How botting may Kill this game (even if the game rebounds)

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Originally Posted by Radaghast

Point is levs is where the majority of the gil entering the system is coming from, not bots. Unless you want to count taru trains.

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leves you can make lets say 200k per 8 leves on average every 1.5 days.

Botting you can make 200k in under an hour while you sleep
36 * 200k = 7.2mil

...... you do the math

Maybe if we had a readily available report button for suspicious activity, we could have more people crying foul upon those who are obviously bots.

I always see bots but I still haven't figured out which GM-call is the appropriate one to file my complaint under so I don't even bother reporting.'

I don't care if it starts a witch-hunt, because as long as the 'task force' has a reasonable judicial system where proof is needed befor punishment, I don't see how many people would find themselves unfairly banned.

I think SE likes to tread on eggshells around botters because... at least they are players! But allowing them to stay does more damages than banning them would.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

leves you can make lets say 200k per 8 leves on average every 1.5 days.

Botting you can make 200k in under an hour while you sleep
36 * 200k = 7.2mil

...... you do the math

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But is that money being created from thin air like lev's, or are you talking about vendor cash generation? Two different things because selling items from the wards doesn't actually create more money, it just changes hands.

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Originally Posted by Radaghast

But is that money being created from thin air like lev's, or are you talking about vendor cash generation? Two different things because selling items from the wards doesn't actually create more money, it just changes hands.

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NPCing items.
There are a lot of bots literally parked next to an npc because all they do is craft and npc stuff 24/7

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

i did not say 20mil. i said 50-100mil and higher. A lot of botters are sitting on 100mil+. That is not from leves.
Inflation is a problem normally but its very heavily enhanced by botting.
I am well aware how easy it is to make gil as I have made well over 20mil in legit ways.

However, when there are bots fishing 24/7 every day and npcing all the fish or consistently taking cheap farmed materials, crafting them, and npcing them for huge profits as in one of my previous examples, there is an obvious problem.

Botting essentially ruins crafting classes and ruins certain gathering classes like fishing. And these are supposed to be -main- classes in the game.

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To be honest I dont care too much about botters in this game. The economy would be by far the worst I have seen in any MMO even without them. What we have is just absurd and there is zero value to gil, I throw it around without even caring and never had any desire to reach 30+ mil. Hell with 5 mil someone can pretty much buy anything they could possibly want aside from something like a +2 champions lance which isnt needed anyway. After buying anything they want they would still have tons left with a steady increase from leves.

I only sold a few items in market wards around release to see how it worked and havent touched that part of the game since, and have more than enough gil. I also always hated how crazy they made amounts. Why do we have to use numbers 7 digits long in a simple trade? Whats the point really? Why couldnt they have just made leves give a couple hundred gil rewards instead and make things cost much less. It doesnt really have much to do with the games economy, just a huge annoyance of mine.

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Originally Posted by Vesperia

Maybe if we had a readily available report button for suspicious activity, we could have more people crying foul upon those who are obviously bots.

I always see bots but I still haven't figured out which GM-call is the appropriate one to file my complaint under so I don't even bother reporting.'

I don't care if it starts a witch-hunt, because as long as the 'task force' has a reasonable judicial system where proof is needed befor punishment, I don't see how many people would find themselves unfairly banned.

I think SE likes to tread on eggshells around botters because... at least they are players! But allowing them to stay does more damages than banning them would.

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Actually SE doesnt care about Botters and ask people to NOT report them. I even tried a few times back in november and recieved responsed asking me not to send reports about other players unless it falls under harassment.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

theres a difference between a few players being a bit ahead and a lot of players being -far- ahead.
Plus the prob isn't just the botting but the psychology that botting is necessary to keep up

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Still though, if the game is fun enough, they won't be worrying about "keeping up". They'll likely be playing with a whole plethora of new players at a steady pace just grouping together till endgame. If people think they have to bot constantly, then i would blame SE for bad design.

At that point they should have plenty of time to complete content and start working on another class to level(if they want, not everyone cares to level everything). Other than just leveling classes there's hardly anything to catch up with in this game.

