Lack of action against gathering bots, it needs to be changed, and soon

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Originally Posted by RareItems

Gathering Bots have been going on since 2010 when 1.0 was released. If what you say is true that gathering bots are destroying the economy, you would think that by 2019, the economy would be so dead that nobody would be crafting and gathering anymore xD. But then again, Raider's don't really think, They just watch guides and use 3rd party apps that execute combos for them so all they have to do is move their character.

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You really like making sweeping generalizations don't you. Show us on the mammet where the raider poked you.

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Originally Posted by SilverObi

You really like making sweeping generalizations don't you. Show us on the mammet where the raider poked you.

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Nope just stating facts. RMT is RMT. Selling Savage Clears/Eden drops, is RMT and should be bannable.

There is literally no difference between someone gathering in a circle for 8 hours, a group of aethersand bots gathering non stop for 2 years, and a shady group of players selling Savage Clears/Drops.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

Nope just stating facts. RMT is RMT. Selling Savage Clears/Eden drops, is RMT and should be bannable.

There is literally no difference between someone gathering in a circle for 8 hours, a group of aethersand bots gathering non stop for 2 years, and a shady group of players selling Savage Clears/Drops.

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The irony here is you won't actually get an argument from most people that both should be policed better. Regardless, they aren't the same thing. Someone buying a Savage clear pays a group with real money, said group clears the content on their account and everyone goes about their merry way. A gather bot, meanwhile, collects all their spoils and sells them on the market board—purposely tanking prices because even if something sells for 1,000 gil. It's all pure profit for them.

One impacts the service economy while the other impacts the buyer's wallet.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

Nope just stating facts. RMT is RMT. Selling Savage Clears/Eden drops, is RMT and should be bannable.

There is literally no difference between someone gathering in a circle for 8 hours, a group of aethersand bots gathering non stop for 2 years, and a shady group of players selling Savage Clears/Drops.

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I agree with your first point. It is RMT. But your second point is off because people selling clears doesn't affect my or other's ability to make gil or the health of the ingame economy so there is a difference in urgency at the minimum. If people want to risk bans for exchanging real money for clears on fights that don't reward gil then let them get their punishment in due time, but bots that actively control markets and make the user experience worse are much heavier targets. We shouldn't be using this to beat legit raiders over the head for what a small subset do in any regard.

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Originally Posted by SilverObi

I agree with your first point. It is RMT. But your second point is off because people selling clears doesn't affect my or other's ability to make gil or the health of the ingame economy so there is a difference in urgency at the minimum. If people want to risk bans for exchanging real money for clears on fights that don't reward gil then let them get their punishment in due time, but bots that actively control markets and make the user experience worse are much heavier targets. We shouldn't be using this to beat legit raiders over the head for what a small subset do in any regard.

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Both are RMT, both need to be solved.
One might effect the economy of the game more, but to me - both are souring to see. Personally speaking, I'm not a crafter, so the bots really don't effect me. If anything, they kinda help me since when I do raids, or trials - I get potions & food at a cheap price, but really, it still just adds a touch of sour to everything I do. It's more about SEs lack of understanding/support/action for the situation then anything at this point.

It's honestly gotten to a point where I am ready to accept the bots, and just well.. let it go.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

The irony here is you won't actually get an argument from most people that both should be policed better. Regardless, they aren't the same thing. Someone buying a Savage clear pays a group with real money, said group clears the content on their account and everyone goes about their merry way. A gather bot, meanwhile, collects all their spoils and sells them on the market board—purposely tanking prices because even if something sells for 1,000 gil. It's all pure profit for them.

One impacts the service economy while the other impacts the buyer's wallet.

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FYI: People selling clears negatively impacts the entirety of the game more than that lone player dumping 9999 logs for 500 gil each or that group of Aethersand bots selling aethersands for 300gil each.

1 Group is making things cheaper, while the other is promoting Elitism, Toxicity and Sabotaging PUG Ex/Savage Groups.

If you shutdown players selling clears, more ppl would be more inclined to help get other ppl get their clears instead of having a dollar value attached to it. You will also have more successful PUG Groups since nobody there is going to purposely sabotage it, purposely making it fail so ppl would get frustrated and give up in hopes these players would just buy the clear/item drops.

