Bot issues

[LunaJoy]

Wouldn't go reporting 1 gil undercutters, since they may very well be an actual person. I do it myself. Some days I just run an instance, finish the instance, and as I wait for next instance to pop, I check my listings and adjust prices if I need to.

Support Desk - Contact Us - Report Cheating
Just suspecting someone might be a bot because they undercut by a gil isn't worth reporting because it's not something only bots do. You'd need to have some fairly specific detail on what you personally observed that makes you believe it's a bot (such as witnessing the flying hack that the RMT farming bots were using at the start of the expansion).

Players can get in trouble for a false report but GMs aren't likely to do anything if your report appears to be getting made in good faith. They're going to punish the reporting players who are trying to make trouble for the other player because they didn't like something that was done (like undercut by 1 gil).

Let me clarify. I said, “for example”. I’m not making trouble because someone is undercutting by 1 Gil. I undercut by 1 Gil. I should’ve said the crafter bot or something else. Clearly. I don’t know what they’re usually called. This is the first time I’ve witnessed anything besides the gathering or flying bots doing MSQ.

I have quite a bit of other “evidence” that is purely circumstantial. I just thought I should at least alert the GMs to this person. I just didn’t want to get in trouble myself, lol.

[esra01]

Let me clarify. I said, “for example”. I’m not making trouble because someone is undercutting by 1 Gil. I undercut by 1 Gil. I should’ve said the crafter bot or something else. Clearly. I don’t know what they’re usually called. This is the first time I’ve witnessed anything besides the gathering or flying bots doing MSQ.

I have quite a bit of other “evidence” that is purely circumstantial. I just thought I should at least alert the GMs to this person. I just didn’t want to get in trouble myself, lol.

Right now I think it's almost impossible to actually get someone banned even if you have clear evidence of them botting. I have previously submitted a report of a fishing bot that is clearly glitching out with a video evidence and the bot is still fishing up till now.

Heck me and my friend also have experimented a bit with FF14 Cheating report, testing if they actually read our reports or not. Everyday my friend would submit a cheating report that absolutely have nothing to do with cheating or botting, but instead he submitted the entire bee movie script to the STF team through multiple "cheating" report. Lo and behold he still didn't get a ban or even a warning.

So yeah right now even if you report the suspect your report would get drowned by the bee movie script anyway.

[Jijifli]

Square ain't gonna do anything about the gathering bots, from my experience. There's a few I've been tracking that honestly have been going for years (one even back in ARR), but I can probably make a guess to why.

The BLM/BRD/WHM bots you see that just get to 50 and spam rush gil before they get banned are (usually) going to be made with false money, things like stolen cards. It's to reduce their investment (as runign 50+ bots at once means, in month 1, they paid $1750, and need to make an investment asking for that back within 2 weeks. I think each bot might need to farm 50+ mil each in arr content, good luck.)

The gatherer bots however you see that're level 80, because they usually aren't involved in mass rmt (note mass, they still probably sell gil on the side), are paid with legit money. Square wouldn't have to deal with chargebacks in these cases, but there's another factor here too. There's a good chance if you ban these bots, which're used with legit money, the person might not come back, and that'll actually cost Square money. So, if Square doesn't think the gatherer bot situation hurts the game, then they aren't going to throw money away.

Bugs me to no end, but... I can't think of any other excuse honestly. It's not like these ones are even good at hiding it (if you manage to break their scrip, some will legit forget where they were and start running into walls for a while. Or in one's case, their scrip will make them flee from battle and run into another mob straight on to die, rather than change course.)

Heck me and my friend also have experimented a bit with FF14 Cheating report, testing if they actually read our reports or not. Everyday my friend would submit a cheating report that absolutely have nothing to do with cheating or botting, but instead he submitted the entire bee movie script to the STF team through multiple "cheating" report. Lo and behold he still didn't get a ban or even a warning.

I will say, please be mindful to not do this though. I mean, I doubt they're reading them anyways, but if they are, that's a good way for your friend's tickets to actually go on the backburner and ignored.