Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks Jojoya. I haven’t played the game as long as you, and your comments on the problem long-term are helpful.

We do see SE banning some suspected bots so there are results.

I haven’t seen a bot get banned—are they a particular type of bot that gets banned? Have they banned bots in the last 6 months? I’ve reported market bots and DOL/Ephemeral bots many times.

Most bots don't pay subs... SE's problem is coming up with enough evidence that bot software is being used. The software is getting more sophisticated so it makes detection harder in many cases if the user follows the bot company's instructions. They do get caught on occasion but it's not as often as players would like.

I’m not sure that SE isn’t making money with the problem in some way.

They have to be making money from subs because there are market bots that have operated for 6-12 months or more with impunity, and these are paying accounts. Considering their diligence in acting on other TOS violations (phishing and harassment), I also don’t think they’re understaffed. I honestly think they avoid addressing some types of bots because they view them as beneficial for their game. It’s sort of like how some players justify DOL/Ephemeral bots because they make crystals affordable, even though the simple solution would be to just make an NPC merchant to sell crystals.

I also am not sure that they don’t have enough evidence. By definition, an account playing continuously and actively (i.e. not AFK) for more than 36 hours is not a human. A human can’t do that. At the same time you have bot accounts playing continuously for months, 24/7. If you’re right about there not being enough information in the reports, they could at least give us guidance on filling in more complete reports.

[TheLoveJenovan]

I find Jojoya's comment interesting on SE not having enough information on bots.

I'd like to try something new. Since we can't discuss specific bots here, I've created a discord for discussing and identifying specific bots on different datacenters. This is not meant to replace this thread, but it's to collect information for reports on specific bots.

My hope is that we can coordinate and gather information to make more detailed reports on specific bots, and see if that might help the problem.

https://discord.gg/KsZSqw

[Jojoya]

I haven’t seen a bot get banned—are they a particular type of bot that gets banned? Have they banned bots in the last 6 months? I’ve reported market bots and DOL/Ephemeral bots many times.

A notice is posted every week on Lodestone listing the number of accounts banned the previous week. Here's a link to the most recent one:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...b147f391c1c7d7

In the past SE had lumped all botting activity together under RMT activity but recently they separated out the non-RMT activity. We can see that they are doing something though the numbers still aren't as large as we'd hope.

Like most game violations, it appears that SE is not permanently banning accounts on a first offense (unless clearly RMT activity). They're doing temporary suspensions then permanent if the player doesn't stop.

I would love a better way to report suspected bot activity, especially considering most of the details we can offer as players amount more to reasonable speculation than actual proof.

A couple of days ago, I was at the Fort Jobb Aetheryte taking a moment to chat with FC while I was scouting a hunt train. Suddenly, a group of characters all with one of the Legend titles displayed appeared around the Aetheryte at the exact same time. A few seconds later, they all took off in perfect unison in the exact same direction.

Clearly it was a party of bots, likely one of the bot map parties that has begun plaguing the game. It is impossible for a group of characters controlled by different human beings to act together with such perfect precision. A couple are going to be a little faster or a little slower because of ping and just general human reaction time. Player controlled characters would take off in slightly different directions before correcting to head the same direction.

There is no quick report tool I could use to select at least one of them, let alone all of them, to tell SE "this character is displaying behavior characteristic of a bot, please investigate". I'm not going to use the Report RMT option because the activity I witnessed was not directly RMT related though it could be getting used to fuel RMT somewhere done the line. All we have is the cumbersome chain of menu options before you get to "Report Cheating" and it would have taken me a considerable amount of time to try to chase the party down to collect names then fill out the support ticket. I didn't bother since there was a good chance they'd be done and gone before I could track them down.

Even a simple change so the current Report RMT quick option becomes "Report RMT/bot activity" would be an improvement.

They have to be making money from subs because there are market bots that have operated for 6-12 months or more with impunity, and these are paying accounts.

There are different types of bots involved. The vast majority of bots are getting run from the accounts set up with the stolen payment information.

The market bots you're referring to are generally operated by "real" players using bot software to automate some of their game play. Yes, they're legitimately subscribed but they're also very small in number compared to the total player base. If SE had some sort of proof they are botting, they would ban the account because losing a couple of dozen subscriptions paid by cheaters is not a big deal in a game with close to a million active subscribers.

By definition, an account playing continuously and actively (i.e. not AFK) for more than 36 hours is not a human. A human can’t do that.

Where is that definition listed? I can't seem to find it anywhere in dictionaries or even in online medical references? Human beings can be capable of amazing things over short periods of time (which would include something like 36 hours). Sometimes it happens as a consequence of medical problems (one of my old WoW friends was hooked up to bags and frequently would remain awake 48-60 hours straight thanks to pain and discomfort from cancer treatment gone wrong).

They can't keep up those patterns of behavior consistently for weeks, though. Eventually the body breaks down enough that the brain forces it to rest.

Also, how do you know those accounts are operating continuously and actively for more than 36 hours if you're not doing the same yourself and at the same location they are so you can be constantly watching them?

I'm willing to bet those accounts, even if being run with bot software, aren't displaying the activity you describe. They will have breaks in activity as they run out of supplies and need human oversight directing them what to do next, or enter into off peak hours where there's little reason to keep monitoring marketboard prices every minute when once an hour is sufficient.

SE is going to make certain they have enough proof before they take action. Gaming companies already get enough grief for taking actions against accounts because of false positives. Better for them to spend an extra month making certain it's a bot than to watch your friend have to fight to get a ban overturned because SE felt pressured to start banning people just to keep the vocal minority content.

