Bot issues

[esra01]

Hi i'm pretty new to FF14 and i'm starting to notice that botting seems to be ignored by the Special Task Force team.

Seeing bots gathering aethersand and crafting crystal at all time is just extremely depressing to see. And looking at the pathetic amount of 4 bots being banned each week is even more depressing. I mean i could just wander around in aethersand gathering spots and i could find 4 bots in under 30 minutes and special task force could only find 4 per week? Well to be fair they also banned thousands of RMT accounts per week which is nice?

I'm also starting to believe that "Please note we are unable to provide individual responses to reports." in the bottom of report cheating tab, is just an excuse so they could turn a blind eye toward bot repots not because of privacy concerns. I mean i have reported this same fishing bot over and over again with video evidence of his bot glitching out ( spamming Patience II with no bait in inventory) and 1 week later the bot is still operational.

Maybe it's because that Special Task Force team only consist of 4 people (you can see that in the credits). But yeah they could be the one supervising the actual team that is responsible for banning the bots, but that's even worse if that's the truth since their combined effort has only banned 4 bots each week.

I'm really sorry if my post is a bit aggressive towards FF14 dev team but i'm just frustrated that this whole issue has been ignored almost entirely

[Alestorm]

The biggest issue is the report system, since it requires you to be able to remember names like Jfdnjuvrio Xvmdrin to fill in a report. They do try, but the botters/RMT sites make/steal a new account and make a new level 1 to spam. Dealing with botters is pretty difficult form what I've gathered and 14 becoming so popular now it sadly means more bots.

[HadesNight]

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Without any spite or malice, I'd just say get use to it. I've been playing for years, have made the reports, taken video and tried to get them to care about this and the response was always "we don't accept outside game proof" or the tickets would go unanswered. It's probably because they cannot prove 100% that the characters are botters considering one of the main FFXIV bots is really cheap, simply uses your keyboard and doesn't impact the game code at all.

So yes, while you can see someone walking and flying in the same pattern on video for hours in a day indicating it's an automated program, you can't 100% be sure. SE GMs largely don't do anything to these players, so botting remains as an activity that feels as though you can do it with little to no consequence if you aren't completely just letting it go for days unattended.

At this point, the best advice I can give is to ignore them and find the positives of the situation which is cheaper shard/sand costs. It's completely unfair to those of us actually playing the game but I'm telling you it's not worth the energy.

That might seem really defeatist, and not what you want to hear but it's been 4+ years since I've started and we've had an FC on our server known as the "Botting FC" have nothing happen to them. You're screaming in the air when you report them at this point. Those banning reports seem to be about the RMT people that should publicly that they are selling gil, or the bots that modify code to teleport under the map, etc (and for that second one, that's a guess who even knows if SE does anything about those).

This game is fantastic, but this is just one of those cons you have to accept and move on from. Sorry if that sounds morbid. Welcome to Eorzea though!

[KageTokage]

The bans for RMT-related bots are so numerous that they just lump them into the general "bans for RMT" category now, so it can be assumed that the "bans for botting" are people using bots for "normal" purposes like lazy level grinding/gathering.

It's not nearly enough when I can typically count upwards of 20 different bots on my server alone on an average day, though. Many of them have been around for several months, if not years, and new ones regularly come into existence either as fresh level-skipped accounts or used accounts that were sold off by their owners.

They really are not handling the situation properly because in a normal MMO the entire GM team tends to be responsible for them; not a separate four man team that doesn't even have a western branch to help ease whatever workload they have.

I also just kind of gave up on reporting them at this point and the only involvement I have with them now is swiftly purging botters from my various linkshells if I happen to notice them doing it.

[Jojoya]

The biggest issue is the report system, since it requires you to be able to remember names like Jfdnjuvrio Xvmdrin to fill in a report. They do try, but the botters/RMT sites make/steal a new account and make a new level 1 to spam. Dealing with botters is pretty difficult form what I've gathered and 14 becoming so popular now it sadly means more bots.

If you're referring to gathering bots, set your Battle chat window to also display other player gathering messages. Then you won't need to remember the name.

I wouldn't bother, though. I'm sure SE has ways to identify bots that are more efficient that player reports. And they do take actions against many of the bots. You'll see the bot groups disappear then reappear a couple of weeks later showing altered behavior. The behavior wouldn't be changed if SE wasn't doing something that forces them to change it.

Marketboard bots are unlikely to disappear because trying to hinder them would be more likely to hinder and annoy legitimate players as well.

