Discussion: How Can We Handle Botting Better?

[Kuzulo]

You can't take action against bots, as a subscriber; It does not work on this level.

As a 14 year plus subscriber of World of Warcraft, I can say it originally worked that way more. Wow had fewer players, so "reporting a bot" might actually do something. Eventually, you had too many players/too many bots to report and too many people reporting people who were not actually "bots."

Blizzard wisely did something, which was instead just detecting them and banning those accounts in waves. I don't know how it works with FFXIV, but with Wow the bot is taking advantage of a particular "seed" or something (I'm greatly simplifying things here.) So the bot program will work, until Blizzard then fixes the way that particular "seed"/whatever works or how they access it. So things just seem to sit there, working normally, then suddenly there is a huge ban wave of bots. At that point, the botting program no longer works either (until they rebuild it, to take advantage of another "seed"/breaking the encryption/whatever.)
I don't know why it works this way, it is something about how it has to be able to work with clients at a high speed, which presents a vulnerability that the bot program writer takes advantage of.

So, as all of you say, this does not work and could not work. Just as with Wow, it HAS to be automatic. It has to be something that is detected, then the accounts just get banned (perm, by the way.) This is basically the one thing they've learned to do right with Wow, after 14 years. You don't really see the posts about bots on the Wow forums like you used to, nor do I EVER see a single one while out herbing/mining anymore. A part of the reason is that even the people making the bot software, as well as people on the message boards for it, are aware that they have to use "throwaway" accounts; They know they will get banned in the next automatic ban wave.

It just doesn't work, at this level, for you or I to report someone suspicious. Then someone live has to follow up, then they might not even be a bot. All of that takes too much time and effort.

[Hestzhyen]

You can't take action against bots, as a subscriber; It does not work on this level.

As a 14 year plus subscriber of World of Warcraft, I can say it originally worked that way more. Wow had fewer players, so "reporting a bot" might actually do something. Eventually, you had too many players/too many bots to report and too many people reporting people who were not actually "bots."

Blizzard wisely did something, which was instead just detecting them and banning those accounts in waves. I don't know how it works with FFXIV, but with Wow the bot is taking advantage of a particular "seed" or something (I'm greatly simplifying things here.) So the bot program will work, until Blizzard then fixes the way that particular "seed"/whatever works or how they access it. So things just seem to sit there, working normally, then suddenly there is a huge ban wave of bots. At that point, the botting program no longer works either (until they rebuild it, to take advantage of another "seed"/breaking the encryption/whatever.)
I don't know why it works this way, it is something about how it has to be able to work with clients at a high speed, which presents a vulnerability that the bot program writer takes advantage of.

So, as all of you say, this does not work and could not work. Just as with Wow, it HAS to be automatic. It has to be something that is detected, then the accounts just get banned (perm, by the way.) This is basically the one thing they've learned to do right with Wow, after 14 years. You don't really see the posts about bots on the Wow forums like you used to, nor do I EVER see a single one while out herbing/mining anymore. A part of the reason is that even the people making the bot software, as well as people on the message boards for it, are aware that they have to use "throwaway" accounts; They know they will get banned in the next automatic ban wave.

It just doesn't work, at this level, for you or I to report someone suspicious. Then someone live has to follow up, then they might not even be a bot. All of that takes too much time and effort.

What you described is what SE does, only they don't seem to address the root cause like Blizzard does. SE bans bots in the thousands every month, but there is apparently no investigation or effort put into fixing the exploits that allow the bots to function. That's why you still see map hacking years after it was reported and why the botting problem seems to be wholly undeterred despite the regular ban wave reports.

I get that SE doesn't see the problem as much in Japan but they have to look further abroad with their global customer base. They market to us, serve us in our home countries, so they should support and listen to us as well. If this is a uniquely Western problem maybe it would make sense for them to have a Western task force with the necessary tools and power to address it.

[Fhaerron]

Which would mean Square isn't taking action on people breaking the terms. Doesn't sound like a good thing for a company to do.

I actually had a discussion with some people about botting a while ago, and I think that the person replied to me might actually be right. (To give more context I was actually wondering why SE wouldn't perma ban accounts of people who buy gil from such botters).

So it's basically totally fine to break the ToS then.

Why make a ToS in the first place then?

Because if they actually had 14 million players like they brag about, they could actually enforce them. But when you tell the media 14m and only have maybe 500k you need to hold onto them as hard as you can to give the illusion your numbers are real.

[Risvertasashi]

Which would mean Square isn't taking action on people breaking the terms. Doesn't sound like a good thing for a company to do.

In many cases. This is precisely what is happening.

What you'd really want is anticheat software. But this is a thorny subject, both legally and ethically. On top of that, aside from bots, SE would need a clearer stance on addons that do things like optimize game graphics or crowdsource information... and the most controversial of all, parsers. ..Moreover, Asian companies have a notorious record of making really ineffective anticheat software, when they even bother to try.

But SE likes the "don't ask don't tell" status quo, which means they can't take action against people that disguise their botting well enough to plausibly be players. If you want things to change, this topic needs to be addressed first.

Finally, as has been mentioned in other posts, relying on players to report other players for botting leads to alarmingly high false positives.

