Attention devs: Game Surveillance Unit re: open world Bots.

[Nakiamiie]

I know at least one confirmed botter as well.
I've reported the him, friend reported him... no action taken.

We are asked to report them, we do it. But then no action is taken?
These shenanigans are unacceptable.

You know what is the cherry on the cake? I bet they took those botters gil into account when pricing housing, lol.

I thought paying an account would help free my gaming experience from botters and get to see more integrity from the company, unlike F2P games.
Seems like I was wrong on that point...

N.B.: The devs are working their arse off and certainly not for botters. I hope to see some pressure coming from them too to help treat the botting plague.

[ToffeeCoffee]

Here I introduce the 4 bots I love to hate most because they are positioned right in my favourite spot to spiritbond, and usually spend most of the day there botting Golden Fleece. I've reported them to the GSU daily for 2 months and are seemingly immune to prosecution. Well on this occasion, Gatling was nearby, and took great offence to their presence. He's not happy with the GSU's lack of action either.

Eastern Thanalan X27 Y24 & X25 Y24.

[Shougun]

Someone killed a bunch of bots near Fallgourd on Balmung, they did not respond to someone mpking them lol, now they're just afking dead.

Also in Ul'dah aetheryte you can see ---armies--- of blackmages with the exact same gear queuing up for duty. I suppose it could be a multiboxer, but someone is going nuts on materia as every time I'm there at least 2-4 BLM --/groups/-- are spawning in and out. I suppose the good news of that is at least its not very gil generating*. Legacy servers get to thank a year of cedar leve botting for part of its awesome inflation.

*Generating gil devalues other gil, as it gets brought through to other players with the most common player interaction - the market wards, which increases the gil of those players and generally those players alone (players that find something of demand, some items are not going to mean anything, even with inflation). So as you go to those housing threads and see "why are people complaining, I'm so rich and its easy - make these things on the market boards and roll in gil" then you can figure that other players who don't use the market make a much more inferior number with the same rate of time.

[Applesnap]

Someone killed a bunch of bots near Fallgourd on Balmung, they did not respond to someone mpking them lol, now they're just afking dead.

I have reported this same group three times now, each time with extensive details into what they do, how they have a crafter in their FC who makes all their spiritbind gear etc. and nothing has been done to remove them. They used to be in South Shroud near Amdapor Keep entrance (I reported them way back then) but have decided that monopolising the Plasmoids in North Shroud works better for them. At this point, I'm not entirely sure what we can do to get rid of them. It's so obvious they are bots and yet they are still here, so I suppose starting a thread here is all we can attempt now.

[Fornix]

Personally I think that the reason why these bots manage to survive this long without getting banned is not so much due to GM's unwillingness, lacking or whatever. But more rather I think it's a concious choice NOT to ban them. Which is being done for multiple reasons I suspect.

1) To give aid in identification of potential RMT traffic. By leaving the farmer account alone a company can rather target possible mule accounts, seller accounts and more importantly possible gil buyer accounts. The sellers after all aren't going to vanish anyway. For them a financial profit can be made pretty fast, even if they'd have to go back to manual farming at very low wages in sweatshops. So banning gil buyers is usually a more effective approach.

2) By allowing farming accounts such as these, which usually control the shard markets and similar low level items otherwise passed upon, the shard pricings remain much more reasonable. Shard mining is a very tedious process, they're needed in very high numbers and compared to the time investment right now are far off from many other items. If bots wouldn't farm thousands of those, prices would skyrocket on shard. The game's economy would change vastly without question. Many consumables such as foods and potions would probably become 3x or 4x as expensive as they are right now, in no time at all. And for many people managing gil is already an issue right now.

[HEC-]

I'm also TOTALLY fed up by seeing same bots month by month on the same spots after hundreds of reports made about them

The problem is that "reporting" in game or here in Forums is pretty much useless - the best / most "direct" way to contact the special unit (GSU) dealing with RMT, cheaters and boters is actually via Lodestone - second part of the screen. If you still have a bit of faith and effort left please try to report them there as well - hopefully increased amount reports there will trigger finally some more firm actions ...

[ToffeeCoffee]

Here they are again, the bots from my previous post, still online and well. They get lined up against the wall while their creepy looking crafter makes more spirtbond gear for them. Tonberry, Lower Limsa (X6 Y12).

Please post pictures of the bots on your server to drive the message to SE that we don't want to pay hard earned money for a game that allows cheating.

This is just not good enough Square Enix, rather it's pretty pathetic that you turn a blind eye to 3rd party tool use.

[Noshpan]

Lately I've been noticing a reemergence of a form of hacking. I say "reemergence" because I hadn't seen this used since nearly a year ago. Anyway, I've been noticing mobs suddenly fighting something not there. Earlier this evening I was in Eastern La Noscea, waiting for a FATE that I needed for one of my Animus books. Suddenly I noticed the nearby coeurl attacking something, but there was noone there. Then I noticed, beneath the ground that these coeurl were attacking, the messages stating when this individual took damage, gained Astral Fire or Umbral Ice. They stopped for awhile, my guess is that they noticed that I was there. Since I couldn't target them, much less see them, I couldn't get a name to report.

[ToffeeCoffee]

I just did a quick scan of the Market Board which revealed these bots have the following materia for sale.
They weren't intelligent enough to give their retainer a different name to their character.








Prospective current sales total of 2,929,600 gil (so this is a typical daily average haul for these guys).

Apparently we are all rich, wonder how SE came to that conclusion......
Are we ok with this being allowed? I'm not. Keep having your say and lets get the devs attention to take action!

[Ravno]

Well, like i was saying to you on an other post, if they not ban after that long, maybe there are not bots but just multiple characters controlled by the same player.
I see on your picture that he did not reply to trade and was kill by hunt mob, but that's not a perfect proof. Could be on his crafter, playing his others char while not watching them and spamming a /tenemy /cast offensiveSpell macro.
While you dont like this, there is no rules broke and no need to 3thd party at that point.

Do you have a video or something that show his slaves drived by an AI ? (Like while he's not answering to trade something like independant movement, heal below a % of health, complexe rotation or proc usage that can't be done with in game macro)