[Suggestion] Easy way to ban all bots in a single day.

[Dagget]

Bots tp to cords that no player could ever tp to (aside from eb ring tp to mate). Just hard blocking tp's to within certain distance of key NPC's and farming nodes should flag bots and even after they adjust courses will add considerably to their scripts and effort.

[Hasrat]

The actual first step they should take is removing gil drops from trash in all instances as that's their primary source of sustainable income and actual players benefit little from it.

If that's gone they'd stop spamming instances and slowing down the servers.

While I don't really disagree with the idea (and relieving server stress may be enough of a boon to disregard minor concerns), I do kinda wonder if this would maybe end up backfiring slightly. Removing a gil source (incredibly minute as it is) for low levels could, potentially, push a few extra players to considering purchasing gil, if they're feeling they're not collecting enough on their own.

Very unlikely, I'll admit. But. Maybe. More importantly, tho, yeah, it's so small to not really even be worth mentioning. And there's such little use for gil, devs could probably stand to cut some other small sources as well without much impact.

[Zfz]

• Add right-click "Report Bot" feature. No need to write report. Right-click > click > end of story.
• Server regularly produce an automated report for things like: zones that have consistent bot reports, accounts that are consistently being reported as bots, player who is consistently reporting others for botting, etc.
• A GM gets the report every hour and does a quick investigation, manually banning confirmed bot accounts for 24 hours, along with any other accounts that are clearly being botted by the same source.

No amount of innovation by botters can defeat tens if not hundreds of pairs of human eyes and the analytical power of the human brain in recognizing clear botting behavior.

It can be as simple as a backend process just receiving these reports and storing them in an independent database that runs the hourly reports. Low tech solution.

Then the Task Force can focus on fighting the technical fight, while the GMs do their part to present a comfortable experience for everyone.

[Niwashi]

• Bots do not use RAND code to randomize their walking patterns

They don't currently, but only because they don't currently need to. They could add it into their script without much difficulty as soon as SE gave them a reason to. So this would work once, but then wouldn't ever work again after that.

[Nyvara]

• Add right-click "Report Bot" feature. No need to write report. Right-click > click > end of story.
• Server regularly produce an automated report for things like: zones that have consistent bot reports, accounts that are consistently being reported as bots, player who is consistently reporting others for botting, etc.
• A GM gets the report every hour and does a quick investigation, manually banning confirmed bot accounts for 24 hours, along with any other accounts that are clearly being botted by the same source.

No amount of innovation by botters can defeat tens if not hundreds of pairs of human eyes and the analytical power of the human brain in recognizing clear botting behavior.

It can be as simple as a backend process just receiving these reports and storing them in an independent database that runs the hourly reports. Low tech solution.

Then the Task Force can focus on fighting the technical fight, while the GMs do their part to present a comfortable experience for everyone.

Elegant and simple. I report bots when I can but jeez the process is so dang time consuming. Half the time they have TPed away before I finish.

[HumanNinjaToo]

Plenty of MMO's have no trading between characters, no mail system. It seems this is where they could start to freeze out RMT. If there is no way for an account to transfer gil to another account, then there is no need for RMT. Also, maybe doing away with all the gil sinks in the game would decrease the need for gil at early levels (i.e. no cost for using transport and things like that); then you only really need gil to purchase from the MB, which you really only need to do if you are in late game or an avid DoH player.

If getting rid of transfers between player accounts is the price to pay for no more RMT, then I say do it.

[Zfz]

If getting rid of transfers between player accounts is the price to pay for no more RMT, then I say do it.

Removing trade would also require a complete overhaul of the gathering and crafting design, as both are designed with trading in mind. That's a big price to pay. For a significant portion of the player population, it would be as bad as removing, say, all ranged DPS. Or all melee DPS. Or removing all Extreme Primals, or removing all Alliance raids.

[Niwashi]

Plenty of MMO's have no trading between characters, no mail system. It seems this is where they could start to freeze out RMT. If there is no way for an account to transfer gil to another account, then there is no need for RMT.

You're actually proposing a rule that forces everyone to be self-sufficient, forbids crafters and gatherers from selling what they craft/gather, while preventing anyone else from getting crafted items?!? Eliminating the entire economy is a pretty extreme solution to something which is a problem due to the way it hurts the economy. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater and all that.

Or was your post just missing the sarcasm tag? It makes a whole lot more sense that way.

[HumanNinjaToo]

Removing trade would also require a complete overhaul of the gathering and crafting design, as both are designed with trading in mind. That's a big price to pay. For a significant portion of the player population, it would be as bad as removing, say, all ranged DPS. Or all melee DPS. Or removing all Extreme Primals, or removing all Alliance raids.

You're actually proposing a rule that forces everyone to be self-sufficient, forbids crafters and gatherers from selling what they craft/gather, while preventing anyone else from getting crafted items?!? Eliminating the entire economy is a pretty extreme solution to something which is a problem due to the way it hurts the economy. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater and all that.

I am not saying removing the MB, I am saying remove the ability for one player to transfer goods/gil to another player via individual trade screen/mog mail.

[AlphaFox]

Then it just becomes "Sell Apple for 5mil" only people who would buy it is the bot farmers to send the gil to the main account. Which I admit would in turn allow them to see which account holds it but I would like to also assume they can find the random jibberish names with millions of gil at level 1.