I wouldn't stress "keeping up", i highly doubt this game will be pumping out so much content that players aren't plateauing at some point (with plenty of time in-between content). Too many people think it's a rush to be #1 or have everything (just play the game and not worry about what everyone else is doing).

Too bad almost every piece of gear that isn't unique or requires NM drops to craft is dirt cheap, generally costing less than 20k gil. You get 20k gil a leve. You do the math. Nobody I know has the mentality that he/she has to bot to keep up.

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Originally Posted by ApplePie

Too bad almost every piece of gear that isn't unique or requires NM drops to craft is dirt cheap, generally costing less than 20k gil. You get 20k gil a leve. You do the math. Nobody I know has the mentality that he/she has to bot to keep up.

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this thread is about new players not about current players and not about now.
This happened in ffxi, a lot of players quit because they couldn't afford the -good- gear and didn't enjoy spending a month farming non stop for one peice of gear. Thats what will most likely happen in this game.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

this thread is about new players not about current players and not about now.
This happened in ffxi, a lot of players quit because they couldn't afford the -good- gear and didn't enjoy spending a month farming non stop for one peice of gear. Thats what will most likely happen in this game.

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We would have to see drastic changes to everything for that to happen. Even brand new players still get a pretty good income from leves and they could look to other ways to gain gil. Most everything in this game is made by crafters, and everything is extremely easy to make, since there arent any rare resources/items. If we got rare items I could see this being an issue for new players, but not with the way things are now. There isnt any difference if you have 5 million or 100 million currently, both players are likely to have similar gear.

This is and was designed to be a casual MMO, gil won't ever be much more than for pocket change stuff. They will make armors r/e and fairly easily dropped to stop mercing, this will never be FFXI mkII, they have stated the desgin of the game from the start.

People hording and collecting gil are going to be sorely dissapointed if they think they will be in a powerful position at some point.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

There is no question that FFXIV is one of the most heavily botted games out there right now. However, SE still hasn't done anything about it, and doesn't seem to intend to any time in the near future.

Even with a great new battle system and amazing new content, this game may not ever have success due to the large amount of botting/cheating

here is why:

1.
The large amount of botting has led to serious gil inflation. As a result of this, a large amount of players have well over 20mil (some having upwards of 50 or 100+).

what does this mean?: New players will have an -incredibly- hard time catching up. This means if elite gear (like the equivalent to ffxi p-charm, hauberk, etc) is released, new players (ex. ps3 players) will be unable to afford it for years or without botting themselves.
And i realize many people say "well SE will implement gil sinks". But honestly from an economic perspective, gil sinks will be nearly impossible to properly implement at this point. Further, FFXIV's economic track record is one of -pure failure-. And further, when hyperinflation took place in FFXI they were unable to gil-sink it out and had to mass ban rmt's and wait about 2 years for the economy to stabalize.

2.
New players will feel unable to ever become elite or catch up to the huge amount of people that have multiple rank 50 jobs. This is especially detrimental to people who want to play the game as a crafter main, as it will be practically impossible to compete or profitably level up crafts when your server is full of people who have multiple crafts at rank 50 from botting.

what does this mean? New players will switch to games where they actually have a chance of being "elite" players. Why? Because humans are on average happier by having relative games than absolute gains. That is to say that people want to have more than the other people around them (this has been scientifically proven to be a characteristic of our brains through neuroscience experiments across the world and across cultures). If FFXIV is released and new players see huge numbers of people with 5-10 rank 50 jobs and realize it could take them months just to get one job to rank 50 (especially crafts) they are likely to move to another game where they can be more competitive.

3
Botters will essentially be the players who end up with all the elite stuff, since they have spent months botting millions of gil and will continue to do so since nothing is being done about it.

what does this mean?: Imaginee FFXIV introduced dynamis tomorrow for hardcore elite weapons. Now lets say a legit player wants it. What are the chances they can compete with the 200+ people on every server who are botting/botted all their gil and can afford to pay high prices for currency. The chances are pretty well 0. Elite gear that is sold or gained with gil (ex. dynamis weapons, p-charm, o-kote etc) will first go to those that botted before it will land in the hands of legit players. Since many people won't want to wait, they will take up botting themselves in order to have a chance.

