Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Muutaras]

Now the market for the sale of 480 items on Brunhildr looks like this 5-6 bots are fighting among themselves, and sometimes players are squeezed into the market when things are good prices. Today two bot has completely equalized all prices for 480 items from 50-120k to 25-30k, and one of them always drops prices to the bottom, the only time when you can sell things is when he does not have them in stock and you remain to fight with bots that throw off 1-1000 gils. As they say, the report is not a report, the team to fight in bots can be seen only able to catch fools with unreadable nicknames like *ajfuhfu871h11 1j19h19*.
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And no one asked the developers in interviews, maybe they are actually cooperating with bots? They report about 1500-3000 banned per week, but it looks like only those crooked nicknames that don't even try to hide.
It would be better if they provided a file with nicknames, so that anyone can check who they are banning and for what, as in War Thunder.

[Prrringles]

I can confirm Moogle is run by bots. Basically all the farmable stuff is sold by bots (herbs, minerals, dusts, crystals). Craftables are mainly sold by 2 bot accounts (both listed in the spreadsheet). On Moogle there is also a bot account selling the farmable mounts non-stop (mainly dodo, eldthurs, night pegasus). I have seen no change in the past 6-12 months. All the usual suspects are still very much active.

I have no idea if SE even takes these reports serious. I would say that with all the data available to SE these bot accounts should be easy to identify. Makes you wonder if the bot accounts are just too profitable for SE (9x8 retainers per account) to remove. I can't think of anything else for not instantly removing them from play.

Edit: Just wanted to add that I'm a crafter since basically the launch of FFXIV. Been staring at the market board for years now so I have a decent view on what's going on. I've noticed that bot activity increased drastically since the release of Shadowbringers. Might be due to FFXIV going "mainstream" with all the marketing for Shadowbringers and influx of WoW players. The Moogle server was kind of fine before that. There were bot accounts for raw materials here and there but basically none for craftables. I also feel that servers were kept pretty clean before the launch of Shadowbringers. Reported a few "suspicious" account before and they were all removed within 2-3 weeks.

[Kes13a]

I would be happy if they even reported the worlds they are being banned from.

[Vaen]

Does anyone have any feedback for the way I wrote this report on the issue? Is there any way I could've been clearer? By the way, I replaced the crafting character's actual name with "[REDACTED 4 U]" so hopefully that appeases the "shut up you're going to get banned just for talking about other players' suspicious behavior" crowd.

■World Name
Behemoth
■Zone
Market Board

■Character Name
[REDACTED 4 U]

■Detail
I've observed suspicious activity by this player over the course of months. I can not prove definitively that they are botting and engaging in RMT with the limited amount of information available to me as a player, but I believe if your team investigated them you would be able to see what they're up to. As a player, I've observed at least 49 different retainers selling items crafted by this one player. Of course, they would need multiple characters and possibly multiple accounts to have access to so many retainers. All the [REDACTED 4 U]-crafted items for sale across all these retainers are updated many times every day, throughout the day, in order to have the lowest asking price on the Market Board by 1 gil. In order to constantly update the prices so often on so many items on so many retainers, it seems very likely that they are using 3rd party botting programs to update the prices. All the gear crafted by [REDACTED 4 U] that's being sold across these 49+ retainers must be earning them hundreds and hundreds of millions of gil. I can't think of a reason for so much work to go into amassing this much gil unless it is being sold for real currency. Here is a list of the names of retainers I've observed constantly selling items crafted by [REDACTED 4 U]:
Booodxr
Itssnl
Icded
Sodangerous
Auyuuuuuyyyy
Guesssso
Nottheflu
Dammaaa
Meiavida
Intheoryy
Hugeadvantagee
Degreesoffreed
Lulaaazz
Radioactivestufff
Smallgains
Briggghtliggghttt
Hoisteed
Rtxon
Cannabis-infused
Tttenettt
Mostek
Nocovid
Covidmanagementtt
Focaaaals
Ol'faux
Sheiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
Alexmuffet
Dasamazinssa
Deffrauddd
Wiwwwwaa
Dannnkk
Detevtetedd
Tragedyofthecommons
Bonedryy
Uldarite
Operationcrush
Cooooook
Chlorelol
Willlferal
Suitteewhisper
Lulaaazz
Dugestcirb
Yolomanssssssser
Stridbrit
Intelinside
Someyears
Hoooyaaa
Eeisjohn
Nveedia

This activity is making it difficult and unfun for regular crafters to engage in the game economy, since all the [REDACTED 4 U]-crafted items tend to have the most competitive price most of the time due to their ability to update the prices on so many items, so quickly with whatever ToS-breaking assists they are likely using.

