Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Muutaras]

Time for big detective. I was interested in one nickname let it be Lisa (I don’t know if it fits the rules of the forum or not. But this is probably used for banned people or for things that have lost their name when the person producing them changed their nickname. I have a couple of things since 2017 and my name is not there) on Brynhildr Market Board. And search it on Lodestone. So I find RMT multi-server accouting. On Brynhildr I know one man and his second window bot both gathering bot, maybe and craft(Blue mark). Owner FC bots for more profit, all members have identical name(or have a name for the task of which it is made) and appearance. Number 1 and 2
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That man have very long thread bots. On Lamia I found this man Lisa he has FC bots, all members have identical name and appearance like on Brynhildr. Also there are names about combat, which makes it clear that these bots also use automation for farming dungeons or something like this Number 3 and 4
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Then I check some gear naming on his items and I find another man, as i thought. Ok Lodestone help me again. I found this name on Faerie world, this character have identical appearance from first Lisa on Bryngildr but bot live on normal FC was since in 2013 year. Number 5
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That Lisa have many start account on 15 servers, with identical appearance and only in Brynhildr this bot work in high-end content. Number 1

[NamidaTekika]

Time for big detective. I was interested in one nickname let it be Lisa (I don’t know if it fits the rules of the forum or not. But this is probably used for banned people or for things that have lost their name when the person producing them changed their nickname. I have a couple of things since 2017 and my name is not there) on Brynhildr Market Board. And search it on Lodestone. So I find RMT multi-server accouting. On Brynhildr I know one man and his second window bot both gathering bot, maybe and craft(Blue mark). Owner FC bots for more profit, all members have identical name(or have a name for the task of which it is made) and appearance. Number 1 and 2
____
That man have very long thread bots. On Lamia I found this man Lisa he has FC bots, all members have identical name and appearance like on Brynhildr. Also there are names about combat, which makes it clear that these bots also use automation for farming dungeons or something like this Number 3 and 4
____
Then I check some gear naming on his items and I find another man, as i thought. Ok Lodestone help me again. I found this name on Faerie world, this character have identical appearance from first Lisa on Bryngildr but bot live on normal FC was since in 2013 year. Number 5
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That Lisa have many start account on 15 servers, with identical appearance and only in Brynhildr this bot work in high-end content. (snipped image)

I took one look at the characters in that group and the face looks and I know EXACTLY two of those in that group that are gathering bots that are on 24/7 feeding this. I've literally reported them well over 60 times over the course of months as have others and they still exist. One's name is like a unpleasant rabbit for example and the other is a J (hope that avoids the naming and shaming rule).

Pretty sad when I can look at that and I know exactly what names of what bots are fueling this junk on my server.

The market bots and gathering bots are directly entwined since they fuel eachother and both need crushed to fix this, though breaking the gathering ones would starve the market bots. Either way it needs enforced, oh it might cost money to have staff do it, but doesn't our money for the game make us worth fixing this for? We do the heavy lifting most times since as shown we actively checking this out, making sure even our accusations have weight and evidence and we want to avoid catching legitimate players. I'd not be as upset myself if AT THE VERY LEAST one of the multiple bots I've seen EVERY DAY for the last 4 months had been banned, but they haven't they still are running gathering circuits and still dominating the markets for months on end when supposed ban waves happen.

[MilitaryVet123]

I took one look at the characters in that group and the face looks and I know EXACTLY two of those in that group that are gathering bots that are on 24/7 feeding this. I've literally reported them well over 60 times over the course of months as have others and they still exist. One's name is like a unpleasant rabbit for example and the other is a J (hope that avoids the naming and shaming rule).

Pretty sad when I can look at that and I know exactly what names of what bots are fueling this junk on my server.

The market bots and gathering bots are directly entwined since they fuel eachother and both need crushed to fix this, though breaking the gathering ones would starve the market bots. Either way it needs enforced, oh it might cost money to have staff do it, but doesn't our money for the game make us worth fixing this for? We do the heavy lifting most times since as shown we actively checking this out, making sure even our accusations have weight and evidence and we want to avoid catching legitimate players. I'd not be as upset myself if AT THE VERY LEAST one of the multiple bots I've seen EVERY DAY for the last 4 months had been banned, but they haven't they still are running gathering circuits and still dominating the markets for months on end when supposed ban waves happen.

The market and gathering bots are typically from the same player. Only breaking the gathering ones does nothing. It only takes 2 days to level a gatherer to Lv80 starting from scratch (with jump pot). Only breaking the market ones is even worse than doing nothing since it takes 2 hours to get a market bot up and running. So you do need both to be crushed to fix this. But then that only means they'll only take 2.5 days to get back up to speed.

The ban waves target egregious cases where some botters get too greedy and even hack the game. That is an easy ban. For some reason SE also really likes catching MGP botting so that's another part of the "ban wave".

[NamidaTekika]

The market and gathering bots are typically from the same player. Only breaking the gathering ones does nothing. It only takes 2 days to level a gatherer to Lv80 starting from scratch (with jump pot). Only breaking the market ones is even worse than doing nothing since it takes 2 hours to get a market bot up and running. So you do need both to be crushed to fix this. But then that only means they'll only take 2.5 days to get back up to speed.

