I heard the Special Task Force is going to hitt the bots hard now, that the patch has

[Jojoya]

I actually was being serious. GM's are not allowed to handle the bot stuff at all, they will get fired if they try.

Right, bot investigations are outside of their scope of responsibility. STF handles it. In any job, you're generally told not to do things that aren't part of your job responsibility unless requested by a manager who has the authority to ask you to do it. If you do something without authorization you can be terminated.

Basically, people need to stop saying the GMs aren't doing their job because bots exist. SE decides whether or not the GMs are doing their job correctly. If you feel SE should be doing more as a company to tackle the bot situation, that's a fair opinion to state.

[Angelhearth]

Right, bot investigations are outside of their scope of responsibility. STF handles it. In any job, you're generally told not to do things that aren't part of your job responsibility unless requested by a manager who has the authority to ask you to do it. If you do something without authorization you can be terminated.

Basically, people need to stop saying the GMs aren't doing their job because bots exist. SE decides whether or not the GMs are doing their job correctly. If you feel SE should be doing more as a company to tackle the bot situation, that's a fair opinion to state.

My guess to the root of the problem - and it's a guess - is that those that sold on the market board, the pros that kept within the rules, earned too much. I easily made 1-2 million a day, and I didn't even work hard for it. Those that really worked hard could easily make 5 million a day. SE saw this and found it to be unacceptable, so they decided to let the bots run free, to keep the prices down. This is a short term solution, as it will have unwanted consequences, something SE probably will find out, if they haven't already. In addition, if I understand it correctly, this isn't much of a problem on the Japanese servers, because the Japanese players are much more willing to follow rules than us westerners, who basically, in most cases, will disregard any rule, if we can get away with it, so SE don't really care much about it. To explain this means I have to get into the word 外人 (gaijin), something I'm hesitant to do, as it's a very sensitive subject for the Japanese.

[Jojoya]

My guess to the root of the problem - and it's a guess - is that those that sold on the market board, the pros that kept within the rules, earned too much. I easily made 1-2 million a day, and I didn't even work hard for it. Those that really worked hard could easily make 5 million a day. SE saw this and found it to be unacceptable, so they decided to let the bots run free, to keep the prices down. This is a short term solution, as it will have unwanted consequences, something SE probably will find out, if they haven't already. In addition, if I understand it correctly, this isn't much of a problem on the Japanese servers, because the Japanese players are much more willing to follow rules than us westerners, who basically, in most cases, will disregard any rule, if we can get away with it, so SE don't really care much about it. To explain this means I have to get into the word 外人 (gaijin), something I'm hesitant to do, as it's a very sensitive subject for the Japanese.

SE still cares. It's just very hard to get a handle on the RMT/bot problem when players are so insistent on cheating.

Not that it's going to make anyone here feel better, but there's a severe botting problem in Classic WoW right now as well - but only on the NA servers. WoW players have the advantage of add-ons and websites that track AH data over time so you can see what's going on. Blizzard had a ban wave that hit 74k accounts back in June that caused the NA markets to adjust for about 2 weeks. Then the bots reappeared and prices started crashing as supply started skyrocketing again. Blizzard did change how some of the most heavily hit nodes spawned but that evidently just made a small difference until the bots adjusted again.

If Blizzard, with their aggressive and fairly well publicized anti-bot efforts, is struggling in their home market, is it any wonder that SE might be struggling with bots in the same market?

Ultimately, if you want to kill RMT and botting then you need to get rid of the players who take advantage of those things. As long as there are buyers, there will be sellers. If there were no buyers, the sellers wouldn't be able to stay in business.

[Angelhearth]

SE still cares. It's just very hard to get a handle on the RMT/bot problem when players are so insistent on cheating.

Not that it's going to make anyone here feel better, but there's a severe botting problem in Classic WoW right now as well - but only on the NA servers. WoW players have the advantage of add-ons and websites that track AH data over time so you can see what's going on. Blizzard had a ban wave that hit 74k accounts back in June that caused the NA markets to adjust for about 2 weeks. Then the bots reappeared and prices started crashing as supply started skyrocketing again. Blizzard did change how some of the most heavily hit nodes spawned but that evidently just made a small difference until the bots adjusted again.

If Blizzard, with their aggressive and fairly well publicized anti-bot efforts, is struggling in their home market, is it any wonder that SE might be struggling with bots in the same market?

Ultimately, if you want to kill RMT and botting then you need to get rid of the players who take advantage of those things. As long as there are buyers, there will be sellers. If there were no buyers, the sellers wouldn't be able to stay in business.

There is a much easier way to get ridd of the market bots, give everyone the same opportunities as the market bots. As to the harvesting bots, you need to put in place programs that will detect repetitiveness, make all node spawns totally random, get the program to ask the suspected bot a question and if it isn't answered within a few seconds, ban the account, the whole damned account, not the character. You could also start with banning the gil-buyers, not only the sellers. For the sellers it's a minor inconvenience, for the buyers it's their life. And lastly, you can start selling gil directly to the players, or change the way housing works, and make it into a quest to get a house.

