Has anyone ever successfully gotten a cheater banned/punished after reporting them?

[KageTokage]

I know the GMs are notoriously bad at dealing with this from both personal experience and the reports of several others, but if even one person has had success with this, I think it would motivate me to persist in sending out reports, because I'm getting sick of the same few players on my server gutting the prices on various items on top of monopolizing large houses with their gathering bots.

It's not nearly as much as a problem on some other servers as it is on Cactaur, as I generally see only two or three gathering bots out at any given time. It was a lot worse shortly after SB's release, but the majority of the cheaters seem to have either un-subbed or transferred to a different server.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Did back in 2.0 when I reported THM bots exploiting terrain hacks to farm EXP in groups. Whether or not they were temp banned or perma banned I do not know. Never saw them again and the names on them generally looked like they belonged to RMT which is quite likely since every single one in the group would be wearing the exact same gear set all the way down to being dyed the same.

[Alien_Gamer]

Since the GMs will never tell you if they do or not there is no way for anyone to know for sure if they did. All you have is the anecdotal evidence of if you see them again which doesn't tell you much because they could have been suspended for a time instead of outright banned.

You have a choice, either report so GMs have the option of acting on it, or not reporting and passively letting the person get away with it. You may not know if a GM will punish someone when you report, but you know they won't punish someone you don't report.

[KageTokage]

Welp, it seems getting the gathering bots on my server banned is a lost cause, as almost all of them seemingly are actually being monitored by their owners while they do their thing, meaning the typical GM bot check of sending them a tell isn't going to work.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they all belonged to gil farmers.

[BigRed5392]

Welp, it seems getting the gathering bots on my server banned is a lost cause, as almost all of them seemingly are actually being monitored by their owners while they do their thing, meaning the typical GM bot check of sending them a tell isn't going to work.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if they all belonged to gil farmers.

not everyone who gathers is a bot though. Even if they look suspicious, doesn't mean they bot.

[Vladmiere]

Those bots can be monitored 24/7. There are easy to find methods to where if the name of their toon is mentioned in shout or they are whispered it automatically sends to your phone. It is advertised all over the fan run websites and reddit for such software. And there are several teleport hackers who got Shinogane housing from being able to warp straight to where they wanted

[Jijifli]

Those bots can be monitored 24/7. There are easy to find methods to where if the name of their toon is mentioned in shout or they are whispered it automatically sends to your phone. It is advertised all over the fan run websites and reddit for such software.

This.

Any botter that cares enough will know when they're caught. I ran into a botter farming his classes up, also using a teleport hack. When I tried to contact him, nothing, but when I whispered one of the fc officers, they instantly did an actual teleport and logged off for 2 days, before continuing it.

They were never banned. They got 70's basically everywhere.

[Vnolan]

Reports on bots are dealt with by the STF, not GMs. If you try to message a GM about it, they'll direct you to the dedicated form for cheating (goes to STF).

Welp, it seems getting the gathering bots on my server banned is a lost cause.

It is. I suggest anyone seeing this to not waste their time reporting gathering (or FATE or PVP) bots in any manner, because nothing will be done. Maybe if they become commonplace enough SE will do something about it, but until then, you're getting trolled.

[NorthernLadMSP]

I'm not sure, but it's possible. A few weeks ago I reported someone for botting in Frontlines and I haven't seen them since. Could be coincidence, but they also could have been banned.

[KageTokage]

not everyone who gathers is a bot though. Even if they look suspicious, doesn't mean they bot.

Trust me, when you gather often enough, you learn how to identify bots at a quick glance. The difference between them and real players is really obvious if both are present.

They follow the same paths to the pixel (This makes it particularly obvious if multiple bots are in the same area, as they'll stack on top of each other regularly), they make unnaturally sharp turns, and they seldom take the most direct path to each node, instead moving as though they're following an invisible track of sorts.

On a related note, all of the bots that are usually active almost 24/7 are currently offline on my server, which makes me wonder if something happened to scare them off temporarily (I directly expressed my frustration with them to a GM after a brief stint of disrupting them by opening trades ended up getting me reported because they apparently have sensors for that).