Please Remove Botters/RMTers.

I've made countless reports, as well as others. This RMT/Botting situation though controlled from spamming tells still get away with a lot. It's truly sad. I along with many others have spoken up and have reported yet particular individuals who are 24/7 botting are not removed, why is this? May anyone give me a good reason. Is it not still tos violation to use third party programs? I'm just sick of them buying housing, sick of them controlling the market boards, sick of them having unfair advantages over actual players and contributors. Also, if you've nothing nice to say save it. I've been in this game too long to argue over forums. This is really just a follow-up of a discussion I had in game with a GM.

Sadly this has been going on for years. As soon as you ban one bot, three more take its place. I believe maybe if SE had more employees to handle the bot situation then it might be a bit better.

I feel like part of XIV is now observing the gaggles of bots floating through a zone.

Seriously tho I used to be highly annoyed with it. I play a lot less these day so I see much less of it. Outside of reporting them I do not know any other recourse we have other than just ignoring it as best we can. They do bug me when I am trying to do a quest for msq and they have a destination point surrounded with 30 or so bots.

As I pointed out in 'Markets and Retainers' unless someone important at SE logs in to the NA servers and tries to sell anything on the market, they will never see it as the issue it is.

banning the teleporting ones in starter cities and the RMT barkers is going after the low hanging fruit. ban 20,000 of then, I dont care, but SE needs to raise the bar and go after the long term crafting and market bots. If they are serious about cheating, this is something they need to put more resources into. and if they REALLY need tips on how to find them, I am certain I and many other crafters can help them figure out who is doing what.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

As I pointed out in 'Markets and Retainers' unless someone important at SE logs in to the NA servers and tries to sell anything on the market, they will never see it as the issue it is.

banning the teleporting ones in starter cities and the RMT barkers is going after the low hanging fruit. ban 20,000 of then, I dont care, but SE needs to raise the bar and go after the long term crafting and market bots. If they are serious about cheating, this is something they need to put more resources into. and if they REALLY need tips on how to find them, I am certain I and many other crafters can help them figure out who is doing what.

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Gosh, I'm so tired of market bots. I've been playing the game for over 5 years and used the MB to sell stuff all the time, but I never noticed this issue until recently on my server. You just can't compete with these bots, and you keep seeing the names of the same crafters over and over. I even went as far as to character search 2 of these recurring crafters, and lo and behold, their FCs are definitely not composed of other players. There's even one of them with 2 "FC members" that I see all the time in Old Gridania, just popping out of nowhere next to the summoning bell, interacting with it for some time, then vanishing. The Elezen one has been the same level and wearing the same gear for over 2 months now -.-

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Originally Posted by Eien713

Gosh, I'm so tired of market bots. I've been playing the game for over 5 years and used the MB to sell stuff all the time, but I've never noticed this issue until recently on my server. You just can't compete with these bots, and you keep seeing the names of the same crafters over and over. I even went as far as to character search 2 of these recurring crafters, and lo and behold, their FCs are definitely not composed of other players. There's even one of them with 2 "FC members" that I see all the time in Old Gridania, just popping out of nowhere next to the MB, interacting with the summoning bell for some time, then vanishing. The Elezen one has been the same level and wearing the same gear for over 2 months now -.-

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it has gotten out of hand in the last few months. they get them to between 20-30, which is when you get access to retainers, so they can sell, after that, they rotate their "fc members" and they pop on to the summoning bell, undercut, and log on to the next one to do the same... 24/7

And yeah, usually the crafter is the fc leader with one combat class and all the crafting jobs to 80. the fc minions never level past when they get their retainers, since that would mean leaving their summoning station.

