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.

[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.

[Canadane]

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.

Those are just the overseas gil farm bots.
If anything those are wiped out more often than others.

The real issue I think is the otherwise legitimate players using bots for repetitive tasks or extended grinding. They will cheat at an endgame level while the gil selling farms just have battalions of generic characters scripted through the game to farm as much gil as they can. Those are easy to stop. Stop buying gil.

Honestly it's nearly two separate and different issues here.

[Doozer]

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.

I usually take a screenshot while targeting them so I don't forget their name.

Even if it seems pointless, I'll always report people I see botting, because even if it's just a 1% chance, it's more than if I didn't report them at all. I'll always report people who break the rules of the game in a way that's beyond acceptable (like maybe swearing because they got a little annoyed, that's not a big deal), because why should the rest of us follow the rules when they don't. Botting not only gives them an unfair advantage over everyone else, but it also screws up the economy, which hurts every player in one way or another.

Taking the time to report the non-RMT bots you see usually doesn't take that long anyway, so I do it no matter what.

[Canadane]

There's a huge difference between simply noticing bots and the due diligence it takes to PROVE an account is botting, and that the account being reported isn't a stolen one.

Unfortunately it's just a losing battle. SE would have to delve into questionably legal territory in order to actually monitor our clients to confirm that people are running botting software, and without doing that they're basically guessing when they shut down an account. Meaning, they're taking back $100's worth of digital content, no refund, based on something they believe you're doing but can't PROVE you're doing.

Banning accounts for botting is complicated because it requires TONS of circumstantial evidence, since they can't legally get any real evidence.

SE can absolutely ban you for any basically reason, they don't require you to have some legal US based court with a jury of your peers to prove innocence. Yes you may lose hundreds of dollars of digital items but hey, that's the risk you take for online services like this. If SE decided to shut down 14 for good, don't expect a refund. If you find yourself banned for breaking the ToS don't expect a refund.

It's not that they legally require tons of circumstantial evidence, it's that SE wishes to have tons of evidence before taking action.

I usually take a screenshot while targeting them so I don't forget their name.

/e <t>

It'll echo your targets name, so only you can see it in your chat log. Makes copying and pasting a bit easier.

[Doozer]

/e <t>

It'll echo your targets name, so only you can see it in your chat log. Makes copying and pasting a bit easier.

Ah, I didn't know you could do that. Good idea.

[Goji1639]

SE can absolutely ban you for any basically reason, they don't require you to have some legal US based court with a jury of your peers to prove innocence. Yes you may lose hundreds of dollars of digital items but hey, that's the risk you take for online services like this. If SE decided to shut down 14 for good, don't expect a refund. If you find yourself banned for breaking the ToS don't expect a refund.

It's not that they legally require tons of circumstantial evidence, it's that SE wishes to have tons of evidence before taking action.

Eh no, they absolutely cannot ban you for any reason and just walk away with your money; that's very illegal. They have to be able to present a convincing case that your broke their ToS, and that is absolutely why every game like this goes through a time consuming process of accumulating circumstantial evidence before closing an account for botting.

That's why it's not as easy as just sitting in a popular botting area and banning everyone that's "clearly" a bot, as some of you think it should be.

[Doozer]

Eh no, they absolutely cannot ban you for any reason and just walk away with your money; that's very illegal.

Actually, yes they can. In the user agreement (linked here), it states:

SQUARE ENIX MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE FFXIV SERVICE ACCOUNTS, CHARACTERS, VIRTUAL GOODS, OR THE SERVICE ALTOGETHER, AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE OR LIABILITY TO YOU

(Bolded for emphasis)

You agree to the user agreement and you agree to whatever is in it. That's how it works. They can delete your account just for fun and there's nothing you can do about it.

[HadesNight]

snip

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!