Attention devs: Game Surveillance Unit re: open world Bots.

[Lexxuk]

That's a silly way of looking at it. By leaving it a while for them to accumulate and sell the gil, they make enough money to continue buying new accounts. If they were very fast in banning the RMT accounts, the accounts would end up losing the RMT money and they would either change their tactics or go broke (hopefully the latter).

Put it another way, RMT is watched for 1 month, over that month they make 2m a day so say 60m gil. They sell half of it at... /checks chat log.... $5 per million, that is $150. Account gets shut down and they buy another game for $50 and still have $100 profit.

Ban them before they can sell the gil, they still have to buy the game but they haven't sold any gil to fund that purchase (eventually they will ban all the accounts the RMT steal....).

[Chasely]

That's a silly way of looking at it. By leaving it a while for them to accumulate and sell the gil, they make enough money to continue buying new accounts. If they were very fast in banning the RMT accounts, the accounts would end up losing the RMT money and they would either change their tactics or go broke (hopefully the latter).

Put it another way, RMT is watched for 1 month, over that month they make 2m a day so say 60m gil. They sell half of it at... /checks chat log.... $5 per million, that is $150. Account gets shut down and they buy another game for $50 and still have $100 profit.

Ban them before they can sell the gil, they still have to buy the game but they haven't sold any gil to fund that purchase (eventually they will ban all the accounts the RMT steal....).

It only costs 15 dollars to buy the game; and get a free month. so that's 135 dollars profit.

[ToffeeCoffee]

Mining bot - Eastern Thanalan. Been there all day moving between nodes with AFK sign on the whole time. X23 Y19.

[ToffeeCoffee]

Mining bot - Eastern Thanalan. Been there all day moving between nodes with AFK sign on the whole time. X23 Y19.

This mining bot is still in operation, same location with afk status on, almost a month later.

[Symbiant]

Snip

How about ban the people that purchase it? No customers = no sale = no bots = no rmt.

See how that works? You can ban bots all day and they will keep coming back until you make it not worth it. Based of the numbers you put in your post, you would have to do a massive amount of bot banning because you can typically get the game for 9.99 - 14.99 so it would take very little to get back into the game say 22.98 - 27.98. Hit them where it hurts and hit the customer.

[Dotsusama]

How about ban the people that purchase it? No customers = no sale = no bots = no rmt.

It's a lot more than just $30 or so; it's time and time IS money. Which is why they should ban everyone involved in the process, because that is what truly makes it unprofitable. You cannot tell me that banning *just* the people who buy gil is the best long-term solution. That logic doesn't work very well.

These bots have to be high level to accomplish anything. A crafting bot would need a significant influx of gil and/or materials to be able to level up and be able to craft the stuff needed for those who spiritbond. The bots I see in N Shroud are usually some combination of CNJ, THM, and a BRD or two, they would have to grind up their XP in the world or duties in order to level. This would either cost man-hours to get someone to actively play the game, or they would be siphoning funds from some other account in order to off-set the cost and time to level once more.

[Symbiant]

snip

Unlike gil sellers most people become attached to the character they play and losing it would cause more issues then it would for a gil seller. Most people will not start over again. Once the word gets out that buyers are being banned in masses the great majority rather have the character then the cheap gil.

Getting less tells does not mean that the tactics being used are effective. It could just mean the amount of gil purchased on that particular server is either in such a high demand that they don't need to advertise or it is so low that that have moved bots to other servers to profit.

If you check the forums you would see that just as many people are saying the amount of rmt tells have went down on there server as the other people saying it has increased. They just shift to the servers that give them the most.

As it stands you only see post (Very rarely) stating how many rmt's they have banned not how many buyers they have banned.

Hitting the customer is going to be the best bet.

[Dotsusama]

The other thing is that while I've reported some of my my server's most obvious spiritbonding bots twice before, they are still there months later, months during which the Ixali were introduced and I now have to run past that same group in the same camp killing the same mobs like twice a day. I imagine hundreds of people do the same, and a few have likely MPKed them and/or reported them, all to no avail. I, personally, have not even received the courtesy of a "lol can't do anything sorry" response to my reports before. But now that I've found out about that Lodestone form, I'm going to give that a shot.

At least I only get 1 or 2 /tell gilseller spam now. That's way below what it used to be here, and the same for WoW and FFXI and Lineage.

[Tharian]

Put it another way, RMT is watched for 1 month, over that month they make 2m a day so say 60m gil. They sell half of it at... /checks chat log.... $5 per million, that is $150. Account gets shut down and they buy another game for $50 and still have $100 profit.

And they have even less profit if they get IP Blocked as well as having their account suspended. This is because not only will they have to buy a new game (50 bucks) they will have to also obtain a new IP address. It gets even worse if they get a Regional IP Block, as then they would need to somehow obtain an IP Address from outside the region that they were logged in from.

Yes there are ways around IP Blockages, but the long term versions of these are not cheap, and simply resetting your IP Address does not stop a Regional IP Blockage.

[ToffeeCoffee]

I have a party member dedicated to holding a trade window open with this bot [Tonberry, Eastern Thanalan X28 Y24] just so I can spiritbond in my preferred location. SE your silence on this matter is worrying. Do you or do you not condone botting in FFXIV ARR? Are you content to just ignore the matter, in effect sweeping it under the carpet?
I won't stop bringing it up and I hope others who feel the same keep voicing their opinion. I'd appreciate some service from you Square Enix.