Why can't SE just ban the bots?
Because from what i've read they currently don't have that special team working on finding out who is botting. And I'm assuming it would be very difficult to mass ban people in the future based on recorded data without banning a number of innocent players. So its very likely those who have botted to this point have gotten away with it.

What will be the future?
It's obviously impossible to predict exactly what happens with the game, but there are a few likely scenarios.

First: Botting leads to constant hyperinflation. Gil sinks fail to remove gil out of the game and as such, the game turns to having all elite gear as rare/ex.
As a result crafting and gathering jobs are no longer nearly as important (other than materia wise).

Second: SE manages to magically combat inflation (incredibly unlikely)
However, there are still 100s of people who have botted numerous jobs. As a result a number of jobs (fishing and crafting) that are easily botted end up completely unprofitable resulting in no one leveling them. In essence, the amount of jobs you have to choose from is cut in half.

Third: SE tries to implement a gil-sink. it fails. The game continues to be one of the most heavily botted games out there. New players see no reason to join a game that is filled with obvious cheaters, and the game essentially fails or stays at its current population. (this seems to be the most likely)

Possible Solutions?

There is probably no viable way to fix the gil problem quick enough in time for a PS3 release unless it is delayed 2 years.

SE could make it -really- easy to get to rank 50 and up the cap to 75 making 50 to 75 the "hard part". If they actually banned bots at this point it would at least make the game more "fair" and allow new players to have a chance at competing for "eliteness". Gil would still be an issue but they could put in more of the current NMs just at higher levels, so that people could farm rare/ex gear to level up with.

Note: I believe many on this forum (not mentioning names but should be obvious) will argue that people play this game to look at the pretty forests and have fun, and don't care about "eliteness" or good gear. I would like to point out that FFXI servers had -massive- amounts of drama over gear, and further that many end game linkshells of FFXI had serious drama over items like byakko haidate, with people getting the item, then quitting the ls. Once again it is scientifically proven that people IN GENERAL (not every single person) prefer relative gains to absolute gains. So please don't just point out that "people don't care about having more than others."

What are your thoughts?

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This is for your first sentence. I actually question that FFXIV is the most botted MMO out their. You would think WoW would have more bots purely because it has so many more subscribers. So ya i do question it.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

this thread is about new players not about current players and not about now.
This happened in ffxi, a lot of players quit because they couldn't afford the -good- gear and didn't enjoy spending a month farming non stop for one peice of gear. Thats what will most likely happen in this game.

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This is a misconception. something soaring to 25mill looks crazy, but when you can make 300k/hr instead of 30k/hr it is not bad.

Example:

Which item is more expensive to Buy

A Hauby selling for 25mill (hyper inflation in XI), but tree cutting selling for 100-120k a stack

Or

A Hauby for 2.5million Gil (Pre Hyper Inflation Prices and the summer after inflation) with tree cuttings selling for around 10-12k a stack.

Hyper inflation did not just increase the price of good gear, it increased the price of everything with value.. including the things people farmed.

So if Hyper inflation happened you would make alot more money but have to spend alot more as well, that is how an economy works it reflects the cost of the market. If 10fold the currency entered the economy the only thing it would devalue is Leve rewards, anything farmed that has value would still have the same purchasing power.

Honestly atm the economy is in massive deflation, ridiculous deflation. Nearly nothing sells.. seriously I can buy a weapon for my rank 50 for the reward I get from 2 leves, my iron plate body costed 45k....... seriously.

Honestly the game needs inflation... everything should cost about 10-20 fold what it does now. Even some Endgame HQ items are becoming dirt cheap.

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Why can't SE just ban the bots?
Because from what i've read they currently don't have that special team working on finding out who is botting. And I'm assuming it would be very difficult to mass ban people in the future based on recorded data without banning a number of innocent players. So its very likely those who have botted to this point have gotten away with it.

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This thread is long and I did't read it all. I may have a solution.

