Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Jojoya]

I haven’t seen a bot get banned—are they a particular type of bot that gets banned? Have they banned bots in the last 6 months? I’ve reported market bots and DOL/Ephemeral bots many times.

A notice is posted every week on Lodestone listing the number of accounts banned the previous week. Here's a link to the most recent one:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...b147f391c1c7d7

In the past SE had lumped all botting activity together under RMT activity but recently they separated out the non-RMT activity. We can see that they are doing something though the numbers still aren't as large as we'd hope.

Like most game violations, it appears that SE is not permanently banning accounts on a first offense (unless clearly RMT activity). They're doing temporary suspensions then permanent if the player doesn't stop.

I would love a better way to report suspected bot activity, especially considering most of the details we can offer as players amount more to reasonable speculation than actual proof.

A couple of days ago, I was at the Fort Jobb Aetheryte taking a moment to chat with FC while I was scouting a hunt train. Suddenly, a group of characters all with one of the Legend titles displayed appeared around the Aetheryte at the exact same time. A few seconds later, they all took off in perfect unison in the exact same direction.

Clearly it was a party of bots, likely one of the bot map parties that has begun plaguing the game. It is impossible for a group of characters controlled by different human beings to act together with such perfect precision. A couple are going to be a little faster or a little slower because of ping and just general human reaction time. Player controlled characters would take off in slightly different directions before correcting to head the same direction.

There is no quick report tool I could use to select at least one of them, let alone all of them, to tell SE "this character is displaying behavior characteristic of a bot, please investigate". I'm not going to use the Report RMT option because the activity I witnessed was not directly RMT related though it could be getting used to fuel RMT somewhere done the line. All we have is the cumbersome chain of menu options before you get to "Report Cheating" and it would have taken me a considerable amount of time to try to chase the party down to collect names then fill out the support ticket. I didn't bother since there was a good chance they'd be done and gone before I could track them down.

Even a simple change so the current Report RMT quick option becomes "Report RMT/bot activity" would be an improvement.

They have to be making money from subs because there are market bots that have operated for 6-12 months or more with impunity, and these are paying accounts.

There are different types of bots involved. The vast majority of bots are getting run from the accounts set up with the stolen payment information.

The market bots you're referring to are generally operated by "real" players using bot software to automate some of their game play. Yes, they're legitimately subscribed but they're also very small in number compared to the total player base. If SE had some sort of proof they are botting, they would ban the account because losing a couple of dozen subscriptions paid by cheaters is not a big deal in a game with close to a million active subscribers.

By definition, an account playing continuously and actively (i.e. not AFK) for more than 36 hours is not a human. A human can’t do that.

Where is that definition listed? I can't seem to find it anywhere in dictionaries or even in online medical references? Human beings can be capable of amazing things over short periods of time (which would include something like 36 hours). Sometimes it happens as a consequence of medical problems (one of my old WoW friends was hooked up to bags and frequently would remain awake 48-60 hours straight thanks to pain and discomfort from cancer treatment gone wrong).

They can't keep up those patterns of behavior consistently for weeks, though. Eventually the body breaks down enough that the brain forces it to rest.

Also, how do you know those accounts are operating continuously and actively for more than 36 hours if you're not doing the same yourself and at the same location they are so you can be constantly watching them?

I'm willing to bet those accounts, even if being run with bot software, aren't displaying the activity you describe. They will have breaks in activity as they run out of supplies and need human oversight directing them what to do next, or enter into off peak hours where there's little reason to keep monitoring marketboard prices every minute when once an hour is sufficient.

SE is going to make certain they have enough proof before they take action. Gaming companies already get enough grief for taking actions against accounts because of false positives. Better for them to spend an extra month making certain it's a bot than to watch your friend have to fight to get a ban overturned because SE felt pressured to start banning people just to keep the vocal minority content.