[Prrringles]

Can't we all just regularly (say weekly) spam the same report to the STF? I don't think complaining in this thread alone is going to do it. More collective action should be taken to take these accounts down I guess. Does anyone else have any input on how to efficiently achieve this?

[Kes13a]

Can't we all just regularly (say weekly) spam the same report to the STF? I don't think complaining in this thread alone is going to do it. More collective action should be taken to take these accounts down I guess. Does anyone else have any input on how to efficiently achieve this?

by their 'actions' I think the STF is just bunkered down in Japan and concentrates solely on that market. they have it under control there, they can justify their existence and the NA and EU are just inconvenient headaches that they will ignore and hope the issue solves itself. despite repeated and very clear reports, the botters seem to be grinding out gil for RMT and while they SAY they are against it, it continues unabated. yes, they ban the RMT shouters, they ban likely hundreds of 'Wkjsdhfskj Pjdsjhf' bots, but they are never addressing the actual issue.

Its hard to say they have to be incompetent, so my leaning is that they dont care.. period. or worse, get a cut of RMT sales.

[Voidle]

I feel like the same bots are being reported over and over again, but for whatever reason, SE just isn't banning some of the bots even though they are obviously involved in third-party software. I'm trying to ignore it, but it kind of pisses me off when nothing is being done about obvious cheaters/exploiters.

I don't mind competing against no-life players who hound the MB constantly, but it's clear when certain crafters aren't even leaving their apartment to farm their own materials and no mounts or minions are being purchased on their account. What are they even using the gil for?

Most botted accounts also use randomly generated FFXIV character names, follow very similar Namedate options, and character design. There's no individuality to these characters at all. Their sole reason is to farm gil and it's infuriating.

[Prrringles]

by their 'actions' I think the STF is just bunkered down in Japan and concentrates solely on that market. they have it under control there, they can justify their existence and the NA and EU are just inconvenient headaches that they will ignore and hope the issue solves itself. despite repeated and very clear reports, the botters seem to be grinding out gil for RMT and while they SAY they are against it, it continues unabated. yes, they ban the RMT shouters, they ban likely hundreds of 'Wkjsdhfskj Pjdsjhf' bots, but they are never addressing the actual issue.

Its hard to say they have to be incompetent, so my leaning is that they dont care.. period. or worse, get a cut of RMT sales.

Well, if that is the case - and it probably is - then that is pretty sad. And I wouldn't put it past them since it was the same in FFXI. Their "JP onrly mentality" never changed. It pisses me off because I pay a chunky monthly fee for retainers myself and my stuff sendom sells because of these mb bots. Basically all I do is crafting/selling and the fun is long gone.

I'm sure all fanatic crafters here are in the same sinking boat. If nothing changes then surely the crafting community will die off. I for one am not going to camp the bell 24/7 or continue to spend hours a day crafting stuff that never sells anyway. SE is miserably failing here, what a joke.

[Vaen]

I don't think the devs that seem really invested in the enjoyment of FFXIV like Yoshi-P would want to let something like this continue, since it takes a lot of the fun out of the game for a big subset of players.

Could we work together to talk to the devs about this directly, like during the Fan Fest stream that's supposed to happen early next year? If we coordinated an effort to bring this up and explain this during a Fan Fest Q and A, maybe we could spur them to focus on the NA server bots and finally do something about them.

[Shinzan]

[QUOTE=Jojoya;5427975] The most the GMs will do is forward the information to the STF.

unfortunately you are wrong, I have many communications and several answers, the GM Team is "isolated", they are not allowed to process any feedback, neither to the community, nor to the STF teams or players! at the moment clicking Support Desk -> Contact Us -> Report Cheating is absolutely useless, it has no effect at all, you get a polite answer that it was read and understood and that they are really sorry that you feel so bad but please understand you must report to the STF via the website.