Let us report retainers who sell items from bots

[WellFooled]

But the method of targeting them mentioned in this thread is idiotic. You're asking SE for the ability to report retainers that you don't actually know if they belong to RMT sellers or not. In a court of law, it's the burden of the accuser to provide proof, and in this case, not a single person supporting this thread could even come up with a way to garner said proof. You run the risk of reporting someone who is entirely innocent, which clogs up the system of reports and verifies SE has to go through even more.

Imagine tonight you look outside and see a group of people doing their best to quietly shove a struggling human into the truck of their car. They could very well be "kidnapping" their best friend for a bachelor party and its all in good fun. Or maybe not. But either way, it looks very odd. So you pick up the phone and call the police.

All that this thread is asking for is an easier way to report (not convict, not sentence, or punish) activity that seems odd. Square can then take those reports, look into things, and then decide if its a bachelor party or a murder.

[Ceodore]

Imagine tonight you look outside and see a group of people doing their best to quietly shove a struggling human into the truck of their car. They could very well be "kidnapping" their best friend for a bachelor party and its all in good fun. Or maybe not. But either way, it looks very odd. So you pick up the phone and call the police.

All that this thread is asking for is an easier way to report (not convict, not sentence, or punish) activity that seems odd. Square can then take those reports, look into things, and then decide if its a bachelor party or a murder.

Now imagine you're a detective involved in trying to bust a large drug trafficking ring. What would you rather fall into you lap? Pictures of the lowly drug seller on the street? Or pictures of the drug producer making the drugs? The fact is, your example has no relation to the situation we are discussing. You're talking about what might be a kidnapping, which is a plain as day obvious offense. There has been no establishment of a human trafficking ring (as might be the case) in which case what you are witnessing is actually the production of the product (the human) to be sold, likely via several exchanges of hands, to the lowly seller. So, your example has no real bearing on this situation as a kidnapping is not even remotely like the illegal production (botting) of goods which then exchange hands until it is sold to a consumer. Next time, get your crimes to actually relate to the situation, and then you might actually understand how to make an allusion.

The reasoning for my examples, and my reasoning for why this kind of system is ultimately more harm than good, (even ignoring the fact that it might call guilt upon the innocent) is that frankly, it's more time consuming. It involves more resources and man hours to trace a product back to its source, then to have to trace the flow of the product from the source to the rest of its selling points than it is to just have the source be placed before you. What should be suggested isn't a system where we start from the consumer side of the equation, it's one where you start from the producer. It yields faster results, and also garners far less false alarms.

[Moonleg]

Ceodore? I don't think anyone wanted a right-click function to instantly perma-ban the owner of a given retainer, just a way to say, "This looks suspicious to me, please look into the source of these shards".

[Lucke]

If you see something hinky, report it. Let SE investigate, that's their responsibility. They have much more info than we do regarding people and they should be able to tell if it's legit.

[OMEGA_HACK]

The problem is people see Player A going to the same route across three different trees and goes "OMG ITS A BOT! LIGHT IT ON FIRE!!!!!" Seriously I cannot count on my hands how many people have stopped to "observe" me while I'm gathering.

Yes we go to the same three nodes over and over again, not because we are bots but because those nodes give benefits like HQ increase, or one additional gathering attempt, or double yields naturally. The problem is that players who have a lazier mindset or lack the fortitude to sit there and gather for an hour or so automatically assume those other people are BOTS, when its not the case. That being said I'm not saying that bots don't exist in the game, there are bots, however IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO KNOW ITS A BOT UNLESS YOU ARE USING ILLEGAL 3RD PARTY PROGRAMS YOURSELF TO MONITOR THEM. Which makes you no better than the person who probably isn't using a bot, but rather probably watching netflix and only half paying attention to the game because well its a very redundant and boring task to most. So that is probably why those players are not responding, not because there is a bot harvesting but because they are not paying attention to their chat box because a random wanna-be white knight is not worth their time.

Yes I know this post is a bit harsh, but honestly like I said, there is already a function if you want to report something you find suspicious and that is the call GM. If you think its too complicated your full of yourself you literally just go into help > Report GM and literally have to type as little as:

Your character
Your server
The time and location of incident
Person of interest
brief reason for report: ie, witnessed a possible bot in action, or group of RMT like players.

