New bot type and potential duplication exploit: map party bots running 24/7

[Oxidized]

Someone I know has done extensive research on a potential new bot situation, and although I have a couple of screenshots, I do not really want to post them out of fear of being flagged for witch-hunting. About 4 days ago, we observed a team of bots that worked in complete unison, but were not at gathering nodes, so we tailed them out of curiosity.

What we found was this: there was a team of bots running maps 24/7 and dumping the mats on the marketboard. I have personally observed this on Zalera, and it has been reported that a similar team was spotted doing this on Coeurl.

Because the MB is not really leading us to a source capable of buying enough maps to allow them to run 24/7, we believe that there is a potential map duplication exploit in-play that needs to be investigated immediately. Even if the maps are being obtained without any exploits, the fact that a once untouched gil source is now being botted should cause a lot of casual players to become very concerned. They have been running for about 4 days now and we already see 24 Seacloths on ONE of their MB accounts.

I do not expect this post to reach anyone who can do something about this, but if you are capable of bringing this to the attention of the JP forums, PLEASE do so, as this needs to be addressed now before it really gets out of hand.

If you wish to verify this activity for yourself, try to stake out the Ondo Cups for a sudden appearance of a bot swarm; I can only verify that this has been seen on the Crystal servers of Zalera and Coeurl, but I would not be surprised if it were far more widespread.

EDIT: Apparently they operate in all 6 ShB zones and then idle in Limsa to sell their spoils.

[KageTokage]

Kind of surprised they didn't start doing this sooner.

Do they have the atypical alt account symptoms like only one level 80 DoW/M class?

If they don't actually have a DoL class leveled to gather maps then that does make the situation particularly strange.

I'm not sure how they'd be having infinite maps unless SE derped and made some part of the treasure map process client-sided and hackable by extension, though.

[Kes13a]

Hoping this gets addressed at least if its an exploit. SE has to notice -something- one would hope.

[Oxidized]

Kind of surprised they didn't start doing this sooner.

Do they have the atypical alt account symptoms like only one level 80 DoW/M class?

I'm not sure how they'd be having infinite maps unless SE derped and made some part of the treasure map process client-sided and hackable by extension, though.

I believe they had one DoW/DoM job and, for some reason, L80 blacksmithing of all things.

[StriderShinryu]

Good for you to post this, but you have actually filed an in game report as well I hope.