Crafting and Marketboard botting

[Nonola]

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.

[ShaliaK]

It's frustrating. I've reported a few and it looked as if they were banned (they disappeared for a month or more), but either a new bot pops up or they get their accounts back. And that's when they actually get banned- many of them don't, and I've only seen the ones who gather get banned. Starting to feel hopeless.

I don't know what else to do at this point.

[Kes13a]

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.

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

I dont think SE will notice or care about NA/EU markets and the RMT botters unless people start ditching the game because of it. by that point of course it'll be too little too late. About all I can think of is if you know streamers, get them to start doing streams on it. enough bad publicity might make SE sit up and notice. but I wouldnt hold your breath, the Special Task Force who "combat bots etc" are based in Japan, and only have 4 people. yes, thats correct... 4 people.

[Sauteed]

https://youtu.be/ItHcsIHshhs

[KageTokage]

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

I dont think SE will notice or care about NA/EU markets and the RMT botters unless people start ditching the game because of it. by that point of course it'll be too little too late. About all I can think of is if you know streamers, get them to start doing streams on it. enough bad publicity might make SE sit up and notice. but I wouldnt hold your breath, the Special Task Force who "combat bots etc" are based in Japan, and only have 4 people. yes, thats correct... 4 people.

They aren't doing a very good job of controlling the problem even on the JP side of things so I've kinda lost hope in them ever actually doing anything substantial.

[Halivel]

It's frustrating. I've reported a few and it looked as if they were banned (they disappeared for a month or more), but either a new bot pops up or they get their accounts back. And that's when they actually get banned- many of them don't, and I've only seen the ones who gather get banned. Starting to feel hopeless.

I don't know what else to do at this point.

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).

[Kes13a]

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).

and yet, the people selling gil on website are making real money at it

I guess what you are meaning is that its more important to make the money than it is to have a reputation. this game is well liked by the bot/cheater community for its ambivalence towards botting/cheating. I dont know about you, but as a business... thats not a reputation I would want, nor money I desire.

as for banning... getting rid of a level 1 RMT barker in a major city is hardly a landmark achievement, or the underground harvesters... they go after the easy to find ones. The ones creating teh money for RMT actions are left alone to operate for years.

[KageTokage]

I do kind of wonder how much gil the "sustainable" DoL/H bots that almost never get banned are raking in vs. the gibberish-named hackers who aim to generate as much raw gil from questing/mob kills as possible before they inevitably get swept away in the weekly banwaves.

I'm honestly not sure how the latter are even able to do anything with their gil at all considering how easily the GMs should be able to trace the money flow and ban whatever accounts are pooling it.

[Liam_Harper]

Is there any way to combat the bots in this game?

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.

[Halivel]

I guess what you are meaning is that its more important to make the money than it is to have a reputation. this game is well liked by the bot/cheater community for its ambivalence towards botting/cheating. I dont know about you, but as a business... thats not a reputation I would want, nor money I desire.

as for banning... getting rid of a level 1 RMT barker in a major city is hardly a landmark achievement, or the underground harvesters... they go after the easy to find ones. The ones creating teh money for RMT actions are left alone to operate for years.

It's not what I tried to say really. I'll try to explain. Rather than not caring about reputation, I'm not sure as to what exactly they can do to prevent massive botting to begin with. Other games would go for in-game tools selling in-game money for real ones (something what, iirc, WoW does, for example). I'm not sure now, but if my memory isn't broken completely, people asked about possibilities to have similar system in FF14 and the answer was no. And yet, it would have been the most efficient one - 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).

Another step is to prohibit using trading tools on free accounts - something what already is in the game so on this account they did it right (because otherwise it would be even worse than it already is). The thing is, without in-game erm... "gil trader", let's call it this, there's nothing really to stop the further spread, given that they can simply buy another copy of the game. You could of course hard-ban them by IP, but this will only result in hurting usual players, while bot-holders will simply use VPN and continue to do what they do. And this is what i meant by saying that situation is weird - there's no way to prevent botters from buying new copies, because you can't really say if a person is a normal player or not when they register their code on Mog Station, it's something what you can tell only later based on reports.

So the only option I see atm is to actually make their team that works specifically with bots and rmt bigger so there are enough hands to fight in the first place (you said yourself there are like, 4 people doing this, which is... nowhere enough in a game that became this big and popular). There may be better solutions (and there IS one, mentioned in first sentences) but for some reason they can't apply it, which is almost a shame, as I'm quite sure it would've been much more beneficial for them than botters buying base edition.