Player Feedback: Gathering Bots

[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.

[Zigabar]

Snipped for limit

Bans on the small fry would not put out the big fire, you're right, but it would send a message to players that personal botting is not allowed. I wish you would come see just how many players Gilgamesh has that bot on their main characters. We don't have a surplus of gil sellers, because our server is blocked for creation most of the time, but we do have an amazing amount of personal bots. Going after them would cause quite an impact, just maybe not the nuclear size you think going after the asdkjawi akdhwihados bots will.

[Malzian]

Bans on the small fry would not put out the big fire, you're right, but it would send a message to players that personal botting is not allowed. I wish you would come see just how many players Gilgamesh has that bot on their main characters. We don't have a surplus of gil sellers, because our server is blocked for creation most of the time, but we do have an amazing amount of personal bots. Going after them would cause quite an impact, just maybe not the nuclear size you think going after the asdkjawi akdhwihados bots will.

I suppose this is a Gilgamesh thing then, because while I was on Lamia and now that I'm on Behemoth, the only bots you see are RMT bots. Player bots are a real oddity here so I was mostly speaking in terms of RMT bots. That being said, it's difficult for SE to discern player bots from actual players in this respect. Many of the bot programs that were around during launch were very sophisticated in how they handled things and could replicate player behavior fairly convincingly. I can only imagine they've gotten much more so in the intervening years... Sadly at that level all you can do is report them, but if they're not using the teleport glitches it can be very difficult for SE to suss out which characters are actually botting from those that are potentially botting.

Good luck with that.

[Zigabar]

I suppose this is a Gilgamesh thing then

For sure. This is more prominent in larger servers, as RMT is more in smaller ones. I just trying to clear up, what looked like, a misunderstanding.

Both should be handled and neither should be dismissed.

[Laeore]

I suppose this is a Gilgamesh thing then, because while I was on Lamia and now that I'm on Behemoth, the only bots you see are RMT bots. Player bots are a real oddity here so I was mostly speaking in terms of RMT bots. That being said, it's difficult for SE to discern player bots from actual players in this respect. Many of the bot programs that were around during launch were very sophisticated in how they handled things and could replicate player behavior fairly convincingly. I can only imagine they've gotten much more so in the intervening years... Sadly at that level all you can do is report them, but if they're not using the teleport glitches it can be very difficult for SE to suss out which characters are actually botting from those that are potentially botting.

Good luck with that.

I gotta say that once a week I get a tell from someone testing me if I'm a bot and half the time I don't respond. They get angry and threaten to report, and because I'mnot here to justify anyone's paranoia of whether I'm a bot or not, I don't care. I'm not teleport glitching. I'm not hurting anyone. Heck, sometimes I don't even see the tell because I'm watching TV or the chat log fills up so fast. This is just a vigilante witch hunt because people are overly-sensitive to a real problem that can only be solved by devs.

[Mwynn]

I suppose this is a Gilgamesh thing then

I was Server hopping pretty much and it's not only Gilgamesh. It's actually even common on EU Servers that you encounter the same kind, in my case the ones that do Aetherial Reduction for Months. Odin, Shiva, Cerberus are the ones I talk about.
I don't wanna imagine how it is like on Balmung but I can imagine the amount is quite even much higher then on Gilgamesh.

It's not hard to find out who is Botting if they all do the same Behaviour as walking, stacking at the same Point, walking again, doing the same stacking, this is very much scripted it seems.
Given the Fact a Bot can only do so much what they're being told speaking of Execution and Commanding, they cannot decide to drift off the same Walkpath for the slightest change.

That's the thing, if 10 Players suddenly Teleport at the same time like 15:40 Eorzean Time, end in the same Zone like they were in Churning Mists and are now in Sea of Clouds, all of these 10 Players..., it's pretty much obvious.
Now see this for 5 Times more and ya, you can tell.

Sure if you just Gather for like 2 Minutes for a Craft or two you will not notice the pattern/behaviour, yet if you do Aetherial Reduction to get Crystals and Clusters or Aethersands for your Raid Pots, then I think, if someone did not fall on their head..., they notice.

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Again I think People misunderstood the Topic here. We are not talking about the RMT Bots that you see Teleporting around and Queue'ing up and doing their Teleport Hacks in Duties, no....

We talk about Real Players having a Real Name who do sometimes play with their Hands, interact with others in the Main Cities and turn on their Bot Program while they sleep or are on Work.
They do it because they're lazy (obviously) and want to make Quick Gil Ingame without a single Effort, hence we Gatherers get upset due of having grinded all those Blue Scrips / Red Scrips with our Hands which took quite some hefty time.

Some of those "Bot Players" have cleared Alexander 12 Savage and even use the Mount so while Botting!