Should the ToS be updated to allow botting?

[Vnolan]

Can you prove they're botting? Why do you think they're botting? Are they actually using speed hacks, and teleporting across the map like the gathering bots/BLM and ARC bots do? Or are they just silent, and that's why you equate them to using a botting service? Genuine questions here.

The players are all lv60 gatherers in ironworks. They zone in near the aetheryte and perform some conversions. Regardless of where they are in reference to the aetheryte when they've zoned in, they will always move on foot to the same location before mounting up and flying away. Based on where they load in, I can even tell you if they'll use sprint before moving. It is entirely possible that a dozen different players all perform the same actions, including moving to the same location, with no deviation whatsoever from the script, but it's much, much more likely that they're bots. Above info aside, I've witnessed one in the group FATE botting in N Thanalan and I reported one a while back for using a gathering bot which was much more obvious.

Both. They were using speed hacks and they were using hacks to disappear and attack mobs from underground. I only report bots once.

I suspected some hacking was involved. Popular opinion seems to be that nothing is done when they are simply automating gameplay.

And a simple Lodestone search can answer if they were banned. If you reported them two months ago while they were around level 45/50, and you see on their Lodestone profile that the bot is level 45/50 still, probably safe to assume they were banned. I'm not obsessed enough to check every day, so whether it was a day, five days, ten days, twenty, etc., I can't provide you an answer to that.

So if someone is lv60, there would be no way to know if they have been banned or if they just haven't been online?

And I still can't understand the concept of why one would pay for a game, but not want to play it, and rather have a bot do it for them.

They use bots to gather items/gil for them while they aren't playing. It's not hard at all to understand why they do it.

...can someone explain to me btw how botting gets people their A12S kills? OP keeps brining that up (how botters are having the A12-mount) but I fail to see the connection? Is he assuming that they bought their kills? With gil earned by using bots? That sounds extremly ridicolous... but I cant see how using a bot in that fight would be any good..

I mentioned the mount once. I've seen the mount used by people performing the actions described above, as in, I've seen them move to the spot, summon the a12s mount and fly off. I mentioned the mount to help convey the idea that these aren't simply dummy accounts we're talking about, but to also show how brazen they are.