Whoa. Crackdown on long time casual botters?

[Galdous]

There has been this FC on my server that have admitted outside the game in a chat program they use bots to farm money for the FC and despite myself and several people reporting them they never have been touched but now I am finding out that 3 high end officers have been banned from the game on a perm basis.

It took almost a year but SE has renewed my faith in the system. They also lost a good deal of gil from my understanding. Dunno if it had anything to do with gil selling or just aquired through illegitimate means.

If SE is starting to tighten the reigns on this issue then good job and keep up the good work.

[Pinkie_Pie]

Well, they DID have proooooooof, so, remember SE has been quite busy lately :P

[Dijana]

If the only time they admitted it was outside the game in a chat program, it's not surprising it took so long to be dealt with. Just because someone is reported, doesnt mean they auto get banned, could you imagine what it would be like if all it took for someone to be banned was someone who didnt like them to send in a report making up whatever reason they wanted?

[nuyu11]

But I believe there is some Bot program that will auto your actions right?
Even you're afk.

[KyteStones]

I really don't understand how the botting works (im no coder by any means) but I thought the entire game was server sided? If it wasn't wouldn't we see people with mods? Like infinite mana/sprint/HP/TP? Does this mean a bot has to connect to SE's servers? So many questions not enough info from Google other than "BUY FFXIV BOT NOW BUY BUY BUY" when I wanna know HOW this is done. It just doesn't make sense to me :/

[Sove92]

I really don't understand how the botting works (im no coder by any means) but I thought the entire game was server sided? If it wasn't wouldn't we see people with mods? Like infinite mana/sprint/HP/TP? Does this mean a bot has to connect to SE's servers? So many questions not enough info from Google other than "BUY FFXIV BOT NOW BUY BUY BUY" when I wanna know HOW this is done. It just doesn't make sense to me :/

Not quite, a lot of things are client-side to reduce server stress and increase player convenience. For example, the client fully trusts the client when it comes to movement, so the bots simply send forged movement packets to warp around. The game still won't let you have godmodes or infinite MP/TP values, however. The bots use the normal game client and their botting tool hooks into the client process, that's why the server doesn't see anything wrong.

If the entire game was server-side, everything you do would suffer from lag and you don't want that. The downside is that it makes botting and poshacking easier, but it's not like you can't bot in a fully server-sided game as well.

But regardless of how easy it is to bot in this game, it doesn't mean you can't get caught from it. There are quite a lot of botting stories around that didn't have a happy ending for the player.

[KyteStones]

snip.

Great explanation for me. Much appreciated. I always thought the game was 100% server sided minus the character config stuff like hotbars and such. I assumed that the game interpreted that "hey I see that you've sent a W command from your keyboard, I'm going to move you forward" meaning they were sending spoofed commands to the server allowing the movement/actions to be performed which seems like a massive hassle but then again, the bots aren't free so I assumed that's how they made up for the development of them. In any case, thanks for the explanation. Makes so much more sense now. I get now how people were able to use bots on the EX Primals and Coils to break the instances when that was going on.

[Conradus]

Not quite, a lot of things are client-side to reduce server stress and increase player convenience. For example, the client fully trusts the client when it comes to movement, so the bots simply send forged movement packets to warp around. The game still won't let you have godmodes or infinite MP/TP values, however. The bots use the normal game client and their botting tool hooks into the client process, that's why the server doesn't see anything wrong.

If the entire game was server-side, everything you do would suffer from lag and you don't want that. The downside is that it makes botting and poshacking easier, but it's not like you can't bot in a fully server-sided game as well.

But regardless of how easy it is to bot in this game, it doesn't mean you can't get caught from it. There are quite a lot of botting stories around that didn't have a happy ending for the player.

And even ignoring the few lag-reducing shortcuts taken, the fact remains that your interaction with the server is just digital data sent to it and received from it. The actions you normally send manually can be replaced by a program that generates the necessary inputs.

[Vlady]

It's like the bot programs that plague wow's pvp system. Between auto kick programs and infamous monk orb bots cheating is all around in any game you play.

Cod and a megaton of steam games have cheaters galore. Most bots use dll hooks which pull id codes and interacts with it then sends the appropriate response back. Some of the smarter bots now use API gimmicks and windows desktop app.

[KaedrianLiang]

There has been this FC on my server that have admitted outside the game in a chat program they use bots to farm money for the FC and despite myself and several people reporting them they never have been touched but now I am finding out that 3 high end officers have been banned from the game on a perm basis.

It took almost a year but SE has renewed my faith in the system. They also lost a good deal of gil from my understanding. Dunno if it had anything to do with gil selling or just aquired through illegitimate means.

If SE is starting to tighten the reigns on this issue then good job and keep up the good work.

Same here on Hyperion, a notoriously known quartet of "casual bots" have finally gone MIA sometime the last 4 weeks. Along with a newer bot FC going MIA around the same time. It's nice to finally see something done, but srsly still took way too long.

One kept a fairly low profile, only finding them in remote areas, but the method of attacking monsters made it extremely obvious.

While the other, the larger whole FC of bots had very convincing method of attacks, legitimate rotations, but alas they couldn't make the same judgements as a person, often attacking A rank NM's solo, dying, home pointing, coming back, and attacking the A rank NM again. And this particular group was very extravagant and flamboyant, an FC of 7 characters with a Large plot and mansion, with individual members owning personal plots ranging from small, med to large. And the names/titles associated with the chars/FC were like taunts at the general server population from the name of their FC to the name of their retainers.

Both are cases of "the perfect crime, but making dumb mistakes that will get them caught" Much like how "that bank robber on the run for 20 years, caught because the window tint of his car were too dark, so he was pulled over."