Bot problem getting worse on Dynamis

This morning there was a 90+ queue to get into Marilith, which would usually indicate the DC crashing or something similiar but upon asking around as well as seeing the usual legitimate players playtime undisrupted it was clear something else was up.

I then looked into novice network and there were more bots than legitimate players on the sprout side of novice network, and I'm sure you can imagine based off that what the player search for sprouts/archers/bards looked like.

Another example was just a few days ago when I saw a constant stream of countless (yes, I couldn't count them as there were many stacked on top of each other too) bots going 'through' the Central Shroud area 'Naked Rock'. Through as in, they were literally going through the ground and the rock like some kind of incorporeal phantom.

There's about 150 to 200 bots in New gridania alone on any dynamis world at any time of day, all of them under the floor and flying around all over the place, it's a complete joke really, you can see them when you search players in New gridania.

Maybe SE should stop posting their fake ban reports every 2 weeks and actually start doing real bans for the millions flying lalas that are there every day.

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

There's about 150 to 200 bots in New gridania alone on any dynamis world at any time of day, all of them under the floor and flying around all over the place, it's a complete joke really, you can see them when you search players in New gridania.

Maybe SE should stop posting their fake ban reports every 2 weeks and actually start doing real bans for the millions flying lalas that are there every day.

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You assume they're fake reports. That could get them in big trouble.

They're legitimate reports, just in the time they ban X amount of accounts, X+Y more accounts have been made.

They basically make lists of them all and then do a huge ban wave all at once in an attempt to be more 'efficient' in banning them, but honestly I'd like it if they had some GMs logged in in popular out of bounds areas that bots go in and for them to start banning them that way too.

Maybe the reports are only JP datacenter?

clearly, real or not, their ban numbers are not having any effect.

they need to take off the kid gloves and ban the buyers. no buyers, no demand. as long as there is real money to be made, the bots will be here.

as it stands now, they only post numbers to show they are doing something. so they could be fake, what difference does it make? because the bots in game... are getting out of control.

Square Enix doesn't care about bots and encourages botting in general I find.

Marilith is pretty overrun with bots, I've reported them and less than nothing happens.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

Square Enix doesn't care about bots and encourages botting in general I find.

Marilith is pretty overrun with bots, I've reported them and less than nothing happens.

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Saying they don't care is one thing but encourages??? Care to explain.

Cuz if they encouraged it, they wouldn't have ban reports posted.

This isn't me saying bots aren't a problem. I'm just not the person that cares enough to come up with a solution.

I have never seen such bots and I doubt they exist. Even if they do I doubt they're harming your gaming experience. This is just another complaint thread made for the purpose of complaining and attacking Square Enix.

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Originally Posted by Bacent

You assume they're fake reports. That could get them in big trouble.

They're legitimate reports, just in the time they ban X amount of accounts, X+Y more accounts have been made.

They basically make lists of them all and then do a huge ban wave all at once in an attempt to be more 'efficient' in banning them, but honestly I'd like it if they had some GMs logged in in popular out of bounds areas that bots go in and for them to start banning them that way too.

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Yet as you point out, new bot accounts are constantly set up to replace the ones banned.

That would only waste GM time that could be used to work on tickets submitted by players who need assistance.

Personally I liked the death traps they were using in Shadowbringers. It was fun listening to the lala death "wah"s as I passed by the locations with traps. But then if SE brought them back, we'd probably return to the days of flying bot trains.

I mean a fix would be to have auto teleport to gm jail if your character ends up somewhere it's not supposed to be like under the map lol

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Originally Posted by Thurmnmurmn

Saying they don't care is one thing but encourages??? Care to explain.

Cuz if they encouraged it, they wouldn't have ban reports posted.

This isn't me saying bots aren't a problem. I'm just not the person that cares enough to come up with a solution.

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I view any system added that rewards botting without taking any steps to prevent it as encouraging botting.

Much like how I view the housing system as a love letter to RMT.