These ppl selling clears also creates a false narrative that FFXIV's endgame is Raids/Ex Trials when in fact it's just a minor optional content like Lord of Vermillion or Chocobo Racing. The game is better off if they made an improved version of Eureka. SE is literally wasting so much Dev Time creating "Hard" Content for a very small percentage of the playerbase when they should be doing content that can be enjoyed by everyone.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

FYI: People selling clears negatively impacts the entirety of the game more than that lone player dumping 9999 logs for 500 gil each or that group of Aethersand bots selling aethersands for 300gil each.

1 Group is making things cheaper, while the other is promoting Elitism, Toxicity and Sabotaging PUG Ex/Savage Groups.

If you shutdown players selling clears, more ppl would be more inclined to help get other ppl get their clears instead of having a dollar value attached to it. You will also have more successful PUG Groups since nobody there is going to purposely sabotage it, purposely making it fail so ppl would get frustrated and give up in hopes these players would just buy the clear/item drops.

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Sabotaging PUG groups? The people selling these runs aren’t like to even join PUGs that frequently... They go about their business and then unsub, usually. So, how are they negatively impacting the PUG scene again? Or are you trying to blame it on the people who bought the clears joining things they aren’t prepared to join? Because then that’s on those players, not the sellers.

I think your tinfoil hat is too tight right now.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

These ppl selling clears also creates a false narrative that FFXIV's endgame is Raids/Ex Trials when in fact it's just a minor optional content like Lord of Vermillion or Chocobo Racing. The game is better off if they made an improved version of Eureka. SE is literally wasting so much Dev Time creating "Hard" Content for a very small percentage of the playerbase when they should be doing content that can be enjoyed by everyone.

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This is your opinion. However, considering that Ultimate garnered FFXIV the most publicity on sites like Twitch compared to anything else this game has ever offered, I don’t consider it a waste of resources at all. Even non-raiders enjoyed watching the Ultimate spectacle.

As always, your posts are full of baseless assumptions and nothing concrete or productive. Are you done derailing this thread?

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Originally Posted by RareItems

How do you know they unsub and don't sabotage PUG groups? How do you know if they helped ppl get their clears for free before Selling Clears was a thing? Selling Clears is against the TOS, its RMT, all it does is promotes Elitism, Toxicity and Griefing. Not to mention Abusing a naive player off his/her hard earned money.

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How do you know that they do sabotage runs? Burden of proof is on you, my dude. Since you’re insisting on dying on this hill. So far, you’ve provide no evidence or proof that these players do all the things you’re claiming they do. Meanwhile, it’s fairly well known that high-tier players—the types that would be good enough to do content sales—frequently unsub from the game between tiers.

Selling clears has existed since Titan HM. It’s existed in MMOs aside from this one. You’re acting like this is some kind of new thing. And abusing a naive player into giving away their hard-earned money? The buyers willingly turn over their money for the content they buy. The sellers don’t force them to buy anything, via your conspiracy theories or otherwise. Buyers are well aware of what they’re doing—they buy to get the shinies for next to no effort. Are you sure they’re the naive ones here?

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Originally Posted by RareItems

Clear Sellers are just a collection of regular Raiders who are elite enough to be invited to that Savage Clear selling Discord, and if they have a buyer, they ask around for 8 ppl who are interested and they all get a cut.

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Somehow, I doubt these people invite any ol’ Raider Joe to sell content with them. Fairly certain that players that sell runs are generally very skilled because a lot of Savage runs involve just having the buyee die and rest 7-man the content.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

FYI: People selling clears negatively impacts the entirety of the game more than that lone player dumping 9999 logs for 500 gil each or that group of Aethersand bots selling aethersands for 300gil each.

1 Group is making things cheaper, while the other is promoting Elitism, Toxicity and Sabotaging PUG Ex/Savage Groups.

If you shutdown players selling clears, more ppl would be more inclined to help get other ppl get their clears instead of having a dollar value attached to it. You will also have more successful PUG Groups since nobody there is going to purposely sabotage it, purposely making it fail so ppl would get frustrated and give up in hopes these players would just buy the clear/item drops.

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Cheaper through fraudulent means. Hence why that impacts the game. Or rather, impacts the crafting endgame since it can be next to impossible for legitimate players to compete with a bot.

