So many bots

Yo, i don't usually post in here, this is my first time, but i think this is important.

I've been playing for nearly a year and i've enjoy the hell out of this game but omg there are quite some bots, more than there should be. You see them like teleporting with weird names and all that. I don't know why Square Enix doesn't fix this.

I play in Louisoux and i've find a guild of 100 people that are all bots, its called: "Qoqwibyn Sucudls". what the hell lmao .

I care a lot about the game and i know thats its going to get bigger in the next years and if this problem isn't resolved, it may hurt the game

What's super freaky is when you're quietly trying to kill a few mobs for a quest and, out of nowhere, they get spammed with Aero 2 and Stone 2. Made it a little difficult to get kill credit for coeurls for a couple minutes.

I have seen 10 of them stacked on top of each other doing the blm job quest, lower paths near camp tranquil, it freaky because they raise up out of the ground spam moves on 10 mobs that spawn at the same time and then all 10 lower into the ground and interact with something and vanish again.

Only got the name of one because they are so neatly stacked they are literally all sitting in each others character space.

saw four bots in limsa, all wearing the same gear, same race, everything. just popped up outta nowhere and then three seconds later then all vanished xD bots are taking over the game and its a bit unsettling. i don't remember seeing so many back when i started

It's only going to get worse on lower pop servers now that RMT scumbags can trade gil and transfer it to other servers now. These RMT botters can't create the armies on higher pop servers as easy.

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Originally Posted by moregano

saw four bots in limsa, all wearing the same gear, same race, everything. just popped up outta nowhere and then three seconds later then all vanished xD bots are taking over the game and its a bit unsettling. i don't remember seeing so many back when i started

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That would be me and my boyfriend Ash. We live together. We are not bots, haha. We just no-life the marketboard/crafting and enjoy making things affordable for people. :)

Just one thing: there are games that lost its relevance due to bots. Ragnarok Online, for instance, almost went extinct due to those.

These bots aren't new. They've been around practically since 2.0. I've noticed their numbers fluctuate rather wildly and they've been significantly higher then usual (Close to 200ish by the end of the week just on Cactuar alone) which would explain why a lot of people are only noticing them now.

SE does ban them regularly but they come back so quickly that it's a wasted effort. They need to target their methods, not just the bots themselves.

They're really just the tip of the iceberg though, because any normal server tends to have a multitude of DoL/H bots that have a significant hand in manipulating the economy and those guys almost never get banned.

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Originally Posted by miraidensetsu

Just one thing: there are games that lost its relevance due to bots. Ragnarok Online, for instance, almost went extinct due to those.

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Ragnarok was an odd case.

Its card system was integral to the game (They're akin to the materia in XIV, but much more powerful) but the drop rates on said cards were so insanely low (0.01% or one in 10,000 was the average rate) that people grew to be almost entirely dependent on the bots for them.

I keep seeing a bunch of bots teleporting about the place in The Black Shroud.

Popping up at FATEs all stacked on top of each other.

Popping up directly on top of mobs then killing them.

Err... Doing quests in East Shroud? (The one where you have to /dance for the Sylphs was notable)

Given that I'm constantly having to queue to log in to my character, I can't help but think that these bots are clogging up some of the space - To say nothing about the spam in cities about RMT...

Oh, they're definitely hogging server space.

If you player search and filter for sprouts in the 1-50 range, you'll see well over a hundred of them on a typical server. Most of them tend to be in instances and not readily visible in searches as a result, but if you check how many players are online in their FCs you'll be able to get a clearer picture of just how many of them there are.

How I feel about bots these days:

https://i.ibb.co/N1ztxWb/eco.png

I think the only people who actually care about the bot farmers are the small crowd of people who craft stuff to sell on the MB.

A lot of people don't bother selling anything, and the largest crowd just doesn't craft period.

Unfortunately this is something we have to deal with all multiplayer games nowadays and I know it may not SEEM like it but SE is banning literally thousands of bots everyday. If they weren't I promise you what you see now would be infinitely worse.

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Originally Posted by Final-Fantasy

To defeat the problem, you need to attack it at its core.
But this game has many layers of BOT activity, the only way to curb at lest some of it, is have GM's actually police areas by acting on player reports of BOT activity.

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I post this a lot, but GMs have no authority over botting/cheating reports. Everything has to be funneled to the Special Task Force (a handful of people in Japan that may or may not be fluent in the various languages reported in). Either local GMs need to be trained to handle these issues or each region needs its own local special task force fluent in the languages being reported in. As a user, the current report flow for these issues seems completely ineffective.

Maybe SE can put a bounty on them, and we can earn in game Gil or something, maybe even a title for turning them in. Once our reports have been investigated and the bad guys dealt with, we can have like a stamp/number next to our names or something on our bot kill count. lol
https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b...1dcb83~mv2.gif
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...ff8134c643.jpg

It might be because I generally avoid "public areas" unless I need to be there for quests and such, but I never really come across any bots on Moogle (apart from the gil selling ones)

At this very moment on Zodiark, if you search for level 50 black mages, you litterally get 200/200 bots as a result.
They are all neatly organised in Free Companies, and all bunched up in the same areas.
If you spend any amount of time near a FC chest (or Auriana in Mhor Dona, or a couple of other key spots), you will see them teleporting in and out.

And yet, in the last report of actions taken against illicit activities) :

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・Botting activity (Using any number of third party tools that allow for automation)
　・Accounts terminated: 2

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Seriously ?

The bans for "conventional" bots are the ones being listed under botting. The hacking gil farmers get lumped into the RMT category.

But yeah, those ban numbers are a joke when there's been well over a dozen people botting on a daily basis for months/years on Cactuar alone despite being reported several times by me and others.

So, it means they banned nearly 11000 gil-farming accounts (up from around 4000 in the previous reports), and still there are so many active bots...

