[Forum Mods/GM/STF] Botters/RMT continually not being dealt with

To the Forum mods, Game Masters, and Special Task Force Unit

Do you care about your users or are we just a paycheck to you?

I have been pretty calm in regards to how SE has handled certain situations. However at this stage of the game I would expect SE to step things up a bit in regards to getting certain things handled. Banning users 1x every 2-3 weeks in a customer service based industry is unacceptable. We pay upwards of 10 dollars per month for services that are not provided in an acceptable fashion.

SE used to have GM's that would actually sit down and have a conversation with people in FFXI. I called a GM I was able to get a response from a real live person. we have the same users running rampant in game and no support from the company that is supposed to be providing it for us. The same RMT shout for hours/days on end with nothing done. The Same bots are sitting there farming diremite webs/fleece/leather warping back to there position after they die or sell there mats and are STILL farming today even after being reported on my server with nothing done by SE.

We as users place a call and receive a automated response? WHAT ?!?

At this point it really does seem like SE is just trying to do nothing but skate buy for the almighty dollar. Lets assume that they have the same staff handling all 3 games, lets assume between all 3 games SE has 1 million subscribers. At 9 dollars per hour for level 1 support, SE should have 1 GM per 1000 users, in the standard help desk environment. SE could even go so far as to allow remote GM in a work from home environment over a VPN connection.

Can a GM or mod please explain to the community here why we continually have to deal with backwards policies when F2P games have better support then what is supposed to be a top teir P2P MMO. Simple customer service 101 here SE, you can split your resources across all 3 games for the Japanese environment. The same language GM's can handle FFXI and FFXIV Spanish/English/French/German, your reps should be able to multitask. Please SE for the love of god give us actual representatives to handle issues instead of an automated system which has yet to respond to me since 10/17/2013 on multiple reports I have made.

I should also note according to the end credits of FFXIV the STFU only has 3 members working on it? 3 for an active community of 600k?

It's something that is fostering apathy, I can rarely be bothered to report them now, I have to admit the number of open world shouts has stopped, but I still get RMT /tells daily - although they are more like brain teasers now with the amount of banned characters introduced into the game. I remember reading at work the recent banning post and being quite impressed, then later that day passed through Bentbranch and saw an incredible amount of auto-bots farming (what I assume) to be Wind Shards and a lot of the enthusiasm generated by the earlier win evaporates. The game is young and full of holes, we'll have to hope it improves over time and SE finds and shut's down loopholes.

As Fa as I know SE always collects Reports and Posts, abd once every 3 Month there is a Massive Banwave. Wouldn't be suprised if it would be the same here.

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Originally Posted by Elkwood

Special Task Force Unit...

I should also note according to the end credits of FFXIV the STFU only has 3 members working on it? 3 for an active community of 600k?

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Such a wonderful accronym... STFU

However I fear that accronym is more suited to SE's standard/auto/scripted response they give to players when valid questions are asked. Esp regarding RMT and EU servers in Europe.

It's not their taskforce , it's what SE want us to do... :(

EDIT: Yes, they normally do it in mass ban's at 1-2 month intervals. By then there must be a ton of gil already sold and levelled accounts already sold netting the RMT a fortune...so they can register more accounts next month and do the same all over again.

RMT is a very difficult problem to solve. They will probably always exist.

Having ingame GM respond immediately and have power to ban or at least temp-ban AFTER they witness it themselves would go a long way to combating it. In XI you could be sent to jail. So it can be done.

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Originally Posted by Nura

As Fa as I know SE always collects Reports and Posts, abd once every 3 Month there is a Massive Banwave. Wouldn't be suprised if it would be the same here.

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They started that practice in XI where they banned mass at end of the month, however individual reports could be dealt with on a case by case basis such as harassment and such. Either way you at least talked to a GM and he explained the situation to you, rather then everything being automated. A player was teleported to jail and required to speak to a GM before being released.

I already deleted it, but I had an email talking about banning just the other day

OP, you're aware you completely took off any chance of seriousness by putting "[Forum Mods/GM/STF]" in your thread title, right?

Please, refrain from doing so in the future. It's an already tainted practice.

SE has banned many accounts already - they have posted the number in the lodestone - they just dont do it everyday - they have to investigate and figure out ways to KEEP them banned and that can take time

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Originally Posted by Shizato

SE has banned many accounts already - they have posted the number in the lodestone - they just dont do it everyday - they have to investigate and figure out ways to KEEP them banned and that can take time

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And yet im standing here at diremites watching the same account teleport back to its spot after turning in its webs. This account has been reported personally by me at least 10x. I also know a few others that have reported it. If we had GM's and a STF that actually investigated rather then waiting weeks to do so because they are understaffed or busy with other games this would not be an issue.

