Discussion on how to prevent or get rid of bots.

[KisaiTenshi]

For playing MMOs for the past 15+ years I'd say there is little we, the customers can do.
SE have a STF but iirc (from XI days) its a small JP based team and obviously lacks communication from NA/EU GM's.

It's a SE internal problem, not for us to fix.
All we can do is report but little to use as most can attest. I.e seeing gathering/pvp bots weeks upon weeks without punishment.

The obvious solution is to actually put anti-bot code into the game and disconnect game clients that have hooked code. However that requires statically compiling the game client so that no DLL files can be replaced, and then also results in issues with things like Geforce experience and OBS, and the steam overlay for those playing it on steam.

A more pragmatic solution in general is to have "report" - > "Suspected automated play" and have the GM observe the player from the server-side. There should not be that many high-level bots, but there clearly are people botting, and players using tools that modify the what the game client displays so botting tools operate. Like a way to do "make game client send me a screenshot" by the GM would be the fastest way to kill bots, because it would provide it's own evidence, but it would also require hiding that code in the game client in a way that the cheat tool doesn't hide from it. Like if a player suspects a bot, and they go "Report - > Suspect automated play", that should trigger a screenshot being sent by both the reporter, and the target to the GM. However it avoid players from using it to DoS the target, there needs to be a cooldown on the report function.

Likewise, reporting cheating in the market place requires more investigation than is really possible to do alone, thus a "Report-> Retainer -> Item" would also at least direct the GM's to actually look at suspected items or retainers, and whoever is in control of them.

In most games, the reason a lot of cheating goes unabated has more to do with the lack of staff/lack of "giving a care" by the staff. Because people will report people they are in competition with out of spite, and until people stop being spiteful in a MMO a lot of reporting tools end up being just another way to grief players.

Unfortunately there's no real guaranteed way to get rid of bots outside of doing the Korean thing and demanding the SSN equivalent from every account. Of course the American SSN is not nearly as protected as foreign equivalents, so I can't say I would like this solution.

That doesn't get rid of bots, it just makes foreign players steal SSN's.

Also in the US and Canada the such numbers are illegal to be store unless you are a credit-reporting service (eg a utility or bank)

There are still ways meeting the goal of preventing botting, duplicate accounts, and ban-evasion. One way of doing that is by requiring the game to use a personal credit card (no pre-paid cards) to create even free accounts. Then requiring a software token on a "new" mobile phone be required before creating any characters (no reuse of previous phones.) This increases the cost of creating RMT from zero to about $100 each time.

But even that won't stop RMT fully. There will always be players who communicate over Discord or some other chat medium to exchange goods and services without using the chat system of the game. A lot of RMT type of cheating in F2P/P2W games tends to be by players that pay other players to do things for them.