Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks Sqwall for the post. I agree with most of your post, but I have a few comments:

i.e. I have seen "Signature Notfound" "Obtaining Signature" .....really? that's the name you came up with when you "started" the game.

I was puzzled by this as well. I did a search and found that this isn't the name of a player, but rather it's the value pulled for a user ID that hasn't logged since a patch was applied. I'm not exactly sure why the server doesn't just pull the character's name directly from the database, regardless of their last login, but that does appear to be the case. For example, you'll notice many items crafted by "Obtaining Signature" after a patch. If you submit cheating reports for an account with this name, I'm not sure support will do anything.

I will now start reporting suspicious names, and if the data proves unsubstantiated then I suppose I was wrong, but if I was right...well.

Reporting is great--assuming that SE does something with the case, which is up for debate--but decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio of reports by increasing the noise would be problematic if it encumbers or diverts resources from investigating legitimate bots. You may be correct in all of your reports, but if you're not, then it's wasted resources that could be used in investigating real bots.

I agree that players don't always act in their own interest, but I would argue that some of the behavior you describe can happen from legitimate players.

- I'm not sure what you mean by suspicious names, other than the "Obtaining Signature." The bots I've encountered have all had "legitimate" sounding names. I've also interacted with players with illegitimate names.

- In my experience, I've witnessed market crashes more from legitimate players than bots. There are legitimate reasons a player might want to sell items below the cost of mats--for example, they may not be buying the mats.

- In reading through the thread, it's clear that everyone here has reported these bots multiple times. This thread is in response to SE USA/Europe's inaction to these reports.

- I agree that this should be exceedingly easy from SE's perspective to address, but here we are.

[TheLoveJenovan]

I guess there's a debate as to how we've "detected" bots. There are different bots that use different mechanisms. For moderators and readers, this is the process I use:

Market bots
1. Frequent price cutting. Crafted items from a specific user will consistently undercut the lowest price by 1 gil within 10-30 minutes. (There are sometimes exceptions when another player buys one of these items at a low price and tries to flip it at a high price.)

2. Price Flooring. The bot will undercut an item by 1 gil every 10-30 minutes until a price floor is reached, in which case they will completely stop. For example, you might post something at 26,000 gil and take turns undercutting every 10-30 minutes with a bot to 25,589 gil, but then the bot won't undercut you by another gil. At the same time, the bot will still undercut on other items.

3. Perpetual log in. The account is logged in 24/7.

4. Engagement. The user only has DOH jobs leveled, the DOL jobs leveled or both, and the user may have one DOM/DOW job leveled to 70. Over months, no DOW/DOM progress is made, and the user never leaves a location with a Summoning Bell--like the apartments. The level 70 DOM/DOW job is consistent with an allowed paid progression, which I believe was done to get access to endgame zones.

5. Free Company. The user doesn't belong to a "real" Free Company. The makeup of these Free Companies varies, but frequently they'll have a few other accounts with a job at lvl 18-25. I'm not exactly sure why this is the case--perhaps it's to circumvent an existing anti-cheating system, these players partially help launder money by conducting RMT, these players offer additional retainers or some combination of the three.

(The market bots I've found check all of these boxes, yet I'm sure there are bots that only check some of these boxes)

DOL Bots
1. Perpetual login

2. Deterministic behavior. These players will run a circuit 24/7 and their behavior is 100% consistent as they go between nodes.

3. Ephemeral nodes. These players frequently mine/harvest ephemeral nodes, I believe for selling crystals. It doesn't help that ephemeral nodes always spawn in the exact same location, as opposed to other nodes.

I mean, finding these bots shouldn't be that hard. SE would just need to filter their logs for players logged in for 24/7 periods without going AFK.

[TheLoveJenovan]

I think the elephant in the room, ultimately, is that SE probably stands to lose money if they really crack down on bots. On one hand, bots probably pay more than regular accounts. They pay for a normal subscription, they often have multiple retainers, and they may support additional alternate accounts for laundering gil. From what I've seen, they also pay for job level boosters.

