Square-Enix, please, do something about the bots

Title.

Because when I ever login on a big city I see them in mass. They were ether advertising or causing lags stacking 50 of them underground. And report them via [Report]>[Report RMT activity] feels like drying ice. That effort feels futile.

And I noticed that:

• The game don't use a check-in solution to check if it have any process messing with FFXIV's packets;
• The banwaves are not getting the situation any better;
• The bots are freely using some hacks and not really permabanned (they just create another account)
• The RMT clients aren't being banned, just the mules;
• Every bot that advertises RMT are from a few sites. I can count in a single hand how much. And they can be taken down via law measures, such as heavy fines, pressure on ICANN to take down the domain (the sites uses a .com domain), pressure on their ISP to take down the site to starve out their services

Also, the bots are known on other games for causing lag, since a single botter can have hundreds of simultaneous connections while a regular player just make one connection. Maybe botters are the cause of the DDoS?

If required, I can help S-E with anything I can. Even with the IT part, since I am an experienced IT professional (programmer, tbe) or I sacrifice a virgin Miqo'te to some vulcan god or I can even try to summon some primal on the Limsa Lominsa Aetherite Plaza.

But, please, do something about those damned bots.

I'm going to assume they have it setup similar to FFXI days. As i recall it they had a RMT Taskforce based in Japan so im guessing a report need to go through alot before even gets to someone who can examine it and then make a call.

Either its lack of manpower or system isnt good enough to counter with RMT.
Honestly we've had these problems since FFXI so 10+ years by now.

I'm not expecting anything major happening with RMT countermeasures in XIV.

There is a bot on Siren doing all the legendary mining and botany nodes including aethersand posting stacks and stacks of mats on the marketboard. I've reported him and sadly he's still running around doing it on a daily basis. The mentality of cheaters is pretty sad and they'll try and make their money anyway they can.

Only way the RMT bots are going to disappear is if people stop buying their gil. Only way that's going to happen sadly is SE shuts the game down.

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

Only way the RMT bots are going to disappear is if people stop buying their gil. Only way that's going to happen sadly is SE shuts the game down.

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Well, SE could also up the punishment for buying gil. Currently it's like..a 3 day ban and they take all your gil away. Unless you'd already spent it all buying a clear or something.
Not really much of a deterrent to players is it?
I'd rather see way more people buy gil and then do a chargeback after it's been delivered, lol. Except the RMTs will already have your CC number and be making purchases with it, and they might even report you to SE themselves for buying if you steal from them. Yeah, the status quo on combating RMT is really just trying keep it from getting worse than it currently is, not actually improving the situation T.T

I agree the game shutting down is the only way to 100% stop it, but there's still many avenues of improvement

Unfortunately bots pay subs too so they will never be gone. Rinumo mentions ffxi bots and we had them and you would not believe some of the stupid ways se tried to combat them. (goblins at water holes in camping areas comes to mind.) They did finally stop the rmt spammers, but that's about it. And even if they could make them all disappear they would all be back the next day on new accounts.

I've seen guilds of actual players farming nodes, with achievements from other content and everything. They were cluttered in a single spot, farming at the same time, disengaging the node at the same time, jumping on their mount at the same time and moving away at the same time. Gonna guess it's a single person's FC with multiple service accounts. It's disgusting, I think I've seen them twice during the week I was farming for mats for scripts.

There's a report given by SE telling us how many accounts where punished by their ban hammer. I also don't know if their GM force is understaffed, I think it is.

What laws are these sites breaking that would call for fines or having domain shut down?

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Originally Posted by miraidensetsu

But, please, do something about those damned bots.

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I wholeheartedly concur. It's sad that I generally feel obligated to filter out /say messages simply to avoid seeing open advertisements by RMT bots. This is a pay-to-play title; SE needs to crack down in a meaningful way (i.e. automated systems and a far quicker turnaround time on bans).

It's never too late to improve.

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Originally Posted by Zarabeth

Unfortunately bots pay subs too so they will never be gone. Rinumo mentions ffxi bots and we had them and you would not believe some of the stupid ways se tried to combat them. (goblins at water holes in camping areas comes to mind.) They did finally stop the rmt spammers, but that's about it. And even if they could make them all disappear they would all be back the next day on new accounts.

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Yeah good times with the fishing bots. I always enjoyed seeing them getting slaughtered!

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

Only way the RMT bots are going to disappear is if people stop buying their gil. Only way that's going to happen sadly is SE shuts the game down.