1) Let the players the ability to flag someone as being a botter

2) If someone is flagged as a botter and is engaged in a combat (or gathering, crafting), nothing happens until the end of the combat. When it is time to reap the benefits (exp, items, gil, etc) the game delays the rewards until the suspected botter correctly answers a question. A picture is then submitted to the screen with fuzzy text (just like when you create a new hotmail account). If the suspected botter type the text right (could add voice to help), he (and his party) can have all the rewards. After 3 tries the botter account is locked for review by SE and no reward is granted.

3) If someone is flagged as a botter and is not engaged in a combat (or gathering, crafting), nothing happens until a combat is engaged. Then proceed to point 2.

If you like this idea please click "Like".

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Originally Posted by Kassad

This thread is long and I did't read it all. I may have a solution.

1) Let the players the ability to flag someone as being a botter

2) If someone is flagged as a botter and is engaged in a combat (or gathering, crafting), nothing happens until the end of the combat. When it is time to reap the benefits (exp, items, gil, etc) the game delays the rewards until the suspected botter correctly answers a question. A picture is then submitted to the screen with fuzzy text (just like when you create a new hotmail account). If the suspected botter type the text right (could add voice to help), he (and his party) can have all the rewards. After 3 tries the botter account is locked for review by SE and no reward is granted.

3) If someone is flagged as a botter and is not engaged in a combat (or gathering, crafting), nothing happens until a combat is engaged. Then proceed to point 2.

If you like this idea please click "Like".

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This is a really bad idea since it would surely result in abuse of this function. The XI team did a pretty damn good job their way on cracking down on RMTs and Bots and I'm sure eventually they'll do the same here.

Look. In FFXI the problem with Bots and RMTs was that players needed very specific gear to be good at their job and the community expected you to step up in almost every situation. There was a strong understanding that you needed these rings, eat this food, wear this armor. From there, RMTs took over and monopolized those items for a long time.

Money was also not a very easy thing to come buy either unless you were taking some serious time out of your job leveling to craft, gather, ect.

In XIV its completely different. Not only do players have access to the same leves that give large amounts of gil, but any new player can quickly pick up almost any craft, ANY gathering profession and make good money on the side without sacrificing a large amount of time from leveling their job.

The other major difference is in XIV, we have access quickly to NMs that drop amazing gear and fast. The game isn't nearly as demanding of the player to maximize every little stat point as XI was. Even if the game turns up difficulty to XI, SE is not going to make the same mistake in gear availability. I don't have the biggest faith in SE, but Im pretty sure they understood well what happened in XI.

So with large amounts of gil that anyone can make, gear dropping left and right from Leves, Chests, NMs ect, there's no shortage of wealth for everyone, even the new players.

RMTs using bots and people that aren't RMTs and using bots are not ruining this game anytime soon. Simply because, everyone can get money.

Am I saying there isn't inflation? No there is, but it's not botting or RMTs imo. The players have pushed their crafts and gathering probably harder than SE expected and the way the game is built, not botting, has caused almost everyone to be filthy rich and THAT is driving the cost of everything up.

How can it be fixed....I have no idea. High Level Gil sinks of some kind are the only real thing I can think of. But even that isn't going to cut back on the surely ridiculous amount of gil floating around in this game.

The way I see it, as long as the new comers can get lots of money to buy the things they need and the market at the top doesn't become completely out of hand than I see nothing wrong at this point.

I think the RMT fishing bots are the biggest problem. Take away those and there probably wouldn't be enough crystals to support the non-RMT botters. Also, the non-RMT botters definitely are not getting rich. It takes serious amounts of gil to get a craft to 50 in most cases. (along the lines of 100M for GSM for example, or so a LS mate told me) And once you get to 50 there are not many profitable synths, because there are dozens and dozens of others with crafts leveled. Just my opinion for the most part, but I think people have serious misconceptions about the issues at hand.

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Originally Posted by Koronos

I think the RMT fishing bots are the biggest problem. Take away those and there probably wouldn't be enough crystals to support the non-RMT botters. Also, the non-RMT botters definitely are not getting rich. It takes serious amounts of gil to get a craft to 50 in most cases. (along the lines of 100M for GSM for example, or so a LS mate told me) And once you get to 50 there are not many profitable synths, because there are dozens and dozens of others with crafts leveled. Just my opinion for the most part, but I think people have serious misconceptions about the issues at hand.

