How Many Reports Does it Take?

1 report for harassment = GM messages you within 30 minutes.
2 reports for cheating = player still in game cheating days/weeks later.

I get the feeling cheater reports are completely ignored until a certain amount of them are submitted against the same player.
If this is the case, how many reports does it take for something to be done about players who cheat?

Harassment has GM's that handle player interaction.
While cheating does not. It's not that it's ignored, it's more that they can't simply just take a few peoples words for things. Investigations and such are a little more intricate than checking a log for someone saying some mean words to you.

I remember awhile back I was told to report through square's site instead of in game so it reached the "special task force" quicker (or at all)? There's only 4 people on the task force according to the last credits and I honestly wonder if they speak English or if reports are translated for them. From what people have said, cheating is dealt with rather swiftly on the Japan servers, so I personally think they just don't have teams set up regionally. This would make it a slow tedious process of them keeping regional GMs from being able to actually deal with the issues while funneling reports that the Japanese special task force doesn't fully understand.

I'll add to the discussion that I received a 24-hour ban (first offense, BTW) from calling someone a "coward" from leaving a learning PF after the first wipe. And that ban even made me miss my own eternal bond ceremony.

Mind you that before leaving he said much worse things to us.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Harassment has GM's that handle player interaction.
While cheating does not. It's not that it's ignored, it's more that they can't simply just take a few peoples words for things. Investigations and such are a little more intricate than checking a log for someone saying some mean words to you.

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...and yet the exact same individuals have been caught by countless players cheating in ranked PvP across multiple seasons to earn exclusive rewards and have yet to be punished. In such cases the time has passed for excuses, especially when regular players risk being banned simply for saying something seen as not being politically correct or is merely stated in the heat of the moment or taken out of context.

Bans for harassment only happen when someone tattles on you - be polite, cautious, or silent around strangers. Don't say anything in /shout you wouldn't want your mama to overhear.

You can say whatever you want among friends without fear of repercussions, for the most part.

I feel more inclined to believe that they aren't even trying with how painfully obvious the average botter is.

Considering that it took dozens of reports from multiple people just to get a temporary ban on someone who was hacking in PvP for months, it's clear that cheaters really aren't high on their priority list.

Considering that one BLM speed hacker is still playing the game even after Yoshida himself acknowledged his existence years ago... yeah. That same BLM still has been speed hacking all this time.

Cheating in the game really doesn't have much risk involved if you're not blatantly telling the (game) world that you're doing it. The systems in place are not sophisticated enough to detect things that are not logged in an obvious way (e.g. speed or position hacking areas in a zone are not get logged in the game, but zone changing is). This is exactly why career botters do not get caught, unless the character account is tied to obvious RMT activity such as RMT advertising, or they won the "lottery" as far as getting investigated for a report and found out on it.

I dare say that cheating has, in some way, become a crutch for the devs to rely on when it comes to crafting/gathering since 2.0. As a norm, there is no way that the shard/crystal/cluster market could upkeep the demand for them without botters supplying and maintaining the cheap or somewhat cheap prices. Currently, this is especially true for the crystals, where only Ephemeral nodes are the best source, yet the need for crystals outweighs the potential supply upkeep of a normal player.

i dont even know how to report so i dont even bother with it

Also SE has a very solid policy of let crimes continue for a long period of time and then punish (if at all). When Ixal dailies were added the Balmung reported these bots for months and months multiple people. If multiple reports crossed the system daily why would they not check? I have seen GMs in other games come out and check send a message "Hey what you up to?" "Draining my soul to farm X coins" "Drop rates a little rough have fun" Or in 11 "We just moved you a bit to see if you were botting" "No, but I bet those other 5 guys aren't going to respond or move"

I am sure everyone has seen the bots/cheaters. They have also grown in greater numbers. Nothing like seeing a whole FC of bots covering 3/4s of every timed node in SB. Also usually have 1 or 2 in pvp. They are still very active. That is just the regular cheaters we see, imagine the position hack players we don't even notice.

The better question is: When will reporting RMT activity actually impact those damn advertisers when enough players use it on them?

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Originally Posted by Joe777

The better question is: When will reporting RMT activity actually impact those damn advertisers when enough players use it on them?

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When they start going after the accounts they actually keep the gil on instead of their expendable spammers, farmers, and traders (AKA, the accounts that finalize transactions with the players who actually buy the gil).

I've noticed the gil farming bots buying things at the market board and I'd assume that's how they transfer their money to the "bank" account, as opposed to trading/mailing money to them directly.

Honestly, I've stopped reporting anything short of verbal abuse of the highest level.

Mentors berating someone, especially a sprout, to an extent that it's just borderline abusive.
People being outright racist, sexist, etc. (It only happened the 1 time but it was so extreme that it would have been a crime to not report it).

Stuff like that I report.

In some rare cases we have vote dismissed a number of players (like for pulling extra mobs ahead of tank when we said don't to), and if they were on the same server they PM us telling they have reported us. However GMs have never contacted any of us and we have no warnings. It seems like reports are ignored if there is no verbal abuse, and anything else is covered by gameplay style differences.
Cheating reports are largerly ignored and bots are rampaging for years, unless they are RMT bots which are banned in waves.