That's it. The only way to make it more simple is to give the power to right click report those players, and frankly I don't think it should ever be like that. Too many people would be harassed with it. I mean we already have players who harass people with the vote kick option in Duty Finder.

Also with the note of the retainer reporting, like mentioned by another poster, all it would do it muck up the system. Also if you think undercutting is bad what about those players who are tired of getting undercut? How do you get around that, get your friends together and report that retainer for suspicious activity. That retainer disappears from the MB while GMs investigate possible RMT activity, and bam you get to sell your $#!% for the price you wanted. Take a step farther, now you have to remember that anything given to the player can also be used by RMT. RMT has tons and tons of players in the game, whats to say they don't mass report non-RMT retainers to confuse and hold up GMs, or to remove any competition in the MB if a temp MB ban takes effect for numerously reported Retainers?

Again this kind of half-baked thinking won't help the game at all. I agree there is a problem with the number of RMT in the game, however this is NOT the solution.

[KaedrianLiang]

OP is worried about shard bots, im still oogling at the retainers selling 20-40 tier IV materias at an alarming undercut rate which indicates bot.

Any legitimate market player wouldnt play along with the undercut game to the point where the market is going below last week/month's average etc.

[Synestra]

Shard bots is the reason people dont have to go low level gathering for 6 hours just to make a batch of items.

Without them the price would go skyhigh.

Dont get me wrong, i dont like bots in general but paying 10-20 gil a shard instead of 500-1000 does make me turn a blind eye to it.

Pretty much this. Peoples always forget that botters/RMT are main suppliers when it comes to crafting materials, sadly without them the MB would be pretty dry because players are either not arsed/dont have time to do that.

[Vlady]

Pretty much this. Peoples always forget that botters/RMT are main suppliers when it comes to crafting materials, sadly without them the MB would be pretty dry because players are either not arsed/dont have time to do that.

Not true. Normal people would supply the MB. A lot of people would find that they can actually make some decent gil again off gather professions because of the less supplies sent by bots. Yes prices would rise some but so would the amount of gil people would have from being able to make gil more easily without having to compete with bots and RMT. Your argument is pointless because the auction system in wow during the first true year of it being bot free allowed someone to log in and enjoyed mining for an hour to actually make enough gold to pay for crafted gear and have some left over. There is no excuse. There is no justification or argument that you can present to defend people who bot.

All botting does is severely disadvantage new people and legal players.

The problem is people see Player A going to the same route across three different trees and goes "OMG ITS A BOT! LIGHT IT ON FIRE!!!!!" Seriously I cannot count on my hands how many people have stopped to "observe" me while I'm gathering.

Yes we go to the same three nodes over and over again, not because we are bots but because those nodes give benefits like HQ increase, or one additional gathering attempt, or double yields naturally. The problem is that players who have a lazier mindset or lack the fortitude to sit there and gather for an hour or so automatically assume those other people are BOTS, when its not the case. That being said I'm not saying that bots don't exist in the game, there are bots, however IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO KNOW ITS A BOT UNLESS YOU ARE USING ILLEGAL 3RD PARTY PROGRAMS YOURSELF TO MONITOR THEM. Which makes you no better than the person who probably isn't using a bot, but rather probably watching netflix and only half paying attention to the game because well its a very redundant and boring task to most. So that is probably why those players are not responding, not because there is a bot harvesting but because they are not paying attention to their chat box because a random wanna-be white knight is not worth their time.

Yes I know this post is a bit harsh, but honestly like I said, there is already a function if you want to report something you find suspicious and that is the call GM. If you think its too complicated your full of yourself you literally just go into help > Report GM and literally have to type as little as:

Your character
Your server
The time and location of incident
Person of interest
brief reason for report: ie, witnessed a possible bot in action, or group of RMT like players.

That's it. The only way to make it more simple is to give the power to right click report those players, and frankly I don't think it should ever be like that. Too many people would be harassed with it. I mean we already have players who harass people with the vote kick option in Duty Finder.

