Discussion: How Can We Handle Botting Better?

[Hestzhyen]

You can't take action against bots, as a subscriber; It does not work on this level.

As a 14 year plus subscriber of World of Warcraft, I can say it originally worked that way more. Wow had fewer players, so "reporting a bot" might actually do something. Eventually, you had too many players/too many bots to report and too many people reporting people who were not actually "bots."

Blizzard wisely did something, which was instead just detecting them and banning those accounts in waves. I don't know how it works with FFXIV, but with Wow the bot is taking advantage of a particular "seed" or something (I'm greatly simplifying things here.) So the bot program will work, until Blizzard then fixes the way that particular "seed"/whatever works or how they access it. So things just seem to sit there, working normally, then suddenly there is a huge ban wave of bots. At that point, the botting program no longer works either (until they rebuild it, to take advantage of another "seed"/breaking the encryption/whatever.)
I don't know why it works this way, it is something about how it has to be able to work with clients at a high speed, which presents a vulnerability that the bot program writer takes advantage of.

So, as all of you say, this does not work and could not work. Just as with Wow, it HAS to be automatic. It has to be something that is detected, then the accounts just get banned (perm, by the way.) This is basically the one thing they've learned to do right with Wow, after 14 years. You don't really see the posts about bots on the Wow forums like you used to, nor do I EVER see a single one while out herbing/mining anymore. A part of the reason is that even the people making the bot software, as well as people on the message boards for it, are aware that they have to use "throwaway" accounts; They know they will get banned in the next automatic ban wave.

It just doesn't work, at this level, for you or I to report someone suspicious. Then someone live has to follow up, then they might not even be a bot. All of that takes too much time and effort.

What you described is what SE does, only they don't seem to address the root cause like Blizzard does. SE bans bots in the thousands every month, but there is apparently no investigation or effort put into fixing the exploits that allow the bots to function. That's why you still see map hacking years after it was reported and why the botting problem seems to be wholly undeterred despite the regular ban wave reports.

I get that SE doesn't see the problem as much in Japan but they have to look further abroad with their global customer base. They market to us, serve us in our home countries, so they should support and listen to us as well. If this is a uniquely Western problem maybe it would make sense for them to have a Western task force with the necessary tools and power to address it.