Whoa. Crackdown on long time casual botters?

There has been this FC on my server that have admitted outside the game in a chat program they use bots to farm money for the FC and despite myself and several people reporting them they never have been touched but now I am finding out that 3 high end officers have been banned from the game on a perm basis.

It took almost a year but SE has renewed my faith in the system. They also lost a good deal of gil from my understanding. Dunno if it had anything to do with gil selling or just aquired through illegitimate means.

If SE is starting to tighten the reigns on this issue then good job and keep up the good work.

Well, they DID have proooooooof, so, remember SE has been quite busy lately :P

If the only time they admitted it was outside the game in a chat program, it's not surprising it took so long to be dealt with. Just because someone is reported, doesnt mean they auto get banned, could you imagine what it would be like if all it took for someone to be banned was someone who didnt like them to send in a report making up whatever reason they wanted?

But I believe there is some Bot program that will auto your actions right?
Even you're afk.

I really don't understand how the botting works (im no coder by any means) but I thought the entire game was server sided? If it wasn't wouldn't we see people with mods? Like infinite mana/sprint/HP/TP? Does this mean a bot has to connect to SE's servers? So many questions not enough info from Google other than "BUY FFXIV BOT NOW BUY BUY BUY" when I wanna know HOW this is done. It just doesn't make sense to me :/

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Originally Posted by KyteStones

I really don't understand how the botting works (im no coder by any means) but I thought the entire game was server sided? If it wasn't wouldn't we see people with mods? Like infinite mana/sprint/HP/TP? Does this mean a bot has to connect to SE's servers? So many questions not enough info from Google other than "BUY FFXIV BOT NOW BUY BUY BUY" when I wanna know HOW this is done. It just doesn't make sense to me :/

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Not quite, a lot of things are client-side to reduce server stress and increase player convenience. For example, the client fully trusts the client when it comes to movement, so the bots simply send forged movement packets to warp around. The game still won't let you have godmodes or infinite MP/TP values, however. The bots use the normal game client and their botting tool hooks into the client process, that's why the server doesn't see anything wrong.

If the entire game was server-side, everything you do would suffer from lag and you don't want that. The downside is that it makes botting and poshacking easier, but it's not like you can't bot in a fully server-sided game as well.

But regardless of how easy it is to bot in this game, it doesn't mean you can't get caught from it. There are quite a lot of botting stories around that didn't have a happy ending for the player.

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Originally Posted by Sove92

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Great explanation for me. Much appreciated. I always thought the game was 100% server sided minus the character config stuff like hotbars and such. I assumed that the game interpreted that "hey I see that you've sent a W command from your keyboard, I'm going to move you forward" meaning they were sending spoofed commands to the server allowing the movement/actions to be performed which seems like a massive hassle but then again, the bots aren't free so I assumed that's how they made up for the development of them. In any case, thanks for the explanation. Makes so much more sense now. I get now how people were able to use bots on the EX Primals and Coils to break the instances when that was going on.

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Originally Posted by Sove92

Not quite, a lot of things are client-side to reduce server stress and increase player convenience. For example, the client fully trusts the client when it comes to movement, so the bots simply send forged movement packets to warp around. The game still won't let you have godmodes or infinite MP/TP values, however. The bots use the normal game client and their botting tool hooks into the client process, that's why the server doesn't see anything wrong.

If the entire game was server-side, everything you do would suffer from lag and you don't want that. The downside is that it makes botting and poshacking easier, but it's not like you can't bot in a fully server-sided game as well.

But regardless of how easy it is to bot in this game, it doesn't mean you can't get caught from it. There are quite a lot of botting stories around that didn't have a happy ending for the player.

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And even ignoring the few lag-reducing shortcuts taken, the fact remains that your interaction with the server is just digital data sent to it and received from it. The actions you normally send manually can be replaced by a program that generates the necessary inputs.

It's like the bot programs that plague wow's pvp system. Between auto kick programs and infamous monk orb bots cheating is all around in any game you play.

Cod and a megaton of steam games have cheaters galore. Most bots use dll hooks which pull id codes and interacts with it then sends the appropriate response back. Some of the smarter bots now use API gimmicks and windows desktop app.

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Originally Posted by Galdous

There has been this FC on my server that have admitted outside the game in a chat program they use bots to farm money for the FC and despite myself and several people reporting them they never have been touched but now I am finding out that 3 high end officers have been banned from the game on a perm basis.

It took almost a year but SE has renewed my faith in the system. They also lost a good deal of gil from my understanding. Dunno if it had anything to do with gil selling or just aquired through illegitimate means.

If SE is starting to tighten the reigns on this issue then good job and keep up the good work.

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Same here on Hyperion, a notoriously known quartet of "casual bots" have finally gone MIA sometime the last 4 weeks. Along with a newer bot FC going MIA around the same time. It's nice to finally see something done, but srsly still took way too long.

One kept a fairly low profile, only finding them in remote areas, but the method of attacking monsters made it extremely obvious.

