Square-Enix, please, do something about the bots

[Zarabeth]

Unfortunately bots pay subs too so they will never be gone. Rinumo mentions ffxi bots and we had them and you would not believe some of the stupid ways se tried to combat them. (goblins at water holes in camping areas comes to mind.) They did finally stop the rmt spammers, but that's about it. And even if they could make them all disappear they would all be back the next day on new accounts.

[Rinuko]

Unfortunately bots pay subs too so they will never be gone. Rinumo mentions ffxi bots and we had them and you would not believe some of the stupid ways se tried to combat them. (goblins at water holes in camping areas comes to mind.) They did finally stop the rmt spammers, but that's about it. And even if they could make them all disappear they would all be back the next day on new accounts.

Yeah good times with the fishing bots. I always enjoyed seeing them getting slaughtered!

[Lilseph]

I've seen guilds of actual players farming nodes, with achievements from other content and everything. They were cluttered in a single spot, farming at the same time, disengaging the node at the same time, jumping on their mount at the same time and moving away at the same time. Gonna guess it's a single person's FC with multiple service accounts. It's disgusting, I think I've seen them twice during the week I was farming for mats for scripts.

There's a report given by SE telling us how many accounts where punished by their ban hammer. I also don't know if their GM force is understaffed, I think it is.

[Cakekizyy]

What laws are these sites breaking that would call for fines or having domain shut down?

[miraidensetsu]

What laws are these sites breaking that would call for fines or having domain shut down?

Intelectual property laws. Everything that's inside the FFXIV software are Square-Enix's intelectual property. Ever your character can be included into that, legally speaking.

The same argument they use to take down youtube videos can be used to take down botters websites. And, considering that botters are actually earning money also with services like "level your char up to 70" (putting a concurrence against SE's Mog Station and their Tales of Adventurer item) or gil selling, most countries lets the injured party to demand compensation for damages to their business (like the DDoS they caused).

Yes, I would like to see S-E suing botters. If I was Yoshi-P, I would made a reunion with the legal team to make the banhammer hit harder. And, coming from an company as big as Square, the lawsuit will appear on every gamer site (and even on IT generalist ones). It will scare off new botters (at least those that is less daring).

[Vhailor]

But, please, do something about those damned bots.

I wholeheartedly concur. It's sad that I generally feel obligated to filter out /say messages simply to avoid seeing open advertisements by RMT bots. This is a pay-to-play title; SE needs to crack down in a meaningful way (i.e. automated systems and a far quicker turnaround time on bans).

It's never too late to improve.

[KageTokage]

I don't think the bots are ever going to be addressed unless there's a serious outcry about it, at least on the level of the housing issue. Unfortunately, from what I've noticed on my server, people are often oblivious to bots, don't care about them, or actually want them around due to driving down the prices on items (Which is strictly beneficial for the crafters who are too lazy to gather their own materials).

The fact that it's largely a non-issue on the JP side of things is also likely another factor playing into why it's being handled so poorly.

[Luna_Ariana]

I don't think the bots are ever going to be addressed unless there's a serious outcry about it, at least on the level of the housing issue. Unfortunately, from what I've noticed on my server, people are often oblivious to bots, don't care about them, or actually want them around due to driving down the prices on items (Which is strictly beneficial for the crafters who are too lazy to gather their own materials).

The fact that it's largely a non-issue on the JP side of things is also likely another factor playing into why it's being handled so poorly.

Ye sadly even if we do know who the bots are I think we mainly dont do anything bout it hence SE doesn't do anything bout it either. Even if you report a Bot who got something wrong in their botting script and so something weird doesn't affect hence SE rather checks them by Chatlog only and not the vids/pics we send them cause it "might be edited".

Maybe it is good to adress this Issue within the Liveletter which will come incase they may wanted our Questions again. or we really cry loud about it like we did with housing...

[Mwynn]

Maybe it is good to adress this Issue within the Liveletter which will come incase they may wanted our Questions again. or we really cry loud about it like we did with housing...

Be surprised but... in one of the latest Live Letters (I think it was before SB hit) the very first Posts contained that Question.
It had over 100 Likes if not even more so yet ... has been totally ignored.

As you can probably think, Glamour Questions were more prioritized...

The fact that it's largely a non-issue on the JP side of things is also likely another factor playing into why it's being handled so poorly.

There were tons of Aetherial Reduction / Ephermal Node Bots on Mana Datacenter according to a few Discord Members who play on Shinryu and other Servers.
That said during 3.56 Heavensward times, how it looks now during Stormblood, I hardly can imagine, tho I'd be not surprised if those are still around.
Even JPN Servers have their Black Sheeps, tho their Community is a bit more punishing when it comes to Players doing awful things or like this.

Basically I remember a Rampage going on because a Female Player was being harrassed of a Streamer / Raider, which the Community decided to raid a entire House with naked Roegadyns as punishment.

[aesteval]

Ye sadly even if we do know who the bots are I think we mainly dont do anything bout it hence SE doesn't do anything bout it either. Even if you report a Bot who got something wrong in their botting script and so something weird doesn't affect hence SE rather checks them by Chatlog only and not the vids/pics we send them cause it "might be edited".

Maybe it is good to adress this Issue within the Liveletter which will come incase they may wanted our Questions again. or we really cry loud about it like we did with housing...

There was a gathering bot that I reported during Heavensward. It did eventually disappear. Took a while, but it is gone.