Cheaters in the Gold Saucer, What Can We Do?

[SirBrighton]

Over the past couple months now, especially since the Make It Rain event started, I've noticed a large increase in the number of cheaters using 3rd-party software to farm Gold Saucer attractions for MGP while AFK. This is obviously unfair to the rest of us who earn our MGP and prizes the honest, intended way.

You may think using a bot to farm MGP is harmless, but that's not the point. The point is that it is unfair. The time it takes you to earn enough MGP to buy a prize, especially an expensive one like Fenrir, is time you paid real money for to play with your subscription. When people cheat they are getting those prizes faster and for no effort, so while it might take you the cost of three months' subscription to get something, a cheater could get it over just a few days while they sleep.

Now, if a report itself is enough to warrant an investigation, what else can we do and include in our reports in order to help prove that these players are in fact cheating?

Also, what can Square Enix do to help prevent people from cheating and/or catch cheaters more effectively? Would adding the equivalent of "The fish sense something amiss" to Gold Saucer games work, or a popup after playing a game for a certain number of time where you have to enter a caption to continue? Personally I dislike these, but I dislike cheaters more.

[HaelseMikiro]

SE would have to actually ban these people, for starters. That's what it would take. Ban some botters, scare the other botters into quitting. Ban the remaining brave ones. SE unfortunately doesn't have good technology for catching botters, unless they're doing something obvious like position hacking or issuing commands while under afk status without losing it, and thus 99% of them get away with it. It looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but if there's a 1% chance that it's just a stray imp from a levequest pretending to be a duck, then SE will keep taking they're monthly sub money, because investigating a bot to see that it's been logged in for 70 hours a week with no downtime, doing the same thing, occasionally putting up busy status 1 milisecond after someone opens a trade window with it, is too expensive and impractical from a logistics standpoint.

[SirBrighton]

I agree with you entirely. It falls upon us, the players, to report any others who are cheating since the game doesn't have its own way of knowing (yet?), at least not that I know of. However, there's no way we could all recognize at a single glance when someone else is cheating, so most cheaters get away with it seemingly unpunished. I don't know what SE's policy is on banning/suspending players who violate the rules, but hopefully cheaters are banned permanently like they are in other MMOs and not just suspended.
I know with the release of Stormblood soon upon us, the entire staff must be undergoing a heck of a crunch time right now to iron out all the wrinkles, so it's at least understandable that player reports might not be looked at for extended periods of time while they focus on more important matters.

[HaelseMikiro]

As far as I'm aware, GMs and the Special Task Force have nothing to do with the crunch time, and it's their job to handle these. Also as far as I'm aware, there are some bots I've been reporting for 2 years still going strong today. I must simply assume that GMs are either 100% powerless to investigate anything, too busy answering tickets about harrassment, or are under instructions to turn a blind eye, because botter sub fees cover their paychecks, and aren't really hurting anyone's gameplay experience. Game economy and good ethics notwithstanding of course. I'm also fairly certain (not positive) the entire Special Task Force (4 people) is strictly JP, and unable to read any reports submitted by other regions unless they get translated. Hopefully by a person and not google.

Although the crunch time is probably why Gold Saucer Seasonal devolved from a great murder mystery last year to.....'Talk to 3 NPCs and we'll give you enough MGP to buy all the rewards, because that might be more fun than just having the NPC hand you the rewards'.

[Holy-chan]

On what grounds can you claim that somebody is botting? Their good times? The fact that they're online a lot during the event? Their "perfect" racing trajectories?

Since the beginning of the event, I have been chocobo racing 10 to 14 hours everyday (except one day where it was closer to 6). Am I botting? Heck no. But to your or somebody else's eyes, I may seem like one. It would be sad to see people wrongfully accused, and I am sure that that happened. It is important to know and understand how you recognize somebody that you consider a bot.

[PotatoTree]

It's quite obvious when one of the bots is programmed to use an ability at exactly 80% of the race every match no matter what happened in the race.

[KageTokage]

I really feel convinced at this point that they just overlook anyone who's paying a subscription fee, because reporting non-RMT bots has accomplished absolutely nothing, whether they be the mass-produced gil farmers, or the actual players who are simply too lazy to gather or get MGP legitimately.

As for how they could stop/hinder MGP botting specifically, they could at least randomize the point where the power gauge for Cuff-a-Cur starts, as it's the only game that has no element of RNG involved in it and thus is extremely easy to get consistent gains with a bot.

As far as chocobo races go, though, there really isn't anything that can be done short of making a more generalized way of stopping bots, as it's extremely easy to win as long you have a decent chocobo, especially in the Sagolli Road races where you can basically just hug the left side of the track the entire time to dodge all of the major hazards that the AI usually just runs into.

[Keicho]

i realy hate it, i see every day a player in odin in the night afk farm, i farm seriously and its rly annoying and dont make me farm anymore see 1 player next to me afk farm... well i reportet her. she stays every night afront this axe and tree mini game

[Shouko]

I really feel convinced at this point that they just overlook anyone who's paying a subscription fee, because reporting non-RMT bots has accomplished absolutely nothing, whether they be the mass-produced gil farmers, or the actual players who are simply too lazy to gather or get MGP legitimately.

This is pretty much true for every MMO now, the reason why most bots beyond in game currency sellers aren't banned is because they're subbed and it gives them money and it's really just plain impossible to get rid of bots. Every action you take against them, they figure a way around it, hence why they're still in game.

[Squintina]

I don't like cheaters or botting in general.

But does it really affect you if someone else is botting the little solo mini games to get items? Sure it's unfair, but it doesn't really change how fast you'll get yours.
Now botting in chocobo racing (or any other non-solo mini games that exists now or in the future), that's definitely bad and should be looked at.

Of course if it was easy for SE to catch all cheaters equally, then they might as well get them all. However, if they can't, I think they should focus on the non-solo minigames first.