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Originally Posted by Ravenblade1979

I mean a fix would be to have auto teleport to gm jail if your character ends up somewhere it's not supposed to be like under the map lol

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How does that fix anything? The bots will probably end up programmed to use a teleport hack to get back to their last location.

And let's not forget the poor player that ends up out of bounds due to some sort of accidental glitch and then has to wait several hours to get out of the GM jail while the GMs are sorting through the bots.

There are no easy answers to the bot problem because they're driven by player demand. Unless player demand disappears, the bots will always be there.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I view any system added that rewards botting without taking any steps to prevent it as encouraging botting.

Much like how I view the housing system as a love letter to RMT.

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It's not the system that is rewarding botting. It's the players who rely on their services that do.

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

There's about 150 to 200 bots in New gridania alone on any dynamis world at any time of day, all of them under the floor and flying around all over the place, it's a complete joke really, you can see them when you search players in New gridania.

Maybe SE should stop posting their fake ban reports every 2 weeks and actually start doing real bans for the millions flying lalas that are there every day.

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I guess you still can't grasp that it is a business. These people make money with bots. They make a lot of cash due to people buying gil. This will always exist. SE can ban them every single day and they will create more as the demand for gil is so high. You don't have to like it but you should expect it and ignore it. Regardless of the # of reports on the forum this will never change.

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Originally Posted by Reap00

I guess you still can't grasp that it is a business. These people make money with bots. They make a lot of cash due to people buying gil. This will always exist. SE can ban them every single day and they will create more as the demand for gil is so high. You don't have to like it but you should expect it and ignore it. Regardless of the # of reports on the forum this will never change.

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There is a difference between at least trying to ban them and just letting them go rampant all day every day without banning a single one of them.

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Originally Posted by Reap00

I guess you still can't grasp that it is a business. These people make money with bots. They make a lot of cash due to people buying gil. This will always exist. SE can ban them every single day and they will create more as the demand for gil is so high. You don't have to like it but you should expect it and ignore it. Regardless of the # of reports on the forum this will never change.

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thats why you action the buyers. if less people are buying, suddenly its not so lucrative to replace banned accounts. actual players are who are causing this, so ban the players. the bot issue at that point would take care of itself. it is a business, we all realize that, how do you cause a business to fail? remove its income, plain and simple.

Pretty sure if you started straight up lifetime banning buyer accounts you'd get a reduction in bots.

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

There's about 150 to 200 bots in New gridania alone on any dynamis world at any time of day, all of them under the floor and flying around all over the place, it's a complete joke really, you can see them when you search players in New gridania.

Maybe SE should stop posting their fake ban reports every 2 weeks and actually start doing real bans for the millions flying lalas that are there every day.

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Flying Lalas gave me a funny picture in my mind lmao.

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Originally Posted by Kaliesto

Flying Lalas gave me a funny picture in my mind lmao.

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https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...e73a3098cd418&

Enjoy. Was finishing up my ARR sight seeing log(finally) and saw a whole train of them walk straight into the building.

If I was developer with botting problem I would offer them NDA deal and wanted a cut from their activities.

- no need to pay gm's (saves money)
- cut from rmt (generates money)

Some Blizzard 7D chess right there.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

How does that fix anything? The bots will probably end up programmed to use a teleport hack to get back to their last location

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You aren't wrong there but for a time it would work or they wouldn't bother doing botting till they figured out a work around.

Gonna put my tin foil hat on here for this:
https://www.ign.com/articles/square-...nal-fantasy-16

I would not be the least bit shocked if Square is ignoring their own ToS to keep as many people subbed and continuing to sub as possible. Hence why things like brothels are fine, bots are rampant, people can stalk you around the entire map for days without consequences...

Maybe they make up a number every week to tell people or maybe they ban a very small portion to keep appearances up but I've always been under the impression that they don't necessarily "care" about the problem, especially since RMT is basically normalized in FF11.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

they need to take off the kid gloves and ban the buyers. no buyers, no demand. as long as there is real money to be made, the bots will be here.

