Quote Originally Posted by IzzyData View Post
You only get a 2 week ban for botting? brb.

But seriously, other subscription based mmos aren't nearly this bad at banning bots quickly. Write some software to auto detect this kind of thing then auto perma ban them. Done.
I take it you've never researched what exactly botting entails.

I've been "taking notes" on what bots do for years. The bots for FFXIV utilize the same software "DPS parsers" do, and hook into the "add ons" API so it gives them access to almost as much stuff as the developers do. The reason it's so "easy" for FFXIV bots to exist is that there's no protection on the game binaries, so players and botters can just drop whatever files they want into the program directory and the game will happily let hook/injections run. This is how most if not -ALL- unauthorized addons work in any game, it's also how protection software gets "patched out" by having the C/C++ runtime patched to hide itself.

The dumbest bots, are the ones that use a certain open-source utility to just copy-paste text into the game and spam relentlessly. They have no feedback loop, so they don't actually know what's going on in the game, unless the pixel-hunting aspect of it recognizes a dialog box. This is generally what RMT's use on throw-away accounts.

The fight against botting requires better self-protections in the software before anything will change. Because a 2 week ban means nothing to a throw-away account.