Lack of action against gathering bots, it needs to be changed, and soon

Yeah I get the strange moods too where I actually enjoy fishing because it is peaceful... well ... for Ifalna. The fish... not so much. :D

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Eeeh... I wouldn't call "hitting a node to get mats into your inventory" as content.
I don't want to "experience" it myself so I usually put on a movie when mass gathering. Never outlasted an hours worth of farming though.

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LOL what? of course it is content. Gathering is it's own system altogether, with sub systems even like collecting and aetherial reduction. What a ridiculous and nonsense statement.

I'm feeling 100% convinced that they are not actually investigating reports after seeing that even a bot that's repeatedly doing something that's blatantly impossible for normal players to do (Accessing its retainers without actually targeting the summoning bell) is getting away with its activity despite me reporting it. If I had to guess it's likely overriding the default retainer interface somehow so it can deposit items/change prices faster then is normally possible because not all bots exhibit this quirk.

I guess their lack of response to the rampant RMT bot activity on Hyperion, Twintania, and Spriggan kinda speaks for how concerned they are about the matter overall.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I'm feeling 100% convinced that they are not actually investigating reports after seeing that even a bot that's repeatedly doing something that's blatantly impossible for normal players to do (Accessing its retainers without actually targeting the summoning bell) is getting away with its activity despite me reporting it. If I had to guess it's likely overriding the default retainer interface somehow so it can deposit items/change prices faster then is normally possible because not all bots exhibit this quirk.

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I would assume it's like a html form. You can fill in the firmfields press the button to submit it, but if you know the controller function it's sent to you can directly post the data to that php function, circumventing the "ui" that is the formfields and the submit button.

I'm not sure how you would know they are actually accessing their retainers tho, never seen any indicators when someone is doing that.

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Originally Posted by RoyalBeef

I would assume it's like a html form. You can fill in the firmfields press the button to submit it, but if you know the controller function it's sent to you can directly post the data to that php function, circumventing the "ui" that is the formfields and the submit button.

I'm not sure how you would know they are actually accessing their retainers tho, never seen any indicators when someone is doing that.

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They're changing their prices whenever they're seemingly idling by the bell because I waged a brief undercut war with the bot in question that I eventually won after I found a price it wouldn't go below.

Once they notice this happening, though, they'll simply keep setting the undercut limit lower and lower until people back off, then they'll eventually start raising the prices again if they don't get any further competition.

I just want to say, that the bot problem (specifically seeing those bots all precision-stacked and doing the exact same actions) is so annoying, that if I ever get to say something to Yoshida, it won't be a thank you but a "do you know your game is infested with bots and it's extremely annoying to see them as a legit player?"

I hope a community manager actually convey this to Yoshida. This game is a joke when it comes to botting. Everyone sees them. And over the past several years nothing seems to stop them, to the point that we as players are doubting if Square Enix are actually even trying to do anything about it.

I'm honestly not sure why the community managers even exist with how overly selective they seem to be in determining in what's an issue worth escalating to the devs.

The subject of botting comes up constantly but I've never once seen them post in any of these threads and it makes me feel like they've been specifically instructed to ignore it when seeing how quickly they've chosen to respond to other matters.

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Originally Posted by Endeleon

LOL what? of course it is content. Gathering is it's own system altogether, with sub systems even like collecting and aetherial reduction. What a ridiculous and nonsense statement.

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I don't consider gathering content, just as I don't consider facerolling trivial mobs in the overworld to get drops content (senseless achievement hunting also falls into this category).
Content either provides story progression or engages my brain. The above does neither.

Perhaps the adjustments in 5.1 will do some things to address the tedious aspects of both crafting/gathering...not that it's going to convince people who bot to stop or anything.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Perhaps the adjustments in 5.1 will do some things to address the tedious aspects of both crafting/gathering...not that it's going to convince people who bot to stop or anything.

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A very simple change would probably fix the issue: giving GMs the power to investigate forms of cheating and take action upon their findings. Until then, it is an endless spiral of bureaucracy that leads to no action being taken.

The disconnect between the STF and GMs vexes me because it creates a situation where the latter are actually protecting players who cheat as if you say anything to directly suggest someone is cheating they can easily just file a "harassment" report and get you in trouble as the GMs aren't permitted to actually investigate and see if there's any truth behind the matter before issuing punishment..

