Apparent bots

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As you can see, quite probably random-named, very similarly dressed, no FC/GC-related, jobless characters just appear, queue for duty, disappear and reapper again - doing that every (other) minute. Or just standing there.

Been going on for long, reported them too (sure others did as well), and yet they remain... doing what I think is obviously something RMT-related.

Just wondering if anyone else is experiencing the same on other servers? With such characters being left intact for too long?

Also, I've 130+ RMTs on my blacklist, been gathering there since the start of the gamebasically, and yet, one hand would be enough to count how many have changed to '(deleted)'. With SE regularly claiming permanent bans on hundreds of accounts, how are those characters not purged from the system, I wonder...?

If I understand correctly, banned doesn't equal deleted. That's only for those who delete the character. I believe most people will regularly purge the oldest names from their blacklist without hearing from them again.

This thread will likely be nuked as "player shaming" is not allowed on these forums, even when it's apparent that they are bots.

Now as to a little explanation why these seem to take longer to be banned:

Bots like these are usually part of a farming group/cluster, the taskforce "leaves these be" for a while to see how many characters (sellers, farmers, banks and buyers) can be linked so that they can take out a whole bunch in one fell swoop.

As for your blacklist problem, it is safe to delete any entry older than a week, probably after a day too.
When SE bans accounts they do not delete the characters attached to those accounts.

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Originally Posted by BreathlessTao

Just wondering if anyone else is experiencing the same on other servers? With such characters being left intact for too long?

Also, I've 130+ RMTs on my blacklist, been gathering there since the start of the gamebasically, and yet, one hand would be enough to count how many have changed to '(deleted)'. With SE regularly claiming permanent bans on hundreds of accounts, how are those characters not purged from the system, I wonder...?

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Too many times. The number of bans gets meaningless when you see the same group of bots you reported farming in the same spot for multiple consecutive weeks.

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Originally Posted by Tiraelina

Too many times. The number of bans gets meaningless when you see the same group of bots you reported farming in the same spot for multiple consecutive weeks.

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As annoying as it seems, as I explained above, they are "left alone" on purpose.
These farmers are usually part of a network of farmers, gilbanks and several transport channels in between.
By monitoring them instead of instantly hitting them with the banhammer they can identify the other characters that are part of the network and at the same time buyers as well.

Unfortunately for us, this is a process that can take a few weeks.

There is a group of farming WHM/BLM bots on my server which has been here since january. They even have an FC. They were reported countless times, and yet....

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Originally Posted by Shirai

As annoying as it seems, as I explained above, they are "left alone" on purpose.
These farmers are usually part of a network of farmers, gilbanks and several transport channels in between.
By monitoring them instead of instantly hitting them with the banhammer they can identify the other characters that are part of the network and at the same time buyers as well.

Unfortunately for us, this is a process that can take a few weeks.

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Meanwhile what resemblance of an economy is left gets eroded permanently. Blizzard has been doing this since WoW launched, I can tell you it never worked in favor of the players it's effecting.

the easiest way to counteract theses bots is to not buy their gil. anything beyond that seems pointless at this time. report or dont, get mad or dont. the one saving grace of all of this scandal is the fact that if this game wasnt successful then they wouldnt even bother. so i guess you can bathe in that.

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Originally Posted by Tiraelina

Meanwhile what resemblance of an economy is left gets eroded permanently. Blizzard has been doing this since WoW launched, I can tell you it never worked in favor of the players it's effecting.

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I agree completely, but no matter what course of action SE takes, RMT will always have a negative impact on an economy.

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Originally Posted by Tiraelina

Too many times. The number of bans gets meaningless when you see the same group of bots you reported farming in the same spot for multiple consecutive weeks.

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I agree and it kinda annoyes me, but.. told be truth, those bots are the "bait" to reach the true gill-sellers/buyers

note to self... make/sell tht bow!!

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Originally Posted by joshsecret

note to self... make/sell tht bow!!

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Not worth it, to be fair.

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Originally Posted by Kuwagami

There is a group of farming WHM/BLM bots on my server which has been here since january. They even have an FC. They were reported countless times, and yet....

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Thing is, you have to look at it like this. What are they farming, are they doing so in a consistent fashion, as in non stop grinding, repetitive/robotic like methods. Is there anything going through the chat log, even if it's scripted, to appear like normal player banter?

