Has anyone ever successfully gotten a cheater banned/punished after reporting them?

I know the GMs are notoriously bad at dealing with this from both personal experience and the reports of several others, but if even one person has had success with this, I think it would motivate me to persist in sending out reports, because I'm getting sick of the same few players on my server gutting the prices on various items on top of monopolizing large houses with their gathering bots.

It's not nearly as much as a problem on some other servers as it is on Cactaur, as I generally see only two or three gathering bots out at any given time. It was a lot worse shortly after SB's release, but the majority of the cheaters seem to have either un-subbed or transferred to a different server.

Did back in 2.0 when I reported THM bots exploiting terrain hacks to farm EXP in groups. Whether or not they were temp banned or perma banned I do not know. Never saw them again and the names on them generally looked like they belonged to RMT which is quite likely since every single one in the group would be wearing the exact same gear set all the way down to being dyed the same.

Since the GMs will never tell you if they do or not there is no way for anyone to know for sure if they did. All you have is the anecdotal evidence of if you see them again which doesn't tell you much because they could have been suspended for a time instead of outright banned.

You have a choice, either report so GMs have the option of acting on it, or not reporting and passively letting the person get away with it. You may not know if a GM will punish someone when you report, but you know they won't punish someone you don't report.

Welp, it seems getting the gathering bots on my server banned is a lost cause, as almost all of them seemingly are actually being monitored by their owners while they do their thing, meaning the typical GM bot check of sending them a tell isn't going to work.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they all belonged to gil farmers.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Welp, it seems getting the gathering bots on my server banned is a lost cause, as almost all of them seemingly are actually being monitored by their owners while they do their thing, meaning the typical GM bot check of sending them a tell isn't going to work.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they all belonged to gil farmers.

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not everyone who gathers is a bot though. Even if they look suspicious, doesn't mean they bot.

Those bots can be monitored 24/7. There are easy to find methods to where if the name of their toon is mentioned in shout or they are whispered it automatically sends to your phone. It is advertised all over the fan run websites and reddit for such software. And there are several teleport hackers who got Shinogane housing from being able to warp straight to where they wanted

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Originally Posted by Vladmiere

Those bots can be monitored 24/7. There are easy to find methods to where if the name of their toon is mentioned in shout or they are whispered it automatically sends to your phone. It is advertised all over the fan run websites and reddit for such software.

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This.

Any botter that cares enough will know when they're caught. I ran into a botter farming his classes up, also using a teleport hack. When I tried to contact him, nothing, but when I whispered one of the fc officers, they instantly did an actual teleport and logged off for 2 days, before continuing it.

They were never banned. They got 70's basically everywhere.

Reports on bots are dealt with by the STF, not GMs. If you try to message a GM about it, they'll direct you to the dedicated form for cheating (goes to STF).

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Welp, it seems getting the gathering bots on my server banned is a lost cause.

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It is. I suggest anyone seeing this to not waste their time reporting gathering (or FATE or PVP) bots in any manner, because nothing will be done. Maybe if they become commonplace enough SE will do something about it, but until then, you're getting trolled.

I'm not sure, but it's possible. A few weeks ago I reported someone for botting in Frontlines and I haven't seen them since. Could be coincidence, but they also could have been banned.

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Originally Posted by BigRed5392

not everyone who gathers is a bot though. Even if they look suspicious, doesn't mean they bot.

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Trust me, when you gather often enough, you learn how to identify bots at a quick glance. The difference between them and real players is really obvious if both are present.

They follow the same paths to the pixel (This makes it particularly obvious if multiple bots are in the same area, as they'll stack on top of each other regularly), they make unnaturally sharp turns, and they seldom take the most direct path to each node, instead moving as though they're following an invisible track of sorts.

On a related note, all of the bots that are usually active almost 24/7 are currently offline on my server, which makes me wonder if something happened to scare them off temporarily (I directly expressed my frustration with them to a GM after a brief stint of disrupting them by opening trades ended up getting me reported because they apparently have sensors for that).

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Trust me, when you gather often enough, you learn how to identify bots at a quick glance.

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They don't stop for unspoiled nodes in the area even if their level is high enough for it either.

Though on that note, I have seen people bot ephermal nodes. You can tell because they work in pairs and will take off, fly, and land at the same time.

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Originally Posted by BigRed5392

not everyone who gathers is a bot though. Even if they look suspicious, doesn't mean they bot.

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Enough people clipping on terrain and teleporting as well. Anyone who jumps more then 15 seconds at a spot equals bot in my book. Also some of the awesome pvp bots do the same thing gathering. I just never knew to look. But after you kick the same bot everyday for a week in pvp you notice if they are out in open world cheating.

I am sure the percentage of bots to legitimate players is minuscule. But by their very nature they exert a force upon the game. Also doesn't help SE takes months to look into botting due to the fact this game has no anti cheating tools.

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Originally Posted by Texa

Though on that note, I have seen people bot ephermal nodes. You can tell because they work in pairs and will take off, fly, and land at the same time.

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If I didn't know this one FC wasn't basically this one persons bot FC. I would wonder about multi boxing. But while I think SE ideas to stop cheating are laughable. You don't really see multi boxing like you do in other games.

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

Regardless if you see a bot report the bot. They won't always just ban the botter right away. They have to first determine if they are botting and if they are botting they may desire the bot to continue functioning for a while so they can study it and figure out how to detect them being used elsewhere. A lack of instant results doesn't mean it's pointless.

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We all know you are right. That SE policy is to let bots run for a long long time. But that doesn't stop the damage that they cause in game to go away. While they mention we removed X gil. Never hear that we took away the million items they pumped into the game.

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Originally Posted by Texa

Though on that note, I have seen people bot ephermal nodes. You can tell because they work in pairs and will take off, fly, and land at the same time.

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That actually doesn't mean they're bots for sure. You could just be witnessing a multi-boxer.

Regardless if you see a bot report the bot. They won't always just ban the botter right away. They have to first determine if they are botting and if they are botting they may desire the bot to continue functioning for a while so they can study it and figure out how to detect them being used elsewhere. A lack of instant results doesn't mean it's pointless.

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

That actually doesn't mean they're bots for sure. You could just be witnessing a multi-boxer.

Regardless if you see a bot report the bot. They won't always just ban the botter right away. They have to first determine if they are botting and if they are botting they may desire the bot to continue functioning for a while so they can study it and figure out how to detect them being used elsewhere. A lack of instant results doesn't mean it's pointless.

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Multi-boxing requires you to run modifications, specially if you're using something to make the two characters have exactly the same movements at the same time.

Axing multiboxing somehow would probably go a long way in curbing the bot problem, honestly.

I'm 99% positive someone on my server is running three bots at the same time, because they always come online simultaneously. They also own two large houses among them that are completely bare, save for a mailbox for easy gil/item transfers.

The latter part is what really ticks me off, because I feel like they're taunting everyone by doing it.