Please hire GMs

[Shirai]

it is not that easy to press the ban button, there are some rules and some stuff need to be done before you can ban (and you ban the root). And Gm are ingame, they dont have to : HEY WORLD, gm <name> will now show himself to the world to know that we are here and doing our job

Sorry, but yes. It is that easy.
It doesn't need a board decission to ban a character which is obviously breaking the ToS.
I can imagine it taking an hour or so to collect enough evidence on a character, I can imagine that the current staff is being swamped by reports and need to shift through them, but there is no reason for a blatant gathering bot or a shout spammer to be running rampant until the taskforce decides it's time for another purge.

[Mayin]

Agreed. Sure some accounts are hacked. But all you have to do is throw them in GM jail and wait until they are claimed.

[LloydShade]

[...]

You are basically saying: give up on adding a function to the game that can isolate thousands of players at once that potentially break the rules (bots, spammers...), on all servers at the same time, and hire Game Masters to manually provide punishment...

Do you know that there are 61 active servers right now? Even if you take the bare minimum for GMs, that would be over 180 (a day of work is about 8 hours, a day is 24 hours and with time zones, servers have people all the time, so that's 3 person per server each day), also, with 180 I'm excluding replacement people for when one takes vacations or is sick. So let say 200 paid worker and with that freaking army, it's only 1 GM per server at any time and there is so much one person can do.

Sorry, but that's not going to happen.

[HamHam]

It should be like RL. Are you a suspect? well, we are going to arrest you, put you in jail until an investigation is over. If you are found innocent, then you are free to go, if you are guilty, well, you are going to jail (and depending on the severity of your crime, then you are either banned, or suspended for a period of time.)

SE needs to hire more GMs. In FFXI you could seen them from time to time. In ARR, they are very or never seen at all. All you get is a generic response whenever someone is reported.

At least in FFXI, the responses from the GMs what more human.

I remember a GM asking specifically what zone did I see the bot at, where specifically in the zone did I see the bot, and other questions. In ARR, again, all you get is a generic automatic response.

[whoopeeragon]

It should be like RL. Are you a suspect? well, we are going to arrest you, put you in jail until an investigation is over. If you are found innocent, then you are free to go, if you are guilty, well, you are going to jail (and depending on the severity of your crime, then you are either banned, or suspended for a period of time.)

That happened with the massive sweep of people with high amounts of gil. You can see the reactions of some in the general discussion towards this approach.

[Delsus]

Sorry, but yes. It is that easy.
It doesn't need a board decission to ban a character which is obviously breaking the ToS.
I can imagine it taking an hour or so to collect enough evidence on a character, I can imagine that the current staff is being swamped by reports and need to shift through them, but there is no reason for a blatant gathering bot or a shout spammer to be running rampant until the taskforce decides it's time for another purge.

Ahh yes and with the insta ban you see many legitimate players getting banned for saying "Guys did you see that Gil Seller?" or "Hmm I hate Cloud Strife for having such an unoriginal name, I'll say he's a Gil Seller, or bot" Have you ever had to look through thousands of reports every day, and follow everyone of them up?

[Shirai]

That happened with the massive sweep of people with high amounts of gil. You can see the reactions of some in the general discussion towards this approach.

The biggest issue here though is that after being released they were left with only a portion of the gil they had before they got suspended.
I am fairly sure not all of them are completely truthful as to how they acquired their fortune, and I don't just mean not having had any interactions with RMT, but I do believe that quite a few players that did obtain their gil through legit means have been caught up in this.

It's those players that are now demanding to have an actual human being investigate their accounts individually because the automated system seems to have flagged them simply for having considerably more gil than the average player and the taskforce just assuming they cannot have gotten it through legitimate means.

Ahh yes and with the insta ban you see many legitimate players getting banned for saying "Guys did you see that Gil Seller?" or "Hmm I hate Cloud Strife for having such an unoriginal name, I'll say he's a Gil Seller, or bot" Have you ever had to look through thousands of reports every day, and follow everyone of them up?

Have you even read what this is about?
Yes, it is easy enough to press an insta-jail/ban button.
It takes a human less than a few minutes to see that a character is not behaving the way the game was designed.
It only takes another few seconds to see if a character is being controlled by a human being or a program following a certain algorithm.

There is no reason for a character, which is visibly cheating to be left alone for such a long time.
Especially when there are several players reporting them, continuously.
Right now it looks like only the taskforce is taking them out, once every two weeks.

SE needs to increase their GM capacity, and quick because their current crew is obviously undermanned right now.
If they can't handle the spammers and botters, I am not sure they'll be able to handle any of the other game's problems that require their assistance.

[Arkista]

I'll Be a GM for FREE! But you can pay me in gum.

[MithrasInvictus]

but but....there are GM ingame already....

I believe that it is the QUANTITY of GMs which needs to be addressed. They're there, but their manpower must be completely overwhelmed with all of the calls that they receive.