Meanwhile, I would like to know how groups selling content promotes toxicity when most content sellers simply go about their business. Likewise, how does it sabotage pugs? If they weren't able to sell content any longer, for whatever reason, most would likely unsub not join random PF groups. They don't go around sabotaging pugs. That's just you spreading nonsense.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Sabotaging PUG groups? The people selling these runs aren’t like to even join PUGs that frequently... They go about their business and then unsub, usually. So, how are they negatively impacting the PUG scene again? Or are you trying to blame it on the people who bought the clears joining things they aren’t prepared to join? Because then that’s on those players, not the sellers.

I think your tinfoil hat is too tight right now.



This is your opinion. However, considering that Ultimate garnered FFXIV the most publicity on sites like Twitch compared to anything else this game has ever offered, I don’t consider it a waste of resources at all. Even non-raiders enjoyed watching the Ultimate spectacle.

As always, your posts are full of baseless assumptions and nothing concrete or productive. Are you done derailing this thread?

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How do you know they unsub and don't sabotage PUG groups? How do you know if they helped ppl get their clears for free before Selling Clears was a thing? Selling Clears is against the TOS, its RMT, all it does is promotes Elitism, Toxicity and Griefing. Not to mention Abusing a naive player off his/her hard earned money.

"Hey guys we didnt' have any buyers today, lets unsub and give up" When was the Party Finder introduced again? These sellers have been here since Party Finder was introduced. You really think these guys just unsub? lol.

Clear Sellers are just a collection of regular Raiders who are elite enough to be invited to that Savage Clear selling Discord, and if they have a buyer, they ask around for 8 ppl who are interested and they all get a cut.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

Nonsense, more nonsense, and paranoid nonsense

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Citations please. Please stop making our server look worse.

Heh, just trying to explain to the raiders why Selling Clears for RL Money is just as bad as a Gathering bot/aethersand bot, if not worse. But i'm sure they all know what i'm talking about already, they're just playing dumb xD.

Open up Party Finder, and there's 2 easy bans right there on the Top. If they can't even ban those, how can you expect to get the gathering bots/aethersand bots banned lol.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

How do you know they unsub and don't sabotage PUG groups? How do you know if they helped ppl get their clears for free before Selling Clears was a thing? Selling Clears is against the TOS, its RMT, all it does is promotes Elitism, Toxicity and Griefing. Not to mention Abusing a naive player off his/her hard earned money.

"Hey guys we didnt' have any buyers today, lets unsub and give up" When was the Party Finder introduced again? These sellers have been here since Party Finder was introduced. You really think these guys just unsub? lol.

Clear Sellers are just a collection of regular Raiders who are elite enough to be invited to that Savage Clear selling Discord, and if they have a buyer, they ask around for 8 ppl who are interested and they all get a cut.

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Even if we went along with this utterly nonsense. In what universe do you believe the average player in PF would suddenly decide to shell out upwards of 500 to 1,000$ because their pug was sabotaged? For the vast majority of people, that isn't pocket change. People buying content aren't random joes. They have money to throw around and had no intention of ever doing the content themselves. So sabotaging PUGs would accomplish next to nothing since people buying clears wouldn't be in PUGs to begin with.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

Heh, just trying to explain to the raiders why Selling Clears for RL Money is just as bad as a Gathering bot/aethersand bot, if not worse. But i'm sure they all know what i'm talking about already, they're just playing dumb xD.

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Most of the people posting here already stated they find RMT clear selling to be a bad thing they wished was regulated more? We get it, you dislike raiders. Please stop derailing this topic and purposefully ignoring what people post in response just because it doesn't suit your narrative. If you want to argue about raiders there's other topics available, or you could make your own.

As for the gathering bot situation I do think the suggestion of SE hiring more people to handle reports would go a long way, as well as expanding the capabilities of their GM's to actually police such matters. I get that some bots can be 'hard to detect' and that they don't want to ban legitimate players, but there has to be some way to take note of the actions and paths an avatar takes if enough people tip them off to a potential botting problem.

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Originally Posted by Enla

Most of the people posting here already stated they find RMT clear selling to be a bad thing they wished was regulated more? We get it, you dislike raiders. Please stop derailing this topic and purposefully ignoring what people post in response just because it doesn't suit your narrative. If you want to argue about raiders there's other topics available, or you could make your own.

