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

[Prrringles]

best way to check is through Lodestone. If they are banned, they disappear. There is a ring that operates on the Crystal data center and the lead "crafter" disappeared, subsequently because they only removed the head and not the network the new crafter bot had little trouble reactivating under a new name. I was temporarily full of joy when Aether Amazon disappeared. they reappeared unfortunately under a new name, which since they are still active... I wont post, but pretty sure crafters on Crystal know who I am talking about.

Didn't know that. Oh well, time to give up anyway. SE did us dirty and nothing will change. They will just deal with it the "Japanese way" -- ignore there is a problem.

[Liam_Harper]

I decided to do some gathering recently to prep for the patch and discovered the same gathering bot that was going 24/7 on timed nodes a month and a half ago is still going. I've also been working on the Blessed Tools recently and selling off most of the gear and noticed one of the main Neo-Ishgardian bots on my server is actually dipping into the market for thousands of items. Everything from lv40 cloth gear to lv62 accessories to lv25 leather gear and so on I'd keep seeing that crafter name pop up.

It's not so much that Enix can't fix it right now that I dislike, more that they aren't treating it like a serious issue. There's so little communication. No plans or measures or increase to the STF or even a "we are aware of the issue and are working hard to resolve it". Reports do nothing far too often, they need to be clear on what information they need to confirm a bot or take action otherwise we're wasting our time. This is a major widespread issue and the lack of action is basically encouragement to bot. It sends a message that it's similar to ACT, don't tell and you'll be fine.

[Anhra]

Didn't know that. Oh well, time to give up anyway. SE did us dirty and nothing will change. They will just deal with it the "Japanese way" -- ignore there is a problem.

Amusingly, according to the credits of FFXIV (which are currently arround 3 hours long btw), the Japanese Servers do have a 3 Person Team who's sole purpose is to deal with bots which works to a degree that RMT over there is quite a rarity.

[Shinzan]

Amusingly, according to the credits of FFXIV (which are currently arround 3 hours long btw), the Japanese Servers do have a 3 Person Team who's sole purpose is to deal with bots which works to a degree that RMT over there is quite a rarity.

I'm also in those credits, and I have started fighting them in a little cave somewhat left of Gridania in the original game already in October 2010, in those days it was no problem posting screenshots with names, the original team had more decisive power and the bots were gone after a week ... and did not appear again in the original game!


good luck and have a safe journey!

[Kes13a]

Amusingly, according to the credits of FFXIV (which are currently arround 3 hours long btw), the Japanese Servers do have a 3 Person Team who's sole purpose is to deal with bots which works to a degree that RMT over there is quite a rarity.

As far as everyone seems to be aware.. that Japanese 3 person team is all there seems to be.

which is why myself and not just a few others, think NA and EU have little attention because there is not a dedicated teams for them.

and I dont think there is an argument to be made that 3 people can deal with all the reports... or that there wouldnt be enough work on NA and EU if they hired teams for those regions so they dont have to worry about language or cultural barriers...

[KageTokage]

RMT isn't a problem on JP, but a cursory glance at the FC rankings on their servers strongly suggests that bot farming coalitions are still a thing on their end as well.

[Prrringles]

RMT isn't a problem on JP, but a cursory glance at the FC rankings on their servers strongly suggests that bot farming coalitions are still a thing on their end as well.

I have a character on Mana and farm bots are doing their business on JP servers as well. The infinite stacks of crystals and materials from the ckjcdskojf retainers are there. There are just no market board bots that I am aware of. There is only 1 conclusion to all this and that is that SE does not care. They probably think bots are needed to keep the supply going and the economy alive. The STF must be pretty useless to be honest. v

"Hi honey, how was your day at work?
- It was great! I did nothing all year and even got a raise"

Seriously, if they put me in their team the server would be cleaned of all this trash within weeks. How hard can it be. So yeah, forget it guys.

EDIT: I even write my reports to the STF in Japanese (I'm fluent) to make sure they get the point. Nothing happened since..idk..March? They only thing that happened was me getting an official warning for calling someone a doodoo. SE not giving a single toss is a straight out insult to their (crafter) community. Also note that the crafters (us) are their best paying customers with all our retainers. Don't expect any "communications" from the SE team btw. Japanese are not known for their strong and direct communication/action. I lived and worked in Japan for over 10 years so have a good insight in how things work (or don't work lol) in Japan. Over those years I reported a few petty crimes (mostly shoplifting or harrassment) I witnessed and reported it to the Police. First response from them always was "are you sure?", "could you have been mistaken?". I'm sure the STF operates the same way. I love Japan but the Japanese are the most naive people I have ever seen.

