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masterorion
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if you run a gob to them and they dont move or you try to talk to them and no reply, what does that say about the char that is sitting there
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Garvin
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Which is exactly why it should be announced and added to the EULA (which they have every right to change).
"Continued use of Final Fantasy XI and PlayOnline services indicates acknowledgement of and compliance with any and all hard drive and memory scans. These scans are for the location and prevention of programs which violate the EULA. No other personal information will be collected or used."
Done and done.
Also, to say "attended macroing" is acceptable is a very slippery slope. Squeenix accidentally implied this when they said that the only way they have to bust someone is that they aren't there, but doing things.
Saying that attended macroing is okay means that it's fine as long as someone is sitting there WATCHING that NM vokebot. That one that's faster than any human player. Is that "fair"?
I'm disappointed that Squeenix does so little to curb this problem, but they'll go out of their way to nerf a job if they think it might not be hard enough to play.
Stopping botting isn't hard -- and it doesn't take GM's to make it happen or even elaborate scanning techniques.
1. There are techniques to find out if a real "live" human person is sitting at, and operating, a computer. You might have seen this on the Internet. Some services display an image which depicts something obvious, and asks you to type in what it is or what is says. These work because bots scan the text to determine what action to take in response -- but the "images" are not text. I might make a picture of a cloud formation that turns out to spell a word -- and ask you to type in the word you see, but there's no text for a bot to latch onto. A real person's brain *would* perceive the pattern and respond correctly. I've seen numerous examples of this. To be effective, a very wide variety of techniques is required -- otherwise the botters would develope pattern-matching software to try to get around it. Pattern matching software would have to be somewhat specific to the technique you used. So by the time you made software to read images formed out of clouds, the next message would be word written on a flag which is flapping in the the wind (animated), etc. By continuously varying the technique, you stay ahead of the botter.
For this technique to work it is CRITCAL that "image" be rendered on the SERVER (can't send a message to the client and ask them to generate the image and display it -- otherwise it gives the bot an interception point where plain-text existed).
The idea behind this to insert things into the game that a player needs to respond to in order to continue playing -- and limit the amount of time a player has to respond. E.g. maybe I see an image in the trees, grass, water, on the fish's body, on a mob walking by, etc. If the player fails to type the correct response, the "/fish" command is ignored (disabled) -- so the bot goes on with their macro but no progress can be made.
2. Diminish returns
It's possible to build heuristics into the game to determine if someone is a real player. A bot will generally do whatever it is they do all day, every day. S-E can make fishing return "normal" results for, say 2-3 hours, then half the normal results for the next 2-3 hours, and so on until a botter figures out that they can only make 3-4 hours worth of progress and then are mysteriously unable to catch anything ever again.
The complication here is that a real player might spend a whole day fishing to make gil they need for something else.
Remember the Moogle's that would spit out your statistics? How many mobs you fought, how many times you joined a party, how many times you got K.O.'d, how many quests you've done, etc.??? They obviously TRACK our movements.
I would suggest that if a player seems to be following normal real-person patterns (fighting mobs, joining parties, buying/selling on AH (not *JUST* selling and maybe buying only 1 type of item - but varied items), then they are probably a real player and the "diminishing returns" rule shouldn't apply.
This means a real player would be able to fish for days and get normal results from it (thus allowing you to raise money for an expensive item you want to get, etc.) because they have established months of normal real-player activity. But a newly created bot would have very little luck making anything.
There are all sorts of patterns that can be used to recognize a player that is being controlled by a real-person, vs. one that was created to be a bot.
3. Make it HARD to give gil away
The IRS does this. Each year you can "give" away up to $5000 (actually I think they raised to $10,000) to anyone you want -- tax free. If you give away more than that, the recipient has to pay a tax on it (this is an oversimplification - but it gets the idea across). IGE works by having you "buy" hundreds of thousands or even millions of gil. Once you pay in real money, someone will drop this gil into your deliver box.
