Anti Bot System

[SatoTheLalafel]

I've seen countless times bots teleporting all over the map and attacking from underground. Can't just developers chose an even map as a trap and flag suspects when their altitude gets beneath certain number, I mean, coordinates of your character are tracked after all.

[Kuroka]

I never get why everything were we cant go isnt marked as insta deathzone like the border of some fights...

[EaMett]

The fact of the matter is that SE would rather spend money on game development rather than policing. It's why third-party tools are TOS breaking but they never act on it. It's why bot reports go mostly ignored. This coupled with a respect for personal data = they won't scan your personal computer for these and traction is hard to get.

The one thing they COULD do is work with their payment service to identify credit cards that pay for multiple accounts. Order those by most accounts to least and slowly work down the list to. You know that the top of the list is going to be full of botters. When a CC is found to be running a bunch of bot accounts. Ban that CC. It's a one-time setup that shouldn't be too expensive to get working and operate. And this kind of CC ban would be a real pain for the mass botters.

It does nothing for people botting on their personal account, but one thing at a time right?

[Jojoya]

I've seen countless times bots teleporting all over the map and attacking from underground. Can't just developers chose an even map as a trap and flag suspects when their altitude gets beneath certain number, I mean, coordinates of your character are tracked after all.

Those types of bots are usually banned weekly. SE does have some traps in place at various locations to catch them (if you're paying attention while doing MSQ on a new character, you can see where at least a couple of the traps are located). SE is banning 4000-7000 accounts each week for RMT related activity and posts a weekly report on Lodestone. Here's a link to the most recent one as an example.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...7162366c584e51

But those bots are also easily replaced with new bots on new accounts. That's why it can feel like nothing is being done even though SE is working on it.

As for the OP, they're referring to suspected crafting bots and that's caused problems because sometimes legitimate players end up accused.

[Stormfur]

I think they don't have as much of a bot problem on the JP servers as the NA and EU servers do. But I also think they saw just how bad the problem is with the Ishgard Restoration rankings -- when you've got a character logged in 24/7 gathering nonstop and crafting nonstop (and I'm speaking here as one of the people who DID make it into the ranking), if it can be exploited, it will be.

The solution then, if they can't/won't ban the bots or players en masse, is to consider an alternative where cheating will get you nothing. Imagine that for Ishgard restoration, if you really wanted that title, you had to craft something like 50,000 points worth of material. Not impossible but a definite investment of time and crystals. After you hit 50,000 - you're guaranteed to get it. Full stop. Sure, some bot could come along with their 200,000 points but who cares? You put your time in, you worked at it, you got your reward.

Why Feast is not structured similarly, I will never know.

[Tarryme]

I seen a strange thing today. 4 off the exact same characters leaving a map. Would that be a bot?

[KageTokage]

I seen a strange thing today. 4 off the exact same characters leaving a map. Would that be a bot?

If you see groups of identical-looking characters moving around in an unusually synchronized manner then that's probably what you're looking at.

Not all of them use hacks since they know it's basically signing a death warrant for their account, but you can still catch glimpses of the hacking ones whenever they're crossing a zone line.

[Naoki34]

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 think you don't understand the principle of bots, who would make a bot that stays afk 24h?

A bot or gold farmer, they are there to work for a player while he does something else.

An afk 24h can't be a bot. And for the people who are always farm, you can't be sure that it's a bot either, except in special cases. There are players who are able to farm comp for hours.

[Lecru]

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?

Well upon a GM getting to you or investigating you they'd see you aren't botting now wouldn't they. No reason to be worried if in fact you weren't doing anything wrong in the first place

[Lecru]

Where all of you are getting that it would be software on the players end baffles me. As it would be a system implemented SERVER SIDE while in the client.