Some bots are farming mobs from underground

Some bots in at least Mod Dhona, North Shroud and Coerthas are killing respawning mobs on cooldown while being under the ground. World is Garuda. Are they to blame for item devaluation on market board?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y5A...ew?usp=sharing

I've seen Bots do that for years, they move underground and then farm on the mobs throughout a lot of ARR areas.

Strangely I never seen them beyond ARR areas for whatever reason.

You can catch them in the act most of the time at Quarrymill too as they're the most commonly seen over there.

Better hide that picture, you've got usernames in there, that counts as "name and shame" and is bannable in the forum policy.

The forum folks can't do anything about it. Bot handling is a 3 person team (though I heard a rumor they added a 4th, I've not confirmed that) in Japan, responsible for every bot and removing them. They don't do forums, they only respond to a single form.

https://support.na.square-enix.com/c...382&la=1&fty=2

Scroll down, WAY down, bottom option, "Special task force".

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Originally Posted by ICountFrom0

Better hide that picture, you've got usernames in there, that counts as "name and shame" and is bannable in the forum policy.

The forum folks can't do anything about it. Bot handling is a 3 person team (though I heard a rumor they added a 4th, I've not confirmed that) in Japan, responsible for every bot and removing them. They don't do forums, they only respond to a single form.

https://support.na.square-enix.com/c...382&la=1&fty=2

Scroll down, WAY down, bottom option, "Special task force".

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Yes, i reported it 2 - 3 times to STF already.

And speaking of "name and shame" - those are bots and not actual players, so who do I shame? In fact, I depict breaking of TOS and help devs.

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

I've seen Bots do that for years, they move underground and then farm on the mobs throughout a lot of ARR areas.

Strangely I never seen them beyond ARR areas for whatever reason.

You can catch them in the act most of the time at Quarrymill too as they're the most commonly seen over there.

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Free trials only include ARR and HW. with EW coming they might include SB. My guess is it's just free trial accounts so their scope is limited.

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Originally Posted by Mitsuka_Souji

Yes, i reported it 2 - 3 times to STF already.

And speaking of "name and shame" - those are bots and not actual players, so who do I shame? In fact, I depict breaking of TOS and help devs.

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It does not matter if they are bots or not - you are simply not allowed to name anyone period.

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Originally Posted by Mitsuka_Souji

And speaking of "name and shame" - those are bots and not actual players, so who do I shame? In fact, I depict breaking of TOS and help devs.

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Innocent until proven guilty.
And the fourm moderators will remove innocent names from your shaming topic, you'll be held accountable.

Just play it safe, talk about the situation without actually posting pictures of the bots.

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Originally Posted by Mitsuka_Souji

And speaking of "name and shame" - those are bots and not actual players, so who do I shame? .

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Just because you believe them to be bots, doesn't mean you can blast their names. Because there's a non-zero percent chance that they're not. You don't actually have any solid evidence. It's also not for you to make that judgment on. Report them and let Square decide of they're bots and if actions need to be taken.

All you're doing is breaking ToS and shaming because you made a judgement call without proof.

They went underground because it was too easy to spot and report them when they just floated up out of reach in the air on their cookie cutter template THMs.

They've been doing this since before there was a free trial of the game. Adding the free trial just means they can mitigate some of their risk by not paying for a full version until it's accumulated things to sell. Though apparently free players cannot hold more than 300K gil and have no retainer or marketboard access and I think no ability to trade either.

Its possible they're aware of the bots and just flagging them for action to be taken when they transition out of free version to paid version so they can see who it interacts with at that point in an attempt to trace and remove more of the actual RMT accounts conducting the actual business.

The other problem is, they get banned, so another account is made (free trial) and that bot is replaced.

Welcome to XIV, get used to it. They are basically a common thing by now and existed since i started to play which was HW so...no worries. They just teleport through the world and get banned at some point, best to just ignore them.

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

I've seen Bots do that for years, they move underground and then farm on the mobs throughout a lot of ARR areas.

Strangely I never seen them beyond ARR areas for whatever reason.

You can catch them in the act most of the time at Quarrymill too as they're the most commonly seen over there.

