Bots: Identifying a growing blight on the community and what needs to change.

GMs can only do so much- bot reports just get forwarded to the special task force or whatever it's called. then they handle it and you see the reports every so often on the lodestone of how many accounts were banned/suspended.

the real way to get rid of bots - DON'T BUY GIL.

In the beginning they were as bad as it could get in FFXIV to the point people wanted to quit. shout were so bad.
SE did a pretty good job of eliminating but it took a long time.
It seems they are making a big comeback again.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

GMs can only do so much- bot reports just get forwarded to the special task force or whatever it's called. then they handle it and you see the reports every so often on the lodestone of how many accounts were banned/suspended.

the real way to get rid of bots - DON'T BUY GIL.

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There will always be those that do so, this it not the answer. People have been saying the same thing you are saying for the 10+ years I played FFXI and for as long as I have been playing FFXIV.
There will always be those that do even at the risk of being banned.

The main reasons RMT bots are problematic is because the ban waves for them don't go out frequently enough, the gil trafficking is not monitored well (Last I've heard they conduct transactions via the market board, which would explain the random garbage items with unreasonably high prices to a degree), and because they still haven't taken any lasting measures to prevent their gil-farming methods in the first place (The base level hacks they utilize are not something any self-respecting MMO should be allowing in any capacity).

I think they need to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt and assume that if somebody is having their junk items purchased with millions of gil that was originally held by somebody named Advxckj Sdfdfvds or the like that there's almost certainly foul play involved. Half the problem is that people aren't even getting punished for buying gil much of the time.

I still consider RMTers a secondary concern to the other types of bots that can be actively detrimental to the gameplay experience of others, though.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

GMs can only do so much- bot reports just get forwarded to the special task force or whatever it's called. then they handle it and you see the reports every so often on the lodestone of how many accounts were banned/suspended.

the real way to get rid of bots - DON'T BUY GIL.

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The GMs would mostly be good at keeping the non-RMT related bots under control as they have much lower numbers and are not being mass-produced through automated scripts and said bots also slip through whatever methods of detection the STF are using on a regular basis.