I'm starting to believe this is getting out of hands...

The worst part is, they are super obvious... Many black mages (over 400 of them on Zodiark), some conjurers (about 100) and a few bards (20 or so). They even regroup in Free Companies...

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Originally Posted by Nexya

So, it means they banned nearly 11000 gil-farming accounts (up from around 4000 in the previous reports), and still there are so many active bots...

I'm starting to believe this is getting out of hands...

The worst part is, they are super obvious... Many black mages (over 400 of them on Zodiark), some conjurers (about 100) and a few bards (20 or so). They even regroup in Free Companies...

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It doesn't matter how many of them they ban because they're scripted to instantly create new accounts whenever they do get banned.

They also aren't actually making any meaningful impact on their gil farming because the ban waves only happen weekly and it takes just a day for a bot to hit the level cap and have farmed up a substantial amount of gil to sell.

It reeks of incompetence for them to be taking the same approach to this problem for years when it's proven to be ineffective.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

It doesn't matter how many of them they ban because they're scripted to instantly create new accounts whenever they do get banned.

They also aren't actually making any meaningful impact on their gil farming because the ban waves only happen weekly and it takes just a day for a bot to hit the level cap and have farmed up a substantial amount of gil to sell.

It reeks of incompetence for them to be taking the same approach to this problem for years when it's proven to be ineffective.

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I've only been playing for a few weeks, so I can't judge of the effectiveness over time...

Anyway, I'm currently stuck on my relic quest -- sure, it's optionnal, even irrelevant nowadays, but I'm doing it for the glamour -- since it requres Amdapor Keep and some bots are farming it 24/7.
https://i.imgur.com/uLTpCmz.png
I withdrew after 5 hours since it was pointless... We got a party a couple of times, but the duty finder stuck on "Reserving server" and someone ended up leaving (can't blame them...)

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Originally Posted by Nexya

I've only been playing for a few weeks, so I can't judge of the effectiveness over time...

Anyway, I'm currently stuck on my relic quest -- sure, it's optionnal, even irrelevant nowadays, but I'm doing it for the glamour -- since it requres Amdapor Keep and some bots are farming it 24/7.
https://i.imgur.com/uLTpCmz.png
I withdrew after 5 hours since it was pointless... We got a party a couple of times, but the duty finder stuck on "Reserving server" and someone ended up leaving (can't blame them...)

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I'd recommend getting yourself to 70 before relic farming. That way you can get i360-i400 gear and absolutely demolish these dungeons solo.

I'm still not sure why they haven't just axed the gil drops from ARR dungeon enemies.

The cultists prior to the first boss in Amdapor Keep have extremely low HP compared to standard dungeon mobs but drop the same amount of gil, which is why they're the go-to for the gil farm bots once they've exhausted the gil from the MSQ. If you happen to get placed into an instance with them, you'll see that they selectively clear out all the cultists then simply leave the instance and requeue.

Had a Bot lvl 70 RDM from Brynhyldr just now. Only used the same 3 attacks even on mass pulls on a lvl 70 dungeon. Randomly used Caster LB and didn't even hit anything lol. He even had a mentor helm on. He ate all the claw/tail attacks from the final boss too.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

Had a Bot lvl 70 RDM from Brynhyldr just now. Only used the same 3 attacks even on mass pulls on a lvl 70 dungeon. Randomly used Caster LB and didn't even hit anything lol. He even had a mentor helm on. He ate all the claw/tail attacks from the final boss too.

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I dunno. He could've just been really stupid.

The few times I did encounter a bot in a dungeon, they'd fixate on a particular player and follow them really closely (As in, stand directly on top of them closely) while not in combat.

If I see weird movement patterns coupled with general stupidity then I tend to assume someone is botting.

Louisoux definitely has alot of bot, i tried this server out as a suggestion when my NA server adamantoise being maint for server split last time

And my very first impresstion of that server is bots running wild in there, while i rarely see bot in my sever only few shouting about selling gils in 3 big city

I was in gridania that time, saw alot of guys with same last name, weird first name, same gear running around, when i go outside for questting, i saw them just teleporting around quest npc and even auto revive when they are dead

I saw a stack of 8 BLMs with gibberish names, all same lvl, same gear and same character design. They stood outside the dungeon entrance at Raubahns Push.
They all stood on top of eachother, but the magitek robots nearby by killed quickly by invisible players. I heard so many spells being cast and the Magiteks died quickly, and it also felt like they teleported around.
And SE GMs told me to report them, but how could I report something I didnt see. It could have been the players that were by the dungeon entrance, but they stayed still so not sure it was them :/

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Originally Posted by Altera

I saw a stack of 8 BLMs with gibberish names, all same lvl, same gear and same character design. They stood outside the dungeon entrance at Raubahns Push.
They all stood on top of eachother, but the magitek robots nearby by killed quickly by invisible players. I heard so many spells being cast and the Magiteks died quickly, and it also felt like they teleported around.
And SE GMs told me to report them, but how could I report something I didnt see. It could have been the players that were by the dungeon entrance, but they stayed still so not sure it was them :/

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Check your battle log and see who’s killing what, lol

Reminds me of a while back, I was at the Black Brush Station in Thanalan for something, no one else seemed to be around at first. Then I saw a procession of around a dozen and a half bots teleport in, all wearing the same low-level hooded robes and such, which all proceeded to move in a straight line to wherever they were supposed to be going before disappearing again. Like watching some paranormal cult coming together or something.

I saw the same thing happen here on Famfrit. I normally hang out in Gridania and for the past few weeks i've been seeing bots with same gear and wierd names like Gf Maguipo, Ug Tamlin, Ay Lohmani etc. pop up for a few secs then disappeared just to pop up like another sec later as more wierd names.