Love How Road To 70 Gives RMT Bots Yet Another Boost

[Pintsized]

RMT have so many reasons to infest this game .. I just noticed today how every Archer bot I see in Gridania on Phoenix actually comes from Lich or another server where Road To 70 is in effect.

Seriously SE, you don't give a damn about RMT any more, do you?

[DumdogsWorld]

Yes, because every player who wants to utilize exp buffs is a bot.

Yes, because every player who wants to level up wants to use skip potions.

Yes, because giving players on underpopulated worlds exp boosts has no practical uses at all outside of fueling bots.


Sarcasm aside, the question is not how to prevent bots, because prevention is not possible. At least, it's not possible without ruining the game. I suppose you could potentially eliminate the more traditional farming bots by completely removing all tradable currencies and items from the game, only to then keep the RMT where people log into your account and clear stuff on your behalf.

Really, what we need is more enforcement. See all those city guard NPCs? Make each and every one of them an avatar for a GM. Ban RMT advertisers on sight immediately. Do the same thing in the wilderness. If people are phasing through the ground and flying around, instantly ban them. Their avatars are deleted right there and then, and so are all their items and gil. Got a marketboard bot that automatically lowers prices programatically? Send real people to investigate it ASAP.

These bots are backed by manpower, and the best way to fight manpower is with manpower.

[Freyt]

I think their bot removal had actually spiked dramatically.

That's just how big the problem is. They post how many accounts they've terminated on a weekly basis, and for the Christmas week it was over 5000.

The problem doesn't like with the team that is responsible for removing bots.

The problem exists both in the ease of botting and in the poor legal framework surrounding it. Can really only blame SE for one of those things.

To make botting harder could involve a variety of things, half of which that people would propose here would disadvantage players at large and the dev team opts not to do because of that. However it's clear XIV needs an overhaul in a number of ways, and I hope that should it ever come that designing it to disadvantage bots and not players could be a part of that.

[SpecialTaskForce]

HAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[SpecialTaskForce]

I think their bot removal had actually spiked dramatically.

[Pintsized]

Yes, because every player who wants to utilize exp buffs is a bot.

Road to 70 is intended to help bolster low-pop servers .. so why does the buff persist when visiting other worlds?

THAT is the 'exploit' the bots are using and it should be stopped .. 'legit' players also have no reasonable expectation for this buff to be game-wide so if they're affected then, tough.

[KageTokage]

I was wondering why the bots were generally wanderers as of late as opposed to natives, but now I know.

In all seriousness though, there are myriad practical solutions to this that don't impact actual players (IE, add kill zones that prevent the bots from using their hacks to go out of bounds or fly through the air); it just feels mostly like SE doesn't care enough to bother.

[DumdogsWorld]

Road to 70 is intended to help bolster low-pop servers .. so why does the buff persist when visiting other worlds?

The buff only affects EXP gains. If a bot needs to be high level for whatever reason, they can stay on their home world until they reach the desired level, and then immediately hop to another world to do farming and whatever else that bots do when they're not leveling.

THAT is the 'exploit' the bots are using and it should be stopped ..

Everything in this game can be used as an exploit if you try hard enough and have the automated software and compromised accounts to do it. Again, the answer is enforcement.

[CazzT]

I'm confused... Why are bots crossing servers? What's the point or benefit of doing that?

[Freyt]

Are you disagreeing?