Square-Enix, please, do something about the bots

[miraidensetsu]

Title.

Because when I ever login on a big city I see them in mass. They were ether advertising or causing lags stacking 50 of them underground. And report them via [Report]>[Report RMT activity] feels like drying ice. That effort feels futile.

And I noticed that:

• The game don't use a check-in solution to check if it have any process messing with FFXIV's packets;
• The banwaves are not getting the situation any better;
• The bots are freely using some hacks and not really permabanned (they just create another account)
• The RMT clients aren't being banned, just the mules;
• Every bot that advertises RMT are from a few sites. I can count in a single hand how much. And they can be taken down via law measures, such as heavy fines, pressure on ICANN to take down the domain (the sites uses a .com domain), pressure on their ISP to take down the site to starve out their services

Also, the bots are known on other games for causing lag, since a single botter can have hundreds of simultaneous connections while a regular player just make one connection. Maybe botters are the cause of the DDoS?

If required, I can help S-E with anything I can. Even with the IT part, since I am an experienced IT professional (programmer, tbe) or I sacrifice a virgin Miqo'te to some vulcan god or I can even try to summon some primal on the Limsa Lominsa Aetherite Plaza.

But, please, do something about those damned bots.

[Rinuko]

I'm going to assume they have it setup similar to FFXI days. As i recall it they had a RMT Taskforce based in Japan so im guessing a report need to go through alot before even gets to someone who can examine it and then make a call.

Either its lack of manpower or system isnt good enough to counter with RMT.
Honestly we've had these problems since FFXI so 10+ years by now.

I'm not expecting anything major happening with RMT countermeasures in XIV.

[LaylaTsarra]

There is a bot on Siren doing all the legendary mining and botany nodes including aethersand posting stacks and stacks of mats on the marketboard. I've reported him and sadly he's still running around doing it on a daily basis. The mentality of cheaters is pretty sad and they'll try and make their money anyway they can.

[DeaconMoore]

Only way the RMT bots are going to disappear is if people stop buying their gil. Only way that's going to happen sadly is SE shuts the game down.

[HaelseMikiro]

Only way the RMT bots are going to disappear is if people stop buying their gil. Only way that's going to happen sadly is SE shuts the game down.

Well, SE could also up the punishment for buying gil. Currently it's like..a 3 day ban and they take all your gil away. Unless you'd already spent it all buying a clear or something.
Not really much of a deterrent to players is it?
I'd rather see way more people buy gil and then do a chargeback after it's been delivered, lol. Except the RMTs will already have your CC number and be making purchases with it, and they might even report you to SE themselves for buying if you steal from them. Yeah, the status quo on combating RMT is really just trying keep it from getting worse than it currently is, not actually improving the situation T.T

I agree the game shutting down is the only way to 100% stop it, but there's still many avenues of improvement

[Zarabeth]

Unfortunately bots pay subs too so they will never be gone. Rinumo mentions ffxi bots and we had them and you would not believe some of the stupid ways se tried to combat them. (goblins at water holes in camping areas comes to mind.) They did finally stop the rmt spammers, but that's about it. And even if they could make them all disappear they would all be back the next day on new accounts.

[Lilseph]

I've seen guilds of actual players farming nodes, with achievements from other content and everything. They were cluttered in a single spot, farming at the same time, disengaging the node at the same time, jumping on their mount at the same time and moving away at the same time. Gonna guess it's a single person's FC with multiple service accounts. It's disgusting, I think I've seen them twice during the week I was farming for mats for scripts.

There's a report given by SE telling us how many accounts where punished by their ban hammer. I also don't know if their GM force is understaffed, I think it is.

[Cakekizyy]

What laws are these sites breaking that would call for fines or having domain shut down?

[Vhailor]

But, please, do something about those damned bots.

I wholeheartedly concur. It's sad that I generally feel obligated to filter out /say messages simply to avoid seeing open advertisements by RMT bots. This is a pay-to-play title; SE needs to crack down in a meaningful way (i.e. automated systems and a far quicker turnaround time on bans).

It's never too late to improve.

[Rinuko]

Unfortunately bots pay subs too so they will never be gone. Rinumo mentions ffxi bots and we had them and you would not believe some of the stupid ways se tried to combat them. (goblins at water holes in camping areas comes to mind.) They did finally stop the rmt spammers, but that's about it. And even if they could make them all disappear they would all be back the next day on new accounts.

Yeah good times with the fishing bots. I always enjoyed seeing them getting slaughtered!