At the same time, you have a player base willing to put up with the problem. (Other than this thread, obviously)

If you ban 100 bots to avoid losing 1000 legitimate accounts, then you make more money. If you ban 100 bots to avoid losing 10 legitimate accounts, then you've lost money. I suspect that the latter scenario better describes the situation.

[MilitaryVet123]

I think the elephant in the room, ultimately, is that SE probably stands to lose money if they really crack down on bots. On one hand, bots probably pay more than regular accounts. They pay for a normal subscription, they often have multiple retainers, and they may support additional alternate accounts for laundering gil. From what I've seen, they also pay for job level boosters.

At the same time, you have a player base willing to put up with the problem. (Other than this thread, obviously)

If you ban 100 bots to avoid losing 1000 legitimate accounts, then you make more money. If you ban 100 bots to avoid losing 10 legitimate accounts, then you've lost money. I suspect that the latter scenario better describes the situation.

Not true. Vast majority of people don't use bots. The cost doesn't come from slashing the income from bots. The cost comes from dedicating resources and manpower which are often expensive, to solve this problem.

[Kes13a]

Not true. Vast majority of people don't use bots. The cost doesn't come from slashing the income from bots. The cost comes from dedicating resources and manpower which are often expensive, to solve this problem.

But there is also the hidden business cost long term.

"Yeah, FF 14 was good, great story, but too many bots... I wouldnt recommend playing until they do something about it"

Is that really how they want their word of mouth to go?

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks MilitaryVet123 and Kes13a for your responses.

Not true. Vast majority of people don't use bots. The cost doesn't come from slashing the income from bots. The cost comes from dedicating resources and manpower which are often expensive, to solve this problem.

That's true. Both aspects--the cost of losing bot account subscriptions and the cost of staff--contribute to the problem. That's why I made the number of bots banned (100) the same in both examples, as this normalizes the staff/infrastructure cost from botting. At the end of the day, the ROI in investing in the problem is low, as evidenced by the prevalence of the problem. The cost is the loss of bot subscriptions and the staff to police botting, while the return are the retention of otherwise lost accounts from the problem. The point remains the same: SE probably doesn't stand to lose enough accounts by taking a serious approach to the problem.

For example, the recent ban wave terminated 7 bots and suspended 25 bots, which would include the pervasive market bots discussed in this thread. By my count, there are 32 JPN servers, 24 NA servers and 12 Eur servers--68 servers in total. That means they banned 0.1 bots per server-week and suspended 0.36 bots per server-week. On Jenova, there are at least 2-3 market bots, so I can expect them to be banned after 20-30 weeks (4.5-7 months).

The irony is that there is no shortage of cheap staff to help solve the problem. I'm sure you could have at least a few players on each server that would be willing and competent enough to identify bots and write up reports in exchange for their subscription cost. To avoid conflicts of interest, these players could help police servers on different data centers.

But there is also the hidden business cost long term.

"Yeah, FF 14 was good, great story, but too many bots... I wouldnt recommend playing until they do something about it"

Is that really how they want their word of mouth to go?

I hope this problem damages FF14's reputation, but it looks like it's a problem that has persisted for a long time. See this thread for example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._in_this_game/

I wish I would have known that before starting to play the game. I think that continuing to make noise can only help the problem.

[Kes13a]

5. Free Company. The user doesn't belong to a "real" Free Company. The makeup of these Free Companies varies, but frequently they'll have a few other accounts with a job at lvl 18-25. I'm not exactly sure why this is the case--perhaps it's to circumvent an existing anti-cheating system, these players partially help launder money by conducting RMT, these players offer additional retainers or some combination of the three.

An addition to this is, an FC with the main crafter as the leader, and a whole herd of members who strangely... only make it to level 30 or so, which is about the level you get retainer access. These "members" are typically the summoning bell clingers with a rotation to update prices, the crafter is usually afk, and logged in 24/7

The thing I dont get is, that was stupidly easy for me to determine with Lodestone and some observation. Why exactly can SE do nothing, or apparently even FIND these cheaters?

