Dancing Salvage Bans.

SE has logs for these sorts of things, including the client logs created that they can transfer from your client (I read some other thread about those). As quoted from the other thread "There is nothing that goes on within the world of FFXI that SE does not know about and does not have logs of." It's just a matter of whether a GM finds out or someone points one in your direction.

They're not going to come to you and say "did you do this?" if they have log proof of you doing so, and you be like "nah" and they're like "oh, k, my b" and warp you back to town.

Either way, terms of use say they can do everything they did.

it could also be dated on jst time and not your local time.

I've been jailed for 30 minutes in Mordion Gaul for shouting "I just got this account today and I need help on how to get started." I was wearing maat's cap at the time in Aht Urghan Whitegate during my shouts. Back then, people were buying accounts and selling gil, and RMT was quite a huge deal. When I got jailed I started just typing in /say, I typed my name, address, account info, and everything I could to prove that I was the actual owner since the start of the account. No GM showed up to chat, and I got no chat from a GM in text. I was released from jail without ever even talking to a GM. But, I didn't need an explanation as to why I was jailed, I knew why.
This should be evidence that GM's, when alerted, actually do read the text in games, all of it, including your /tells. Don't type bs in the game because you think it's funny to troll GM's, you will end up jailed. They don't need to give a reason, because the reason is clear, concrete, no room for interpretation, because they are present at the time of the event. Your character cannot commit crimes against the design by accident. If you are using 3rd party tools, and anyone at all calls a gm on you, they can easily monitor the zone you are in and watch the game. They can zoom in on your character and the parameters show up, they can see your characters buffs. The evidence is tangible, always. This game is governed by laws of Vana'diel physics as designed by the development team, and when broken are evident to the observer. There is no, "well you have to understand the context", there is only 1 context, meaning there are limitations designed into this universe, breaking these laws of Vana'dielian physics will destroy the universe, in other words, you are no longer playing the game. You changed the design parameters of the game, and have invented a new universe, where you are now God. The design of a game defines what is possible, when you do the impossible, it's crystal clear that you cheated. This is not a case where you get representation to defend your point of view. In Vana'diel, SquareEnix is the Creator of the Universe, they see all. God speaks to us everyday when we log in, and basically tells us what we can do, we know God exists in this game, there is no room for skepticism. All who cannot deal with these laws either quit, or roll the dice and cheat, and then hope that God/SE will let you slide. There are numerous warnings all over the place about cheating and what it can result in if God/SE catches you. That is everyone's warning, and the explanation is self-evident.

I can personally guarantee they didn't do that. The log files your talking about only last a few minutes to a few hours at best as they are rotated logs.

C:\Program Files (x86)\PlayOnline\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XI\TEMP

You can see them here, and yes you can even delete them with no problems at all.

What we are saying is that there was no "investigation", it was all automated, which is an extremely bad thing to do for a customer facing service. People get pissed enough as is when they have to deal with automated answering systems, but to automate the process to terminate accounts, that's extremely bad for long term customer service.

But where's the proof of this?


The client side ones, sure. Server side ones still exist, it's the reason SE can ask you "when did this issue occur?" and if you give them a time, they can go look up the logs for that time.

Either way, those logs could've provided info required to justify the suspension.

Halfway through reading this I took off one of my socks and smelled it. No idea why, but I think it's relevant somehow.

While not impossible, it's highly unlikely SE is banning people without any sort of confirmation/investigation. If they were, they would burden themselves with a massive amount of false bans that would only increase the workload on their already tiny staff, not to mention the utter outrage we'd see on all the forums about false bannings.

It's highly likely, based on all the information so far, SE is changing up their methods to ban people. Long have people expected a polite GM call to ask if they are around to confirm they are botting, which the playerbase was ready for with alarms and automated responses, even as far to decipher the GM chat box and have a program waiting to answer even that.

The lessons I take from this recent wave of bans are:

1)If you have been botting job points or clipping in Salvage in the past 1-3 months, you're at a very high risk of being banned sometime in the near future as they continue with their investigations.

2)We don't know exactly how they determine who is botting anymore, but based on the total lack of false bannings so far it seems like they have been fairly successful with whatever method they adopted.

3)Based on #2, you'd have to be crazy to bot JP or do anything that would get you reported until the heat dies down or until someone finds out how they are finding botters guilty and a way to bypass it.

Well see, here's the thing, it's literally impossible to prove botting, short of asking the player if they are there. They don't do it because they're polite, they do it because any other method is fallible.

If you throw every reindeer on the planet off a cliff, and none of the survive, it does NOT prove that they cannot actually fly. It only proves that they chose not to fly.

I know that takes some logic to understand, and you could say well bots run the same paths over and over, not the good bots.

You could say, the time spent in zone proves not human, never more than 8 hours at a time.

