Attention devs: Game Surveillance Unit re: open world Bots.

[DizzyDragonfly]

I have grave news, It turns out that not only do autonomous bots exist but they are apparently capable of detecting a gm and answering questions, as well as custom pathfinding to avoid players, jump over obstacles, and more.

Supposedly its undetectable outside of asking the bot weird questions that no one could have prepared for.

Knowing this... I don't know what to say, GM's need to be more aggressive, no more cookie-cutter questions, GM's checking new players, a system needs to be in place to detect automatically players who have been gathering/killing for over 24hrs.

I agree that there should be a way to detect these players, the companies that create these botting programs have no where near the funds of SE, they should get rid of the pointless and useless STF(U) and instead create a program to detect people who bot

[chrillix]

The bots that get me the most are the ones with names like "asdfasd asdfasdf". Whoever does the banning should be able to use some kind of common sense. Oh this person has completely random letters for a name? Oh this person is in blm af? Oh this person queues for WP 2000 times per day? Oh this person queues with 3 other people identical to themselves as well? BAN

[Snugglebutt]

For first time ever I saw what looked like a bot army banned (I think as they all vanished after being reported) but I have never seen a single player botting banned. So looks like they might target and take action on bot armies and RMT sellers but still looks like to me they don't bother with the single player botters. But also keep in mind the bot army was all level 50's so they had been getting away with it for a long time.

[Hitomi-Giniro]

World: Tonberry
Timestamp: 6:54am AEST 6/11/2014

Come on GMs equip that banhammer of yours and do your job.

[ToffeeCoffee]

Eastern La Noscea botting Raptors - which I need! Can't farm with these bots here. Interfering with my game time!!




Lower La Noscea botting Wind Sprites

[Astralos]

I really have no idea what is wrong with SE and/or the FF14 team. Are they so detached from their own game that they've become completely oblivious to most of these activities? Are they so short-staffed that they don't have the manpower to deal with such a huge number of botters? Or is it a financial issue? Are there so many botters that their subscription fees are a significant factor in keeping this game afloat? Is SE getting a % of the gil sales on the side?

Unfortunately, I don't think anything is going to be done about it until a large enough portion of the playerbase cancels their subscriptions and lets them know that this is the reason why. And that isn't going to happen.

I do have to say that I admire and appreciate your perseverance, Toffee!

[ToffeeCoffee]

I really have no idea what is wrong with SE and/or the FF14 team. Are they so detached from their own game that they've become completely oblivious to most of these activities? Are they so short-staffed that they don't have the manpower to deal with such a huge number of botters? Or is it a financial issue? Are there so many botters that their subscription fees are a significant factor in keeping this game afloat? Is SE getting a % of the gil sales on the side?

Unfortunately, I don't think anything is going to be done about it until a large enough portion of the playerbase cancels their subscriptions and lets them know that this is the reason why. And that isn't going to happen.

I do have to say that I admire and appreciate your perseverance, Toffee!

Thanks and I appreciate your and everybody's contribution to this thread.
It is quite bothersome and frustrating doing this when we are being blatantly ignored by the CM team after the GM's told me to bring this issue to their attention.
They often respond to threads about vanity items, duty finder, fishing, tomestones and gardening but this major problem seems to be swept under the rug time and time again.
Hoping for a response soon...ignoring this issue is not going to make it go away!

We all pay subscription and the user agreement prohibits botting, therefore we deserve to demand an effort be made to rid the game of cheating.

[ToffeeCoffee]

Seems I can't steer clear of them..on my way to mine near Black Brush Station and I see mobs dying and no player hitting them.
Upon further inspection there are 2 bots underground killing them and then teleport position hacking to kill more.

[dragorian]

they do ban them heck i even had fun screwing the bot/rmt party up lol with my lv 50 sch if this was real players they whould of had a cow for what i did but they did not or say anything i just grabed all thier mobs and they ported to town and had the agro i just stood there and took the dmg wich was too low and i reported them and they got banned

[Morningstar1337]

Today I started doing WP runs to get weapon parts both because I want to get all the relics because and because of the gil they sell for. The latter is part of the problem in the first place. It has me wondering if there's anything we can do to deter their gil profits? Making the parts untradable would be a problem because people already whine about relic as it is and would go likely ape at the prospect of having to level a DoH as well as a DoW/M to get the relic.