Why Botters doesnt get perma ban?

This is a great game , but there are too many botters and noone do a thing. I use ingame report/ report to special task force on lodestone but they never ban them. Wonder if SE will ever do something about this big issue that affects our gameplay

it doesnt hurt the botter if se just bans the bots, they have to ban their bank accounts and I think they do so

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Originally Posted by Cianna

This is a great game , but there are too many botters and noone do a thing. I use ingame report/ report to special task force on lodestone but they never ban them. Wonder if SE will ever do something about this big issue that affects our gameplay

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I cant speak for other servers, but on Balmung, they get swift kick in the ass and you never see them again

SE patches out certain exploits and gives out a massive wave of bans about once a month. If a normal player is using one of those targeted exploits, there is a chance they will be banned with the rest of the trash. Most of those who receive bans are just RMT accounts, however, and after the ban they make new characters on new accounts and continue farming using different methods and exploits. For the RMT, exploiting the game is a business, and as long as they make more money than they spend on new accounts, it doesn't matter much to them. The RMT will only stop if the cost of continuing their actions somehow was greater than the profits they could earn. The "special task force" isn't enough of a deterrent, since the interval between "disciplinary measures" is both generous and predictable.

There's been a bot farming the same nodes in the Shroud on Leviathan since July 2014, I saw them on my first day. They farm 24hrs a day without stopping, the only time you don't see them is for a short period after a patch while they're reworking the software. This is the SAME bot, same name, same gear (never upgraded), same place. I know of several dozen reports about the person.

Bots do not get banned in my experience.

We musnt forget alot of the RMT hackers who stole the account will lose them and the player will get their account back. Alot of times this player will have his account taken from him again.

But do you see the threads about "Actions Taken Against In-Game RMT & Other Illicit Activities" on this page? Probably not.

"Time Period: Mar. 5, 2015 to Mar. 11, 2015
- Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 630
- Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 3,452
- Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

- Accounts receiving disciplinary action for participation in RMT/illegal activity: 3
- Action Details: Temporary ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV"



SE has been dealing with RMT and bots, but the thing is that they need to investigate the instances reported - which can take a while. They can, have and will continue to ban accounts deemed to be botting, RMT or doing anything against ToS.

I think SE has to prove to themselves it is 100% a bot. The tele hacking bots get banned, the bots they can trace back to RMT get banned, but the 24/7 farmers don't.

We all know you can't farm 24/7 but they aren't hacking the game at all and obviously cant be traced back to RMT, so SE would have to make a judgment call and not a factual call.

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Originally Posted by SirTaint

The tele hacking bots get banned

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Myself and a bunch of other players caught someone speed hacking/position hacking, and had at least 20 reports go in about it, that player is still around, and still botting 24/7. This is many months going by as well.

There were bots running around mining/harvesting with the AFK chair on them and have been reported by tons of players and still there botting almost 24/7, they eventually notice the AFK chair and fix it though, but they still there. So no, I don't think SE bans ANYONE unless they are RMT. It's pretty much a free ride if you wanna bot you might as well since you aren't gonna get punished for it.

It's not just about proving who's a bot but more of a sting operation where not only do they have to catch the bots committing the acts but also the masterminds behind it all. It's like a web Much like copration have upper management, middle management, lower management, maintenance department, customer service, retail etc etc, it goes down a list and botters as the bottom of the barrel.

Ban a bot then what? It's not so much of a big deal cause you just make another one and start over, the bot doesn't hold the money nor the trades, they just produce the money and send it off to another person.

I wouldn't be surprised if they went this far to hide their gil funds. For one it's somewhat easy to launder money because of the Market Ward. The free market of being able to pick what item you want to buy allows RMT to easily spread their money out and give it to "legit" looking players.

In XI this wasn't possible but it was still attempted via selling really stupid items for a ridiculous amount so if you suddenly saw an item bought for 50mi odds are it was an RMT exchange.

