bots: Identifying a growing blight on the community and what needs to change.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ElazulHP

Yeah, because right now there is nothing to fear. There is no punishment. SE does literally nothing to them. They can get away with buying gil and then brag about it in game chat. However, if you're talking about actually banning someone going forward permanently they may have an account with character(s) they've been playing for 5 years they could essentially lose and flush away 5 years of work and there comes in the fear. You would force them to stop and judge the risk between losing possibly months to years worth of work/effort building a character for some stupid gil you can get super easy the legit way. Much better than the absolutely nothing that is being done right now.

---

Except- really, how can you prove anything? How is Square going to get these buyers accounts without outright digging into information completely out of their jurisdiction? There is nothing in game as proof that they bought from another source even if someone brags about it. The same goes for house and Free Company selling. You can't ban players for exchanging large sums of gil. My account is not a year old, but if I suddenly got 90m in my bank, is it RMT? And if I was banned for "suspicion" with no evidence, then that's just bad business.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gula

Except- really, how can you prove anything? How is Square going to get these buyers accounts without outright digging into information completely out of their jurisdiction? There is nothing in game as proof that they bought from another source even if someone brags about it. The same goes for house and Free Company selling. You can't ban players for exchanging large sums of gil. My account is not a year old, but if I suddenly got 90m in my bank, is it RMT? And if I was banned for "suspicion" with no evidence, then that's just bad business.

---

So because SE may make mistakes while investigating we should continue to let people continue cheat with impunity and let the gold farmers continue to ruin the game? Great logic there! smh...

Obviously, they would need to set some kind of standard of proof before making a ban like that. EDIT: If you suddenly get 90m in the bank I feel the account should be flagged for suspicion and investigated by an internal team. Not outright banned of course, as automated systems can be flawed, but if the gil originated from a known/proven RMT account you would be banned. And we do know they can identify these because they ban those all the time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ElazulHP

-snip-

---

Theyll rarely, if ever, ban gil buyers for one reason only: They pay a monthly sub and SE would rather keep them around for their sub cost.

On top of that imagine the sub fees they get from the bots before the mass bans? They’re getting money from both sides with one being guaranteed to buy more copies once more for the sake of repeating the process. Obviously they take a while to review, obscenly long compared to other games, but that is an added benefit in their favor.

Does anyone happen to know of a game that goes after the buyers? Only one I can think of is WoW, though I am not certain, would make sense since they offer a legitimate means of RMT so to speak.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

For you in particular - "anyone that crafts a lot and keeps a close eye on the market board is probably a bot!"

For other players - "That guy with the lore-friendly Roegadyn name is a bot!" "That guy that's probably never played an MMO before and acts weird is actually probably a bot!"

---

And the 32 identical lv50 hyur black mages that just appeared in front of a quest npc, leveled up, jumped into the ground and vanished?

Or the 1500 pieces of endgame crafted gear listed by fghdgjgskd at massive undercuts and with a maker tag from a different server?

Must be legit players, no need to even investigate them...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

And the 32 identical lv50 hyur black mages that just appeared in front of a quest npc, leveled up, jumped into the ground and vanished?

Or the 1500 pieces of endgame crafted gear listed by fghdgjgskd at massive undercuts and with a maker tag from a different server?

Must be legit players, no need to even investigate them...

---

No, they made it clear- it would not be an identical hyur with the Askdysn Lythwyn name, but a Roe. You're twisting the intent of their post into something that isn't what they're trying to get across.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gula

Except- really, how can you prove anything? How is Square going to get these buyers accounts without outright digging into information completely out of their jurisdiction? There is nothing in game as proof that they bought from another source even if someone brags about it. The same goes for house and Free Company selling. You can't ban players for exchanging large sums of gil. My account is not a year old, but if I suddenly got 90m in my bank, is it RMT? And if I was banned for "suspicion" with no evidence, then that's just bad business.

---

Other MMORPGs have a system in place that tracks each individual in-game currency "coin". Think of it as a serial number assigned to each coin created in the game much like the serial number on US paper money, just as a visual example.
This gives each coin a trackable trail.
This allows the teams that deal with the accounts of those found botting or exploiting, in order to create the currency to then RMT, to follow each coin's progression through the various "hands" until it shows up in bulk on some player's character, showing an extremely high probability that player took part in RMT.
They then investigate and if so determined, action/ban all involved, the botter to launderer to the buyer, removing that "bad" currency from the game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

For you in particular - "anyone that crafts a lot and keeps a close eye on the market board is probably a bot!"

For other players - "That guy with the lore-friendly Roegadyn name is a bot!" "That guy that's probably never played an MMO before and acts weird is actually probably a bot!"

In short, players are prone to accusing those that act in a way they consider abnormal of botting. Because they can't fathom why someone would act that way, or that someone might be really new to MMOs/gaming in general/etc. Or just that they spent their day off doing something like gathering for a long time. Ergo, must be a bot.

---

You can justify anyone as being legitimate with enough stretches in logic.

There's a point where doing so honestly becomes insanity though, because when you see players who observably spend 12+ hours active and doing non-DoH/L activities in the day then spend the entire night crafting and/or gathering as a regular routine it becomes hard to justify that as being normal, as does thinking someone who consistently follow the exact same path between gathering nodes for hours on end is normal.

I don't know why they just don't get the cheating software or whatever it is, and use it in a way to give GMs alerts that certain things are being triggered. I've seen videos about GMs in WoW and how they get alerts for speed hacks, warping, and all sorts of stuff.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bacent

I don't know why they just don't get the cheating software or whatever it is, and use it in a way to give GMs alerts that certain things are being triggered. I've seen videos about GMs in WoW and how they get alerts for speed hacks, warping, and all sorts of stuff.

---

Or if they don't want to do that nor bother banning crafting/gathering bots, give everyone tools in-game to allow for idle crafting and gathering so they all have equal footing. The other type of bots get banned anyways.