As for the gathering bot situation I do think the suggestion of SE hiring more people to handle reports would go a long way, as well as expanding the capabilities of their GM's to actually police such matters. I get that some bots can be 'hard to detect' and that they don't want to ban legitimate players, but there has to be some way to take note of the actions and paths an avatar takes if enough people tip them off to a potential botting problem.

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I don't hate raiders. More than half of the people on my FL raid. My FC leader raids. I would be raiding too if the drops were BiS for a year. It's pointless to do it unless for glamour now and none of them looked great enough to warrant hours of wiping and watching videos for.


Just stating the double standard here. Raiders tend to turn a blind eye on the Blatant RMT going on the party finder for years now, and yet they're complaining Gathering Bots are driving prices down but they don't want to go outside the city and actually file the report? lol.

How are you determining they are bots? Are you just reporting anyone who is gathering or crafting for longer than you would?

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Originally Posted by Machi_Machiavelli

How are you determining they are bots? Are you just reporting anyone who is gathering or crafting for longer than you would?

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Movement patterns, mainly.

Bots exhibit basically no variance in how they move between sets of gathering nodes and if there's more then one in the same zone they'll oft be following one another perfectly.

A lot of players who use bots are also too lazy to be bothered with ever crafting/gathering legitimately and thus conveniently only ever will be seen doing so late at night/early morning.

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Originally Posted by Machi_Machiavelli

How are you determining they are bots? Are you just reporting anyone who is gathering or crafting for longer than you would?

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One form of bot at max level will toggle the skill "Preparation" on and off at the start of every node. There is no reason to do this as Preparation stays on between nodes and it has no use for these gatherers. If it was only one player doing it, you might not think much of it, but multiple players are doing it.

That's for regular nodes. For timed nodes, one example is the 4AM node in the Rak'Tika Greatwood. There is a tree next to the node that has a space in it. Some bots will fly into the space and dismount while bouncing off the inside of the tree at the same spot every pass.

Example: https://gfycat.com/enormousfrequentamericanwirehair

While the two bouncing off the tree are clearly bots, the third player approaching from the left side is also a bot and has been using them for at least two and a half years (was also a bot I was talking about in the thread I linked earlier).

Saw another that would accidentally aggro a mob but then let the mob kill it, release, return and accidentally do it again later.

This doesn't cover all bots and only those that know they can do it so blatantly without consequence.

Some will exhibit inefficient patterns such as approaching or leaving a node in stealth while walking when they have flight unlocked. Again, doing it once or twice isn't odd, but performing those same steps along the same path during every pass when it still doesn't prevent them from aggroing mobs = automated gameplay.

It should also be noted that the bot count is actually higher than it looks since the instancing system is spreading them out.

I expect some measures to either be in place by, or be set up after, the ishgard rankings start. Because bots will basically rule that

Out of interest, is anyone here who was/is playing on Japanese servers and could share if the situation with gathering bots is as much of a problem there too?

If the problem does not exist there, then wouldn't it basically mean that there's either 1. a lack of communication between NA/EU department and JP one, or 2. an assumption from the developers' part that if something isn't the matter in Japan, where people tend to be much more honourable, then it means it's neither the case on the West?

It’s already well known they don’t take priority for non-JP issues.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

I don't hate raiders. More than half of the people on my FL raid. My FC leader raids. I would be raiding too if the drops were BiS for a year. It's pointless to do it unless for glamour now and none of them looked great enough to warrant hours of wiping and watching videos for.


Just stating the double standard here. Raiders tend to turn a blind eye on the Blatant RMT going on the party finder for years now, and yet they're complaining Gathering Bots are driving prices down but they don't want to go outside the city and actually file the report? lol.

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If you can't spot the difference between people selling clears, which is not impacting anyone else in any way, and bots flooding the market with gathering and crafting material tanking the market to the rock bottom and constantly undercutting and therefore making it impossible for legit people to play and enjoy DoH/DoL content then I don't know what to say. Sure, people selling clears for real life money IS bad, but there are different levels of bad and to make a massive part of the game unplayable is definitely worse than carrying people through savage in my honest opinion.

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Originally Posted by Machi_Machiavelli

How are you determining they are bots? Are you just reporting anyone who is gathering or crafting for longer than you would?

