Player Feedback: Gathering Bots

[Malzian]

Couple things... First, if the GMs took the time to respond to every single bot/rmt report, they'd never have a chance to do anything about it nor handle any other situation. Second, the GMs are not as concerned with identifying the gatherer bots (or even the RMT bots) as they are the 'mule' characters holding and moving the gil around.

To be honest, SE might even see this type of activity as a way to REMOVE excess currency from the game as a gil sink. If you buy shards/crystals/clusters/materials from a RMT gatherer bot, and that gil gets put on a mule character, and then that character gets banned they have effectively removed potentially millions of gil from the economy which can actually help cut inflation and keep the market stable. It's sad if the economy is that unbalanced for that to be a possibility, but there you have it.

[DrWho2010]

They tend to ban bots in waves. They don't want them to know what activity specifically got them banned I believe. They're part of the report you see on the lodestone every so often for Actions Taken Against In-Game RMT & Other Illicit Activities. For example Jan 5 - Time Period: Dec. 22, 2016 to Jan. 4, 2017

・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 1,232
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 47,989
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

the bots would fall under "illicit activity". However, as soon as a bunch of bots are banned, more will be created. The stuff they gather is sold on the Market Board and then the gil is prob used to sell to players buying into RMT.

[Zigabar]

They tend to ban bots in waves. They don't want them to know what activity specifically got them banned I believe. They're part of the report you see on the lodestone every so often for Actions Taken Against In-Game RMT & Other Illicit Activities. For example Jan 5 - Time Period: Dec. 22, 2016 to Jan. 4, 2017

・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 1,232
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 47,989
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

the bots would fall under "illicit activity". However, as soon as a bunch of bots are banned, more will be created. The stuff they gather is sold on the Market Board and then the gil is prob used to sell to players buying into RMT.

If it weren't against the rules, I could give you 3 names off the top of my head that have been botting for at least 2 years. Those illicit bans are probably gil buyers and sellers, not player ran farming bots.

[Mwynn]

Blubb

Not going against you but rather against Square Enix not providing us the Security they should have given us since the beginning of ARR with those multiple Exploits going on...

They could, yes ... could add Protection to the Client, change Packet Behaviour in the Client and destroy Bots that Way in a much better Way, if not even detect automatical behaviour that Way.
That would also mean that the Raid Scene looses the Function to Parse if People decide to do so.... which is quite hurtful for the Raid Community.

This is quite turning into the second Bot Infested MMORPG that I played due of the same Errors.

[Malzian]

Not going against you but rather against Square Enix not providing us the Security they should have given us since the beginning of ARR with those multiple Exploits going on...

They could, yes ... could add Protection to the Client, change Packet Behaviour in the Client and destroy Bots that Way in a much better Way, if not even detect automatical behaviour that Way.
That would also mean that the Raid Scene looses the Function to Parse if People decide to do so.... which is quite hurtful for the Raid Community.

This is quite turning into the second Bot Infested MMORPG that I played due of the same Errors.

I agree that the teleporting glitches that the bots use is a terrible exploit and somehow is still around even though it was known about in the Beta... This, however, doesn't mean that even if they remove the glitches there still won't be bots. People had bot programs that would run you around the map (including obstruction avoidance) and automatically gather by sending legitimate commands through to the client through the keyboard and mouse drivers as if someone was actually playing. It just proved more expedient to use the glitches that were found.

[Vnolan]

Second, the GMs are not as concerned with identifying the gatherer bots (or even the RMT bots) as they are the 'mule' characters holding and moving the gil around.

To be honest, SE might even see this type of activity as a way to REMOVE excess currency from the game as a gil sink. If you buy shards/crystals/clusters/materials from a RMT gatherer bot, and that gil gets put on a mule character, and then that character gets banned they have effectively removed potentially millions of gil from the economy which can actually help cut inflation and keep the market stable. It's sad if the economy is that unbalanced for that to be a possibility, but there you have it.

It doesn't matter what their reasoning is. If they aren't going to take any action when receiving reports of players cheating, they should change the wording so people aren't misled into wasting their time filling out reports.

