Any point in reporting crafting botters?

[Peregrine]

I've not seen any action on any on players that chronically bot on the server. Seems like every four or five days some shell is catching our regular server fails in Halatali caves dinking away, like little Taliban insurgents.

Even if they're planning on taking action on many of them all at once, the longer bot tolerance goes on the less it's a sting operation and the more it's entrapment. The problem players quickly resort to botting to make something of themselves. If you wait too long, you let the problem children create problems, and you start catching people who deserve it less than the first generation of cheaters. People start giving up if it looks like no action is being taken. You can only tempt people for so long.

The first generation of botters need shown the door as quickly as possible. Waiting really serves no purpose. The STF likes to send messages with mass bannings, but right now they're sending a message that whocares lolffxiv. The cheaters are not paying for the service, offering no benefit to the game right now. If players actually heard that botters were banned, it'd be good press. We wouldn't care that some affected kid came on here to rage that SE lost his bot-ass vote. We'd laugh, point, wave, and say good for Square.

If they think that they need these players, they don't. Not only do they not need them, they certainly don't need the image that botters are tolerated. Makes the game look below average and desperate to the population.

[Cairdeas]

I found one botting in a Storyline Instance.

[Peregrine]

Only thing we can do is keep reporting them to the STF. Too many people probably stop when the GM call gets returned to sender. That's a failure on SE's part. STF reports should be made in-game. You can't accurately gauge the extent of the problem if 80% of reports never get filed because they're pains in the asses to fill out. Thus, SE is choosing to make the reporting difficult, and in doing so encourages itself with how few reports they get.

Hm only 200 reports this month! I guess we must have fixed botting guys!

The captcha for crafting is also much worse than that for gathering. I kindof wish they'd do away with that entire system and implement something as silly as Squall's timed R-button hits for his limit break on each synth. Then to bot you'd need visual detection software. But then once the system becomes an obvious ploy to keep botters from doing it, it has to be fun and not monotonous. That's where the art of good, fun minigames has been lost, especially in this game. It's a task, not a game.

[Verecund]

..was not aware people liked crafting so much. Duly noted.