Botspotting?

[Skyrior]

That doesn't mean it's allowed.

No, it's not allowed, but that means they can't just create more throwaway accounts casually. If they're caught and banned they'll lose months to years of progress.

So banning endgame bots is a decent way to stop botting in the endgame.

[KisaiTenshi]

No, it's not allowed, but that means they can't just create more throwaway accounts casually. If they're caught and banned they'll lose months to years of progress.

So banning endgame bots is a decent way to stop botting in the endgame.

But that still requires reporting, and the current mechanism to report active botting (even if it's not RMT) is too much effort so only really pissed off technically-minded people do it. I used to report bots all the time, and eventually something happens, even if it takes a month. But it can take take 15 minutes to report a single bot, get screenshots and video, upload those to imgur/youtube and so forth. Uploading to youtube kills the internet connection for several minutes, so that also involves having to re-login to the game.

The easiest way to report most of this stuff would require being able to target the player in question, hitting a hotkey that records 30 seconds of video, screenshots, and allow the player to select a category and a free-form report. One game's built-in report form actually sent screenshots (which I'll point out was also an easy to identify players who had altered their clients.) In one case, >50% of the players in a screenshot thread were themselves having unauthorized alterations that were identified by the lack of the game's watermark (which the alteration did by default.)

At any rate, what drives away players is the inattention to players who are cheating by the developers. Indeed one of the reasons I take long breaks from MMORPG's is because I just see too much RMT and materials farming bots and just decide the game is not worth playing for the crafting aspects and NOPE out of that part of the game entirely.

[Skyrior]

But that still requires reporting,.
...........

No disagreement there. I'm just saying if SE decided to take action it will actually solve part of the problem. It wouldn't be completely useless as some pessimists suggest.