Happy Thanksbanning!

There've been weekly bans since mid october, duping stuff didn't get any attention until nov10. They never stopped banning AH bots, the entire period from rhapsody bans until now. We aren't going back to salvage ban v2, there were less bans then than we got at rhapsodies launch.

They obviously aren't trying to ban every cheater, just enough to scare you, which is why determining a threshold is pointless. That sort of tactic doesn't need to and isn't always best suited by focusing on the most aggregious offenders. Banning some casual offenders will deter people more than banning obvious bots.

This thread is like a hilarious bizzaro world. JA0 is most definitely cheating. It allows you a lot more freedom, especially in aoe farming or certain fights where you need to turn fast, the benefit is undeniable.

Nobody said it wasn't, directx was asking if it was detectable, which it likely isn't. Go back to my post, I said it's cheating.

Weekly bans since mid oct? Did you personally have an account banned or are you getting that info from somewhere

Not surprised in the least. But clearly the majority of us, myself included, weren't paying attention and always thought it musta just been "those dirty RMTs in Ceziak" or something of that nature. Not the decked out pearled guy in Mhaura.


sweet lord the most truthful and 100% guaranteed statement on this webpage at the moment.

China's been crying about losing their jp bots on their private chats since mid october. A couple regular players have come up as well, dating back to before dupe. Scope certainly seems to have increased in the past few weeks, though. I haven't lost a leveled account in a couple years, besides 'the taru' and the character I verified the dupe on in the first place.

(They always ban on tues-thurs midnight-3am EST anyway though, so it comes off as a wave, when really it's probably just the timeslot whatever worker is assigned to read through the list of offenders and 'verify' aka check them off to be acted on.)

'The new normal' is short periods of low enforcement followed by longer periods of no enforcement. People who will just buy or make a new character and not care about what they lost are going to bot regardless.

But, by now everyone should realize that there'll always be another period of ban activity. So, if your character has meaning to you, and you've spent however many years building it up, some pause is necessary. You never know if you'll be one of the people botting away in what you think is a 'no enforcement' period, only to be caught up in the first wave of bans when they get back to it.

tldr; if you like your char don't bot.. it's the message SE wants to send and it's not that complicated

This thread needed more memes.

That is incorrect.

There is a big difference between, “the game allows (a) x 5 and I want (a) x 10”

Vs
“The game allows (b) x 0 and I want to straight up add it to the game”

It wasn't a short period, it was long as ***. I don't know who thinks two whole years is a short time for an online MMO to not enforce any rules. I honestly don't get what angle hes coming from, its quite odd. Also his examples are really poor, you can prevent people from getting banned by showing them that SE is actively banning for that behavior. Then they will just not do it, not look for the shortest amount of time they can bot.

I personally know a handful of people who only botted light because they saw everyone and their grandma doing it, with this they stopped out right. So the message has worked from SE (which is what I suggested they did from the start.) With more testimonials people will tone it down a lot and your average player, the ones that join you on shouts and you see putting life into an MMO, won't be banned. Also, at one point they could turn around and say any windower users will be banned. So by your example, we should all be playing vanilla.

I can't corroborate his statement saying ban waves started before the dupe. I know a lot of people botting 24/7 that didn't get touched prior, so it definitely was not at the same intensity as now.

you both illiterate? i'm saying the times they ban are low enforcement, and the others are no enforcement

they definitely banned in between rhapsodies waves and current waves, just not for farm botting .. i lost a few lv1 mules for AH botting

It was a period of NON-ENFORCEMENT to them because it wasn't a big wave of their buddies just "dem baddies in Ceziak" and SE didn't make a big deal about it with announcements and temp server shutdowns. Was just the business as usual bansticks that you mention that the majority of players didn't notice.

The difference between them and others is they choose to think unless SE makes an announcement with bells, whistles, and at least 100 banned accounts that nothing is going on.

There was definitely groups of sixbots banned in oct/pre dupebans

Sirset of mithras, Which magically one day all had afterglow twashtars, which I found a little odd to say the least lol. They probably got bopped for duping, but were botting too, it'd be neat to know. (could've been sold too, but the timing is suspicious)

New bots october "sirset"
Sirama Sirateta Sircat Sireneta Sirenita Siryan

The other "set(s)" is a certain yellow linkshell that has like 5 sets of 6bot and all but one are missing

I'm not responding to anything specifically said in this thread, more things I've been seeing in LS chats and various discords I'm in, but I'm sick of people who are acting like it's gospel confirmed from SE that certain things are what's getting people banned. Stop. We don't know what triggered it. You can't even say that if we get enough data from people about what they've been up to we'll be able to figure it out. People lie.

Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. SE phone support doesn't know more than what the e-mail tells you unless there is an STF report on file, and even then they're super vague. If someone says SE phone support told them something they're full of ***.

Why do you think Chinese bots getting banned would make it to the forums?

Wasn't that what he was talking about? and you called him full of rubbish.

They must of missed loads of rmt dupers because rmt site prices are insane lower than before.... No wonder why people only yell for crap instead of actually doing it with a group....

server?

