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

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Originally Posted by One_Time

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.

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I don't find it weird when people spend hours crafting in general, but when it's consistently is done only in the dead of the night or early morning and after said players have already spent several hours doing other things prior I can't help but feel suspicious of them.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

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.

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I like to craft and gather during the night, as it does not require as much brain power, and I can chill a bit before I sleep, that being said, I'm not crafting/gathering during the entire night like bots would.

Although my time zone might make it seem like I am online for someone else's entire night.

At least the servers should notice if bots move a lot faster then they should be able to, or register if 10+ chars follow the very same movement patterns and move within the same second...

"Growing blight".... I'm sorry to inform you that it's been a blight since day 1, and honestly it's better now than it's ever been. The first couple of years were HORRIBLE for all the bots you listed and they've actually been tamped down quite a bit. The 'Report RMT' function they added helped immensely, but unfortunately they're never going to be able to cull all of them. It's sadly just the nature of online gaming.

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

At least the servers should notice if bots move a lot faster then they should be able to, or register if 10+ chars follow the very same movement patterns and move within the same second...

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There seemingly is some kind of speed hack detection active in PotD and PvP, as those are the only places where people have made multiple claims about getting DC'd from using gap closers like Onslaught and Shoulder Tackle (Usually when crossing over uneven terrain and/or if your target dies while you're in the middle of the move). Why this doesn't extend to all areas in general is beyond me.

Being able to detect identical movement patterns would also be nice, since it gets annoying to see the aethersand farmers going around in a conga line...

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Originally Posted by Malzian

"Growing blight".... I'm sorry to inform you that it's been a blight since day 1, and honestly it's better now than it's ever been. The first couple of years were HORRIBLE for all the bots you listed and they've actually been tamped down quite a bit. The 'Report RMT' function they added helped immensely, but unfortunately they're never going to be able to cull all of them. It's sadly just the nature of online gaming.

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I only started playing in late HW, but I've noticed a definite increase in the number of non-RMT bots since then. Depending on how the DoL/H content plays out in ShB, it could intensify even further (Though I'm honestly not expecting the whole Ishgard thing to be more then glorified custom deliveries).

The RMT bots are being kept under control better then before, but they'll continue to be an issue as long as SE adheres to only banning the gil farmers once a week. Daily purges would be necessary to actually curb their farming to any meaningful degree because it only takes a day for them to finish the MSQ and start doing their thing.

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Originally Posted by ElazulHP

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.

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This would be a concern if Gil in of itself had any real worth value to vast majority of players, which it does not. Gil in the long run is meaningless as the gearing paths is pretty much bound to the very content they're meant for in the forms of drops, tokens or Tomestones. Gil in this game is pretty much used for cosmetic things such as glamour and housing, with glamour itself having multiple avenues depending on one's taste in fashion. On top of that the RMT itself will scale accordingly to the number of players as it would generally be a part of that population that enables them. Unless gil becomes a massive force behind progression SE will always be passive about them.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Why this doesn't extend to all areas in general is beyond me.

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I dont get why terrain a normal player cant walk onto isnt an insta death zone like the border of some Arena, the very few times ppl glich and die there they just gotte return to their home while bots could no longer stand in deadly zones...

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

I dont get why terrain a normal player cant walk onto isnt an insta death zone like the border of some Arena, the very few times ppl glich and die there they just gotte return to their home while bots could no longer stand in deadly zones...

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I also had a thought they could just make all out of bounds areas killzones so the gil farm bots can't teleport around anymore.

It would be easier to just improve the enemy AI so it resets if its target is too far above/below a certain point on the Z axis for a prolonged period of time, though, because the bots are often only able to kill things by either hiding under the ground or in the air at a height where they can't be reached by auto-attacks. Enemies in HW/SB zones will already insta reset if they're unable to find a path to their target (Usually if you're standing up on a cliff), so extending this to ARR enemies and dungeon enemies could potentially impede their ability to function.

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Originally Posted by Noodle_Trinidad

This would be a concern if Gil in of itself had any real worth value to vast majority of players, which it does not. Gil in the long run is meaningless as the gearing paths is pretty much bound to the very content they're meant for in the forms of drops, tokens or Tomestones. Gil in this game is pretty much used for cosmetic things such as glamour and housing, with glamour itself having multiple avenues depending on one's taste in fashion. On top of that the RMT itself will scale accordingly to the number of players as it would generally be a part of that population that enables them. Unless gil becomes a massive force behind progression SE will always be passive about them.

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I think the bottom line is that if they say that something is against the ToS, they should be just as zealous about enforcing it as they are other issues like harassment instead of having an awkward double standard.

With free server transfers opening soon, it's highly likely the bot farmers are going to shuffle around in hopes of finding servers with less competition/more exploitable economies (Considering that Cactuar has been gaining them at a steady clip even with only paid transfers being a thing), so I figured it wouldn't hurt to breathe some life back into this topic.

On a separate note, after considering various, I really feel like it's just an over-reliance on automated detection methods that's the cause for a lot of bots being glossed over by SE, as at a server-side level a properly-programmed bot is indistinguishable from a normal player (Meaning the few who do get banned likely just screwed up somehow). Chances are high that they don't realize this and think that their measures are doing an adequate job when they...well, aren't, because there's noticeable bot populations even on the JP data centers contrary to what some believe.

It still boggles my mind as to why the GMs are only allowed to relay reports instead of acting on them themselves, as prompt two-way communcation is extremely important when it comes to matters like this, plus they have access to a wealth of information that can be used to readily identify players as suspicious, such as their achievement data (Abnormally large gathered/crafted item counts, namely), log-in/play time history, etc.

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Originally Posted by Malzian

"Growing blight".... I'm sorry to inform you that it's been a blight since day 1, and honestly it's better now than it's ever been. The first couple of years were HORRIBLE for all the bots you listed and they've actually been tamped down quite a bit. The 'Report RMT' function they added helped immensely, but unfortunately they're never going to be able to cull all of them. It's sadly just the nature of online gaming.

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When I started playing FF14 back just before HW, I saw bots once in the year or so I played. They were stuck in the wall killing cactuars and as a sprout I remember being an excited sprout having found a real bot and asking how to report.

Nowadays, I can can take a stroll through the starter cities after midnight or into the low level zones and spot 3-4 different clusters of bots openly teleporting between NPC's. I see them constantly.

RMT spam bots I agree have always been an issue.