Hacking and bots

Hello,

I am a disciple of the Land, and am often in the field, levelling up or gathering materials/crystals to craft or sell.

It seems that roughly 1/4th of areas I gather in has a bot, using a hack to stay stealthed and teleport from one node to another. This may be because I happen to be at the level where I am gathering at areas where there are crystals.

I always report these players via cheating, but am uncertain if anything is being done. I once reported a cheater, and proceeded to mine at the same place as him for two hours... And he was still there when I left...


Do you understand the frustration of having to mine right NEXT TO a cheater that will always be one step ahead of you because he teleports from one node to another? Knowing that he has been doing that for a while, because he is level 30+? on top of that, you reported him and have no way of knowing if the report weht through or if it had anny effect?

I once looked up a bot the next day and he WAS STILL THERE.
This is frustrating, negatively impacts gameplay AND the economy.

The frustrating part is not as much that there are bots, but that the response time is very slow and that we have no feedback or way of knowing if it even had an effect.
Please consider:
- Implementing a program that detects client-side operations (such as teleporting). This has been done before, no need to reinvent the wheel from scratch. look at WoW or EVE online.

- Assigning more people (interns?) to go through reports.

- Implementing a system where the player can get a followup of cheater reports, to confirm what, if anything, has been done.

- Implement a faster, automated, easier way to report and tag players. right-click player, report.. Gets sent in a batch file containing, date, name of reportee, name of reporter, area, server. (people abusing this feature would be liable to punishment)


The RMT are annoying, but these bots are downright infuriating. Cheating, ruining the economy and getting away with it. And the player is powerless before them, except to report and hope vaguely that anything is being done.

I completely agree with you regarding the bots. I recorded the video below while out playing. It's frustrating that it takes us so long to harvest and to watch this occur while we are harvesting. This allow devalues our time because it will lower the value of materials on the market. I've reported a few characters none have been banned yet. I also did a quick search on Youtube after uploading my video and the top result for "Final Fantasy XIV Boting" is a video on how easy it is to bot in this game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfpkU...ature=youtu.be

considering how i was whispered by a gilseller that sold 9999 of all crystals and shards for 56$ earlier ... yeah, this is a problem :P

If GMs have a look at -any- server's WThanalan/Horizon's Edge (Copperbell entrance) logs, they'll see lots of bots there teleporting from an iron node to another. They seem to stand way below ground, just in range for reaching the node while hiding themselves as much as they can. I have no idea how all of this is even possible to normal characters!

Here's another video I just recorded of botters in Western Thanalan. This is live right now on Sargatanas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWFgE...ature=youtu.be

Wait, people are hacking and botting in this game? Thank you for bringing this to the communities attention, as we were unaware of such a thing.

^
The point of it, Mr.Sarcasm, is that nothing or very little is being done about it.

I'm sick of them but I've given up on SE ever doing anything about it.
People keep saying the only ones hacking are RMT's but a lot of them are lv 50 raiders just too lazy to do anything themselves.

It's sucks pretty hard working your way up in gathering levels while these cheaters are rampant everywhere.

Or maybe so much is being done about it but it isn't enough

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dorin

^
The point of it, Mr.Sarcasm, is that nothing or very little is being done about it.

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Or you're just ignorant, and a lot is being done about it. Sorry you can't see that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Reiterpallasch

Or you're just ignorant, and a lot is being done about it. Sorry you can't see that.

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What i (still) see is bots hacking and gil sellers spamming...
What am I missing?

Wow cracked down on on gold farmers a few years back, and you noticed their absence afterwards..
They also have anti-hacking software (warden) that makes hacking virtually absent from the game...

Other MMOs have implemented similar measures..

As stated previously.. No need to reinvent th wheel.

I am perplexed as to why SE has not implemented similar measures at launch... Especially considering botting was an issue in XI, its not like it was unexpected.

These is a miner on Hyperion doing this and I have reported. Seen her out there in various zones a few times now. Aside from being stealthed she is in plain sight, not in the rock or ground. Just zapping around the nodes. Really pissing me off that Square cares so little about ridiculously critical issues like this. This is pretty damn game ruining stuff and they don't appear to give a damn at all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Reiterpallasch

Or you're just ignorant, and a lot is being done about it. Sorry you can't see that.

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You know what I can see, though? The same bot hack-mining in the same spot for 2 weeks.

Surely, a lot is being done about it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shinraijin

- Implementing a system where the player can get a followup of cheater reports, to confirm what, if anything, has been done.

- Implement a faster, automated, easier way to report and tag players. right-click player, report.. Gets sent in a batch file containing, date, name of reportee, name of reporter, area, server. (people abusing this feature would be liable to punishment)

The RMT are annoying, but these bots are downright infuriating. Cheating, ruining the economy and getting away with it. And the player is powerless before them, except to report and hope vaguely that anything is being done.

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Don't need individual follow-ups on cheater reports, but just some confirmation the reports being sent in are not going into some bottomless void and not being seen. Like just having it show up under the history tab after sending in the report like most RMT ones do.

The question I have is can the GMs do anything besides confirm that it is going on at the time? I know they can not be everywhere, but this is so obvious when see it, all it would take is a GM physically viewing the area and not looking at logs to tell that it is not playing in the intended way. And if the evidence is reasonable enough to determine foul play, instead of letting the bot keep mining in an area and causing economic problems for the legitimate players, move said botting character to an area with teleport and return disabled, and no way out besides contacting a GM to stop the bots while the necessary investigation is on-going. Or anything else to interrupt the gathering bots.

I think a large part of the problem is that we get so little response from Square Enix. If they would post and say, "Yes, we know that bots are a problem, and we're working on it, but we're going slow because blah blah blah," I'd be satisified. But when the official forum is full of people talking about how much this sucks, and there's zero response from official sources... that's a problem for me.

So I just checked back and the botters I recorded two days ago are in the same area doing the same activity. Yes I also reported them.

I am guessing they are doing exactly the same as with RMT gil sellers. Nothing. They are spamming in /shout and /tell and not being banned. How do I know? Because the same characters are doing this day after day even after I have reported them.