Also with the note of the retainer reporting, like mentioned by another poster, all it would do it muck up the system. Also if you think undercutting is bad what about those players who are tired of getting undercut? How do you get around that, get your friends together and report that retainer for suspicious activity. That retainer disappears from the MB while GMs investigate possible RMT activity, and bam you get to sell your $#!% for the price you wanted. Take a step farther, now you have to remember that anything given to the player can also be used by RMT. RMT has tons and tons of players in the game, whats to say they don't mass report non-RMT retainers to confuse and hold up GMs, or to remove any competition in the MB if a temp MB ban takes effect for numerously reported Retainers?

Again this kind of half-baked thinking won't help the game at all. I agree there is a problem with the number of RMT in the game, however this is NOT the solution.

You know you are not a bot then there should be no issue. Of course there are ways to catch bots without being a bot yourself. The bots are for the most part popping up in the same spots on most servers. Outside of Copperbell is a huge stomping area for bots and if I constantly go by same area's and see someone mining day in day out for a week I may whisper them or see if it is a human. If you choose not to respond then that is your right but I will most likely put in a report based on a suspicion.

SE has the means to check whether or not the materials you mine are sent to be sold then the gil shuffled to a RMT gil seller account. You act so defensive when you have no reason. You are just coming up with a bunch of what if scenario's that have not happened since the near beginning of 2.0 when cheaters were getting their gil deleted. Unlike you all these bots affect people like me who do craft legit and my real life family plays with me. And its going to get immensely worse because the whining pissy bot crowd who got their just deserts from wow want to come here now.

[Sicno]

Snip

THIS. When I go gather a specific mat for an extended period of time I sometimes wonder if some people may believe I'm a bot. Especially something I recurrently go gather again for constantly selling at the market board (like silver ores to make silver ingots to sell or to make stuff to desynth).

Most of us are tired of RMT and their advertisers (I've made it clear on that 85 page long thread against RMT ads that SE keeps ignoring), but getting excessively paranoid as to report as possible botting anything you may find odd is actually detrimental to everybody. For instance, it means that the 3 people of the task force would have to go through a lot more of reports, and investigating someone to see if he's botting or engaging into RMT doesn't take 5 minutes, so you may be causing them to take longer to investigate the real bots. Bots in open fields tend to be obvious. They act in packs, they all look the same, they and their chocobos have random nonsensical names, they teleport around, they have absolutely no sense of fashion, etc. Suspecting people on the market board is not so simple. Even if you think a retainer's actions are suspicious you can't see the player behind them unless they sell crafted goods with the crafter's name on them, which is not the case for gathered goods. So since you can't reach to them and have a better idea of what's going on refrain on making reports on loose suspicion alone. Suspicion about a player has to be more solid to make a report.

[OMEGA_HACK]

You know you are not a bot then there should be no issue. Of course there are ways to catch bots without being a bot yourself. The bots are for the most part popping up in the same spots on most servers. Outside of Copperbell is a huge stomping area for bots and if I constantly go by same area's and see someone mining day in day out for a week I may whisper them or see if it is a human. If you choose not to respond then that is your right but I will most likely put in a report based on a suspicion.

SE has the means to check whether or not the materials you mine are sent to be sold then the gil shuffled to a RMT gil seller account. You act so defensive when you have no reason. You are just coming up with a bunch of what if scenario's that have not happened since the near beginning of 2.0 when cheaters were getting their gil deleted. Unlike you all these bots affect people like me who do craft legit and my real life family plays with me. And its going to get immensely worse because the whining pissy bot crowd who got their just deserts from wow want to come here now.

I'm getting defensive because unlike you and many other people who support some as ridiculous as this cannot see the many myriad of problems something like this can cause for the smidgen of good it may do. When you create an idea you have to look at ALL the pros and cons of the idea. Not just what good it can cause, you have to think "Who can abuse this? Why would they abuse it? How will they abuse it? When can they abuse it?" If you fail to go through those questions when trying to implement something that gives a big amount of responsibility and power to a mere player then you are doing yourself and the game a disservice. If you fail to even COMPREHEND that a suggestion like this can be twisted into something less attractive and helpful then you are naive and shouldn't be offering suggestions. I can see so much more bad with an idea like this than I can see good. And again because of that I adamantly say no to this idea.

I should note I'm using the hypothetical you in my statements, I'm not directing it at anyone in particular.