They tend to ban bots in waves. However, as soon as a bunch of bots are banned, more will be created. The stuff they gather is sold on the Market Board and then the gil is prob used to sell to players buying into RMT.

Right, more bots will be created. It shouldn't be the same bots, but that is currently the case. Of the bots I reported back in November, one was reported months before that. Still active and still botting. And, if what you said is true about the bots I'm talking about, they wouldn't be doing it on a character with most jobs at 60.

[Malzian]

It doesn't matter what their reasoning is in my opinion. If they aren't going to take any action when receiving reports of players cheating, they should change the wording so people aren't misled into wasting their time filling out reports.

Fixed that for you.

It does matter what their reasoning is. They take the same stance the police do when they find a person dealing drugs on the street. They KNOW that one individual is just a small player in the ring and they can spend ages busting the individual players and it won't get them anywhere. Instead, SE aims for the larger distributors and works on breaking the rings circulating the currency that the bots produce. Also, if you read the paragraph for the 'Report Cheating' button it says clearly, "Please note that we are unable to provide individual responses to reports." so you shouldn't expect a response to any report you make.

[Mwynn]

Fixed that for you.

It does matter what their reasoning is. They take the same stance the police do when they find a person dealing drugs on the street. They KNOW that one individual is just a small player in the ring and they can spend ages busting the individual players and it won't get them anywhere. Instead, SE aims for the larger distributors and works on breaking the rings circulating the currency that the bots produce. Also, if you read the paragraph for the 'Report Cheating' button it says clearly, "Please note that we are unable to provide individual responses to reports." so you shouldn't expect a response to any report you make.

Well we're talking about Lv.60 Players that have most Jobs at Lv.60, so it is Indeed a big Case if one of them gets banned. Those ain't the typical RMT Bots you see around Teleporting from Quest to Quest, sadly.

Though understandable that they won't reply to us after we send them the Reports.

[Vnolan]

It does matter what their reasoning is. They KNOW that one individual is just a small player in the ring and they can spend ages busting the individual players and it won't get them anywhere. Instead, SE aims for the larger distributors and works on breaking the rings circulating the currency that the bots produce. Also, if you read the paragraph for the 'Report Cheating' button it says clearly, "Please note that we are unable to provide individual responses to reports." so you shouldn't expect a response to any report you make.

We're not talking about one or two. It's dozens. Outright banning the people doing it would be quite the impact. It would directly reduce the botting by removing the bots, would have people think twice before doing it and it wouldn't reduce the number of reports they get from people like myself who see the same bots months after reporting them.

It seems like you're saying you can bot without getting punished as long as you're a small fry? How is many more bots better than a few big botters? FATE botting by people that just want easy leveling goes against what you're saying.

I'm not talking about GM or any manual form of response, but an automated response when the report is processed in some manner and not just when it 'goes in the pile'. The automated response you currently receive upon sending the report would be fine if there were some other tools the players had, but there aren't any. No record of who was reported, when they were reported AND no response other than the generic one on sending, so players have to report and pray action is eventually taken against the bots? Why would they do that? Answer: They won't

[Malzian]

We're not talking about one or two. It's dozens. Outright banning the people doing it would be quite the impact. It would directly reduce the botting by removing the bots, would have people think twice before doing it...

And this is where you would be wrong... The bot characters made are generic "throw away" characters and the accounts made for them are trivial in their cost compared to the amount of money the companies making them stand to (and often do) gain. Accounts are banned for RMT by the thousands, you can see the reports. Has that stopped RMT? No, and it will not stop botting. Bans on these small, autonomous bots is like putting out small fires on the edges while the main fire burns... No matter how many of the little ones you stop, the big fire will always start more. These bots you're referring to are a symptom of the problem, not the root cause... which is in fact that it is simply more efficient for a player to buy gil in the game economy than to try and make it themselves, so the RMT will almost always have buyers for the money these disposable bots generate. Only when it is no longer profitable for these companies to bot and RMT will it stop.