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The zones are way bigger. But I have seen them underground in HW's zones. But not passed HW's. But think of it this way. Someone was buying treasure maps less 1 min apart non stop. They had to be teleporting, or had armies of map parties. I stopped counting at roughly a 100 maps bought.

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Originally Posted by DragonFlyy

The other problem is, they get banned, so another account is made (free trial) and that bot is replaced.

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Which is why I mentioned they may just flag the free version bots to mark them then take action when they push it out of free version and start trying to move the stuff it collected in order to try getting to the actual RMT accounts holding or distributing things. Deleting free version bots is like trying to kill an unwanted weed by plucking it's leaves off 1 at a time.

The teleporting bots are not on the free trial as they routinely form parties to speed through the MSQ dungeons using non-standard party comps (Usually pure DPS with no healers) plus they need to be able to transfer the gil off their accounts before they get banned.

Perhaps the weirdest thing I've noticed regarding them is the sudden emergence of pure DRG parties when they traditionally have only ever used ranged jobs.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

The teleporting bots are not on the free trial as they routinely form parties to speed through the MSQ dungeons using non-standard party comps (Usually pure DPS with no healers) plus they need to be able to transfer the gil off their accounts before they get banned.

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There is 2 categories of bots, the obvious ones that have names that happen when you headbutt your keyboard or play Roegardyn and jump and glitch all over the place, which i believe to be free trial ones.

Also theres the bots which have normal names, likely look like an afk player just vibing in town, those are paid accounts, these are the banks which have the cash.

From just this idea you will have an idea on how futile it is to ban the jumpy broken name bots. To address the Party system, you only need 1 of the 4 to have a paid account, 3 can be free trials as they just need to join.

Here it derails theres 2 imo viable outcomes.

1. SE really only cares about the obvious bots and does not track the money or who they play with, in which case you could make the banks directly play with the free trial bots.
2. SE bans the bots that have direct contact to the free trials bots, in which case you need 3 step process. Free trial > Normal game > Bank.

Regardless of that the 2 weeks cycle is ...

Day#1 Bot is created
Day#2 Bot is reported
Day#14 Bot is banned
Repeat from 1

As to what you could farm with a dungeon party for money ... im not entirely sure even but it would likely be a direct money drop or npcable.

In 2.1 i somehow stumbled into a run when i did my first Wanderes Palace. I loaded in and was alone, so i figured ... okay they prolly need a bit more loading time. Instantly the msg "x will close in 15 sec pops up" ... it did and they killed it fast, same with the 2nd and final boss. At which point all the normal chests seemed to open. Everything was instantly rolled and instantly left before i rolled so i got everything.

A Bizzare adventure to say the least.

If the bosses are dying that quickly it suggests they're not just using teleport hacks, which might explain the sudden appearance of the DRG bots.

Assuming they're able to modify their GCD speed and other nonsense DRG would probably be busted given it hits harder to compensate for its lack of a haste buff.

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Originally Posted by Voidedge_Ragna

1. SE really only cares about the obvious bots and does not track the money or who they play with, in which case you could make the banks directly play with the free trial bots.
2. SE bans the bots that have direct contact to the free trials bots, in which case you need 3 step process. Free trial > Normal game > Bank.

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The step you are missing is stolen credit cards, or otherwise false money.

A stolen credit card is acquired, thousands of dollars of subscription cards are bought, the cards get shuffled around a few times, so it looks like they are sold to some innocent. Months of subscriptions for all the trial bots are charged to the card, they become "real" for about 72 hours before the card holder can chargeback and those subscriptions get canceled. This lets all the trials unload. The subscription cards are used to keep the normals alive. The gold is sold off at pure profit with no real money ever being spent.

Underground I've never seen.... but I have seen it start raining fire as I've been out mining and bot thaumaturges were farming open world mobs.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

They went underground because it was too easy to spot and report them when they just floated up out of reach in the air on their cookie cutter template THMs.

They've been doing this since before there was a free trial of the game. Adding the free trial just means they can mitigate some of their risk by not paying for a full version until it's accumulated things to sell. Though apparently free players cannot hold more than 300K gil and have no retainer or marketboard access and I think no ability to trade either.

Its possible they're aware of the bots and just flagging them for action to be taken when they transition out of free version to paid version so they can see who it interacts with at that point in an attempt to trace and remove more of the actual RMT accounts conducting the actual business.

