So Devs...Are we going to rule with an iron fist this time around?

[darkstarpoet1]

For all we know they banned all the known bots when 1.0 went down so all their saved up gil is lost! HA HA HA!
Probably not though

now that would be absolutely hilarious and very welcome.

[IndigoDarkwolf]

Huh. I'd never known about /emote motion. More reason for S|E to not expose an API for playing emotes.

[Cojika]

Just report as many bots as you see every time you see them and we'll be good.

Hopefully the RMT special task force is actually competent in ARR and actually bans cheaters and rmt. In 1.0 it seemed like most reports you sent them went straight to the recycle bin without being read or they just went to an inbox that was never, ever checked.

[WednesdayEve]

I remember back when I played FFXI, every once in awhile they would show how much gil was taken out of circulation and how many accounts were banned between this date and that date(or was it "this month"). I don't remember but I always felt some comfort in them showing us they were putting in some effort in banning RMT/third party tool users.

[fusional]

Botting however, they're allowing Add-ons, so they kind of told b-...end-game shells it's perfectly ok to script bots.

i want to metaphorically punch you in the mouth every time you try to fallaciously connect add-ons with botting.

let me explain one more god damned time. it won't get through your thick skull, but i'll try regardless.

where does the word "bot" come from? it's a colloquialism for ROBOT. what is a ROBOT? a robot is a MACHINE that is either controlled by man, or designed by man to autonomously control itself.

add-ons like a distance plug in, quest tracker, map marker- these DO NOTHING FOR YOU. you aren't CONTROLLING anything. and there is NO AUTONOMOUS CONTROL OF YOUR CHARACTER as direct result of using the add-on. add-ons provide INFORMATION or ADDITIONAL VISUAL ENHANCEMENTS/CUES, and nothing more.

a program that fishes for you, though? yes, it's a bot. a program that farms for you? yes, it's a bot. a program that claims for you? yes, it's a bot. and yet, add-ons DO NONE OF THESE THINGS.

so why do you do this? why do you keep leaning on the slippery slope fallacy? why do you keep fallaciously connecting add-ons and bots as if they're the same thing? a bot is a bot. an add-on is an add-on. both are fashioned by third parties and the similarities end there.

and then there's the implication that endgame shells are botters. ok.

are you brain damaged? are you so stupid that you honestly believe the only people in FFXI who fishbotted were hardcore endgamers? does the alternate reality you live in have a name?

[Lucke]

*DISCLAIMER*
I'm not telling SE how to run their business, I don't know the first thing about running a business, but this is just an idea. If it sounds like I'm ordering SE around, I certainly don't mean it, I just don't know how else to explain it.

Ok, so I think SE needs to put in bold letters "BUYING GIL IS AGAINST THE RULES, YOU WILL BE BANNED/SUED/CASRATED/DRAWN AND QUARTERED/etc IF YOU BUY GIL!" instead of that "Don't neglect your school, work, family, goldfish, antfarm, etc".

The RMT stuff is just buried in the EULA which noone bothers to read. I think some, not all but some, of the buyers are just stupid and don't know it's against the rules. You guys should know by now, I think people are morons, I make that clear. It's true to, people are effin MORONS. So, I really think SE should make it abundantly clear that RMT is against their rules. Put that up and FORCE people to acknowledge that it's against SE's rules.

That won't do much though. I remember that a loooong time ago, I started playing EQ. I talked with people whose parents bought them EQ and like 10000plat to start them off. Parents being parents probably didn't realize that was against EQ's EULA. This one I don't think SE can control. We, as the "good guys", have to educate other players to make sure they know so noone can say "DURRRRR I didn't know I couldn't do it". That may stop buyers from buying that crap. I think SE really needs to be more aggressive with bannings so that people will think "Oh gee, I better not buy this million gil cause SE likes to ban people....". SE should create a program, or alter their code that throws up a flag when a person's account gets a mass influx of cash. SE could investigate if that person just got lucky on the markets or if someone traded the gil. That's another idea, SE could record all gil transactions up to a certain point, maybe like a month at a time.

tl;dr version People are STUPID

[fusional]

Addons are fully traceable because they need to access the game API. They are also fully dependent on what sections of the API are exposed and how the developers want people to use the addons.

Bots are not limited and unrelated to addons, because they do not use any API and do not interact directly with any game code in any fashion. They replicate human behavior via automated button presses and mouse movements. They are completely untraceable in any automatic way and require large amounts of human investigation on a case-by-case basis.

Games that expose their API and are smart about it in restricting their usage like not allowing API that performs character actions are no more at risk of having bots than games who don't have an API at all.

kudos to you for explaining it much more politely than me.

the abundant stupidity in topics like this is bound to give me an embolism someday.

[HiirNoivl]

tl;dr version People are STUPID

Hehehe. You're really cute!

[Solace]

When people realize the problem is not RMT but the buyers, it's always people sitting there singing F!@# RMT when they are the ones keeping them around cause some of them are the buyers.

That doesn't solve the problem. People need to get banned to make a point.
This is real world stuff here, social psychology.

In the real world people will push the boundaries until you make them stop.
If there were no laws, we would be lawless.
That is why they need to implement judges, that is why they need to implement bans.
You need to make a point.

Point being: "If you use RMT or bot, you will get banned. Period."
Unless that happens, there will not be a significant deterrent.

If there were no deterrents in real life, every store in the world would be looted.

[CptnGamble]

Always look at the money, how many subs the RMTs hold compared to how many ppl will quit the game because of RMT botters. I bet SE will ban RMTs but not to the "Iron Fist" extent we honorable players expect; but more in line with making it more expensive for RMTs to have to buy a new key to continue their gold farming...