I give up, the bots win AKA: My flight is scheduled for departure

[MariaArvana]

Sure.

False, sure, they will lose some money, but many and I mean many bots operate via trial accounts thus there is no profit barring that which can be used to overinflate their population numbers. So going to disagree with this one.

The RMT bots aren't trial accounts. The trial has far too many restrictions on it for them to actually accomplish anything. They use sophisticated fraudulent credit card schemes along with stolen credit card #'s & chargebacks to make accounts on the game, hence why it's basically impossible to keep them under control. Anytime you ban them, they load up the next credit card number on their endless database and are back in 0.5 nanoseconds generating gil.

Due to the volatility of their accounts since they get banned on the next wave after their chargebacks show up, they can't mess with the MB outside of extremely easy to farm stuff like Shards. The actual accounts that control MBs are 99.9% actual players using automated systems, which is where jijifli's point is extremely true. Any legit player they ban is less $$$ each month since many might not choose to return, and Square might simply value profit since its quantifiable that they'd lose $15/month losing them (especially if they've paid their sub every single month for years), but its un-quantifiable what they'd lose by not banning them.

[Nepentha]

The RMT bots aren't trial accounts. The trial has far too many restrictions on it for them to actually accomplish anything. They use sophisticated fraudulent credit card schemes along with stolen credit card #'s & chargebacks to make accounts on the game, hence why it's basically impossible to keep them under control. Anytime you ban them, they load up the next credit card number on their endless database and are back in 0.5 nanoseconds generating gil.

Due to the volatility of their accounts since they get banned on the next wave after their chargebacks show up, they can't mess with the MB outside of extremely easy to farm stuff like Shards. The actual accounts that control MBs are 99.9% actual players using automated systems, which is where jijifli's point is extremely true. Any legit player they ban is less $$$ each month since many might not choose to return, and Square might simply value profit since its quantifiable that they'd lose $15/month losing them (especially if they've paid their sub every single month for years), but its un-quantifiable what they'd lose by not banning them.

The marketboard bot rings I've run into do seem to be two accounts per botting FC. But it's hard to say much they generate in money on SE's side of things. Would they return if banned? I think so. I've seen the same person create the same scheme on every server on the Crystal DC (and I suspect they've branched out to other DCs). That's quite a few accounts, so yes it would hit their 'so many subscribed' number by like... 14 accounts? And they'd lose each account's $15 a month. But those accounts do nothing else. They don't buy anything on the cash shop (other than maybe a boost and story skip for the main crafting bot, that's $50 once, or less if the boosts/skips are on sale at that time.). Their second account *might* have bought extra retainers for listing items. I'd have to research that tbh. If they only have the standard 2 you get with an account though, that's 14 retainers and just $15 a month.

So bare minimum you have two accounts running at $30 a month (less if the main crafter pays the lesser cost of $12.99 a month and less still if they buy it in 6 month chunks). And a one time purchase of at most, $50 for story skip and job boost. Compared to players who frequently purchase more than one retainer, buy plenty of stuff on the cash shop, and tend to pay the full $15 a month in order to have more alts than just 1 per server.

Meanwhile, the botter is likely selling the gil they make as RMT, so paying out $30 a month with a one time $50 fee is worth it, they make more without really having to do much as their operation is 95% automated.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

The marketboard bot rings I've run into do seem to be two accounts per botting FC. But it's hard to say much they generate in money on SE's side of things. Would they return if banned? I think so. I've seen the same person create the same scheme on every server on the Crystal DC (and I suspect they've branched out to other DCs). That's quite a few accounts, so yes it would hit their 'so many subscribed' number by like... 14 accounts? And they'd lose each account's $15 a month. But those accounts do nothing else. They don't buy anything on the cash shop (other than maybe a boost and story skip for the main crafting bot, that's $50 once, or less if the boosts/skips are on sale at that time.). Their second account *might* have bought extra retainers for listing items. I'd have to research that tbh. If they only have the standard 2 you get with an account though, that's 14 retainers and just $15 a month.

So bare minimum you have two accounts running at $30 a month (less if the main crafter pays the lesser cost of $12.99 a month and less still if they buy it in 6 month chunks). And a one time purchase of at most, $50 for story skip and job boost. Compared to players who frequently purchase more than one retainer, buy plenty of stuff on the cash shop, and tend to pay the full $15 a month in order to have more alts than just 1 per server.

Meanwhile, the botter is likely selling the gil they make as RMT, so paying out $30 a month with a one time $50 fee is worth it, they make more without really having to do much as their operation is 95% automated.

Pretty sure one of the forum trolls is a botter. Accounts on so many servers all crafting focused