Let us report retainers who sell items from bots

[dayspring83]

If you can't see how this would be wholly abused by bitter market sellers then please unsub.

I get what you're trying to do, but this is a horrible idea.

[StrejdaTom]

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.

Exactly, in my own twisted way I actually like bots.

An to the topic, no.
Selling items from bots doesn't exactly mean that you own bot or that you are botting. Things like this just bring us closer to banning innocent people.

[Galdous]

People can report anyone for any reason already. You can put in reports for retainers as well in your description so these points of easy abuse are unfounded.

I already report retainers who for weeks keep up with an ungodly amount of shards and I've seen retainer names vanish before. Se is not going to ban you unless they have absolute proof you are selling stuff gained through illegal means.

[Vlady]

Exactly, in my own twisted way I actually like bots.

An to the topic, no.
Selling items from bots doesn't exactly mean that you own bot or that you are botting. Things like this just bring us closer to banning innocent people.

Itleast you are honest in your support of bots. Good try making stuff up since no one has ever complained about being banned for botting. So you are basically saying that someone who played the game for 24/7 without sleep for a year gets a ban is not a botter but instead someone misunderstood and innocent because they decide to lie? Sorry to pop your bubble but botters are going to lie about being a botter if banned. They are lying to you ;/.

[NorthernLadMSP]

We are talking about the marketplace. I undercut mastercraft demimateria once by 50k, and had 20 different people report me for cheating within a day. I had to show exactly how i craft, including pictures of my controller setup (I have a digital stopwatch attached to my controller to time my crafts), to prove my innocence.

In the FFXIV economy, collusion is rampant, and if one person doesn't like you, they can easily get gangs of people after you.

Sounds like your server is filled with childish drama queens.

[Vlady]

We are talking about the marketplace. I undercut mastercraft demimateria once by 50k, and had 20 different people report me for cheating within a day. I had to show exactly how i craft, including pictures of my controller setup (I have a digital stopwatch attached to my controller to time my crafts), to prove my innocence.

In the FFXIV economy, collusion is rampant, and if one person doesn't like you, they can easily get gangs of people after you.

Who did you have to show exactly how you craft too? If you felt you had to defend yourself against nay sayers then go tell them to pound sand. They have no power over whether or not how you played. If SE required screenshots I am dubious of your response. They have methods to determine if what you do is legit and would never ask for screenshots.

And unless you tell people how do they know who your retainer is?

[tocsin]

And unless you tell people how do they know who your retainer is?

Lets just say it wouldnt be the second or third time I have had to talk to a GM about my crafting. I play from work, so its really easy to see someone literally crafting 18 hours a day, and think that they are botting. especially since I craft with timers and dont look at the screen, so I miss chat message prompts.

I had actually made the unfortunate mistake of posting an item that was crafted by me, in my retainer. I have since begun deleting and renaming retainers on a weekly basis to prevent this from happening again, but the fact still remains that I cannot post any crafted equipment on that particular retainer, and that damages my bottom line.

This is also why I have been highly supportive of an optional removal of the crafters name from the bottom of equipment. it undermines our anonymity.

Sounds like your server is filled with childish drama queens.

Jenova is comprised of 90% PS3/PS4 players. Console gamers tend to have a lower median age than PC gamers do, so childish drama tends to be rampant, yes. Its mostly "Lazy millennials" though, so any crafted item that takes effort tends to have a pretty comfortable profit.

[NorthernLadMSP]

Jenova is comprised of 90% PS3/PS4 players. Console gamers tend to have a lower median age than PC gamers do, so childish drama tends to be rampant, yes. Its mostly "Lazy millennials" though, so any crafted item that takes effort tends to have a pretty comfortable profit.

I hate undercutting as much everyone else who opposes it, but I would never report someone for doing it - the fact that 20 people reported you is insane.

[Vlady]

Which shows that people will try to abuse anything. You have yet to be banned because you did nothing wrong if you do not bot or use programs that automate bots. When I report I do so expecting SE will know how to properly deal with it and move on.

[KisaiTenshi]

WHAT?! I jump when I am stuck not because im a bot but because I'm stubborn, again you have NO PROOF that those are bots.

