Crafting and Marketboard botting

[ShaliaK]

They do get banned and yes, they do create new bots too, even more of them than get banned. The thing is, along with stolen accounts (fishing websites hello), they also apparently buy copies of the game, as otherwise you can't use any trading tools at all, making unpaid bot account simply useless, and you can't steal that many accounts solely for botting (given that usually they are only interested in money character has, not in the account itself, as I can see people successfully logging back after they were robbed).

So it's kind of... weird, because as much as they are annoying and in some cases straightforward harmful, they also bring some cash to the company, and it's not like SE can prohibit people buying the game. Unless there will be some type of in-game tool to exchange real money for Gil, there's not much what they can do sadly (and I think they said that selling Gil for money officially is unlikely to ever happen for some legal reasons they have in Japan or something).

The saddest part is, I've seen one get banned recently- twice even. They disappeared for a month or more... and then another new character showed up botting, and they were eerily similar to the bot that was banned. But that's not the sad part- the first bot got their account back, twice. And they immediately went right back to botting like they were doing before. Bots are going to bot, why are they allowed to have their accounts back at any point?? Especially twice.

Doesn't help this particular bot uses a 2nd account, a lv 22 lalafell probably on a free account, who updates their prices every 2 minutes. Now they're back too, for some reason. I'm starting to think that bot-related account strikes should be more severe.

[Tuska]

if people can buy Gil legally, there's no need for them go to sellers in general (though even then it likely won't solve the issue completely).

That will rarely do anything, I used to play Archeage, they had a sub token called Apex, 1 Apex cost $10. Depending on your server you could sell it for like 2k gold (that's just a random number idr the actual price people sold it for) on the auction house. You need 2 apexes for a sub so a total of 4k right? People would just buy 4k for around $4 which in turn has people getting their sub for cheaper entirely. If you subbed normally it was like $15? Or you can just buy gold for $4...

I believe it's the same in WoW, people just buy the gold to pay for the sub and it all comes out cheaper. This might be why they won't do something like that, it's obvious they can't detect the bots, so this would just help people get cheaper subs.

Also a lot of people bot to sell accounts probably takes like, what a week botting to get to max level? Sell the account and the account is not in actual hands of a player making it even harder to detect. They can't just go off "Oh this person has been mining for 24 hours" some people are hardcore, some people are neets, some people will switch out and have a younger sibling or child do it. It's based off inputs and movement and if the bot is codded nicely, it's hard to detect.

I find it crazy how common bots are here, in a game where ultimately nothing is difficult or "matters". In Archeage is a heavy pvp game, world bosses are pvp, securing your trade packs, pvp, robbing people to make gold, pvp, etc and I could count on one hand the amount of bots I saw in the 5 years I've played it. Hell maybe if that stopped with all the annoying systems (like crafting scripts) that might cut down on the botting people try to by pass.

[MsMisato]

Is there any way to combat the bots in this game? I've reported them all atleast a dozen times or more. They have been doing it over 2 years. The same bots, day after day non stop flooding the market and undercut botting at all hours when they're in their apartment. Always on without fail. Always gathering, if not gathering they're in their apartment crafting and marketboard botting.

I've been told to just use the PF to sell that there's nothing that can be done.

when it comes to botting, make sure to send the information to the link the GM provides. YOu will get a response pointing you to the STF link to submit your report to. At least that's what they had me do.

[SavishSalacious]

Is there any way to combat the bots in this game? I've reported them all atleast a dozen times or more. They have been doing it over 2 years. The same bots, day after day non stop flooding the market and undercut botting at all hours when they're in their apartment. Always on without fail. Always gathering, if not gathering they're in their apartment crafting and marketboard botting.

I've been told to just use the PF to sell that there's nothing that can be done.

I do this. I over run markets and drive prices down Hello!

As for bots, nope you gotta play their game and do it better then them.

[KageTokage]

Most of the crafter/gatherer bots on my server either have separate alts that are camped out by a retainer bell undercutting 24/7 or check/adjust the prices themselves after every single timed node they visit.

You're not going to "do it better then them" unless you're willing to constantly figure out what price they're unwilling to go under and selling for that much, but they'll quickly notice and set the floor even lower within a few hours.

I tried playing that game with them for a time but it got to a point where I could be making more guaranteed income from leve spamming or treasure maps, so I gave up.

[Sindele]

It's amazing just how much even FFXIV's own tools will out them and yet they won't do anything. Follow the Mateus FC standings back week by week or month by month and you'll see some incredibly, spectacularly obvious outliers with consistent behavior tracking back for an eternity. Someone with access to the DBs could run a search for gear in circulation on Mateus with a certain handful of signatures on it and find at least four - again - spectacularly obvious outliers that have been mass producing for years. You can watch one run through the Quicksand on nearly an hourly basis, 24/7, with blatantly irregular playing patterns and zero attempt to even conceal it.

It's quite literally at the point that it raises the question: why *not* bot? There's evidently zero enforcement risk and zero willingness to trace things back to the source, you're at greater risk posting screenshots on Twitter or datamining content that will be public in <24 hours than you are gather/craft botting on a secondary account 24/7 and bending the economy to your will. The only way to get any attention directed on these things is apparently to make sure it happens live on an official stream, or make a big public fuss about it that can't be ignored by PR.

[Krojack]

Best of luck Nonola. many people have reported them for months and SE does nothing.

There are 3 level 80 gathering bots going 24/7 that I have been reporting since early Stormblood, so going on 3 years now. SE won't ban them. I've given up and lost hope in the reporting of bots.

[Krojack]

Sadly, no.

Some do get banned, but it's usually the careless ones who are far too obvious with their botting and give the STF some sort of solid proof they can use, like admitting it in chat/tell or ground hacks. Otherwise, the STF are extremely limited in their regulations as for what constitutes as definite proof of botting. They can't scan your computer and they won't take 24/7 activity, extremely precise movement patterns or even a broken bot loop as certain evidence.

Not to mention the STF is tiny and based in Japan and doesn't have the manpower or inclination to tackle the tens of thousands of reoccurring bots across all servers.

The fact that you still see bots teleporting around in the game shows that the server net code is poor. So SE could start by fixing this.

I remember in my early days of playing WoW that you would see this. Bots teleporting around, going into cities and killing themselves to spell out websites using dead bodies on the ground. Blizzard over time fixed their client/server code and prevented this. Are all bots gone? no, but a vast majority are.

[Kes13a]

The fact that you still see bots teleporting around in the game shows that the server net code is poor. So SE could start by fixing this.

I remember in my early days of playing WoW that you would see this. Bots teleporting around, going into cities and killing themselves to spell out websites using dead bodies on the ground. Blizzard over time fixed their client/server code and prevented this. Are all bots gone? no, but a vast majority are.

I agree. there will ALWAYS be bots as the some people say as an excuse but the reality is, SE does little to even try and prevent it or punish it. if they even bothered to put in some effort to stop the problem, but that seems either beneath... or beyond them.

[MevariNavalo]

... killing themselves to spell out websites using dead bodies on the ground.

Man, I wish our bots were that entertaining.