[NamidaTekika]

There is a much easier way to get ridd of the market bots, give everyone the same opportunities as the market bots. As to the harvesting bots, you need to put in place programs that will detect repetitiveness, make all node spawns totally random, get the program to ask the suspected bot a question and if it isn't answered within a few seconds, ban the account, the whole damned account, not the character. You could also start with banning the gil-buyers, not only the sellers. For the sellers it's a minor inconvenience, for the buyers it's their life. And lastly, you can start selling gil directly to the players, or change the way housing works, and make it into a quest to get a house.

Not sure about banning on one fail, I think the gathering bots could pretty easily be taken out by different random effects coming up that you had to use an ability to mitigate or you lose the node. Nothing crazy but injecting randomness in would massively deter the bots but players wouldn't really be effected. Give the benefit of additional gather or gives a bonus to GP or something by successfully hitting it but missing it just makes you lose the node. Or similar to your idea just have something that every X number of nodes theres a stacking percentage to bring up said question, failing the question gives a flag similar to missing a group queue. Once you accrue like 5 failures you are locked out of gathering for like 12-24 hours. It wouldn't ban but it would kill any ROI for the bots since that lockout would make them less effective at gathering than a player. Making the percentage stack like 0.1% each gather after x number and percentage is reset after a successful answer, but not on a failure, so queries more on people failing them or something would help keep it from coming up on actual players doing a grind.

[Charlotte_Wells]

An insta-ban if someone "doesnt answer in seconds" Then hope that you never have to go for toilet

Some things that could work:
- Set a limit on logins per day (High enough so nobody with a lot of disconnects or RP chars would be affected)
- Add a cooldown on price adjustments - this could also make the entire marketboard more interesting.
- Add a secret achievement for a specific amounts of time or items gathered per day and use this as internal alert.
- Add more superrare materials that you only get in limited quantities from DoW / DoM dutys.

Oh and of course: If the marketboard doesnt use an Encryption: Add Encryption.

[NamidaTekika]

An insta-ban if someone "doesnt answer in seconds" Then hope that you never have to go for toilet

Some things that could work:
- Set a limit on logins per day (High enough so nobody with a lot of disconnects or RP chars would be affected)
- Add a cooldown on price adjustments - this could also make the entire marketboard more interesting.
- Add a secret achievement for a specific amounts of time or items gathered per day and use this as internal alert.
- Add more superrare materials that you only get in limited quantities from DoW / DoM dutys.

Oh and of course: If the marketboard doesnt use an Encryption: Add Encryption.

I do like the idea of super rare limited daily mats for something. Seems like that could make for competitive items (kinda like submersible items and the like)

And I'm on the same agreement on the 'ban immediately', cooldown on price adjustments I like too, if you had to wait like 10 seconds to update another price it would certainly throw off automated things and not really bother normal people
The time thing could be interesting with the acheivements and flags the acct in some fashion though warning the bots to chill seems meh on that.
Limit on logins per day could you elaborate on?

[Charlotte_Wells]

For those limited mats:
It would also give others the chance to get some gil too and could help to keep prices up for a bit longer and to avoid massproduction. Like with those expensive beast-tribe mats back in HW.

I think "achievements" that get unlocked when someone does an insane amount of specific things in a given time would be a great way to get an bot alert. And would be easy to implement. This would work for all computer systems and as it is an achievement it's not against privacy.

About the limited amount of logins: I assume an account with MB Bot is constantly rotating trough all 8 Alts. A limited amount of logins could prevent them from doing that.

[Jojoya]

Not sure about banning on one fail, I think the gathering bots could pretty easily be taken out by different random effects coming up that you had to use an ability to mitigate or you lose the node. Nothing crazy but injecting randomness in would massively deter the bots but players wouldn't really be effected. Give the benefit of additional gather or gives a bonus to GP or something by successfully hitting it but missing it just makes you lose the node. Or similar to your idea just have something that every X number of nodes theres a stacking percentage to bring up said question, failing the question gives a flag similar to missing a group queue. Once you accrue like 5 failures you are locked out of gathering for like 12-24 hours. It wouldn't ban but it would kill any ROI for the bots since that lockout would make them less effective at gathering than a player. Making the percentage stack like 0.1% each gather after x number and percentage is reset after a successful answer, but not on a failure, so queries more on people failing them or something would help keep it from coming up on actual players doing a grind.

Randomness isn't going to deter a bot. There will be failures at first but once the bot programmers know the list of conditions, they can program the bots to react faster than a player could (though they could also add in a delay to simulate player reaction time to a small degree). The randomness would likely end up deterring players far more than the bots simply because it gets annoying and makes the content less fun to do. That's why so many players decide to turn to using bots in the first place - they find the requirements of the content too annoying to do themselves.

What is generated through programming code can be identified and countered through programming code. That's the ongoing battle between game developers and bot programmers.

[Arazehl]

You all talk like this is new problem that only FFXIV deals with. Botting has been around since the dawn when the very first mmo launched. Make virtual money, in a virtual world and profit from it. Be it in game or outside the game. If the mmo brands haven't solve the problem after all this time, don't expect it will get better any time soon. If they had a solid solution, don't you think they would have solved it long before now?

It will never entirely go away. A bigger, better bot is always there to take it's place.