[Forum Mods/GM/STF] Botters/RMT continually not being dealt with

[MrObject]

Yes, as someone who's always hardcore in eco in every mmo he's ever played this games eco is pretty much already ruined, thus removing most of the reason I play this game. As it is now the highest demand item in this game, shards, are overun with botters dropping the prices so low that no one even bothers to compete.

Let's say hypothetically there were no botters farming shards, the demand would still exist and the supply would drop increasing the prices of shards and thus increasing the prices of all finished products. This may seem like a bad thing but for those who are farming those shards it creates a good source of income, enough income to buy those finished products. Farming shards is also also not restricted to botany and mining, it's actually quicker to kill the mobs that drop shards then to mine/botanise them so anyone can farm shards.

[Toddmounts69]

Ya ive started to get extremely upset about this. Theyve done very little on our server and all you have to do is just look at the auction house.

[Velev]

Farming shards.

If the RMTs and bots were taken care of, the price of many items would be firstly higher making it worthwhile farming and secondly worthwhile selling rather than selling them to NPCs. That alone would change the game and people would get busier by farming, crafting.
The way it is now, 90% if not more of items crafted/farmed are a total waste of time since they have no value more than 1g per item and more importantly have been ruined price wise by RMTs.

As for your shard farm comment, it is NOT quicker to farm shards by killing monsters. It was like that for XI but in XIV it's nowhere near like that. Nothing is faster and more reliable than mining/bot to get shards. Killing the elemental mobs for their shards is a total waste of time.

If you don't believe that, why don't you go and farm some lightning shards for example, good luck with that. Let me know how you get on.
For every 10 elements you kill you'll be LUCKY to get 5 shards in total IF that. Apart from the time you have to wait for them to re-spawn.
The drop rate on elements is terrible to say the least. By the time you gather 50 shards from their corresponding elements a miner/botanist would have farmed 5 times that amount if not more.

[MageBlack]

Sure it may be easy to just ban accounts, but does that solve the underlying problem? I say, let them keep going for a while, find exploits, collect data, then find out how to stop the exploits. That is the issue, not just the actions they are using. Is getting from 1-50 in 3 days from harvesting the same 5 nodes for crystals an exploit? Should we just ban the account or find a way to change how that situation played out? Is that a hacked account? So many questions that need to be addressed.

Also remember that the only reason that RMT's exist in the first place is because PLAYERS BUY FROM THEM. If no one bought anything from an RMT shop, would we even be talking about them today? Probably not. In all honesty the problem lies with the players who enable the RMT's to continue doing buisness. It frustrates me to no end to see people putting all the blame on *insert game company here* for not dealing with the RMT's. In contrast I love how armchair dev's say how easy it is to solve the problem.

[Sumii]

They don't just automatically ban people because of a report. If they did, many would lose game time due to false reports and inaccurate observations. They have to investigate the reports, and then take appropriate action as needed. Investigation can take weeks depending on their workload.

Complaining because you aren't seeing these characters disappear immediately is a pointless waste of forum resources. If it is so terrible to deal with that you prefer to waste even more of SE's resources in this way, maybe you should just move on.....

Youtube Video

That is from just a hour or so ago. In FFXI when you made a GM call they contacted you in real time and were technically at your location but invisible. You could even ask them to show themselves and have a friendly chat. Yes, there needs to be investigation to make sure the account is or isn't cheating and whether it's a hacked account or not. However, just by having a real time appearance like in FFXI the GM could immediately see in this case that the character needs to be moved to jail and temporarily suspended until the investigation on whether the account was hacked or not. There is no question of hacking/cheating in this situation.

[OldGeezer]

I believe SE is doing a fair job in dealing with bots and rmts. The number of accounts suspended/banned in October inreased almost 4000% over September. November's numbers should prove interesting. Do I still recieve RMT tells, yes. But it's significanty reduced from last month. Do I seel see bots, yes. But the people I see farming diremite are all actively playing and not botting it. I believe the cheaters are being impacted by SE. Maybe not to the level we would like, but this is a perpetual struggle not something that will disappear overnight.