Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks Commander_Justitia,

I don't agree that they should just allow bots. The only reason to play an MMORPG, instead of an RPG, is to play with other players. I don't want to play with bots, and I don't think other players want to either. It ruins the game. It ruins the marketboard; it ruins duties; it ruins the experience in achieving anything in-game.

A common refrain in these discussions, not necessarily from you, is that it's a pointless endeavor because bots will continually pop back up. It's not an either-or proposition. To some extent, it would be like saying that catching bank theft is pointless because theft at banks will inevitably happen. They could at least get the low hanging fruit to begin with. Many of the bots are extremely easy to detect right now, and I could write a simple script to identify most of them, if they gave me access to their API.

The other point that comes up is that it's too costly to address this issue. I agree that it costs money to address botting, and it's likely cheaper to ignore the problem because it won't ultimately decrease subscriptions.

SE has money. Their FFXIV quarterly profits* are on the order of $620M. They have a 20M registered user base. If we conservatively say that 2M of those a paying subscriptions, and subscriptions are $13 a month, then that's ~$312M a year ($78M per quarter). My guess (based on my work in supercomputing) is that infrastructure is $30-50M per year, so that leaves $262-282M. That's enough to pay for a staff over 2000 full-time employees at 100k per year (average). They have 300 dev staff--and definitely not 1700 support staff. 1700 support staff would be enough to have 20 full-time employees per server (68 servers) while having 340 full-time staff to manage other operations.

They're just being greedy.

* https://mmos.com/news/square-enix-an...uly 2%2C 2019.

[Commander_Justitia]

I don't agree that they should just allow bots. The only reason to play an MMORPG, instead of an RPG, is to play with other players. I don't want to play with bots, and I don't think other players want to either. It ruins the game. It ruins the marketboard; it ruins duties; it ruins the experience in achieving anything in-game.

Many of the bots are extremely easy to detect right now, and I could write a simple script to identify most of them, if they gave me access to their API.
[...]
They're just being greedy.

I mean it is obvious they never will allow it, it would be admitting total defeat against them. But funnily it worked out in some older MMO which were very grindy and it made those games mildly enjoyable, I know this won't compare to FFXIV, as grinding is usually not needed for PvE content for example.

The problem I see is, there are (almost) the same type of bots since the release. They teleport around the map, they talk to the same NPC, in the past they unlocked the same crossskills for Blm (unlimited resources; when TP was a thing) so they could heal themselves with Physik and got Raging Strikes from Archer just so they could clear stuff faster. They still did that when it wasn't even useful anymore. They have their farming spots at specific locations on the map.
As you say they are extremely easy to detect. This happened for 7 years and they still don't think it is necessary to do something. They mentioned in some live letter or event that they don't wanna start a war with the botters, where normal players have to suffer because the anti cheat code gets too complex and influences game performance... But well how much blatant botting can you allow, how many hundreds bots are okay to pass through a mainstory npc during one hour? They start to go on other worldservers than their original home server too, I assume it helps them evade detection.
So in conclusion I feel like they gonna keep using that excuse "old code= servers implode, cant do much, its not that bad yet, just ignore and report" when there are cases where bots never got banned after years lmao.
This game got more popular recently, I assume sub numbers to be at least in the 1-2 million now too, more players attract more RMT/Botters as well, as they see their demand for RMT Gil is rising, every other MMO loses gil value over time as well and this game seems to be in a deflation right now. Some items rarity didn't change at all, but it becomes all cheaper. This is so unusual for MMORPG's. But it just shows that it has become hard to sell something to a good price, when a lot of it is in the hands of bot users.

The game has almost reached its demise, I don't see it happening anymore after 7 years, even though I feel they should.


And to @Jojoya: With outside evidence I mean stuff like socialmedia/discord screenshots mostly, people have been creating new accounts with the same avatar of persons they wanna talk dirty about.
Something like a Twitch clip is ofc way more useful than a screenshot of something like that.
If you compare the numbers with the ones of 2 years ago then you notice they are actually same or even lower. And botting is still only in the single or double digits. I don't look at those reports with much confidence, they would suggest that there is no real botting problem which is not the reality.
And STF used to be slow, idk maybe its changed - but for something like Ishgard Restoration where you only have a bit more than a week to act upon (before rewards are send out), it won't be able to achieve its purpose.
I guess chargebacks are considered under prohibited actvities aswell..It is obvious they don't wanna tell too much about how they operate and what they do, it might scare people from doing it after all, but I would take those numbers with a big grain of salt.

