Does Square intend to address Market botting?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shinzan

The most the GMs will do is forward the information to the STF.

unfortunately you are wrong, I have many communications and several answers, the GM Team is "isolated", they are not allowed to process any feedback, neither to the community, nor to the STF teams or players! at the moment clicking Support Desk -> Contact Us -> Report Cheating is absolutely useless, it has no effect at all, you get a polite answer that it was read and understood and that they are really sorry that you feel so bad but please understand you must report to the STF via the website.

---

In which case, SE needs to update the game UI because it specifically states to use Report Cheating to report suspected bot activity.

https://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acc...703fad157a.jpg
above is one of the replies I got, hope this will be visible

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shinzan

above is one of the replies I got, hope this will be visible

---

Which isn't saying they can't forward information to the STF, only that the GMs can't investigate them and it's better to send the reports directly to the STF. If you're reporting frequently, you're clogging up their ticket queues with things they can't handle.

We really need to press SE to update the Support Desk UI. It clearly stats that bot activity should be reported under Report Cheating.

https://i.imgur.com/cvuQ8qo.png

If they don't want the reports going through the GMs, there needs to be a separate Report Bot Activity option.

https://img2.finalfantasyxiv.com/acc...475f4ee701.jpg
added another screenshot from previous communication, and what is that? only one bot behind the market board this time, max was 4 at the same time today.
as mentioned before, I've sent hundreds of "Report Cheat" messages and if there is any kind of effect it happens in a weekly sweep.
since it is the far end of the market it is not so populated, so only 3-4 people take notice and most do not take the time to report,
in fact 95% of all players I was communicating with told me that it is nice what I'm doing but they don't see any hope.
the player with the longest fight I know gave up after a year, and I'll give up on December 14th, that's where my 180 day billing cycle ends.

Started a thread in the UI subforum asking for changes to be made to the Support Desk UI so hopefully bot reports can start being directed to the STF in-game. Add a like if you support the idea.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...95#post5465195

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

Started a thread in the UI subforum asking for changes to be made to the Support Desk UI so hopefully bot reports can start being directed to the STF in-game. Add a like if you support the idea.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...95#post5465195

---

the reporting system for it definitely needs a rework if they are unable to process those. Its long overdue and not very clear unless you get a reply at which point most people wont bother with a second report to the right area

Wait, so what's the Special Task Force website? Is there currently a way to send reports to them directly?

https://support.eu.square-enix.com/c...383&la=2&fty=2
and there scroll down to the very end

Thank you! It's a shame that it's so hidden.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vaen

Thank you! It's a shame that it's so hidden.

---

Definitely. Unless someone points you to it, you're unlikely to ever find it.

since my topic "24/7 market-manipulating-bots ... frustrating!" was deleted without any notification or feedback I will not invest any more energy into this topic,
my 5 months long fight is over now!
@Vaen don't expect more to happen when using the website link, I've sent really many with enough details to terminate accounts, but nothing happened with the
obvious bot free companies, 2 masters sitting 24/7 in gridania/limsa appartments and all their automated bots still active since June, and those are single players
with legacy accounts ruining the market. there are many obvious sings that those activity come from single legacy accounts because the crafter of the items selling
on the market is same on every server. my personal view is that market manipulation in European datacenter is handled like homelessness in Japanese culture.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shinzan

comment

---

I get it man. Just do what I do, find the bottom price of these bots and sell your items under that price. Even if you make 10k profit per item, 100x10k is still 1 million a day. Also, Ragnarok is kind of a difficult server. There are a few legit players on there camping the retainer bell 24/7 and crafting like a bot. Like the guy standing in front of the Limsa market board all day long with the black/purple outfit. I'm sure you know who I mean. (can't mention his name for obvious reasons). He also sells cross server.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shinzan

since my topic "24/7 market-manipulating-bots ... frustrating!" was deleted without any notification or feedback I will not invest any more energy into this topic,
my 5 months long fight is over now!
@Vaen don't expect more to happen when using the website link, I've sent really many with enough details to terminate accounts, but nothing happened with the
obvious bot free companies, 2 masters sitting 24/7 in gridania/limsa appartments and all their automated bots still active since June, and those are single players
with legacy accounts ruining the market. there are many obvious sings that those activity come from single legacy accounts because the crafter of the items selling
on the market is same on every server. my personal view is that market manipulation in European datacenter is handled like homelessness in Japanese culture.

