Has Square Enix given up on countering RMT and botting?

[LittleImp]

Give up? Don't they let us know somewhat regularly how many accounts relating to RMT have been suspended? If I remember correctly it's always a number in the thousands. I don't think they've given up, but I don't fully know how they tackle the issue.

Despite SE's statements about ban-waves, there is little to no real impact on the prevalence of botting on 14. They make a show of banning the silly teleporting bots and a few RMT spammers, but the more impactful types of botting go more or less totally unpunished. An ex-FC mate of mine has been botting for 2+ years straight, running his in character in gathering loops 24-7, and has never gotten so much as a warning about it. There are many people like him out there, and they are doing significantly more damage to the in-game economy than RMT bots. On most servers, if you gather timed nodes regularly you'll pretty quickly become familiar with who is botting.

[ForteNightshade]

Despite SE's statements about ban-waves, there is little to no real impact on the prevalence of botting on 14. They make a show of banning the silly teleporting bots and a few RMT spammers, but the more impactful types of botting go more or less totally unpunished. An ex-FC mate of mine has been botting for 2+ years straight, running his in character in gathering loops 24-7, and has never gotten so much as a warning about it. There are many people like him out there, and they are doing significantly more damage to the in-game economy than RMT bots. On most servers, if you gather timed nodes regularly you'll pretty quickly become familiar with who is botting.

Adding to this, I've raided with people who used a second character to test what sort of hacks and crap they can get away with before doing them on his main. To quote them, "Surprisingly, almost everything I've tried." Another person knew someone else who bot crafted and she basically said, "I could crash the pot market in a day if I wanted to. Even if it's selling for 500 gil, it's still free gil to me." They're both still playing to this day and these conversations were years ago now. Cactuar has two notorious botters who have infested the crafting market for years and SE has done nothing.

The whole RMT reports are a complete show and little else. They do absolutely nothing towards impact botting, which is why people have become more emboldened over the years.

BroJobs, the god of trolls.

The irony is his new "trolling" seems to be posting relevant or factual claims and banking on people dismissing them over his reputation. Say what you will about BroJobs/Skiros' history, SE's response to botting has been utterly laughable at best. I don't doubt for a second Lost Ark handles them better because virtually every other mainline MMO does.

[AnimaAnimus]

They haven't done anything since day 1. Even in version 1 the botting and rmt were so bad the same characters would root themselves in place for months and would actively prevent you from farming some materials and they still did absolutely diddly. XI is in an even worse state and they do nothing. Any ff mmos in the future will likely be the same thing. SE just does not care because they are getting that monthly sub from them and there is no way you can change my mind of that.

[HisShadowX]

Lost Ark has a severe RMT spam issue and lo and behold:



I wonder when we can see the same in FF14? Are the developers even aware of all the undercutting bots and long-time crafting and gathering bots that exist right now in NA and EU? Or have they completely given up?

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Market-botting

The fact that we can have a 64-page thread on market undercut botting all the way from 2020 (and believe me it was a thing prior to 2020 already. The problem has started since at least late HW), and yet there has been zero progress and zero developer feedback either indicates that Square Enix has completely given up on this issue or they're not even aware of it.

And what about people speedhacking in Feast? And of people hacking the GCD in Savage fights? Of people using bots to do their rotations for them in Savage?

Why has there been not a single word from the developers that they're even AWARE of this issue?

I can't believe Lost Ark has a better response to RMT and botting than FF14! It's time to take this seriously, SE.

Oh god that would suck for new players. Whenever I came back and rerolled someone was always nice and gifted my 1 million gold.

[Eriane_Elis]

If you want to take RMT filters into your own hands, there's a plugin that does just that from what I hear. Apparently you select what you want to block and can write your own filters and you never see those messages again. But it is against the ToS. What do people consider RMT anyway? I consider it cash for gold since it's Real Money Trading. RMT isn't putting yourself as a mercenary on the PF, Yoshi P said that was what the PF was intended to be. I have reported botters before and they were never banned. I think we can all remember what happened during the Ishgard Restoration with players turning in crafts equivalent to 24/7 crafting. Obviously this is impossible to do but somehow they weren't banned. lol...

[KageTokage]

A lot of people seem to operate under the illusion that the only bots in the game are those teleporting gil farmers you see in ARR areas when they can be found in virtually all forms of content.

As far as I've noticed, the only time people actually get semi-reliably punished is if their program glitches out and has them repeating a fruitless sequence of actions for hours on end and that same player is also reported by several different people, as a couple of cheaters did get removed from the Firmament rankings, but far more did not.

I'd agree that the weekly ban reports honestly are probably encouraging people to start cheating now that they've made a distinction between the bots that are easily discernable as being RMT-related and the ones that are more ambiguous. It's rare to see even a single temporary ban in the figures when an average server tends to have dozens of people automating the farming of DoH/L items.

[Padudu]

Is there a reason to report players botting? I was in Ul'dah at like.. maybe 3am EST or so a week ago and there was someone with like, idk 7-8 characters following them. All sprouts, same outfit/race/ect, named like "FC Support 1/2/3/ect". I took screenshots and reported it, but is it actually actionable? They weren't doing anything reportable perse, just using Peloton to make them zoom, but would anything actually happen?

[Eriane_Elis]

Is there a reason to report players botting? I was in Ul'dah at like.. maybe 3am EST or so a week ago and there was someone with like, idk 7-8 characters following them. All sprouts, same outfit/race/ect, named like "FC Support 1/2/3/ect". I took screenshots and reported it, but is it actually actionable? They weren't doing anything reportable perse, just using Peloton to make them zoom, but would anything actually happen?

No, that's role-playing most probably. Player trains happen often especially when people are guild recruiting or bored unless I misunderstood what you're saying. I doubt any report you make would be actionable since there's really nothing going on that would violate the ToS

[KageTokage]

Is there a reason to report players botting? I was in Ul'dah at like.. maybe 3am EST or so a week ago and there was someone with like, idk 7-8 characters following them. All sprouts, same outfit/race/ect, named like "FC Support 1/2/3/ect". I took screenshots and reported it, but is it actually actionable? They weren't doing anything reportable perse, just using Peloton to make them zoom, but would anything actually happen?

Anything that isn't immediately discernable as cheating seems to be seldom actioned in general, though even some more egregious stuff like people hacking in PvP to increase their movement speed has been known to go under the radar frequently.

By principle botting in general is against the ToS and something that can enforced, but it's generally not going to be directly interfering with your gameplay unless you get someone using a poorly programmed bot in duty finder or someone multiboxing in PvP.

[Padudu]

No, that's role-playing most probably. Player trains happen often especially when people are guild recruiting or bored unless I misunderstood what you're saying. I doubt any report you make would be actionable since there's really nothing going on that would violate the ToS

Nah it wasn't roleplaying. He basically had them all on follow, I've been on RP trains before it definitely wasn't it lol. It was like if you had like 7 chocobo companions or minions on follow all at once.

Anything that isn't immediately discernable as cheating seems to be seldom actioned in general, though even some more egregious stuff like people hacking in PvP to increase their movement speed has been known to go under the radar frequently.

By principle botting in general is against the ToS and something that can enforced, but it's generally not going to be directly interfering with your gameplay unless you get someone using a poorly programmed bot in duty finder or someone multiboxing in PvP.

Ahh ok, yeah fair. I feel like it's just hard to report someone botting from a player's perspective. Not like they're going to say it in the chat and unless they're cheating like how you described, might as well not even bother.