Does SE actually do anything when we report bots/gilsellers?

((Apologies if in the wrong forum, mods/admins move as needed.))

Does SE actually do anything when we report bots/gilsellers?

I ask because today it sort of hit home that I've been reporting this one group of botters (that group that's in North Shroud, for anyone who's on Balmung) for over six months.

Six. Months.

I've used both the in-game interface and the one in the Support Center on the Official Site. And I'm not the only one who's been reporting them. Tonight, while I was grabbing their names to report them yet again, another player ran up and commented that she/he has also been reporting them for at least the same amount of time. Other times I've stopped to report, other players have commented that they've reported the group before. One goes into other zones, if the topic of bots comes up in /shout, this group is usually brought up as an example.

I understand that there needs to be an "investigation" of sorts. Tracking down the actual transfer of gil with the RMT probably isn't an easy task. And I also get it that the BLM bots are near-impossible to get rid of. They're like cockroaches, a GM could hide by the various BLM quest points and ban every bot that appears, clicks the objective, and then falls underground for days and days, and not really put a noticeable dent in their population. But one would think the botting issue would be quite easy in cases like my server's notorious North Shroud group -- you can just sit there and watch them. I'm currently watching while the healer of the group repeatedly targets the same mob, then casts Cure III... all while the rest of the party lays dead at her feet. It's such a... normal sight to see them there when running to do Ixal dailies, that I'm actually shocked on the rare occasions that they're not logged in.

I don't know... I guess it was a bit of a disheartening thing to realize that I've been doing this for so long, and that I'm not the only one who's reported them. Is it even worth my time to stop what I'm doing and report these things anymore?

My guess is if they do it's very low priority. I have also reported only to go back daily for a week different times a day to see the same bot and even a few weeks later they were still there. I got tired of reporting bots being that I have to jump through to many hoops to do it then see no results. It's as easy as a GM sending them a tell and seeing they are not answering yet performing actions.

I'm starting to think it does no good. Blacklist is always full I have to go into busy mode to stop getting /tells, which keeps me from getting invites or trades because I forgot I'm "busy". After all, bots are paying accounts and that's money in SE's pocket. Yea I know bad thoughts....

Reposted from another thread but,

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 and cheat you might as well since you aren't gonna get punished for it.

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Originally Posted by Wulfyn

I'm starting to think it does no good. Blacklist is always full I have to go into busy mode to stop getting /tells, which keeps me from getting invites or trades because I forgot I'm "busy". After all, bots are paying accounts and that's money in SE's pocket. Yea I know bad thoughts....

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While I agree on your post, I also have to tell you this is a different case. Spammers are lv1 characters created for the sole purpose of spamming for a while, getting deleted, remade and so on. You will never be able to stop the spams without restrictions that would affect normal players (there are some that would affect the playerbase not so much, opinions may vary). You can't control who gets a new account, makes chars and starts spamming and you can't stop them. Now these lv50 chars farming for months are different and there could be several reasons why they're not banned:

1) Like someone said, maybe it's not top priority
2) They're subs paid for SE, money.
3) Gil has to be transfered in one way or another, easy to track who gets it from the bots, thus easier to track down who buys gil. Keeping the "evil gil source" up while catching the buyers because you can't stop the sellers.

Also, it's really not that easy to distinguish a bot from an actual player.. Unless they're just sitting there doing stupid things that are obvious. And who's to say that when GM checks them they'd be doing the same thing?

Busy sign on top, many players already do this because of the incessant RMT tells they get. I have it on too most of the time because it gets annoying.

Unresponsive to /tells.
Also, due to the RMT /tells I keep getting, I actually have all my /tells go to a different chat tab. Many people I know do this as well. I have 1 for social LS/FC. Another for party/raid chats and yet another for crafting messages. I keep my /tells on the party/raid tab and when I'm not in a party or a raid.. well, that doesn't get checked.

Now, I'm not saying your suspicions are unfounded or false, most of those people you noticed probably ARE indeed bots.. But without sharing your experience of having been there for days on end noticing the same players repeating the behavior, GMs have no way to know for 100%.

