Over 500 bots on Balmung. Please let us click report!

[LineageRazor]

This is one of those kind of comments that really gets under my skin. I don't like to draw assumptions, but I take it if you saw a little old lady getting her pursed mugged, you just whistle and keep on walking since it's none of your business? Wasn't your purse. As Atoli said, Bots like this exponentially inflate the markets but more importantly, almost always are the gil funnels that fuel the RMT market. That in and of itself leads to more RMT spam bots bothering people. I don't think anyone really likes to live in a high crime neighborhood, by intentionally ignoring the fact it exists just because you perceive it hasn't affected you only furthers the problem itself.

While it is true that these bots are far from harmless, they are also, practically speaking, unfightable. These low level bots can be mass produced at a rate that FAR exceeds SE's ability to fight them. Keep in mind, that SE is vastly outnumbered in this regard; the total amount of manpower and resources fielded by all the various RMT companies out there vastly outnumbers anything SE could possibly hope to bring to bear.

So, SE does not bother with these mass produced bots, and they SHOULDN'T. Instead, their focus is on seeing where the money flows to - and then destroying that. This hurts RMT much more than sweeping up level one bots does, and is something they actually have a prayer of stopping.

So, when you see hordes of bots teleporting here and there in Thanalan, just ignore them. They aren't going away, and there's no methods currently existent that could stop them. Just take comfort in the fact that SE IS doing something about RMT in general, even if you never see the gil-laden mules that actually get the banstick.

[Dustytome]

While it is true that these bots are far from harmless, they are also, practically speaking, unfightable. These low level bots can be mass produced at a rate that FAR exceeds SE's ability to fight them. Keep in mind, that SE is vastly outnumbered in this regard; the total amount of manpower and resources fielded by all the various RMT companies out there vastly outnumbers anything SE could possibly hope to bring to bear.

They still have to purchase copies of the game, register and then create characters to start over. Pay someone minimum wage for awhile to play wack-a-mole. Each time they knock one of the bots out that's another copy of the game that has to be purchased. They'd essentially be paying someone to print them money.

[Mwynn]

They still have to purchase copies of the game, register and then create characters to start over. Pay someone minimum wage for awhile to play wack-a-mole. Each time they knock one of the bots out that's another copy of the game that has to be purchased. They'd essentially be paying someone to print them money.

Stolen Keys obtained by CCF, Keys that were obtainable with Cheap Money in different Countries.
That's a Reason why Square Enix Bans Players who buy Cheap Keys on Websites that do not have Trusted Sellers.

More to read here : http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...c2fd1b14bcf06f

[Welsper59]

I'm not bothered by RMT Bots, I'm rather bothered by normal Player Bots that have a normal Name, a normal FC, have Sophia or even Savage Weapons and yet farm tons of Mats as a Gatherer over Night.

These are the ones that you generally won't see any negative repercussions happen to. Actually justifying a ban for legit player bot activity is significantly more difficult, primarily because there is no linking supportive evidence besides "this looks like it might be a bot". Even those 99 stacks you have mentioned isn't good enough, and thus these bots are usually put on the low priority list (i.e. ignore list). Outside of bot sessions, they likely act and do as any other non-botting player does. Unless they admit to their activities in-game, there's only a very low chance of being banned.

A lot of those legit players that bot and get caught either admit to it or use a hack tool in a way that is easy to detect server side. Even position and speed hacking is extremely difficult to, without a doubt, accuse someone of unless they admit to it or it's used in an abusive way (e.g. massive position changes that notify the server of timed changes (zoning, node use, combat actions)). SE has never been good at detecting players that aren't that stupid, including during the XI days. GMs being present to observe is very rare in XIV, so you usually can't count on that.

They still have to purchase copies of the game, register and then create characters to start over. Pay someone minimum wage for awhile to play wack-a-mole. Each time they knock one of the bots out that's another copy of the game that has to be purchased. They'd essentially be paying someone to print them money.

Typically that's not how it works. The only expenses that most RMT companies make are to buy stolen credit card information or unauthorized distribution of time cards and activation codes, which for at least the card information, come in bulks of thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of card numbers. As long as a card number gains them access to the game, they essentially get to play on that account until the card is cancelled and the monthly sub is up or SE bans it. With the slow pace that most MMORPG companies like to move on their RMT bans, this basically means that RMT have an almost guaranteed allotted time period to do their business.

The cost for card info isn't much in the grand scheme of things, especially when you consider that RMT don't lock themselves to only one game or activity. That one valid card info will gain them access to ALL of their card necessary activities. Now multiply that by the thousands upon thousands of valid cards they probably have, and you get an idea of how much profit RMT stands to make while the companies they "spend" on don't make anything and often lose money.

[SwdVengeance]

snip

Now I don't disagree that from a practicality standpoint, it's like trying to hold back the tide. My issue was not that someone wasn't reporting every one they saw, but that they didn't even have an issue with it if it didn't directly affect them.

That said, just because the issue may be beyond the individual level to fix via reports, that hardly excuses being a willful bystander to it. I tend to be of the mindset that if you can't be bothered to take even the smallest active role against it, you don't have room to complain about it. I don't ever think reporting to the police that some guy stole a little old lady's purse would ever stop crime altogether in a neighborhood, but I'll be damned if that's not the better option to ignoring it. I'm not saying people need to spend their playtime going around, hunting down bots, but spending 2 mins copy/pasting a handful of names into a report when you see some is far more constructive than anything else you can do.