Underground Bots

[Jojoya]

I am boggled - - this seems "low hanging fruit".

I just started using Idle Cam - enjoying the show - - and always always (ALWAYS) end up with a view of a pod of identical bots underground.

You could sweep - manually or automatically and burn all players underground - that does not seem complicated given an absolute parameter.....underground.

In order to "report" I need to be able to see/target the offending payer character.

If the SE team is waiting for that to happen the Bots are forever safe.

Proactively burning everything underground........ that's like getting rid of termites or cockroaches. Rats.

Low hanging fruit. Burn the nest.

I retire in ten years and have been shaking my head in this economy faced with the inevitable jobs to seniors like "Wal-Mart Greeter" or "Costco Food Taste Demonstrator/SampleGiver". What a great job I would enjoy so much more in my sunset year - - - burning pirates 4-6 hours a day.

Low hanging fruit - cost effective - HUGE dividends.

There's really no need for us to be report those obvious RMT bots. SE is aware they're there. They've even got underground death traps scattered in various places. I used to love to watch the bots trying to go to the Waking Sands die to the one under the entrance.

The bots you want to be reporting are the gathering bots and the like that may be trying to imitate normal player activity but have failed somehow. Example would be a bot I found in Diadem flying into a tree branch going nowhere for over a half an hour. A normal player would have corrected immediately and continued to their node, or would have been kicked from Diadem for inactivity. Since it was that same position for over 30 minutes, I knew it was a bot.

Back in ARR you used to see them running around in the sky.

That was happening again in the city-states at Shadowbringers launch. You could watch the trains of bots floating thru the air and buildings.

[KageTokage]

There's really no need for us to be report those obvious RMT bots. SE is aware they're there. They've even got underground death traps scattered in various places. I used to love to watch the bots trying to go to the Waking Sands die to the one under the entrance.

Did they really start doing that?

That feels like it was years overdue, though hopefully they also applied it to the dungeons the bots run because they'll likely just adjust by staying in-bounds in the overworld, but they have to stay out of bounds in dungeons in order to kill the bosses.

[Jojoya]

Did they really start doing that?

That feels like it was years overdue, though hopefully they also applied it to the dungeons the bots run because they'll likely just adjust by staying in-bounds in the overworld, but they have to stay out of bounds in dungeons in order to kill the bosses.

I went back to my old screenshots and tracked it down to Oct 2020 when I was leveling one of my new alts. I could see the damage text rising out of the ground plus hear whatever noise then character would make when dying followed by a faint thud. I had captured the battle log information, and a few would come back after rezzing and briefly appear above ground at the entrance so I could target them easily.

I'm assuming the traps are still there though the bots probably have been given a different way to get in and out of Waking Sands since. And as you say below, they seem to be a lot rarer now at least there. I think they can still be found if you idle near the GC HQ or a company chest.

I might try checking for them when I transfer a couple of my characters to the new data center next month. It should get swamped with bots, especially if all the current NA worlds end up Congested.

Hard to say if those traps would work in dungeons since those are instanced. I'm not even certain exactly how the bots were dying, I could just tell they were.

It's not that hard, just /icam by the Aetheryte in Ul'dah and you will see them. Honestly, I'm shocked that they don't swat them down. That's just more game keys that SE can sell to the botters, lmao.

Except this type of bot is usually on an account set up with compromised payment info. They only last long enough for a quick farm and gil transfer before SE gets the chargeback.

I know people like to think that nothing is done because the bots mean more game license and subscription income but they're actually a loss to SE because the payment info is fraudulent or stolen. Chargeback costs add up for businesses.

[DixieBellOCE]

I went back to my old screenshots and tracked it down to Oct 2020 when I was leveling one of my new alts. I could see the damage text rising out of the ground plus hear whatever noise then character would make when dying followed by a faint thud. I had captured the battle log information, and a few would come back after rezzing and briefly appear above ground at the entrance so I could target them easily.

I'm assuming the traps are still there though the bots probably have been given a different way to get in and out of Waking Sands since. And as you say below, they seem to be a lot rarer now at least there. I think they can still be found if you idle near the GC HQ or a company chest.

I might try checking for them when I transfer a couple of my characters to the new data center next month. It should get swamped with bots, especially if all the current NA worlds end up Congested.

Hard to say if those traps would work in dungeons since those are instanced. I'm not even certain exactly how the bots were dying, I could just tell they were.


Except this type of bot is usually on an account set up with compromised payment info. They only last long enough for a quick farm and gil transfer before SE gets the chargeback.

I know people like to think that nothing is done because the bots mean more game license and subscription income but they're actually a loss to SE because the payment info is fraudulent or stolen. Chargeback costs add up for businesses.

Large majority of bots just boost and do eureka.
its like 750m-1b/day with 50 accounts.

Square just dont care about banning them.

[UkcsAlias]

Square just dont care about banning them.

I think the issue is mainly that it takes quite a large amount of costs to have very effective detection, while now, even if they are running for a few weeks (and generates the rmt vendors smoe profit), SE also gets some profit from that. On that you want to disrupt them enough that as plague they have a lesser effect, but still want to be break even in money. And that is a somewhat fair balance to go for, as in the end, its going to just be a race where the RMT vendors will generaly be ahead into avoiding detection.

Sure, they can ban the underground bots now, but if that becomes autodetection and reacts fast, bots makers will just find diffirence positions the bots will use. Now this might actualy be part of the easy detection and be very efficient on that (where they might only ban 80% instead of 100% to obfuscate that detection method).

Its barely possible to stop the RMT vendors as bots are usualy cheap (often using stolen credit card info)