Discussion: How Can We Handle Botting Better?

[KageTokage]

Honestly, in the case of XIV I think they could actually kill them off they wanted/tried to.

Gathering/FATE/PvP bots are not terribly common due to generally being the main or alt accounts of actual players and a diligent team could easily keep them under control. If people start getting banned regularly, it'll instill a sense of fear and make others reluctant to take up/continue botting.

As for the gil farmers, they exploit several fundamental flaws in how the game is coded/designed, but fixing up just a few of them would severely hinder if not kill off their ability to function. One of the main things they abuse is the fact that mobs in dungeons will not reset if they're being attacked from out of bounds and instead will just sit there and do nothing until they're dead, allowing them to be killed with no fear of reprisal (The only reason they keep a WHM around is because some bosses have AoEs that will still hit them even if they're out of bounds/LoS). If they tweaked their AI to reset like some enemies out in the world do, they'd be unable to kill anything and unable to finish dungeons to farm gil as a result.

[KisaiTenshi]

There is definitely some kind of source code they need to function, though, because they disappear for a few days after every major update. If SE was serious about controlling they could isolate that data and encrypt it better or some such so they at least don't come back as quickly, because it's virtually impossible to eliminate bots entirely even if you try to take legal action against them (Blizzard won a lawsuit and forced some bot producers to shut down, but they simply resumed operations under a different name eventually),

This is because every non-minor patch update, they change the instruction id for all but the animation effects (stuff that generates flying text, opens doors, and such.) It's the same reason all third party tools are broken at patch day. Sometimes those changes are trivial, sometimes not.

The end result is the same though, those changes are a speed bump, not a jersey barrier.

SE can take legal action on copyright grounds because all these unauthorized tools contain portions of data reverse-engineered from the game client. Even if they trivially encrypt the spawn and movement codes, the game client has no protection against arbitrary memory writes, because Windows allows that to happen. As I said previously in the thread, software that "protects" the game client is often easy defeated by the very same "well meaning" people often in the pursuit of privately operated services in order to make money from gullible players.

[Jijifli]

Unfortunately, mobile bots like gatherers, FATE grinders, and PvPers are just the tip of the iceberg, as crafting bots and market board bots (Who constantly buy out items within a certain price range or undercut whenever their prices aren't the lowest) are also a thing, but since they don't move or are often hiding in their houses the only things that really suggest they're up to anything unusual is the sheer amount of time they spend online and/or the amount of items they have listed on the market.

I forgot that was even a thing.

I can imagine the awkwardness if two different botters set up for the same item and did that crap, accidentally killing a market in 5 minutes.

[Vnolan]

Which would mean Square isn't taking action on people breaking the terms. Doesn't sound like a good thing for a company to do.

The current system does not work.

Depends on your point of view. If you're trying to strike a middle ground between everyone using bots, and spending more time and money than necessary trying to get rid of them, it works.

[ChaseNetwork]

I have an idea, though I can't gauge how helpful it would be.

Issue a rating of Square Enix to the Better Buisness Bureau, documenting their performance in upholding the standards of their own Terms of Service, End User Lisence Agreement, whatever.

Square Enix has no obligation to adhere to, or seek approval of the BBB, but the BBB is scrutinized by journalists, and a spike in negative opinions on a topic for a business would get eaten up by some of those journalists. The overall goal here being to instigate negative publicity. This ended working in the case of Destiny 2 by Bungie, though I can't promise Square Enix would care.

[JackHatchet]

You can't ISP ban bots, because it could punish innocent people who play together. Warcraft had this issue, which is why they stopped doing it. Imagine a family who plays together. The dad bots, but the kids don't. ISP banning the dad would ban all accounts in the house--and that's bad. I wouldn't want to sort through that issue with Square-Enix's infamous support staff.

Checking the number of items listed on the market board isn't a good way to detect bots. Every player is limited to 40 items by default. And you list more--you have to pay real-life American dollars, which gives Square-Enix money. Plus even casual players can fill their retainers up with junk to sell. It's not hard.

Finally, all of the botting, the nude mod community, the parsers. They're all connected in the gray area. As soon as one gets hit--they'll all get hit. Square-Enix has been tip-toeing around the gray area and ignoring anything that isn't stupidly obvious. But for every person who's frothing at the mouth that someone bots, there's another just as upset that someone is sexualizing their character with a nude mod, or angry because elitest people literally rely on DPS meters to make dps checks to clear enrage timers. So for those people in the parser/nude mod camp, they're invested in the concept that Square-Enix doesn't do anything, and would probably let bots slide just to cover their own. Live and let live I guess.