It's obvious to spot them. They are online 24/7. They move in the same repetitive manner through major cities and in zones to gather materials. They have their status on /busy so they can avoid being seen as AFK. They also undercut without needing to click on the summoning bell. There are four notorious botters on Cactuar and I'm aware there are a ton in other worlds too. I personally think instead of more staff SE should just take the banning more seriously. I've been in this game nearly 7 years now and it hasn't been this bad. I am thinking of writing a letter personally to the headquarters. I know people will think first world problems and that there are people dying of covid but honestly this has nothing to do with any of that. I play this game religiously and support it religiously and RMT and botters are hurting the balance.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

And yeah, usually the crafter is the fc leader with one combat class and all the crafting jobs to 80.

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Oh my God, yes! I totally forgot about this. All gathering jobs at 80 too. Just checking it out on character search made it clear something was very suspicious.

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Originally Posted by Eien713

Oh my God, yes! I totally forgot about this. All gathering jobs at 80 too. Just checking it out on character search made it clear something was very suspicious.

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Lodestone is also a very good feature for checking out the "fc"

Seriously, takes all of 5 minutes, so not sure why SE, since they RUN the game, cant do something more in depth to deal with this. pretty sure its because the people in charge here, havent bothered to communicate that its a prevalent issue here. Someone said that this issue isnt present in Japan. Well.. thats awesome, so why is it present here?

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

Lodestone is also a very good feature for checking out the "fc"

Seriously, takes all of 5 minutes, so not sure why SE, since they RUN the game, cant do something more in depth to deal with this. pretty sure its because the people in charge here, havent bothered to communicate that its a prevalent issue here. Someone said that this issue isnt present in Japan. Well.. thats awesome, so why is it present here?

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Yeah, I used the character search feature in the Lodestone, got their FCs from there, then checked all the "FC members" of the suspicious crafters (didn't take long since they were like 4 or 5, tops). It was so easy to tell something fishy was going on. At first, I wasn't 100% sure based on my MB observations, but Lodestone made it undeniably clear botting was at work. I really hope they do something about it but am not really holding my breath :(

Unless major core game changes are made, which will negatively impact the game and players, theres never going to be an end to the bots. While there is definitely more that could be done, i dont see SE doing any more because its not profitable enough.

all you can do is report to the GMs which get transferred to the STF of which there only like 4 people in Japan. It's not a big priority unfortunately.

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Originally Posted by Bsrking5

Unless major core game changes are made, which will negatively impact the game and players, theres never going to be an end to the bots. While there is definitely more that could be done, i dont see SE doing any more because its not profitable enough.

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You dont need core changes to hire a team in NA to deal with the issue and the cheaters.

the costs don't outweigh the benefits most likely.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

the costs don't outweigh the benefits most likely.

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Yeah, you are right. having a game stuffed full of known cheaters who can get away with it has always been good for the health of a game. Getting a reputation for having an entire aspect of gameplay being run and ruined by bots never gets around, and the people who would enjoy that aspect of the game would never be turned off by that kind of reputation.

The benefits of removing cheaters will always outweigh anything that the cheaters bring to the table.

The mass-produced bots seem like a bit of a lost cause unless SE is willing to impose temporary restrictions on newly created accounts to prevent them from moving their gil around before they get banned.

The "normal" bots that farm gil by spamming crafts or are simply lazy players are very much controllable provided you have a moderation team that can pick up on their not-so-subtle behavior patterns and ban them, though, as they are not going to come back nearly as quickly.

It takes WILL and EFFORT from SE's side to deal with this blatant problem. Something I've started seriously doubting lately that they have. It's sad to say but I don't believe anymore after having reported issues several times that they care enough. In the end they are just a company and like any other company they only care about money. There is no money in assigning teams to investigate players but there is money in getting money from subs no matter if it's from legit or not legit players. So unless there will be (an unlikely) scenario of LOTS OF PLAYERS who cancel their subs as a protest, absolutely nothing will be happening

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Originally Posted by Auriya

It takes WILL and EFFORT from SE's side to deal with this blatant problem. Something I've started seriously doubting lately that they have. It's sad to say but I don't believe anymore after having reported issues several times that they care enough. In the end they are just a company and like any other company they only care about money. There is no money in assigning teams to investigate players but there is money in getting money from subs no matter if it's from legit or not legit players. So unless there will be (an unlikely) scenario of LOTS OF PLAYERS who cancel their subs as a protest, absolutely nothing will be happening

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Not unless some dev accepts a challenge to recoup crafting costs in the NA worlds (and apparently EU as well) they will never see that its bad enough to be a problem.