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Originally Posted by cotti

OP, you're aware you completely took off any chance of seriousness by putting "[Forum Mods/GM/STF]" in your thread title, right?

Please, refrain from doing so in the future. It's an already tainted practice.

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Your opinion but then again you mistook me for someone that cared.

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Originally Posted by Elkwood

And yet im standing here at diremites watching the same account teleport back to its spot after turning in its webs. This account has been reported personally by me at least 10x. I also know a few others that have reported it. If we had GM's and a STF that actually investigated rather then waiting weeks to do so because they are understaffed or busy with other games this would not be an issue.



Your opinion but then again you mistook me for someone that cared.

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SE does what they can with the resources they have available - feel free to send them more money or ask them if you can work there for free if you feel they need more help!

They don't just automatically ban people because of a report. If they did, many would lose game time due to false reports and inaccurate observations. They have to investigate the reports, and then take appropriate action as needed. Investigation can take weeks depending on their workload.

Complaining because you aren't seeing these characters disappear immediately is a pointless waste of forum resources. If it is so terrible to deal with that you prefer to waste even more of SE's resources in this way, maybe you should just move on.....

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Originally Posted by Shizato

SE does what they can with the resources they have available - feel free to send them more money or ask them if you can work there for free if you feel they need more help!

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really your really going to go there? They have the resources to fund the staff to handle this SE is a multi BILLION dollar corporation. You dont become a multibillion dollar corporation by being incompetent, so im willing to go with either 1 of 2 scenarios, they are currently working on building and training the staff to be proper in game GM's and we will see the staff rollout soon as it takes approximately 4-6 weeks to train a staff properly. Or the 2nd option which is SE is cheap. You pick.

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Originally Posted by fixitman

They don't just automatically ban people because of a report. If they did, many would lose game time due to false reports and inaccurate observations. They have to investigate the reports, and then take appropriate action as needed. Investigation can take weeks depending on their workload.

Complaining because you aren't seeing these characters disappear immediately is a pointless waste of forum resources. If it is so terrible to deal with that you prefer to waste even more of SE's resources in this way, maybe you should just move on.....

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Investigation is 1 thing blatant teleport hack cheating is another

Ive reported the same guy 4 days in a row now. Hes been there none stop in wellwich woods farming fire crystals teleporting from node to node half under the ground. Ive made out 4 reports asking someone to look at it while hes still there teleporting and I loged in today and hes still there. 5 days now hes raping this game and nothing been done.

to be perfectly honest - if the botter is not trying make gil from the things they are botting and is not causing any server instability, i HIGHLY doubt SE considers them to be a priority

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Originally Posted by AndyBartlett

Ive reported the same guy 4 days in a row now. Hes been there none stop in wellwich woods farming fire crystals teleporting from node to node half under the ground. Ive made out 4 reports asking someone to look at it while hes still there teleporting and I loged in today and hes still there. 5 days now hes raping this game and nothing been done.

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Exactly my point there's no staff to do anything about it.

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Originally Posted by Shizato

to be perfectly honest - if the botter is not trying make gil from the things they are botting and is not causing any server instability, i HIGHLY doubt SE considers them to be a priority

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I see the same 2 retainers dropping 40 stacks of Diremite on the market every other day please explain to me how dropping the price to 250g / diremite from the same 2 retainers every other day is not doing just that, Prices dropped from 400 to 250.

(You care for my statement as much as Squeeny cares for your "destined targets" in the title).

Anyway, Squeeny is doing their job as they can. Unfortunately, not everyone that see them reports, and I must say that rules on creating new chars are yet EXTREMELY lax. I don't see a fair use from a normal account to create 8 chars in one day.

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Originally Posted by Elkwood

Exactly my point there's no staff to do anything about it.



I see the same 2 retainers dropping 40 stacks of Diremite on the market every other day please explain to me how dropping the price to 250g / diremite from the same 2 retainers every other day is not doing just that, Prices dropped from 400 to 250.