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Or SE could sell gil. People would probably choose the safer option of buying gil directly from SE rather than some sketchy RMT site, and run them out of business.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

Or SE could sell gil. People would probably choose the safer option of buying gil directly from SE rather than some sketchy RMT site, and run them out of business.

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Lol. That doesn't work. Check out the games that do, you'll find the rmt sellers are still in business in those games.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

Or SE could sell gil. People would probably choose the safer option of buying gil directly from SE rather than some sketchy RMT site, and run them out of business.

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Unfortunately, all that does is start an undercut war. Remember that most of the people doing the gil farming are doing it in unpaid sweatshops with fear of torture or even execution if they don't farm enough gil. It's basically done via trafficking and hostage taking, in countries that don't care for it and allow it to happen. So sure, SE could sell gil for a reasonable price, but then the gil buyers will just undercut, and then it just becomes a war of undercutting if you want to try and stop them.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

Remember that most of the people doing the gil farming are doing it in unpaid sweatshops with fear of torture or even execution if they don't farm enough gil. It's basically done via trafficking and hostage taking, in countries that don't care for it and allow it to happen.

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.. And this, children.. is how skynet was born.. rebellion slave bots..

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Originally Posted by Cakekizyy

What laws are these sites breaking that would call for fines or having domain shut down?

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Intelectual property laws. Everything that's inside the FFXIV software are Square-Enix's intelectual property. Ever your character can be included into that, legally speaking.

The same argument they use to take down youtube videos can be used to take down botters websites. And, considering that botters are actually earning money also with services like "level your char up to 70" (putting a concurrence against SE's Mog Station and their Tales of Adventurer item) or gil selling, most countries lets the injured party to demand compensation for damages to their business (like the DDoS they caused).

Yes, I would like to see S-E suing botters. If I was Yoshi-P, I would made a reunion with the legal team to make the banhammer hit harder. And, coming from an company as big as Square, the lawsuit will appear on every gamer site (and even on IT generalist ones). It will scare off new botters (at least those that is less daring).

I don't think the bots are ever going to be addressed unless there's a serious outcry about it, at least on the level of the housing issue. Unfortunately, from what I've noticed on my server, people are often oblivious to bots, don't care about them, or actually want them around due to driving down the prices on items (Which is strictly beneficial for the crafters who are too lazy to gather their own materials).

The fact that it's largely a non-issue on the JP side of things is also likely another factor playing into why it's being handled so poorly.

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Originally Posted by Rinuko

I\\'m going to assume they have it setup similar to FFXI days. As i recall it they had a RMT Taskforce based in Japan so im guessing a report need to go through alot before even gets to someone who can examine it and then make a call.

Either its lack of manpower or system isnt good enough to counter with RMT.
Honestly we\\'ve had these problems since FFXI so 10+ years by now.

I\\'m not expecting anything major happening with RMT countermeasures in XIV.

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The system in FFXI was vastly more inclusive, you had the GM taskforce (several of them rather than the seemingly almost none we have now in ffxiv) who's entire existence was to look over reports, and would at times actually communicate with me the 126 *kept track* times my Blue Mage spookily stalked up on an RMT in full Immortal Lion gear and reported them.

You could stand there for five minutes after sending the report and watch as the person suddenly had the red ball of eminent death by their name, they would disappear from the world with my blue mage as the last thing their characters ever saw.

Then within five seconds of that you would get a message thanking you for your report with assurances that the matter was being looked in to.

I miss that sense that stuff was actually getting done and that I just had a hand in brutally murdering the existence of 126 abominations in epic immortal lion fashion

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I don't think the bots are ever going to be addressed unless there's a serious outcry about it, at least on the level of the housing issue. Unfortunately, from what I've noticed on my server, people are often oblivious to bots, don't care about them, or actually want them around due to driving down the prices on items (Which is strictly beneficial for the crafters who are too lazy to gather their own materials).

The fact that it's largely a non-issue on the JP side of things is also likely another factor playing into why it's being handled so poorly.

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Ye sadly even if we do know who the bots are I think we mainly dont do anything bout it hence SE doesn't do anything bout it either. Even if you report a Bot who got something wrong in their botting script and so something weird doesn't affect hence SE rather checks them by Chatlog only and not the vids/pics we send them cause it "might be edited".

Maybe it is good to adress this Issue within the Liveletter which will come incase they may wanted our Questions again. or we really cry loud about it like we did with housing...

