Many people cheating, automated bot to farm drops to synth spheres for Escutcheon

[Halley]

Well, guess the cheaters will get richer off their illgotten gains.

Huh, who would've thought games are more like real life than fantasy.
Crazy, right?

[VoiceMemo]

I've been waiting months for bots to get banned for farming spheres, not ONE has been banned yet. And now when I search for all farming locations for spheres I see bots everywhere.

SE do you really not care about the Terms of Service that you have set and just care about money from subscriptions now?

If this is so please change the terms of service and say 3rd program party use is allowed, because this is essentially what you are doing by turning a blind eye to the massive issue of bots killing mobs for items to desynth to spheres, and the cheaters profiting off their illgotten gains.

I'm really considering retiring from game if this continues because the T4 shield is one of 2 things left in the game for me. I don't mind competition between other REAL players, but to fight bots daily is not what I want to do.

[Sirmarki]

I've been waiting months for bots to get banned for farming spheres, not ONE has been banned yet. And now when I search for all farming locations for spheres I see bots everywhere.

SE do you really not care about the Terms of Service that you have set and just care about money from subscriptions now?

If this is so please change the terms of service and say 3rd program party use is allowed, because this is essentially what you are doing by turning a blind eye to the massive issue of bots killing mobs for items to desynth to spheres, and the cheaters profiting off their illgotten gains.

I'm really considering retiring from game if this continues because the T4 shield is one of 2 things left in the game for me. I don't mind competition between other REAL players, but to fight bots daily is not what I want to do.

I think it's too out of control now. I have yet to see any evidence of removal of the typical offenders, and I'm not just referring to shield makers.
It doesn't take long to stand there in Palborough Mines to see that these people are clearly cheating, and these players simply don't care.

I'm starting to to feel the same, as is a friend of mine.
It's a two teir game, with some players playing vanilla FFXI, and others playing with third party software.
It's essentially saying some players are driving go-karts following the speed limit, and others are driving sports cars at unchecked speeds.

We know a huge majority of people are using 'non-standard' versions of FFXI now. This is publicly evident on the likes of Youtube and Twitter with players streaming. Players using various add-ons/plugins to give them an advantage over the people who use the 'legitimate way' of playing 'out of the box' FFXI.

How does SE deal with it? It's tough, because its gone too far now, as I said above. Something needs to be done though, as it's like the wildwest out there. I also wish there was some kind of moderation on the /yell system, just as there is on these forums.

[Dzspdref]

As I said before, make the spheres /ex. You CANNOT sell them.
You either make them to use, or nothing at all.
That would kill every single sphere synthing 'bot out there (although groups of real players teaming up would not be affected, although they couldn't make any gil from it and ONLY the person that can make/use spheres would benefit... at first)
If this is done, then every single /yell for "I sell spheres cheapest!"... or anyone farming them for resale would get turned off. Instantly. And those trying to make a shield would have much less competition for targets, alleviating all "legal" players' problems.
And for those saying "Oh you can't change them to /ex, it's too difficult in programming"... sorry it is not difficult at all. Remember how hard it was for them to make rare/ex items only rare, or even stackable and not rare now too? Literal flip of a switch.
And for the rest saying "Then how am I going to make all my gil I want to make?".... Easy; go do something else. Plenty of ways to make gil nowadays it's sickening, because it now makes things just waaaay too overpriced too.
Remember when 1~2 million was a godly amount of gil? I went thru my first 10+ years of playing and NEVER had more than 250,000 gil at a time and survived just well. Might have hit 350~400k once or so, but spent it on items so i could enjoy the game or level my crafting.

[Isola]

For all the gigantic obvious mistakes they make trying to keep this game going, spheres being sellable was one of the largest.

The entirety of the shields, from the very start, all the way to the end.

Maybe even crafting in general, tbqh.

[VoiceMemo]

At this point I'd welcome what they did to chocobo digging/fishing. Implement a limit of the amount of spheres you can produce per day. Since only a person with T3 shield can produce them that would limit the amount people can farm in any zone.

[Justuas]

As I said before, make the spheres /ex. You CANNOT sell them.

Can you make synthesis stuff /ex?

[Isola]

Can you make synthesis stuff /ex?

The cards they made to turn into spheres are EX, half the items that turn into spheres are ex too

[Dzspdref]

The cards they made to turn into spheres are EX, half the items that turn into spheres are ex too

Sad thing about that is the card drop rate and synth rates are horrendous for time spent compared to non-card target item recipe drops.
Friend and I farmed the cards off efts/leeches for nearly 3 hrs on THF x2 with base TH8 each and we each can proc up to TH13.
Killed nearly 400+ targets, got only ~50 cards (so ~12% drop rate).
From those ~50 cards using success rate food and gears, I got only 13 spheres (Guessing ~25% success rate).
Not liking the fact to get enough spheres via cards you'll have to kill nearly 1,680,000+ targets to get enough spheres to "possibly" complete shield.
Even still with just regular sphere recipes, makes me want to know HOW some people have now gotten 6~8 shield fully completed in less than 2 months.
Not allowed to post names here, but I know of one person on Asura that has done that, plus few others that have more than one, having most likely bot-farmed them all.
There MUST be some synergy recipe they used on the Focuser II we haven't figured out yet.
My best is ~45 spirit for T3 using light sphere ... that's IF i get some HQs.

[orionis]

Not allowed to post names here, but I know of one person on Asura that has done that, plus few others that have more than one, having most likely bot-farmed them all.

.. How sly of them..