Rampant Botting making the game unplayable for legitimate players.

Botting, at least on Asura is now beyond a joke. Every Apex camp is full of parties that never leave and that are obviously automated, It's impossible to avoid them but it gets worse out of frustration today I started a new character, after running outside into the ronfaure I encountered a level 50 thief in the starting RSE with no subjob and a doublet running the same route over and over killing low level mobs, I continued on to encounter a different thief again level 50 doing the same thing in a different section of the zone. I did a /sea of the zone and it was CRAWLING with characters exactly like that.

Has SE abandoned all attempts at controlling the botting situation? It has reached the point where the game feels unplayable to even a 15 year veteran due to it and I cannot in good faith recommend final fantasy XI to MMO playing friends anymore either.

I am begging you square enix, do SOMETHING about the blatant botting, this whole server is now mostly exp bots and mercenary's (who are likely also automating) spamming yell and congesting endgame camps 24/7, now it's even spilling over to the starting zones.

SE you've already lost my recommendation, I think you will also soon lose my sub. Your inaction is destroying my favourite game.

I would say it's gotten ridiculous, but it's so far past ridiculous there isn't a suitable description of it anymore.

The players posting on the Japanese side also complain about it as well. Both communities feel like SE isn't actually doing anything about the problem.

Sadly it's true, but at the same time, SE is also in part to blame for making some of the grinds so extreme, ML 30 is actually more work than 2100JP was. If the grind was less silly I think fewer people would be tempted to bot it.

Maybe but that doesn't excuse the behaviour of the Asura player base nor does it excuse SE for failing to address this massive issue. I won't make excuses for cheaters, If people don't like the content they're free to play something else and SE should pay attention to that drop in sub numbers and make better content.

It also doesn't explain why there are around 15 level 50 subjobless thieves running set paths around ronfaure killing level 3 mobs either. SE's negligence and complete lack of interest in properly maintaining this beloved game does.

Those level 50 running around starter zones on every server are spark bots. When square decided to cap sparks they effectively raised their sub count 10 fold because all these bots are new accounts that have to be bought from square and restarted over and over.

So now they're making (A LOT) more money by letting them do that.

I'm quite sure they've done the math on how many people will quit if they ignore bots vs how many botter accounts are paying them money. Very Cynical and I'm going to make sure anyone who asks me about what MMOs are worth playing in the future (I have two subs on XI and 1 on XIV currently) know how SE ignores these problems and that they should avoid the two final fantasy MMOs.

The most obvious answer is for everyone that is NOT a bot/RMT is to NOT pay them gil/IRL monies to power-level them up, or stop buying gil online. Then if THAT happens, the RMT/bots will LOSE money on exp'ing and start going away to other games, and then problems will be (partially) solved.
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But as we know that will NEVER completely happen since SO few people are patient enough to do their work themselves - even though it is SO damn simple nowadays to get Lv.1 → 99 in less than a few days all by yourself - that it is bound to be somewhat viable for them to remain.

That won't happen, it doesn't happen in any game. The only thing that keeps mmos playable is policing the issue so it never gets so bad that it destroys the ability to play legitimately. XI is currently way over that line.

I didn't like it either, but there's 15 other servers where this isn't a problem.

It's less apparent, but it is a problem on every server.

I moved to Bahamut months ago, I've seen maybe 2 bots that were the slightest bit intrusive.

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Originally Posted by Uriah

It's less apparent, but it is a problem on every server.

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It is disporportionately worse on Asura (and probably also the biggest mainly-JP server) than on the smaller ones. There are *some* bots everywhere, but camps are much more available elsewhere and so not only are there fewer botters, but those botters are far less disruptive to legitimate players.

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Originally Posted by Tarmarkvar

I didn't like it either, but there's 15 other servers where this isn't a problem.

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I believe every single server has the armies of bots in starter zones, monopolizing low level mob spawns and thrusting shitty RMT bots into new player's faces.

It's a terrible look for new players to encounter.

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Originally Posted by Sfchakan

I believe every single server has the armies of bots in starter zones, monopolizing low level mob spawns and thrusting shitty RMT bots into new player's faces.

It's a terrible look for new players to encounter.

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Yeah but they don't seem intrusive to me. I just leveled up a new character last week and didn't have any trouble getting spawns. I wouldn't even realize they were there unless I did a zone search.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sfchakan

I believe every single server has the armies of bots in starter zones, monopolizing low level mob spawns and thrusting shitty RMT bots into new player's faces.

It's a terrible look for new players to encounter.

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I can't say i've ever seen this. While I'm not in those areas very often, I have not really seen them in the field killing the monsters a newbie would be killing.

Now, that doesn't mean it isn't happening (I have seen groups of bots simultaneously moving between the sparks NPC and the nearby home point on some occasions), but they don't appear to be routinely getting in the way of anyone on Shiva.

Again, this is primarily an Asura problem. There are disporportinately large numbers of bots there because they know everyone's telling people to make their characters on Asura.

Search South Gustaberg or West Ronfaure Thursday night - Sunday morning

Every server, 18 level synced bots in one or both zones, when they aren't cashing in deleting and restarting to reset the spark cap

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Originally Posted by Uriah

Search South Gustaberg or West Ronfaure Thursday night - Sunday morning

Every server, 18 level synced bots in one or both zones, when they aren't cashing in deleting and restarting to reset the spark cap

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can't say i've seen it and i've played in those times. Again, not saying it doesn't happen, I'm sure it does, but I see no evidence that it's being done on every sever with the same frequencies. There's no sense in generating more supply than you need to meet your demand.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

I can't say i've ever seen this. While I'm not in those areas very often, I have not really seen them in the field killing the monsters a newbie would be killing.

Now, that doesn't mean it isn't happening (I have seen groups of bots simultaneously moving between the sparks NPC and the nearby home point on some occasions), but they don't appear to be routinely getting in the way of anyone on Shiva.

Again, this is primarily an Asura problem. There are disporportinately large numbers of bots there because they know everyone's telling people to make their characters on Asura.

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Do a search of level 10 to 11 characters in the starter zones. i saw them on Bahamut yesterday. You'll see them. But it's a non-issue because the zones are large enough that you can avoid contact pretty easily.

There needs to be a bot to continually bump all the threads about bots.

There already is one.