Has Square Enix given up on countering RMT and botting?

[Raikai]

OP posts thread after thread flamiing every aspect of the game, I keep asking myself what they're doing with their money beng subbed to a game that they clearly dislike?

[DigbyCaesar]

I don't know if I'm reading a lot of comments correctly (from earlier posts, not recent) but people really do put too much faith in the weekly banwaves.

Let's look at this realistically, there are people botting constantly in all manner of ways, from gathering, to farming dungeons (and even bunny fates which I recorded 10-20 bots doing in one instance), but SE aren't doing enough about them.

Here's a breakdown of the last 10 weeks of bot accounts terminated (and suspended in parenthesis):

03/03/22 - 4(4)
24/02/22 - 0(0)
17/02/22 - 0(2)
10/02/22 - 0(10)
03/02/22 - 0(4)
27/01/22 - 0(0)
20/01/22 - 0(3)
13/01/22 - 1(2)
06/01/22 - 0(12)
23/12/21- 0(7)

Those are the reported actions taken against players for botting activity. Across the entire game, literally every data centre.

The truth is, the reports we make under "Report Cheating" go to the STF (special task force) and if you do enough digging around, you'll find that the STF consists of only 5 people:

Yuji Takahashi
Keisuke Furudate
Makoto Okabe
Shinya Seino
Satoshi Yasukawa

While I do understand that some people will want to disregard the fact that this game has become a bot haven. Just because you hate a fact, that doesn't mean it's no longer a fact.

If you really do want to support the game, take some time to look at the problems, talk about the problems, get the problems recognised so that someone with a moral compass in SE decides to do something about this.

That being said, I know it isn't the devs fault that botting is like this, I'm sure they're aware of the situation, I'm sure they want to do something, but these ultimately aren't just FF accounts that need to be banned, they're SE accounts, and I strongly believe that the corporate side of things are perfectly okay with allowing this stuff to go on, as it generates SE more money and provides better MAU reports for their shareholders.

The fact is, things won't change until either the game starts to lose money (which will not happen for a very very very very very long time) or it gains a bad reputation for being a literal bot haven.

[KageTokage]

There's a pretty significant disconnect between the head devs and the other teams at times considering that they apparently weren't aware of how prevalent the party finder RMT/content selling spam was until around only a month before Endwalker's release where one of the interviewees was bold enough to ask them directly about it, after which they promptly revised the ToS to give the GMs jurisdiction over it.

I think the only reason they haven't made more...sweeping changes is because they're not even aware of just broad the scope of cheating is. The most realistic/effective solution would probably be to just give the GMs permissions to deal with cheaters because they're a larger team with a much faster response time, which is important when you need to actually be catching people in the act because simply reviewing activity logs can only say so much.

[Canadane]

There's a pretty significant disconnect between the head devs and the other teams at times considering that they apparently weren't aware of how prevalent the party finder RMT/content selling spam was until around only a month before Endwalker's release where one of the interviewees was bold enough to ask them directly about it, after which they promptly revised the ToS to give the GMs jurisdiction over it.

I think the only reason they haven't made more...sweeping changes is because they're not even aware of just broad the scope of cheating is. The most realistic/effective solution would probably be to just give the GMs permissions to deal with cheaters because they're a larger team with a much faster response time, which is important when you need to actually be catching people in the act because simply reviewing activity logs can only say so much.

Normal GMs in XI had a lot more power.
I don't know why they're essentially bookkeepers in XIV.

[DigbyCaesar]

Normal GMs in XI had a lot more power.

I went to XI a while back and the game is practically fuelled by bots, when I made a report about it, they just told me to go to the STF website, the same way they do in XIV. Although, having done a little research on that, XI literally freeze the gil made by the bots, that's a whole step further than XIV at this point and the game is two decades old.

I'm actually lost for words:

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/rule/specialtask.html

Can we get these guys instead?

[Ironthorne]

LMAO LOST ARK IS BANNING MORE BOTS THAN FF14 EVER DID IN AN ENTIRE YEAR

https://forums.playlostark.com/t/inc...ot-bans/233996

A F2P game has a bazillion of bots more than a game that costs money to play, who would have known. In other news, America has more McDonalds than North Korea.

Also, what kind of shitty game has a million of bots one month after launch despite having an 8-year headstart lmao

[DigbyCaesar]

A F2P game has a bazillion of bots more than a game that costs money to play, who would have known. In other news, America has more McDonalds than North Korea.

Also, what kind of shitty game has a million of bots one month after launch despite having an 8-year headstart lmao

What about a P2P game that also has a bazillion bots with a decade behind it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR73ggQMZPw 2 mins in for their performance.

[Ironthorne]

What about a P2P game that also has a bazillion bots with a decade behind it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR73ggQMZPw

Never said that this game doesn't have bots, it's just blown way out of proportion. I've played for about 1500 hours, and I have seen a pack of bots exactly once. People in this thread have been talking about bots as if they're destroying the game, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm completely unaffected, nor can I perceive any negative effects caused by bots. If the situation is so bad, surely, I must have at least noticed something, no?

[DigbyCaesar]

Never said that this game doesn't have bots, it's just blown way out of proportion. I've played for about 1500 hours, and I have seen a pack of bots exactly once. People in this thread have been talking about bots as if they're destroying the game, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm completely unaffected, nor can I perceive any negative effects caused by bots. If the situation is so bad, surely, I must have at least noticed something, no?

It's honestly not hard to spot bots, take some more time to look at efficient gathering spots, timed nodes, map farming parties, go into Gridania and just watch at exits + Aetheryte, go literally anywhere and take a deep look into things, because if you've only seen one pack of bots, you haven't looked hard enough.

They are single-handedly destroying the economy, the clearest example of this is crafting crystals, but look at other materials on the market board, things that are crafted in huge batches, only a small portion of these are done by players, and players can't compete anymore because there are undercutting bots that continue to dominate the MB.

It doesn't take 1500 hours to see this, only a few mins.

[Ironthorne]

It's honestly not hard to spot bots, take some more time to look at efficient gathering spots, timed nodes, map farming parties, go into Gridania and just watch at exits + Aetheryte, go literally anywhere and take a deep look into things, because if you've only seen one pack of bots, you haven't looked hard enough.

They are single-handedly destroying the economy, the clearest example of this is crafting crystals, but look at other materials on the market board, things that are crafted in huge batches, only a small portion of these are done by players, and players can't compete anymore because there are undercutting bots that continue to dominate the MB.

It doesn't take 1500 hours to see this, only a few mins.

If I have to go out of my way to look for bots then maybe, the situation is not that bad? I have done a lot of gathering before EW (haven't done much recently), and I never saw anything out of the ordinary. My friend who has been gathering and crafting a lot recently also hasn't noticed anything unusual. He still gathers, crafts stuff, and sells on the market every day without a hitch. Maybe our experiences are just different?

Again, I'm not saying bots don't exist, or they're not a problem. But considering that neither I nor people I know could perceive this "destroyed" economy in any significant way, I just don't think bots are THAT big of a problem. Could SE do a better job handling bots? Sure. But if the majority of players remain unaffected, the issue will remain low on the priority list.