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Didn't see them year ago on my world, though.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Innocent until proven guilty.
And the fourm moderators will remove innocent names from your shaming topic, you'll be held accountable.

Just play it safe, talk about the situation without actually posting pictures of the bots.

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The picture below named "Pugilist Guild" and there are no statements or assessments to it.

And you are completely wrong about calling this topic "shaming". It's the topic aimed to resolve in-game issue.

SE knows about these guys and has been banning them but they come back too quickly for it to matter.

They need to come up with lasting solutions that interfere with their hacking like adding kill zones to out of bounds areas in dungeons, or better yet upgrading the overall enemy AI so it automatically resets if it can't path to its current target.

First time I noticed them it was like a bot meteor shower in Southern Thanalan.
That and after every purge its Bot Day in your chosen citys inn.Always been this way .Not sure why.

Bots are everywhere now. Today healer I had was a bot and kept wasting our limit break when out of combat.

They are currently abusing the stairs up to Sorrel Haven (The Matron's Lethe) on Siren and Famfrit. They stand under the platform and pop in and out of the ground, attacking the diremites. I reported them but they are still there to this day. RMT seems to be the only think that action is taken against.

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Originally Posted by Mitsuka_Souji

Yes, i reported it 2 - 3 times to STF already.

And speaking of "name and shame" - those are bots and not actual players, so who do I shame? In fact, I depict breaking of TOS and help devs.

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I mean its your forum account, its up to you on if you don't mind the possible forum ban or not.

I usually tend to be afk, but have been playing Triple Triad to pass the time by as the expansion gets closer. In doing so I've been out in the open world more often and it's been both surprising and amusing with how bold these bots have been. I spent about an hour grinding matches for a card to drop at Southern Thanalan and have seen the same lala bots repeatedly coming back and forth. I even stalled one for a minute or two by just trade canceling their teleport attempts.

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Originally Posted by Mitsuka_Souji

The picture below named "Pugilist Guild" and there are no statements or assessments to it.

And you are completely wrong about calling this topic "shaming". It's the topic aimed to resolve in-game issue.

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You shouldn't waste time arguing with other users about your interpretation of the ToS. The ToS is as the ToS is, it's not open for interpretation. You don't like it, argue with SE's customer service.

Regarding bots, they've been there, you probably didn't see them before. They know the low traffic hours and areas to exploit. A very common one is the Dannifen Pass tunnel in Central Coerthas. Starting last year I've even started seeing map bot parties, so they are well beyond free trial and HW content.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

Its possible they're aware of the bots and just flagging them for action to be taken when they transition out of free version to paid version so they can see who it interacts with at that point in an attempt to trace and remove more of the actual RMT accounts conducting the actual business.

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lol

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Originally Posted by wereotter

Underground I've never seen.... but I have seen it start raining fire as I've been out mining and bot thaumaturges were farming open world mobs.

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Waiting for POTD que at Quarrymill from like 3-6 am its pretty freaky when all of the sudden a clump of naked rmt bots fly through the air from one main scenario quest npc to another. At first its like, "Wait what was that, am I sleepy?"

They also go underground and spawn beneath the bridge at Quarrymill like bridge trolls, flagging the main scenario npcs, back underground and across to the other npcs.

In the same area, during those hours, while waiting for my POTD que, I decided to level mining in the nearby creepy greenlit cave.

A goblin mob suddenly just "poof" appeared aggroed at low health, behind me and died. Knowing how far he was from the goblin area, I knew something had to kite it there, so it was kind of spooky.

Also the FC chest by the Grand Company counter, there are always bots piled up inside the wall accessing the chest. I noticed a pile of them in the wall while using idle cam and it explained why I always see job actions dropping off over there when there are no players standing there.

Considering this week's ban report, only from Oct 28 to Nov 3 is over 5k accounts, it is basically whack-a-mole.

Actions Taken Against In-Game RMT & Other Illicit Activities (Nov. 4)

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Time Period: Oct. 28, 2021 to Nov. 3, 2021

・Participation in RMT/prohibited activities
　・Accounts terminated: 5,734
　・Accounts temporarily suspended: 6

・RMT advertising
　・Accounts terminated: 1,332

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