[NamidaTekika]

The game has almost reached its demise, I don't see it happening anymore after 7 years, even though I feel they should.

That could be a summary of your whole post. That statement makes it obvious you don't see any point in any improvements or attempts to combat things that bother the player base. Why even comment about it if you are basically in a "Eh its dying doesn't matter." mentality.

Those of us who are playing and don't see it as 'dying' or dead or end of life want the game to be as good as it can be and if possible to grow and those who play or might join to be able to have good experiences and not have to deal with things like bots wrecking things they'd like to get involved in.

[Commander_Justitia]

That could be a summary of your whole post. That statement makes it obvious you don't see any point in any improvements or attempts to combat things

I actually do see a point, like I recommend it at the end of the quoted sentence too.
I don't see it happening anymore because of what our game developer did in the past about it, like stopping bots to freely teleport/speedhack around the open world map would be a start.

And how TheLoveJenovan pointed it out, it seems to be less an issue on JP servers. And even if their numbers aren't as high as EU/NA, they are still the most hardcore/dedicated players on JP and the companies home market..

[Kes13a]

I actually do see a point, like I recommend it at the end of the quoted sentence too.
I don't see it happening anymore because of what our game developer did in the past about it, like stopping bots to freely teleport/speedhack around the open world map would be a start.

And how TheLoveJenovan pointed it out, it seems to be less an issue on JP servers. And even if their numbers aren't as high as EU/NA, they are still the most hardcore/dedicated players on JP and the companies home market..

my theory is because the developer play there, so would be more likely to see it as an issue there. I feel the NA team people are not communicating how much of an issue it is becoming here.

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks, Commander_Justitia,

As you say they are extremely easy to detect. This happened for 7 years and they still don't think it is necessary to do something. They mentioned in some live letter or event that they don't wanna start a war with the botters, where normal players have to suffer because the anti cheat code gets too complex and influences game performance... But well how much blatant botting can you allow, how many hundreds bots are okay to pass through a mainstory npc during one hour? They start to go on other worldservers than their original home server too, I assume it helps them evade detection.

I think they made some poor design decisions that have enabled bots. There are other MMO games out there where botting is almost absent. I played Warframe for a year and got pretty high up (rank 25), and I never noticed a bot once. A big part of that comes from how the game is designed.

I'd personally be happy if they restricted some features to greatly eliminate bots. For example, I'd be happy if they removed gil transfers between players. I'd be happy if they removed item transfers as well. I asked my FC about this, and they told me gil transfers are useful for dividing up sales from map loot and for combining money for an FC house. There are solutions to the latter problem, like having an FC bank for FC purchases that you couldn't draw from for non-FC purchases. The elimination of item transfers would preclude potion exchanges for raids, but I think using the marketboard for this purpose would be good enough.

In the end, I believe FFXIV was made for the Japanese market, in which these problems aren't as prevalent, and they view the NA and Europe markets as just gravy. MMOs developed by western companies take botting a lot more seriously.

[Kes13a]

I'd personally be happy if they restricted some features to greatly eliminate bots. For example, I'd be happy if they removed gil transfers between players. I'd be happy if they removed item transfers as well. I asked my FC about this, and they told me gil transfers are useful for dividing up sales from map loot and for combining money for an FC house. There are solutions to the latter problem, like having an FC bank for FC purchases that you couldn't draw from for non-FC purchases. The elimination of item transfers would preclude potion exchanges for raids, but I think using the marketboard for this purpose would be good enough.

I think the first restriction should be anything you get on another world should be bound, plain and simple. if I go to another world, I am going there to buy things for me I would say 100% of the time, either materials or gear. I realize not everyone does that of course, sometimes you are getting it for a friend or something. maybe....

being about to bring over hundreds of items is for no other purpose than gil generation, and suspect that a majority of that gil goes towards RMT selling