[KisaiTenshi]

I have an idea, though I can't gauge how helpful it would be.

Issue a rating of Square Enix to the Better Buisness Bureau, documenting their performance in upholding the standards of their own Terms of Service, End User Lisence Agreement, whatever.

Square Enix has no obligation to adhere to, or seek approval of the BBB, but the BBB is scrutinized by journalists, and a spike in negative opinions on a topic for a business would get eaten up by some of those journalists. The overall goal here being to instigate negative publicity. This ended working in the case of Destiny 2 by Bungie, though I can't promise Square Enix would care.

The BBB isn't a legal entity, it's basically "Serious Yelp, without the trolls". The BBB has no power to do anything, at all, other than mount PR embarrassment campaigns to warn people away from dealing with certain companies. But the BBB is also something of a scam. Without going into it, the BBB has no leverage over large companies, only small ones. Customers that trust the BBB rating may decide to not deal with companies that have numerous complaints, but if the company is the sole supplier of that product or service, then really the BBB rating is meaningless. Essentially, ignoring the BBB has no dire consequences unless a serious deluge of complaints pour in on the same same topic (eg not honoring refunds, defective product, etc.) The BBB can't tell a company how to operate their business, just act as a customer advocate.

Square-Enix is a Japanese company, so it's even less likely any kind of BBB complaint would even reach someone that could make a difference.

The most direct solution to solving the bot problem requires SE to empower a few players per server to actually have access to one GM tool that can "jail" a bot. Then let the GM's deal with the actual bots in the jail. Abuse = Lose the tool. However one needs to point out that this has never really worked in practice, even in games like Archeage where the entire mechanic was part of the game. The reason is that it's just another thing to be gamed, and since the game client lacks protection, there would be nothing stopping a player without actual access to the tool to be able to trigger it as well.

Which puts us back at an impasse on how to solve or mitigate the servers from being overrun with bots short of straight up closing all of them.

[Dirwen]

only way for botting to die if mogstation adds real money options for gil,clears and such

I think it's a great idea to just add gil to the mogstation. However, who knows what impacts this can have on the game. Inflation due to legal gil?

I really hate warping into Limsa Lominsa every time and seeing a rmt shout to buy gil. How is that city not monitored for rmt shouts is beyond me. The other two cities don't have this problem I noticed.

[ChaseNetwork]

The BBB isn't a legal entity, it's basically "Serious Yelp, without the trolls". The BBB has no power to do anything, at all, other than mount PR embarrassment campaigns to warn people away from dealing with certain companies. But the BBB is also something of a scam. Without going into it, the BBB has no leverage over large companies, only small ones. Customers that trust the BBB rating may decide to not deal with companies that have numerous complaints, but if the company is the sole supplier of that product or service, then really the BBB rating is meaningless. Essentially, ignoring the BBB has no dire consequences unless a serious deluge of complaints pour in on the same same topic (eg not honoring refunds, defective product, etc.) The BBB can't tell a company how to operate their business, just act as a customer advocate.

Square-Enix is a Japanese company, so it's even less likely any kind of BBB complaint would even reach someone that could make a difference.

The most direct solution to solving the bot problem requires SE to empower a few players per server to actually have access to one GM tool that can "jail" a bot. Then let the GM's deal with the actual bots in the jail. Abuse = Lose the tool. However one needs to point out that this has never really worked in practice, even in games like Archeage where the entire mechanic was part of the game. The reason is that it's just another thing to be gamed, and since the game client lacks protection, there would be nothing stopping a player without actual access to the tool to be able to trigger it as well.

Which puts us back at an impasse on how to solve or mitigate the servers from being overrun with bots short of straight up closing all of them.

I thought I made it clear already that the BBB doesn't actually hold power, and that this could only be potentially useful for moving a PR campaign.

[Chouxbun]

I see them early (EU) morning on Chaos when all is quiet...all level one going through their first quests. I'm sure it's been said before but it's very difficult to report them as they have horrible names and move so fast you can't always catch them. And you can't right click and report a character, only if they say something. Which these bots levelling up don't - so no real way to catch them.

But as has been said, that would only be open to abuse anyway with peeps reporting non-bots due to some quarrel