Cheating and RMT exploitation has hit a new level of ridiculous.

[Bearded]

The thing is that SE never respond to such things to the reporter apart from the boilerplate stuff. They are passed to a central team who (for some reason) decides to ban in waves rather than as and when reported.

Botting is of course a serious issue but it is also good that a GM does not take a player word for it - they investigate and so malicious reporting (and it sure does happen) fails.

It's no way ideal but some worlds have it worse than others - sadly a reflection of the willingness of the players on that world / data centre to engage in activities (RMT) that they ought not to.

[Johners]

The thing is that SE never respond to such things to the reporter apart from the boilerplate stuff. They are passed to a central team who (for some reason) decides to ban in waves rather than as and when reported.

Botting is of course a serious issue but it is also good that a GM does not take a player word for it - they investigate and so malicious reporting (and it sure does happen) fails.

It's no way ideal but some worlds have it worse than others - sadly a reflection of the willingness of the players on that world / data centre to engage in activities (RMT) that they ought not to.

Banning in waves is often the strategy other MMOs use. It has worked relatively well for Blizzard that used ban waves psychology. Enough players felt like they got away with it, got attached to having their cheated stuff and then banned them while removing it. Worked really well during Warlords of Draenor when there were several major ban waves during that expansion in the run up to the release of Legion.

The bigger issue in this game is the fact a lot of cheating isn't visible to players directly and Square Enix have no anti-cheat to actually detect it with. Unless the player admits it or you suspect and report them, it's more than likely that you'll get away with it. Square Enix should really start taking ownership of this including the implementation of an anti-cheat.

[PangTong]

Banning in waves is often the strategy other MMOs use. It has worked relatively well for Blizzard that used ban waves psychology. Enough players felt like they got away with it, got attached to having their cheated stuff and then banned them while removing it. Worked really well during Warlords of Draenor when there were several major ban waves during that expansion in the run up to the release of Legion.

The bigger issue in this game is the fact a lot of cheating isn't visible to players directly and Square Enix have no anti-cheat to actually detect it with. Unless the player admits it or you suspect and report them, it's more than likely that you'll get away with it. Square Enix should really start taking ownership of this including the implementation of an anti-cheat.

The reason why online games ban in waves is because fighting cheaters is an arms race. You build systems to detect cheaters, and the cheaters build countermeasures to circumvent the detection. Repeat to infinity.

If someone makes a botting program, and they get instantly banned as soon as the bot does something weird, that gives the bot-maker a HUGE clue about what tripped the detection, and therefore what they should change to make the bot harder to detect. By accumulating known bots over time and then banning in waves, it gives bot makers a lot less information about how they're being caught.

Whether or not SE is being aggressive enough with banning bots is another matter. I doubt it's something they're ignoring, but if the scale of the problem is starting to get out of hand and their current strategies are no longer enough to keep it in check then they might eventually need to take some bigger steps like adding real anti-cheat. I think they're reluctant to do that out of privacy or legal concerns though.

[Xrystofer]

The reason why online games ban in waves is because fighting cheaters is an arms race. You build systems to detect cheaters, and the cheaters build countermeasures to circumvent the detection. Repeat to infinity.

That is false. Bots always had similar movement and you can tell who is a bot if you observe them for a bit. Not only that but if you teleport a player to the GM jail after you become suspicious of them you can pretty much confirm that they are botting with confidence.
If you want to fight botting you have to make the cost of purchasing accounts higher than the profit. Otherwise, being banned for botting is just a cost of ''doing business''. If you ban bots every few months you will NEVER EVER solve the problem this way because it will still be profitable.

The reason why they are not taking action is that they are cutting corners with CS. CS is expensive and investigating reports manually is time-consuming. In WoW classic I was banned for botting, I didn't bot. They used an algorithm to flag accounts as suspicious and banned them.
Plenty of legitimate players got banned but that was acceptable collateral damage because CS would be more expensive.

[Jojoya]

Banning in waves is often the strategy other MMOs use. It has worked relatively well for Blizzard that used ban waves psychology. Enough players felt like they got away with it, got attached to having their cheated stuff and then banned them while removing it. Worked really well during Warlords of Draenor when there were several major ban waves during that expansion in the run up to the release of Legion.

You're assuming only lazy players bot. Ban waves work well for them but they're not the only ones botting.

Most botting is RMT and a ban wave isn't going to deter them. They've got no problem starting over because it's how they make money and the new account is just an operating expense.

That is false. Bots always had similar movement and you can tell who is a bot if you observe them for a bit. Not only that but if you teleport a player to the GM jail after you become suspicious of them you can pretty much confirm that they are botting with confidence.

If you want to fight botting you have to make the cost of purchasing accounts higher than the profit. Otherwise, being banned for botting is just a cost of ''doing business''. If you ban bots every few months you will NEVER EVER solve the problem this way because it will still be profitable.