[Sqwall]

I have also increased my efforts to linking retainers to the player making the item, and 9 times out of 10 the originator of the item is nothing out of the ordinary.

But you when you start to see MASSIVE item dumps or 99 stacks or an entire market board of an item taking up the first initial listing....THAT'S suspicious. Not saying someone should be convicted of botting.....but investigated. And let the subsequent data prove the behavior of the originator.

Are they in a zone long enough to collect that many items? Are they staying within the bounds of the zone? How many jobs do they have leveled? How often are they on? How long are they on? Are they moving LARGE amounts of GIL to other players? How many times per hour do they adjust their prices and by how much?

These are the questions I want them to use when hunting the bot's down and REMOVING them without a shadow of a doubt. It is very hard to compete with a computer program when putting in a lot of work to legitimately craft something and make a profit. I reported numerous suspicious names and have actually cleaned up the boards for maybe 2-3 days. But then they are replaced with another non-sensical name originator with 5 retainers.

I want them to bring in the bounty hunters like they implemented in FFXI, and if your listed of KNOWN botting you will be hunted down by an insanely OP NPC. This really put the brakes on RMT in FFXI, didn't stop it completely, but showed the botting community they will not be tolerated. It was pretty funny to see bot's waiting on a NM pop and literally 3 min before the NM was scheduled to pop any player on the bounty list would be "murdered" by an NPC that was on patrol around the NM area with 500% normal run speed. Freaking hilarious to put a stop to the gil farming operation, and the AH did stabilize back from a HYPER inflated pricing. You no longer saw items priced at 40mil or 120mil price tags down to something like 1mil or 3mil.

[Angelhearth]

I have also increased my efforts to linking retainers to the player making the item, and 9 times out of 10 the originator of the item is nothing out of the ordinary.

But you when you start to see MASSIVE item dumps or 99 stacks or an entire market board of an item taking up the first initial listing....THAT'S suspicious. Not saying someone should be convicted of botting.....but investigated. And let the subsequent data prove the behavior of the originator.

Are they in a zone long enough to collect that many items? Are they staying within the bounds of the zone? How many jobs do they have leveled? How often are they on? How long are they on? Are they moving LARGE amounts of GIL to other players? How many times per hour do they adjust their prices and by how much?

These are the questions I want them to use when hunting the bot's down and REMOVING them without a shadow of a doubt. It is very hard to compete with a computer program when putting in a lot of work to legitimately craft something and make a profit. I reported numerous suspicious names and have actually cleaned up the boards for maybe 2-3 days. But then they are replaced with another non-sensical name originator with 5 retainers.

I want them to bring in the bounty hunters like they implemented in FFXI, and if your listed of KNOWN botting you will be hunted down by an insanely OP NPC. This really put the brakes on RMT in FFXI, didn't stop it completely, but showed the botting community they will not be tolerated. It was pretty funny to see bot's waiting on a NM pop and literally 3 min before the NM was scheduled to pop any player on the bounty list would be "murdered" by an NPC that was on patrol around the NM area with 500% normal run speed. Freaking hilarious to put a stop to the gil farming operation, and the AH did stabilize back from a HYPER inflated pricing. You no longer saw items priced at 40mil or 120mil price tags down to something like 1mil or 3mil.

Well, then I should definitely be investigated. I sell 6 to 8 stacks of 99 of raw material on 8 of my retainers. It doesn't sell much anymore though, since I don't bother haggling over prices that doesn't make it worth while doing any gathering. I also sell 2 of each of certain housing things, on each retainer, but it's the same there, no money to be made, so I don't bother making new ones for peanuts. What I DO earn gil on atm is sending the retainers on my other 4 characters out on quick explorations and selling whatever they bring back. Having 36 retainers doing that, and checking 4 or 5 times a day, brings in around a million a day, although that has also been reduced lately.

[Prrringles]

Why do we even bother? No one can compete with automated farming/crafting/undercutting. It's very clear SE does not give one toss about cleaning this mess up, so why bother? Crafting is dead anyway. Everyone and his mom have all crafters on 80 thanks to Ishgard. Everyone uses the same 2 button macro's thanks to reddit/youtube. Almost everyone trying to make gil is salty and annoyed due to aforementioned, so again, why bother?