QoL changes to Bot reporting

Can we PLEASE get an easier way to report obvious bots? Similar to how gil seller reporting works right now? Add a comment function where we have to describe the botting observed or something but make it a right click option when targeting the char.

It's hideously difficult to report a bot these days. Especially if they have key smash names that I cannot even type into the report sheet without making a mistake. Obviously, targeting and reporting will not work with those bots that travel underground but most of them are not that sophisticated.

The amount of bots is just staggering. I feel like it's a quarter of all chars online. Just yesterday I was fishing at the Isle of Umbra and they popped up behind me and slid/ported to the NPC they needed to talk to. Always in groups of 4 or so, all with key smash names. 4 or 5 groups of them in a span of 10-15 minutes or so. And don't even get me started about the BLM NPC in Uldah....that's bot haven it seems. Or Hawker's Alley in Limsa when the freshly born ones port through the alley to talk to NPCs.

I would love to report these guys but the current way is just not feasible when we are talking about 5 groups of 4 key smash bots popping up and vanishing in their creepy ways one after another.

Last I remember reading the special task force only had like 4-5 people, an easy way to report would mean 10x the number of reports they would get from over 60 servers. Not defending them or anything, just telling you why you probably will never see that option being added, it would be unsustainable with their small team, and since bots can be made as fast as they can be banned it's not worth to pay a huge team of people to pointlessly try to keep bots in check.

Ideally the devs need to invest in the code it needs to automatically identify these porting bots and once they are identified move them to a location from which they cannot "escape" from whilst they take action on the account and any connected ones. Sadly though I suspect this will involve a great deal of investment in development/testing as well as ongoing GM staffing so probably not going to be a winner as far as shareholders are concerned.

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Originally Posted by alimdia

Last I remember reading the special task force only had like 4-5 people, an easy way to report would mean 10x the number of reports they would get from over 60 servers. Not defending them or anything, just telling you why you probably will never see that option being added, it would be unsustainable with their small team, and since bots can be made as fast as they can be banned it's not worth to pay a huge team of people to pointlessly try to keep bots in check.

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That's dumb way of prioritizing though seeing as those keysmash bots are feeding into the gil seller and market board pipelines. Also....some of them will be sold to players who want a high level char without the work.

And it makes me angry if I get a congested area warning when trying to port to Upper La Noscea and the first thing I see when finally porting there is a bunch of bots.

But you're likely right that things will not change if SE is not putting more ppl to work in that area.

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Originally Posted by Bearded

Ideally the devs need to invest in the code it needs to automatically identify these porting bots and once they are identified move them to a location from which they cannot "escape" from whilst they take action on the account and any connected ones. Sadly though I suspect this will involve a great deal of investment in development/testing as well as ongoing GM staffing so probably not going to be a winner as far as shareholders are concerned.

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Actually, it's not a bad idea. And it wouldn't even involve a large investment of resources. Just create a large empty room/zone that has nothing in it, the software you're referring would put offenders in this room. Place a Return spawn point in there like dungeons have and disable Teleport. They're trapped in there. Then you can deal with them at your leisure. Legit players that get put in there will obviously contact support so that takes care of itself.

It removes the problem from the world and allows a process to deal with the offenders.

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Originally Posted by alimdia

Last I remember reading the special task force only had like 4-5 people

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They really should hire more people to the STF if that is true. I'd personally like to see 1 or 2 people on each server spot banning bots as they appear. Like make that their sole responsibility.

Also, they should have automated server-side auditing of character movement and detection of teleport hacking and speed hacking. That kind of thing should be considered a bare essential for any online game. WoW has had that for years, and don't recall ever seeing a teleport or speed hack in WoW, and I've played that since Cataclysm.

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Originally Posted by ElazulHP

They really should hire more people to the STF if that is true. I'd personally like to see 1 or 2 people on each server spot banning bots as they appear. Like make that their sole responsibility.

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Or they can just outsource bot enforcement to the GMs, who are a much larger team.

Their problem is that they think you need specialized "tools" to detect bots when a lot of them don't exhibit any abnormalities that can be detected from scanning the data a client is sending and such. Simply observing them is enough to deduce whether a real player is in control or not.

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Originally Posted by Feronar

Also, they should have automated server-side auditing of character movement and detection of teleport hacking and speed hacking. That kind of thing should be considered a bare essential for any online game. WoW has had that for years, and don't recall ever seeing a teleport or speed hack in WoW, and I've played that since Cataclysm.

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I was seeing tons of teleporting gather bots in early Cataclysm personally. I'd go to a seemingly unoccupied node to try to hit it, only get an "already in use" message due a bot underneath the ground using it.

It was scarcely an issue because reporting said bot after checking the combat log to get their name reliably got them purged by the GMs within the day, if not a few hours.

Meanwhile on the XIV side of things even the most obvious of gather bots are still around despite me reporting them since back in the HW days.

I remember soon after WildStar came out and teleport hacking was rampant, someone made an addon that would scan other players' movements and if it detected speed or teleport hacking, would automatically open the report player window and generate a pre-written report ticket. All you had to do was click the Send button. However it wasn't 100% reliable, as it could sometimes produce a false positive from a player riding the flying taxi for instance.

If a random guy on the internet was able to write up a teleport hack detection script in his spare time, can't a dedicated team of professional programmers also write up a teleport detection routine?

I mean ... look in Siren .. Ul'Dah at the Company Chest. There are at least 20 of them INSIDE IT at any one time. It's staggering.

I used to slap on my recording software and just chill there for a while, recording all the names and the like. Not sure if it's still worth it or not.

I've already reported 5 level 80 gather bots today alone, 1 of them I have been reporting since last December at least, 2 for the past few weeks and 2 new ones I spotted today. I don't expect SE to do anything. It's getting really frustrating that I sit here manually gathering my crystals while other can load up a 3rd party bot and just go AFK letting the bot do everything for them and never get banned.

This is really just going to cause more people to start botting. "Oh look SE isn't banning gather bots, I'll just start doing it too!"

Honestly, it's not the report system that needs work.

If people actually got banned when you reported them the current way of things would be perfectly fine, but the STF either doesn't care or thinks they have better judgment then the player base when you can have dozens of people reporting the same individuals for botting and still have no action taken.

I remember a little story of how it took a collective effort from several players over a period of months to get someone who was blatantly speedhacking in PvP a mere temporary ban and even then I think it was largely due to them eventually forcing the GMs to step in and do something because the STF wouldn't.

They have a team is both faster and more reliable then the STF at issuing punishment for the fields they do enforce, so I don't know why they don't allow the GMs to take charge of things.