FFXIV: Cheat 2 Win - The New Norm?

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Originally Posted by Kallera

From the forums.

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I think a screenshot would be actual proof, forum posts are kind of like citing Wikipedia in a paper for the New England Journal of Medicine

It's funny to see so many jimmies rustled when the fact of the matter is, only the blatant and dumb ones who tell others who disagree with the app that they are using the app + get reported would get banned.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

long quote short story:
Something should be done

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*sigh* Are you ever happy? Im not saying I think third party programs are a good thing(im against them myself) but your the same person who came here and made a new topic and started posting screenshots of my whole ls list trying to get us banned because -some- members pvp win traded. If you only come here to yell and scream about every thing you decide isn't okay, maybe you should play a different game. (Right.. people do this stuff in those games too.. don't they?)

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

I posted 4 threads with 100s of hits about win-trading. No response for months I have screenshots of entire LS's on my server specifically for win trading, with screen shots of ppl admitting doing it. none of them were ever banned.

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For the record the LS shes mentioning was a "PVP" LS ran by my friend and I was logged on that day. All you did was join say do you pvp trade? Like ONE guy said he did and you screenshotted the whole thing posted it here, tried to gm call us and threatened to gm call me twice(as well as screen shotted my tells where as I tried to explain nicely it was a pvp ls that just didnt care if some people did that) and made a lot of nice decent people look bad for something they never did.

What happened to all your threads? Oh right, the GM's closed them all, didn't they.

Those screenshots posted with peoples names, free companies here on Lodestone should have had you banned. Oh right but SE isn't listening :)

/end rant

I still couldn't understand all this WHAAMMMMMBULANCE crybaby QQ thread especially when its obvious the silent treatment is the answer we get all this time. Oh anyway is OP is FULLY AWARE that even using such tools isn't a 100% guarantee of getting seals in hunts, considering party, resets, trolls, ninjas, lag, etc? Not to mention theres so many peeps using it too!

OH I KNEW IT the OP refused to do hunts in such a way that he/she/it doesn't knew the real issue of it!

So, we got a thread about OP who dun know shit about X and making a rant thread about X? seems legit these days eh

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Originally Posted by Empressia

Wut

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It was kinda hard to understand such cryptic post, but I find it Ironic nontheless that you'd call out whambulance crybaby QQ thread on your whambulance crybaby QQ post.

Anyways, SE handles boting and cheating pretty badly. We know of a botter/POShacker/Yaxisabuser that hasn't been banned yet. He actually got his "Mapping the Realm: Turn 9" achievement before his "Beating T9" achievement because he went "exploring" and accidentally got the achievement. SE hasn't lifted a finger yet.

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Originally Posted by Kyros

Anyways, SE handles boting and cheating pretty badly. We know of a botter/POShacker/Yaxisabuser that hasn't been banned yet. He actually got his "Mapping the Realm: Turn 9" achievement before his "Beating T9" achievement because he went "exploring" and accidentally got the achievement. SE hasn't lifted a finger yet.

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Yeah, there are botters on my server that hog the farming spot for karakul, all of the farming spots for it. it is almost impossible to farm wool cloth yourself since they are always there targeting everything as soon as they spawn and tagging it all.

It has been going on for weeks. I reported, others reported, I got some of my FC to report, and they are almost always there, just spiritbinding and botting their way to a fortune.

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Originally Posted by Titor

Yeah, there are botters on my server that hog the farming spot for karakul, all of the farming spots for it. it is almost impossible to farm wool cloth yourself since they are always there targeting everything as soon as they spawn and tagging it all.

It has been going on for weeks. I reported, others reported, I got some of my FC to report, and they are almost always there, just spiritbinding and botting their way to a fortune.

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Odd, considering I farmed fleece a few days ago without seeing any bots. We're on the same server. Managed to farm 800 fleece without interruptions.

Oh and for those claiming that the programs do nothing different then having people mass spread out in an ls they are completely wrong. numerous times i've been killing a lil b rank by myself soloing it no one anywhere around and all of a sudden my exact coordianates and the monsters name are shouted out. this has happened to me and numerous of my friends. you can try to claim oh well you didnt see them act all you want but its junk. these programs do way more then oh so and so is up in that region they are giving locations as well.

They don't intentionally bring out content that can be exploited - people just find away around the content and learn HOW to exploit it.

Yes people are doing it and are bragging about it, but lets give SE some time to actually address the issue.

easy enough fix remove bloody logs entirely and add sands of time to the weekly alotment from syrcus. this way only people are cheating are doing it for glams

People botted crafts like crazy.. bot harvesting, bot killing npcs... the game has been infested with bots and gil sellers since it started. FFXI was the same way.

Ultimately, these games end up feeling more like F2P cash shop and grind based games then sub games, because they are so out of control.

