Attention devs: Game Surveillance Unit re: open world Bots.

[Its_Elodie]

After reporting so many bots for so long and waited for an actual staff member, in their own words, to send me a response, it's boiled down to this for me, I wouldn't even care if they banned the bot's or not at this point , but just give me a legitimate reason why they haven't been banned so I can end this frustration and either accept their answer and continue playing or move on to another game

My guess is subscription money. There's hundreds of RMT bots on Lamia, regardless of if they are currently advertising or not because my blacklist is still full of them. They put out a cash shop with $24 mounts (which is like 2 months worth of sub) and whilst the bots are so annoying and spirit bonding now (o.O) they'd hate to let that money go, regardless of them irritating the general population with constant tells, friend requests, and advertisements. Its obvious one sub is no different from the next to SE. $>all.

[DizzyDragonfly]

My guess is subscription money. There's hundreds of RMT bots on Lamia, regardless of if they are currently advertising or not because my blacklist is still full of them. They put out a cash shop with $24 mounts (which is like 2 months worth of sub) and whilst the bots are so annoying and spirit bonding now (o.O) they'd hate to let that money go, regardless of them irritating the general population with constant tells, friend requests, and advertisements. Its obvious one sub is no different from the next to SE. $>all.

that's a good point

[Daeva]

I'm pretty disgusted; it takes quite a bit to do that to me.

[ToffeeCoffee]

Mor Dhona X18 Y17

[Hitomi-Giniro]

Sever: Tonberry
Time: Between 5:10pm AEST 5:20pm AEST

[SilentSymphony]

I've been reporting several bots on Excalibur for over 6months now, there are even players boasting about it in their names and comments, not to mention bots queuing up for instances as well, even marketboard bots undercutting/buying, you name it there's a bot for it, apparently.


one of the arguments i see often is that if they banned all the bots prices would skyrocket on things like shards well... then they would be worth gathering! and the entire economy would adjust so its not an excuse!

[BobtheBlackMage]

Bumping, and I'll keep and eye open for this kinda noise myself.

More Bots need to be banned, the old anti-cheating team from FFXI was terrible for years until they finally stepped up to fix the problems.

[Nakiamiie]

SE: $>all

The company is starting to rot inside it seems, what a shame.

[SilentSymphony]

I'll say this, they have their work cut out for them, even if a player is botting, i would wager that a good number of them have a player managing them and if a gm were to contact them to check if they are in fact an autonomous bot they get a reply back from a real person.. how can you really deal with that, and the automatic detection method would probably make mistakes more often than we would like.

And at the same time those of us willing to make a fuss about it number so few that how would we really get our complaints noticed anyway, well instead of just posting one or two bots, or any specific ones at all we should try to come up with a way to get this more attention, Talk to your friends, have them talk to their friends, post our cause on more popular mediums, and lets be civil about it, less hate and more solution!

Do we have any threads on the Japanese forum? or any of the other forums? This would be a great help to the cause!

I hope you get my train of thought.

[ToffeeCoffee]

I'll say this, they have their work cut out for them, even if a player is botting, i would wager that a good number of them have a player managing them and if a gm were to contact them to check if they are in fact an autonomous bot they get a reply back from a real person.. how can you really deal with that, and the automatic detection method would probably make mistakes more often than we would like.

And at the same time those of us willing to make a fuss about it number so few that how would we really get our complaints noticed anyway, well instead of just posting one or two bots, or any specific ones at all we should try to come up with a way to get this more attention, Talk to your friends, have them talk to their friends, post our cause on more popular mediums, and lets be civil about it, less hate and more solution!

Do we have any threads on the Japanese forum? or any of the other forums? This would be a great help to the cause!

I hope you get my train of thought.

You make some good points.
With the 4 I've been trying to get banned on Tonberry, yes sometimes they are being watched. Sometimes he sets each bot to Busy status (funny how Busy is a bot's best friend), other times he is not watching his computer(s) while the characters continue to kill mobs automatically. Those gathering bots with AFK status active are obvious ones that should be banned immediately but aren't.

If a GM logs in and sends them a tell to verify whether they are bots or not, I'd be willing to say they get a response a fair percentage of the time. This is an extremely poor detection method in my opinion and I'd hope SE has more covert ways of verifying that a character is running on automation. If you trade one you can easily see it cycling targets and making no attempt to break the trade window - this is just one example. GM's surely have the means to trade with a character with Busy status on which we can't do...surely.

The surveillance team can see everything these bots do, they can see how much gil they have, they can see market board transactions for overpriced items that gil buyers put up.

So while it sounds like banning bots might be tedious and something SE aren't interested in doing if it can't easily be automated...the end result is a game full of RMT bots and an increasing number of players who turn to botting "because xyz number of people are doing it and get away with it".

I really hope to hear from a CM soon on this major issue in the game.