With XIV though it's a lot easier, as mentioned laundering the cash is as simple as this.

-Bots get money

-Another group sets up retainers to sell certain items for x amount, potentially items that rarely sell and are easy to make, to a point where the history would either be washed away fast without anyone noticing the odd exchange or something a person would never check price for.

-Item is purchase and honestly they could do this process over and over again just to muddy the deception of who is and isn't RMT. Once the gil goes through the Market Ward it's harder to catch because it webs out so knowing who is and isn't RMT becomes a tricky task.

-When they catch the one with the gil they then have to go down a line of how the gil came to be so you have Player Z, that goes back to Player M, back to Player C, Back to Player N, Back to player A, back to player C and finally to Bot 1

Because of the potential ease of being able to launder around money in the above situation banning a bot is a useless waste of resources because they can easily get the gil out of their hands or even the materials they've gathered before being banned. If they are part of a FC they could potentially drain out their inventory every 2hrs so that even if they are banned all that's lost is the time spent leveling, their items are safe in the FC chest.

So tell me how would you manage disposable bots? If they wanted they could even make a character (to bot on) use it for a few days/months, and manually delete the character, SE's logs would say that character ID has been deleted (you know on your blacklist, the RMT tell bots that are listed as "deleted" are all manually deleted characters) this would then end any investigation into the character. They could then make a new character maybe even using the same name, but if the ID is different SE cannot know it's the same person behind the keyboard.

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Originally Posted by Delsus

So tell me how would you manage disposable bots? If they wanted they could even make a character (to bot on) use it for a few days/months, and manually delete the character, SE's logs would say that character ID has been deleted (you know on your blacklist, the RMT tell bots that are listed as "deleted" are all manually deleted characters) this would then end any investigation into the character. They could then make a new character maybe even using the same name, but if the ID is different SE cannot know it's the same person behind the keyboard.

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They can if it's the same account. RMT delete their characters to make new ones and get around blacklisting, so that's something different entirely.

RMT bots aside, on Hyperion there are several actual players botting around the clock for months now, and they have NEVER received punishment for this. There's even an entire FC of botters that have been hitting the same location all day every day for months and have received numerous reports because they're always killing relic mobs.

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Originally Posted by Aethaeryn

They can if it's the same account. RMT delete their characters to make new ones and get around blacklisting, so that's something different entirely.

RMT bots aside, on Hyperion there are several actual players botting around the clock for months now, and they have NEVER received punishment for this. There's even an entire FC of botters that have been hitting the same location all day every day for months and have received numerous reports because they're always killing relic mobs.

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The thing is proving it, SE uses the logs they have available, and yes these can include logon times, and what they were doing, but except the afk flag indicating the keyboard is not being used (easy workaround for any bot) how can you prove they are using illicit software? How do you know it's not just friends sharing a character to farm? I know it's very unlikely, but people put the lottery on every week with worse odds of winning. You have to think what would it be like if SE issued a permenant ban on an innocent player because someone reported them simply because they do one thing and play at the same time as another? They would loose customers therefore they need evidence.

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Originally Posted by Delsus

The thing is proving it, SE uses the logs they have available, and yes these can include logon times, and what they were doing, but except the afk flag indicating the keyboard is not being used (easy workaround for any bot) how can you prove they are using illicit software? How do you know it's not just friends sharing a character to farm? I know it's very unlikely, but people put the lottery on every week with worse odds of winning. You have to think what would it be like if SE issued a permenant ban on an innocent player because someone reported them simply because they do one thing and play at the same time as another? They would loose customers therefore they need evidence.

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That's why it's their job to research before issuing a ban. They're not just gonna go, "Welp that character was deleted, moving onto the next report!" because it definitely does not work that way. If another character was made from the same account, they're obviously going to make sure that character isn't being used for illicit activity, but I won't pretend to know what their process is beyond that. But the point that was made by the OP is that there are some known bots that have been actively botting for a long time and they are ALWAYS there even months later.