Also, I think the problem with detection stems from FF14's Cross platform nature. You'll see some people logged on for almost 24/7. afk,busy,dancing whatever it may be.. Because the game doesn't kick you out. Many will just never log out. So it's impossible to track people based on playtime which I'm sure many other games do.

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Originally Posted by Gillionaire

Also, it's really not that easy to distinguish a bot from an actual player.. Unless they're just sitting there doing stupid things that are obvious. And who's to say that when GM checks them they'd be doing the same thing?

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http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y5/...ps4581245e.jpg
Pretty sure this is the group the OP is referring to, they been there for over a year really. In that same spot killing the Plasmoids.

They aren't on 24/7 but it is pretty obvious they are botting - same action over and over again, and people kill them with /trade alot since they usually don't have /busy on.

Sorry, but no. They don't.
This is just the reality without candy talk.

We have them on Diabolos too... and I hear they exist on other servers also. Let me guess, are they in an FC where the tag next to their name is a string of numbers? I saw screenshots of them on another server where they were just like ours except the number used for the FC label was different. Of course I can't say what that is because perversely enough I'm the one who'd get punished here.

Lots of people have reported these on Diabolos as well. And given up. As have I. Sad that someone is able to run these bots nonstop across several servers. If they were shut down at least they'd have to level new ones up from 50.

They don't because jp mmo devs don't care about major issues on non-jp servers.

Hmmm interestingly enough, I don't think there's any organized group of bots in Jenova like that..
Probably not worth the money to bot on the smallest server out there..

That's why they should allow open world PvP.. Let us players take care of the problem ourselves :D

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

Pretty sure this is the group the OP is referring to, they been there for over a year really. In that same spot killing the Plasmoids.

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There has been a similar group on Odin for probably the same amount of time, at least it was months ago that I stopped bothering with reporting them and just pretended they didn't exist. In a shocking turn of events after seeing this thread and being reminded of those bots I checked the lodestone profile of two of them whose character url I still had in my history and got greeted by

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The page you are searching for has either been removed, or the designated URL address is incorrect.

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so it seems that once a year miracles can happen on one server.

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y5/...ps4581245e.jpg
Pretty sure this is the group the OP is referring to, they been there for over a year really. In that same spot killing the Plasmoids.

They aren't on 24/7 but it is pretty obvious they are botting - same action over and over again, and people kill them with /trade alot since they usually don't have /busy on.

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Yep, that'd be the group.

I only started doing Ixal dailies... maybe seven months ago, and it took a couple weeks before I realized what they were doing. That they've been there for over a year is even more disheartening. When I report them, I always do it when they're doing something obvious (like my example in my first post, the healer is the only one alive and is just auto-casting Cure III for hours, or when the lead bot is dead and the rest are just snapping their heads around) on the hope that a GM will get to the report sooner rather than later and be be able to witness their actions.

Coming from the admin side of things,
Gil sellers are extremely hard to get rid of. There's more to consider than just one character. They have the funding to make multiple accounts, and know how to change their ip addresses. i'm sorry, but as WoW and many other mmorpgs will show, Gil sellers are here to stay, and there's not a lot you can do about it.

Which is probably why dealing with bots is a low priority. There's simply just too many of them.

I'll admit that I never reported bots or gil spammers. It just takes too much time. I log on, /busy, and communicate through FC chat and LS.

How you deal with RMT is by making it too expensive to operate. SE's only method to do this is by banning bots and spammers daily. They refuse to ban bots, and they take too long "investigating" spammers for their bans to be effective.

some characters can fight monsters while having AFK icon on their heads. pretty obvious they're botting.

with most of the bot reports i think they take it to a database and watch and if they are conformed to be bots then they are added to the mass banning that happen bi-weekly

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Originally Posted by DracotheDragon

with most of the bot reports i think they take it to a database and watch and if they are conformed to be bots then they are added to the mass banning that happen bi-weekly

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Then explain the hundreds of bots, across all servers, that have not been banned since launch, even with hundreds of reports each.

You know, why does the just beat them at their own game.

I know may people would oppose it(me included)... But...

If SE sold gil on the shop, for a fraction of the price the gil sellers do. GG sellers. And since it's their game and they can literally create money, they could just be like "oh, 10mil? 10$"

That would put all of the gil sellers in the ditch.

