Discussion: How Can We Handle Botting Better?

[KageTokage]

I'm really curious as to what those few players getting banned for botting each week did to actually get noticed, because it's not like bots in general aren't obvious for one reason or another.

Their movement patterns are what gives them away the most, and the things I've noticed include:

-They always make extremely sharp turns due to their "point A to point B" movement pattern that tries to get them to their destination with as few changes in direction as possible, though not necessarily in the most efficient manner.

-They always jump in place when they take flight in the HW/SB zones due to a seeming inability for their scripts to register multiple actions/inputs simultaneously.

-Since they can't "see" unspoiled nodes, they'll never move straight to a node when it spawns and instead go to a central point between all of the possible spawn points then move to it from there once it's close enough to be targeted. This leads to them doing awkward things such as flying past the node then suddenly doubling back to it.


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.

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),

In the end though, the most effective way to control them is to simply have a good-sized staff dedicated to hunting them down and eliminating them (Which I'm feeling convinced that XIV is sorely lacking in when looking at how small the credits section for the STF is). Even the gil farmers would likely give up after a while if they were getting banned often enough as they need to be able to hit level 50 before they can make much gil.