North Thanalan Botting

[Kit-Kat]

And while I don't condone/support botting, XP bots aren't hurting you in any way. If they are merely using the bot for leveling (and not spiritbonding), then it's not hurting you or anyone else. It would be no different than if a group of friends rotated on a character so it could be played 24/7.

The thing here is morals. If someone doesn't give a flying kweh to openly bot like that, what other things could that person bot. It would be quick to judge, but from experience from past MMOs, if someone has access to a certain tool that will do the job for you, you'll use it for everything possible aswell. And it becomes addictive to the point you get completely used to it and rely on it. "Oh look I need X item to craft that, UGH I should bot it, afterall I already botted before" <-- I actually read these words from other players in other games.

EXP botting itself didn't hurt anyone (in fact, it helped a lot of legit players to clear fates faster). Us, legit players, just get frustrated and jelous that we have to do the boring and long work by ourselves while others don't put effort on it just because we can't get ourselves so low to have to cheat.

[IzzyData]

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.

[KisaiTenshi]

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.

[Lego3400]

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.

Actully I see this same kind of post on WoW forums all the time. "Wah I reported bots but they didn't take care of it when I said to, Blizzard loves bots"

[IzzyData]

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,

I don't see how that is relevant although I wouldn't mind them making parsers be recognized as 3rd party alteration and ban them too as long as they add in an official dps meter.

What they should do is create a separate system to watch for patterns in player behavior that could be determine as a bot. Or if they are never going to make player addons a thing then severely limit the unused addons api so that you can only do a limited number of things.

[Kosmos992k]

**snip**
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.
**snip**
The fight against botting requires better self-protections in the software before anything will change.

Agreed, but when the developers can't (or won't) even secure the server-side database against teleportation hacks, sanity check movements, or even enforce basic in-world geometry to prevent 'underground' mining, I can't see them doing anything to protect the executable or integrity of the game client when the database and/or game servers are as open for abuse as they appear to be.

[repoe]

Oh man, when I was leveling mining in outer la nosc. I ran the same triangle over and over. People.Think.i.am.smart.because.I.talk.like.a.robot

Joking aside, you filled the report and did your due diligence, if you have nothing better to do then monitor ppls movements...I don't know what else to say

[Gunspec]

And so you're ok with suddenly not being able to play because someone falsely/mistakenly reported you? I'm pretty sure the first thing you'd do (if your forum account wasn't temp banned as well) would be coming in here screaming about how you were wrongly banned.

See, the issue you have is that you don't see the big picture. Yes, it doesn't take that long to investigate a single bot. But they don't have the manpower to have GMs sitting around N.Than (and other areas) on every server 24/7. So they rely on reports... but those reports have to be verified, which takes time, especially considering they get thousands and thousands of reports.

And while I don't condone/support botting, XP bots aren't hurting you in any way. If they are merely using the bot for leveling (and not spiritbonding), then it's not hurting you or anyone else. It would be no different than if a group of friends rotated on a character so it could be played 24/7.

SE not having manpower IS the big picture problem. The game has cheaters, botters, hackers, and RMT spam operating more openly than any other subscription based game I have ever seen. And yet, despite "thousands and thousands" of reports, SE has made no effort to expand it's rule enforcement team. Ordinary players are bombarded by RMT spam which could easily be ended if such accounts were immediately terminated. And as for leveling bots, those players ruin the game both mechanically (by forcing fates to scale higher for players not participating) and aesthetically (zones in which players teleport around and attack enemies underground are so life like and pleasing, no?).

Sure, banning someone due to only a single report is wrong. But in a game that has $25 mogstation items, in addition to $15 a month subscription fees and added retainers for $1-$3, there really should be enough staff to investigate cheating in a timely manner. Cheaters basically get a free week before any action is taken by SE staff.

[repoe]

something about this thread for immediate action on reports filed screams medieval mob mentality

[KisaiTenshi]

I don't see how that is relevant although I wouldn't mind them making parsers be recognized as 3rd party alteration and ban them too as long as they add in an official dps meter.

What they should do is create a separate system to watch for patterns in player behavior that could be determine as a bot. Or if they are never going to make player addons a thing then severely limit the unused addons api so that you can only do a limited number of things.

The problem here is that it's impossible for SE to know the difference between an unauthorized add-on and legitimate one. Since there are no authorized ones, right -now- they could just outright ban anyone using an addon and that will ban everyone with a DPS parser, no matter how they were using it.

As for "patterns"... they could look for people who are solo in content that should be impossible (Eg Extreme Primals) if they want to nab people who are cheating for the sake of cheating. A lot of what cheating players do is ALSO quite lazy.

Agreed, but when the developers can't (or won't) even secure the server-side database against teleportation hacks, sanity check movements, or even enforce basic in-world geometry to prevent 'underground' mining, I can't see them doing anything to protect the executable or integrity of the game client when the database and/or game servers are as open for abuse as they appear to be.

I just want to mention that there is a bit of a misunderstanding about what is going on. In FFXIV V1.0, SE encrypted the Login server but not the Gameplay Server, at most they compressed some packets. In V2.0 they reused this mechanism, so "not securing the database" isn't what is going on, rather it's they are fabricating/editing extra packets. There are cheat tools that are readily available that hack memory and packets. "Teleporting" happens because the game client and server send a "where am I" packet several times every second, and the server does NOT go "no you're not there" rather it just accepts it. A lot of MMORPG network traffic is no different.

As I mentioned elsewhere, the server isn't aware of the world geometry, all the collision detection is on the game client. So teleporting bots are simply getting a list of the gathering nodes straight out of the network stream, teleporting to them (many of the bots at ARR V2.0 release literately dropped out of the sky, because they were teleporting to the actual node location) and they end up "underneath" the ground by setting the Z location to whatever Z coordinate would put them under the node but still let the game client see it within reach.

A lot of "fixes" require validating every action, which immensely slows down the server and it's capacity, which increases the amount of network traffic. So unless we want much smaller maps I don't see these things happening in real time. Rather mass-data-entry systems could check player velocities and locations and anything that is more than 0.1% out of normal gets flagged. Like there is absolutely no excuse for bots being "underground", the server is being told by the bots they are under the map, an out of bounds checker could scan every player on the server in seconds against the actual map's geometry and ban the accounts instantly... if there was a will to do it.