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most gear is profitable, you almost never make gear at a loss regardless of what you make
the problem is people arent making uber profit off single pieces, which is what people usualy mean when they talk about profit

i can easily make 20-30k profit a piece, and mass produce tons of easily sellable pieces
the problem is, why do this when i can farm for better profit?

botting is an issue, and alot of the ideas here are utterly rediculous

just report them to the STF and let them deal with it, it isnt our job to be able to do something directly about it as there is NOTHING we can do in all honesty

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Originally Posted by TheVedis

most gear is profitable, you almost never make gear at a loss regardless of what you make
the problem is people arent making uber profit off single pieces, which is what people usualy mean when they talk about profit

i can easily make 20-30k profit a piece, and mass produce tons of easily sellable pieces
the problem is, why do this when i can farm for better profit?

botting is an issue, and alot of the ideas here are utterly rediculous

just report them to the STF and let them deal with it, it isnt our job to be able to do something directly about it as there is NOTHING we can do in all honesty

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Yes I suppose I was thinking of profit more as it relates to time and effort involved. I made a bunch of lowbie gear at R20 ARM and actually made a couple mil my first two weeks, but its a lot of work and the market gets saturated very easily with such a small player base right now. I agree that botting is a huge issue, and hopefully SE will address it soon.

Wow.. in browsing through this post its pretty clear that there must be a lot of botters posting in here... or should I say.. "people who are letting their kids play" or who are "watching netflix while they play so I couldn't respond to you"

Either way, botting is a major issues that is decimating the economy..... the fact is that when you bot, you can make free money.

For example, you're turning 1000 traded gil into 10,000 personal gil. Which may not be significant to one person, but when you have hundreds of people doing this 24 hours a day... you will see a lot more gil entering the economy. Simple as that. As other players have mentioned, there is nothing significantly taking money OUT.

New players that are coming in are now up against a majority of players who have multiple R50 crafts (which takes FOREVER to accomplish ((unless you bot))) and have little oppurtunity to enter into the market. Their prospects at making money will involve Gathering (which is heavily botted so the supply and demand are screwed up), Leves (this can be seen as your basic 'allowance' and the price for items will likely reflect this) or crafting (Which as mentioned in this thread- when heavily botted the ability to make gil in this for new players is rapidly decreasing)

As for those stating: who cares, economy doesn't effect me. You're being really ignorant. There will be items that you want to buy. Currently, money is flowing from the skies- but expect the prices of 'have to have' items increase along with that. Now all of a sudden, you can't pay for your sneak oils/invis powder, and you're trying to find a way to make money.

Lastly,
If you think you can level up faster than/equal to a bot... you're wrong. Simple as that. You cannot play 24 hours... a bot can. I don't care if you're getting 600 sp, while the bot is getting 200... they will easily outpace in the long run ,not to mention you're probably failing a couple of those 600 synths, while the bot is just mashing enter to complete it....

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Originally Posted by Koronos

Yes I suppose I was thinking of profit more as it relates to time and effort involved. I made a bunch of lowbie gear at R20 ARM and actually made a couple mil my first two weeks, but its a lot of work and the market gets saturated very easily with such a small player base right now. I agree that botting is a huge issue, and hopefully SE will address it soon.

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its not even the botting that is oversaturating the gear market
its the materials market being hit by it(and the crafters suffer there honestly)


yet you still have people stating we gouge prices, make sense of that, we barely make a profit unless its hq

I have read people criticizing ideas without any kind of contribution.


I don`t expect evreyone on this forum to be clean either, I am realistic. I am accusing no one, but I can see what is at stakes here, and some may defend their own interests.


It seems the problem is not even recognized here. How can a problem be resolved if it is not recognized as such?

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Originally Posted by Maverick_Hawkeye

Lastly,
If you think you can level up faster than/equal to a bot... you're wrong. Simple as that. You cannot play 24 hours... a bot can. I don't care if you're getting 600 sp, while the bot is getting 200... they will easily outpace in the long run ,not to mention you're probably failing a couple of those 600 synths, while the bot is just mashing enter to complete it....

