Gold Sellers

[Faelandaea]

Well, judging by the tells I've gotten from the hundreds upon hundreds of bots, there is a prime location for their operation: China. Some of the bot creators are European, which if I'm not mistaken, do honor these sort of laws. Of those from Europe, most of them are Eastern European, like Romania and the like. Broad, blanket bans are like taking a hammer to a sewing needle.
As I've suggested, and oft demanded, have in-game GMs. People paid by SE, to literally roam the game worlds. They get spammed, bam, instant ban. As such, while typing this short response, I've gotten four tells, all spamming for the SAME website. Honestly, if these mass tells are going out, identify key phrases, words, and ban. I would put up the words, but I'd get banned, because banning a paying customer is far preferable to these people than dealing with the greater problem with any sense.

You wouldn't even need to pay the GM's probably.

back in the glorious days of the old classic Everquest, I was a GM. I played on Vazaelle and was a GM on Mith Marr. I volunteered to do this job and my only payment was no subscription fee, so basically I did customer service for $14.99/month . . . out of everything that has changed economically isn't it amazing that MMO game subs are still basically the same? Anyway I digress. So my job was: help players out of stuck situations (not an issue for FFXIV since players don't get stuck) and assist the company with investigations of harassment or illegal activity. We were not visible to players, most of the time. Most of the time we stayed invisible . . . we could be standing literally on top of you and you'd never know we were there. As such we could spawn into anywhere in the world, monitor chats of people around us, and watch for malicious activity being done. If we caught a player red handed, one of most common procedures was to "pull" them into a special zone we had, which was basically just a blank cube that had no distractions, and discuss the issue with them. More often then not we'd give the player a chance to plead their case, and depending on the results, they could end up banned or maybe the case dropped altogether.

The catch was as GMs we were customer service agents, and customer service was our foremost priority. We had powers to pull players to talk, and we could make ourselves visible to the public just for kicks or PR. We'd even sometimes hold events where we transformed into "NPC's" that players had to interact with, kill, do a quest for, etc. to change things up a bit sometimes. However we could NOT ban players. We also could not discipline players beyond what a mall security guard could do in real life - basically we intervene and stop harassment, but it was up to the actual game devs if a player got banned or not, and based on our reports they would usually listen to our recommendations on disciplinary action against the suspected player.

I would not expect pay if SE were to make such a program - I'd HAPPILY volunteer just for free game time again. But it would take lots of work - systems would have to be introduced that monitored us VERY closely and made sure we did not abuse our powers or misrepresent the company, because the primary goal of a GM is always customer service - to represent the company. An in-game Gm is an ambassador between the player base and the development team.

Yes . . . i think this is an outstanding idea - if SE would consider it. Live GM's roaming the world could certainly pick up and catch bot activity more efficiently than random algorithm reports.

[censingice]

They need to put a button in so we can just report them like how u click their name to send tell there should b a report option there too

[aresgodofwar30]

Is Square Enix doing anything to prevent these third party botting programs? I haven't found anything other than "we will look into the matter" cookie cutter responses. I want to know specifically what is being done.

[moudoka]

They'll periodically announce "We have banned X amount of accounts for RMT" which really means little to nothing. At least with in-game GMs, there is an opportunity to show the community as a whole that SE is trying to do something. As it sits now, it really does appear they get kickbacks from the RMT guys, to ply their trade at our expense. Their system in place for both reporting, and the methods the bots use to find people is very poorly designed. I won't stop my disdain for this behavior. Especially when SE gives us zero response to the issue. But, given their utter LOVE for RNG in EVERYTHING in this game, they could care less about what the community thinks, as long as those dollar signs keep racking up.

[Bobbyky73]

There really needs to be a way to report these pests from the chatlog. I've added over 100 names to my blacklist in the past 4 days. This is really ruining my enjoyment of the game.

[moudoka]

This will get me banned, but I don't care. SHUT DOWN THE FUCKING SITE WTSGG. Those goddamn idiots spam me hundreds of times a day, and SE does NOTHING.
These people have Facebook pages. They are on twitter. And yet, miraculously, SE doesn't do ANYTHING about them. Constant harassment by their bots, all day long. Report them, nothing happens, their bots are never deleted, or banned. Their accounts continue to spam and harass paying players. You've got one month SE. End this harassment.

[KisaiTenshi]

If you see "stacking", it's definitely bots. This is exactly how they work in a dozen other MMO's.


If you see "players" that never move, and are in the same spot every single day and minute until a new patch (these guys only disappeared after maintenance, which suggests that they needed time to update their bot software.) That is also a characteristic of bots. Also these ones in particular can be tested for botting because you can time them.

[Reikon]

That to me is just sad that there's that many bots in this game that we pay for. I would expect this from a Free to play. Every single player in that list was the same Class, same levels and farming all the same things. How is this not a red flag? Having one single Admin for a few hours a day per server would clean this problem up so much. These guys are level 50 bots!!! All on Faerie Server =/

[KisaiTenshi]

That to me is just sad that there's that many bots in this game that we pay for. I would expect this from a Free to play. Every single player in that list was the same Class, same levels and farming all the same things. How is this not a red flag? Having one single Admin for a few hours a day per server would clean this problem up so much. These guys are level 50 bots!!! All on Faerie Server =/

This is Excalibur:

Also there's dozens of bots not shown because their names end with a '

[Gillionaire]

This will get me banned, but I don't care. SHUT DOWN THE FUCKING SITE WTSGG. Those goddamn idiots spam me hundreds of times a day, and SE does NOTHING.
These people have Facebook pages. They are on twitter. And yet, miraculously, SE doesn't do ANYTHING about them. Constant harassment by their bots, all day long. Report them, nothing happens, their bots are never deleted, or banned. Their accounts continue to spam and harass paying players. You've got one month SE. End this harassment.

I don't think SE owns the internet..