Can we please get a ban wave on the marketboard bots?

My servers has been going since October, 24/7. Seems to be the same or worse on all the others as well. It's just incredibly disheartening to see. It's not even like they hide either, they're right there rotating retainer bots in starting cities nonstop.

Eh. Console players should be in arms over this. There is a well-known public bot that tens of thousands of cheaters have used for 5+ years to dominate the economy on all these servers. There are bots so advanced they can map out entire fights for you with actual steps and event triggers that help guide you to the proper spot while firing off a perfect computer-controlled rotation, potion use, and cooldown use for each encounter. It lets you farm and use market boards 24/7, farm all the high-end gear, and allow you to play on the cutting edge level with the use of this highly advanced bot and the addons you can get with it. If SE were to at the very least send their lawyers after this one bot it would help dominate a lot of the NON-rmt bots which are normal players that cheat and use the market board for their guild. Some guilds own 5+ mansions and one high-end guild has 20+ mansions/largest estates from having the billions of Gil to afford it all.

This bot has no shame. It posts dozens of youtube guides on how to maximize its use and I shrug my shoulders and am glad I do not take FF 14 serious for the high end because as of right now its way saturated with the bot using cheaters that should have been banned 5 years ago but I guess being able to boast about having 20 million users is more important than cleaning the house of these market and farming bots.

The way you've described it doesn't sound like a scourge, and more like a sales pitch.

Infomercial I guess is a frame of reference but it still does not diminish the statement. Some people do not realize that RMT is actually a highly inefficient way to cheat in this game. I think there is a misconception that RMT is all that botting is about when it is not. Legit-acting people can get away with massive cheating as well using a bot that does it all over RMT and it's highly more efficient. Why buy Gil in the game when you can own a bot that has a very low ban record and farm it yourself at a much cheaper rate along with grinding your gear for you and playing the game to a level that lets you match the most skilled non-cheaters. Yes, it's a pitch. A pitch that I hope finally gets Square Enix to look at sending lawyers to as efficiently take out the public selling bots which is probably also one of the core bots RMT sellers use as well. It just makes sense over banning so many spamming rmt accounts every so often. And if you think I am just helping these bot makers out by pointing all of this then we are way past that point. Its publically advertised on any fan webpage having to do with Final Fantasy 14 online with the banners, Reddit advertisements, and more. I am not a fan of WOW but I would love for Square Enix to take a page from Blizzard and go after these bottom barrel scums of the digital gaming earth.

HA you really thing SE will do anything about this? NEVER!

I've been reporting the same level 80 gathering bots since early level 70 Stormblood content. Those 2 bots are still going at it today, 24/7 gathering and even doing aether reduction.

I'm poretty sure SE doesn't care if they are high level bots.

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Originally Posted by Fyrefox45

My servers has been going since October, 24/7. Seems to be the same or worse on all the others as well. It's just incredibly disheartening to see. It's not even like they hide either, they're right there rotating retainer bots in starting cities nonstop.

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no all resources have to be put into banning RPers first.

maybe we should just accuse the market bots of being role players

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Originally Posted by Gojin

no all resources have to be put into banning RPers first.

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True priorities

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Originally Posted by Ashua

Infomercial I guess is a frame of reference but it still does not diminish the statement. Some people do not realize that RMT is actually a highly inefficient way to cheat in this game. I think there is a misconception that RMT is all that botting is about when it is not. Legit-acting people can get away with massive cheating as well using a bot that does it all over RMT and it's highly more efficient. Why buy Gil in the game when you can own a bot that has a very low ban record and farm it yourself at a much cheaper rate along with grinding your gear for you and playing the game to a level that lets you match the most skilled non-cheaters. Yes, it's a pitch. A pitch that I hope finally gets Square Enix to look at sending lawyers to as efficiently take out the public selling bots which is probably also one of the core bots RMT sellers use as well. It just makes sense over banning so many spamming rmt accounts every so often. And if you think I am just helping these bot makers out by pointing all of this then we are way past that point. Its publically advertised on any fan webpage having to do with Final Fantasy 14 online with the banners, Reddit advertisements, and more. I am not a fan of WOW but I would love for Square Enix to take a page from Blizzard and go after these bottom barrel scums of the digital gaming earth.

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Why would you say they’re good though? This seems like it will attract more people to bot.

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Originally Posted by SecretIsland

Why would you say they’re good though? This seems like it will attract more people to bot.

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Maybe that should happen. Maybe when 1/3 of the active playerbase does it SE will CONSIDER doing something. I mean it did take until a spammer messaged Yoshida during a presentation for them to do something about the RMT spammers in chat.

The sad reality is Square's anti-cheating division is based entirely in Japan. The JP servers has a tiny fraction of these offenses so to the team they don't really see the true scope of the problem. They really need an NA division for this to really handle NA's problems. It's just pathetic that you can report the same people for months on end and nothing happens. Obviously whatever their strategy is is not working. So they need to change their game plan on going about dealing with it. Will they? No, because the JP servers don't have a problem. Do you expect people on an anti-cheating team that never play on any other servers but JP to see a world problem? No, you don't.

I say we spam the (Japanese) dev tracker forums

So what I'm hearing is we need to take all NA bots and put them on JP.

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Originally Posted by LisSquid

So what I'm hearing is we need to take all NA bots and put them on JP.

