I give up, the bots win AKA: My flight is scheduled for departure

[Jojoya]

Industries are motivated by profit. Them stepping back from it isnt likely cause "Ah we cant be bothered, even if it costs us millions in profits." Given the age of MMOs, there is likely a background reason were not privy too.

Furthermore, I would hazard a pretty good guess that bot numbers probably increased the more simplistic the game became. SEs approach to making all the low to mid tier casual content that requires no real input makes it far easier for bots to operate in that space. The harder//complex the content, the more difficult it is for bots to utilize it for profit.

Bot numbers would also have increased because of the rapid increase in the player base in 2019. More players means more potential customers.

If the customers weren't there, the bots wouldn't be there because they wouldn't be making money.

I have no problems restarting at zero gil if thats what it took to eliminate bots and cheaters.

You and I have no problems making gil.

Other players do whether it's lack of time, lack of knowledge or lack of interest in wanting to go the effort.

The problem is, a reset isn't going to reset cheating or bots. The reset would actually bring bots out in greater numbers as players who have lost what they had go "screw it, I'm not going to go to all that effort to get back the gil I lost. I'll just buy it, I've got plenty of money". WoW Classic has had a massive botting problem because players just couldn't be bothered to farm their gold and were more than willing to pay the gold sellers to get it.

[Melichoir]

I'm more inclined to chalk it up to genuine incompetence when some major exploits like the Ungarmax glitch went untouched for upwards of a month strictly due to miscommunication between the English and JP teams.

The fact that there is no English branch of the STF means that all and any reports made against cheaters in general are having to be translated then relayed to their horribly understaffed JP team which honestly makes me question how many of the reports are even reaching them in the first place.

I would go with incompetence if it remained local. But since were looking at a global market, and the fact that global servers in the US and EU have more players and likely generating more profit, ignoring an issue that we believe is heavily detrimental to their bottom line just because theyre in another country doesnt line up with business basics 101. This isnt a matter of localization either where they have to tip toe around laws. In the US, for example, the ToS provided allows SE to do virtually anything it wants. We dont 'own' the game, we lease it. So if they want to ban people cause wtf-ever, they can, and theres little you can do about it. Not saying itd be smart, but its an obvious option they have. I also have to ask if there are no bots and RMT sellers on JP servers, because if there are, then you can pretty much rule out translation/communication issues.

Then, you have to think about this in terms of the MMO market broadly. SE isnt some outlier. Botting and what not is prevalent in every single MMO. So for US based companies where you dont have translation issues, why do they still have bot issues? This is why I dont buy into the 'incompetence/lazy' issue. Nothing seems to lend itself to that other then our dissatisfaction with how fast/well botting is being handled.

Speaking of Ungarmax, simply chalking it up to "Oh just a communication error and pure incompetence" isnt accurate.

-Ungarmax is implemented in internal build along with command missions for 4.1.
-Due to action implementation oversight, bug allowing usage of Ungarmax outside of command missions is introduced. This is an oversight on their end. This happens a lot more than people think. Sometimes bugs get through.
-Bug remains undiscovered by development and operations teams, and is ultimately pushed live.
-Bug is discovered by players and is intentionally exploited to execute Ungarmax outside of command missions.
-Player executing Ungarmax outside of command missions is observed by another player, who reports it three times as cheating.
-Reports of cheating are received by the Special Task Force, which begins to monitor the reported player.
-The STF is unable to confirm the usage of third-party tools to facilitate cheating and ceases monitoring the reported player. As explained by YoshiP, the STF team didnt consider the possibility of an ingame bug, but third party manipulation. When tehy couldnt find it, (and since the reports came from one player repeatedly) they dismissed the issue.
-At a later date, the reported player is confirmed to have used a third-party tool to cheat and is permanently banned. Is this related to Ungarmax specifically or a different case by happenstance? This isnt clear. Either way, they may have considered the issue resolved because the player was banned.
-The Ungarmax bug remains unknown to the development, operations, and QA teams for an extended period of time.
-On the afternoon of 2/27 JST, information regarding the Ungarmax bug is spread by several players aware of it.
-On the evening of 2/27 JST, the development, operations, and QA teams commence an investigation and discussion as to how to proceed.
-At 2/28 4 PM JST, the servers are taken down for emergency maintenance.
-Two hours later, at 6 PM JST, the servers are brought online and the Ungarmax bug has been addressed.
-The work flow for the development teams is revised in an effort to eliminate similar bugs in the future.
-The work flow for the STF and operations teams is revised in an effort to ensure that similar reports are fully investigated.
-Disciplinary actions are planned for players who intentionally and/or repeatedly exploited this bug in order to clear content.