Just curious, does anyone knows any MMO which managed to remove all bots/rmt'ers and if yes, how did they managed that?

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Originally Posted by fumofu

Just curious, does anyone knows any MMO which managed to remove all bots/rmt'ers and if yes, how did they managed that?

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I am not sure thats possible. all a company can do is make it VERY prohibitive to be caught. there will always be people who prefer cheating to get ahead. Or who are simply too lazy to play like everyone else.

so, I dont know of any who have cut it out completely.

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Originally Posted by fumofu

Just curious, does anyone knows any MMO which managed to remove all bots/rmt'ers and if yes, how did they managed that?

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I have indeed seen some mmos succeeding in doing that, but that was only a result of these games becoming so barren and deserted by players that even the bots and RMT would not bother with them anymore, thinking that there is nothing left to gain there XD

I just wanted to say, that you also know they are bots when they are in Free Companies with only one member or a few and are top ranking. That's suspect af.

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Originally Posted by fumofu

Just curious, does anyone knows any MMO which managed to remove all bots/rmt'ers and if yes, how did they managed that?

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The mass-produced RMT bots pretty much always find some avenue of exploitation that makes it nigh-impossible to get rid of them, but other MMOs are at least aggressive enough about banning the conventional bots to scare actual players into not taking the risk.

There's so little fear of being banned present in XIV that you'll see people using bots to do damned near everything, whether it being FATE grinding, the MSQ, dungeons, gathering, crafting, or PvP.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

[...]but other MMOs are at least aggressive enough about banning the conventional bots to scare actual players into not taking the risk.

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I dunno man... Bots have been pretty noticable in every MMO I've played.
(WoW, Rappelz, Warhammer Online, Mabinogi, DDO, RunScape, Star Trek Online, etc.)
FF14 isn't some outlier in this respect.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

I dunno man... Bots have been pretty noticable in every MMO I've played.
(WoW, Rappelz, Warhammer Online, Mabinogi, DDO, RunScape, Star Trek Online, etc.)
FF14 isn't some outlier in this respect.

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Oh yes FFXIV is. Why keep denying the severe bot problem!

For a P2P MMO, I'd say XIV is rather exceptionally bad in terms of how rampant the issue is among actual players who are just too lazy to do certain things.

It's kind of sickening to routinely see bots sporting the ultimate titles in Diadem because they seemingly want more false prestige from the pterodactyl mount but consider DoL/H activities beneath them.

I sometimes feel like it takes longer to fully load into Gridania lately because of all the bots on my server Zodiark ^^" I stopped paying attention to them, but when I go to Coerthas for example I still see bots farming mobs in the wall where they did 4 years ago...

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

You dont need core changes to hire a team in NA to deal with the issue and the cheaters.

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They are dealing with bots and cheaters thou. I never said they weren't. Throwing more money on a problem won't solve everything which you are suggesting it would. Just because cheaters exist doesn't mean nothing is being done.

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Originally Posted by Bsrking5

They are dealing with bots and cheaters thou. I never said they weren't. Throwing more money on a problem won't solve everything which you are suggesting it would. Just because cheaters exist doesn't mean nothing is being done.

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the problem I have, is their efforts are geared towards the low hanging fruit. They are not addressing the bots funding the RMT machine. they can ban 20,000 hacked accounts advertising RMT, but thats easy. the playerbase reports these by the hundreds. The teleporting ones in the starter cities, again, I imagine there are easy and reported.

The market boys are easy to pick out, and took me 5 minutes through Lodestone to determine something wasnt on the level. So even a small team would be able to be competent enough to do that. Imagine if they had access to actual server data. If they are that against someone else making real money off their game, then spending a bit to stop it should be further up their priority list.