FFXIV has limited this somewhat by making everyone the same and giving out skills at level up, and by hiding gear behind token grinds.... so... all the nonessential stuff (housing and vanity) is owned by the gil sellers/bots...and all the gameplay stuff is earned on the hamster wheel.... or was... until hunts =/

necro'd ><

http://imgur.com/Br00TCn.gif

Any particular reason or just too much free time

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Originally Posted by HaelseMikiro

necro'd ><

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... I'd say.

Surfing old forums posts trying to find something specific (not this thread) but I happened to click on this one and read the entire first page, and kinda blew my mind that almost everything there was something relevant enough that I wouldn't be surprised to see a brand new post about it weekly. Just curious if people could see it and start adding to it again. If the OP didn't have 178 likes already I might not have bothered, but people always say '1 strong thread is better than many repeats"

Edit : Well, it's alive! Not my fault someone applied the defibrillator, but what's done is done.

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Originally Posted by HaelseMikiro

I happened to click on this one and read the entire first page, and kinda blew my mind that almost everything there was something relevant enough that I wouldn't be surprised to see a brand new post about it weekly **snip**
but people always say '1 strong thread is better than many repeats"

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It boggles my mind that SE has thus far (2 and a half years later) found it impossible to filter teleport requests based on source and target coordinates - even if all they did was trace telemetry off-line, they'd at least be able to Identify cheaters using teleportation hacks. The same goes for all position and speed hacks, some simple offline scanning of game server logs should immediately throw up some potential candidates for action; and that's just position and teleportation hacks.

Banning bots isn't that easy. A dev for wow addressed this issue and basically said that it's a constant arms race. Even if they ban the botters, a lot of them will just make a new account and continue their nefarious activities.

On the other hand, if they break the bot, someone will just develop a new one and it goes on forever.

To be fair, it is hard to come up with content that DOESN'T promote cheating...because cheaters will cheat, regardless the content.

Having worked as a GM where finding, reporting, gaining evidence and then enforcing bans with a tertiary part of my job (my primary was actively bug testing while secondarily answering customer support), it's not easy to ban. Take this bit of information with a grain of salt because I don't know how SE operates.

Anyone using a VPN can avoid an enforced IP ban (banning accounts works far better, but no idea how SE does banning).

That does not include time taken to trace reports sent in by players to support cheating. I found more reports that were simply lacking information (time, date you saw cheating occur, what happened, players in question, screenshots, videos, combat logs- anything) and combing logs in the system was often time consuming, even with tools while still meeting quotas. Yes, there are ticket quotas (or at least where I had worked did. Again, I don't work for SE, so I don't know if they have a similar system). The game I worked on was far smaller than FFXIV and things easily backlogged. I can only imagine with how many servers there are and players with... how many staff?

Running after bots is often an endeavor in futility, as frustrating as that is. For the time taken to track down a cheater (like botting done by RMTs), several more have already been made. Investigations have to be done; banning is never done blindly. It's worse to ban a player that someone reportedly maliciously (people will find excuses to witch hunt those they don't like) or accidentally (gatherers do often look like botters or even a simple misclick) than to leave a bot grinding away. A player will rage and make a scene. RMTs stay silent and just start from scratch. However, while futile, rule enforcement is still done; it just takes longer than what most players are willing to understand and often stop sending in reports [with actual valuable information] because they see no change within a certain time frame. The more reports sent in on specific people or groups, the more likely they will be pushed up over other issues (and why certain characters may go unpunished for months).

As for cheaters, a lot of people mistake a lack of understanding of skills or mechanics and think there are exploits when there are none to be had. In this case, not only are there reports being made with lacking information, done out of spite or even accidental, but there are many with simply wrong information. The more serious the reported exploit or cheater, the more likely it will be looked into faster. Companies have no obligation to let players know if things are being looked into or worked on. Mostly, this is to not let an exploit spread to those that don't know there is one currently (think at the time of writing this, using pomanders outside of Palace of the Dead is a thing) as well as protect the staff or company. Nothing will be seemingly done about the issue, or said about it, until an effective fix is found. Then there are simply exploits that are simply hushed, hoping that it will go unnoticed (like that world #1 BLM on FFLogs who had logs that made no sense unless they were using spell speed/ casting hacks- this was addressed after someone reported them with quite a large amount of data as to why their logs made no sense). :P Then a fix is made and servers are taken down for emergency maintenance, if the exploit is severe enough, and players complain. /laugh Can't win.

All in all, nothing is ever as simple as a majority of players think they are.

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Originally Posted by HaelseMikiro

necro'd ><

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I read 10 pages of posts trying to figure out why people were talking about Hunts like they were relative content until I looked at the post dates.

