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

I didn't look to see if anyone else said it but, RMT is a good portion of FFXIV's money when they banwave the bots, because the people who owned those bots will just buy new service accounts and then start the whole process over. I understand how morally horrendous that sounds, but that's just money and how it ends up. Whether purposefully wanting more money or unintentionally getting more from bots is another discussion all-together, but botting will continue and will be in droves until... Anything can be done. It's just something we have to deal with until someone finds a way to break it up.

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Originally Posted by KinzolaiVeras

I didn't look to see if anyone else said it but, RMT is a good portion of FFXIV's money when they banwave the bots, because the people who owned those bots will just buy new service accounts and then start the whole process over. I understand how morally horrendous that sounds, but that's just money and how it ends up. Whether purposefully wanting more money or unintentionally getting more from bots is another discussion all-together, but botting will continue and will be in droves until... Anything can be done. It's just something we have to deal with until someone finds a way to break it up.

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It's highly unlikely they're actually paying for those accounts.

The more likely scenario is that they're committing fraudulent purchases using credit card chargebacks, as it's already a known problem when it comes to Mogstation item codes.

The only thing that gives me some doubt about this is why they don't just endlessly buy level skips because that would both allow them to start farming instantly and give them free gil in the process (Since level skips come with a few hundred thousand gil for whatever reason). I have seen obviously level skipped bots before, though (Exhibiting all the usual signs but wearing the full Shire gear and Filibuster ring the skip comes with), so it may just be that not all of the RMTers have caught onto it yet.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

It's highly unlikely they're actually purchasing those accounts.

The more likely scenario is that they're committing fraudulent purchases using credit card chargebacks, as it's already a known problem when it comes to Mogstation item codes.

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That's unlikely, chargebacks get accounts banned and unable to do anything immediately, and disallow future purchases from the cardholder. Sure you can get around it with different cards and other banks, but the process is lengthy and if they were chargebacking, SE bans them pretty automatically ever since the chargeback changes last year. At that point you just buy Crysta, which makes you have to buy double price to bot if you were already banned.

The bots are paying legit, or else we wouldn't have this problem.

Edit: Forgot to mention, those are ITEM codes, not service account registrations. Different beast entirely.

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Originally Posted by Noodle_Trinidad

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.

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They'll get less money overall if enough people get sick of all the cheaters ruining the game and unsubscribe. Crafting/gathering is terrible right now because of the cheaters/RMT Gold farmers.

The situation with the bots on Cactaur is bad enough that some of the serious crafters ended up jumping ship and moving to other servers that lacked competition. I keep seeing new level-capped bots springing up out of nowhere as well, so I can only assume they too are hopping servers for whatever reason.

It makes me really curious as to how World Travel is ultimately going to influence the economy.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Increase the size of the STF

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Won't happen. At the moment they stand to gain nothing from it. I thought you were joking about it only being comprised of three people but it turns out it's actually four. I guess they already increased the STF's size by 33% lol. You can't expect them to do it again after that large of an increase.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Give the GMs power to punish cheaters. The GM force is a much larger team then the STF, and they're also extremely prompt in responding to reports, which is essential if you're trying to catch someone while they're actually cheating. All they need to do is attempt to contact a suspected bot repeatedly then ban them if they fail to respond for a prolonged period of time.

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How does that work if the botter isn't afk at that time? Do the GMs ignore all reports about them from then on?

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

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

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Which is why it's a waste of time to engage in such arguments. Ignore them unless you want to use them to prove botting is allowed.


Square Enix strictly prohibits the use of third-party programs or tools – including programs and tools that permit automated or “absentee” play – in Final Fantasy XIV. The Game Master (GM) may speak to players to investigate and confirm “absentee” play, and if the player continues with this behaviour, contrary to the GM's instructions, this will be treated as “absentee” play and subject to penalties.
"Maybe they didn't want to respond to the GM or maybe it was a child/sibling that was playing and didn't know how to respond"

tl;dr SE doesn't need hard proof and can ban people for whatever reason if they wanted to

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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.

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It's only the bots with gibberish names that do that. The bots regular players use for gathering, crafting, FATEs and PVP don't perform any actions a normal player can't.

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Originally Posted by KinzolaiVeras

I didn't look to see if anyone else said it but, RMT is a good portion of FFXIV's money when they banwave the bots, because the people who owned those bots will just buy new service accounts and then start the whole process over.

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But regular players won't buy new accounts, so does that mean regular players are allowed to bot?

People who do bot 24/7 should be easy to find, same things for those who bot over the night to gather / craft / leveling. For example, there is already an afk timer in the game, so they can turn on the afk status. You just need to keep a track on suspicious account and see if these characters ever go to sleep. Having people who doesn't afk more than the time for a node to spawn - so maybe 15 minutes max - for en entire week is clearly impossible.

There is ways to detect a bot, and before banning, it could be as simple as, for a game master, to teleport the player somewhere and try to talk with it. If the player is making weird mouvement or not answering at all but were moving right before the teleport, sorry, but there is no excuse, even if you don't look at your chat, getting teleporting out of nowhere will trigger any players that there is a problem and you would check it. And a bot might just lose his pattern and stop working. The chance of getting a false positive that way is really low.

And the big problem with allowing bots like SE is doing, or giving no punishement is that, well, if everyone else is botting and it's ok, people might start to bot just to make it fair. And if people start to think like that, it will become more and more impossible to deal with that problem.

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Originally Posted by Vnolan

"Maybe they didn't want to respond to the GM or maybe it was a child/sibling that was playing and didn't know how to respond"

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Don't let someone that can't respond play with your account unsupervised then. What if they were to obstruct someone else's gameplay or use emotes excessively and got reported?

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Originally Posted by Vnolan

How does that work if the botter isn't afk at that time? Do the GMs ignore all reports about them from then on?

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You're able to issue follow-up reports if you feel a matter wasn't resolved properly, so you could suggest that they investigate at a different time of day if it didn't work the first time.

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Originally Posted by AlliciaCapulet

And the big problem with allowing bots like SE is doing, or giving no punishement is that, well, if everyone else is botting and it's ok, people might start to bot just to make it fair. And if people start to think like that, it will become more and more impossible to deal with that problem.

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This is basically why the problem has been getting worse as time goes on.

No punishment equals no fear, so people will more readily take up something that supposedly violates the ToS if they see others getting away with it.

There was originally only a single persistent bot farmer back in HW on my server (Though they seemingly multibox three accounts alongside their main account), but that number has swelled to close a dozen as of now.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Yeah, it's... (People who regularly spend the night holed up crafting in their private housing/apartment are particularly suspect) ...

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I'm always crafting in my house or at the market board next to it for hours on end. I requested a crafting fatigue for players who are bot-crafting (try staying on one knee for 2+ hours IRL and you will be fatigued!), but nothing like it ever got implemented.