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

[Snugglebutt]

They don't ban bots at all in my experience from the many, many reports I have sent them. Not a single one has ever been banned. They care more about their community of automatic scripts/programs users more so than their community of fair and legitimately playing members. I have come to the conclusion there is no such thing as this so called special task force or unit and all GM's do is tell you to send reports to this fictional unit.

In a previous MMO I played in order to show they were tackling the problem about bots they would at the end of every week post a list of all the bots they banned listing both server and character names so people could see for themselves that their reports were having an effect by sometimes seeing the names of the ones they reported in that list. This was greatly appreciated and endorsed by the community building a high level or trust and goodwill towards the GM's.

To check if someone was a bot only took them less than a couple minutes, they would enter the game world, go to the location and then while cloaked teleport the suspected bot to a limbo like room in which any rational and normal player would react to such an event but a bot program would run into the walls or stop moving and just stand there doing nothing and not reacting, the GM's to make even more sure was a bot would then send a message to the player/bot and if the bot disconnected upon receiving a GM message which is what a lot of bots did as they were coded to disconnect at sight or sound of GM nearby or if did not respond at all they would know it was a bot.

This system of proving who was a bot worked, their list at the end of each week proved they were tackling the problem and all this created good will towards the GM's and trust between the players and the GM's. This game however GM's do nothing and never bans any bots. The only thing they ban is the RMT spammers but never ever any gathering, crafting or EXP grinding bots.