I think there are still some bots around from 1.0 actually.
And there are gathering bots that... well, i've seen them farming 24/7 for like... 8 months now? Since i moved to this server lol

http://files.gamebanana.com/img/ico/...b66dabf387.gif

Necro'ing threads

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Originally Posted by ZanzhizExaverion

LM-17, FFXI, your move.

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I know right?

For those of you who have only played a FF MMO for a short time (2 years or less) you may not be familiar with their history of tight lipped banhammers that only get spoken about when they put out a statement 'X-Thousand accounts were banned and or suspended for the following category of violations'.

Or when someone who personally got banned makes a thread, which RMT never do.

EDIT: Far-out-necro-brussel-sprout... i'll move along now.

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Originally Posted by Pinkie_Pie

http://files.gamebanana.com/img/ico/...b66dabf387.gif

Necro'ing threads

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There wouldn't be a need to necro threads if the problem has been stopped, it's sad how this has continued since I first ever entered the game :(

I don't really agree with the use of cheat, but player respond to SE's bad content in their own way.

The hunt was, is and will always be a trash content, especially because of tards pulling without anyone being here instead of signaling them and wait (and it's like this since the beginning of the hunt). Plus some people take ages to load and have the NM show on their screen, which sometime forbid them to have the kill. We've been complaining for ages about it, asking at least for NM to be like FATE with stats increase depending of the number of people. But nothing has ever been done.
So, what people do when nothing is made to change a crappy situation that SE doesn't care about? They use tier software to make the content DOABLE.

It's kinda exagerated for PvP but I can see where people go with bots. PvP is an uninteresting content, where people are just randomingly rolling their head on their keyboard. I did The Feast for an entire afternoon last sunday to get the Garo mount, and I've never ended a day being so salty. Bless SE for disableing the team chat in The Feast. So if there's something you really want in there, mostly mount, but don't wanna catch cancer, well...

Again, I don't promote the use of cheat, I'm just pointing out that people use cheat not to cheat, but because they're trying to solve content's problem that SE has never be able to solve.
Now there's RMT, who cheat for cheating. Those are garbage.

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Originally Posted by ZanzhizExaverion

LM-17, FFXI, your move.

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LM-17 literally destroyed an end game LS I was in. We were never the same after that and splintered off into other LS's.

That's actually 10+ bots there. Their legs are under the ground.

How can they make new characters on Balmung anyway?

http://i.imgur.com/RLP3rkA.jpg

I don't understand why they don't fix that teleport glitch. It would stop bots in their tracks. Temporarily anyway.

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Originally Posted by Evangela

That's actually 10+ bots there. Their legs are under the ground.

How can they make new characters on Balmung anyway?

http://i.imgur.com/RLP3rkA.jpg

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Those are the automated RMT Bots with gibberish Name, they usually get banned sooner or later, hence when the Server Re-Opens after a Banwave you see tons of em jumping from NPC to NPC.

Those are completely automated and rather hard to fight back, if SE doesn't involve adding some Protection to the Client. That would get rid of some 3rd Party Tools though and would be bypassed in a matter of a time.

On the other Side there are "Normal" Players like you and me, who use Bot Programs to Gather 24/7, FATE Grind 24/7, Run Duties 24/7, usually not in a FC, if... then mostly the Owner of that Character has more then one Character and they're all in the same Company.

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Now what is easier to detect? A Normal Player turning on his Program once in a while or a RMT Bot with a gibberish Name jumping around from NPC to NPC?

Inbefore People call me Paranoid because of this stuff, no, I think we all know that Players tend to Cheat.
It happened in the Past, it still happens now and it happens in the Future.

We're only able to Report in the End and if Square Enix decides to throw away those Reports, it's ultimately their Decision how they deal with that...

In the End People usually get banned if they cross the Line too much, like using Glitches/Tools for Raids that give a unfair Advantage.

On the other hand it's a Blessing for the Crafters due of the Materials and Crystals / Clusters being cheap in the end. Though... the Gatherers will curse this as they favour Gathering over Crafting.

Pretty much this.

As much as I hate bots I have to admit that it does not stop me from enjoying the game the way I want to. In RL you have bank robbers, poker cheaters, card counters, machines that predict (supposedly) the Lottery numbers, pick pockets, crooks, house vandals, and on and on and on!! This is just a game just remember it is about RE-CREATION. Get in do what you want to do and get out. You are not obligated to deal with these "characters". So much time and effort and back and forth about how someone figured out a way to exploit a game. I say let them do what they do just give us a good enjoyable game with great content that is fun to play 3-4 hours (or whatever many) a day or week and let me have my fun my way.

