Botters/Cheaters/3rd party programs

[Shougun]

People are actually getting punished for 3rd party apps? Youtube is filled with people and their names uncensored using apps lol. I don't think SE really wants to ban people from the game and do it as a last resort, which is good for not getting mistakenly banned because you did something funny but not against the ToS. For third party tools though Yoshida pretty much said if you don't get caught we won't do anything, and he expects people to be using them. To be clear he didn't say bots, he was talking more like aggro tables and parsers - but he didn't say they were allowed as much as SE's priority wasn't to punish these tools.

Imo SE would be more successful catching bots with a VATs/Warden but there would be a number of players who will quit because those tools are very similar to spyware (if not technically already are).

Bots that use gil generating tasks do have a negative impact on everyone though, legacy servers had years of bots doing leves which is strictly a gil generator. Can cause weird things like some players looking at materia/housing as cheap (being part of the market wards = win) or hilariously eye stabbing (get into the market wards yo, lol).

[Dewd]

A few messages that say things like "I have better things to do with my time", "not my job to enforce", "I couldn't care less", certainly aren't going to help change or fix the problem. This was part of my reluctance for posting about it on the forums int he first place. I would much rather be spending my time actually playing the game, and so would the majority of players. Those that use the forums are a minority. While it is indeed an extra outlet to voice any concerns we have about the game, it is not the most user friendly way of submitting a complaint, nor do I see any devs/mods chiming in with what their stance on this is. Why have a ToS in the first place if it is not going to be enforced?

Every day that goes by while I see the bots still performing their actions every time is frustrating. I simply wish more would be done about it. I know there are many others out there that are equally as annoyed that this type of behavior that clearly violates ToS is permitted to continue.