What if S-E were to cap "gifts" in the game. In other words, you could only receive 50,000g per week through your delivery box or trade. Anymore than this and the excess gil would simply be kept by S-E or blocked completely. Even if multiple players (e.g. 20 players who each give you 50,000g so that you get a total of 1,000,000) would be blocked because the recipient is exceeding the cap.
This would make it very difficult for the gil sellers to do any transacting -- other than small stuff. To "sell" you 1,000,000g it would take them 20 weeks (almost 5 months) to complete the transaction. A time period SO ANNOYING that you'd decide it's just not a good way to get gil.
They'd have to be careful not to ruin trade - but that's do-able. They'd just need to make sure that you don't do really stupid things like trade "1 pebble" for 1,000,000g. They can just compare the sum value of the items being traded (by comparing it to average AH prices) and if the skew is too great, then the excess would be considered a "gift" and count towards your weekly cap. If there is no skew or very little skew then the trade would not be considered a gift and would not count against your weekly cap.
Point to all of this is, there is a LOT that S-E can do to curb botting. They just need to put their minds to it.
S-E doesn't actually need to totally eliminate botting to be successful, they just have to get it down to a very small percentage of what it is today. Sites like IGE can't survive if, after an entire month, only a handful of gil is made and sold. They need VOLUME to be worthwhile. If you can chop their volume by maybe 90%, it wont make them enough money to be worth running the site. When the site disappears, the remaining 10% of botters will lose their sales channel. In other words, botting only exists because there is enough "critical mass". If you reduce the mass to the point where there isn't enough, then what remains will just burn out and go away completely.
Stopping botting isn't hard -- and it doesn't take GM's to make it happen or even elaborate scanning techniques.
1. There are techniques to find out if a real "live" human person is sitting at, and operating, a computer. You might have seen this on the Internet. Some services display an image which depicts something obvious, and asks you to type in what it is or what is says. These work because bots scan the text to determine what action to take in response -- but the "images" are not text. I might make a picture of a cloud formation that turns out to spell a word -- and ask you to type in the word you see, but there's no text for a bot to latch onto. A real person's brain *would* perceive the pattern and respond correctly. I've seen numerous examples of this. To be effective, a very wide variety of techniques is required -- otherwise the botters would develope pattern-matching software to try to get around it. Pattern matching software would have to be somewhat specific to the technique you used. So by the time you made software to read images formed out of clouds, the next message would be word written on a flag which is flapping in the the wind (animated), etc. By continuously varying the technique, you stay ahead of the botter.
For this technique to work it is CRITCAL that "image" be rendered on the SERVER (can't send a message to the client and ask them to generate the image and display it -- otherwise it gives the bot an interception point where plain-text existed).
The idea behind this to insert things into the game that a player needs to respond to in order to continue playing -- and limit the amount of time a player has to respond. E.g. maybe I see an image in the trees, grass, water, on the fish's body, on a mob walking by, etc. If the player fails to type the correct response, the "/fish" command is ignored (disabled) -- so the bot goes on with their macro but no progress can be made.
2. Diminish returns
It's possible to build heuristics into the game to determine if someone is a real player. A bot will generally do whatever it is they do all day, every day. S-E can make fishing return "normal" results for, say 2-3 hours, then half the normal results for the next 2-3 hours, and so on until a botter figures out that they can only make 3-4 hours worth of progress and then are mysteriously unable to catch anything ever again.
The complication here is that a real player might spend a whole day fishing to make gil they need for something else.
Remember the Moogle's that would spit out your statistics? How many mobs you fought, how many times you joined a party, how many times you got K.O.'d, how many quests you've done, etc.??? They obviously TRACK our movements.
I would suggest that if a player seems to be following normal real-person patterns (fighting mobs, joining parties, buying/selling on AH (not *JUST* selling and maybe buying only 1 type of item - but varied items), then they are probably a real player and the "diminishing returns" rule shouldn't apply.
