Huge bot network spotted in the wild

[Bacent]

You'd be better off reporting them. Doing that could get you suspended as it's considered griefing.

...m'kay? Never said I didn't report them. It's hard to even target them, so just getting one in a trade can be a challenge if they fall through the ground too quickly. Barely even done it enough times to count on both hands from my whole time playing the game. It's still funny that some of those bots just break and sit still for hours

[lezard21]

You'd be better off reporting them. Doing that could get you suspended as it's considered griefing.

Not really. The real risk depends on how the "Special Task Force" does their account banning. If they go by logs and see someone was attempting to trade with the bots, they could assume it's the main account and ban it. I wouldn't risk it. Just report them or ignore them.

[Sotaris]

...m'kay? Never said I didn't report them. It's hard to even target them, so just getting one in a trade can be a challenge if they fall through the ground too quickly. Barely even done it enough times to count on both hands from my whole time playing the game. It's still funny that some of those bots just break and sit still for hours

Regardless if they hard to target or not, you're interupting their gameplay and if they turn around and report you, you're in danger. But if you want to take that risk, go on.

[IceW]

There should be an easier way to report bots.

[Kes13a]

There should be an easier way to report bots.

few people who have tried to report botting would disagree

the GM's are not empowered to do anything about them, only the STF is able to apparently

[Pinkmonkey54]

They hide in the walls and under the floors? That’s disturbing… and very scary. Reminds me of Terminator.

[Dragonblanco]

(1) Misleading title, as that didn't look like a "huge bot network" to me. Just a handful of characters at best. I mean, I've seen "huge bot networks" of 20+ characters while playing.
(2) One of my big questions is, what the heck were they even doing? I mean, you going to tell me all of FFXIV's gil is hidden underground and they are mining it up? lol.
(3) Bots are hard to stop. When companies have been heavy with the ban hammer, they also saw huge attacks against them. We're talking DDOS attacks, viruses, etc. That's why they just do the flyswatter approach instead. When an account becomes bothersome and quite obvious, they'll swat at it. Sometimes it's just enough to try to spook them off back into being seclusive but if they keep buzzing around, they get them for good. But as it always is, the flies come back around. Often the accounts suspended/banned are trial accounts and they just go and make another one.

And sure, you might suggest that they get rid of trial accounts, make people buy the game, and pay for a subscription first...that would solve it, right? Wrong...they still keep coming back after doing all of that. And, when it's harder to do new accounts, they resort more to stealing accounts or really mining/hacking the game to try to get more money out of each account attempt. So it's cheaper and less stressful to developers to just stick with the flyswatter approach.

[Bacent]

Regardless if they hard to target or not, you're interupting their gameplay and if they turn around and report you, you're in danger. But if you want to take that risk, go on.

Yes, defend a BOT and THEIR GAMEPLAY. Twelve forbid a BOT report a normal user.

[KageTokage]

Yes, defend a BOT and THEIR GAMEPLAY. Twelve forbid a BOT report a normal user.

Messing with the hacking gil farmers is unlikely to be of any consequence as their operations are basically completely automated.

I would not, however, mess with bots involved with smaller-scale operations like DoH/L farming as they tend to have more manual input involved and if they notice something is off after they return from a period of absence, they can/will report people if they can see that it was a trade that interfered with the process.

[Bsrking5]

And you are more likely to get punished for griefing. Even if they get banned by STF before the GMs get to your case.