I hope they find a better way than this, but if it comes to it this could be a good way to end it.

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Originally Posted by Taliph

Then explain the hundreds of bots, across all servers, that have not been banned since launch, even with hundreds of reports each.

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easy they have to physically conform its bots, and if a bot dose probably one thing that wasn't reported them doing in the act of betting then they may judge it to be a honest player,

or the fact that judging one bot takes up a lot of time so they cat keep up with the increasements of bots,

with some of them some bots are programmed with a RNG in themselves to switch to a new thing or act like a human player would making it harder to judge if someone is a player or a bot, bots that spam tell are more easily conformed then bots that are silant, as for bots standing around doing nothing, you got me there.

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Originally Posted by DracotheDragon

easy they have to physically conform its bots, and if a bot dose probably one thing that wasn't reported them doing in the act of betting then they may judge it to be a honest player,

or the fact that judging one bot takes up a lot of time so they cat keep up with the increasements of bots,

with some of them some bots are programmed with a RNG in themselves to switch to a new thing or act like a human player would making it harder to judge if someone is a player or a bot, bots that spam tell are more easily conformed then bots that are silant, as for bots standing around doing nothing, you got me there.

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Funny, but isn't it automatic confirmation that it is a bot when they do things while the system has them tagged afk? Pretty sure no honest player can do this. Also, if it takes a year or more to "investigate" things like this, then I propose hiring more intelligent investigators.

For SE to hit RMT in the pocketbook, they would also be hitting their own.

Sometimes they do but most of the time they do not, on the very rare occasions where they have taken action in my experience it is normally only against RMT chat spammers or limited to huge bot armies when those armies are congested in one place and even then requires multiple reports both in game and using the web service to report them. They have never banned any botting (non-RMT) players I have reported though. They tend to ban RMT chat spammers more so than any other types.

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Originally Posted by Able

I'll admit that I never reported bots or gil spammers. It just takes too much time. I log on, /busy, and communicate through FC chat and LS.

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Not only too much time, but no matter how many they get rid of, more will just spring up in their place. I just blacklist em, then remove them from the blacklist once they are marked as deleted on that list.

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Originally Posted by darkknigh

Not only too much time, but no matter how many they get rid of, more will just spring up in their place. I just blacklist em, then remove them from the blacklist once they are marked as deleted on that list.

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I don't bother blacklisting anymore. /busy takes care of it all!!

I don't really bother reporting anymore either. By the time I go through the process, I usually have another message waiting to be reported, so now I usually just add them to my blacklist and carry on. If SE had a faster way to report bots/gil spammers, I'd probably still be doing it. But honestly, it doesn't feel like it's worth the effort because it's a CONSTANT problem, and nothing has changed.

If any of you have played XI or 1.0 then you'd remember the out-of-nowhere massive ban wave for RMT and BOTS that were instantly wiped out. In XI the bots/rmt almost disappeared all together (while having some repercussions of accidentally banning legit players which were resolved slowly) and 1.0 RMT was gone for so long it made me so happy.

Give it time. I know the games been out for over a year now, but remember, one day it's gonna happen and it's going to be a glorious day.

Banning the bot is not a solution to the problem. Its a band-aid. If they are smart, they will tag the bots, watch their activities and use them as a basis for patch fixes later on that will help prevent the RMT gil earning activities.

Bot's arent the problem. People selling and buying gil for real money, thats the problem. They support each other and keep the wheel spinning.

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Originally Posted by MageBlack

Banning the bot is not a solution to the problem. Its a band-aid. If they are smart, they will tag the bots, watch their activities and use them as a basis for patch fixes later on that will help prevent the RMT gil earning activities.

Bot's arent the problem. People selling and buying gil for real money, thats the problem. They support each other and keep the wheel spinning.

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Daily banning of bots, both gathering and spamming, increases the cost to operate. This drives up RMT prices. Which reduces customer base. Thereby requiring further RMT price increases. Eventually this reduces the money available to buy new accounts for bots.

When you let the RMT have free reign for this long, it lets them become entrenched.