This means a real player would be able to fish for days and get normal results from it (thus allowing you to raise money for an expensive item you want to get, etc.) because they have established months of normal real-player activity. But a newly created bot would have very little luck making anything.
There are all sorts of patterns that can be used to recognize a player that is being controlled by a real-person, vs. one that was created to be a bot.
3. Make it HARD to give gil away
The IRS does this. Each year you can "give" away up to $5000 (actually I think they raised to $10,000) to anyone you want -- tax free. If you give away more than that, the recipient has to pay a tax on it (this is an oversimplification - but it gets the idea across). IGE works by having you "buy" hundreds of thousands or even millions of gil. Once you pay in real money, someone will drop this gil into your deliver box.
What if S-E were to cap "gifts" in the game. In other words, you could only receive 50,000g per week through your delivery box or trade. Anymore than this and the excess gil would simply be kept by S-E or blocked completely. Even if multiple players (e.g. 20 players who each give you 50,000g so that you get a total of 1,000,000) would be blocked because the recipient is exceeding the cap.
This would make it very difficult for the gil sellers to do any transacting -- other than small stuff. To "sell" you 1,000,000g it would take them 20 weeks (almost 5 months) to complete the transaction. A time period SO ANNOYING that you'd decide it's just not a good way to get gil.
They'd have to be careful not to ruin trade - but that's do-able. They'd just need to make sure that you don't do really stupid things like trade "1 pebble" for 1,000,000g. They can just compare the sum value of the items being traded (by comparing it to average AH prices) and if the skew is too great, then the excess would be considered a "gift" and count towards your weekly cap. If there is no skew or very little skew then the trade would not be considered a gift and would not count against your weekly cap.
Point to all of this is, there is a LOT that S-E can do to curb botting. They just need to put their minds to it.
S-E doesn't actually need to totally eliminate botting to be successful, they just have to get it down to a very small percentage of what it is today. Sites like IGE can't survive if, after an entire month, only a handful of gil is made and sold. They need VOLUME to be worthwhile. If you can chop their volume by maybe 90%, it wont make them enough money to be worth running the site. When the site disappears, the remaining 10% of botters will lose their sales channel. In other words, botting only exists because there is enough "critical mass". If you reduce the mass to the point where there isn't enough, then what remains will just burn out and go away completely.
2. Cap botters don't hurt the economy. They have more gil than you, well crap. There will always be people with more gil. The vendor system in FFXI ensures that there is limitless amounts of Gil circulating through Vana'diel at any given time. Some of you may say "doesn't this cause inflation? That's what my professor in Economics told me." You forget who has the majority of that Gil. The botters. I've been playing for about 4 months. The JPs for almost 2 years now. If it wasn't Cap botting in Rabao it was botting the cliffs of Saruta. If this really affected the economy as much as everyone likes to think it does, then 1 friggin mithkabob would cost 20,000. Come on.
THERE IS LOCALIZED INFLATION!!! Just check the price on Leaping Boots!
1. There are just as many campers as ever;
2. The drop rate most likely hasn't changed;
3. The competition is seemingly legit;
4. More and more people are getting Leaping Boots over time, reducing the market size.
Thus we have a constant offer, and a demand that is balanced between players who have hunted or bought their boots already, and new players joining the game. So why has the price gone up 100k ever since I bought my pair?
Simple: because people can afford to pay more.
That drives people to need more money to buy that stuff. More money needed means more time spent NM hunting, crafting, farming, mining, fishing, etc.
Botting is a solution to that problem. It helps divert the money from the economy from one player to another (buyer and seller), so the botter can buy that pair of boots at a higher price. Since they had a better ease in buying those boots, the next seller will feel justified to drive the price up.
Theorically, all current botters and Gil buyers will eventually have their gear and the prices would go down. However, some people will not have the patience to wait for the economy on Leaping Boots to recover, and will start botting or buying Gil in order to be the next in line to possess that top-of-the-line item, thus maintaining inflation on that item.
