Small window into the state of botting

[Roflcopter]

The forces of darkness say this is a troll thread.

[Vahlnir]

Bots are to be expected, especially in an MMO as popular as this one. The main issue is that the task force meant to take care of these things is laughably small. Like, no more than a few people. There's no way they can handle all these reports in a timely fashion. That force needs to be expanded if they are ever going to get a handle on this situation, or RMT.

[DigbyCaesar]

The forces of darkness say this is a troll thread.

What part of this thread gives you that impression? o.O

Bots are to be expected, especially in an MMO as popular as this one. The main issue is that the task force meant to take care of these things is laughably small. Like, no more than a few people. There's no way they can handle all these reports in a timely fashion. That force needs to be expanded if they are ever going to get a handle on this situation, or RMT.

And they can either increase the STF (because yes, they literally have only 5 people as of EW) or have something proactive in place, many games have systems that are designed to confuse bots and don't effect players at all (literally known as a honeypot), or have a system that goes through event logs and flag unusual behaviour (such as players who have managed to remain online and never AFK for like 2 full weeks).

[KageTokage]

It's occurred to me if the bots are able to know exactly where the treasure is hidden the moment they get a bunny (Via client-side datamining or some such), that would be an undeniable indicator of foul play being involved because this method of farming would not be efficient if they were having to manually check every single treasure map spot with no direction whatsoever.

It also bears mentioning that there is a limit to how many bunnies can be distributed per FATE meaning these bots can potentially deprive actual players of them if their numbers are high enough which really can't slide.

The forces of darkness say this is a troll thread.

I guess pointing out a known problem with video evidence is trolling now...?

[Jijifli]

What part of this thread gives you that impression? o.O

Probably to do with how any time bots get brought up, people just assume "LOL THEY BANNED LIKE 5K LAST WEEK OBV TROLL" knowing full well how their reports specificly split things up and show that the only things ever getting smacked are the lowest of hanging fruits my little cousin could probably clean up.

FFXIV is a very bot friendly game. The absolute lack of numbers (and, potentially effort) from the task force have made that pretty clear and easy.

[KageTokage]

I did a little "research" into the status of the situation on the Aether DC, and while I didn't see tons of freshly level-skipped accounts grinding bunnies like in TC's video, there were nonetheless a handful of suspicious players who were mounting up on the standard chocobo (Which is the mount botting scripts default to) in perfect unison and running EXACTLY to where their bunny chest was every single time with no pauses along the way to suggest they were checking other spots.

Hopefully it doesn't go mainstream for the RMTers on every DC like with the treasure map bots.

[DigbyCaesar]

It most likely will hit the mainstream tbh. It takes one google to get several results of different botting programs, freely advertising how they can do everything in the game for you.

The fact that these can be found so easily without fear of intervention from SE is just another example of how welcome botting is to the game.

And this only cascades into influencing RMT, as these people use the gil they're generating to sell and fund the several bots they're paying a subscription for.

If this grows, this will put (mostly new) players into a position where they can't make gil as easily as we did once, and resort to RMT to be able to catch up with people.

There are already predatory sites that go under the cloak of "guide websites" that always suggest "you need about 3 mil to start doing things" and the same website uses 2/3 of it's page to advertise that it sells gil. I'm probably not allowed to mention the name for obvious reasons but it rhymes with "millionaire mirls".

[Skiros]

LMAO!

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

[DigbyCaesar]

LMAO!

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

Honestly, if I saw this post a year ago I'd white knight for FF, but I really can't anymore lol

[Jijifli]

It most likely will hit the mainstream tbh. It takes one google to get several results of different botting programs, freely advertising how they can do everything in the game for you.

The fact that these can be found so easily without fear of intervention from SE is just another example of how welcome botting is to the game.

I have seen some of these proudly advertising themselves into Square's social media with the comments. While uncommon, I feel the fact some are willing to go to that level, to proudly flaunt their program right in front of them, shows enough that they aren't concerned at all.