I can't even attempt to at least raise awareness of the cheaters on my server because of this, nor can I remove wastes of space in the Novice Network who spend most of their time botting.

Then again, if they actually banned people I wouldn't feel a strong desire to do any of that in the first place.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

you're never going to see the results. they do the ban waves every so often. that's all the action you're going to get on it. the problem is never going to go away. you will never see instant results.

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I've been reporting the same 2 bots for 7-9 months and they are still gathering this morning. SE won't ban max level gather bots. I'm not telling people to run gather bots but if you were to then you most likely won't get banned.

Don't run a damage meter for personal use only so you can max your dps though, you will get the ban hammer on you in less than 24 hours.

Black Desert completely disabled the trade feature. The only way to obtain most items is to acquire it yourself or buy it on the market board. I dont want SE disabling trades, but maybe a timer would help. Mail as well. Maybe make it so that we cant trade or send mail unless we have like a months worth of sub(USED not pre-paid/stocked) on our account.

This would definitely suck as a new player, but it would only be a month or so and after you reach said threshold youd never need to suffer it again. However, the gil bots could potentially be lessened quite a bit in that month. If noobs wanted to trade in the first month they could look at the market board or maybe a company chest. Friends could run them through dungeons unsynced as well and pass on drops. This would easily cover repairs and teleports.

Bots would have to wait out the entire month every time they wanted to make an account.

I recently made a trial account for my kid to play on and it cannot trade, join an fc and we got to level 15 without ever needing it. I dont think I ever needed it except for trading glamour/mounts/dye/etc with my wife.

Edit: Oh and trading materials with crafting suppliers/buyers.

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Originally Posted by xJimmehx

Black Desert completely disabled the trade feature. The only way to obtain most items is to acquire it yourself or buy it on the market board. I dont want SE disabling trades, but maybe a timer would help. Mail as well. Maybe make it so that we cant trade or send mail unless we have like a months worth of sub(USED not pre-paid/stocked) on our account.

This would definitely suck as a new player, but it would only be a month or so and after you reach said threshold youd never need to suffer it again. However, the gil bots could potentially be lessened quite a bit in that month. If noobs wanted to trade in the first month they could look at the market board or maybe a company chest. Friends could run them through dungeons unsynced as well and pass on drops. This would easily cover repairs and teleports.

Bots would have to wait out the entire month every time they wanted to make an account.

I recently made a trial account for my kid to play on and it cannot trade, join an fc and we got to level 15 without ever needing it. I dont think I ever needed it except for trading glamour/mounts/dye/etc with my wife.

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This never works.
All this would do is have botters/gil sellers just make accounts in advance, really. Plus, if they aren't getting banned in the first place, what is really stopping them?

let's be honest here, the real issue is SE.

SE lacks a solution, and it seems like they've just given up.

This should be a pretty easy tell:
https://i.imgur.com/sUTbT5C.jpg

But instead SE barely puts the resources into bot control.

It's frustratingly difficult to find a place on the Aether DC where I can gather in peace without having to put up with DoL bots going in circles past me like a bunch of pesky flies. This is with instances enabled so I imagine it'll only be worse once they get removed.

I'm also really hoping they'll go into detail about how exactly the ranking system for the Ishgard Restoration is going to work in the next live letter so we'll know whether or not we need to riot in advance.

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Originally Posted by xJimmehx

Black Desert completely disabled the trade feature. The only way to obtain most items is to acquire it yourself or buy it on the market board. I dont want SE disabling trades, but maybe a timer would help. Mail as well. Maybe make it so that we cant trade or send mail unless we have like a months worth of sub(USED not pre-paid/stocked) on our account.

This would definitely suck as a new player, but it would only be a month or so and after you reach said threshold youd never need to suffer it again. However, the gil bots could potentially be lessened quite a bit in that month. If noobs wanted to trade in the first month they could look at the market board or maybe a company chest. Friends could run them through dungeons unsynced as well and pass on drops. This would easily cover repairs and teleports.

Bots would have to wait out the entire month every time they wanted to make an account.

I recently made a trial account for my kid to play on and it cannot trade, join an fc and we got to level 15 without ever needing it. I dont think I ever needed it except for trading glamour/mounts/dye/etc with my wife.

Edit: Oh and trading materials with crafting suppliers/buyers.

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The bots already use FC chests to juggle items and gil. Why do you think so many of them have their own FCs? Disabling trade is a non-solution.