You could say, "mechanical inputs" I input commands faster than the game can process. Starcraft II apm.

You could say, a myriad of "this is proof" there's an answer for every possible one, except "are you afk Mr. Botter, please execute this command".

I identify bots all the time.

Their pathfinding is extremely obvious, in addition to how they handle mobs that you take from in front of them, etc. Not to mention the fact that they repeat these things without fail, and you can easily test over and over and they'll respond the same way every time.

Example: pull a mob the bot is running up to tag, they run back to the spot where they originally were and continue patrol. It's extremely obvious pathfinding and not something a normal player would do, especially not so precisely on their movement. They run up and down an area the exact same way, exact same coordinates, every time.

I've also seen people that I've talked to before, and am friendly with, killing mobs in a CP camp. I will send them a tell, say hello, ask them if they want to join, nothing. They sit there killing for hours. Then, next day/later, they are talking to me super friendly again, like nothing happened. Naturally I don't question it.

ITT: people with US accounts being served the JP treatment.

They're merciless and well, the amount of falsely banned players is so low, why wouldn't they be.

You can call it impossible and fallible until you're red in the face: The simple fact is they are now banning botters without the usual GM tell to confirm a real person is playing and it's extremely hard to make the argument that it hasn't been successful, by and large, so far.

Isn't that a bit.... Hypocritical?
I don't think you can justifiably get up on a high horse against something when you don't unilaterally uphold that value.

You shouldn't really crusade against people if you're not crusading against everyone equally.

Huh? I'm not going to call my friend out on botting, if that's what you're implying.

There's just no reason to bring it up with them at all. If they are doing it, then they will get caught eventually. I'm not going to enter something that will be a purely negative situation for both of us. I didn't say I didn't report them.

Besides, it's not like I just messaged them and was like "he's not responding, he must be botting!" No, he was solo farming at the edge of our camp pulling one at a time (just randomly showed up) for hours, and it was extremely obvious bot behavior, using the examples I gave in my post.

His profile lists all jobs 99 and he solos his JPs with trusts


Dynamis quote after saying he averages 800




Dunno why he's so surprised.

When it comes to friends, a lot of people would look the other way because losing a friend isn't worth doing the right thing, I wouldn't report my friends on this game for Job Point botting or clipping in Salvage but I'd probably advise them to stop, especially considering the recent crackdown.

Just want to point something out here, for clarity regarding the recent activity.

They are not sending people to Gaol, they are simply disconnecting service on the spot and flagging the account. When/If you return there is no debriefing or conversation with a GM.

Yeah, I know. If you read the rest of the posts I'm responding to, I know that's the case.

The point is he's complaining that they aren't doing that, and because they aren't, it's impossible for them to know he's cheating because they're "not verifying", which is far from the case.

how the hell do you get 800 in dynamis? That's 2x as much as me on my best days. They buff the proc rate or something since I quit last year?

They don't have to either, I'll agree that it's not polite to not do so, but they are in their full right to suspend or terminate any service without having to explain themselves.

This! Especially if the given party they are going to suspend is offline. They're not going to wait for you to come online.

I used to be an administrator/game master of a completely different game, an MMORPG, a server with over 1000+ active players simultaneously. I had to deal with so much random stuff the players would do, rules broken, drama situations, hacks, botting, whatever. Doing this, on top of being a manager of the GM staff, I had to have the last word on a lot of situations. I'm well-experienced with being on the other side of these things, so I can somewhat understand the situations they go through.

That doesn't make my opinion any more valid or more correct, but I can understand better their reasoning behind the actions they take.

Know what, your sarcasm is accurate. I just scan read the OP and said to myself, oh oh OH here we go again, a cheater who wants to know why he got banned, and thinks he deserves to be told that he got caught cheating. The point in the end was that he doesn't need an explanation or confirmation, because SE witnessed it. The dude is mad because he didn't get an explanation. Which makes it sound like, "Hey wtf, last time my account was banned I was told why." Good riddance.

It's not so different from moderating a forum or chatroom either to be fair.
Even the situations where people know they were in the wrong, but still get angry when you terminate access. (Even up to the point of being threatened with a lawsuit, that sure made my day.)

Sorry I'm late to this party, but:


Is this the pot calling the kettle black or what?

There's a difference between exploiting game mechanics for massive profit and tweeking the UI so it makes more sense.

I mean, look at WoW. Blizzard supports the community bettering the UI and making new tools for different jobs and tasks.

It's possible to make a distinction. People with the "Oh, I'm pure, I play on PS2 without Windower etc. If you use those, you're just as bad as someone duping!" are the ones being "holier than thou" jackasses. :p

'scuse me, what on earth are you doing?

[edit]
This comment was aimed at a now deleted post.

Better to just not comment on it, a mod will take care of it, I'm sure. :p

Copy and paste the whole page...its a trap.