---

It wasn't entirely removed. A few of the posts in that thread were moved to this thread. Moderators have been combining active threads on the same topic lately to consolidate feedback. There's a sticky in every forum reminding players not to start new threads when there's an active thread available to post in.

What did get removed was the posts where you included screenshots with player names. A couple of those names were real players, not just bots, captured at the edges of the screenshots. Several posters did warn you that was a way to get your thread deleted because it is against the forum rules but you openly stated you didn't care about the rules and would not remove them. So the moderators enforced the rules and removed them. They could have hit you with a forum suspension as well but it looks like they chose not to. I'm sure they understood that you're frustrated.

I hope you're still able to find enjoyment in the game even if the bot situation is frustrating.

nothing was move to this thread, all that is here from me were my original posts to this thread, my topic has been deleted without informing me. all pictures were only showing bots or bot's account retainers, no real players, also not at the border or corners. this is even handled worse than homelessness in Japanese culture, it is censorship like in China!
they don't want to see the evidence in form of pictures or videos, they look away! well, not relevant for me anymore, my fight and my journey is over on December 14th latest, close friends and I will leave this game, 106 Euro to spend elsewhere every 6 months :-) just preparing a "clean" exit giving away all goods and dumping the retainers as soon as everything was sold. good luck for you and have a safe journey!

I got ticked off at Black Friday traffic, so came home hoping to find some items sold on the mb and instead found some same suspects undercuts and decided to just email support to take out my frustration. I haven't gotten to making spreadsheets and plotting market trends yet, but I've noticed these suspected automaters are really ramping things up this holiday season, probably to sell their ill-gotten gil for holiday present funds or just be sitting on multi-gil capped retainers and bragging how they dominated the market and lie about how legit they did it too. If by legit they mean they made their own code strings to set their little bots up , ok. I don't suspect anything will legitimately happen, but I hope it does. I don't know anyone saying they're legit going to pack up and go to some other MMO over it, but it is for me at least one more little thing that is bothersome and unlikable about this game.

PVP automation/afk/abuse is also something that should be seriously looked in but I'll leave that alone as there is a slew of feedback on that topic and this thread isn't for that.

Anyhow, hope everyone had a wonderful holiday here in the United States, and hope you do find some enjoyable things to get into other than marketboard warrior'ing and white maging.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shinzan

... my fight and my journey is over on December 14th latest, close friends and I will leave this game, 106 Euro to spend elsewhere every 6 months :-) just preparing a "clean" exit giving away all goods and dumping the retainers as soon as everything was sold. good luck for you and have a safe journey!

---

Good luck to you and godspeed. I wish I had your resolve. I need to just go ahead and pull the trigger as well but I just can't bring myself to do it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shinzan

just preparing a "clean" exit giving away all goods and dumping the retainers as soon as everything was sold. good luck for you and have a safe journey!

---

Can I have your gil? :p Im on Moogle. Send me a tell, I will "keep it safe" if you ever return.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Prrringles

Can I have your gil? :p Im on Moogle. Send me a tell, I will "keep it safe" if you ever return.

---

after checking the market I'm selling some remaining goods for 98 gil (unfortunately in stacks of 99 mostly since I had 9 full retainers), and my remaining 50k shards/crystals/clusters already sold for 7 gil.
I'll keep some gil on my character if I should decide to return for the free to play campain, or my FC pays for the monthly cost because they would like me back. the rest is already distributed to my FC friends. They really deserve it, we had so much fun time together e.g. running Syrcus Tower or The Wolves' Den FC internal only in the old days.

to keep it on topic of this thread I'll add some market related information: the "random name" market bots were not reappearing at my summoning bell since 2 days, but the 2 "master rings" were not detected yet. since the "random name" market bots were only responsible for quick shard price manipulation the prices went up a bit and the manipulation is slower since the 2 "master rings" (i have detected easily, maybe there are more) are throttling their spawns, using smart city rotation and even change summoning bells from time to time (but mostly they use the far end of the market). all this aggressive botting is an effect of COVID-19 and one day it will go back to normal levels for sure, I wish everybody good luck and have a safe journey!
and to the moderators and STF teams who eventually read this and talk about it: after so many years of playing this game (/ptime = 1783 days, 19 hours, 29 minutes) i can clearly tell the difference if a character is logging in, or raising from below ground level!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shinzan

comment

---

I don't know you but it's sad to see you leave the game. SE won't care though, but their success will be short lived once more and more veteran players leave the game. End of the day this is just a game. Once a game stops being fun and turns into frustration it's better to quit.

