Just had the most fascinating conversation with a GM

[ICountFrom0]

There is no reason for people to explode so hard just because some streamer is over-faking-outrage-for-those-views. This isn't a normal thing just like when the servers get DDoSed. There are lots of different groups out there attacking FF14 since it is exploding in success. Be patient.

No, I do not accept this as being the new normal, I will protest, even if you say not to.

[ICountFrom0]

So i made an alt on Hyperion and have been entering and exiting Central shroud for 20 minutes, the only hiccup i have had with loading is accepting the very 1st quest which could be down to me being an EU resident on NA server getting a hiccup as much as bots.

So few things i could gleam from this.
1. they got the botters
2. the botters have all stopped for now
3. This has all been overexaggeration

If this becomes a daily thing of zone crashing expect heavy action to be taken, if this has been a 1 off thing expect them to look into it to try and prevent it in the future, if this has been overexaggeration bravo you got me.

I'd say that they got all the bots they wanted to level 5, and moved on to another region, so somewhere else is now undergoing crush. Where, I don't know, but somewhere in the world, the bots are active. How do I know? Multi thousand person deep ques, and being kicked out of the game every 5 to 10 minutes that I am in it.

The game is being crushed to death under the weight of bots.

[CazzT]

Yeah the in game GM's are not allowed to do anything about the bots. SE has a separate team for bot busting and bans them in waves to hinder bot creators from finding out how their bots were detected since SE uses mostly an automated system to detect bots. Having humans banning the bots one at a time while nice for optics, is not very efficient. Bots are created pretty fast and SE would need a lot of employees working to keep up, probably. RMT bots use stolen credit cards to buy the accounts so they don't care about the money/subscription lost from a banned bot.

This is exactly why the problem is growing. Bot farms know they can get away with this. And with each ban wave, it keeps them out of the game for a few hours, at best. They have a backstock of accounts that they will activate with stolen credit cards and other means. Wave banning has not been an effective solution since 2005.

[Crushnight]

I'd say that they got all the bots they wanted to level 5, and moved on to another region, so somewhere else is now undergoing crush. Where, I don't know, but somewhere in the world, the bots are active. How do I know? Multi thousand person deep ques, and being kicked out of the game every 5 to 10 minutes that I am in it.

The game is being crushed to death under the weight of bots.

The servers were just hit by DDoS which explains the queue, we unfortunately get hit by these usually when they do a big ban wave which is comically sad when you think about it People make bots, SE bans bots, bot owner gets annoyed causing DDoS, SE tries making new anti DDoS maneuver rinse repeat.

Before you even think about typing "just get better preventive measures" YOU DO IT, because you cannot prevent everything it is impossible DDoS will always be a thing, bots will always be a thing, so long as someone finds a way to cheat a system people will take the path of least resistance. The best you could hope for is increase the Bi-weekly bannings to weekly at this stage

[KokonoeAiyoko]

I guess World Visit doesn't exist anymore. Oh wait.

Come back to scream your outrage if you can't get into the zone across all the worlds on your data center. Otherwise you're just not making use of the feature that SE specifically put in to deal with congested areas.

Lol what kind of logic is this? Go to a different world cause bots have invested your homeworld?

Sure that's a solution to the concerns posted in the thread.

[Youkulm]

Proof of what OP is talking about, from Reddit. Please beware of foul language.

https://clips.twitch.tv/FitAlertDelicataPrimeMe

This is 100% a problem. OP may sound dramatic but this is preventing new people from enjoying the game sadly.

This should be high on SE's radar when paying customers can't to basic quests and game functions because of Bots.

[CazzT]

The servers were just hit by DDoS which explains the queue, we unfortunately get hit by these usually when they do a big ban wave which is comically sad when you think about it People make bots, SE bans bots, bot owner gets annoyed causing DDoS, SE tries making new anti DDoS maneuver rinse repeat.

Before you even think about typing "just get better preventive measures" YOU DO IT, because you cannot prevent everything it is impossible DDoS will always be a thing, bots will always be a thing, so long as someone finds a way to cheat a system people will take the path of least resistance. The best you could hope for is increase the Bi-weekly bannings to weekly at this stage

I work for an ISP. We have layer upon layer of DDOS prevention for our commercial customers, which our residential customers benefit from as well. That's just our line of defense and doesn't take into account the business' end of prevention.
There is no excuse for a company as large as SquareEnix to not have enough prevention measures in place that players will not be impacted. You know how hard it is to DDOS WoW? It's next to impossible now because they've put in so many layers. SquareEnix can easily afford to put more layers in place. The only excuse not to is sheer foolishness.

Proof of what OP is talking about, from Reddit. Please beware of foul language.

https://clips.twitch.tv/FitAlertDelicataPrimeMe

This is 100% a problem. OP may sound dramatic but this is preventing new people from enjoying the game sadly.

This should be high on SE's radar when paying customers can't to basic quests and game functions because of Bots.

This sort of thing leads to investors being scared to invest. Because they're smart enough to know this leads to a game people don't play if the problem is not addressed.

[Nixxe]

This sort of thing leads to investors being scared to invest. Because they're smart enough to know this leads to a game people don't play if the problem is not addressed.

Investors aren't likely to pay a lot of attention to something like this. They invest in SE as a whole, not FFXIV, and they're much more interested in changes in performance metrics than specific problems people are complaining about on the forums.

[KageTokage]

I'd like to hope incidents like this will finally convince them that they need to take more lasting countermeasures against the RMT bots.

I also agree that the GMs really should just be trained to recognize bots and allowed to ban them because the STF is really too small of a team to be managing the entire game on their own.

[Moonlite]

I do think you are barking up the wrong tree, sadly. These forums have been pretty steadfast in the defense of the current system SE uses for bans.


So yesterday they banned a bunch of bots. Look at the people saying "Look at SE they are doing something." But they allowed all those bots to circulate gil and items. I have also seen large groups of people defend the gating of this game. They believe it lowers the amount of bots. The bots will teleport around and hack.



Interesting thing, if you are lucky enough to be near Hawthorne hut for one of these waves. They can talk to NPCs underground and teleport back and forth. But they have to come above ground to do the emote dance with the sylph. Not really relevant to your complaint, but something I find odd.


Also are we really being DDOSed? Or they just jamming the login servers like players do when new patch/expansion, and that is causing the issues? Also this game has a limited amount of instance servers, as the one armed man has taught us. How many instance servers are we losing to these bots?