Level 70 gathering bots go unpunished

[JackHatchet]

bots that do things like spam the server with an unrealistically high number of commands in an attempt to work faster ever get caught by them.

I can't tell you how many times I'm sitting there waiting for an ability to come off global cooldown and I'm just spamming the heck out of the key just waiting for the action to go through! Dang PvP can get intense sometimes!

[KageTokage]

I can't tell you how many times I'm sitting there waiting for an ability to come off global cooldown and I'm just spamming the heck out of the key just waiting for the action to go through! Dang PvP can get intense sometimes!

There's a limit to how hard a player can mash a keyboard (Even with a turbo function installed). However, the bots skip controller interfaces and send commands directly to the game client, so the only limitation is basically their computer's processing power.

Most users of them are script kiddies who let the developers do all the work, but some people try to use custom scripts, which if not handled properly (IE, accidentally putting a "0" before the value for the interval at which they want a certain action or sequence of actions to be repeated) can make them even more obvious then normal bots already are on a visual and/or server-side level.

I've seen them try some cute things like pretending to be AFK by unspoiled nodes and not gathering from them until a while after they've actually spawned to look less suspicious, except after I noticed they were consistently moving to the nodes at the exact time according to the Eorzean clock, it kind of fell apart. Most of them are totally shameless, but some of them try to (Unsuccessfully) conceal their activity in such manners or by only doing it on an alt (Who oft conveniently happens to be wearing only gear made by their main character).

[KisaiTenshi]

I've seen them try some cute things like pretending to be AFK by unspoiled nodes and not gathering from them until a while after they've actually spawned to look less suspicious, except after I noticed they were consistently moving to the nodes at the exact time according to the Eorzean clock, it kind of fell apart. Most of them are totally shameless, but some of them try to (Unsuccessfully) conceal their activity in such manners or by only doing it on an alt (Who oft conveniently happens to be wearing only gear made by their main character).

Most are shameless really. The crafted gear is one example. Now if someone were logging what everyone was wearing as you stand around a crowded area, you would eventually find the player who owns that crafting alt, if that is indeed a crafting alt and not the player themselves. Too much work for a player, but I'm sure the STF does something like this.

The thing with gathering bots is that even if a human was using website to check the timing of the nodes, there would be seconds, before the character responds, and they would actually move towards the node as though the keyboard or game controller was used, and the timing would be inconsistent (eg they'd miss some times if they went to dinner or something.) A bot however never misses, reacts within 500ms of the node appearing, and if they aren't already in front of it, move linearly to it (mounts help this since they can summon, go straight up, go to the target, go straight down, and then select the node without unmounting) it's that "too accurate" aspect which gives them away, and even a bot designed to mimic a player as much as possible (eg only sends input via Keyboard, Mouse or Game controller) is still going to read the network data to know where the node is, and where the character currently is. Close the gap between the player and the node, and then activate. The most obvious bots are the ones that simply have those nodes set as waypoints in their script, and thus they always move in exactly the same manner.

The STF could catch both by exploiting the fact that they're not humans and can't actually see what's on the screen. Throw obstacles in the way so the "waypoint"'s are blocked, put aggressive monsters in the way that blockade the node and respond to "smell", so they can't simply walk around the monster, they have to wait for the monster to move. If the monster can't attack them (the player is underground, behind an obstacle) then that alerts the STF of "unreachable" players.