Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Kes13a]

as an update to the banned RMT gil generator that I noticed recently banned. not sure if I can post the name of who it was, but I am sure everyone would recognize it if you sell any gear of the boards for any length of time.

Just a notice, the next version is back, they blew up the mp this morning with over 300 items, using the same selling network since the retainer names are the same. Since they are based in my group, on Brynhildr there is little need to bring that many items to Zalera except for generation of gil for RMT purposes.

So.. back on report they go, see how long it takes to get rid of this one. be nice if they took out and banned the network of sellers too.

[Helbara]

As a new player; I actually like the bots. They're the only people using chat which is nice because otherwise I wouldn't have a clue that this was an online game with other players.

[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.

[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

[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.

[Muutaras]

At this point the best they could do is allow botting. They don't have the tools to get cheater/botter and don't wanna get into an arms race with them, because that doesn't generate any money. They should really have a look at how other games make a GM visit a pleasant experience, e.g. when a bug occurs.

@Muutaras The GM won't invest as much time and effort to come to conclusions like you do. It is detrimental anyway because as a GM you would be on a constant witchhunt, if you would work like that. If you accept outside evidence you also risk getting faked information from players that want to see another player banned, as happened in the past. The majority of the cases GM have to deal with include harassment and griefing. And the bans we see are for RMT advertisment mostly from free trial accounts.
By the time a GM sees your report and checks & acts on it, the Restoration rewards will probably be out yet.

When working as a GM, you need to conduct your tests and not refer to the words of the players. Therefore, a witch hunt is inappropriate here. I am an ordinary player who will spend well 30 minutes or an hour to observe the behavior. And not spend several hours flying in invisibility, kicking and teleporting bots to see his reaction to my actions.

And the permission of bots kills the meaning of the game, crafting professions, it can immediately offer the SE to sell ready-made clothes for any profession at any level.
You can fight bots, it would be necessary to have a strong one in this and strength (well, as well as the human factor, and interest in the case, and not wiping your a** for money). In AA on Euro very well GM interact with players, and if you often help in search of bots. You are given the function of marking a player so that the GM can see this player in the world and observe his behavior. If you start to use this function badly, you will simply be banned.

[Kes13a]

There is an argument to be made that players would abuse the system and report people they dont like etc, well, thats where a human GM comes into play and has to do some basic investigating. So yes, the system is likely going to try and be abused.

but is the system not already being abused by cheaters? and we are not talking about silent reports against someone not liked or that they are picking on, we are talking about blatant in your face cheaters that are abusing the system and virtually EVERYONE knows it. I believe that harms the game and the community far more than a bully, or a group of them, making false reports

no one is asking for complete elimination (tho that would be awesome lol) but a real response to a real problem would be a good start. and a vague report on numbers isnt cutting it, because they should be broken down by area, hell, I would love to see BY SERVER before this vague banning report has any meaning to people watching these things daily

[NamidaTekika]

Honestly with GM tools it would be almost brainlessly easy to identify many of the worst offenders. A simple online time report, then start going and observe the longest online times for about 5-10 minutes and you could quickly tell if they are a bot.

That would probably axe a large percentage of them quickly enough. Market ones you could probably just go and look at online vs what zone they've been in the whole time. I've yet to know a REAL person who would sit in one zone for all of their online time. To nuke gathering bots, just head over to Duskbloom spawn and/or Ephemeral node for Levin mint. Watch the bots SWARM. Pick a few to follow and check online times...within like 2 hours you could scythe through the bot population and destroy many of these long standing gil farmers.