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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Canadane]

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).

I almost guarantee you that the bots that purchase the game use stolen CC information, it's not like it's coming from their gil sale profits.
I do wonder if SE ever actually sees any of that money.

[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.

[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.