Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Muutaras]

I took one look at the characters in that group and the face looks and I know EXACTLY two of those in that group that are gathering bots that are on 24/7 feeding this. I've literally reported them well over 60 times over the course of months as have others and they still exist. One's name is like a unpleasant rabbit for example and the other is a J (hope that avoids the naming and shaming rule).

Pretty sad when I can look at that and I know exactly what names of what bots are fueling this junk on my server.

The market bots and gathering bots are directly entwined since they fuel eachother and both need crushed to fix this, though breaking the gathering ones would starve the market bots. Either way it needs enforced, oh it might cost money to have staff do it, but doesn't our money for the game make us worth fixing this for? We do the heavy lifting most times since as shown we actively checking this out, making sure even our accusations have weight and evidence and we want to avoid catching legitimate players. I'd not be as upset myself if AT THE VERY LEAST one of the multiple bots I've seen EVERY DAY for the last 4 months had been banned, but they haven't they still are running gathering circuits and still dominating the markets for months on end when supposed ban waves happen.

You may have seen an interesting bot these days with the initial letters N. S., this person too interesting, he comes when prices on crafting jewels up was Restoration starting. He have 10-20 lvl war or pal and 80 DRK(he buy book for fast 80 lvl) and typical all set gatheting-craft jobs, and FC owner. + It's too multi server bot. Item on him made a person with the same appearance with the identical FC name on another servers. I found 4-5 servers where this bot working. You can add me in friends in game Ijn Akagi

[Kes13a]

guardedly happy news everyone...

Someone I reported a while back because I suspected them of being a source of RMT on multiple servers, is apparently no longer with us. no one by that name exists on any of the servers according to Lodestone and I havent seen their brand of sales this week.They werent the undercutting bots however. they would have their sellers get crafted items from the base server, and sell on each world in the group, typically listing for dirt cheap for fast sales using a 'worldname'-'designation'-'roman numeral i-viii' format for their retainers. mind you, I reported them for RMT suspicions, not botting, but its a start

[KageTokage]

I have a hunch that reporting for RMT may have worked because while the STF and GMs suck at identifying bots, they seem much better at tracking suspicious gil transfers; to such an extent that I've heard stories of players who weren't actually involved in RMT being contacted out of the blue because they were transferring several million gil to either an alt or a friend.

There's some kind of Aether DC-wide shard farming operation going on using a series of FCs named "***HUB" (With the asterisks being shorthand for the server name, so CacHUB in the case of my server) that are populated by a single max level DoL bot that does nothing but aetherial reduction in HW and SB areas so perhaps I'll see if I can get rid of them using the same tactic.

[TheLoveJenovan]

I have a hunch that reporting for RMT may have worked because while the STF and GMs suck at identifying bots, they seem much better at tracking suspicious gil transfers; to such an extent that I've heard stories of players who weren't actually involved in RMT being contacted out of the blue because they were transferring several million gil to either an alt or a friend.

I've tried the game's "Report Cheating" with RMT in the subject, and I've used the Special Task Force (STF). The bots I've reported to both are still present after about 6-8 weeks. If anyone would like to try STF, you can submit to the STF at this link:

https://support.na.square-enix.com/c...382&la=1&fty=2

This was also the procedure that SE USA recommended to me when I sent them a support email. Who knows, maybe more reports through this mechanism will work. From my understanding, the STF operates out of Japan.

There's some kind of Aether DC-wide shard farming operation going on using a series of FCs named "***HUB" (With the asterisks being shorthand for the server name, so CacHUB in the case of my server) that are populated by a single max level DoL bot that does nothing but aetherial reduction in HW and SB areas so perhaps I'll see if I can get rid of them using the same tactic.

I've noticed this as well, and I've reported our version on Jenova a few times over the last 3 months--including the STF. Nothing has been done with this bot. It's not even a sophisticated bot, as its movements are 100% deterministic. I've even asked the account if it's a bot, without a response.

