Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[NamidaTekika]

I wonder if they make a bot I can create an account for just to do that? Gave me a giggle if nothing else since botting on the mp is getting more common and according to SE and Jojoya, we must learn to live with it and enjoy...

The whole learn to live with it is what it feels like. Bots just seem to be ignored forever, when they are SUPER obvious. Like you can follow them and it is blatant that it is not a person running that, on 24/7 etc. Theres really no excuse for it.

I've seen these bots so often I can literally rattle off the names by memory now (and from putting in so many reports on them over weeks and weeks). It wouldn't be hard for them to catch these, and theres no real reason to leave them active, even the flimsy 'they study them' reason, no there is no excuse for the amount of time the same ones remain active, because you're not going to learn anything more...since theres no need to improve or change said bot since you can get away with it...forever.

[Kes13a]

The whole learn to live with it is what it feels like. Bots just seem to be ignored forever, when they are SUPER obvious. Like you can follow them and it is blatant that it is not a person running that, on 24/7 etc. Theres really no excuse for it.

I've seen these bots so often I can literally rattle off the names by memory now (and from putting in so many reports on them over weeks and weeks). It wouldn't be hard for them to catch these, and theres no real reason to leave them active, even the flimsy 'they study them' reason, no there is no excuse for the amount of time the same ones remain active, because you're not going to learn anything more...since theres no need to improve or change said bot since you can get away with it...forever.

I would agree. Not sure how much studying needs to be done on behaviour thats been in there for MONTHS. Yeah, I get it, they ban one lot, another lot shows up. But the ones they are banning are the "Gkjhgfkjsdhgfdkj" archers or RMT barkers, the rest are untouched and seemingly condoned. So either SE is helpless... or they just dont see it as an issue

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks for everyones' comments; I found this thread very informative and helpful. I had been working the MB for the last couple of months to help my FC save up for a large house, and I noticed (and reported) this botting behavior for at least 2 months.

I don't mind the undercutting. The part I don't like is that the bots extinguish markets on dozens (hundreds) of items. We've had a Jenova bot that follows the exact same behavior listed at the start of this thread. For the Jenova bot, it will start with an underserved market, like a Titanium Axe, in which the bot might price it at 2-3 times the average selling price, like 120k. When other players enter at the average selling price (50k), the bot will loop through an undercut-sell-restock cycle of the item to such a point that it becomes too time consuming to sell items at the bot's floor prices. Our bot used to do this on lvl 70-80 gear, but it has recently moved to lvl 50-80 gear. I've worked for the last few weeks to push the bot's prices to its floor prices on each item, in order to help new players with gear. It's not really what I want to do when I play a game.

At the end of the day, you can live with it or excuse the bots. If you're ok with that, then that's fine and this thread might not be for you. At the same time, we're paying customers, and it's reasonable to have an expectation for a base level of quality in a product. For me, this means that the devs take an active role in addressing cheating and harassment in their online game. In my experience, FFXIV's role here has mostly been lip service for any bot more sophisticated that an RMT advertisement bot. It is for this reason that I've cancelled my subscription, and I've sent a note to the Support Desk to let them know that this is the reason.

Finally, I also believe the devs have not done a good job with some aspects of the game and bot incentives. The two clear examples that come to mind are crystal farming and purchasing a first house. I believe both of these are setup in such a way as to strongly incentivize botting--which is why I haven't engaged in these activities on my own. I'm not sure there's a perfect solution--perhaps a crystal vendor NPC or a housing lottery--but surely there's a better solution than the current implementation. The fact that these have been known, unaddressed problems for years tells me that the devs are more concerned with generating more content than fixing fundamental problems with their current platform. For me, this supports my decision to leave.

[Kes13a]

I think part of the issue is that the devs dont have the time to devote to the MP to actually see the issue in play. If they did, I am sure it would be seen as a problem. We see it because we deal with it constantly, and reports are likely shrugged off as "oh someone doesnt like 1 gil undercutting". I couldnt give a lalafells behind about being undercut, that happens. but a single person taking up every item in categories from 50 to 80 and maintaining that undercutting 24/7 is a bit beyond the pale, and human endurance.

But they should realize that a whole aspect of their game is ruining by cheaters and they are not addressing it, should concern them. The fact it is getting worse and not better and will soon entice others to leave, should concern them even more.

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks Etherea,

I agree with your comments, and I speculate that there are other factors as well. I think the feedback loop between the SE/USA Support Desk and the SE/JPN developers isn’t strong, and I don’t think the relationship is collaborative.

Part of the problem is that the JPN, NA and Europe servers have different problems in how the players approach the game. From my understanding, bot cheating isn’t as rampant on JPN servers, and this may explain why it isn’t a higher priority for the devs. This is consistent with how other NA MMORPGs are more active with cheating than a JPN-based MMORPG, like FFXIV. I hope that the SE NA support desk can effect change on our behalf, but I’m not optimistic that they can or they care. It's heartbreaking. It's clear that the devs care about the game a great deal, and that the NA fans do too. But I think the NA support has really dropped the ball, and it has isolated the two groups.

