Anti Bot System

[Lecru]

I've questioned why this hasn't been implemented for some time now. And i'm only writing about it because i'm currently STARING at a bot in game. They have been on for about 4 days now (that my group knows of) and being as my group is on different hours of the day, we've checked to see if this person has been on during when we play. They have been on non stop thsi entire time. And bought over 1500 sublime solution and slithersand. After their time at the board they go up to the Mizzentmast Inn and lock themselves away from prying eyes.

Now. What does that have to do with the title? Well. I do not see why there is no system check in place after all these years to see if you've been logged in, lets say, over 24 hours. Yes, people afk. But there is also an afk kick timer implemented into the game. If someone was to go over a certain amount of logged in time with said system, it would mark them for GM survey to see if they are botting. Or for that matter, account sharing. Considering THAT is also against ToS and was a big problem during Firmament ranking. It really shouldn't be that hard of a system to put into place. IT's not intrusive and it helps mark these types of acts all around instead of relying on us, the player, to report what might not even be suspicious activity.

[MilkieTea]

I've questioned why this hasn't been implemented for some time now. And i'm only writing about it because i'm currently STARING at a bot in game. They have been on for about 4 days now (that my group knows of) and being as my group is on different hours of the day, we've checked to see if this person has been on during when we play. They have been on non stop thsi entire time. And bought over 1500 sublime solution and slithersand. After their time at the board they go up to the Mizzentmast Inn and lock themselves away from prying eyes.

Now. What does that have to do with the title? Well. I do not see why there is no system check in place after all these years to see if you've been logged in, lets say, over 24 hours. Yes, people afk. But there is also an afk kick timer implemented into the game. If someone was to go over a certain amount of logged in time with said system, it would mark them for GM survey to see if they are botting. Or for that matter, account sharing. Considering THAT is also against ToS and was a big problem during Firmament ranking. It really shouldn't be that hard of a system to put into place. IT's not intrusive and it helps mark these types of acts all around instead of relying on us, the player, to report what might not even be suspicious activity.

I've been afk for over 24 hours before... went to sleep forgetting I was at the marketboard. my PC screen was asleep, I went about to do my daily business IRL, came back to log in and. Well.

A system like that wouldn't work, really. What happens to the people who pull all nighters and do the whole "36 hours because the Expac has just been released!" thing? Or people who, like me, might have forgotten they were doing something that doesn't AFK auto-log you out?

[Ranaku]

They ban bots frequently but implementing anticheat software would be against the law in their country as far as i know. That's why they also can't detect if you use mods or damage meters or anything else that is just clientside. They detect how people act as bots and they ban them frequently.

But yeah, they said they will never burden us with spysoftware like most other mmos etc. do. Dunno if that's cause of japanese law but that's their stance on it.

[Fyrebrand]

I could be way off, but it seems to me that a lot of bots seem to do gathering mainly. And we have this neat gathering system in FFXIV, where you have multiple items per node, and you can select which item you're after. What if the item placement in the gathering window were randomized each time you accessed a node, and among them were "dummy" spots that would heavily damage your gathering tool and even kick you out of gathering completely? It would be completely obvious to an actual player, but a bot might not have any way of telling the difference. Would this be possible, or just something the botters could easily bypass with clever programming?

[Larirawiel]

Bot detection is not that easy. Yoshi P said in an interview that they will not scan the computer of their playerbase for bot- or cheat-software. So they have not many opportunities to detect a bot. They can use heuristics but heuristics are not very reliable. They still will need some personal ressources to detect and ban them.

You can help SE when you report them. It could be more reliable than an approach based on heuristics.

Cheers

[MilkieTea]

I could be way off, but it seems to me that a lot of bots seem to do gathering mainly. And we have this neat gathering system in FFXIV, where you have multiple items per node, and you can select which item you're after. What if the item placement in the gathering window were randomized each time you accessed a node, and among them were "dummy" spots that would heavily damage your gathering tool and even kick you out of gathering completely? It would be completely obvious to an actual player, but a bot might not have any way of telling the difference. Would this be possible, or just something the botters could easily bypass with clever programming?

Something that botters could bypass - also when grinding out gathering levels could harm players in the long run. IDK about others but I ended up relying on muscle memory to level MIN, knowing what was where was a lifesaver for me.

[Juun]

How do you know he doesnt log off when they go to an inn? Why go through the effort of botting and taking your sweet as time to walk all the way to Mizzentmast inn?

[Violyre]

How do you know he doesnt log off when they go to an inn? Why go through the effort of botting and taking your sweet as time to walk all the way to Mizzentmast inn?

You can use player search to find out if they're online. And I assume if they're doing massive crafting, they would want to go somewhere to make it less obvious, like a place only they can get to. It could be programmed into the bot to do that.

[Liam_Harper]

Would this be possible, or just something the botters could easily bypass with clever programming?

Sadly bots could bypass this. Bots are intelligent enough to clear Savage and spam Expert Recipes.

For gathering and crafting, since they can't scan player computers developing a system to defeat bots is difficult. Probably the only viable option is to implement weekly limits. For example, a character enters an account-wide fatigue state after gathering 2000 current content Timed Node items or crafting 200 (non-material) current expansion items per week. Sure it'd suck for those legitimate players who just want to gather/craft all day to relax, but most normal players would be unaffected and bots would hit a wall fast. It would even promote mb trade and add value to items. Extract Materia could use a 2 day cd on each slot after use too.

I don't know, personally I dislike when bot measures impact gameplay for normal players, but facts are they have no power to detect them and they have to do something. I'd take a compromise at this stage.

[KageTokage]

I honestly agree that imposing more limitations; albeit ones that aren't going to affect 99% of the populace is probably the only way they can really combat them.

The current treasure map abuse is a good example of this as their practice is to have a mule account constantly mailing dozens if not hundreds of maps to a player in one of their farming parties. Simply removing the ability for them to mail maps would slow them down considerably while not likely impacting actual players that much.

Even if they did, say, upgrade their detection methods to ID certain abnormal patterns of behavior the bots exhibit, they would likely just feel the system out again and develop a workaround.