I don't think it's a stretch to say most bots are people's mains. That really just goes to show how low the fear of getting punished is.
I honestly think that if a player is constantly being reported by people that the STF should at least notify them them that they're being watched out of suspicion of illicit activity so that if they are doing something wrong, it might make them paranoid enough to stop.
I just came back yesterday of a 2 year and 355 day break - and before I could even change my settings in my Gridania inn room, I had several goldseller spams. I felt like home immediately :-)
So, no, I do not see a difference from May 2015 and now ;-)
I'm starting to get seriously frustrated about the fact that it seems like new gathering bots are turning up on a weekly basis as of late, while the oldies who I thought might've finally gotten banned are beginning to resurface as 4.3 approaches.
At this point, it's mostly just seeing them getting away with blatant ToS violation for months/years on end that annoys me, because the amount of gil they make doesn't even matter when there isn't anything to spend it on.
Their decision to publicize the number of players banned for botting honestly has done nothing but make me more angry about this whole situation, because it's just drove home the point that there is something seriously wrong with how they handle reports if they are actually banning them, but the majority are slipping through the cracks.
Noting this.
There's been a gathering bot I've been seeing for Most of SB on Balmung. I have reported this person multiple times, and yet they are still free to gather. Why? They're even using a warp for some of the nodes, yet it's completely fine?