BOTs and what SE does / does not do.

[Sairii]

So the past few days Ive reported about 30 gilspammers and 60 Bots.

And I was shocked after seeing how many bots are actually online and roaming around.
Having a hard time to report them all, so I asked the support.
I asked them if they even do something actively against those bots / spammers.
And as it turns out they dont.

They only investigate cases that we the players report. They dont have gms looking for baddies, even tho they are so easy to spot. (at least on my server)

And to make things worse, those first bots that I´ve reported 3 days ago are still roaming around.

So SE, when are you going to do something?

You aren´t looking for bots yourself and aren´t banning the Bots that I report?
Your game is so infested.

I only need a few seconds to find loads of bots.
Hell if I could ban them the Server would be clean in no time.

So please, I beg you SE...
Give us one.... only one GM that actually does something against those guys.

[Axlle10]

I would like to see proof of what they actually said. I have a feeling you are leaving out information. The GMs do in fact look at each individual case. But as you may or may not know, there are thousands of bots/gilspammers. And to top all that off, some of these players may in fact be hacked accounts that have no clue that this is happening. A responsible game company can not just go ban-hammer crazy and expect to have happy customers. They also have to go in somewhat of a list order i would assume. First in first out. And its possible that they also may go on a "reach X reports before investigation" basis. Since most people only blacklist and dont actually report, SE may not hit this number right away.

[Sairii]

Well maybe I formulated it badly.
What I meant was that they dont act on their own.
They just look at the reports (if they do).
But here have a snap of the email I recieved:

Greetings Sairii,

thank you for your reply.

Unfortunately we cannot hand out emails of staff members. Furthermore the GM team cannot hand down players' feedback to the development team in Japan. If you want to share feedback, please do so on the Forums. There it will reach the right ears.
We can assure you however that reporting third party tool users and RMT spammers to the GM or STF departments is not pointless. We conduct an immediate investigation upon receiving a report and usually ban the reported player within few minutes. So we would like to encourage you to keep on reporting players who violate the ToS to us. Unfortunately acting on players' reports is all we can do as the GM team at the moment.

(had to shorten 1k char limit)

[Sairii]

So today I´ve found a pretty easy to spot Botanist Bot.
He was taking a rather perculiar route to every tree that can have a node and turns every time exactly the same 90degrees at the same spot.
I used /tell and nothing.

I thought, hey everyone can see that this is a bot.
So I asked a gm via ticket, told him that the support / special task force takes to long.
He just gotta see him once and he should know.

>>> First reply to my ticket:
- copy paste message Special Task Force report page

After that I´ve made a ticket thanking the support for not reading my ticket and said thats not what I wanted.

>>> Second reply:
- they do not have the tools to investigate

I replied that they dont need them as everyone can cleary see that it is a bot. ( By that time 2 FC mates were already trailing the bot like some chicken dance )

[Sairii]

>>> Third reply:
- copy paste message feedback forum

Then I told them that not doing their job does not equal a suggestion. Or should I suggest SE doing their job?

>>> Fourth reply:
- they kindly asked me to report this to the Special Task Force as they cannot act.


If they had one GM thats activly looks for them / acts or even acts right after ticket / report then we wouldnt have such an infestation and everything would be fine.
But I suggested so many things already against gilsellers etc and everything probably goes to a folder that noone looks into.
Its horrible.

So what does our "Support Team" "GMs (GAMEMASTERS)" do if they cannot act?

Im sorry for being harsh but you need to start doing something against those Bots.

(had to split it up)

[snakey77]

I would like to see proof of what they actually said. I have a feeling you are leaving out information. The GMs do in fact look at each individual case. But as you may or may not know, there are thousands of bots/gilspammers. And to top all that off, some of these players may in fact be hacked accounts that have no clue that this is happening. A responsible game company can not just go ban-hammer crazy and expect to have happy customers. They also have to go in somewhat of a list order i would assume. First in first out. And its possible that they also may go on a "reach X reports before investigation" basis. Since most people only blacklist and dont actually report, SE may not hit this number right away.

seriously do i want to spend most of the day reporting gill spammers and bots watched a bot teleport farm karakul the other day i was there for well over 2 hours farming myself after reporting them and no one came to see what was happening... this is why se is losing this fight because it always gets thrown in the cbf bin (couldn't be fucked) unless of course you kick up a massive stink and talk to a gm in game.. so 9 times out of 10 ppl just pull the cbf with reporting them

[Sairii]

Well the Problem is the "We dont have the Tools to act" "Investigate" part.
You dont need to look into the Server logs.
Just teleport as a GM to these bots and notice that they are outside the map, duh.......
These bots are so easy to find and identify that you dont need "tools".
You can just ban those and get over with it.
Ban them now when they are still acting and look into the logs later to see if they traded with someone. Because those gilseller bots have a lvl 1 char somwhere at a delivery moogle.

And that Botanist Bot was still at it after many hours. Prolly farmed 9k shards without doing anything himself.

[KaedrianLiang]

im certain action is in fact taken. The issue is that there is a lot of red tape GM investigators need to go through before hitting the account with the ban approved stamp.

The issue is that the botters will come back a 2nd or 3rd time as usually these bots are just bogus or even stolen accounts with just one class leveled. You need to follow them to their master.

For example:

http://i.imgur.com/0B76mwy.jpg

I caught two bots in the same vicinity returning, i figured i would follow them.

Edit: When they all d/ced at the same time that kinda sealed the deal.

Edit: these are spirit bond bots, they are the ones selling Materia in clumps at a time. The master is making accessories for them.

[Sairii]

Bots

Yes I know the spiritbond Bots. But on my server they are in larger numbers. Estimating around 90 active on my server every day. Estimated because you only see a fraction for a second.
Always a party of 4 bots queueing for dungeons over and over. Most of them in Uldah, have the same char data and about the same equip.
Spiritbonding magic ilvl 45 equip.

Thing is, that it is hard to counter them if they dont get banned fast.

And if they had a GM thats online, actively looking for them / banning, then they wouldnt need to "investigate" the data mess. Which I still doubt they do.

[Sairii]

Another Note would be that those guys using bots have an enormous amount of gil.
Pretty much destroying our economy.
A few months ago the shard prices were at about 13 gil a piece.
Now the price is at about 80-170 depending on shard.
Reason being people (gilsellers) buying out all the shards at night. Even at ridiculous prices, so that they have monopoly.
I noticed that for fire shards. Huge quantities were bought at 80-300 gil per shard.
They then tried to drive the prices up to 500 per shard.

Now this aint much for something that requires only one shard. Its 500 gil per craft.
But later on this rises to a whooping 5500 gil per craft.

Now imagine being a new player leveling more than one crafting profession at a time.
Well hes gonna quit crafting or the game soon....

Thank you bots for destroying our game.