Oh well at least our lives are better than those of the people running the bots. Let them craft 24/7 in their sweatshops with no light at the end of their tunnel. But a sub is a sub..right SE?

for anyone just joining this thread in the hopes that Square Enix will do something about the bots taking over the game in its entirety... here is the tldr version.

No.

From all appearances Square Enix provides lip service to the idea that they are against RMT and cheating, but the reality is far different. Reported bots function with immunity from any kind of action from the makers of this game. In the botting community this game is known to be "very bot friendly". The STF, if it is anything more than a group that organizes staff parties, is 4 people that apparently do all of the bot investigations for Jpn, NA and EU.. the ONLY activities they seem to ban are those that a 5 year old could figure out, such as the RMT barkers in major cities. The GM's are not allowed to act against blatant botting/cheating and refer you to the 4 person "task force"

While other games seem to try at least to go after botting and cheaters, Square Enix has taken a "head in the sand" approach and the business unit, developers and I suspect even the STF have decided to ignore the problem in combat, in maps, in crafting, in the market, and hopes it will just go away one day.

So there you have 34 pages in a nutshell. You're welcome ^^

Market bots are akin to illegal immigrant workers of the United States: they are now a staple of the workforce. There are those who want them to stay and those who want them to go. Buyers love it and sellers hate it. It takes about 10 minutes of research at most to know if one is a bot account yet SE does nothing about them. You can assume with near certainty that SE won't be taking action against them, ever, so don't even worry about reporting it. It's ironic how the bots are a major source of RMT and that is supposedly something SE really cares about. In my opinion SE doesn't mind the bots because bots make everything cheaper so it is very helpful for the casual and new player base, and may keep them paying for subs longer than they would if bots weren't around.

From a business standpoint, there really is no reason for them to go after the bots other then improving the game's image.

They'd effectively be spending more money to lose money by banning paying customers.

Yeah it's a matter of what is the bots' net impact on profit for SE. Apparently positive since obvious bots who have operated for years don't get banned lol.

well, I guess at least SE will have a steady income after real players that appreciate their content and effort get frustrated and leave.

way to go SE

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KageTokage

From a business standpoint, there really is no reason for them to go after the bots other then improving the game's image.

---

I actually am not sure this is true. When a botter gets banned, as long as they perceive that the cost of starting up a new account is outweighed by the profits they can make over time, they will simply purchase a fresh one, a cycle that can probably make SE money if it is played correctly.

Of course, this is hypothetical, since botters do not get banned :P

We fully understand how frustrating it must be, but please keep paying your sub and be happy, as the STF will do nothing about it. They are too busy picking the next promotional items you should buy to prove that you are a real fan.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

We fully understand how frustrating it must be, but please keep paying your sub and be happy, as the STF will do nothing about it. They are too busy picking the next promotional items you should buy to prove that you are a real fan.

---

if they actually SAID anything, we would know one way or the other. the really FRUSTRATING part is that they just seem to be ignoring it, and the people frustrated by it. doing nothing AND refusing to even acknowledge the issue is the worst thing possible. personally, I am just telling everyone about how bot infested this game is and how little SE is doing about it.

The one time they did actually address it in a live letter they seemed to have a weird misconception that PvP was the primary place botting was taking place in and just urged us to "keep reporting people" for what little that's accomplished over the years.

Shame they made the game addicting enough for some people to put up with it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Voidle

Shame they made the game addicting enough for some people to put up with it.

---

more a shame that some people are so "addicted" that they essentially condone cheating

While I agree that bots are a huge problem, I fear that going on witch hunts for bots is going to catch a bunch of MB aficionados in the crossfire.

It happened to me in WoW. Someone reported me as a bot because I managed to take their market away from them and dominate it for the 4-12 hours a day I was on. Bliz in their infinite stupidity simply banned my account without doing any research at all. I DID eventually get my account back but it was a horrid process. I wasn't even using TSM. I was just checking the AH between each activity and adjusting prices. So maybe every 30-60 minutes.

Be careful who you report. Be VERY sure they are indeed bots. There are people out there who like I used to be live and breath for the MB. Some of them might be hard to distinguish from a bot.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Myrany

While I agree that bots are a huge problem, I fear that going on witch hunts for bots is going to catch a bunch of MB aficionados in the crossfire.