[Alucard135]

The GMs need to be given a bit more power and/or region based special task force teams need to be put in place.

That's what needs to be done. You start to wonder what the STF team are doing when you have people becoming famous for being botters and nothing's being done to them.

I remember when the Namazu beast tribe quests were released, that I found a gathering bot around the Steppe's nodes. I said in shout chat "Come see this bot here" and instantly got replies in shout saying "You mean XXXX? Yeah, he's been at it for a while". This will easily discourage people from reporting botters if they see nothing's done to those blatantly botting.

[OurMom]

Something is being done to botters in most cases it's just not perm and when it is, it's done really half assed.

Have a few friends that use to play this game, they botted. The first I think 4 or 5 times they got 3 day bans then after that they got a "perma ban" but for some reason SE only banned their on that account. So they could just use a vpn for the launcher and or get another account and go back to what they were doing.

[KisaiTenshi]

In many cases. This is precisely what is happening.

What you'd really want is anticheat software. But this is a thorny subject, both legally and ethically. On top of that, aside from bots, SE would need a clearer stance on addons that do things like optimize game graphics or crowdsource information... and the most controversial of all, parsers. ..Moreover, Asian companies have a notorious record of making really ineffective anticheat software, when they even bother to try.

But SE likes the "don't ask don't tell" status quo, which means they can't take action against people that disguise their botting well enough to plausibly be players. If you want things to change, this topic needs to be addressed first.

Finally, as has been mentioned in other posts, relying on players to report other players for botting leads to alarmingly high false positives.

Most anti-cheat software is easily defeated by the very same "well meaning" third party tools people. Botters don't care.

Putting the legality of any such tools aside, there are ways of crowd-sourcing the bot hunting , and it wouldn't require every player to have the program, just the same people who complain about the bots, and those who would benefit from the bots disappearances. Basically the same idea behind an antivirus program, have users with the program track the coordinates of all players, and then use the OOB areas to detect the worst disposable bots, and some smarter logic to find the "undetectable" bots by detecting behavior that gives away that it's a farm bot (and quite frankly it's embarrassing how easy it is to find bots just from just the Lodestone, no game client needed. But that doesn't tell you that they're active.)

What you want is passive reporting. Kick a player, GM gets a report with the entire chat log from the client and a screenshot. Vote for kick, log+screenshot. Report RMT log+screenshot. Allow reporting bot activity from any search panel, have it report the coordinates of the player, the reported bot, and any players within 20y of the target. Bots like to stand on top of each other, so that would reveal all the bots. Keep seeing players in the same locations, especially out of bounds, then you know who is botting, and who's controlling them.

But like any combating of fraud, you need to go after the source, and law enforcement just moves too slow to do anything when the bots only exist for a week.

[Riardon]

All it takes is a GM to visit the usual nodes and spectate. The bots are pretty easy to tell just by observing. Once they see them they can begin the investigation.
I'm pretty sure they know the procedure which makes me believe they either don't want to take any action because those bots also pay for their sub or they simply don't have the technical mean to prove that those players are botting.
I've made many reports in the past and nothing happened.
As for the Gold Sellers in town. I'm pretty sure they are solely focused on those as they do indeed ban them.

[KageTokage]

I'm really curious as to what those few players getting banned for botting each week did to actually get noticed, because it's not like bots in general aren't obvious for one reason or another.

Their movement patterns are what gives them away the most, and the things I've noticed include:

-They always make extremely sharp turns due to their "point A to point B" movement pattern that tries to get them to their destination with as few changes in direction as possible, though not necessarily in the most efficient manner.

-They always jump in place when they take flight in the HW/SB zones due to a seeming inability for their scripts to register multiple actions/inputs simultaneously.

-Since they can't "see" unspoiled nodes, they'll never move straight to a node when it spawns and instead go to a central point between all of the possible spawn points then move to it from there once it's close enough to be targeted. This leads to them doing awkward things such as flying past the node then suddenly doubling back to it.


Unfortunately, mobile bots like gatherers, FATE grinders, and PvPers are just the tip of the iceberg, as crafting bots and market board bots (Who constantly buy out items within a certain price range or undercut whenever their prices aren't the lowest) are also a thing, but since they don't move or are often hiding in their houses the only things that really suggest they're up to anything unusual is the sheer amount of time they spend online and/or the amount of items they have listed on the market.

There is definitely some kind of source code they need to function, though, because they disappear for a few days after every major update. If SE was serious about controlling they could isolate that data and encrypt it better or some such so they at least don't come back as quickly, because it's virtually impossible to eliminate bots entirely even if you try to take legal action against them (Blizzard won a lawsuit and forced some bot producers to shut down, but they simply resumed operations under a different name eventually),

In the end though, the most effective way to control them is to simply have a good-sized staff dedicated to hunting them down and eliminating them (Which I'm feeling convinced that XIV is sorely lacking in when looking at how small the credits section for the STF is). Even the gil farmers would likely give up after a while if they were getting banned often enough as they need to be able to hit level 50 before they can make much gil.

[Duskane]

only way for botting to die if mogstation adds real money options for gil,clears and such