The latest illicit activity report now specifically mentions bans for botting.

I believe in the past, this type of offense was just lumped together with the general "illicit activity" bans but presumably as a result of all the complaints in the live letter Q&A thread, they've separated it into its own category, which also seems to exclude those mass-produced, teleport hacking gil farmers who account for the vast majority of the bans.

Unfortunately, this does nothing indicate whether or not they've actually stepped up their efforts in this regard, since I've always heard scattered reports/claims about people being banned for botting throughout my time with the game, plus all of the usual suspects on my server are still kicking.

I'm still hoping they'll actually address the matter during the live letter instead of thinking this is going to appease people and ignoring the questions as a result.

Good! Even if they're few, I feel SE wasn't doing absolutely nothing before.

They can separate the illicit activity into as many categories as they want, but that still won't mean they're doing anything about the hordes of low level characters blatantly landing right on top of npcs for story quest progression and then watching them jump down below the floor or literally watching them fly through the air to their next destination, among other things they're seen doing. Grand companies are a revolving door for that mess and it's so painfully obvious what's going on since some of those npcs are behind a desk area that we normally can't even access.

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Originally Posted by Sekkei

They can separate the illicit activity into as many categories as they want, but that still won't mean they're doing anything about the hordes of low level characters blatantly landing right on top of npcs for story quest progression and then watching them jump down below the floor or literally watching them fly through the air to their next destination, among other things they're seen doing. Grand companies are a revolving door for that mess and it's so painfully obvious what's going on since some of those npcs are behind a desk area that we normally can't even access.

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You can't really stop those bots....

The rmt will be able to create them faster than anyone could get rid of them.
They're like the spam bots, expendable.



Those bots aren't 'important'.
They're low effort, and getting rid of them doesn't hurt the rmt at all.
And it's trivial to see these bots on SE's side.

The accounts they want to get rid of are the ones holding the currency, and tracking those expendable bots is how you find the ones you really want to hit.


The only real way to get rid of those farm bots, is locking down the server for creation.
For a long time Balmung was completely free of those bots because no one could create new characters, rmt included.

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Originally Posted by TaranTatsuuchi

The accounts they want to get rid of are the ones holding the currency, and tracking those expendable bots is how you find the ones you really want to hit.

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Which probably isn't made easier by the fact that RMT can just use a company chest and have multiple accounts with access to the currency. Like, 512 per free company. Mailing to a single holding character is so last century in comparison.

Hm, not sure if this weeks announcement resulted in anything on Cactuar. Maybe..

I don't think it would be unreasonable to place harsher restrictions on the transfer of gil to a FC chest for the sake of hindering RMT gil farming.

I can't help but question just how thorough their bot screening process is for the same gathering/crafting bots to be allowed to exist for as long as they have when they claim to actually watch them for repetitive behavior at least as far as the PvP bots go.

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Originally Posted by XenoCranel

Hm, not sure if this weeks announcement resulted in anything on Cactuar. Maybe..

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As far as I can tell, all of the long-time botters are still present.

There were a few newer individuals I had noticed who seem to be absent as of late, though, so I'm wondering if they might've gotten axed and if they did, what exactly they were doing wrong that the others aren't.

Like I get they're bots, and they use scripts. What I never understood is how those scripts allow them to instantly teleport, levitate, or fall through the floor. That seems more like hacking and tampering. More like using a cheat engine than it does a script that tells them to play the game for them. Which clearly is being used in conjunction with it. Like a script would just input the commands for you, (move from point A to point B without having to pick up the controller. Like you see in TAS videos), they have to be using other things and hacking the game to be able to teleport right? Like I haven't been able to figure out how they pull that one off.

The gil-farming bots are hacking in conjunction with the usual scripts, which is likely a big contributor to why they get banned so regularly.

Though unfortunately not regularly enough to make what they do unprofitable, as it only takes a day or two for them to amass several million gil strictly from MSQ completion rewards.

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Originally Posted by TaranTatsuuchi

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I think differently. The faster they ban Bot accounts, the faster they will buy another game copy = profit for SE.