Has anyone noticed a decrease in botting activity in light of recent events?

[KageTokage]

Your server is pretty bad to have more then one of them active at the same time.

The sad thing is that the "Report RMT" feature is supposed to auto-block them and keep them from spamming if they use certain restricted phrases, but it's extremely easy for them to evade the block.

It's less these guys I'm concerned about then it is the ones who are keeping a chokehold on the infusion/food market, though.

[KisaiTenshi]

Your server is pretty bad to have more then one of them active at the same time.

The sad thing is that the "Report RMT" feature is supposed to auto-block them and keep them from spamming if they use certain restricted phrases, but it's extremely easy for them to evade the block.

It's less these guys I'm concerned about then it is the ones who are keeping a chokehold on the infusion/food market, though.

A bot was kicked no less than three times from the NN yesterday.

[XenoCranel]

Nope. One of them is starting to tread more softly now by parking in Mor Dhona and only visiting the nodes that spawn Infusion Mats. Also recently saw a toon bork harvesting windtea leaves in yanxia today with the cancel/confirm repeat on a node.

[KageTokage]

I guess it is more probable that the botters that went missing might've just gotten bored of the game and decided to go play something else during the pre 4.3 lull.

A total of 52 bot-related bans across every datacenter really is like a drop in the bucket assuming every server has at least many bots as Cactaur does (There's at least six gatherers of varying activity and who knows how many crafters being fueled by their mats).

I'm also kind of dumbfounded that there's presently over 100 gil-farming bots on Cactaur right now, plus some of them of them have been active for nearly a month. If they can't even keep those guys under control, it's unlikely they'll ever do much about the non-RMT bots who actually take effort to identify.

[Remedi]

Sadly I don't think banning bots is good enough, I think they should go after the ones programming them like activision-blizzard did to do something effective against this problem

[KageTokage]

Sadly I don't think banning bots is good enough, I think they should go after the ones programming them like activision-blizzard did to do something effective against this problem

Last I heard, it didn't actually accomplish much because the bot creators simply started distributing the program under a different name on a new website.

Preventative measures seem more effective, honestly. The only reason the gil farmers are even able to function is because of their warp hacks, so if they did something like turned all of out of bounds areas into kill zones, it would put a quick end to the problem. It honestly seems like they don't know how to stop them, though, considering that they tried to slow them down by moving the items they were farming in Amdapor Keep deeper into the dungeon (Which obviously is not going to matter when they can warp wherever the heck they want).

As far as the other bots go, they really need to give the GMs the authority to take action against them, as they seem a lot more active then the STF judging from quickly they tend to respond to queries, not to mention you can actually communicate with them to know things such as whether or not you're even giving them enough/the right information/evidence for them to properly investigate a matter..

[KisaiTenshi]

Last I heard, it didn't actually accomplish much because the bot creators simply started distributing the program under a different name on a new website.

Preventative measures seem more effective, honestly. The only reason the gil farmers are even able to function is because of their warp hacks, so if they did something like turned all of out of bounds areas into kill zones, it would put a quick end to the problem. It honestly seems like they don't know how to stop them, though, considering that they tried to slow them down by moving the items they were farming in Amdapor Keep deeper into the dungeon (Which obviously is not going to matter when they can warp wherever the heck they want).

As far as the other bots go, they really need to give the GMs the authority to take action against them, as they seem a lot more active then the STF judging from quickly they tend to respond to queries, not to mention you can actually communicate with them to know things such as whether or not you're even giving them enough/the right information/evidence for them to properly investigate a matter..

There's plenty they could do, but it would either break immersion, make it a pain in the butt for real players, or break how some content works.

The solution to the teleporting problem is to stop believing point-to-point movement from the client. That would also break the aethernet, and how some dungeons are setup (eg Halitali). But you know what, if it stops bots, take the teleport-anywhere aethernet away. Replace ad-hoc teleportation with server-sided teleports that are invoked by buying tickets for the destinations, from that destination. Then they can just audit the ticket use, and people who have teleported one more time than they've purchased tickets = ban. If the teleports are even more stupid, eg blindly accepting moveTo(x,y,z), that's something that needs to be solved in a game client communications.

Probably half the reason it works the way it does is so players can avoid AOE's during combat, but that doesn't excuse it outside of combat.

[XenoCranel]

Giving more tools and power to GMs in-game wouldn't really do anything to negatively impact gameplay but help the FF14 Team actually do their job better.

Honestly, just have them sit in gathering zones for like 5-10 minute based on reported botters and ban them on the spot.

[Paladinleeds]

Giving more tools and power to GMs in-game wouldn't really do anything to negatively impact gameplay but help the FF14 Team actually do their job better.

I actually had an idea for that. "Sting ops". So things like bots, RMT, etc, get the GMs to start up a "Sting campaign" designed to try and catch them. Complete with non-GM characters. Act like a normal player interested in the services, reach out, make contact, compile evidence while doing it, and ban once enough evidence has been compiled. Would require more staff, but the effectiveness would be great. Because it's humans doing it, they can adapt to the new moves being played by the offenders, and keep fighting.

[Remedi]

Mh didn't knew some after effects, but frankly since they hack the game to do much, you are simply working catch-up on them, meaning you'll be always a step behind