Another ban wave, another disappointment.

[NolLacnala]

I really can't believe Square is not putting money into this.

I can believe it. SE has their priorities, specifically Not-FFXIV, aka their other IPs

[Texa]

I can believe it. SE has their priorities, specifically Not-FFXIV, aka their other IPs

I doubt the money is primarily going to their other projects either. Some of it is for sure, but a lot of it has probably gone into their recent stock buybacks.

[KageTokage]

You see the things too simple. It is very hard fix this problem.

The auto-created RMT spammers and gil farmers are the ones that are difficult to deal with.

There really isn't any excuse for them to be allowing people to get away with blatant botting for gathering/crafting/leveling purposes, though. If those players get banned, they aren't going to come back for a long while if at all, because it takes a ton of time to level DoH/L classes plus progress through the MSQ.

I'm feeling curious as to whether or not they're even investigating the players I report, because they're so obvious that you'd frankly have to be stupid to think they aren't botting.

[Vnolan]

I feel like if there was more of an outcry (Like there was with the whole housing fiasco), they might actually pay attention to this issue.

Which issue? The one where nothing seems to be done about player bots, or the one where they continue to allow players to waste time filling out reports with the false hope that something will be done?

The problem is that these bots have made the users a lot of money, especially with players still doing RMT today. It's nothing to them to get banned - they'll just change one letter or number on a new character and go back to doing it. And it's not just one character - one account could have 8 characters under it. All they need to do is buy a 30-day subscription, grind out trials with a macro, and get stuff. It may not just be that the staffing is an issue, but that these accounts just make new ones. It's not hard to just get under a new IP, make a new account, and go again.

Blame the people that buy the gil. It may not be popular, but they are the reason the sellers exist.

Quite a few of the bots are regular players doing it when they aren't playing the game, because why not? It's free mats/gil when talking about gathering bots and it's free exp/progress when talking about FATE/PVP bots. One reason to not use bots is fear of punishment. If you know the chance of receiving punishment is next to zero and that the punishment isn't going to be a perma...

Sadly, video/picture evidence cannot be used when making a case, because of the fact that it can be edited. GMs have stated multiple times that they cannot accept anything other than evidence from directly inside the game with regards to any sort of report, be it for cheating/botting, harassment, or anything else reportable/bannable.

For taking action against the players? Perfectly logical. Not looking at additional info at all? Poor choice. 'This video shows what is clearly a bunch of bots that we haven't detected, buuuuuuuut it might be edited, so we'll just ignore it altogether.'

OP and some others have it right that something can be done if enough noise is made, but it won't happen. Too many either use bots themselves, associate with players that use bots, benefit from them in some manner (crafters get cheaper mats off the mb, players doing FATEs can put in the minimum amount of effort and let the bots do the majority) or just don't care.

[KageTokage]

The bots wouldn't bother me quite as much if their owners weren't prone to using them to purchase medium/large houses just because they have nothing better to do with their excess gil. I can only hope they 'll actually deliver with the 4.2 housing plan so it won't be much of an issue anymore.

But yeah. I doubt anything's going to be done just because there aren't enough people who actually care. Multiple crafters on my server have admitted that they like having them around because they're too lazy to farm aethersands.

[SuperZay]

From a business standpoint there's no reason to ban user-controlled bots because they still pay their subscriptions. They don't have detection methods for it anyway and they can't ban anyone without written in-game proof. Same for The Feast wintraders, the only ones which were suspended were those who accidentally admitted it in tells/linkshells while everyone else got away with it despite dozens of reports and hours of twitch video footage evidence.

[KageTokage]

Now I'm starting to doubt if they even bother banning the gil farming bots, since those guys are all paying subs so they can finish the ARR MSQ.

I decided to check how many of them were online on Cactaur, and I counted 112 of them (Do a search for level 50 BLMs/WHMs, pick out the gibberish named ones, then check how many people are online in their FCs), which is utterly ridiculous.

I think they truly cared about this, they'd have installed some basic hack protection by now.

[basketofseals]

People comparing SE to EA is just laughable at how hyperbolic it is. I don't recall having to spend 40 in game hours of rigorous play in order to unlock other jobs. Not to mention the grand majority of stuff actually in the cash shop can be obtained in game at some point. How much stuff from the cash shop is exclusive? Like 200 dollars worth? For a game that's 5 years old that's a pittance. That's not even as much as you've probably spent on sub time.

[Xeon]

Nothing of what you said constitutes bots or cheating. Quit being an ass. Sorry you are dirt poor and don't have a house. I truly am. Maybe somebody on this thread will throw this guy a big mac so he doesn't starve.

I, myself, have listed over 2,000 of the same consumable items at once, and I don't craft. Mostly they come from desynth trying to either get that rating up or farming for demateria. I have more than the 2 retainers that SE gives you, and can fill them up at any time with items worth millions of gil. I've been known to buy the market out on certain items and then list them for 10X their previous value. I've made upwards of 15M gil in a 24 hour period, and I've done so with only 2-3 hours of play time that day.

[Xeon]

Sorry. Just because you can't conceive how a legit player can do these things doesn't mean that they're cheating. Just means you need to do some playing around and try to figure it all out. I'm on the verge of maxing out all my crafting classes, and I've yet to craft my first item since stormblood came out.

Many people own multiple houses. Most of the higher ups in my FC have their own seperate home, including myself, and an apartment aswell.

People can disappear through walls, sure, but there are many objects that can be walked through, and sometimes you see this as a result of lag.

So with this said, now I guess I gotta watch out because the OP will report me .. LOL