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Absolutely not, I love the crafting/gathering community on my home server of Zalera, and I frequently see them at nodes at intermittent intervals. Bots, on the other hand, exhibit a number of telltale signs:

--Not responding to tells, or in the case of some bots, responding to them in a nonsensical manner.
--Operating for hours on end along the same route, to the point that it defies being reasonable.
--Doing the same "order of operations" every single time (ephemeral bots tend to gather, pause for 3 seconds, reduce items, pause, mount up) without any variation. When I go for long gathering stints, I often craft a little bit in between, or pause because I am responding to a tell or taking care of IRL stuff.
--Move from node to node in an unnatural way (most gatherers will home in on nodes, whereas bots often fly overhead and "drop" onto them, causing them to exhibit the midair floating glitch quite often)

As for selling clears, I am against that as well, but it is also something that is much harder to police, since all of the transactional steps could happen outside of the game (although people getting away with PF listings is comically-sad). A gathering bot, on the other hand, must conduct its illicit activity in-game, since it involves interacting with the nodes themselves as well as the marketboard. I want to fight the battles that could actually be won with a little bit of awareness.

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Originally Posted by BothFawn

Out of interest, is anyone here who was/is playing on Japanese servers and could share if the situation with gathering bots is as much of a problem there too?

If the problem does not exist there, then wouldn't it basically mean that there's either 1. a lack of communication between NA/EU department and JP one, or 2. an assumption from the developers' part that if something isn't the matter in Japan, where people tend to be much more honourable, then it means it's neither the case on the West?

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I can tell just from looking at their FC rankings that it's definitely a problem over there, too.

Or at least I'm assuming these tiny FCs that are loaded with nothing but "Obviously an alt account" crafters/gatherers that are somehow getting as much if not more FC credits then FCs that have several times as many active members as them aren't legit.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I can tell just from looking at their FC rankings that it's definitely a problem over there, too.

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Although you are probably right, it does not mean illicit activity in a vacuum; there are plenty of ways to gain a TON of GC seals over the course of a single week by storing up other resources to be converted into turn-ins.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

Heh, just trying to explain to the raiders why Selling Clears for RL Money is just as bad as a Gathering bot/aethersand bot, if not worse. But i'm sure they all know what i'm talking about already, they're just playing dumb xD.

Open up Party Finder, and there's 2 easy bans right there on the Top. If they can't even ban those, how can you expect to get the gathering bots/aethersand bots banned lol.

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It's not "the raiders" selling content for real money, it's maybe 3-4 groups per data center, but each group has 7 people so you can have 1 group posting 3-4 different ads making it seem like this is a widespread issue.

Would you think it fair if I accuse you of RMT because some non raiders buy gil? Because that's exactly what you're doing with "the raiders".

Gathering Bots have been out since 2010 on 1.0 and People have been selling clears since 2013. One is supposedly destroying the economy the other is supposedly promoting Elitism and Toxicity. Is the Game's Economy Destroyed? no. Is the Game getting more Unfriendly and Toxic? Yes.

I fail to see how content selling has anything to do with the community supposedly getting more toxic.

I don't think the average player even pays attention to how heavily the bots sway the prices on servers either, because they generally just care about getting stuff for cheap. It's already hit a point where the bulk of the sellers of crafted gear/consumables on my server are botters and most of the legitimate players have backed off because they can't be bothered to be adjusting their prices constantly to combat them. I consider the economy to be in a bad state if it's largely dominated by cheaters.

Content selling has nothing to do with toxicity, toxicity breeds when you get the "don't tell me how to play" people in duties, it creates animosity between the people who want to have fun with a quick dungeon vs those who just want their party to carry their weight for them, and this has nothing to do with raiding. Plenty of people who don't raid carry their own weight.

Raider thinking: Oh you need help clearing content? Sure! That will be just 500 dollars per Eden Savage drop :D. Oh you cant pay? Then get out of here your wasting my time.

The ppl selling content are not some tight knit group of individuals selling content, its a collection of regular players in different "Endgame Raiding" FC's in a special Discord Channel.

These players join PUG savage groups/learning parties and purposely make it fail so ppl can't complete content. lol. How else are they going to sell Clears to people.

