Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks Jojoya,

I didn't get the second part of your post.

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.

I disagree with this statement. The market bot accounts I am referring to don't play the game. They have all the crafters leveled and never level anything else or leave the apartment for months. Maybe it's a real player that likes to amass big numbers of currency in a game. Maybe it's a bot that's generating income for RMT sales.

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).

That's fair. If they identified bots this way, there would be false positives from a small number of outliers. I would still create a rule despite outliers though. In any case, I would think that a ban that resulted from a medical condition could be sorted out pretty easily with an email.

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 don't have to, I just need to sample their activity at regular intervals for long enough. That said, I didn't run the statistics to ensure that I had a 95% confidence interval, but at the end of the day, the accounts I've listed are on all the time for months. I've never seen a break.

I'd be happy to write a script that logs the online activity of specific bots. Frankly, it's something that Square Enix should do. I also don't have much sympathy for them, as there's clearly a problem--identified by many people--and they haven't even given us a response. I'd be forgiving, if they simply posted:

"We recognize that we're getting many bot reports from users that have not led to bans of bots. We want to assure you that we've looked at each and every case, and in most cases, we could not identify the botting activity. Please include more detailed information in your reports."