Please make "impossible" levels of playing worth investigating for botting

Hello forum crew,

I started playing FFXIV on the Balmung server during patch 2.5. With so little time before the next expansion, I only just got my gathering classes to level 50 in time for Heavensward. However, I knew that I wanted to be able to make gil so I could help friends get items they want. So I started putting a lot of time and effort into gathering in the early patches of the expansion.

A lot of the gathering done at this time was at unspoiled nodes. I wasn't able to work during the early Heavensward patches, so I had a lot of time to invest. I started to meet other gatherers at these nodes, and we had a lot of friendly chats while waiting for the next unspoiled nodes to spawn.

However, there were max level gatherers who never spoke. They also took the same path from the Aetheryte to the same waiting spot safe from enemies and then to the node when it spawned. Every time. And they never stopped. If I couldn't sleep I would log on to gather and they were there without fail. If I took a break for a meal they'd be at the nodes when I got back. And no matter when I started my next gathering spree, they were there.

And they kept gathering.

I reasoned that they were using a botting program- because what other conclusion is possible for characters doing nothing but taking the same routes to the same nodes with no breaks and never talking? So I filed thorough botting reports on every one, thinking they would be dealt with in time. The first report was filed in patch 3.1.

And they kept gathering.

Every so often, I'd see one of the all-too-familiar names not in their pack. So I ran player searches to see if my reports had finally taken affect. I would see them in a different zone, so I'd investigate but only to see them farming Aethersands or another set of node patterns.

And they kept gathering.

Their numbers grew during Heavensward. There are multiple Free Companies, one with a house, whose only members are the ghostlike bots I saw at every unspoiled or legendary node. The markets were flooded. High end materials that I spent months investing on being able to gather were selling for under 100 gil apiece. I kept checking the unspoiled and legendary nodes, hoping time and time again that my reports had done SOMETHING- that I would be able to put my hard won skills and gear to use.

And they kept gathering.

(( to be continued in first post ))

During Stormblood, I was looking forwards to the new story and classes and features. But more than anything else I was looking forwards to the hope that with the new expansion, maybe they would be gone. For a while I was able to make some gil from the Stormblood materials. But then one day I started seeing them again from one free company. All six, level 70 in mining and botany, moving as one unit between nodes.

And they kept gathering.

In the next months more of the botting free companies joined them, and a new one sprung up with its own fleet.

And they kept gathering.

So I filed more reports, though I was losing hope. Since I was only given silence (and no vanishing bots) from my cheating reports, I tried harassment reports. I was able to speak to some GMs, and I told them of my (and Balmung's) plight. A few agreed this was highly suspicious, and they promised me they would investigate and take action.

And they kept gathering.

Eventually, I heard from a GM Fennratth that the special task force had not found evidence of cheating. Even though no player could possibly do the same paths every time and spend as long as they do without breaks.

And they kept gathering.

There are three Free Companies where I've seen multiple high end gathering bots. These companies have no other members. Other bots are in a Free Company by themselves or unaffiliated. Prices of high end gathering materials on Balmung are not worth the investment into gear and leveling the classes. It is extremely difficult for players who don't cheat to make gil.

And they keep gathering.

If we can adjust the rules for third party programs to include in depth investigations of accounts that do nothing but churn out impossible quantities of items that crash markets, if we can consider it a bannable offense to play more than is humanly possible, taking pixel perfect paths so there is logically no other option than botting, then these bots can be banned and honest players can make gil from the efforts they've put in. I have been struggling with this for years and felt despair every time I go to a node and am the only human played character there. If this is not the correct place to make my plea, then please direct me to where is.

Because until Square Enix steps in, they will keep gathering.

I'm really not sure how it is that they go about investigating bots because even if they're not able to spot their obviously scripted movement patterns the sheer amount of gathered/crafted items they have in their inventories/storage as well as logged in their achievement records compared to normal players should be a huge red flag.

I feel like they're trying to rely entirely on some kind of faulty bot detection tool when they should conducting a proper investigation through non-automated methods.

It wasn't too much of a problem during HW on Cactaur, but it's blown up ever since 4.1 released. Almost all of the bots that were present then and reported multiple times are still around, and the number of them continues to grow as more people feel pressured into resorting to their methods to compete on the market, or simply start reasoning that there's no sense in not doing it when there's almost no risk of actually getting banned.

I can't help but wonder how badly those few players being banned each week for botting screwed up to actually get caught when even the most obvious of the ones I've reported have gotten away with it for over two years straight.

