How Often Can You Report the Same Bot?

Without annoying or receiving the ire of a GM for repeatedly reporting the same thing?

There are several (very obvious) gathering bots on my server who have sort of just exploded onto the scene since 4.1. They just rotate through the ephemeral nodes as well as the Torreya logs and Azim Cotton Boll node. Their routine is:

-Torreya Branch at 4AM-6AM
-Torreya Log at 6:00 AM
-Doman Yellow at 8 AM
-Azim Cotton Boll at 12:00 AM/PM
-Windtea Leaves at 4 PM

They generally have only a botanist or miner at 70, but one bot has every class at 70, DoW/M/H/L. Like full spectrum 70s. He bots on the weekday mornings then plays as Joe regular in the evenings - chatting in /shout and crafting at his pad in Shirogane.

I report them all daily, in the morning when I get on - if I see them botting (which I do, they're 24/7.)

I've made videos (6mins to 18mins) that prove beyond any reasonable doubt they are bots and I upload to YouTube and send in along with the report (online report has a URL line which I assume is the purpose of this.

I feel that now, after a week of doing this, someone must have the reports by now? So are my continued reports annoying? Potential cause for a GM to get angry or fed up with me?

GMs won't do anything to you for reporting legitimate bots and they tend to kill them in waves so you may not see anything for a while.

So little/no point in continued reporting?

you sure the one isnt just a regluar player? i go from node to node to node on my gathers for ephermals and have been asked if im a bot because you dont need to hit the node to make the eph pop, you just tap it, then walk to the next two nodes tap them and then go back, sure thats not what your seeing for that guy? cuz gathering is pretty much a spam click kinda thing

They are absolutely bots. I gather a lot lately too, i go node to node all day sometimes and so I don't accuse lightly. They are 100% bots. I've watched / gathered around them for a week now. No doubt at all.

For example - the pathfinding of one will clip a rock beside the node so they can't properly click it - meaning they wind up spending the 4 hour window circling round and round, moving away then rubber-banding back through the ground and getting caught on the rock again. Happens every spawn of this certain node, no exception. When the clock ticks to the de-spawn hour they immediately stop and head on to the next ephemeral node.

With another - if you open trade with him (stops them accessing a node) he'll stand there for however long you take to cancel. He'll keep targeting and deselecting the node. When you cancel the trade he'll teleport back to Rhalgar's Reach and stand there until the next node window then heads off. He also has a very bizarre flight path where he will fly to each spawn point and land - so if the Azim Cotton Boll is further noth he'll stop at the south spawn point first, then take off and fly to the north one. It's a repeating path.

I honestly wouldn't bother continually reporting them. Its either a bot and the GMs are aware of it now or its not and they've moved on. That said, until a GM tells you to stop you aren't hurting anything by continuing.

just figured id ask lol, hopefully something is done with them

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Originally Posted by Niraye

just figured id ask lol, hopefully something is done with them

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Edited it to read clearer. I was on phone, then moved to PC :)

It's more important to have many people Report then 1 reporting many times.

There are two things I noticed that gathering bots always do.

One is that when they take flight, they always jump in place to initiate flight, then fly towards their destination, rather then start moving towards it immediately like most normal players would.

They also change their jobs before they're even completely visible on-screen whenever they arrive at the zone with the next node they intend to farm.

Many of them will also just sit there and do nothing if you open a trade with them, but after I messed one up by doing this, the next day I noticed it was rescripted to cancel trades every few seconds (Though that still doesn't prevent me disrupting it, as you can cancel most actions with cast times by trading with somebody right before it finishes, whether it be mounting or teleporting).

Hellluuuuuu

Well, I just learned today that some of the bots on my server are evidently being monitored rather frequently, as while I was able to get one to sit there and do nothing for several minutes by simply opening a trade with them, it eventually set its status to Busy so I was no longer able to interfere with it.

It works in tandem with another bot that operates out of the same large house in Mist, so I decided to go pester the other one in the same way, and sure enough, it also set its status to busy after some time. I later noticed it was trying to farm moth scales in the Peaks, so I decided to be a nuisance further by tagging the moths before it could get to them, but after it suddenly stopped moving, I decided to lay off.

I'm kind of afraid they might actually have the nerve to report me now...

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I'm kind of afraid they might actually have the nerve to report me now...

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And I can tell you that works. Someone I know have trade a bot (sure it was one) and after several minutes he have finally come back checking his screen, wasn't happy about the trade and report him.
A bit later the person I know was in jail because he was disturbing the bot heh. (yup, only 1 report, and only like 10min before being in jail with a gm)

Welp, I think I might be in trouble now (Though it's unlikely I'd get banned seeing as it's my first "offense").

But in all honesty, I might appreciate being able to have a proper discussion with a GM on the matter of bots...

EDIT: Lol. It actually happened. But I honestly don't regret it too much, because getting to directly express my discontent with how poorly bots are handled made me feel better in a way.