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i already play more then is humanly possible, so yeah, its not easy keeping up with bots
seeing people pass me on ffxivpro.com is rediculius, especialy with how fast some of them do it and im at the top of my server almost. i know the people "keeping up" with me are legit, but ive seen some quastionable activity from some of those who passed me, and not just apssed me, but really passed me like it was nothing and shot up even further then that(add in the fact i saw 2 of them in the field doing some questionable "farming" that looked a bit botlike, and i wasnt the only one who saw them that day)

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Originally Posted by Kassad

I have read people criticizing ideas without any kind of contribution.


I don`t expect evreyone on this forum to be clean either, I am realistic. I am accusing no one, but I can see what is at stakes here, and some may defend their own interests.


It seems the problem is not even recognized here. How can a problem be resolved if it is not recognized as such?

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it is recognized, but you CAN NOT give the power to do something about it to players
players are idiots, they will abuse it(such as the ability to flag other players to "punish" them, you know this would be abused

what people need to do is be diligent about reporting them to the STF(not gms, people need to learn the gms arent the answer) if they care so much about it

I say, let's wait for when the PS3 release will be announced, then let's talk about this topic. That day will be when we have enough informations to suggest the dev team to defend from botting, even though they aren't that stupid to fail into that.

No, they either deal with it now, or no player will want this game at PS3 release.
I'll tell them personally not to get it if the bots aren't dealt with by then. Waste of their time to invest in a MMO that's not being taken seriously by its developer.

The bots are the biggest problem with FFXIV right now. Just like it's pointless to design raids without fixing the poor-quality battle system, there's no point in even designing good goal-oriented content until you get rid of the botters and RMT.

Gil, RMT, and bots: urgent if not emergency status in FFXIV. Can't wait. Should have been dealt with months ago already.

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Originally Posted by Peregrine

No, they either deal with it now, or no player will want this game at PS3 release.
I'll tell them personally not to get it if the bots aren't dealt with by then. Waste of their time to invest in a MMO that's not being taken seriously by its developer.

The bots are the biggest problem with FFXIV right now. Just like it's pointless to design raids without fixing the poor-quality battle system, there's no point in even designing good goal-oriented content until you get rid of the botters and RMT.

Gil, RMT, and bots: urgent if not emergency status in FFXIV. Can't wait. Should have been dealt with months ago already.

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Dude peregrine stop fucking acting so righteous about getting the RMT banned its gonna happen sooner or later and guess what people played thru XI when inflation was the worst 15 mil for V-claws and shit, people gonna play regardless weather you like it or not im tired of seeing all your post about im gonna stop people from getting this game etc.

Well, I don't know how you would deal with bots and RMTs, since they're in every MMO.

Lol I can't believe people think 50-100mil is a lot of gil. I've mentioned before on another topic that there is at least one guy on my server with capped gil or 999 million and he reached that cap months ago. How did he do it? We don't know but I do know that he has multiple accounts and abused the fuck out of leves when they gave large amounts of gil (pre-november patch).

I have multiple rank 50 classes but they're all DoW/DoM and thats because it took me 7 months of grinding and doing leve link parties every reset. But that same guy with capped gil also abused the system to reach every single DoW/DoM 50 in only 2 months or less. How did he do it? I've never been in a party with him but it goes like this. Using multiple account (I'm guessing about 15-20) hes able to leve link on every one of his alternate characters and have them drop out so he doesn't have to deal with sp loss from partying. I was told by others that he could go from rank 39-50 in 3-4 resets.

Because he has capped gil he was able to powerlevel every single craft to 50. Did he bot? I don't know but most likely yes. Did he abuse the system? probably since SE even made nerfs because of it.

Point is even against a guy like that we have no solid proof that he bots or cheats. Unless several people caught him in the act, but even then it would only be your word against his.

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Originally Posted by Firon

Dude peregrine stop fucking acting so righteous about getting the RMT banned its gonna happen sooner or later and guess what people played thru XI when inflation was the worst 15 mil for V-claws and shit, people gonna play regardless weather you like it or not im tired of seeing all your post about im gonna stop people from getting this game etc.

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No.
I'm looking forward to seeing the list of banned people whenever the STF gets off its ass so we can all have a good laugh at who used to bot sympathize it up on this board.