The ban waves target egregious cases where some botters get too greedy and even hack the game. That is an easy ban. For some reason SE also really likes catching MGP botting so that's another part of the "ban wave".

Ya, the ban waves don't really do anything to the main issues fueling RMT and the like either. And thats 2.5 days of them not generating money. If they were actively hitting the accounts on the weekly, losing 1/3 of a week of bot activity on all or most of their bots would make it a bad ROI overall to relevel the bots constantly (especially if they get caught during leveling too).

Basically have to make it worse and worse ROI for botters to make it a bigger hassle releveling constantly and very little overall uptime on the bots (since it does take them resources and time to get all the gear too for the bot to be able to effectively gather things or to even generate crafted goods)

[Kes13a]

Ya, the ban waves don't really do anything to the main issues fueling RMT and the like either. And thats 2.5 days of them not generating money. If they were actively hitting the accounts on the weekly, losing 1/3 of a week of bot activity on all or most of their bots would make it a bad ROI overall to relevel the bots constantly (especially if they get caught during leveling too).

Basically have to make it worse and worse ROI for botters to make it a bigger hassle releveling constantly and very little overall uptime on the bots (since it does take them resources and time to get all the gear too for the bot to be able to effectively gather things or to even generate crafted goods)

I think when they ban shouldnt be just an account ban, run the IP as well. SE's bans are basically lip service, I mean seriously, you ban hacked accounts and the stupid botters, the smarter ones they arent even touching

[TheLoveJenovan]

1. Tierny12, did you receive a response to your message and, if so, would you post it here? At this stage, I'm just hoping for at least an acknowledgement that this is a bad issue on NA and Europe servers.

2. Kes13a, banning by ip could work to some extent, but spoofing IPs and VPNs could circumvent this approach. I think they should ban by the name that appears on the credit card to also avoid virtual credit card numbers. Stolen credit cards wouldn't be too useful to bots, since these can get cancelled after a couple of weeks.

3. Cheating stats. Does anyone know how these stats relate to the bots we're discussing? Has anyone witnessed a market/gathering bot getting banned? Last week, 1,721 accounts were banned for RMT advertising and 2,634 bots were banned for "other" RMT offenses. If the "other" category covers the market and harvesting bots we're discussing, this would be ~39 bots per server (68 servers). I have never seen a market or harvesting bot banned. At the same time, "non-RMT" bot bans are only 1 with 26 accounts suspended, which makes me think the bots we're discussing aren't considered RMT activity. If this is indeed the case, I think they're only enforcing RMT bans at the last transaction between vendor and player.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...92a05c481b70ff

4. I'm not sure SE reads this forum (or the Japanese one). Are there other suggestions for venues in which we could tell the devs this is a problem?

5. Does anyone know if there is an allowed access to the FFXIV API? I looked into writing a script to identify market bots, but the sources of data appear to be quite stale. For example, xivapi.com doesn't post market data anymore, universalis doesn't have fresh data and the companion app api appears to be a violation of the TOS. If SE is willing to give some developers access to the API, writing scripts to identify these bots should be fairly straightforward.

[Kes13a]

True, just the IP would only be a start, account, IP and name on the credit card should be the basics they do.

Yeah, their bans only grab the low hanging, easy to spot in your face kind of bots. and they never post WHERE those bans took place. lets face it, those could all be stats from Japan for all we know and no bans take place here in NA or Europe, which, if you ask me, seems more to be the case.

In all honesty, I think it would take 50% of the player base cancel;ling their subs and listing market/harvest botting as the reason for any word to get to the devs. unless we can get a question to Yoshi P in one of their broadcasts to have him answer, we wont know

[NamidaTekika]

I think when they ban shouldnt be just an account ban, run the IP as well. SE's bans are basically lip service, I mean seriously, you ban hacked accounts and the stupid botters, the smarter ones they arent even touching

Given the nature of dynamic IP addresses, IP bans are relativly ineffective (as also Jenovan mentioned too, VPNs and the like). Now if the game collects like hardware ID or something that might be effective, don't know what the client collects myself. Account bans wouldn't be bad, and honestly it should trigger an investigation into any FC that is like 10 or less that the bot is in IMO.

[Kes13a]

Given the nature of dynamic IP addresses, IP bans are relativly ineffective (as also Jenovan mentioned too, VPNs and the like). Now if the game collects like hardware ID or something that might be effective, don't know what the client collects myself. Account bans wouldn't be bad, and honestly it should trigger an investigation into any FC that is like 10 or less that the bot is in IMO.

especially if 8 of those are under 35 with one omni crafter/harvester in the FC

but again, thats a perfect world where SE would care

[Kes13a]

guardedly happy news everyone...

Someone I reported a while back because I suspected them of being a source of RMT on multiple servers, is apparently no longer with us. no one by that name exists on any of the servers according to Lodestone and I havent seen their brand of sales this week.They werent the undercutting bots however. they would have their sellers get crafted items from the base server, and sell on each world in the group, typically listing for dirt cheap for fast sales using a 'worldname'-'designation'-'roman numeral i-viii' format for their retainers. mind you, I reported them for RMT suspicions, not botting, but its a start