What's the point of reporting cheating if SE doesn't even look into it?

[KageTokage]

I own 4 accounts pay 4 subs, made my own fc by myself creating airships and submersibles and progressing myself and going to own 8 mansions and ect. Is it going to rub ppl the wrong way yep, am I going to dominate the mb yep is it unfair nope against tos nope. Like on player stated if he or she is doing as I it's not cheating unless proof can be shown that players likes are actually cheating. I have 3 laptops and ps4 that I use on ffxiv

I'm not sure what your point is. Nobody ever said multi-boxing or owning multiple accounts is cheating, so it sounds like you're just gloating about being able to annoy people without any repercussions..

However, it is a known fact that a lot of people multi-box and leave bots running on their alt accounts while they play their mains and the signs of most forms of botting are really, really easy to distinguish once you've learned to recognize them due to people generally using the same few scripts and there simply being some inherent limitations to how precisely a bot can replicate human behavior. IE, I've seen some FATE bots that will sprint away to lose aggro if their HP drops below a certain threshold, but they'll always run and stop at the exact same coordinates every single time.

In the case of these undercut bots, while it can't be said with absolute certainty that they are bots, it would take some serious suspension of disbelief to think they'd stay logged in for several days straight just so they can undercut people every few minutes.

[chocolatebabysundae]

The best thing you can do is try to find out who their script gathers are and have them reported en mass. That's what I did with a known player who crashed a few markets in Leviathan months back until they did a world transfer most likely after getting a warning from GMs.

[Vnolan]

The best thing you can do is try to find out who their script gathers are and have them reported en mass.

And then they report you for stalking, and since GMs can deal with stalking and not bots, there is a much higher chance you receive a harsher punishment and before the botter does, if they even get one.

That's what I did with a known player who crashed a few markets in Leviathan months back until they did a world transfer most likely after getting a warning from GMs.

GMs don't deal with bots. If you showed a GM some bots doing bot things, they wouldn't be able to do anything other than send a report to the STF. The first penalty for botting is a temp ban of a few days, not a warning. What's more, if you report a bot for 100 days straight and the bot is caught on day 100, it only counts as one instance of botting. There aren't any checks placed on players caught botting, meaning if no one reports them again, they can go back to botting indefinitely.

[Adventica6]

This has been going on for over 8+ years, a bit late to the party.

People bot, people cheat, welcome to life.

[hynaku]

Hacking and bots been going on since first mmorpg I played. Was in a guild logged and when login again 2 days later found out that 195 in it was banned for hacking and bot use. FFXIV not that bad for bots. So far only seen 5 whole time have played which be since 1.0. I have seen more hackers than have bots. Last time was in pvp saw 2 one where hit them on there mount didn't have heavy applied and when they got off they could outrun ones on mounts another time saw dragoon that could one hit anyone. You see him do jump then saw tank die that was at full health same with healer. Since SE doesn't give a care they should just get rid of the TOS or do something about it.

[chocolatebabysundae]

And then they report you for stalking, and since GMs can deal with stalking and not bots, there is a much higher chance you receive a harsher punishment and before the botter does

I've never had this issue so I'm not sure if you are going by hearsay or personal experience. What you got right though is their gathering bots got hit with a temp ban and not a warning.

[Vnolan]

What you got right though is their gathering bots got hit with a temp ban and not a warning.

Do you happen to remember how many times they were reported or what the reports included for the details?

[Nixxe]

Unless you can provide proof that he is actually botting, the player in question is not cheating. Certainly being amoral, but not cheating.

There's no rules against:
- undercutting
- have multiple ALTs to gain retainer access
- have poorly geared ALTs
- be online 24/7
- a single player owning a mansion
- having ALTs in another FC, different from the main character
- wanting to craft and pay little attention to anything else

What is against the rules:
- automation

You'd need to file a report attacking the automation with proof of automation. Having something like a video of the crafter literally crafting a full 24 hours might be a good indication of actual automation, especially if this happens multiple days in a row (because there are days even I've marathoned play up over 24 hours).

Without proof, you're just leading GMs on a wild goose chase. Even if you have the player in question, actually combing logs for "proof of cheating" is a massive endeavor (coming from someone who has done this). You need concise information. Without this, it probably gets thrown into a "not enough information" pile. That's usually the #1 reason reports don't get looked into. This is not something unique to SE, either - this is pretty universal for all MMOs.

Also note, I'm not arguing against your observations. I'm just giving you the business take of the issue.

What kind of game would make players prove someone is botting? Without a statement from that person (which could be explained away by saying they lied anyway), there's very little a player could do to prove it. In most games, you simply report the person and then the company investigates it in some fashion. Blizzard, for instance, absolutely will launch their own review of the player to see if they can detect botting, though they may not punish them right away, as they prefer to punish botting in waves in order to catch as many people as possible.

[KageTokage]

The only instances I've heard of people being banned for botting were ones where they openly admitted to it, which really makes no sense at all. The police don't expect you to get recordings of criminals confessing their crimes just to get them conduct an investigation.

A properly managed MMO would investigate all and any reports of cheating whether there's any tangible evidence of it or not. WoW was by far the best about it from every game I played, because the GMs actually reply to your reports, will ask for extra details if necessary, and will even disclose if any action was taken against the suspect players. I got multiple bots purged throughout my time with the game, and some of the ones who weren't banned initially did punished after a follow-up report with more details.

The lack of two-way communication here mostly feels like a way to avoid accountability because for all we know they aren't even reading the reports we send them.

This has been going on for over 8+ years, a bit late to the party.


People bot, people cheat, welcome to life.

Dismissive attitudes like this are partly why nothing changes. If people made an outcry on the scale of the housing fiasco, they might actually bother revising how they go about enforcing the ToS.

Unfortunately, the only people who really care about the cheaters are the ones who are actively involved in gathering/crafting for money and/or PvPing, which isn't the majority.

[Fhaerron]

Until it actually impacts them financially, SE doesn't care enough to bother.

Time to vote with our wallets?