Underground Bots

[DixieBellOCE]

I went back to my old screenshots and tracked it down to Oct 2020 when I was leveling one of my new alts. I could see the damage text rising out of the ground plus hear whatever noise then character would make when dying followed by a faint thud. I had captured the battle log information, and a few would come back after rezzing and briefly appear above ground at the entrance so I could target them easily.

I'm assuming the traps are still there though the bots probably have been given a different way to get in and out of Waking Sands since. And as you say below, they seem to be a lot rarer now at least there. I think they can still be found if you idle near the GC HQ or a company chest.

I might try checking for them when I transfer a couple of my characters to the new data center next month. It should get swamped with bots, especially if all the current NA worlds end up Congested.

Hard to say if those traps would work in dungeons since those are instanced. I'm not even certain exactly how the bots were dying, I could just tell they were.


Except this type of bot is usually on an account set up with compromised payment info. They only last long enough for a quick farm and gil transfer before SE gets the chargeback.

I know people like to think that nothing is done because the bots mean more game license and subscription income but they're actually a loss to SE because the payment info is fraudulent or stolen. Chargeback costs add up for businesses.

Large majority of bots just boost and do eureka.
its like 750m-1b/day with 50 accounts.

Square just dont care about banning them.

[Myrany]

Someone new to the game could easily be overwhelmed by all the things there are to buy and the prices for them. It looks different for those of us who have been playing a long time and slowly acquired those things we wanted as they were released. We're also familiar with all the ways gil can be made. The new player isn't.

Then there's the occasional lazy player that just isn't interested in putting the slightest effort into making gil when they've got a credit card to get it for them.

Very much this. I rolled on Phantom when it opened. Fresh character with no other characters to support it. Yes I got 1 mil gil at 30 from the new world bonus. But getting level 60 gear (I was in 50 content from the road to 80 buff) cost me nearly 2/3 the gil I had. I KNOW what I am doing. A new player that found themselves catching crap in MSQ normal dungeons because their gear although perfectly adequate for the content they were doing was not for their actual level. Yes this actually happened to me more than once. The prices would have floored them and probably put them in a bit of a panic as they wouldn't know how to recoup the loss quickly.

That said unless one is into the whole housing thing there isn't much use for more than say 2 million Gil (allowing for a safety net).

[UkcsAlias]

Square just dont care about banning them.

I think the issue is mainly that it takes quite a large amount of costs to have very effective detection, while now, even if they are running for a few weeks (and generates the rmt vendors smoe profit), SE also gets some profit from that. On that you want to disrupt them enough that as plague they have a lesser effect, but still want to be break even in money. And that is a somewhat fair balance to go for, as in the end, its going to just be a race where the RMT vendors will generaly be ahead into avoiding detection.

Sure, they can ban the underground bots now, but if that becomes autodetection and reacts fast, bots makers will just find diffirence positions the bots will use. Now this might actualy be part of the easy detection and be very efficient on that (where they might only ban 80% instead of 100% to obfuscate that detection method).

Its barely possible to stop the RMT vendors as bots are usualy cheap (often using stolen credit card info)

[Saraide]

At this point going after the bots that do exist would be very easy. If SE did become more active we would see better veiled bots (or rather not see). As it stands SE doesnt have much of an incentive to go after them beyond keeping them out of sight. The game doesnt have a lot of the free2play economy garbage like endless systems of boosters and I am glad about that. But that also makes it so that taking a shortcut to getting gil isnt really all that much of a problem for SE.

They are losing engagement from people just buying their clears but seeing how little they do against that it cant be that much in terms of money. You can run yourself ragged with reporting every single bot but it wont achieve anything as long as SE doesnt care. Getting them to care can easily turn out to be making a wish to a monkey paw.

[LianaThorne]

I really doubt there's ever gonna be a solution to this tbh.

[Shibi]

I really doubt there's ever gonna be a solution to this tbh.

Likely not, but sometimes I do idly wonder if SE could hire a few PR/Enforcement people to sometimes appear in world near the GC turn in counters. 90% of their job being PR.

Bonus points if they have a boss level Megaflare/AkhMorn spell.

If nothing else, we could just enjoy the show of a GM destroying bots every now and again.

Likely not a serious well thought idea, but more of a fantasy. I think it would be awesome to watch.

[Jojoya]

They are losing engagement from people just buying their clears but seeing how little they do against that it cant be that much in terms of money. You can run yourself ragged with reporting every single bot but it wont achieve anything as long as SE doesnt care. Getting them to care can easily turn out to be making a wish to a monkey paw.

I'm not certain I agree they're losing engagement from those buying carries. The people who buy have no interest in being engaged by the content, they just want the rewards fast and quick. Take away the ability to buy the carry and they wouldn't bother with the content, they'd just complain it's too hard and that the game should give them another way to earn the same rewards.

On the other hand, allowing carries to be bought for gil can prolong engagement by those who do engage with the content. It's allowing them to save gil for the next raid release when they'll need new gear, more materia and more consumables.

It only becomes a problem if the player is turning to RMT to get the carry. A lot of players earn more than enough gil to pay for the carry without turning to RMT.

Likely not, but sometimes I do idly wonder if SE could hire a few PR/Enforcement people to sometimes appear in world near the GC turn in counters. 90% of their job being PR.

Bonus points if they have a boss level Megaflare/AkhMorn spell.

If nothing else, we could just enjoy the show of a GM destroying bots every now and again.

Likely not a serious well thought idea, but more of a fantasy. I think it would be awesome to watch.

It would only take one member of the GM or Community teams to go around doing this. The visual displays can be more effective than mere words seen as empty.

[Saraide]

I'm not certain I agree they're losing engagement from those buying carries. The people who buy have no interest in being engaged by the content, they just want the rewards fast and quick. Take away the ability to buy the carry and they wouldn't bother with the content, they'd just complain it's too hard and that the game should give them another way to earn the same rewards.

On the other hand, allowing carries to be bought for gil can prolong engagement by those who do engage with the content. It's allowing them to save gil for the next raid release when they'll need new gear, more materia and more consumables.

It only becomes a problem if the player is turning to RMT to get the carry. A lot of players earn more than enough gil to pay for the carry without turning to RMT.


It would only take one member of the GM or Community teams to go around doing this. The visual displays can be more effective than mere words seen as empty.

Yea I meant RMT carries but yes, the negative impact it has on SE's wallet is probably very little if it even exists.

[Kaliesto]

I didn't even know the Devs had set up traps for those nasty bots.

Actually a more effective trap would be to add a sensor, and mark the bots that are underground and then kick them out and have them turn into a mob for players to punish.

It would be hilarious to watch them get mauled in Limsa Lominsa or something by the NPC guards.

[KageTokage]

There seems to be a total lack of active enforcement from the STF and they'll instead only act on behavior that can detected automatically, which would explain why the teleporting bots account for almost all of the weekly bans while the "legit" bots that are mostly not doing anything that is blatantly impossible (Aside from the Mare Lamentorum bots that are using an animation removal hack to fish faster...) get a free pass.