I know that this is a serious issue , but all I could think of : Good luck in finding a virgin Miqo'te.

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Originally Posted by Luna_Ariana

Maybe it is good to adress this Issue within the Liveletter which will come incase they may wanted our Questions again. or we really cry loud about it like we did with housing...

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Be surprised but... in one of the latest Live Letters (I think it was before SB hit) the very first Posts contained that Question.
It had over 100 Likes if not even more so yet ... has been totally ignored.

As you can probably think, Glamour Questions were more prioritized...

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

The fact that it's largely a non-issue on the JP side of things is also likely another factor playing into why it's being handled so poorly.

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There were tons of Aetherial Reduction / Ephermal Node Bots on Mana Datacenter according to a few Discord Members who play on Shinryu and other Servers.
That said during 3.56 Heavensward times, how it looks now during Stormblood, I hardly can imagine, tho I'd be not surprised if those are still around.
Even JPN Servers have their Black Sheeps, tho their Community is a bit more punishing when it comes to Players doing awful things or like this.

Basically I remember a Rampage going on because a Female Player was being harrassed of a Streamer / Raider, which the Community decided to raid a entire House with naked Roegadyns as punishment.

Honestly would like at least a system to detect people glitching the maps or moving at impossible speeds without teleporting constantly and ban them. There HAS to be a way to tell from data if someone is either somewhere they shouldn't be or faster than what is possible for players.

Getting tired of bots advertising underneath the Aetherites. Maybe also implement a system that kicks you for inactivity after 2 hours of doing nothing. (I know they had this at Stormblood's launch and it did cut down the RMT advertiser bots)

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Originally Posted by Alestorm

Maybe also implement a system that kicks you for inactivity after 2 hours of doing nothing. (I know they had this at Stormblood's launch and it did cut down the RMT advertiser bots)

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The only problem with this is the bots are running a script and it wouldn't be that hard to modify it to give them something to reset the inactivity timer.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

Unfortunately, all that does is start an undercut war. Remember that most of the people doing the gil farming are doing it in unpaid sweatshops with fear of torture or even execution if they don't farm enough gil. It's basically done via trafficking and hostage taking, in countries that don't care for it and allow it to happen. So sure, SE could sell gil for a reasonable price, but then the gil buyers will just undercut, and then it just becomes a war of undercutting if you want to try and stop them.

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OR it could be getting done via botting...

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Originally Posted by Luna_Ariana

Ye sadly even if we do know who the bots are I think we mainly dont do anything bout it hence SE doesn't do anything bout it either. Even if you report a Bot who got something wrong in their botting script and so something weird doesn't affect hence SE rather checks them by Chatlog only and not the vids/pics we send them cause it "might be edited".

Maybe it is good to adress this Issue within the Liveletter which will come incase they may wanted our Questions again. or we really cry loud about it like we did with housing...

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There was a gathering bot that I reported during Heavensward. It did eventually disappear. Took a while, but it is gone.

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Originally Posted by Alestorm

Honestly would like at least a system to detect people glitching the maps or moving at impossible speeds without teleporting constantly and ban them. There HAS to be a way to tell from data if someone is either somewhere they shouldn't be or faster than what is possible for players.

Getting tired of bots advertising underneath the Aetherites. Maybe also implement a system that kicks you for inactivity after 2 hours of doing nothing. (I know they had this at Stormblood's launch and it did cut down the RMT advertiser bots)

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Server-side checks for movement hacks and glitches would require validating movement every poll which can cause some pretty crazy stress on a server when you take into account it'd have to happen for every player in every map. At the same time, those players/bots are also modifying the game as it runs to achieve such a state.

I'm with you on the AFK timer. It should just be kept on always.

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Originally Posted by Mwynn

Be surprised but... in one of the latest Live Letters (I think it was before SB hit) the very first Posts contained that Question.
It had over 100 Likes if not even more so yet ... has been totally ignored.

As you can probably think, Glamour Questions were more prioritized...

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What? Wow that's really not cool from them. Still hope they reconsider this issue. <___<

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Originally Posted by aesteval

There was a gathering bot that I reported during Heavensward. It did eventually disappear. Took a while, but it is gone.

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If many more people report a specific bot think it can disappear. So ye it could work.... maybe.

Also may I ask to people who play other MMOs: How do they get rid of them? Speaking of both RMT and Gatherer Bots from actual active people.

God no on afk timer, I hate those.