The only way bots will ever disappear is if all players stop cheating, and that's pretty unlikely to happen. There are always those looking for an unfair advantage, or ways to get what they want without doing the work themselves. I don't know the point of even playing a game if you're going to have a bot play it for you but it is what it is.

[KageTokage]

The "conventional" bots like gathering, leveling, marketboard, etc are really not prevalent enough that the GMs couldn't keep them under control once they learn to recognize their behavior patterns.

It's the gibberish-named gil farming bots that are virtually impossible to stop as they're a fully automated process that's exploiting the game on several levels, starting all the way from the account creation process where they're committing credit chargeback fraud to effectively give themselves starter edition accounts at no expense.

[esra01]

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Actually it's pretty rare to see those type of bots in JP servers right now. The only time i ever encounter them is when i'm still on my trial period and doing quests on the 3 starting zones. Most of the bots that i encounter right now are actually legit player, checked some of them they actually have level 80 in every combat and DoH/DoL classes.

At this point, the best advice I can give is to ignore them and find the positives of the situation which is cheaper shard/sand costs. It's completely unfair to those of us actually playing the game but I'm telling you it's not worth the energy.

I also just kind of gave up on reporting them at this point and the only involvement I have with them now is swiftly purging botters from my various linkshells if I happen to notice them doing it.

Man this is just extremely sad, SE doesn't care about it, the community ignores it and some of them even happily accepts the botters, and the Special Task Force is just 4 people and we don't even know what they are doing. Nobody cares about the problem

The only thing that could fix this issue is if the GM team that is currently managing harassment issues would be given the authority to investigate and issues the ban hammer for bot reports. The GM team is actually pretty competent imo, atleast on JP server they are pretty quick on handling every case even if their responses are copy pasted messages. Have sent some reports about toxic and improper use of vote kick and all of them got answered within 10 minutes.

If they are given the permission to review and handle bot reports then I think the rampant bot issues would be partially solved since aethersand and crafting crystal botter are pretty obvious and not that many. Plus most of them requires lvl 80 account to do it so they can't just create another one next day.

[Hysterior]

As a former CM on another MMO, I feel like most players have no idea how bots work.

In a nutshell:

• Your reports are pretty much useless. If anything, report players you see/know are purchasing from bots. if you see a group of bots in the area, just report one. Don't bother with the rest of the cluster.
• Banning bots manually is a lost cause, having more CM will not help. They should not even bother with it.
• CMs are probably mass banning IPs on a regular to keep the population under control when a group is spotted but they will always be swamped. That's how good bots are. They change IPs on the fly so there is so much you can detect under one IP.
• No, you cannot spot a bot even before they join the game most of the time.
• Some games (and FF14 being pretty old could be one of them) need maintenance to apply hack/bot patches and these are probably bypassed in a day or so...
• The bot population is different per servers. The more people purchase, the more bots you have. If no one purchases, you have less bots (You will probably never have 0 bots, they will always try)
• Bots are organized. The bots shouting in an area are probably alone in their IP as most likely to be banned so other bots actually farming are not impacted. Another one will take its place as soon as banned so I would not bother blacklisting either, just leave the area.
• Bots are not real people in a sweatshop (I know, I know...). Don't even talk to them. They are just scripts running. You might feel like blocking them or taunting them can be fun but you are just wasting your time. They usually have scripts to avoid you anyway.
• SE should continue to have a 0 tolerance policy for people purchasing from bots. No exceptions. They should make it a bit more clear/evident and I HOPE that cash-shoppers are not "immune" or at least less susceptible to bans like I have seen in other games...

[esra01]

As a former CM on another MMO, I feel like most players have no idea how bots work....

Yeah i know that banning the mass produced bots that are below lvl 50 are pretty much a lost cause. But can't they do something about bots that actually have lots of effort put into it? I mean some player use bots just for their personal use whether it is to buy a house, gather high end material, or craft lvl 80 gears. Those bots need some time investment to make, heck I think i found some of them that are using their main account to bot since SE did literally nothing to prevent it. Seriously i found one that has level 80 in everything and I found him because his fishing bot is broken for a long period of time ( 4+ hours until he realized that the bot is glitched out )

[KageTokage]

Much of what was said is really only applicable to the mass-created gil farming bots that never go past ARR and rely on their sheer numbers for profitability.

Like previously stated, the less numerous level 80 bots can realistically be kept under control as it takes time to max out DoH/L classes. Even if they're buying level/story skips it takes around a week for them to max their DoL classes and significantly longer for DoH stuff, and having to complete the ShB MSQ further draws things out.