Stop defending the indefensible and giving square an excuse to fail this hard.

No offense, but I think botting has less to do with people having multiple rank 50's then the fact this game has been out for 9 months now with no new content.

I don't even bother reporting botters any more and I encountered two blatant farm botters yesterday. It's just not worth it because no GM is going to come watch them.

To be honest, in my years playing XI, people who used bots didn't seem to impact the immediate enjoyment of my play time until I joined the HNM scene. Because that player demographic has the most (not all) players who want their best items now and at whatever cost. They have much to lose and will do whatever it takes to compete with other players in other HNM linkshells.

Mind you, that was just from my perspective. I know most of the core botting is developed and used by RMT to control the market--which impacts everyone whether they know it or not, but botting is unavoidable in MMO's. Developers and producers just have to do their best to minimalize the damage they cause.

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Originally Posted by Akira-Niji

To be honest, in my years playing XI, people who used bots didn't seem to impact the immediate enjoyment of my play time until I joined the HNM scene. Because that player demographic has the most (not all) players who want their best items now and at whatever cost. They have much to lose and will do whatever it takes to compete with other players in other HNM linkshells.

Mind you, that was just from my perspective. I know most of the core botting is developed and used by RMT to control the market--which impacts everyone whether they know it or not, but botting is unavoidable in MMO's. Developers and producers just have to do their best to minimalize the damage they cause.

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theres a difference between "doing their best" and what SE has done which is suspend the special task force (i believe) meaning they are doing essentially -nothing-.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

There is no question that FFXIV is one of the most heavily botted games out there right now. However, SE still hasn't done anything about it, and doesn't seem to intend to any time in the near future.

Even with a great new battle system and amazing new content, this game may not ever have success due to the large amount of botting/cheating

here is why:

1.
The large amount of botting has led to serious gil inflation. As a result of this, a large amount of players have well over 20mil (some having upwards of 50 or 100+).

what does this mean?: New players will have an -incredibly- hard time catching up. This means if elite gear (like the equivalent to ffxi p-charm, hauberk, etc) is released, new players (ex. ps3 players) will be unable to afford it for years or without botting themselves.
And i realize many people say "well SE will implement gil sinks". But honestly from an economic perspective, gil sinks will be nearly impossible to properly implement at this point. Further, FFXIV's economic track record is one of -pure failure-. And further, when hyperinflation took place in FFXI they were unable to gil-sink it out and had to mass ban rmt's and wait about 2 years for the economy to stabalize.

2.
New players will feel unable to ever become elite or catch up to the huge amount of people that have multiple rank 50 jobs. This is especially detrimental to people who want to play the game as a crafter main, as it will be practically impossible to compete or profitably level up crafts when your server is full of people who have multiple crafts at rank 50 from botting.

what does this mean? New players will switch to games where they actually have a chance of being "elite" players. Why? Because humans are on average happier by having relative games than absolute gains. That is to say that people want to have more than the other people around them (this has been scientifically proven to be a characteristic of our brains through neuroscience experiments across the world and across cultures). If FFXIV is released and new players see huge numbers of people with 5-10 rank 50 jobs and realize it could take them months just to get one job to rank 50 (especially crafts) they are likely to move to another game where they can be more competitive.

3
Botters will essentially be the players who end up with all the elite stuff, since they have spent months botting millions of gil and will continue to do so since nothing is being done about it.

what does this mean?: Imaginee FFXIV introduced dynamis tomorrow for hardcore elite weapons. Now lets say a legit player wants it. What are the chances they can compete with the 200+ people on every server who are botting/botted all their gil and can afford to pay high prices for currency. The chances are pretty well 0. Elite gear that is sold or gained with gil (ex. dynamis weapons, p-charm, o-kote etc) will first go to those that botted before it will land in the hands of legit players. Since many people won't want to wait, they will take up botting themselves in order to have a chance.

Why can't SE just ban the bots?
Because from what i've read they currently don't have that special team working on finding out who is botting. And I'm assuming it would be very difficult to mass ban people in the future based on recorded data without banning a number of innocent players. So its very likely those who have botted to this point have gotten away with it.