While the other, the larger whole FC of bots had very convincing method of attacks, legitimate rotations, but alas they couldn't make the same judgements as a person, often attacking A rank NM's solo, dying, home pointing, coming back, and attacking the A rank NM again. And this particular group was very extravagant and flamboyant, an FC of 7 characters with a Large plot and mansion, with individual members owning personal plots ranging from small, med to large. And the names/titles associated with the chars/FC were like taunts at the general server population from the name of their FC to the name of their retainers.

Both are cases of "the perfect crime, but making dumb mistakes that will get them caught" Much like how "that bank robber on the run for 20 years, caught because the window tint of his car were too dark, so he was pulled over."

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Originally Posted by Conradus

And even ignoring the few lag-reducing shortcuts taken, the fact remains that your interaction with the server is just digital data sent to it and received from it. The actions you normally send manually can be replaced by a program that generates the necessary inputs.

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SE could sanity check those values that are sent but that would add overhead and you'd have to also take into account lag (which can teleport a player legit).

Good.

It's about time real people get banned for using bots as well as the RMT bots. Although they aren't as frequent, I've spotted several of these bots, and many times, they are high ranking members of FC so I know that they aren't just being controlled by RMT. Most of the time, it's people botting on gathering classes, but I remember a case of a dragoon bot farming hippogryphs. The problem with these cases of real people using bots on their characters, is not only are they more rare, but they are less obvious.

The only reason I was able to finally reason out that the dragoon was a bot, was because I was also farming in the area. After so many clears (moving from camp to camp) with the bot, I began noticing that he never moved out of enemy aoe. After marking the ground where he stopped, I realized that he would return to that exact spot after one rotation. Finally, I did the trade invite test. He failed.

Since it's rare that SE catches these players, I just keep a .txt file of the ones that I spot, and the free companies that they are in.

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Originally Posted by Galdous

There has been this FC on my server that have admitted outside the game in a chat program they use bots to farm money for the FC and despite myself and several people reporting them they never have been touched but now I am finding out that 3 high end officers have been banned from the game on a perm basis.

It took almost a year but SE has renewed my faith in the system. They also lost a good deal of gil from my understanding. Dunno if it had anything to do with gil selling or just aquired through illegitimate means.

If SE is starting to tighten the reigns on this issue then good job and keep up the good work.

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Is this the same FC with the guy who has those crafters and the description of the FC is something along the lines of "it's not bots, it's legit dual boxing."? o.o I am curious as to whether this is even ok or not.

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Originally Posted by Crimen

Is this the same FC with the guy who has those crafters and the description of the FC is something along the lines of "it's not bots, it's legit dual boxing."? o.o I am curious as to whether this is even ok or not.

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Multiboxing's usually one of those don't ask don't tell kinda deals.. Most games I've played don't ban multiboxers though, and the terms of agreement is rather ambiguous around it.
Personally, I have no problem with it.. If people want to run multiple instances of the game and pay extra, it's not my problem.. Although, in FF14 I fail to see what good a multiboxer can do.. I don't buy the multiboxer argument when it's a group of BLMs though, multiboxers either play hybrid classes for utility (not possible in this game) or use a very complex set up to play multiple classes. That is the whole point behind it, not to have multiple BLMs blasting things away.

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Originally Posted by Crimen

Is this the same FC with the guy who has those crafters and the description of the FC is something along the lines of "it's not bots, it's legit dual boxing."? o.o I am curious as to whether this is even ok or not.

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A quick google seems to suggest multiboxing in FFXIV is not banned. As a pragmatic matter, even if it were, it would be hard to prove vs "It's my SO/sibling playing with me" and similar.

That said, as another mentioned, multiboxing doesn't seem like it would be much of an advantage in XIV.

Yeah, multi boxing isn't against the TOS as long as you're not using a bot to control one of the characters. Hey, it's twice the sub fees to SE, they don't mind at all!

Actually, having a SCH on the 2nd account would essentially give you a free AI healer, albeit a limited one, without any botting whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by Crimen

Is this the same FC with the guy who has those crafters and the description of the FC is something along the lines of "it's not bots, it's legit dual boxing."? o.o I am curious as to whether this is even ok or not.

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If you want to find me in the game tonight I can tell you details but not naming and shaming on this forum can get us in trouble. Multiboxing is not really a big deal since its almost impossible to multi box the quick reactions needed to avoid jump rope mechanics of raiding and even some dungeons in this game.

Sigh. I wish MMO's would readmit programs that allowed VMP players that people trust who had some power over monitoring and helping gather information to submit to the task force. UO use to have a wonderful volunteer program along with EQ for moderators and such positions but stupid unions got involved and lawyers demanded that they get paid which sort of nixed the program for all mmo's since.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

Yeah, multi boxing isn't against the TOS as long as you're not using a bot to control one of the characters. Hey, it's twice the sub fees to SE, they don't mind at all!

Actually, having a SCH on the 2nd account would essentially give you a free AI healer, albeit a limited one, without any botting whatsoever.

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Lol. I actually know someone who drags his brother's scholar around when he is doing certain dungeons that he can just let the fairy handle the healing while he tanks. Pisses the dps off thinking the healer is a lazy scrub but cant kick him since the tank doesn't allow it.

The largest bot in wow right now also has a bot for FF 14. I hope if Blizzard finally gets somewhere with their lawsuit it will take away a lot of SE's botting problems for awhile itleast.