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They already have a non-negligible amount of the usual bots on their end of things; enough that I've seen JP players complaining about it as well.

Whether they're as oppressive on the marketboard as they are here is what I'm curious about, though.

I like the cheaper mats, I just avoid the bots markets and still bank. The diadem bots were lifesavers. Getting rid of all that supply in one shot would crash the market.
u

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

Maybe that should happen. Maybe when 1/3 of the active playerbase does it SE will CONSIDER doing something. I mean it did take until a spammer messaged Yoshida during a presentation for them to do something about the RMT spammers in chat.

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It might already be that high. If you do a search on these bot websites with a search index that tracks unique visited IDs and look for unique visits versus the population of actual players the numbers are higher than you think.

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Originally Posted by Awha

I like the cheaper mats, I just avoid the bots markets and still bank. The diadem bots were lifesavers. Getting rid of all that supply in one shot would crash the market.
u

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That is a very minor part of the problem at this point. Bots should not be an excuse to artificially deflate the market when it would only crash the illegal aspect of the market. Legit herb/miners/leatherworkers can finally play the game again and not be forced to cheat just to be on an even playing level. Final Fantasy 14 is a fun game for its social aspect but anyone who seriously cares about the competition in finding housing, markets, and the high-end games should realize they are competing against bots for a good part of the competition. Its hard to take the high end competition seriously on any game that does so little to punish these types of people. It's like the Olympics no longer caring how much doping is going on with their athletes.

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Originally Posted by Ashua

It might already be that high. If you do a search on these bot websites with a search index that tracks unique visited IDs and look for unique visits versus the population of actual players the numbers are higher than you think.



That is a very minor part of the problem at this point. Bots should not be an excuse to artificially deflate the market when it would only crash the illegal aspect of the market. Legit herb/miners/leatherworkers can finally play the game again and not be forced to cheat just to be on an even playing level. Final Fantasy 14 is a fun game for its social aspect but anyone who seriously cares about the competition in finding housing, markets, and the high-end games should realize they are competing against bots for a good part of the competition. Its hard to take the high end competition seriously on any game that does so little to punish these types of people. It's like the Olympics no longer caring how much doping is going on with their athletes.

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I mean sure what you say is true, but you still have no reason for me personally to dislike bots, cheaters, rmt buyers and sellers etc . . . in the end if you mass ban market board bots the supply on many servers will take a hit, especially my main server. For me personally that is a net negative cause that may force me to gather my own mats, or craft foot and potions myself. As it stands market board bots are the least of my worries when it comes to this game. They may detract from your own enjoyment, but for me it is kinda meh. Though if SE does mass ban them I will just have to adjust, but until then I will take advantage of the low low prices.

I get my view is in the minatory never been one for chasing down cheaters, and hell when it comes to sports even if someone dopes it is not an instant get good juice. They still have to put in effort and train. Doping just makes it so their training is just more effective, allows them to train harder recover quicker you get it. Personally I do not think it should cheapen their achievements and I do think they should normalize doping across the board so at the very least for everyone it can be done as safely as possible. Also let us not down play the role genetics play into how well someone responds to juice. No avg joe can take juice and train and can reach an Olympic level. It only cheapens the experience if you let it.

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Originally Posted by Awha

I mean sure what you say is true, but you still have no reason for me personally to dislike bots, cheaters, rmt buyers and sellers etc . . . in the end if you mass ban market board bots the supply on many servers will take a hit, especially my main server. For me personally that is a net negative cause that may force me to gather my own mats, or craft foot and potions myself. As it stands market board bots are the least of my worries when it comes to this game. They may detract from your own enjoyment, but for me it is kinda meh. Though if SE does mass ban them I will just have to adjust, but until then I will take advantage of the low low prices.

I get my view is in the minatory never been one for chasing down cheaters, and hell when it comes to sports even if someone dopes it is not an instant get good juice. They still have to put in effort and train. Doping just makes it so their training is just more effective, allows them to train harder recover quicker you get it. Personally I do not think it should cheapen their achievements and I do think they should normalize doping across the board so at the very least for everyone it can be done as safely as possible. Also let us not down play the role genetics play into how well someone responds to juice. No avg joe can take juice and train and can reach an Olympic level. It only cheapens the experience if you let it.

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I would rather not go down a rabbit hole that has little or nothing to do with the topic. I just chose it as an analogy so if it is not properly comparable then that is fine but I understand your point. Of course, I do not begrudge people for taking advantage of the prices since it is the norm and without a doubt, it will be the norm for the game's entire life. Once in a while, I like to scream to the heavens and hope that the powers that control the game will start taking these bots with a higher priority.

now is the perfect time to ban market bots. high end gear is in a slow selling phase, since many people are just levelling up off jobs. so hte "hit" would be less negative overall.

however, I am not holding my breath on SE doing anything

Get rid of them, or add a fee to LIST on the retainers.

*shrug* At the very LEAST if they are not going to enforce the rules they set themselves then why not let Pandora out of the box and legalize botting. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. At least we will have a definitive stance coming from SE itself. 6 years it has been ignored so it's a good time to also make even more changes. Allow the GUI to help automate your basic DPS or healing so that way we can at least not be so disadvantaged and feel like suckers because some people want to attempt to follow SE's rules.