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

[Deceptus]

MMO's and bots are inevitable, but I don't think OP is stepping out of line trying to get this "Operation" taken down. I hope devs "investigate" this situation and others alike. I'm newer to game so don't know how well SE handles situations like this, plus all I do is savage/ultimate content so don't see many bots.

Literally all it takes is for a GM to take 5 min, zone in, notice extreme botlike behavior and act appropriately. Send em to Gaol and then sort them out.

[Lily_Skye]

gms are useless in this game

[BrokentoothMarch]

I didn't even know GMs existed. Seriously.

[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.

[Taralyne]

I play on Zurvan from NA so most are sleeping when I play,Im deaf so no FCs for me .._.Never beleve you.Anyway I see bots all the time that late at night.
I just ignore and go about my business but today I zoned into Ulda from the airship with at least 20 all at same time,like one big "Whoose".
I was stunned.Just kina stood there until they blinked out.I mean if a GM needs more proof and they see or know about it,lwould say they
are putting zero effort into at all.

[dspguy]

Oh no MMO and Bots what are rare combination

That which we allow we condone.

[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.

[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.

[Kes13a]

the only bots SE bans in waves in this game are the low hanging fruit... namely the barker bots advertising gil in major cities.

the market bots and harvest bots operate with impunity and zero repercussions. more recently the 4 person team in Japan, had been sent several report on map bots.

you can take a guess as to how many of those were or have ever been dealt with in a ban wave and are still operating. (I would say any number higher than 1 would be wrong but who knows)

for SE, it is apparent that unless they are singing in unison "we are bots we are bots, we are bots" in /yell and advertising the botting software... SE wont even bother them. period

[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.