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This. Though, some botting isn’t for money. Had a bot as co-healer in Aglaia. Stood in the same spot for almost the entirety of the fights, remained in the middle of giant aoes, not even attempting to move away, just casting self heal and broil. The worse part is that it had the battle mentor crown. Not sure what there is to gain from that given that it’s not even for xp as it’s lvl 90.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

Gonna put my tin foil hat on here for this:
https://www.ign.com/articles/square-...nal-fantasy-16

I would not be the least bit shocked if Square is ignoring their own ToS to keep as many people subbed and continuing to sub as possible. Hence why things like brothels are fine, bots are rampant, people can stalk you around the entire map for days without consequences...

Maybe they make up a number every week to tell people or maybe they ban a very small portion to keep appearances up but I've always been under the impression that they don't necessarily "care" about the problem, especially since RMT is basically normalized in FF11.

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There is no need for conspiracy theories. This game is a for profit business. The actual harm caused by botters is less then what SE would have to invest to meaningfully combat it. PR damage is minimal, players arent significantly hindered. Many players are secretly benefitting because bot crafters push prices down through increased supply. Free trial ad bots in the big cities are so easy to make that the ban numbers SE posts are entirely realistic. Incentive to ban gil or clear buyers is also low because that's not money redirected away from SE. FF14 is not a free2play game and therefore doesnt need to concern itself nearly as much with grind circumvention to protect its profits.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

Many players are secretly benefitting because bot crafters push prices down through increased supply.

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To some degree yes, but at the same time: not realy.

Most bot crafters have automated undercuts. But here is a catch: you cant spam these updates (unless you want to get detected as botter).
So lets say only once per minute an undercut happens (maybe 10 bots with 10min tresholds between updates), and you end up with 1 undercut per minute on average. Thats 1440 gil per day worth of undercutting.

As top tier items can go for 400k all down to 100k over time. Even that undercutting is barely going to do it until its saturated. Players arent like to undercut by 1gil every time. Taking steps like 10k are far more efficient if you want to push sales. Bots dont change this behaviour.

Sure, bots will get players to do this faster and with higher values. But as those players will quickly leave, the progress slows down quickly.

Most of the time when bots are involved they only craft a new item after a sale, this means there is a gap for others to sell, yet this is deliberate and beneficial for botters to do. As otherwise other botters will push your price down, so efficiency goes down. Why bother selling 2x the same item at 200k, if you could also do it once at 400k?

Dumb botters will crash markets, and yet those are also the ones who cannot even automate those crafts reliably enough, or waste lots of gil. And guess what: the other botters will be able to provide proof of botting easily.

The less a botter shows he bots, the less likely they are caught, and they will often look like players. And sales prices generaly match here.

Not to mentioning that botting crafts isnt even the most profitable anyway.

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Originally Posted by Luluya

I then looked into novice network and there were more bots than legitimate players on the sprout side of novice network, and I'm sure you can imagine based off that what the player search for sprouts/archers/bards looked like.

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I've seen this be a thing on a few Worlds over the years. Remember that Mentors are not allowed to one-way kick sprouts (or even each other) from NN, and for good reason. Only GMs can do that. And for the most part barely anyone notices or cares, because there's SO much sprout space on NN (the mentor side fills up regularly, but I don't think I've ever seen a sprout not be able to get in) and the bots don't say anything in NN.

The more worrisome effect is that this results in sprouts having trouble getting admitted to NN (which is more or less the gateway to world society on most worlds even mentor side) depending on their class - especially sad for free trial players, since they have few other social options (and can't answer tells, if you wanted to actually have a conversation with a sprout rather than just cold invite them to NN).

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Originally Posted by Bacent

They're legitimate reports, just in the time they ban X amount of accounts, X+Y more accounts have been made.