It happened to me in WoW. Someone reported me as a bot because I managed to take their market away from them and dominate it for the 4-12 hours a day I was on. Bliz in their infinite stupidity simply banned my account without doing any research at all. I DID eventually get my account back but it was a horrid process. I wasn't even using TSM. I was just checking the AH between each activity and adjusting prices. So maybe every 30-60 minutes.

Be careful who you report. Be VERY sure they are indeed bots. There are people out there who like I used to be live and breath for the MB. Some of them might be hard to distinguish from a bot.

---

I imagine that even you, in your living and breathing the market, took breaks, ate, went to sleep, maybe even left the house and were not online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

as you stated, 4-12 hours a day... thats simply lack of observation on the part of blizzard and the other player. We have people who are so brazen the only time they are "offline" is after maintenance" and they havent logged the bots back in. thats it. the rest of the time they are on and marketting.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kes13a

I imagine that even you, in your living and breathing the market, took breaks, ate, went to sleep, maybe even left the house and were not online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

as you stated, 4-12 hours a day... thats simply lack of observation on the part of blizzard and the other player. We have people who are so brazen the only time they are "offline" is after maintenance" and they havent logged the bots back in. thats it. the rest of the time they are on and marketting.

---

Agreed but my point is that there are "Bad Actors" who will use the witch hunt to get rid of honest competition. Which is basically what happened to me. It is also possible that there will be some who don't do their research into possible bots well enough.

Like I said in my post be very sure before a report is written. Please do not mistake my intention here. I am actually all for getting rid of the bots. I am just saying be very careful in who you label as one.

Is it a fact that japanese DCs have drastically less botting happening? Even in the Worlds "adopted" by English speakers?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Myrany

Agreed but my point is that there are "Bad Actors" who will use the witch hunt to get rid of honest competition. Which is basically what happened to me. It is also possible that there will be some who don't do their research into possible bots well enough.

Like I said in my post be very sure before a report is written. Please do not mistake my intention here. I am actually all for getting rid of the bots. I am just saying be very careful in who you label as one.

---

if SE is going to assess penalties without any investigation so that in your scenario these "bad actors" can get rid of competition, then we might as well let the bots have the market and the game. its a poor argument to blame doing nothing on a fear that people will misuse it. people are already cheating, so on the off chance that someone innocent might get banned we should continue to allow them to do virtually nothing to combat the bots?

no thank you.

It's a little ridiculous how many different individuals seems to be running DC-wide bot farming operations.

I make it a note to check who crafted the gear on each of the bots on my server, and there's multiple cases where all of their gear was made by a "primary" bot on a different server, and further investigation would turn up still more bots geared up by that same individual on other servers, which suggests that it's a collective operation.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KageTokage

It's a little ridiculous how many different individuals seems to be running DC-wide bot farming operations.

I make it a note to check who crafted the gear on each of the bots on my server, and there's multiple cases where all of their gear was made by a "primary" bot on a different server, and further investigation would turn up still more bots geared up by that same individual on other servers, which suggests that it's a collective operation.

---

It is. With the sole purpose of gil generation for RMT transactions. I mean why else would a crafter need to sell their wares across multiple worlds?

Something a inept 5 year old could figure out... but seems beyond the people at SE as to what is going on.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kes13a

...but seems beyond the people at SE as to what is going on.

---

Doubt it. They know but just don't care about taking action. I mean, how many people are actually complaining about this you think? 20? 50? 100? How much money do those people generate compared to bots with their retainer spam? SE is simply ignoring us.

To whom it might concern:

I made a final report to the STF maximizing the character count. It is VERY extensive and leaves pretty much no room for doubt. I gave them the chance to redeem themselves and regain our confidence by doing the right thing. I closed it off by reminding them to honour their own statement about RMT;

"Square Enix has a zero-tolerance policy for third-party tools and RMT. Items and gil obtained through third-party tools or RMT can affect the game’s economic stability and disrupt gameplay balance."

And that's all she wrote. My "fight" here is done. I am not expecting SE to do anything with the info I sent them (like all our previous reports and efforts fell on deaf ears). SE has proven we are not important to them eventhough they claim otherwise. You can all draw your own conclusions. But who knows, SE might surprise us (lol).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Prrringles

I made a final report to the STF maximizing the character count. It is VERY extensive and leaves pretty much no room for doubt.

---

Any chance you could share it with us here?