Wow that description you give sounds just the way I play gathering.
Like 100%

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Originally Posted by vigioX-Sun

Wow that description you give sounds just the way I play gathering.
Like 100%

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Do you mean the description of gathering 24/7, moving at a pixel perfect path towards every unspoiled node that's up, without talking to anyone near the unspoiled nodes? If yes, I doubt you're doing the first two things, though I'll agree that the last one (no talking) isn't really a bot related thing. I never really talk to anyone other than friends/FC when gathering.

Since I'm playing on the same server as the OP, and used to gather on a regular basis in HW, I probably know the names of a few of those bots. And just like the OP, I've also seen them botting for the entirety of 3.x, with reports doing absolutely nothing.
I didn't do as much gathering in SB, but I do remember seeing one of those botting FCs closer to the release, with a bunch of gatherers often camping at the Rhalgr's Reach aetheryte while waiting for the next node to come up.

I've never once mistaken an actual player for a bot before, though there are often half-AFK botters that are doing something else on another screen (Including playing on their main account) and thus still respond if you try to interact with them in the earlier hours of the day.

When there's more then one of them present at the same nodes, it becomes painfully obvious because there aren't that many botting programs out there and thus most bots are running the exact same script and mirror each other's movements perfectly. Even if they aren't together, they're still noticeable from how they move between a precise set of coordinates, which gives them an extremely jerky and often inefficient movement pattern (They'll pretty much never take anything resembling the most direct path between nodes, oft flying needlessly high in the air or even running straight past an unspoiled node then doubling back to it), and also because of how they never turn while they aren't in motion and always jump in place before they take flight in HW/SB zones, then suddenly whip around to face whatever they need to be flying in.

I feel like the STF probably isn't actually even looking at them if they seriously think they're innocent with the huge blanket list of quirks they exhibit compared to actual players, and I'm particularly sour about it with 4.4 on the horizon, meaning there'll be a fresh market for these guys to crash within a week or two of the patch's release.

Thank you for the input. On one hand, the fact that the situation is not unique to Balmung makes me hope there's a greater chance of a response. On the other hand, I'm sorry other servers have to suffer like this. I really hope people won't get beaten down and stop raising this issue- since a few entitled people are cheating to make crafting and gathering harder for everyone else.

Honestly, I really doubt anything is going to ever change when despite a complaint about botting being the hottest topic in one of the past Q&A threads, the only thing we got out of it from the developers in the following live letter was "We're trying, please understand and keep reporting the bots".

Nothing has actually changed since then other then the weekly illicit activity reports having a separate category for bots which just emphasizes how poor of a job they're doing at keeping the issue under control.

They don't seem to understand just how negatively these guys can affect the experience of others when you've got PvP bots being dead weight in frontlines, gil farming bots invading people's ARR roulettes, and gathering/crafting bots keeping a chokehold on the economy that while arguably beneficial to consumers discourages other players from entering the market when their competition effectively has an infinite amount of time to spend on gathering/crafting.

I would say that the gathering/crafting bots are not arguably better for consumers. They have lower prices, but as their gil is funneled to RMT it creates an economic divide that favors people willing to cheat.

Like I said in another post, I think they should put in the terms of service they could see what programs are running together with FFXIV, then gathering information of all program names that can interact with FFXIV, then analyze program behavior compared with programs that can do certain stuff.
Also, they should do something about these people who sell UwU weapons across data center, is it not obvious this is real money? I think doing this, RMT/third party program will suffer a lot.

Seeing what other programs are running is more sketchy. But having Square Enix actually investigate player reports would be a huge help. I just went to gather Duskglow sand and counted eight (8) bot characters at the node gathering whom I have been reporting since Heavensward. If these cases were investigated and the bots banned, non-cheating players would take their place and NOT funnel the gil to RMT sites. However, it is very hard to work up the motivation to gather because every time we do we face a raid of bots who can generate massive amounts of materials we can never hope to match without cheating.

I agree wholeheartedly. I have been playing FFXIV for several years, starting with a Realm Reborn and it's re-release. Just as you and several others have mentioned, I cannot express into words how frustrating and aggravating the bots have made the game. It has destroyed the economic system in Final Fantasy. For us true players it makes it nearly impossible to benefit from crafting and gathering and hope for any form of profit off of the market board. And then for those characters to severely undercut the market board forcing us to sell our materials and items for significantly less just to survive. And then they go and buy out the market board at the lower rate that they caused and then resell it at ridiculous prices. And the fact that we cannot match their money we cannot hope to even begin to reset the market board.