Oh, and consequently, should that make NM hunters happy that the drops are now more expensive? Not really. It might be worth more, but it's also harder for one specific player to get it, due to increased competition. It the item was worth less, there would most likely have less players participating in one specific hunt, thus increasing the frequency of obtaining the item over time. Profit per sale isn't as important as profit over time. Oh, and add those 'voke bots in the picture.
So, the true problem isn't with the economy in general, it's more with specific items that have become even more than a luxury. The rule is simple: botters and Gil buyers will get those items faster than someone who does honest farming. And ever higher prices encourages further botting and Gil buying, thus the trend will be difficult to kill by letting it carry on unchecked. Yes, I can live with that, if my party mates can live with me not getting a Peacock Charm at >3 million Gil.
Happy?
THERE IS LOCALIZED INFLATION!!! Just check the price on Leaping Boots!
1. There are just as many campers as ever;
2. The drop rate most likely hasn't changed;
3. The competition is seemingly legit;
4. More and more people are getting Leaping Boots over time, reducing the market size.
Thus we have a constant offer, and a demand that is balanced between players who have hunted or bought their boots already, and new players joining the game. So why has the price gone up 100k ever since I bought my pair?
Simple: because people can afford to pay more.
That drives people to need more money to buy that stuff. More money needed means more time spent NM hunting, crafting, farming, mining, fishing, etc.
Botting is a solution to that problem. It helps divert the money from the economy from one player to another (buyer and seller), so the botter can buy that pair of boots at a higher price. Since they had a better ease in buying those boots, the next seller will feel justified to drive the price up.
Theorically, all current botters and Gil buyers will eventually have their gear and the prices would go down. However, some people will not have the patience to wait for the economy on Leaping Boots to recover, and will start botting or buying Gil in order to be the next in line to possess that top-of-the-line item, thus maintaining inflation on that item.
Oh, and consequently, should that make NM hunters happy that the drops are now more expensive? Not really. It might be worth more, but it's also harder for one specific player to get it, due to increased competition. It the item was worth less, there would most likely have less players participating in one specific hunt, thus increasing the frequency of obtaining the item over time. Profit per sale isn't as important as profit over time. Oh, and add those 'voke bots in the picture.
So, the true problem isn't with the economy in general, it's more with specific items that have become even more than a luxury. The rule is simple: botters and Gil buyers will get those items faster than someone who does honest farming. And ever higher prices encourages further botting and Gil buying, thus the trend will be difficult to kill by letting it carry on unchecked. Yes, I can live with that, if my party mates can live with me not getting a Peacock Charm at >3 million Gil.
Happy?
Dang, I missed the quotes part. The whole first paragraph is a quote from gutress' lastest post.
M
masterorion
Guest
Lokkin said:
look at my previous post....
if you train a gob to them and they dont move, they just sit there and take the hits and eventually die as they are still fishing(casting/recasting their fishing pole) id say, thats a bot. not to mention if they are standing in a line like they do outside of windy. if they arent bots, they would see the person next to them being attacked and would more than likely move or bitch and moan about having something trained to them
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In response to Squirrelin's idea about limiting gil trading, I'd have to give a HUGE veto to that. For the reason why, I'll explain the situation I have now.
For our static group, I'm the Bard for BCNM. Our leader recently bought the Monster Signa (he got a good deal and had to snag it right away) and I'm currently earning the gil to pay him back. (He's currently away, out of state move in progress.) When he gets back, I'll have to send him a lump of gil in excess of 160K- which he is then going to turn around and use to buy his Valkyrie Mask. If we were limited to 50K trade per week, it would be 4 weeks (!!!) before he got all the gil back and could afford his mask.
Limiting gil trading would hurt legitimate players FAR more than the gil sellers. The higher level you get, the more true this becomes, because the transactions you make have a much bigger price tag attached to them than at starting levels.