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those retainers had them already and are trying to be competitive with other retainers that already have them is one explanation

all you can do is make assumptions

that could be wrong

only SE knows the truth

and if they dont think the TRUTH is a priority, all your ASSUMPTIONS in the forums are not going to matter

it also doesent help that it takes about as long for them to get rid of a bot as it does to unban the people hacked by them

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Originally Posted by Shizato

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You cannot possibly be that obtuse to think a retainer can manage to have 20 new stacks of 99 diremites everyday and continue to drop the price. Basic economics/intelligence says even is hes buying them up hes not stupid enough to resell at a loss. Im watching the guy right now every banemite that pop he Jumps, Turns around, and then attacks never moving. The Guy Teleports out of the area and 5 minutes later I watch him teleport back. He has been doing this since level 24 he is now level 37. The Truth is those are his retainers and hes selling the dire mite he is illegitimately farming as a stand still worst bot in history.

Yes, as someone who's always hardcore in eco in every mmo he's ever played this games eco is pretty much already ruined, thus removing most of the reason I play this game. As it is now the highest demand item in this game, shards, are overun with botters dropping the prices so low that no one even bothers to compete.

Let's say hypothetically there were no botters farming shards, the demand would still exist and the supply would drop increasing the prices of shards and thus increasing the prices of all finished products. This may seem like a bad thing but for those who are farming those shards it creates a good source of income, enough income to buy those finished products. Farming shards is also also not restricted to botany and mining, it's actually quicker to kill the mobs that drop shards then to mine/botanise them so anyone can farm shards.

Ya ive started to get extremely upset about this. Theyve done very little on our server and all you have to do is just look at the auction house.

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Originally Posted by MrObject

Farming shards.

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If the RMTs and bots were taken care of, the price of many items would be firstly higher making it worthwhile farming and secondly worthwhile selling rather than selling them to NPCs. That alone would change the game and people would get busier by farming, crafting.
The way it is now, 90% if not more of items crafted/farmed are a total waste of time since they have no value more than 1g per item and more importantly have been ruined price wise by RMTs.

As for your shard farm comment, it is NOT quicker to farm shards by killing monsters. It was like that for XI but in XIV it's nowhere near like that. Nothing is faster and more reliable than mining/bot to get shards. Killing the elemental mobs for their shards is a total waste of time.

If you don't believe that, why don't you go and farm some lightning shards for example, good luck with that. Let me know how you get on.
For every 10 elements you kill you'll be LUCKY to get 5 shards in total IF that. Apart from the time you have to wait for them to re-spawn.
The drop rate on elements is terrible to say the least. By the time you gather 50 shards from their corresponding elements a miner/botanist would have farmed 5 times that amount if not more.

Sure it may be easy to just ban accounts, but does that solve the underlying problem? I say, let them keep going for a while, find exploits, collect data, then find out how to stop the exploits. That is the issue, not just the actions they are using. Is getting from 1-50 in 3 days from harvesting the same 5 nodes for crystals an exploit? Should we just ban the account or find a way to change how that situation played out? Is that a hacked account? So many questions that need to be addressed.

Also remember that the only reason that RMT's exist in the first place is because PLAYERS BUY FROM THEM. If no one bought anything from an RMT shop, would we even be talking about them today? Probably not. In all honesty the problem lies with the players who enable the RMT's to continue doing buisness. It frustrates me to no end to see people putting all the blame on *insert game company here* for not dealing with the RMT's. In contrast I love how armchair dev's say how easy it is to solve the problem.

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Originally Posted by fixitman

They don't just automatically ban people because of a report. If they did, many would lose game time due to false reports and inaccurate observations. They have to investigate the reports, and then take appropriate action as needed. Investigation can take weeks depending on their workload.

Complaining because you aren't seeing these characters disappear immediately is a pointless waste of forum resources. If it is so terrible to deal with that you prefer to waste even more of SE's resources in this way, maybe you should just move on.....

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Youtube Video

That is from just a hour or so ago. In FFXI when you made a GM call they contacted you in real time and were technically at your location but invisible. You could even ask them to show themselves and have a friendly chat. Yes, there needs to be investigation to make sure the account is or isn't cheating and whether it's a hacked account or not. However, just by having a real time appearance like in FFXI the GM could immediately see in this case that the character needs to be moved to jail and temporarily suspended until the investigation on whether the account was hacked or not. There is no question of hacking/cheating in this situation.

I believe SE is doing a fair job in dealing with bots and rmts. The number of accounts suspended/banned in October inreased almost 4000% over September. November's numbers should prove interesting. Do I still recieve RMT tells, yes. But it's significanty reduced from last month. Do I seel see bots, yes. But the people I see farming diremite are all actively playing and not botting it. I believe the cheaters are being impacted by SE. Maybe not to the level we would like, but this is a perpetual struggle not something that will disappear overnight.