I've been on a rampage on the STF reports and I don't really care who hates me for it.

Through the last week I've had people both cheer me on for killing the bots and pissed off at me calling me a sadist and whatever else. At one point, there was literally 5 AFK bot groups dead in Dho Gates last week and a room full of mobs for real players to enjoy.

I was doing shouts in Dho Gates like "Botting is bad for your character's health!" and "If you want to pay for CP, find a real player to pay and stop paying bots and Chinese RMT" and once I had them all dead, "Dho Gates is now a bot free area" to which someone replied in shout "he really did it!" or something like that. At one point I had someone helping me mess with the bots.

I spent several hours last week after getting off work each night messing with bots in Dho Gates and reporting them to STF.

And I've done reporting in the weeks before that, too, but I really went ham last week.

I've got screen shots of one set of the Chinese farmers telling me line after line of chat in /tell in Chinese (English Letters). None of which did I reply. I'm pretty sure he was mad that I got all his bots killed over and over right after he'd set them up. It was hilarious because the bots' actions were so predictable, and once he turned the bots on, there wasn't anything he could do to counter what I was doing to get him killed. I took screen shots of his communications, but haven't run it through my phone's camera/translate app, yet. Might be a fun story in those chats.

And another Chinese farmer, who spoke English well enough, who was running two bot parties simultaneously selling CP, actually brought his PLD (that he claims he never bots on), out to help his two bot parties and trying to prevent them from dying.

I made him hold an Apex Bat on the PLD for what must've been 2hours. He mentioned several times that it must be a waste of time for me and that surely there was something else I could be doing. He also mentioned a few times how come I wasn't messing with the other bots. To which I told him that I had. Anyway, I had claim on the bat, but his bot group had threat on it as well and then the PLD came out and cured his bot party to get on the hate list and then he popped off Sentinel and self cured/phalanx from there. He really wanted to get back to farming Malignance Gears on the character he'd come out on PLD on; he said he was spamming VE on THF. I think he said he was just missing the hat. He made jokes about how the bat was like flies. Wouldn't leave him alone. I learned he was previously an international student and that he does his two parties across two computers. He has an Intel CPU preference. Lots of other stuff. In the end he really wanted me to end this (the bat that I had claim on that his PLD was holding). I told him that he charges people to kill stuff for them, and here you are wanting me to kill something for free for you?

Humorous to me, I've basically got him sending me a Popper (firework) every day to not mess with his bots rofl. Some seriously soft-level extortion going on. The guy is pretty smart, humorous, and probably a great guy to know and play with. He made a comment that I was interesting to talk with, as well.

Bottom line for me, I'm tired of bots. And that's what I tried to convey to him.

I keep an STF report tab open in my browser all the time now.

Personally, I don't a whole lot care if you're using windower for something like gear swap or even automated echo drops. I don't even care if you put a BRD on auto follow and have it doing automated songs. What pisses me off, is full-on automated play. If you're not at the computer, and your characters are doing ***, I'm reporting you.

Dho Gates (asura) I'm claiming as a bot free zone, now. Test me.

Mpking others and harassimg others players are also breaking SE rules.

You (generic) can hate all bots and RMTs, be it right or wrong, it doesnt give anyone any right to make justice by your own hands.

Report button is there for that reason.

I don't care if you think it's harassment. I make my entry upon them known. If they don't answer, they are botting and get what's coming to them. It's not like it's not obvious, anyway, when they are there every day of the week.

My whole methodolgy of proving they are botting is then put in the STF report (which includes what you'd call out as harrassment) for SE or whomever to verify what I'm doing to prove that they are botting.

MPK issues were resolved back in 2006 era. There is not a single method in the game to actually MPK someone now.

Common bots on the other hand will provoke/tag any unclaimed monster, so if you pull a velk (lawl) or a craklaw (lawl), engage it, move within the bot's vicinity, disengage, the monster will become unclaimed, and the bot will proceed to engage and voke that monster lol.

Some bots are programmed to not touch some monsters, though, but that method is fun, too. And then "they" literally killed themselves. You didn't tell them to pull that mob. lol

But yeah, MPK does pretty much take some effort on the bot's part. In the end, they do it to themselves.

One of the most fun ways to get them, is to sleep rotation a LOT of mobs in front of them, then let them throw something at one of them (usally whiff), sleep it again to claim it, let them throw something at another, sleep it to claim it, etc. Until they've got 8 or 9 things they've tagged. Then as a rdm/pld, you can diaga them, sentinel, warp ring. They die in seconds.

I had one set of bots swap to Dia pulling on the account of me. I can still mess with them the same way, it just takes Brygid, Defense food, rdm/war (defender) and a solid DT idle set with block rate+ etc. You do all the same things but all the mobs are beating on you the whole time. It's more stressful 'cause you gotta recast aquaveil like every 4 or 5 cures or be at risk of losing the buff, entirely, but still totally manageable. Warp out and they die in seconds.

Some of these bots are extremely capable of handling an extra crab, fish, or bat beating on them for an hour+. Which is kinda impressive.

Whatever technique you use, the bots are basically doing it to themselves, though.

I'm not going to humor this question.