For our static group, I'm the Bard for BCNM. Our leader recently bought the Monster Signa (he got a good deal and had to snag it right away) and I'm currently earning the gil to pay him back. (He's currently away, out of state move in progress.) When he gets back, I'll have to send him a lump of gil in excess of 160K- which he is then going to turn around and use to buy his Valkyrie Mask. If we were limited to 50K trade per week, it would be 4 weeks (!!!) before he got all the gil back and could afford his mask.
Limiting gil trading would hurt legitimate players FAR more than the gil sellers. The higher level you get, the more true this becomes, because the transactions you make have a much bigger price tag attached to them than at starting levels.
Fellina said:
If items & gil were traded at the same time, it wouldn't be a problem because the value of the item would be proportional to the amount of gil traded. Othersise it may make things a bit awkward or make it take a couple of weeks to perform a legit transaction, but I'm willing to make the sacrifice in exchange for getting rid of botters and re-balancing the economy. Are you saying you do exchange items of this value every day or every week? If it's only making one isolated transaction inconvenient then I'd put up with it in exchange for getting rid of gil sellers.
Items costs more because someone is trying to outbid everyone else. Some of those people doing the out-bidding just *bought* their gil instead of earning it. The ability to just buy a few hundred thousand gil for an item is what causes inflation on the item. If players couldn't easily access huge amounts of gil, items wouldn't sell which leads to pressure to keep prices down to something reasonable.
It's not just the inflation, it's the fact that gil sellers are competing for resources against people trying to earn gil the old fashioned way. In Ghelsba Outpost, for example, there's "Elvaangirl". You can find her there pretty much any time of any day -- in '/anon' mode, and logging as fast as "she" can. There's a 2nd player there (whose name escapes me at the moment) doing the same thing. There are ONLY two logging points active at any one time in that area. If you try to go do some logging to raise gil, these people will move right in on your logging point (w/o respect to whomever got their first) to try to log the point out from under you. I know people who just don't want to log there because they're sick of having their logging points stolen. The only time this person isn't there is when she's full and has to go unload. I don't think this is a bot. I think it's a paid gil-seller operating the player.
It's amazing how as soon as real money enters the picture, respect for other players in the game is disregarded. They are gonna make their money and they really don't care who they have to screw-over to do it.
M
masterorion
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Squirrelin said:
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To be honest, in our linkshell we DO make trades of high value items pretty often. Until recently, we had a weird situation where for our static the person who was normally BLM was actually playing PLD tank (my husband) and the person who was normally tank was playing BLM. Before every meet for xp, they would end up swapping stuff back and forth- so my husband was loaning out 2 Morion earrings, a Morion Tathlum, a Wisdom ring, and a Faerie Shield. That's like *does quick math* almost 300K worth of gear, traded for nothing. Asking that a "fair value" be put on all merchandise trades would have left us unable to play.
And in the situation with the Signa, I was given that item "on loan" with no gil traded, simply on the expectation that I would pay it back (which, as I've stated, I will, because we're all good people in the link. XD) If I had waited until I had the gil to make a "fair trade" with our link leader, then I wouldn't have the signa until he got back- which means I wouldn't be able to do any BCNM as bard for 3 weeks. Mind you, I may or may not do anything during that time- I haven't decided. But I, for one, like to have that option open.
Which leads to another point- how can the game designers honestly program in something like the "fair trade" you proposed? It would ruin the economy far worse than any botters would (and don't get me wrong, I hate the botters). You'd be asking the game programmers to arbitrarily assign a gil value to every item in the game, based upon what? Current market? Markets change, just look at the 6-month price history of Elemental ores for example.
I'm not saying that nothing should be done to hamper the botters- I just think that some of the solutions you're proposing would cripple honest players, and bring about mass exodus from the game into greener pastures. But then, I suppose that would end the botting after all- there's no point in selling your gil if noone's left playing the game willing to buy.
