Kill the "BOTs"

[PrettyPrincess]

the thing is, how does one tell who is a "bot" now? Obviously you cant just go around banning people cause they dont respond to you, especially now that you can craft with a turbo controller. (because they enabled as said before)

[tymora]

I would think the farming bots will be pretty obvious - Fixed farming pattern, comes hit your claimed mobs if you claim it after they locked on to the target, farm till their weapons hit 0%, farm for inhuman number of hours...etc etc

Or the Lalafell armies that run around?

Crafting bots not so much since we regular crafters turn on human-bot mode and watch TV.

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I believe another game also made a small unannounced and sudden UI change to their crafting interface. A number of botters didn't notice the change and continued to run their bots which caused them to hit a changed/imaginary button on the screen, effectively telling the server - "Hi there, ban me please".

Things they can do...
1) Replace Standard with "Ban me please" for 24 hours and revert it back after they kill off the botters. I doubt regular players will mind it the short term inconvenience if it meant the end of bots.
2) Move the menu selection from left to right side. Regular players can still spam standard as they did before. Screen position based bots will be detected.

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Even without special in-game changes, less advanced bots can also be detected by checking input patterns.

There are entire papers devoted to the arms race between bots and bot detectors, so this is as simple as it sounds.

[PrettyPrincess]

I would think the farming bots will be pretty obvious - Fixed farming pattern, comes hit your claimed mobs if you claim it after they locked on to the target, farm till their weapons hit 0%, farm for inhuman number of hours...etc etc

Or the Lalafell armies that run around?

Crafting bots not so much since we regular crafters turn on human-bot mode and watch TV.

----------
I believe another game also made a small unannounced and sudden UI change to their crafting interface. A number of botters didn't notice the change and continued to run their bots which caused them to hit a changed/imaginary button on the screen, effectively telling the server - "Hi there, ban me please".

Things they can do...
1) Replace Standard with "Ban me please" for 24 hours and revert it back after they kill off the botters. I doubt regular players will mind it the short term inconvenience if it meant the end of bots.
2) Move the menu selection from left to right side. Regular players can still spam standard as they did before. Screen position based bots will be detected.

This might sound like a shock, but maybe se doesn't really care for craft "bots" They enabled turbo function for controllers that have it and also conveniently had the cursor position default to the recipe option instead of requested items all in the same patch. all speculation of course.

[tymora]

This might sound like a shock, but maybe se doesn't really care for craft "bots"

In the grand scheme of things, I would think this is low priority now but they'll look at it sooner or later.

I still remember clearly the FFXI Salvage dupe bans...those offenders were boasting on all the forums...then one day, it all became so quiet... Hope history repeats itself.

Anyway, 1.19 came with shard bot bans. It took RMT a couple weeks to come back.

[PSxpert2011]

Deal with it... RMT are part of these type of games... sure everyone hates em... but they exist because players will gladly use RMT to obtain things they desire. The community creates demand for RMT. The best thing you can do is protect yourself and alert a GM if you spot a player whom is a problem maker.

Why doesn't SE provide the services RMT do? This would put a serious dent in their activities.

BTW... there is NOTHING WRONG with using something like a turbo controller! Nothing is preventing you from purchasing one.

"Exceptionallism" ... See now this kind of ppl in the game really make me sad... If you see something happening that could harm someone, something or the natural state of things and integrity of life, take action and protect what is good. Saying, "Okay, w/e, things won't ever change, blah,blah,blah...", no. Don't get let use to negativity or let it take control, take control of "it".

[Lienn]

the thing is, how does one tell who is a "bot" now? Obviously you cant just go around banning people cause they dont respond to you, especially now that you can craft with a turbo controller. (because they enabled as said before)

No one gives a crap about "turbo controller". The dude does can release the button a sec to answer the GM. And, in FFXI, we had a nice, cool place named Mordion Gaol, where they sent all people suspected from botting to investigate. Not really hard to have this here too.

EDIT: Forgot to say...for SE botting isn't you using automated play through script...for them botting = automated play while the player is not present. So yes, not answering the GM does could be considered botting.

[PrettyPrincess]

No, actually. And if they didn't think about these things they shouldn't have enabled it in the first place eh?

[Lienn]

It's like i said. they don't deny automated play...an soon as the player is present. I tried to find the official announcement of this but POL is somewhat confusing to search stuff after some years not going there...they posted all their policies regarding botting, erd-party usage, bug exploits, etc when STF was created.

This is why they care very little if the player is or isn't using turbo controllers. They care about the player being there though. If not mistaken they talk 4 times to the dude...if he keep "playing" and not reply, bye bye. Just wish GMs in FFXIV were taking similar actions here.

This is just another of Tanaka's aspects i miss...he never let RMTs/bots walk free as they are nowadays in FFXIV.

[PSxpert2011]

No, actually. And if they didn't think about these things they shouldn't have enabled it in the first place eh?

So for how long have you been playing FF14?

It's like i said. they don't deny automated play...an soon as the player is present. I tried to find the official announcement of this but POL is somewhat confusing to search stuff after some years not going there...they posted all their policies regarding botting, erd-party usage, bug exploits, etc when STF was created.

This is why they care very little if the player is or isn't using turbo controllers. They care about the player being there though. If not mistaken they talk 4 times to the dude...if he keep "playing" and not reply, bye bye. Just wish GMs in FFXIV were taking similar actions here.

This is just another of Tanaka's aspects i miss...he never let RMTs/bots walk free as they are nowadays in FFXIV.

I miss Tanaka too! =(


When Tanaka was producing the game before "stepping down", his vision of the game was about actual WORK. Eeeeeew, that four letter word no one wants to read or hear!!!! XD


BLASPHEMY!


This would of made the game intolerable for RMT and Botters with actual steps to making an achievement. Like real life but in an MMO. This purpose was to act as a deterrent for RMT and along with the degrading system (how food and items would loose value over time while in possession) which has seemed to me to change to just equipment dmg/repairing (and ppl still complain about it).

Do you think this would of worked as this game isn't even charging yet? It would have attracted a highly sophisticated fan base and extremely hard-core type of player IMO and even me would have enjoyed it.!

[PrettyPrincess]

The problem is, when you make a lot of hoop jumping for rmt guess what? regular players have to go through it as well. And that turns people away. Also I've been playing since last november. every mmo developers knows there will be rmt no matter what, however you shouldn't make systems that punish your playerbase.