What will be the future?
It's obviously impossible to predict exactly what happens with the game, but there are a few likely scenarios.

First: Botting leads to constant hyperinflation. Gil sinks fail to remove gil out of the game and as such, the game turns to having all elite gear as rare/ex.
As a result crafting and gathering jobs are no longer nearly as important (other than materia wise).

Second: SE manages to magically combat inflation (incredibly unlikely)
However, there are still 100s of people who have botted numerous jobs. As a result a number of jobs (fishing and crafting) that are easily botted end up completely unprofitable resulting in no one leveling them. In essence, the amount of jobs you have to choose from is cut in half.

Third: SE tries to implement a gil-sink. it fails. The game continues to be one of the most heavily botted games out there. New players see no reason to join a game that is filled with obvious cheaters, and the game essentially fails or stays at its current population. (this seems to be the most likely)

Possible Solutions?

There is probably no viable way to fix the gil problem quick enough in time for a PS3 release unless it is delayed 2 years.

SE could make it -really- easy to get to rank 50 and up the cap to 75 making 50 to 75 the "hard part". If they actually banned bots at this point it would at least make the game more "fair" and allow new players to have a chance at competing for "eliteness". Gil would still be an issue but they could put in more of the current NMs just at higher levels, so that people could farm rare/ex gear to level up with.

Note: I believe many on this forum (not mentioning names but should be obvious) will argue that people play this game to look at the pretty forests and have fun, and don't care about "eliteness" or good gear. I would like to point out that FFXI servers had -massive- amounts of drama over gear, and further that many end game linkshells of FFXI had serious drama over items like byakko haidate, with people getting the item, then quitting the ls. Once again it is scientifically proven that people IN GENERAL (not every single person) prefer relative gains to absolute gains. So please don't just point out that "people don't care about having more than others."

What are your thoughts?

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My thoughts are: LOL, omg some botter kid will have more gil than me so he will be more uber, more elite, zomg the world is ending! *runs away arms in the air.

I get the feeling that Square Enix has a way they plan to balance out the economy so they aren't worried too much. (Not sure what they plan to do.) As for the fact they got free levels with no effort. I'm sure right before the game hits PS3 they will actually take measures against the botters for once. If they are botting now they will be botting then. Sqaure Enix isn't as some think they are.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Frebaut

This is for your first sentence. I actually question that FFXIV is the most botted MMO out their. You would think WoW would have more bots purely because it has so many more subscribers. So ya i do question it.

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He said 'one of the most heavily botted games', but good try.

well rmt and bots are two separate issues... I mean who would RMT FF14 (laughs!)

Bots raise and fall with updates, and with so many suppose system changes, I doubt I would even care (as well as all the people who wouldn't care if they even played).

And really do you want to ban characters at this point in time? it's bleeding enough, isn't it?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shampooo

The only real use to money now is to collect it, build a giant money bin and swim in it like uncle scrooge.

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^^You won my night with that, ducktales ftw.

Back on track though, yeah if they implemented a reset (ranks, money or otherwise) i would quit the game as well. While i agree that inflation could be a problem for new players, just as it can be in any game with a mix of new and old players, punishing the player base with any form of reset would be too much salt on the wound.

I was just thinking a possible solution for shielding new players against severe inflation is to put them on new servers and to not allow current players to transfer over. That plus forming some long term way to thwart new botters would keep these new servers and player bases clean, just my thought on it.

I'd like the new players to be shielded from the hustlin' ballers who plan on milking them as soon as they hit. Over the years people have perfected the art of fleecing newbies, and it makes their game harder than we had it. We had it ridiculously easy. Hundreds of people LFP. Thousands of materials for sale. Ample gatherers just grinding to grind and give things away.

But that's got nothing to do with botting.
One way to help stop the bleeding in this game is to get the botters and RMT out of it. They're the icing bad name on the cake of fail here.

Plus, it'd relieve a lot of market ward congestion.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kam

Exactly like the Salvage bans that killed off alot of XIs endgame "leet" players.

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Most of whom complained quite loudly, and then within 6 months most of them had since leveled or purchased a new character and were right back in it.