Request: Anti-cheat system for rampant botting.

[TonyDude]

I know it's wishful thinking to think square enix will care from this one post but I hope that at the very least more awareness and attention to the topic eventually grows and grows until it finally reaches the developer side and square does something about it.

Right now bots really plague the system and it's kind of disgusting seeing how much of a stain they leave upon the game. Bots can gather and craft 24/7 and conquer entire markets, making it harder for actual gatherers and crafters to make a profit in the game. Combat bots have also been very thoroughly optimized and can be used in dungeons, savage, and ultimate raids with very little input from the user that makes clearing them very trivial. This devalues the efforts and work of people who actually go through the process of leveling, learning raids, and practicing optimization. Bots even plague other areas of the game from gold saucer games to PvP to events like Ishgard restoration and more.

Can more attention be brought to this issue? Even if some of these bots do not affect you depending on your gaming experience and how you spend your time in XIV, you can at least agree that a game experience without bots everywhere is better than a game experience with bots everywhere right? Please help in bringing more attention to this issue.

[LaylaTsarra]

I haven't sold seriously since 4.2 other than tome mats and materia I get from hunts but it's intersting to see how the crafting bots even make selling quest coffers difficult with their persistent undercutting. It's really a shame that real people have to deal with cheaters like this.

[Enkidoh]

The trouble with bots are that no matter what SE tries to implement to defeat them, the bot makers and their users will always find a way around it, it's a zero sum game. Worse, countermeasures SE may implement often just end up negatively impacting legitimate players and the bots still continue unabated.

A FFXIV example was version 1.0 - part of the reason 1.0's client was so notoriously laggy was the client had a function that inspected each packet between the client and the server, checking to see if any third-party program - read: bots - were in use, and would send alerts to SE and the GMs accordingly if any were found. However, this did not work nearly as good in practice, and just made the game chug badly, adding to the lag and issues. And the bots still managed to find workarounds and infested the game anyway, making the whole thing moot.

That's not to say they should just give up fighting botting - I too would love to see the game rid of them and RMT in general - and there have been times where countermeasures they added against botting have been effective (such as the Steps of Faith trial at the end of ARR having mechanics that bots simply could not cheese through, thus it ensured bots were essentially blocked from HW areas for over a year, only when SE nerfed the trial considerably were bots able to get passed it (and not helped by the bot AI learning how to fight in it); and then there were the infamous anti-fishing-bot 'Goblin Bounty Hunters' (or 'GBHs') in FFXI against bots crowding fishing spots), so measures against bots do work, it's just not a simple matter of "do something about botting." It's a complex issue that requires a lot of time, planning and effort to properly combat.

[Consummation]

I report every single player I suspect to be botting. This is my contribution. Although I do understand why some would like to use something like a bot I am against it since real players can't compete with something that can run 24/7

[KageTokage]

They mostly need a bigger and more reliable enforcement team because the kinds of behavior the bots are allowed to get away with is honestly a little mind-boggling.

I've tried reporting the same group of treasure map bots I regularly see doing conga lines around Norvrandt, but they apparently don't think there's anything unusual about a group of eight almost perfectly synchronized players running treasure maps 24/7...nevermind that there's now several groups of them.

The ARR bots are bit of a lost cause as these days they can easily grind from 1-50 in the matter of a day or two, but the level 80 bots would take significantly longer to return, even accounting for the fact that they're usually buying level/story skips.

[Theodric]

It's probably an unpopular opinion but I'm very much in favour of some sort of 'exhaustion' system that serves not to punish honest players but to prevent situations where a character can be online for many hours - or even days at a time - hitting up gathering nodes over and over again.

[KageTokage]

It's probably an unpopular opinion but I'm very much in favour of some sort of 'exhaustion' system that serves not to punish honest players but to prevent situations where a character can be online for many hours - or even days at a time - hitting up gathering nodes over and over again.

That's basically what the original intent of the annoying "The fish sense something amiss" prompt was...except it failed miserably as the bots just altered their scripts to have multiple fishing spots they cycle through to prevent it from showing up.

[Luin]

How hard can it be to have an automated system flag accounts with suspicious uptime and have a person watch them for 30seconds.

Seen the same accounts still running since Stormblood.

[Absurdity]

The issue with crafting bots is that you can barely tell them apart from legitimate players. Crafting basically boils down to selecting the recipe, choosing the correct actions to complete the craft in HQ and then making a macro to perform these exact actions without your input. Then all you have to do is load up on materials, start the craft, press your macro and go afk for a bit. Hard to tell a player apart from a bot when they both just sit there and pump out potions for a few hours.


The only thing that somewhat kept crafting bots in check was the hurdle of leveling your crafters in the first place and the initial high gil investment to gear them properly.

[Kes13a]

I wouldnt hold your breath.

multiple reports done to the "proper" team have resulted in nothing, long term botters do everything but advertise they are cheating and SE turns a blind eye.

the reality is, 3 people based in JPN will never be able to handle the issue. If SE really wanted to seem to make an effort they would have a team for both EU and NA as well. they do not. I'll let that speak for itself.