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks Jojoya,
I'm not sure how to read those reports. They include impressive numbers like 3,238 RMT accounts banned, but I've never seen a bot get banned. I assume those are almost all accounts that advertise gil selling or that conduct the final gil transfer with the customer. The bots that fund these operations appear to never get banned, and these I think show up under the "Botting Activity" category, which only shows 3 terminations and 12 suspensions (this week). That's only 0.04 bans per server and 0.18 terminations per server. Another way to look at it is that it will take 22 weeks to ban 1 bot on a server or 5-6 weeks to suspend 1 bot on a server.

I started a spreadsheet of some of the bots on my datacenter, with the help of a couple of other people on the discord I created (https://discord.gg/KsZSqw). We've already identified 18 bot rings comprising 87 accounts that have operated anywhere from 83 days to 960 days (about 2.5 years).

My plan is to send the updated list to the Special Task Force every Thursday, after the post on "Actions Taken Against In-Game Bots." Hopefully they can make some headway with a more concerted effort from us players.

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks Jojoya,

I didn't get the second part of your post.

The market bots you're referring to are generally operated by "real" players using bot software to automate some of their game play. Yes, they're legitimately subscribed but they're also very small in number compared to the total player base. If SE had some sort of proof they are botting, they would ban the account because losing a couple of dozen subscriptions paid by cheaters is not a big deal in a game with close to a million active subscribers.

I disagree with this statement. The market bot accounts I am referring to don't play the game. They have all the crafters leveled and never level anything else or leave the apartment for months. Maybe it's a real player that likes to amass big numbers of currency in a game. Maybe it's a bot that's generating income for RMT sales.

Where is that definition listed? I can't seem to find it anywhere in dictionaries or even in online medical references? Human beings can be capable of amazing things over short periods of time (which would include something like 36 hours). Sometimes it happens as a consequence of medical problems (one of my old WoW friends was hooked up to bags and frequently would remain awake 48-60 hours straight thanks to pain and discomfort from cancer treatment gone wrong).

That's fair. If they identified bots this way, there would be false positives from a small number of outliers. I would still create a rule despite outliers though. In any case, I would think that a ban that resulted from a medical condition could be sorted out pretty easily with an email.

Also, how do you know those accounts are operating continuously and actively for more than 36 hours if you're not doing the same yourself and at the same location they are so you can be constantly watching them?

I don't have to, I just need to sample their activity at regular intervals for long enough. That said, I didn't run the statistics to ensure that I had a 95% confidence interval, but at the end of the day, the accounts I've listed are on all the time for months. I've never seen a break.

I'd be happy to write a script that logs the online activity of specific bots. Frankly, it's something that Square Enix should do. I also don't have much sympathy for them, as there's clearly a problem--identified by many people--and they haven't even given us a response. I'd be forgiving, if they simply posted:

"We recognize that we're getting many bot reports from users that have not led to bans of bots. We want to assure you that we've looked at each and every case, and in most cases, we could not identify the botting activity. Please include more detailed information in your reports."

[TheLoveJenovan]

SE's silence is starting to look like negligence or condoning the behaviour. Time for someone at SE to do more than ban or suspend the low hanging fruit.

I agree 100%

[NamidaTekika]

Almost beautiful today. Said someone in say near some of the botter types (the same one who is using the 'real name') and after they teleported away, I got the same tell from 2 separate characters that I've seen doing the bot kinda rounds...all the exact same tell at the exact same time. That sure shows me you're not using third party programs! Mhmm...

[Angelhearth]

Sadly SE doesn't give a damned about the problem. I'm guessing they don't know how to handle it. I've suggested they make an algorithm that will scan all market boards constantly, looking for repeated and predictable biddings, which shouldn't be very hard, and then monitor those accounts, with other algorithms, 24/7. It shouldn't be that hard. I've reported it several times the last month, since the market on Spriggan, as most others, to my understanding, have been completely destroyed from a crafters perspective. I have also sent emails to SE trying to make them aware of the problem, but all I get back is "You have to open a ticket with the GM's". The problem is that the GM's doesn't react, or at least don't give feedback, showing that they react. Maybe if more players started sending emails directly to SE support, they would start understanding how big of a problem this is turning into. I notice some players write that you should just let it be, and find other things to do, well, some of us play this game for the gathering, crafting, and selling, which we are silly enough to find much more interesting than to do the same raids/dungeons over and over again.

[NamidaTekika]

I don't even know why some of the low hanging fruit bots need manual intervention. I swear you could probably script things out on the back end to easily detect and suspend/ban. On the less low hanging fruit side you could then redirect efforts to actually hunting the bots. A few database commands too and you could even easily identify those since humans don't do things the same way constantly for hours on end at exact intervals. Easily identify, easily crush.

[Kes13a]

I don't even know why some of the low hanging fruit bots need manual intervention. I swear you could probably script things out on the back end to easily detect and suspend/ban. On the less low hanging fruit side you could then redirect efforts to actually hunting the bots. A few database commands too and you could even easily identify those since humans don't do things the same way constantly for hours on end at exact intervals. Easily identify, easily crush.

NOOOO, we wouldnt want to do that. what if someones completely honest and unsuspecting friend does things exactly the same at exactly the same intervals for hours?!?!? we wouldnt want their friend to go through the pain and trauma of trying to get their account back would we? I mean I am certain they didnt mean to download that bot program, go through the effort to set it up only to be perma banned