The Botridden Land, Eureka Pyros

[CandyTicklefingers]

Agreed, but now the in game option is sending me here, telling me this is the place too complain also. Other wise I wouldn't have even known this existed. I've been reporting them too the special task force each day, and yet too no avail. It's sad that other players are now using the same method they were complaining about previously ;(. But I guess if they see the bots not receive any penalty or removal, guess they think it's a good way too make gil I have not put the names of the players that I believe arent RMTs into the special task force but I have asked them too take a look at the instance. The 16 on the actual fate 24/7 shouldn't be rocket science too work out they are bots, who knows maybe this area of the game is under staffed, or the number of bots is too great too address. Thank you for your reply, and I will keep reporting them too the Special task force, until I think it's hopeless. But I truly don't think I am far off that.

[Curisu]

You can quite simple find out who is a bot.
Port the potential bot out of the instance in the house close to the pier and see how they react.

1 Person can do this on all DCs within a hour. Whats the price for it? probably 50$ worth of work and you banned all active Pyros bots.
Now the bot makers have to adjust but a human will probably able to observe the new behaviour .

[ArchlordPie]

You can quite simple find out who is a bot.
Port the potential bot out of the instance in the house close to the pier and see how they react.

1 Person can do this on all DCs within a hour. Whats the price for it? probably 50$ worth of work and you banned all active Pyros bots.
Now the bot makers have to adjust but a human will probably able to observe the new behaviour .

This makes sense until they do this to someone who's paying attention to their bot. This person will watch for a bit, go "there must be a GM doing this" when more bots start showing up one at a time, and either lay low for a bit, or update their bot to recognize when it's been ported and get back into Pyros from where it got ported to.

Pulling other mobs into the bunny fates and trying to de-level the bots that way is probably the most effective thing you could do to counter them, though that also lands you solidly in danger of getting reported for "gameplay disruption" by the bot owner.

[KageTokage]

A lot of bots already have a failsafe that kicks in and either makes them teleport to a specific aetheryte or use Return, then restarts whatever script they currently have running.

I've seen it happen to ones that got stuck in a loop of actions due to latency or some other problem.

[VictorSpoils]

I'm not entirely sure if this is becoming an issue in other data centers, but unfortunately on Light data center farming in Pyros at late hours when there aren't many players around has become a HUGE pain (read: practically impossible) due to the ridiculous amount of bots in the area staying in Pyros' bottom Happy Bunny/Elemental conflict FATE pretty much 24/7.
The players are literally sighing in relief when a new instance begins and the bots have yet to join it!

Is this a thing in other data centers as well?

P.S: People have been reporting them for so long and yet nothing has been done, it's so irritating tbh.
For real, example: out of 14 Players in the instance, only 3 of us are actual players, farming fates and having to deal with fates adapted to 14 people, my burning hatred for these bots knows no bounds anymore lol.

That's nice and all, but how does one figuratively sigh in relief?

[Jijifli]

To report a bot, contacting the STF through the website link is the way to go.

https://support.na.square-enix.com/c...382&la=1&fty=2 (bottom of the page)

The forums would be for discussing the botting issue in general and suggestions, like making it easier to report bot activity from within the game instead of having to switch to a browser app to make the report, which would potentially leave out valuable information.

Better idea. Keep both going.

Because if Square is going to continue to completely ignore the issue, why should we not make it public knowledge? Clearly, it's not a problem, since they hadn't been doing anything about it, so there's no harm, yes?

I'd be more trusting on just the report thing if they actually did anything, but they rarely ever ban bots outside of rtneorbge rjhbtr under the ground teleporting around and chargebacking himself (You know, the lowest of fruits).

[Jojoya]

Better idea. Keep both going.

Because if Square is going to continue to completely ignore the issue, why should we not make it public knowledge? Clearly, it's not a problem, since they hadn't been doing anything about it, so there's no harm, yes?

I'd be more trusting on just the report thing if they actually did anything, but they rarely ever ban bots outside of rtneorbge rjhbtr under the ground teleporting around and chargebacking himself (You know, the lowest of fruits).

Certainly discussing the problem in the forums is something that should continue, and I never said anything to indicate I think otherwise.

But reporting specific bots here doesn't accomplish anything if the intent is to get the bot banned. It's not like we as players can take direct actions against a known bot without potentially landing in hot water ourselves because of ToS violations. As Archlord Pie said, you absolutely could get reported for Monster Player Kill if you intentionally dragged other creatures into the bunny FATEs that really shouldn't be there.

We do know that SE does take action against at least some bots other than the disposable RMT bots. There have been a few that disappeared. Sometimes I wonder if SE deletes bot characters when their accounts are banned instead of leaving them in limbo on the banned account. Deleting them would free up the name, allowing the bot operator to reuse it on a new account and creating the appearance that nothing is being done because the same name is still active. That could explain the occasions when those who track bots notice a specific bot will disappear for a few weeks then reappear.

I'd be curious to hear from players on Aether whether all their usual suspects remained active while Aether was Congested or if many of them slowly disappeared. If some had disappeared, will they suddenly start reappearing next week now that there's been a few days to make new characters again.

[Jijifli]

Certainly discussing the problem in the forums is something that should continue, and I never said anything to indicate I think otherwise.

But reporting specific bots here doesn't accomplish anything if the intent is to get the bot banned. It's not like we as players can take direct actions against a known bot without potentially landing in hot water ourselves because of ToS violations. As Archlord Pie said, you absolutely could get reported for Monster Player Kill if you intentionally dragged other creatures into the bunny FATEs that really shouldn't be there.

We do know that SE does take action against at least some bots other than the disposable RMT bots. There have been a few that disappeared. Sometimes I wonder if SE deletes bot characters when their accounts are banned instead of leaving them in limbo on the banned account. Deleting them would free up the name, allowing the bot operator to reuse it on a new account and creating the appearance that nothing is being done because the same name is still active. That could explain the occasions when those who track bots notice a specific bot will disappear for a few weeks then reappear.

I'd be curious to hear from players on Aether whether all their usual suspects remained active while Aether was Congested or if many of them slowly disappeared. If some had disappeared, will they suddenly start reappearing next week now that there's been a few days to make new characters again.

I feel like part of the intent is to show it's still going. People here tended to pretend too often it doesn't exist, so proving stuff of it existing, even just to show it, is honestly being helpful still.

But also, even if I do pretend they take care of the bots, the answer would be no, based off the plenty enough list I check every now and again. Any that have seemed to finally go inactive (And these were like... HW old) still exist on stone. Including their FC, to boot. So that wouldn't be why.

[KageTokage]

I'd be curious to hear from players on Aether whether all their usual suspects remained active while Aether was Congested or if many of them slowly disappeared. If some had disappeared, will they suddenly start reappearing next week now that there's been a few days to make new characters again.

Most of our "usual suspects" have been around since Stormblood and few of them have actually disappeared or ceased activity since then. There was a later secondary surge of bots in the tail end of Shadowbringers due to them basically cracking the system and making a "one and done" script that can take a freshly-skipped account through the 5.0 MSQ as well as grind every DoH/L job to 80.

The only time they tend to be gone for any noticeable amount of time is immediately after major patches, and in the case of Endwalker they just stuck to botting 5.x content until the scripts got updated for 6.0 maybe about a week after release because it typically only takes a day or two for the developers to patch up existing scripts.

[Meowdyj]

I really don't get it why game masters aren't actively tackling this problem. Its so obvious they are bots yet not getting removed. Would say get a grip Square but its honestly embarrassing on every aspect of the game, bots everywhere.