Unfortunately after considering everything I do not believe that much will be done about this. As we all know Square Enix makes money from our subscription fees. If you consider that they find the bots and ban their accounts. They will just create new accounts and pay a brand-new subscription fee just to remain in business. Also if you consider how much money that the bots are making from the RMTs that they can afford to continue to pay those subscription fees after they've been banned. For all the complaints we are only paying $12-$15 a month, per person. If you were to say that bots owner is banned four times in a month Square Enix has made about $60 off of that one person. Creating an email account, is free . Just as creating a Square Enix account is free. So even though that account has been banned , they just create a new one. So I believe the banning will continue, but a true fix of eliminating the botting or RMT altogether I don't believe they will do anything about it considering the money that they are making from them as well. It saddens me, I must admit. And I do hope that they care enough about the true fans and not about money to do something about it because it does make this game feel like it is not worth playing.

For the bots that focus on crashing the high end material market, I think banning would do more. Getting a character to that level and gear takes time. Unfortunately, nothing has been done to the same bots who have been active for years. It's the second day of a new patch and on Balmung they are swarming the nodes along with the legitimate players- who are getting more and more disheartened by the lack of action done by Square Enix.

I feel like they really ought to just give the GMs power to enforce cheating because they seem a lot more diligent then the STF and with them on the job 24/7, it really wouldn't that difficult for them to catch the bots at a hour where they're truly AFK and unable to respond.

The traditional method of checking for bots is for a GM to simply PM the suspect player if it isn't totally obvious that they're botting, then drop the banhammer on if they keep going about their business and ignoring them for a prolonged period of time. Why XIV is relying on some manner of extremely flawed method (Assuming they're even trying at all) instead of that is beyond me.

In other news, after being absent for two days, most of the bots on Cactaur suddenly resurfaced last night. I guess it took them longer to get the memo then the ones on Balmung.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I feel like they really ought to just give the GMs power to enforce cheating because they seem a lot more diligent then the STF and with them on the job 24/7, it really wouldn't that difficult for them to catch the bots at a hour where they're truly AFK and unable to respond.

The traditional method of checking for bots is for a GM to simply PM the suspect player if it isn't totally obvious that they're botting, then drop the banhammer on if they keep going about their business and ignoring them for a prolonged period of time. Why XIV is relying on some manner of extremely flawed method (Assuming they're even trying at all) instead of that is beyond me.

In other news, after being absent for two days, most of the bots on Cactaur suddenly resurfaced last night. I guess it took them longer to get the memo then the ones on Balmung.

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I completely agree that the GMs should be allowed to enforce consequences for botting based on responses and player activity. Every GM I have recently spoken to on the matter (including a supervisor) has been incredibly courteous and understanding.

There looks to be some good news! With the bot report last Thursday, I noticed a few bots on Balmung stopped coming around. However, they are back today- which could mean they got a 3 day suspension. If this is the case, we just need to keep reporting the bots as we see them! Everyone please help Square with this!

See, that's the other problem.

Since they refuse to offer responses to reports, you can never actually know whether or not the bots got temp banned or if their owners just took a break. I've had far, FAR too many instances of thinking they finally did something, but they didn't, because all of the bots on my server have had significant periods of absence multiple times (Presumably just due to them getting bored of the game). A lot of these players are not simply alt accounts, so if they had a shred of sense they'd have stopped after a single temp ban due to the risk of losing absolutely everything (Which comes to another sad reality that even if these people get a temp ban, they'll still be loaded with enough gil to manipulate the economy as they see fit for eternity).

It's standard practice in other MMOs to state if a report has been read and/or acted on, but SE seems to value the privacy of their players over any actual efficiency with their report system.

Things have just gotten several times worse in the past few months, as I'm counting nearly a dozen gather bots active at night at its peak and there's now three or four people flooding the market with infusions instead of just one.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

See, that's the other problem.

Since they refuse to offer responses to reports, you can never actually know whether or not the bots got temp banned or if their owners just took a break. I've had far, FAR too many instances of thinking they finally did something, but they didn't, because all of the bots on my server have had significant periods of absence multiple times (Presumably just due to them getting bored of the game). A lot of these players are not simply alt accounts, so if they had a shred of sense they'd have stopped after a single temp ban due to the risk of losing absolutely everything (Which comes to another sad reality that even if these people get a temp ban, they'll still be loaded with enough gil to manipulate the economy as they see fit for eternity).

It's standard practice in other MMOs to state if a report has been read and/or acted on, but SE seems to value the privacy of their players over any actual efficiency with their report system.

Things have just gotten several times worse in the past few months, as I'm counting nearly a dozen gather bots active at night at its peak and there's now three or four people flooding the market with infusions instead of just one.

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That's unfortunate. I hope more bans for serial botters come out soon. Though I think for using botting to amass wealth to either control the market or funnel to RMT, a straight permaban would be more appropriate. I also wish there was more of a GM or Square Enix response on what's being done to combat these bots, and what they look for in player reports.