** Note: Italicized text is my thoughts
Source

For an 'incompetent' company, once the QA team becomes aware of the issue, they attack it pretty quickly, fix it, and implement changes from top to bottom to mitigate against future occurrences. When reading the detailed response given, they explain that some oversight had occured. To assume that SE as an entire company is incompetent because of an a single instance of an oversight is no better than saying "They lazy and stupid". Even using Ungarmax as a sign of their incompetence argument isnt fully accurate. It was not as widespread in use as people suggest, and it was eventually fully understood by online resources first discussing the issue, not in game reporting, which points to a SOP issue in regards to the STF and GMs in the game, something they actually addressed. So again, everything actually considered, the actions taken by SE does not strike me as a lazy company who doesnt care. If anything, this response is exactly the response you all want in regards to botting. Once understood, measures are taken to deal with the issue and resolve it.

So we are still stuck with the Primary Question: "Why does SE, whether intentional or not, allow botting to some extent in their game?" Even if you want to lay some blame on STF, it is very clear that SE isnt lazy at HQ, and no one here is seriously going to humor the idea that SE isnt aware of botting in its game.

[KageTokage]

Perhaps it is not incompetence that's the issue and more that they need such overwhelmingly undeniable evidence of cheating/illicit activity that they simply aren't willing to ban the vast majority of bots.

There was a noticeable increase in the number of bans during the week of the second Ishgard Restoration rankings where the Diadem bots had gone mainstream, but were prone to glitching out and getting stuck on terrain or in an endless loop of mounting/dismounting. People actually got removed from the rankings for cheating then, but come the third ranking session the bots had been refined, were no longer glitching out, and the number of bans remained as low as always.

[Jijifli]

The Limit Break your grand company trainees use when you're in a dungeon with them. There was an exploit that allowed you to use it in REGULAR dungeons... People were using it to cheese trials and such.

More specifically, it was more commonly seen being used in O6S, where you could unequip your gear until right when the fight starts, full heal because the boss takes 10 seconds, eat the room wide, heal again, and you'd have LB1 due to LB bonus on critical healing, lined up perfectly to go with openers.

[MonsutaMan]

[Axxion]

Hahahahaha well that explains that~
Thanks.

time stamped it for you

https://youtu.be/OkiVOdj5H08?t=2604

[ItMe]

time stamped it for you

https://youtu.be/OkiVOdj5H08?t=2604

Oh my gosh it's even funnier than I imagined!
gg ez

[Melichoir]

Perhaps it is not incompetence that's the issue and more that they need such overwhelmingly undeniable evidence of cheating/illicit activity that they simply aren't willing to ban the vast majority of bots.

There was a noticeable increase in the number of bans during the week of the second Ishgard Restoration rankings where the Diadem bots had gone mainstream, but were prone to glitching out and getting stuck on terrain or in an endless loop of mounting/dismounting. People actually got removed from the rankings for cheating then, but come the third ranking session the bots had been refined, were no longer glitching out, and the number of bans remained as low as always.

Yeah the bar could be set to high to get rid of bots, but theres a few problems with that take too. For starters, ToS allows SE to do whatever it wants with very little repercussions legally. So if they think youre a botter negatively impacting the game, they can ban you on that suspicion if they wanted too. Waiting for overwhelming evidence to ban a bot seems a bit to safe if bots are such a negative impact on the game as being suggested. Theyve banned people for less. Then theres how they actually handle banning. Unless Ive misunderstood this, it happens in waves. So collect evidence and ban all at once. Why? And even then, it appears they do actually get the evidence necessary to ban bots without issue, they just dont act upon it. If anything, batch banning like this appears more like a culling effect rather than resolving it completely. Cut down the number of bots rather than outright stop bots.

Then there's the issue of actually detecting them. While I dont have an answer to why bots are so prolific overall, I am skeptical that the entire MMO industry over the past 20+ years havent devised methods to quickly and accurately detect bots. That the best method of finding them is player reporting? Especially when many of you have stated that you can find them with a very basic search. And then even with that consideration, since ban waves do happen, SE must be doing something to find and detect these bots on their end. So they do have some method of finding them that has to be evolving alongside the bots, otherwise ban waves would get subsequently smaller ever time as SEs detection method becomes outdated. Theyre obviously refining their detection methods to pick up bots if the number of bots at the very least remains static as bot complexity increases.

I get that the simplest answer is probably closest to being right, but if bots are so detrimental and literally sapping profit from SE, this would be something that they would address.

[SamSmoot]

If bots can do high end crafting, then it's not hard enough. It needs to be made so it can't be reduced to a sequence of scripted actions.

[Kaurhz]

If bots can do high end crafting, then it's not hard enough. It needs to be made so it can't be reduced to a sequence of scripted actions.

They can already do expert recipes.

Fundamentally speaking, the crafting system isn't complex enough. It has never been complex, and nor will it ever be. It's very limited in dimensions.