A friend and well-known hunt spawner on Primal/Dynamis with no prior infractions on their account was recently suspended for 10 days. In the email sent to them, it listed botting (and related activities) as the ToS that was broken. However, they play on a PS4 and have checked their logins to make sure that their only PC access to their account was for Mogstation.
The only thing that resembles botting on their account is killing too many mobs. This spawner enjoys doing kill counts for hunt mark S ranks, and more specifically, Sphatika. For those not in the know, spawning Sphatika requires you to kill 100 of three separate types of mobs, for a total of 300. Killing these 300 mobs does not guarantee a spawn; Sphatika can spawn anywhere in the 48-hour window that it’s open, and the only way to spawn it is to complete the 300-kill count whenever the invisible timer is ready.
This person waits for people that seem to be there for the daily hunt bills. They don’t sell the drops for the mobs on the Marketboard, and just keep materials stacking up in their retainer for laughs, or to give away a stack to people who need the items for crafting. There is ZERO bonus for being the one to spawn the S rank, monetary or otherwise. They just find it calming to do these kill counts and mindlessly grind.
I was originally going to wait and hope the GMs would listen to the appeal, but they upheld their decision, even though there’s miles of difference between how a bot moves and interacts. We think that they likely only looked at the amount of kills done and did no further research.
I’m just really frustrated that they decide to suspend an outlier that isn’t generating gold or negatively affecting others at all. This also worries a lot of us in the hunt community, because if they will suspend for just kill statistics, ignoring any chat logs or player actions or lack of use of the materials gained, we’re not sure where the line is drawn and how many attempts to spawn marks we can safely do without facing action on our accounts.
tl;dr: GMs suspended someone for killing too many mobs, when they:
• Are completing the requirements to spawn an in-game mob
• Play on a PS4
• Interact and chat with others while completing kill counts
• Stop and do other things while completing kill counts
• Do not sell or use materials gained from kill counts