[Muutaras]

I do not know how many GMs are running on the servers and what they are doing. But is it really difficult to arrange 2-4 GMs per server? If, as they say above, they are triggered only for large volumes of gil transfer, but this is very strange. As already mentioned, you can try to make volunteers for GM positions that will help the main GM on server. When just observing the collection point for about a week ShB nodes and check actual sellers on market board, I find near 30-40 people who 99.99999% bots. Moreover, having FC for greater profit and through them you can find whole networks of bots on other server.

[Muutaras]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Creamploo...121609728?s=19 Interesting tweet post about Restoration ranking.

[Commander_Justitia]

At this point the best they could do is allow botting. They don't have the tools to get cheater/botter and don't wanna get into an arms race with them, because that doesn't generate any money. They should really have a look at how other games make a GM visit a pleasant experience, e.g. when a bug occurs.

@Muutaras The GM won't invest as much time and effort to come to conclusions like you do. It is detrimental anyway because as a GM you would be on a constant witchhunt, if you would work like that. If you accept outside evidence you also risk getting faked information from players that want to see another player banned, as happened in the past. The majority of the cases GM have to deal with include harassment and griefing. And the bans we see are for RMT advertisment mostly from free trial accounts.
By the time a GM sees your report and checks & acts on it, the Restoration rewards will probably be out yet.

[Kes13a]

At this point the best they could do is allow botting. They don't have the tools to get cheater/botter and don't wanna get into an arms race with them, because that doesn't generate any money. They should really have a look at how other games make a GM visit a pleasant experience, e.g. when a bug occurs.

@Muutaras The GM won't invest as much time and effort to come to conclusions like you do. It is detrimental anyway because as a GM you would be on a constant witchhunt, if you would work like that. If you accept outside evidence you also risk getting faked information from players that want to see another player banned, as happened in the past. The majority of the cases GM have to deal with include harassment and griefing. And the bans we see are for RMT advertisment mostly from free trial accounts.
By the time a GM sees your report and checks & acts on it, the Restoration rewards will probably be out yet.

So, you are saying cheating should be allowed? Treat it as a pleasant experience?

I am certain I just read that wrong and misunderstood what you are saying.

[Jojoya]

At this point the best they could do is allow botting. They don't have the tools to get cheater/botter and don't wanna get into an arms race with them, because that doesn't generate any money. They should really have a look at how other games make a GM visit a pleasant experience, e.g. when a bug occurs.

@Muutaras The GM won't invest as much time and effort to come to conclusions like you do. It is detrimental anyway because as a GM you would be on a constant witchhunt, if you would work like that. If you accept outside evidence you also risk getting faked information from players that want to see another player banned, as happened in the past. The majority of the cases GM have to deal with include harassment and griefing. And the bans we see are for RMT advertisment mostly from free trial accounts.
By the time a GM sees your report and checks & acts on it, the Restoration rewards will probably be out yet.

The GMs have nothing to do with investigating bots. That's handled by the Special Task Force. The most the GMs will do is forward the information to the STF.

The "outside evidence" may not be treated as actual evidence but it does give SE information they can use to check their own logs. It never hurts to submit what you have to help them pinpoint where and when something happened.

SE has started banning for non-RMT botting and now lists it as a separate category in the weekly notices. There's not a huge number of accounts getting hit but they are taking action against some. It could be interesting to see if there's a sudden spike in the number in the weeks after the leaderboard rankings end.

[Shinzan]

[QUOTE=Jojoya;5427975] The most the GMs will do is forward the information to the STF.

unfortunately you are wrong, I have many communications and several answers, the GM Team is "isolated", they are not allowed to process any feedback, neither to the community, nor to the STF teams or players! at the moment clicking Support Desk -> Contact Us -> Report Cheating is absolutely useless, it has no effect at all, you get a polite answer that it was read and understood and that they are really sorry that you feel so bad but please understand you must report to the STF via the website.