The reason why they are not taking action is that they are cutting corners with CS. CS is expensive and investigating reports manually is time-consuming. In WoW classic I was banned for botting, I didn't bot. They used an algorithm to flag accounts as suspicious and banned them.
Plenty of legitimate players got banned but that was acceptable collateral damage because CS would be more expensive.

Pang Tong was correct about it being an arms race. That's part of why Blizzard ban waves are so far apart - they study the bot behavior to develop counter measures. Once they're ready to deploy the counter measures, they do the ban wave. The bot programmers then set up their new accounts, figure out what the counter measure was and find a new way around it. What's achieved through code can be circumvented by other code.

Making the cost of purchasing accounts higher than the profit has the potential to drive legitimate players out of the game. They're going to lose a lot of players if subscription prices were jacked up to $100/mo. That's the balancing act that game developers face - disrupting the bots without negatively impacting the genuine player experience.

If a game company wants to get rid of RMT and its bots, it needs to focus on the RMT customer. RMT stays in business because there's no penalty to being a buyer. SE can shut down one set of RMT seller accounts and another one will appear because the customer still has money they want to spend.

[Kes13a]

If a game company wants to get rid of RMT and its bots, it needs to focus on the RMT customer. RMT stays in business because there's no penalty to being a buyer. SE can shut down one set of RMT seller accounts and another one will appear because the customer still has money they want to spend.

I agree. ban the buyers. start with a 14 day ban for the first offense and perma for the second.

fairly sure their buyer pool would quickly empty once that got around the player base

[Deceptus]

The bot programmers then set up their new accounts, figure out what the counter measure was and find a new way around it. What's achieved through code can be circumvented by other code..

The bot countermeasures are simply

Set up a new email and a new account
Set up a new payment method
Run leveling script to desired level
Continue botting as normal

Can you imagine how much things would cost if everyone had to gather their own crystals and aethersand, instead of bots constantly minting them by the thousands?

IMHO Crystals should have went away a long time ago as they're nothing more than bot farms at this point.

[UkcsAlias]

They've got no problem starting over because it's how they make money and the new account is just an operating expense.

The moment they get banned faster than they can get value out of their bots, operating expenses will make them stop.

The problem in MMOs is mainly that those botters are actualy still bringing in money. And it costs money to make them stop (both in personel costs and losing those subscriptions). This generaly means that you dont want them to stop entirely, you only want to disrupt them in such way you can maximize their expenses while having them disrupt less. Sure, depending on the dev they might go for the more extreme method, but note that this then always will cost money.

You can ofcourse have some AI systems for detection, which for some bot things can be effective and often is a good way to push their expenses up (which they then cannot as effectively counter, because of quicker bot detection). But in the end, you cant realy win this fight anyway. Botters will just make their bots more effective at dodging detection, often with just reduced productivity, but as long as they still make profit at low effort, they wont care.

[KageTokage]

That is false. Bots always had similar movement and you can tell who is a bot if you observe them for a bit. Not only that but if you teleport a player to the GM jail after you become suspicious of them you can pretty much confirm that they are botting with confidence.
If you want to fight botting you have to make the cost of purchasing accounts higher than the profit. Otherwise, being banned for botting is just a cost of ''doing business''. If you ban bots every few months you will NEVER EVER solve the problem this way because it will still be profitable.

The reason why they are not taking action is that they are cutting corners with CS. CS is expensive and investigating reports manually is time-consuming. In WoW classic I was banned for botting, I didn't bot. They used an algorithm to flag accounts as suspicious and banned them.
Plenty of legitimate players got banned but that was acceptable collateral damage because CS would be more expensive.

I do feel like the STF is the core issue with why cheating is so prevalent.

A four member team is much too small to be trying to manage the entire game's population of cheaters without being overly reliant on automated detection methods that apparently can't even pick up on a lot of the impossible things bots and hackers alike do. The only thing that seems to semi-reliably get them banned is using hacks to teleport around the place but even that won't necessarily be acted on if used in moderation judging from accounts I've heard in PvP and elsewhere.

We really need a team that when prompted, will just go and observe suspected players in person as that's all it takes to tell that foul play is involved. You don't need fancy detection tools; just send the GMs after them with a laundry list of red flags to look for and purge them if it's obvious something is off.

[Deceptus]

The reason why online games ban in waves is because fighting cheaters is an arms race. You build systems to detect cheaters, and the cheaters build countermeasures to circumvent the detection. Repeat to infinity.

Except the bots in this game don't really have countermeasures. Look for the mass amounts of randomized names in a zone. Look for the Players zooming around the map teleporting.

Take this OP picture for example, they're not trying to hide it. It's blatantly in the open. That's the case with most bots.