Maybe if SE stopped making raids/Ex Trials and actually made meaningful fun content that everyone can easily play like an instanced open world PVP with a mix of Eureka and Frontlines, that would probably be better than them creating content for a small percentage of the playerbase.

As for Gathering bots? If you see one, grab your entire FC and have them mass report the botter. SE's banning system works if you actually report instead of complaining about it on the forums.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

As for Gathering bots? If you see one, grab your entire FC and have them mass report the botter. SE's banning system works if you actually report instead of complaining about it on the forums.

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No, it does not.

Me and and others I keep in touch with have collectively reported several different obvious bots on our server since as far as back as HW and they're still here.

If it did actually work, I think we'd be seeing way more people getting banned according to weekly illicit activity reports but instead it consistently maintains an average ban ratio of less then one bot per server.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

No, it does not.

Me and and others I keep in touch with have collectively reported several different obvious bots on our server since as far as back as HW and they're still here.

If it did actually work, I think we'd be seeing way more people getting banned according to weekly illicit activity reports but instead it consistently maintains an average ban ratio of less then one bot per server.

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Gathering Bots have been out since 2010 on 1.0 and People have been selling clears since 2013. One is supposedly destroying the economy the other is supposedly promoting Elitism and Toxicity. Is the Game's Economy Destroyed? no. Is the Game getting more Unfriendly and Toxic? Yes.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

As for Gathering bots? If you see one, grab your entire FC and have them mass report the botter. SE's banning system works if you actually report instead of complaining about it on the forums.

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If this were actually true, I would have never created this topic in the first place; did you even read my original post before deciding to take this discussion in another direction?

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Originally Posted by RareItems

Is the Game's Economy Destroyed? no. Is the Game getting more Unfriendly and Toxic? Yes.

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Both of these assertions are questionable at best.

If you really think content-selling is the root of growing toxicity in the game, please by all means create a new discussion about it; it is nearly impossible to prove and is only loosely-related to bot gathering in that they are two activities that people get away with that violate the ToS.

At this point, I would be happy to just see the bots we've all known about for years upon years get banned one time. No just the gibberish bots, but the player owned gathering bots that people have been reporting all this time, need to go.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

Raider thinking: Oh you need help clearing content? Sure! That will be just 500 dollars per Eden Savage drop :D. Oh you cant pay? Then get out of here your wasting my time.

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You still have your tinfoil hat on too tight.

The raiders that sell content don’t go into random Party Finders and try to harass players into purchasing their services. They don’t need to—because the ones doing the buying are usually the ones who would never step foot into the content anyways. They want all the shinies while putting in no effort to obtain them. You’re really hardcore into conspiracy theories, aren’t you?

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Originally Posted by RareItems

The ppl selling content are not some tight knit group of individuals selling content, its a collection of regular players in different "Endgame Raiding" FC's in a special Discord Channel.

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[citation needed]

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Originally Posted by RareItems

These players join PUG savage groups/learning parties and purposely make it fail so ppl can't complete content. lol. How else are they going to sell Clears to people.

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[citation needed]

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Originally Posted by RareItems

Maybe if SE stopped making raids/Ex Trials and actually made meaningful fun content that everyone can easily play like an instanced open world PVP with a mix of Eureka and Frontlines, that would probably be better than them creating content for a small percentage of the playerbase.

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Raids and EX primals get along just fine. They’re content designed for a subset of players, just like PVP, Eureka, and the like were designed for a subset of players. This is a theme park MMO, meaning it has something for everyone—there’s content some people like, and then there’s content that those same people don’t like. Not every piece of content needs to be designed for everyone.

Personally, I don’t see the need to spend money on Open World PvP because I don’t even like PvP—and PvP is probably the least popular activity in this game with only a small set of players participating in it. I also don’t like the idea of more Eureka elements, because that completely killed my love for doing the relics back in Stormblood. I think both are content for a small percentage of the playerbase and don’t need more funding put into them. See how that argument can be flipped?

I don’t think I need to repeat that Ultimate garnered this game the most positive attention its ever received on Twitch. I don’t think Eureka or PvP ever managed that, even when SE was heavily into turning this game’s PvP into some sort of “eSport”.

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Originally Posted by RareItems

As for Gathering bots? If you see one, grab your entire FC and have them mass report the botter. SE's banning system works if you actually report instead of complaining about it on the forums.