I made a report a month or so ago regarding a group I suspected was farming Dulahans and Bats in Proud Creek. Same type of thing, group of BLMs/WHMs wearing mixmatch gear, usually Mage aligned body sets, with crafting accessories. The reason they were farming those particular mobs, I discovered (I was doing an Atma book for the Dullahans), is that each mob was dropping about 180-220 gil a pop. You have a full party, that's about 1760 gil a kill, so a thousand kills (a long time, yes) would net 1.7m gil, quite easily, especially with how abundant and how quickly those mobs respawned.

Next day, decided to have myself a look see. Killed one of each mob, no gil at all, not even a reduced amount. They removed the gil drop completely. What happened to the people in the report? No clue, maybe it was innocent, perhaps not. I doubt I'll ever find out as I didn't write the names to a permanent list. But just food for thought, consider the circumstances surrounding a group of people you suspect for RMT behavior. What are they doing exactly, because SE cannot justify banning people just because they lack fashion sense. lol

who cares, not like this game has an economy anyway

Oh it has an economy, granted, a lot of people are really stupid with money and it shows with how they undercut/sell things below their NPC vendor price (the latter I personally love cashing in on).

If people truly wanted to 'fix' the economy, everything that gets sold on the wards would be sold for vendor price (or just a little higher to compensate for tax). The only purpose of that would be to get their items out into the hands of other people who may not have the same opportunity to craft/farm items. But, selling it at the lowest possible price, without losing money beyond vendor NPC price due to the tax system, would ensure that things were kept so low that the surplus of gil needed from RMT farmers would become obsolete, because doing a few dungeon runs, or leves, or FATEs could net you enough gil to buy things easily.

It wont ever happen though, because people want more gil, for housing, mostly. And because housing started (and is still) pretty pricey, the economy remains the way it is. The poor remain poor, the rich get richer.

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Originally Posted by Shirai

When SE bans accounts they do not delete the characters attached to those accounts.

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Any particular reason for that, I wonder? Because it doesn't sound like it makes a lot of sense... They happily cite server issues when asked about, for example, inventory expansion, but then they continue to store characters of perma-banned accounts? Sounds kinda illogical to me?

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Originally Posted by Shirai

Not worth it, to be fair.

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get that money b4 they get banned!

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Originally Posted by BreathlessTao

Any particular reason for that, I wonder? Because it doesn't sound like it makes a lot of sense... They happily cite server issues when asked about, for example, inventory expansion, but then they continue to store characters of perma-banned accounts? Sounds kinda illogical to me?

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By deleting those accounts or characters they also delete data they might need in the future in case a SE wants to pursue legal charges against a company/party, or vice versa.

As a side effect, they can't make new characters with that name to harass you with. Making it safe to remove them from the list forever.

Apart from that, character data is merely that, game data.
And data isn't the issue when they talk about the issues you mention, it's server load, the traffic that takes place between the client (you) and the servers.

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Originally Posted by Akujin

If people truly wanted to 'fix' the economy, everything that gets sold on the wards would be sold for vendor price (or just a little higher to compensate for tax). The only purpose of that would be to get their items out into the hands of other people who may not have the same opportunity to craft/farm items. But, selling it at the lowest possible price, without losing money beyond vendor NPC price due to the tax system, would ensure that things were kept so low that the surplus of gil needed from RMT farmers would become obsolete, because doing a few dungeon runs, or leves, or FATEs could net you enough gil to buy things easily.

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That wouldn't cover the cost of the materials in items bought for the craft, and if you aren't at least making a small profit, and everything is going a loss, you'd have to farm everything for yourself and never buy the items off the ward in the first place.

Material A = sells for 150 G at vendor, sells for 155 G on board. Material B = sells for 20 G at vendor, sells for 25 G on board.
Item X crafted from Material A and B sells for 160 G at vendor, 165 G on market boards. 10 Gil loss each time you sold Item X. Obviously this doesn't seem to be a big deal, but it's still fairly stupid in the long run, not to mention that isn't even estimating the cost of shards/crystals/clusters.
(All math was made up by poster. Though I have seen this on multiple items in game already, because some people "cant maths." And even worse, I constantly see items selling for less than it can be sold at the vendor for, which I promptly buy up and get off the boards.)