Discussion: How Can We Handle Botting Better?

[Jijifli]

The moment someone complains about being poor--you give them a pickaxe and tell them to stop being a lazy scrub!

Incredible.

This man made millions doing this one action. Poor people hate him! Find out how he did it by clicking this!

[Jijifli]

So quick update here.

I found one of the bots, without the busy symbol on them. I got to see how it works. Someone was trading the bot as it was trying to teleport, so it'd get stopped. It went miner, tried again, put up truth of mountain, tried again, then got on its mount, put up busy, jumped, and flew away.

Seems what program it was, it looked smart enough to register if someone's messing with it... kinda.

[Dreggit]

It has been quite some time since last i posted on the forums, having recently come back to the game after 13 months I do not have any solutions for how to resolve nothing. However, I was doing hunting logs to ease myself back into the game and bore witness to black mages/thuamages clipping below the player world in the two circled areas in Western Thanalan. Specifically in the northern indication, many (and I mean 7-8) evil eye (level 40) mobs were attacking one such character below the world.

I put them on my blacklist but here\\'s the thing I noticed though. The name was as you\\'d expect but they also were part of an FC and they weren\\'t the only only one out of bounds, just the only one I physically saw. (The mobs were targeting different people)



In case the image doesn't load, a direct link: https://i.imgur.com/hdxvXty.jpg

[CrystalRainbow]

Talk to your government and have them pass a law that the buyers of IG currency will be prosecuted.
1st offence would be 3 months Community service and fine of $1,000 online service account cancelled.
2nd offence would be 3 month jail time with no internet access. $2,500 online service account cancelled.
3rd offence would be 1 year jail time with no internet access, fine of $5,000 online service account cancelled.

Where if games have issue with RMT they are required to forward on transaction info to Government to take action. IE User contact info of who got the currency.
Government only takes action on 2nd report of same user to make sure it's wasn't a one of or mistake.

SE could make RMT script to weed who they are. And who they sent it to. The buyer should be punched as my as the seller.

Make it part of any new LOOT BOX LAW.

[KageTokage]

So quick update here.

I found one of the bots, without the busy symbol on them. I got to see how it works. Someone was trading the bot as it was trying to teleport, so it'd get stopped. It went miner, tried again, put up truth of mountain, tried again, then got on its mount, put up busy, jumped, and flew away.

Seems what program it was, it looked smart enough to register if someone's messing with it... kinda.

If you see bots active at a normal time of day, there's a fairly good chance their owners are monitoring them.

It's not a good idea to pester them like that because a lot of them are so petty that they'll deliberately just ignore people until they've been pestered enough that they can make a case to the GMs about it.

[Jijifli]

If you see bots active at a normal time of day, there's a fairly good chance their owners are monitoring them.

It's not a good idea to pester them like that because a lot of them are so petty that they'll deliberately just ignore people until they've been pestered enough that they can make a case to the GMs about it.

I wasn't the one pestering, so I'm good. I was getting the node myself, since I was still waiting on GP when they showed up.

[Risvertasashi]

If you see bots active at a normal time of day, there's a fairly good chance their owners are monitoring them.

It's not a good idea to pester them like that because a lot of them are so petty that they'll deliberately just ignore people until they've been pestered enough that they can make a case to the GMs about it.

Or.. just don't be one of those people. Might not have been a bot at all.

I know from my own experiences levelling gatherers, righteous bot hunters can definitely be one of the worse scourges on eorzea. Not going to shed any tears if they get actioned for harassment, they deserve it every bit.

[KageTokage]

Or.. just don't be one of those people. Might not have been a bot at all.

I know from my own experiences levelling gatherers, righteous bot hunters can definitely be one of the worse scourges on eorzea. Not going to shed any tears if they get actioned for harassment, they deserve it every bit.

It's kind of pointless to even try to disrupt them as they mostly have fail-safes enabled that will ensure their scripts start working properly the moment they're left alone.

Some people really don't have any idea how to properly identify bots and might just use faulty methods such as "Selling too much stuff on the marketboard" as a reason to be suspicious of somebody.



They do have very obvious, almost unmistakable tells that can be noticed once you become aware of them, though, and they're mostly related to their movement patterns. The things I look for are:

-How they behave after gathering from a node. In flight-enabled zones, they always jump in place, then abruptly veer towards their next destination the moment they take flight (Even if it's directly behind them), which both looks unnatural and would be clunky/impractical for an actual player to imitate, let alone constantly due to the camera shenanigans that would be involved.

-Jerky "Point A to point B" style movement reminiscent of how one would move in a point and click game. More noticeable in ARR areas, but also applicable in HW/SB areas if they don't move directly to the node before dismounting.

-Inability to path to unspoiled nodes in an efficient manner. Since they can't "see" nodes until they actually register in the game's memory via proximity, they'll path to a central point between all of the possible spawn points for a node then move to it from there, even if means going around or straight past the node in question.

-Repetition. If you feel any doubts still after noticing any of the previous red flags, just take note of whether you see them doing the same weird things over and over again or not while you're gathering.

[Jijifli]

They do have very obvious, almost unmistakable tells that can be noticed once you become aware of them, though, and they're mostly related to their movement patterns. The things I look for are:

-How they behave after gathering from a node. In flight-enabled zones, they always jump in place, then abruptly veer towards their next destination the moment they take flight (Even if it's directly behind them), which both looks unnatural and would be clunky/impractical for an actual player to imitate, let alone constantly due to the camera shenanigans that would be involved.

-Jerky "Point A to point B" style movement reminiscent of how one would move in a point and click game. More noticeable in ARR areas, but also applicable in HW/SB areas if they don't move directly to the node before dismounting.

-Inability to path to unspoiled nodes in an efficient manner. Since they can't "see" nodes until they actually register in the game's memory via proximity, they'll path to a central point between all of the possible spawn points for a node then move to it from there, even if means going around or straight past the node in question.

-Repetition. If you feel any doubts still after noticing any of the previous red flags, just take note of whether you see them doing the same weird things over and over again or not while you're gathering.

Yep. I try to pay attention to them for these. And while you did mention the "listing a lot" i wanna mention a little thing.

It alone is not how you tell, but I did watch a bot farm what I couldn't tell at the time, was Yanxian Parsley. I already knew this person botted, but usually it was just unspoiled nodes. There were other factors I tended to notice, in this situation.

Strangely, they never used an action to assist the gathering, such as increasing the amount they gather. Seems like a good idea to use if you're mass farming for hours rather than wasting it. They also, like up here, were moving very perfectly to the spots, never correcting their flight, outside of changing vertical. And what was strangest, was every 6th node, they'd start to fly over, but then suddenly appear above it. Even my girlfriend watching said that the teleport was too much for the game to just be "having issues with placement".

What I did in this case, since it was spammable node, was I gathered one of each item. I was in the area originally for tea mats. When the bot finally stopped, I saw 20 listings of 99 Yanxian parsley's up for sale suddenly. Nothing changed for the rest of the mats. Really strange.

[Ilan]

You can't do anything against bots from the gill sellers. This is such a big business that they keep comming no matter what a company does.