Bots

[Denji]

it'd be a lot easier if they just made it so that you had to use 2fa and reach, say, level 15 to "speak" over /say if you're a trial acc and force all trial accounts into the novice network so that if it starts getting hit by bots, it can be reported instantly without needing to be nearby said bot to see the spam.

additionally, to give the mentor status some actual worth what they could do is make it so a mentor can "vouch" for a trial user so that they can speak before the level 15 limit. if that person ends up being a bot spammer then the mentor's crown/status could be taken away due to association.

[Pixieh]

weird named characters

If that was applied not only would the bots be gone but also Roe's who used the 'random name' function and half the NPC's in world.

[ICountFrom0]

I have a question to SE. And its a big one. Why you dont rly do smth sbout all the bots, like banning them constantly, checking servers for them? As you can Literaly see lots of bots when you do a player search thing in main cities. Just look at all those same low lvl, weird named characters. Its just so obvious, and for some reaxon, theyre always there. The bots hurting this game in many levels, so why you cant just check the servers, world from time to time, maibe assingn some gms for the task and get to banning them? Imo it isnt a hard thing to do. And as it is now, it seems that bots are just left to do whatever they want in game. So, yeah, if you wont do smth about that, the situation can go out of hands sometime in the future. And it wont be pretty.

This is what they claim to do.

Ban a bot as soon as it is detected, the person running the bot learns how you detected them.
Ban the bots every other week on friday, and post about it, the person running the bot only learns they have to make another account.

[DixieBellOCE]

Unfortunately it's also a never ending battle and one a lot of MMO's suffer from - SE bans the botters; they just buy new accounts, SE finds a way to tell if an account is using software that violates ToS; they just create/get new software that SE can't detect. I hear there's quite a lucrative market out there for coders who can write bot programs - some even sold on dark sites for quite an amount.

I do agree that something needs to be done and going after the reason for the botters in the first place (buyers) is probably the best course of action (as no buyers = less rmt botters) but it'd requires considerable resources that SE don't apparently have (or are unwilling to pay for).

Although a few characters all the same level with weird names is a sure sign of botting, SE won't ban them until they can catch them doing something against ToS.

Most of the time they don't even buy new accounts. They just use fake chinese cd keys that last ~2 months before autoban for chargebacks.

[KageTokage]

This is what they claim to do.

Ban a bot as soon as it is detected, the person running the bot learns how you detected them.
Ban the bots every other week on friday, and post about it, the person running the bot only learns they have to make another account.

The thing is the ARR bots have literally been doing the exact same thing since 2.0, so at this point I think it's less that they know how to evade being detected and more that they're simply abusing the slow once-a-week banwaves to farm as much as they can within that limited timeframe and sell it off before they get banned.

The amount of time they save by hacking is presumably too great to make it worth doing things legitimately for a chance at not being banned, because I did used to see conga lines of "legit" ARR bots that would manually run between MSQ objectives, but that's still painfully obvious due to the sheer numbers involved and while they did last a time, they eventually started getting purged just as quickly as the hackers.

[Communion]

I have a conspiracy theory that the bots are actually owned by the devs. In fact, all mmos and multi-player games on in on it. Free money side hustle. I know, I know... but I'm sticking to it. lol!

[MAJRIS]

I have a conspiracy theory that the bots are actually owned by the devs. In fact, all mmos and multi-player games on in on it. Free money side hustle. I know, I know... but I'm sticking to it. lol!

I'm starting to think some parallel botting world in mmos has become pretty much standard, except the only one in denial are players themselves.
Can we get past the same reguitated lie "oh devs hands are tied" or "bots are like hydra they just get back" it starts to sound like really cheap excuses. Put one GM under aetheryte and start kicking out all players out of bounds.

Do you need any high tech software or just working pair of eyes to know that flying under terrain is not done by ordrinary means?
and the "ban them every two weeks to be le mysterious so they dont know what hit them". yeah sure let them farm and then ban them when they reached the desired treshhold or cap.