They basically make lists of them all and then do a huge ban wave all at once in an attempt to be more 'efficient' in banning them, but honestly I'd like it if they had some GMs logged in in popular out of bounds areas that bots go in and for them to start banning them that way too.

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Yep. It's whack a mole. Also the waves are deliberate, the idea is to make it harder for botters to figure out just what they did that got them busted to increase the effort involved in reworking their bot to get around it. If they banned on the spot, then it would be a degree easier to figure out what got them caught. (This is why in general in most games cheaters seem to get let off "easier" than social offenders.)

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Originally Posted by Ravenblade1979

I mean a fix would be to have auto teleport to gm jail if your character ends up somewhere it's not supposed to be like under the map lol

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Too many false positives, especially in irregular terrain or with higher latency or when you're falling, as has been mentioned a number of times.

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Originally Posted by PetThisMiqo

I have never seen such bots and I doubt they exist.

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Probably bait but idc, this post unlocked a memory and I'm bored. I remember when I first began playing this game and thought this was true, that there were no bots. I hadn't seen any, after all. I was super impressed by how there was no anticheat running in the background but there were also somehow no bots running around. I thought maybe since SE was running the show, they'd used their riches and resources to somehow do the impossible. Then, about a week into playing the game, I was standing in Limsa by that tree near the aetheryte. A midlander male approached the edge of the invisible wall... and stepped off. Then he flew away, walking on air, and disappeared after a while, sort of like Mary Poppins vanishing over the horizon only without an umbrella. The doubts began to form in my mind. Later, shortly after Shadowbringers came out and the game was extremely popular, I tried to leave Ul'dah. The game told me the zone outside was congested, and to try again later. Parked on top of me were other players who had been similarly booted. Except their names were all gibberish. And they were all little lalafell boys who looked the exact same. My doubts deepened.

And then, one day, somebody in Limsa told me to type /icam and look around for a bit. I did. icam opened the "idle camera" mode, which is just a mode where you can use a cool camera that randomly jumps to different players in a town. It's like a fun way to people watch without moving your character around, because the camera does it for you. The camera swapped over to a Roegadyn relaxing by a tree. To a lalafell running to the market. To a catboy seducing another catboy. And then... the camera leapt to another player who was underneath the city. And sure enough, he was a lalaboy who looked like the lalafell boys I mentioned earlier. Basic preset lalaboy, under the city. And he was standing in a tightly packed cluster of lalaboys that all looked just like him, huddled together like spider eggs, under the city. Just standing there. All with gibberish names. Waiting.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...a1854bb106633&

Later still, I learned that actually, this game is extremely insecure. I have seen people using certain naughty tools to simply tell the game "hey, I can run really really fast" and the game just says "seems legit to me" and that's how you get those guys who zoom through Ul'dah at Sonic speeds for memes. They don't even get banned because, I guess, even if the game detects some stuff server side, nothing comes of it?? I don't know. There was a bald dude in Balmung who would literally speed through uldah whenever I saw him, and afaik homie's still chillin'. Used to see him all the time. Dude seemed like a chill memer so I'm not trying to put him on blast, just saying like ... nobody on staff seems to give a shit about enforcing anything unless you hurt someone's feelings in a dungeon with mean words. Do I personally care? Hell no. I think this shit's funny af. But it's just another example of how this game's full of holes and god I hope we never have to deal with gameguard or xigncode or some other garbage rootkit trash that makes games run like crap, but I wouldn't be surprised if one day the devs just threw their hands up and installed something, because every year people get bolder and stupider. Best part is, those anticheats don't even work half the time; the genuine cheaters bypass it with ease and regular users get banned for false positives. God I hope we don't see that crap in this game ever.

We are LALA of Borg, your kneecaps will be assimilated.

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Originally Posted by Luluya

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Citizens accused the Weeaboo Police Department of employing bots in Limsa Lominsa, but they weren't bots. They were Weeaboo Police Officers standing guard. Perhaps the bots you see aren't actually bots and are just guards from another department, citizen.



Light bless you.