since reporting doesnt work what does it take to ban cheaters?

this person on my server bots favor nodes, you can see him teleport node to node, stop, pop another favor and continue. this person has maxed out crafter gear both sides which he cheated to get. this person also bots fates at night. he is logged in and active 24hrs a day.

my entire raid reported him, ive reported him countless times and GM's swear up and down they going to ban this guy.....yet nothing ever happens.

Same here, on my last server and current ones i have reported clear bots yet they are still there weeks later. the "we need to investigate" thing is hard to swallow considering these are Blindly obvious. So your guess is as good as mine. I mean if a GM simply WATCHES them for 15 seconds they can easily see it. One of those unsolved mysteries.

Have you reported them through the website?

First, http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...ff670a7f3fe2f9

Second, how would you feel if they outright banned you because someone said you did something, and what if they were wrong, what if you are wrong, just because it takes time doesn't mean they aren't doing anything. But you have to keep in mind, if they just take your word and ban people then the risk of banning innocent people increases if they aren't diligent about it and that would hurt the game because then people would be screaming how they aren't doing their job in background checking before banning.

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Originally Posted by Airget

First, http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...ff670a7f3fe2f9

Second, how would you feel if they outright banned you because someone said you did something, and what if they were wrong, what if you are wrong, just because it takes time doesn't mean they aren't doing anything. But you have to keep in mind, if they just take your word and ban people then the risk of banning innocent people increases if they aren't diligent about it and that would hurt the game because then people would be screaming how they aren't doing their job in background checking before banning.

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Yea, you're right, If i pass a miner that is UNDERGROUD mining a node, and then instantly vanishes, There is that small possibly that it was just your imagination and you were wrong.

There was a particular group of people from a couple FCs that became somewhat notorious for botting/hacking during the early parts of Heavensward (also likely to have done this during ARR... wouldn't be surprised if they did it for their Coil clears). At least two of them would use speed hacks while botting FATEs in N.Than at the time. I'm pretty sure that anyone doing those FATEs encountered those same bots, of which had a particular habit of instantly knowing when Dark Devices was up and ready to be started... but they'd just run into the FATE area and idle until an active player starts it.

Little to nothing was done to them, including the ones that speed hack. There's even video evidence on youtube for some of them lol. They did leave the FCs that they were a part of but formed new ones of their own. No bans. I'm assuming this is just how "legit" players are treated despite cheating. It honestly isn't surprising though, given how bad behavior is either ignored, encouraged, or simply responded with "please don't do this because it's not in the spirit of the game". To be honest, I don't really blame ANY non-RMT player that decides to bot or cheat in some way. With no repercussions in sight, why not just do it if you want to? The likelihood of you actually being banned is extremely low, even if people report you. I think the way they see it, if your botting/hacking actions do not directly affect other players (i.e. potential cause for harassment) and is non-RMT related, they'll usually let you slide. GMs are the low-man on the totem pole afterall. They have nearly no means of seeing in-depth details of specific actions and location reading data. They'd have to literally be present to see speed hacks, for example, unless you're dumb enough to constantly use them to get from zone to zone in seconds.

The reports that they make public of bans and RMT are pretty much just RMT related... and even that is hardly impacting. It's literally like the story of the Hydra. Cut off a head, and two more would grow back. Basically, there's nothing that'll be done against people that cheat if there was nothing already done lol. Until SE makes a stronger stance against bad behavior in general, things are going to be exactly as they are now. RMT is hardly something Yoshi-P and the devs focus on, and with bigger concerns such as harassment and threats definitely being a daily thing, the GMs priorities put those FAR ahead of something petty and passive things like cheats that don't either break the game (like that old marketboard gil theft and instant crafting levels hack) or create those previous priority situations. I'm still amazed at how people managed to do the marketboard one, as that's something I've never heard of before in any game. It's almost something to applaud their efforts for, if it weren't such a d-bag thing to do.

I reported a "legit player" clearly botting on miner about a month ago and checked back in the next day and a few times since, the person appears to have not played since about 24 hours after my report.

By clearly botting I mean this person was running a scripted route that stopped at every potential mining point, slowly rotating, then moving to the next one, mining at the ones that were up that round.

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Originally Posted by Invision

this person on my server bots favor nodes, you can see him teleport node to node, stop, pop another favor and continue. this person has maxed out crafter gear both sides which he cheated to get. this person also bots fates at night. he is logged in and active 24hrs a day.

my entire raid reported him, ive reported him countless times and GM's swear up and down they going to ban this guy.....yet nothing ever happens.

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Logged in and active 24 hrs a day, so it's an account, not a person.

I just burned 10,000 shards making stuff to desynth and I'm only at level 70 desynth. You think I farmed those shards? No, I did what everyone else does. I bought them from a bot. So... thank-you Mr. Bot?

Keep in mind, too, that if these cheaters are associated with RMT, SE may not ban them immediately because they're small fish and easily replaced. They want to figure out the whole network, where the money is being stored, etc, etc, and rip the whole thing out by the roots. If that means letting miner bots mine for a few weeks, then so be it.

In general, the most blatant uses of move hax and such are used by RMT and not players, because RMT have a lot less of a personal vested interest in their characters. They could care less if their three-day-old miner-bot gets banned. A real player, who put care and thought into building their character? They will be much more broken up about it if their character is banned - and so if they cheat, they're going to be a lot more subtle about it.

Mmo bans usually happens in waves so they can catch a lot of people at the same time.
I think you have to wait till the next wave and see if he is still around.

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Originally Posted by Blood-Aki

Yea, you're right, If i pass a miner that is UNDERGROUD mining a node, and then instantly vanishes, There is that small possibly that it was just your imagination and you were wrong.

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That's not what he is saying. If SE doesn't do an investigation and simply bans someone because they were reported, who's to say that person wasn't reported out of spite or jealousy?

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Originally Posted by BHGlobbd

That's not what he is saying. If SE doesn't do an investigation and simply bans someone because they were reported, who's to say that person wasn't reported out of spite or jealousy?

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It is also possible they're tracking where the bot is sending gil, so they can ban downstream links of the RMT chain.

Cheaters don't get banned simply because of 1 report or 1 observation made by GM or STF. They get banned after multiple observations and they pull logged data on the server that serves as reasonable evidence to ban or suspend account. For example, "logs show that player has been online 24 hours a day for the last 30 days, actively doing suspicious activities"

This is to minimize any wrongful bans or suspensions because they can say "we've observed you doing this multiple times over the course of several months, and we have the data to back up our findings, the judgment is final."

Multiple observations, or multiple cheat detection triggers, over weeks or months is the industry standard for controlling cheaters. Steam also practices this method with online gameplay.

Yeah cheaters will get away with it for now, until that moment it all disappears, all for nothing.

Theres also the apparent issue of understaffing.

IT does work, it just takes TIME. It's not overnight. They need to prove they're actually cheating, you could be wrong. (Also the special task force is like 5 people)

i know im not wrong, when you are clearly teleporting node to node and instantly appearing its pretty obvious whats happening. botting fates is easy to tell as well, most of the time they have a set pattern of casts and movement, they never move away from incoming danger, and if they die they respawn at the crystal and start over. some bots wont respawn and stay dead there for hours ( i purposely overwhelmed them with enemies) would a real person just wait there?

its not like im calling out random people for cheating. i play this game daily, i know my neighborhood so to speak, and if hillbilly bob come cruising through with his bot program im going to know.

A good way to speed up reports I've found is if the report is detailed and easy to read (like isn't just 1 big long paragraph with all the information), and if you put in a video of the person where it's clear that they are abusing something.