And in the situation with the Signa, I was given that item "on loan" with no gil traded, simply on the expectation that I would pay it back (which, as I've stated, I will, because we're all good people in the link. XD) If I had waited until I had the gil to make a "fair trade" with our link leader, then I wouldn't have the signa until he got back- which means I wouldn't be able to do any BCNM as bard for 3 weeks. Mind you, I may or may not do anything during that time- I haven't decided. But I, for one, like to have that option open.
Which leads to another point- how can the game designers honestly program in something like the "fair trade" you proposed? It would ruin the economy far worse than any botters would (and don't get me wrong, I hate the botters). You'd be asking the game programmers to arbitrarily assign a gil value to every item in the game, based upon what? Current market? Markets change, just look at the 6-month price history of Elemental ores for example.
I'm not saying that nothing should be done to hamper the botters- I just think that some of the solutions you're proposing would cripple honest players, and bring about mass exodus from the game into greener pastures. But then, I suppose that would end the botting after all- there's no point in selling your gil if noone's left playing the game willing to buy.
Here's an idea: monitor how much Gil is sent to different people by each player. Gil sellers must have an account to receive and send Gil, and their volume of transactions must be really high. So if one character sends constant Gil to 40-50 players, then something must be up. It'd be best then if some administrator then investigates the case and acts up on it. Then he can also investigate who sent Gil to that character.
Thing is, that won't stop botting by a long shot. Not all botters do that to sell Gil online. Some just want to avoid either farming for their goods, or buying Gil online themselves. Those are the hardest to catch, as they aren't carrying out any other illegal actions besides using a 3rd party program to gather ressources and sell them for Gil on the AH, in a Bazaar or to an NPC while they are working or sleeping.
Thing is, that won't stop botting by a long shot. Not all botters do that to sell Gil online. Some just want to avoid either farming for their goods, or buying Gil online themselves. Those are the hardest to catch, as they aren't carrying out any other illegal actions besides using a 3rd party program to gather ressources and sell them for Gil on the AH, in a Bazaar or to an NPC while they are working or sleeping.
when you have items worth 8-20 mil gil being farmed daily and to probably distro that among 8-10 people or more the ideas of caps and monitoring isnt very good
A lot of the economy is broken, when you think about it a potion is way too much money to be practical, most crafters follow a chart to the top instead of following supply/demand rules. Things are just too expensive unless your a high lvl player whos been playing for a long time who can finally afford practical things.
I'm sure a lot of ppl including myself would enjoy farming for the item myself but since ppl think an item is 500k it will attract ppl who only sell it for 500k. Many players dont undercut items in abundance like some kotes or some boots I know.
Speaking of undercuts look what I did to the lv 70 behemoth knife sometime
You should still see it...hehehee
I'm sure a lot of ppl including myself would enjoy farming for the item myself but since ppl think an item is 500k it will attract ppl who only sell it for 500k. Many players dont undercut items in abundance like some kotes or some boots I know.
Speaking of undercuts look what I did to the lv 70 behemoth knife sometime
You should still see it...heheheeGhostinmyShell said:A lot of the economy is broken, when you think about it a potion is way too much money to be practical, most crafters follow a chart to the top instead of following supply/demand rules. Things are just too expensive unless your a high lvl player whos been playing for a long time who can finally afford practical things.
I'm sure a lot of ppl including myself would enjoy farming for the item myself but since ppl think an item is 500k it will attract ppl who only sell it for 500k. Many players dont undercut items in abundance like some kotes or some boots I know.
Speaking of undercuts look what I did to the lv 70 behemoth knife sometime
... so your the one. I want to violate your rectum with razors.
He only does that on Tuesdays.
I almost did it with a pair of strider boots I was toting around, but then that would have annoyed my LS somewhat I think 
Dalecooper said:
It's called breach of contract, idiot. It is illegal and you can be sued for it. If you had passed 7th grade you may know that.
By the way, talking the way you do (especially on the internet where you are obviously doing it intentionally) makes you seem like a piece of street trash, which, by the way, is not a good thing.
I hadn't looked at it that way. You're correct.
So instead of everyone playa hatin, lets see some letigiousness
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