Level 70 gathering bots go unpunished

[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.

[Warghoul570]

It would be nice if SE banned them because it gives them an unfair advantage over those of us that play on a PS4. That being said I agree with what someone else was saying in the fact they won’t ban them because SE can’t afford to lose anymore paying people than they have to. Everyone knows that the actual active sub numbers are far, far les than they’d want us to believe

[KageTokage]

I feel leery about them implementing any kind of automated countermeasures for bots when the only one currently in existence to my knowledge (The whole "fish sense something amiss" thing) only serves to inconvenience players as all of the fishing bots have a multitude of alternate fishing spots they'll cycle through whenever it kicks in.

The only automated measure I've seen actually have some measure of success are security softwares that link to a MMO's client and will either prevent from you connecting at all or immediately close the game if it senses some kind of outside program interacting with it, but they're really just an additional hurdle for the bot makers to work around in the end and it can potentially alienate people who use more harmless things like parsers.

[KisaiTenshi]

I feel leery about them implementing any kind of automated countermeasures for bots when the only one currently in existence to my knowledge (The whole "fish sense something amiss" thing) only serves to inconvenience players as all of the fishing bots have a multitude of alternate fishing spots they'll cycle through whenever it kicks in.

The only automated measure I've seen actually have some measure of success are security softwares that link to a MMO's client and will either prevent from you connecting at all or immediately close the game if it senses some kind of outside program interacting with it, but they're really just an additional hurdle for the bot makers to work around in the end and it can potentially alienate people who use more harmless things like parsers.

Those programs only hinder curious people, it does nothing for the script kiddies who are the main customer of the bots. Hackshield is defeated by undermining the CRT (C Runtime) and every other kind of DRM is defeated the same way. Basically something else "launches" the game, sees the anti-hacking software, and then just disconnects the function path so that it just spinwaits while doing nothing yet leaving the "call home" function working as normal, which is why the client closes in those games. As pointed out frequently, these anti-hacking tools simply don't stop anyone. The PC is simply not a secure platform.

If MMORPG's only came out for the PS4, it's very likely (due to the non-encrypted nature of the game's communication channels) that someone would just run the game through a linux box and tamper with it that way.

That's why encryption of the network traffic has to be the first defense against tampering. The developers reluctance to even do a trivial level of encryption is probably because it would hamper their own security tools.

[KageTokage]

I guess it really depends on the game.

They hardly worked as a deterrent for more main stream MMOs, but it did seem to get the bots to back off in some more niche games like PSO2 (Which initially had the exact issue with money farmers flying around the place and RMT spammers).

[Krojack]

They can't detect the bots.

Don't give me this. Players see bots teleporting all over cities every day. You can follow a gathering bot for a few minutes and see that it follows the exact same path every time as it loops around.

[KageTokage]

I think the STF never actually observes the bots to see if they're suspicious or not and just simply uses some kind of tool to see if they're exhibiting any abnormalities with the data they're sending the server (Which is not going to be the case for any of mainstream bots that are paid services, which is yet another reason why they should be taking them more seriously).

I don't think you even need to observe a player firsthand to write them off as suspicious if the number of items they'd gathered/crafted is several times higher then that of other players on the server, though...

[HaelseMikiro]

I'm pretty sure the STF is still only a 4 person team (used to be 3) that only speaks JP, so anything forwarded to them goes through the additional process of being translated, or possibly goes to a void where it gets ignored. That might be one of the reasons that the only real action against bots we have ever seen is the periodic ban waves. Actual policing in this game is non-existent unless a GM has to put a band-aid on someone's feels.

[Hyperia]

I have a feeling that SE is sorta trapped in their current crafting situation. If they were to exterminate all of the bots, then crafting in its current form may become unsustainable due to supply costs skyrocketing and crashing the market. Because of this, they just turn a blind eye to the whole botting system on the crafting side. I have read about the sophistication of the bots in the media and they are getting to an amazing level. The amount of resources that SE would need to invest to capture these automatons would be incredible. I'm not fond of botting in any way and wish people would not do it but I don't see any way for SE to stop the current generation of bots with the resources they have.

[KageTokage]

Trying to offload that much work onto such a small team, let alone a foreign one we can't necessarily even communicate with properly is honestly ridiculous with how much bigger their GM team is.

I'm assuming this is just another side effect of SE trying to fund XIV as little as possible.

I have a feeling that SE is sorta trapped in their current crafting situation. If they were to exterminate all of the bots, then crafting in its current form may become unsustainable due to supply costs skyrocketing and crashing the market. Because of this, they just turn a blind eye to the whole botting system on the crafting side. I have read about the sophistication of the bots in the media and they are getting to an amazing level. The amount of resources that SE would need to invest to capture these automatons would be incredible. I'm not fond of botting in any way and wish people would not do it but I don't see any way for SE to stop the current generation of bots with the resources they have.

While XIV bots can execute some pretty complicated scripts, they're still terrible at making themselves not stand out like a sore thumb, and even if they weren't obvious, the sheer amount of time they spend online and active is still a giveaway. The GMs wouldn't need anything more then their eyes and a few PMs to determine whether or not someone is botting.

Also, the whole situation with bots and crafting/gathering isn't quite that simple. A lot of people back out from crafting/gathering to make gil specifically because the bots have tanked prices to the point where it's scarcely worth the effort. Get rid of the bots and more people will be gathering/crafting again.