If they need pointers on how to do this, I and quite a few other crafters/sellers would be more than willing to help them out, for free.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

the problem I have, is their efforts are geared towards the low hanging fruit. They are not addressing the bots funding the RMT machine. they can ban 20,000 hacked accounts advertising RMT, but thats easy. the playerbase reports these by the hundreds. The teleporting ones in the starter cities, again, I imagine there are easy and reported.

The market boys are easy to pick out, and took me 5 minutes through Lodestone to determine something wasnt on the level. So even a small team would be able to be competent enough to do that. Imagine if they had access to actual server data. If they are that against someone else making real money off their game, then spending a bit to stop it should be further up their priority list.

If they need pointers on how to do this, I and quite a few other crafters/sellers would be more than willing to help them out, for free.

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You're right to a point. They do need to address the marketboard issue. I feel like SE fears that the MB will crash without bots. Some people are even saying they are getting paid off by the RMT companies. All I know is, it's sus af to ban accounts for RMT activity but leave the prominent and prevalent ones who have been on servers since the dawn. Some people are even saying the RMT/botters are SE itself. This is not facts but mainly gossip among my community.

Curious to see how awful the restoration rankings are going to be this time around, considering it's only going to take some minor tweaking for the bot producers to get their scripts functioning for the new nodes/crafts in phase 3.

MB botting and house botting both are new concepts to me. It was worse back then for us with spam. But now i guess i don't notice it as much as housing because i've looked up a guild that has almost a whole ward in my world with two people in the fc or one. With the fc name "ranked" by numbers. I also want to give a heads up if their are people that are asking to help form an fc in your world, don't accept. The goal is to make friends build bonds to make a free company. This is an exploit under sheeps fur. I notice that at the grand company counters. Please inform others of this.

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Originally Posted by Eien713

Gosh, I'm so tired of market bots. I've been playing the game for over 5 years and used the MB to sell stuff all the time, but I never noticed this issue until recently on my server. You just can't compete with these bots, and you keep seeing the names of the same crafters over and over. I even went as far as to character search 2 of these recurring crafters, and lo and behold, their FCs are definitely not composed of other players. There's even one of them with 2 "FC members" that I see all the time in Old Gridania, just popping out of nowhere next to the summoning bell, interacting with it for some time, then vanishing. The Elezen one has been the same level and wearing the same gear for over 2 months now -.-

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They weren't nearly as bad until the mid to end of Stormblood. A notorious botter on Cactuar basically dominates the consumable market; putting up an endless stream of 99 potions. He's gone as far as listing over 10,000 in three days. Unfortunately, SE being so lax has emboldened a lot more players because why not? They know they'll never get banned for it.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Curious to see how awful the restoration rankings are going to be this time around, considering it's only going to take some minor tweaking for the bot producers to get their scripts functioning for the new nodes/crafts in phase 3.

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I would love nothing more than for SE to congratulation their winners only to find out every single one of them was a bot. Maybe that level of embarrassment might actually wake the dev team up to how bad botting has become.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

I would love nothing more than for SE to congratulation their winners only to find out every single one of them was a bot. Maybe that level of embarrassment might actually wake the dev team up to how bad botting has become.

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While that would be an embarrassment, it would only do anything if the dev team was even advised about it.

My biggest suspicion is they are not told its an issue, and even if it does make it to the person in charge of allocating resources to fix issues, they likely deem it low priority since technically its nothing wrong with the game in terms of a "bug" or "exploit"

Welp, there's chaos already. Marketboard inflation and LIMITED quantities of things needed. If they really think that bots help regulate the MB here's proof they don't! If anything it scares off real crafters!

Been less then 24 hours and the Diadem bots are already back at it.

I've given up on trying to get top 12 on MIN/BTN as a result.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Been less then 24 hours and the Diadem bots are already back at it.

I've given up on trying to get top 12 on MIN/BTN as a result.

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That's awful! ):