All I'm hearing in your sarcastic response is that you're just being a Troll. A Troll response deserves Text-book answer.

Let's go point by point:

WHAT?! I jump when I am stuck not because im a bot but because I'm stubborn, again you have NO PROOF that those are bots. Not to mention you say I see person at node at 3PM I come back 16hours later and find same person at same node so he must be a bot!!!!!!!!!!!one!!!1!!! How do you know that person didn't log off, go to sleep for 8 hours, go to work/class for 8 hours and then log back in and start to farm again?! YOU DON'T UNLESS YOU ARE CHEATING YOURSELF TO MONITOR OTHER PLAYERS EXACT WHEREABOUTS AT ANY TIME.

Allow me to show you:

HMM THESE PLAYERS HAVE BEEN IN THE EXACT SAME POSITION ALL MONTH

WEARING THE SAME GEAR

And only ever moving to trade with a player who stands in this space

And when they get banned/deleted, they are replaced with 7 more identical bots wearing the same gear

And look, there's the bot-lord who made all the accessories that all of these bots are wearing to spiritbond.

And there's the bot-lord making more accessories while AFK

And there's the lodestone data showing this character has nothing else leveled, not in a GC and not in a FC.

All these bots with the exception of the bot-lord were standing around the Gelmorra Ruins for days on end, running non-stop until their inventories were likely full. Or a maybe a GM killed them all:


Because they disappeared after that and haven't been seen since. Previously only disappear for a few hours after a patch. And you know what is funny about all this? There is no way those were not bots. Now go back and look at every point I mentioned previously:
- Wearing identical gear, all of them from the same players, both sets of bots.
- No other jobs
- No GC or FC
- Automatically doing actions while "AFK"
- Dead for hours.

All my gear is HQ from the same person because guess what...MY FREAKIN' FC MATE CAN MAKE IT AND I GATHER IT.

Good for you, here's a cookie.

Look at the screenshots above and you will see that is not the case.

Minions being summoned as a call to not being a bot? Are you kidding me? You have to be kidding me. Seriously where is Ashton Kutcher because I must be getting punk'd.

Someone with Puff or Darkness, Onion Knight, or Louisoix likely isn't a bot. Because these minions are only available to players who completed hard content. I have never seen a bot have a minion summoned, because they just don't do stuff they aren't required to do.

Yes most RMT only have WHM and/or BLM leveled up, much like in FFXI. So that would be a decent tell sign but I wouldn't name it RMT just because.

They only have those leveled up and NOTHING ELSE. The barest minimalist done.

Just because someone in dead for a while doesn't mean they are a bot. There could be a number of things that happened in that person REAL LIFE that took precedent over the game. Ie: child birth, dog sick, family emergency, diarrhea, uncontrollable vomiting, or all of the above and more.

While you have listed a couple tell signs for illicit activity that is not the end all be all. And having the power to report on a whim or worse--which honestly is what people are asking for without asking for--should NEVER EVER be in the hands of the players. period. I don't trust the paranoia that exists on these forums enough to entrust anyone with that kind of responsibility. I mean hell people believe SE is in bed with RMT...case and point of paranoia to the max.

Because people abuse reporting processes. A business is a business and it has to draw a line between making "most customers happy" and "making reasonable staffing service levels"

Have you ever wondered why you can call your credit card company and spend less than 3 minutes on hold, for any reason, but if you call your wireless phone company you will spend upwards of 20 minutes on hold if you call during a service outage? Wireless companies only staff "just enough" people to handle the best case scenario which is just people calling in to pay their bills and reset their passwords. That's why they are derided as having some of the worst customer service ever.

If everyone was reporting things consistently and accurately (that bot report above took no less than 5 separate reports to SE, each time I took a screenshot with the dates and names of the bots, and made a point of pointing out the connection between them all,) but the average person just wants a "report this" button and let SE try and figure out the context. That works fine for spam but not for things that require actual investigation processes like the Retainers who somehow have hundreds of grade IV materia, yet the players they belong to don't have the capability to make it.