[Sqwall]

Market bots
1. Frequent price cutting. Crafted items from a specific user will consistently undercut the lowest price by 1 gil within 10-30 minutes. (There are sometimes exceptions when another player buys one of these items at a low price and tries to flip it at a high price.)

2. Price Flooring. The bot will undercut an item by 1 gil every 10-30 minutes until a price floor is reached, in which case they will completely stop. For example, you might post something at 26,000 gil and take turns undercutting every 10-30 minutes with a bot to 25,589 gil, but then the bot won't undercut you by another gil. At the same time, the bot will still undercut on other items.

3. Perpetual log in. The account is logged in 24/7.

4. Engagement. The user only has DOH jobs leveled, the DOL jobs leveled or both, and the user may have one DOM/DOW job leveled to 70. Over months, no DOW/DOM progress is made, and the user never leaves a location with a Summoning Bell--like the apartments. The level 70 DOM/DOW job is consistent with an allowed paid progression, which I believe was done to get access to endgame zones.

5. Free Company. The user doesn't belong to a "real" Free Company. The makeup of these Free Companies varies, but frequently they'll have a few other accounts with a job at lvl 18-25. I'm not exactly sure why this is the case--perhaps it's to circumvent an existing anti-cheating system, these players partially help launder money by conducting RMT, these players offer additional retainers or some combination of the three.

(The market bots I've found check all of these boxes, yet I'm sure there are bots that only check some of these boxes)

DOL Bots
1. Perpetual login

2. Deterministic behavior. These players will run a circuit 24/7 and their behavior is 100% consistent as they go between nodes.

I have also seen this first hand. I am putting together an accusation against one that I believe to be suspect. Like you mentioned they check all these boxes, and have all the same behaviors you describe. I'm trying to get video of this happening but I play on PS4 and it can be problematic to block names, but at this point I don't care if it exposes a huge ring of botters destroying our markets.

Because this is affecting everyone on our server in the 70-80 range gear/mats/items. The undercutting is disgustingly out of control!

That seriously impacts my profits since there are some items that I do buy to make 490 HQ gear for sales. Where I spend 20-30k for sublime solutions or something and I expect a return since I DID put the work into farming and crafting.

For me this boils down to cheating and we need to address this since SE will or won't go out of their way

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks Sqwall; please let us know if your report and video leads to a ban for the bot FC.

On our server (Jenova), one bot used to only work the lvl 70-80 gear markets, but it has recently moved to about sixty different lvl 50-80 items. Many of the sellers and crafters have just given up on those items/markets, and the bot is the only seller at ridiculous prices--like 120k for a Mythrite Axe. I hope your bots don't move in that direction.

[Kes13a]

Thanks Sqwall; please let us know if your report and video leads to a ban for the bot FC.

On our server (Jenova), one bot used to only work the lvl 70-80 gear markets, but it has recently moved to about sixty different lvl 50-80 items. Many of the sellers and crafters have just given up on those items/markets, and the bot is the only seller at ridiculous prices--like 120k for a Mythrite Axe. I hope your bots don't move in that direction.

On Zalera we have several bots in operation, and one covers pretty much everything down to level 50. And a second is branching in that direction as well.

As someone that now works from home, and spends a fair bit of time er... watching my gaming computer >.>, I spent my day crafting to start then putting things up. I KNOW how mind numbing it is to stand on the market board and check my prices in order to get any sales. There is no way within human endurance that a real person can do it as fast as they do, day in day out for months. have I played for over 24 hours straight, of course, if I want to get through something or am running quests, but to cycle through different characters and retainers for changing pricing? no, thats just not a human doing it.

sure, its a sub... but I have a sub too and I actually PLAY the game. and, unlike a bot, chances are if I leave, a friend or two will come with me.

its past time for SE to tell us they are going after more than the low hanging fruit. face it, banning RMT barkers is easy. and a number doesnt mean anything to me. if the mp bots disappear from the mp.. THAT tells me they are doing something, because I dont even notice the teleporting bots with nonsensical names any more

oh, and TheLoveJenovan.. they are that level (20-30) because thats when they get retainers...