At the end of the day, I think the devs will only see and understand an impact on the bottom line.

[tierney12]

Part 1/2

Common comments regarding MB bots that tick me off:

"I undercut by 1 gil, so am I a bot?/how do you know they're a bot?"

"Just take advantage of them, sell at a low price and buy off of them."

"I've sold x of this recently, readjust what you're selling."

"Who cares about trading, play the game a different way."

You should undercut by one gil, it's common decency towards your fellow traders. The point is not how much they undercut, but how frequently. These bots take crafted items, at the moment the most common thing is the neo-ishgardian set (all pieces), list twenty items on each one of their ten retainers and continuously cycle through them with a script that compares the price of what the lowest is on the MB and undercuts it. We know that it's a script because we can predict within seconds when they will undercut regardless of when the last update to the items being sold was, i.e. we can put a cheaper item on the board at a predetermined time and watch it be undercut in an impossibly fast time for a human player.

Bots are not as simple as they were a few months ago, they have preprogrammed floor functions that can catch players trying to bait them and they can buy off you and resell for a profit if they are so inclined.

The bots can sell literally anything: they regularly sell materials that have been bot farmed, and they can sell crafted gear that has been passed onto them. There is an expectation that there should be a fair, player driven economy where there is a limited supply and demand for most items. Items that sell frequently can be taken advantage of by a bot listing several of them and routinely undercutting every minute (or less), and can restock from their inventory when their items have sold, pushing legitimate players out of the potential market even though there may be a high demand. Similarly, highly valuable items can be passed onto a bot that can routinely undercut in the same fashion, locking players who have had lucky drops/spent a considerable amount of time farming out of converting their items into gil as well.

[tierney12]

Part 2/2:

"You don't play my sub." FFXIV has very rewarding and engaging crafting, gathering and market systems that are absolutely amazing when they work. Market bots significantly detract from all of these systems by devaluing the time that players spend engaging with these systems because they significantly reduce a player's return on their time invested. Market bots are also involved in RMT, which damages the game's health as well as contribute to organised crime such as credit card theft which ties to other serious crime such as identity theft: see the bots which send phishing links via tells, blackmail, hacking, use of ransomware etc. as well as any other criminal activity that the proceeds of RMT can fund.

Now how can SE go about attacking the MB bots? Firstly they could set up checks that would alert them to trading activity that doesn't fit the profile of a human player (even a dedicated one), such as 24 hour activity, high percentage of items being traded as a third party source, and consitent timings of price adjustments. Now we know that SE can't look at what applications are running in the background of a user's machine, though there must be a interface through the client that thrid party software can interact with. Rewriting this interface to eliminate or frustrate attempts to automate the selling of items would also detract from the ability of market bots to function.

[TheLoveJenovan]

I agree with your comments, tierney12, and I think that players that justify or excuse botting are counter productive.

I hope SE implements your anti-botting suggestions, but I worry that these measures are more complicated than the priority level SE has for this problem. As a developer, I think these measures would be straightforward to implement. From what I've seen, SE's anti-botting measures are very rudimentary, like the fishing mechanism.

Honestly, I'd be happy if they implemented simple measures like banning or capping player-to-player gil trades or a captcha mechanism that triggers randomly after being online for over 8 hours. For my first suggestion, RMT could still trade gear and items, but this would have to happen *much* more frequently for each player, rather than having 1 transaction. I also think flagging RMT would be easier, and it would be easier to identify the source of assets, thereby hampering laundering. For my second suggestion, a captcha mechanism could be tied to the lore of the game. Other online services (like Google) have made great progress in solving this problem, and SE wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel.

Finally, I have a comment on scanning for other software running in the background. Even if they did implement this, it wouldn't catch all of the bots. I won't list out methods or techniques. I think this measure would only change how bots operate.

[Kes13a]

I think part of the dev issue would also be that they will not be playing the NA version of the game. So even if they did wander on to check a server, they would be doing it in Japan and relying on NA CS to monitor things here.

Basically, I think each region needs a dedicated team monitoring this kind of thing if any progress is to be made. They have put amazing effort into their game, I just wish they would do the same against the cheating and going out of their way to ruin the product

[tierney12]

Finally, I have a comment on scanning for other software running in the background. Even if they did implement this, it wouldn't catch all of the bots. I won't list out methods or techniques. I think this measure would only change how bots operate.

Computer Vision techniques, while indistinguishable from normal user input can be defeated by sampling their inputs from a captcha style mechanism (like asking them to move their mouse/thumbsticks) as well as human intuitive checks like answering simple questions, or simple logical problems.

Edit: Slightly changed my tone as I may have been unintentionaly condescending.