And just the cherry on top is live letter "please guys, don't cheat, don't mod." Well, if this benchmark/visual feedback will end up ignored, I can bet it will push even more people into modding.




I'm tired, boss.

[RoadGGG]

Y'all need to go watch Pirate Software's videos on how he handled botters in WoW. Seriously.

[Octavia_Deathschoicen]

the easy solution to end all bot proplems is allow people to sell things like fantasia's ally raid gear on marketboard, and sell the emotes on mogstation for example, add a house build on private islands then noone will buy gil from them . there you go i just solved the bot problem, and honestly make everything sell able.

in game solution to gil is make npcs actrually buy things at a reasonable price or add in the fishing npc that buys fish for a decent amount since most fish are worthless

or just make all glamour shared between all characters that would decrease them big time


plus lets look at it without buying retainers most someone can put up is 40 total, for sell at lvl 80 the quest is giving about the same amount as gil reward as a lvl 50 quest does, most items are near worthless 80% of fish cant be cooked, or turned into oil and cant even go into a tank. and what few items are worth something are highly over priced to point some of the mats for the item itself cost more.. So honestly its kinda players and se fault when most items are worthless gil rewards from quest is kinda pathetic in current expansion and what items would be worth it are unsellable.

housing being the only thing gil is even used for yet the odds are not in someones favor for said thing if they are after it, with limited plots and selective locations and designs not even counting some of the items can only be made in a fc ...

So honestly why wouldnt someone bot, combat is 1 2 3 4 you basicly could design a bot with just auto key on any pc. Let alone battles are based off a rotation pattern enemy has x enemy does y, its honestly sad how even bots in dungeons are so poorly designed they cant even do one thing right.

and honestly with just a basic software like auto key you could bot without actrually botting just be at keyboard watching it and clear things fine, maybe slower but the fact is its functionals


our eco is based on taking advantage of ilvl requirements which was made worse with alliance raid change, if someone is only in arr yet at lvl 60 which can happan they lose a roulette for a complete expansion which turns around and harms there gil in take. then we got selling an item for 50k that is like 4k in a npc sells in an area some people cant access at the time. so honestly its not like we have a good eco anyways, we got some people with near max gil, since there nothing for them to spend on outside of a house which is pure luck or chance and once its done thats it . they could have done more with islands and should keep evolving it to be a gil sink like buying recipes and building blueprints and eventally add a house to it for players.

The proplem which leads to all botting and people using the bots for w/e all has the same single domino just like in every single game


and what the one other proplem is here, what they add new wise is almost always a piece of furinture or something linked to housing which for the vast majority it either has no worth or its no reason to get cuz no place to put it. We get a new dungeon or w/e with nothing tradeable from it. So really why wouldnt a person go get w/e to rush get a house and then never have to spend gil again. the "economy prays upon deseperation to get a plot and ilvl requirements, and selling the same piece of glamour to another alt so its not like we have a good one for bots to effect anyways which is why i stoped caring about them, im more annoyed whoever makes the bots isn't smart enough to test run them when combat is so simple a monkey could do it.
in simple terms gil only has worth for one thing in the entire game everything else is like lizards and scorpions in a desert yes it may be food source but that doesnt matter if the heat kills you first like what we have in the game, every other piece of item only has worth if you have a house

Bots exist and will always exist because a game like this makes money nearly impossible for most and what its used for its only available for a specific time line in ff14 it may always be there, but doesnt mean the possibility is always there. for example the recent events are lvl 50 and msq locked Why wouldnt someone rush through get a bot to spend like 1mill on 50 gear they cant access yet outside of farming poetics (which Poetics are a problem in itself 2k means 4 items regardless of the fact it covers nearly every expansions gear.

Its like our econemy is a single bowl of water in a desert that bowl woudlnt matter in a forest or a place filled with water, the only reason it matters is because its in an area that forces one to rush to it. 100% garntee with doing more the island and making it replace housing it would stop the vast majority from even thinking of gil bots. and the level bots the ones we see in dungeons are kinda poorly design not worth caring about