Dem Galka Bots Doe

sure but i can do this at the office

I'm confident no one ever said it wasn't a waste of time

More than responsibility, I'd say it's about priorities.

If Matsui and co's objective is keeping the game running and making new content as the budget allows, they have to weigh the player inconvenience of the perpetual bot churn against the increased game sales and improved metrics they generate. If something really rocks the boat, they'll address it, but otherwise it's not worth it.

Face it, if SE really wanted to kill 3rd party RMT, they'd get into the business themselves. They could even combat P2W accusations somewhat by only selling REMA currencies, not finished weapons. They already have a web store, the infrastructure set up for item code redemption, and the game assets to make it convenient(Cat's eye, Swart Coffers, etc). Priced right, the $/gil market price would tank below the level needed to break even on equipment and sub fees, even for the non-galkarmy RMT mercing or crafting. I think that scenario would be worse for the game than the status quo, though.

I can confirm with absolute certainty that they are receiving weekly bans.

I expect that any day now (maybe monday) the stf page with the amount of bans they did for August will be up, and while the numbers are lies, I expect the lies to at least represent *** 1500 + 18x16x4 "weekly bans"

there's no chance i'd tell you how i'm checking if they got banned.

i don't care if you believe or not, confirmed it for my own sanity last week and this week. they also appear to have reduced their numbers. likely couldn't get enough discount keys for all servers this week

Right. "I know but I'm not telling you."

I see I woke up in the 90s today, my elementary school sure looks different.

SE introduces a cash shop for XI, I stop playing XI...and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. This isn't a modern MMO, and that's the reason we stick with it. Giving it a cash shop is one of the major no-no's in the eyes of the majority of XI players(not all- I'm not saying all so don't be barfing up anecdotal evidence of "well, I would like one")....honestly, if people wanted a cash shop, they'd play a different game.

sucks to suck

See, if you truly didn't care if we believed you, you wouldn't even post you have this "secret amazing way" to know. You want the credit for being a mystic, yet give us zero reason to believe. This might be State Fair season across the nation, but I still don't trust Carnies or those who use their methods.

you caught me

a decade ago i would have agreed, not sure if i still do. FFXI might not have a direct cashshop but it sure is designed around pay2win with extra steps, aka the RMT/multi box/bot -> Merc loop.

it's sad to say but a cashshop could be considered to be a more "honest" approach than what we have now. it would give SE a bigger incentive to ban bots asap and stop RMT. plus we'd finally get a face to glue on our vooodoo dolls.
depending on what you offer in that shop it might not stop mercing but pickup groups are so dead that i'm not sure if putting a end to mercing would be enough to cause a comeback.

to know that RMT who ruined the fun for a lot of folks would find themselfs suddenly cut from their source of "income", maybe with debts or a loan on their hands... you know, karma catching up to them, sounds good to me, ngl.

This is pretty much undeniable, but I can also verify they're not on the same accounts, so they're certainly getting banned.

The idea that they (may or may not actually) get a report on friday(jp morning) and do nothing until monday morning is ridiculous.

Or that they get a report, and actually follow through in as little as 6 or so business hours from report to ban (in current year*) That is an entirely unreasonable ask, considering the company. Not impossible, but certainly irregular if so.

Friend invite will show the handle number the character is attached to, and they've gone up by about 1500 since last week. Go to pending friends, click enter, and it shows the handle ID between their name and the 'tell/send message/view messages' options.

I know you *really* want to believe they're never getting banned, but at some point you have to realize that it's not a realistic explanation for them to just log off and quit from monday to thursday every week.

Neither option is logical. There mere idea that the square team turns a ban that fast, is insane. When you can see the same bots running for literally years in some instances.

I assume, reasonably so, that they don't just insta ban all 18 accounts in an alliance, across all 16 servers. I assume they "have" to have some amount of protocol that must take some individual assessment, regardless of obviousness. and if they don't work weekends, and the first reports are sen midday friday that leaves very little time for that to happen.

COULD they drop a ban literally 5 minutes after the bots start, yeah, of course it's blatantly obvious. But do they, no, they don't.

Anyone with even a modicum of tech knowledge and access to the databases can write a script for it. It's not rocket science, and these people are employed in a tech field.

Query all characters with less than 36 hours of playtime that have emptied sparks(weekly cap value below 10k, for example).

Sort into pools by account ID.

Flag any pool with more than 5 entries.

If there's an older character on the account, flag it for review. Otherwise, straight to ban.

The level of your delusions because you're upset over what some chinese are doing is completely ridiculous. It is beneficial to SE to sell all of those account keys and ban them on monday. It is beneficial to china to buy all the account keys and farm for a weekend, because their labor is worthless. Everyone wins, except the players.

It's never been about can or can't. It's about actively choosing to ignore it. And/or needed 10 people's "ok" to proceed through the "paperwork".

The same people who can't even translate and spell correctly just nail this ban 300 accounts a week thing flawlessly, right.

Wish we could ban this thread.

Imagine thinking that the people responsible for localization are the same people logging in on a work laptop to ban galkas every Monday.

Why would they ban them they pay monthly fees it is counterintuitive.

They only ban a small percentage of people to make it look like they care.

Those STF numbers could be completely fabricated so the people can be like "look they banned 2,345 accounts last month".

When in reality it was more like 10.

There's no "could be" about it, they are entirely fabricated.

There's no scenario where 1553 accounts got banned last month. It simply didn't happen.

But, if Augusts numbers say 2700~ I'll believe they actually banned the 1200 galkas.

i mean no, you won't. you'll make up some *** about how SE is fudging the numbers and say you were right all along.

didn't elidyr or whatever try to replicate what these were doing and get banned the same day?

They ARE faking the numbers. unequivocally. Just if they add 1200 to the fake numbers, the fake numbers will still be fake with the 1200 galkas tacked on.

But if they spit out the same *** ~1500, then we should all know they were not banned.

If you're going to go down the road of thinking they are lying to you, and the banned numbers are just fabricated you might as well just say Square Enix are actually running these bots and selling the gil themselves.

Naw that's silly. They can create gil with the stroke of a key.

Inflating numbers is a common tactic for any business.

Negative. Mine still running, but I did catch a suspension after exactly 30 days.
Edit: I also don't heavily abuse them either. Only a matter of time before they get hit. I'm just not naive enough to think it can't or won't happen.

Just as a point of clarity, it's not that they don't get banned AT ALL. It's that they don't get banned in 6 business hours / 1 work day / 3 days. Whichever qualifier you chose.

Start thursday afternoon get banned sunday night, is what I doubt. Again, not because it can't be done, but because the redtape and/or permissions and/or time it takes to fix/accomplish/do anything else. That speed would be an extreme outlier in their procedure (in current year).

I honestly think it's just pointless to really put to much thought in to anymore. That's just my opinion though. :/