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Originally Posted by aesteval

There was a gathering bot that I reported during Heavensward. It did eventually disappear. Took a while, but it is gone.

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The legitimate player who was running the bot probably just quit the game :p

Almost every single online game that has a market will have currency sellers, if there's a crafting/gathering side to it, you will find bots. So unless you get every single game (some which don't have the staff to do so) to get rid of every single bot, and put in counter measures to prevent them from coming back it's literally impossible to get rid of bots. Even then when you put in counter measures, they find a way to get past them. It's no different from DDOS, Hacks, Scams, Fraud, etc.

I remember when I got tells from the gil sellers all the time, haven't had a gil seller send a tell to me since i've been back in the game, so them getting banned in waves is probably having an affect it's just very long term.

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Originally Posted by Shouko

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The lack of rmt spam is a result of the player base being vocal about them actually building a decent filter into the game. It was something they should have launched with and instead had to be bombarded to get fixed.

Or they could have a system that bans bots in a more timely fashion. Instead of letting them put tens of thousands of items into the game. Most reasonable people would agree that bots are never going away. But as an MMO company keeping your game clean in a timely fashion is also reasonable.

Multiple posts over the years have shown SE does not react as if this is a threat to the integrity of the game. While allowing it to grow before getting around to removing it. Here is a little experiment I tried way back in 2.X days. Some of the shard sellers were bots they could not humanly possible provide the amount they had on the AH. So I removed all the wind shards I had onto a retainer. Bought from a "Supposed" bot, put those new shards onto a different retainer and watched the ban waves. Eventually they got removed. The shards I had bought from them did not. So how many billions of shards do you think they put into the game before a timely response happened?

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Originally Posted by Luna_Ariana

Also may I ask to people who play other MMOs: How do they get rid of them? Speaking of both RMT and Gatherer Bots from actual active people.

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They don't. It's a never ending dance. Bot programmer makes a bot and sells it. Game developers study said bot, determine how to detect it, then ban them. Bot programmers see how they are being detected and make a new bot that won't be and sell it. And so on.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

Multiple posts over the years have shown SE does not react as if this is a threat to the integrity of the game. While allowing it to grow before getting around to removing it. Here is a little experiment I tried way back in 2.X days. Some of the shard sellers were bots they could not humanly possible provide the amount they had on the AH. So I removed all the wind shards I had onto a retainer. Bought from a "Supposed" bot, put those new shards onto a different retainer and watched the ban waves. Eventually they got removed. The shards I had bought from them did not. So how many billions of shards do you think they put into the game before a timely response happened?

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P2P models rarely act on bots as they're making them money via subs. I dealt with that in WoW for years, they never did anything back then except for spamming which actually hurt the players more than the bots.

It feels like the only bots they regularly take action against are those warp-hacking gil farmers who tend to show up in droves, only to mysteriously vanish some days later and the expendable RMT spammers who are replaced in a matter of minutes.

The more low-key bots that are being used for personal income seem like they're never going to be dealt with, even though they do often impact the game in a negative way on a small scale by giving individual players too much control over the market as well as an excess of income that is often used to horde houses just because.

The most annoying thing about bots for me is the ones that happen to be "playing" the MSQ at the same area where you are, and interrupt a non-cutscene story piece by popping up on top of the NPC you are trying to having a conversation with. It feels.... intrusive? Like someone pushed in front of you in a line and doesn't care. And just messes with my enjoyment of the scene.

There's the quick-report option for RMT, but not for other kinds of issues, so there's no easy way to report them if you encounter them. Or can I report them under that because they're creating gil for the RMT?

There is quite a lot of them on Northen Thanalan right now, teleporting like mad from mob to mob and killing them. I sure hope this doesn't become like what i have seen on some other games, where completing some quests was nearly impossible because the required mobs were all stolen so fast by whole swarms of bots that a human player couldn't hope to compete with them.

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Also may I ask to people who play other MMOs: How do they get rid of them? Speaking of both RMT and Gatherer Bots from actual active people.

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The only efficient way i have seen to achieve that is by having a game so dead and deserted by players that the people behind RMT and bots wouldn't even bother with it, because there is no money to gain at all from a non-existent playerbase :rolleyes:

There was a game...Tera? which made a minor tweak to the UI and exposed a good number of bots (basically making them click on the wrong UI repeatedly).
Ban-hammered them all.

And Balmung in a way is fairly free from bots since once gone, they usually don't come back due to server lock down.