Is this a bot and how do I report bots?

[MageBlack]

No matter how many times this gets posted in this thread, it remains untrue. Any activity removes the AFK flag as of patch <mumblesomethingmumble>.

I will concede that, I havent done it since pre 2.2 patch, I think. I'll try it again tonight. But, as i mentioned in a previous thread about Bots, If this is an RMT bot doing it to make RL money, Banning a character or account is a trivial setback for them. The best course of action would be to identify the exploit, if there is one, fix it, without breaking the intended system for legit players, then tracking the IP to the source of where these bots are coming from and try to correct the issue at the source, if possible. Banning the bot is a very temporary solution that never fixes or resolves the actual problem.

Either you're one of those users trying to defend bots (as anyone else is keeps denying this) or you have serious trouble reading, you CANNOT move with the afk logo, as it will go away with ANY action. It is a 100% bot.

This is proof SE does not do anything with bots because they will still be there days later even tho it is plastered in their face that a bot is clearly preset.

My mistake, I saw that post i quoted and remembered doing this quite some time ago. I'm not defending bots or SE's courses of action, i was simply mistaken and I will verify it later tonight. No need to be so curt. As I said above, banning the bot, chr or account, does not fix the problem. It would only make you feel better until the next one comes along called Asidfgnu Khertihvw.

[Meshico]

To the point of SE doing "nothing"

That is wrong, they ban "bots" all the time.

Also why they take so long, could be many reasons, removing 100,000,000 gil from the economy is not better than removing 999,999,999 million gil from the economy.

Legacy servers desperately need money taken out of the economy, so yeah what they do may be slow, but they have their reasons, also another months sub doesn't hurt the pocket books while doing some good

--------- THIS IS ONLY MY OPINION BASED ON THINGS I WOULD TO IN ORDER TO FIX ECONOMY ----------

[JayCommon]

For everyone saying you can move around with the AFK status (I see most of you have forum sign-up dates similar to mine when ARR released), this was changed quite some time ago when the auto-afk was put into the game.

You used to be able to move around everywhere because you had to manually set your status to AFK. There was a timer when server stress was still excessive that would just auto-boot you from the game if you were idle for 30 mins. There was no auto-afk status then.

This has all been changed now, though. Might be where some of this confusion has come from.

Everyone else is right though, Busy status is the one that prevents tells and allows you to walk around without having the status removed now. Great for being able to ignore RMT whispers, bad if you aren't in FC or LS with everyone you want to talk to.

[Snugglebutt]

People saying banning bots doesn't solve it or SE don't ban bots I do not believe SE does not ban them but there does seem to be variation on how fast some bots get banned vs others which have been reported and that might be down to individual members of the support team who do the banning's not all putting in same level of devotion to the problem as others but I do not believe none at SE's bot banning team is banning bots. On the other matter of whether or not does any good, even if does not solve things long term it's better to do something than do nothing so I will continue to report bots as they significantly damage the enjoyment of my crafting/gathering classes and damage the economy both in terms of flooding the marketplace and heavily underpricing/undervaluing peoples hard work spent creating the items and gathering the materials the right way.

[ToffeeCoffee]

They nerfed spiritbonding in dungeons so a lot of people are doing it in open world now.
Having to compete with 4 bots for kills in my favourite place to do this (ET) is extremely irritating. I know I can go elsewhere but that's not the point. To have one section of a map owned by bots that I've reported daily for 2 months and longer is just pathetic.

[Snugglebutt]

I have changed my mind, Squeenix DO NOT ban bots at all. They value botters over their actual fair playing, rule abiding players in a big way.

They do not enforce their own policies on 3rd party programs and botters. If Squeenix refuse to do their jobs then maybe I should make it my job to spread a campaign of negative PR on every gaming site and social media to damage this game and if I am half as good at doing that job as they are about not doing theirs then their reputation and that of this MMO would be immensely damaged which could provoke a change in their truly shitty performance on enforcing their own policies.

Whoever is on this so called special task force for targeting automated programs users and RMT should be fired. Anyone who claims that I or others do not know when someone is botting is stupid, it is not hard to tell who is botting and who is not and they are probably a botter themselves so have a vested interest in trying to discredit any complaints about bots.

[Gerolan]

Don't waste your time, no action will be taken.

Agrees, I've reported the same bard bot in north shroud for few months now, always on same mobs dies when you initiate trade due to locking them. Yet they are still their farming same mobs

[Brine_Gildchaff]

They nerfed spiritbonding in dungeons so a lot of people are doing it in open world now.
Having to compete with 4 bots for kills in my favourite place to do this (ET) is extremely irritating. I know I can go elsewhere but that's not the point. To have one section of a map owned by bots that I've reported daily for 2 months and longer is just pathetic.

SBing is not nerfed, it's just narrowed range. If you're in the right range for the gear you're using the SB rate is actually -increased- dramatically. Case in point: I took a new HQ cashmere BLM hat (no materia or SB boosting ring/potion) into an expert roulette, came out with 17% spiritbond from just that one run.

[Alukah]

Agrees, I've reported the same bard bot in north shroud for few months now, always on same mobs dies when you initiate trade due to locking them. Yet they are still their farming same mobs

I don't know what annoys me the most, the bots themselves or SE ignoring this.

[Snugglebutt]

It is ruining any enjoyment I have playing DoH/DoL class because not competing with people who play fairly and abide by the rules but instead competing with automated programs and scripts running 24/7.

It really pisses me off that SE refuse to deal with the problem and so far refuse to ban a single bot that I have reported despite multiple times caught and reported them. It only takes maybe 30 seconds for SE to actually do the checks and visit the locations, check their market history and attempt to speak to the bot or could even take less then 10 seconds if teleport the bot to new location or limbo type zone and see if gets any reaction which would if was actual player at the helm. Yet SE refuse to spend even 30 seconds looking into the ones reported.