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Originally Posted by Renius

As much as I hate bots I have to admit that it does not stop me from enjoying the game the way I want to. In RL you have bank robbers, poker cheaters, card counters, machines that predict (supposedly) the Lottery numbers, pick pockets, crooks, house vandals, and on and on and on!! This is just a game just remember it is about RE-CREATION. Get in do what you want to do and get out. You are not obligated to deal with these "characters". So much time and effort and back and forth about how someone figured out a way to exploit a game. I say let them do what they do just give us a good enjoyable game with great content that is fun to play 3-4 hours (or whatever many) a day or week and let me have my fun my way.

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Unless if one of the things you enjoy is gathering and would like to use it as your source of ingame income. Then those gathering bots are interfering with your enjoyment.

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Originally Posted by aesteval

Unless if one of the things you enjoy is gathering and would like to use it as your source of ingame income.

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In which case you can still get the full enjoyment from the gathering - you just get less money.

That's currently the case for the Lore-materials for battle class players - With the anima not requiring another lore grind, lots of spare lore is used on the lore mats instead and thus, the prices of them go down dramatically. Does that infringe the enjoyment of a given lore-giving battle content in any way? I dare say most people don't even remotely take that into consideration.

But let's be honest here - who seriously enjoys gathering to the point they'd gather for the sake of gathering progression as thousands are doing battle content for the sake of battle class progression? One, two people per server? As a rule of thumb, any ingame activity that's considerably profitable is either highly gated (Skill/Time/RNG/Limited Supply (House Flipping goes into the latter category)) or such an unenjoyable drag that the rarity comes from people's unwillingness to put up with the shite (can be freely combined with gating).

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Originally Posted by Zojha

In which case you can still get the full enjoyment from the gathering - you just get less money.

That's currently the case for the Lore-materials for battle class players

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There is significant difference between fluctuations in the economy based upon what human players do in their play time and what bots do that run 24/7 endlessly. Standard market forces created manually by players are one thing. Bots drive market prices down artificially low and ruin a reasonable market by making it too much of a race to the bottom for price. I would present the same argument against bot farming of tomestones as I do for the gathering component. Bots have driven the price of some mats low enough where I've purged mats by selling to NPCs for the system gil instead of dealing with the trash created in the markets by bots.

I've never played a game where people were genuinely ok with bots. Mind boggling.

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Originally Posted by KoujiMoreno

I've never played a game where people were genuinely ok with bots. Mind boggling.

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Balmung apologists do not represent the majority, thankfully

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Originally Posted by aesteval

Unless if one of the things you enjoy is gathering and would like to use it as your source of ingame income. Then those gathering bots are interfering with your enjoyment.

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I've made quite a bit of money gathering and bots don't seem to be an issue. I suppose if you're trying to sell crystals and shards. At least that is the case on Siren. Gathering and selling make up a nice chuck of my dailies. Always something to do in this game. I'm curious what mats you're referring to that bots seem to be having an impact on.

Bots are a huge problem in this game and I've been reporting them all day, however saying the devs design content to promote cheating is quite stupid to be honest.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

I've made quite a bit of money gathering and bots don't seem to be an issue. I suppose if you're trying to sell crystals and shards. At least that is the case on Siren. Gathering and selling make up a nice chuck of my dailies. Always something to do in this game. I'm curious what mats you're referring to that bots seem to be having an impact on.

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Gilgamesh as example has tons of Aetherial Reduction Bots resulting in a huge dropdown for Aethersands, Crystals and Clusters.
This is different from Server to Server, your Server may have Luck and doesn't have the amounts of Gathering Bots compared to other Servers.

If I look now on Odin, this is actually a huge difference, almost no Gathering Bots around, if maybe 2-3 doing Aetherial Reduction but not with the intention to destroy the Market.

If you see a Player selling 1.200 - 1.500 High Quality Light-Kissed Aethersands or 10.000 - 20.000 Water Clusters on the Marketboard, you can be pretty sure what is happening there.
A Normal Player would never farm 100 Light-Kissed Sands in a Session, that's too much, given the Fact getting High Quality is a different thing on top of that.

Doesn't require a Brain to actually see that something is wrong when there is 99x Stacks of Smithsonite Ore / Meteorite / Luminium Ore / Zeolithe or other stuff driving down the Prices even more...

If bots make material prices decrease, why would I hate them?

on Balmung they don't spam /tell to me. so no reason to hate them.

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Originally Posted by Evangela

If bots make material prices decrease, why would I hate them?

on Balmung they don't spam /tell to me. so no reason to hate them.

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Everyone is able to afford the Mats with no Work at all nor a Gil Sink, this results in tons of Crafted Items and thus flooding the Marketboard with tons of People undercutting each other.
If Stuff is Cheap to get beforehand, People will buy tons and flood the Marketboard, not only for the Gathering Part.

No hating Bots? Oh well, this is just wrong... on so many levels.

That's like a confirmation that you approve what they're doing, nice view!