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Really? It works? Is that why the same three bots that I reported multiple times throughout Stormblood are still playing and botting away at just about every ephemeral node in Shadowbringers areas? Is that why the bots that have been present on Cactuar since HW are continuing about their business to this day? What about those RMT middlemen that have also been reported? Something tells me that your “solution” isn’t actually working as intended here.

There have been multiple complaints before this thread about DoL/DoH botters getting off scot-free after multiple reports. There was even a Q&A back in Stormblood where multiple questions were posted begging the developers to address the DoL/DoH botting problem this game has. I think only one was answered, and it was answered with an explanation of how the reporting and reviewing system works. But, if I’m recalling correctly, it didn’t offer any answers as to what the STF is actively doing to mitigate this issue. All it really shed light on was that they were obscenely undermanned—I think there’s only 4 individuals on this team, and GMs are not allowed to respond to reports of suspected botting, which really only exacerbates the issue.


Please, just stop. You’re embarrassing yourself at this point, and detracting from the point of the thread with your continued “raiders and content sellers are promoting toxicity and elitism because they force players to buy clears for things”.

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Originally Posted by Oxidized

If this were actually true, I would have never created this topic in the first place; did you even read my original post before deciding to take this discussion in another direction?

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I’d wager, no, they did not. They’ve been in multiple threads the last couple days going off about how raiders are ruining the game, so I guess they wanted to hijack your thread as another avenue to push their rhetoric.

Just an update, if you see any of these bots operating, please do not attempt to take matters into your own hands and decide to use a "friendly" A rank to "temporarily disable" the bot if the opportunity presents itself. I just received word that one of my good friends who is also sick of seeing our economy being ripped to shreds received a warning for doing exactly this, and although this presented my friend an opportunity to talk to a GM, the only response to his explanation of motives was "we will look into it" and "don't do it again". Although I learned of this story today, the event in question happened weeks ago, and guess what? The bot is still fully operational.

In short, this may be the only MMO ever where the GMs actively protect the bots, which shows just how much the system needs the change and how much the priorities need to shift.

A lot of bots are alt accounts being monitored by their mains while they play or even just their mains being watched while they play a different game entirely, so it really is for the better to not try to do anything to disrupt them. I similarly got pulled aside by the GMs for finally snapping after having the same annoying DoL bot buzzing around by me every night through HW and SB and tried to break it through a combination of different methods at a hour I presumed it would not be being observed at (They were nice enough to not actually put a bad mark on my account, though).

Even if they don't witness you doing it firsthand it's still easy for them to read back in their chat/combat logs to determine if anyone was trying to slow them down while they were absent then file a report about it.

It really is stupid that they keep the hands of the GMs tied when they're a far bigger and more active team then the STF is, not to mention one you can actually communicate with properly.

Judging by what I see people saying in this thread, is it safe to assume that botting is ultimately... allowed? I mean, if you are currently cheating and see another player who tries to disrupt your gathering bot, and then you can report this player who is then punished by a GM who literally doesn't care that there is a cheater running around, it is the same level of absurdity as in the Hildibrand quests.

Not punishable = allowed

I really wonder what is Naoki Yoshida's stance on this. And I mean what he is REALLY thinking about it. Does he want us to just don't give a damn about it and we should just enjoy the story and lore in FFXIV for ourselves?

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Originally Posted by BothFawn

Judging by what I see people saying in this thread, is it safe to assume that botting is ultimately... allowed? I mean, if you are currently cheating and see another player who tries to disrupt your gathering bot, and then you can report this player who is then punished by a GM who literally doesn't care that there is a cheater running around, it is the same level of absurdity as in the Hildibrand quests.

Not punishable = allowed

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Stop making mountains out of mole hills here.

What the GM is meaning that you shouldn't exert punishment on your own, but instead report the suspicious individual.
'Vigilante justice' can always hit someone who isn't involved in all this, which is why support need those reports to investigate whenever those accusations are true or false.

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Originally Posted by BothFawn

Judging by what I see people saying in this thread, is it safe to assume that botting is ultimately... allowed? I mean, if you are currently cheating and see another player who tries to disrupt your gathering bot, and then you can report this player who is then punished by a GM who literally doesn't care that there is a cheater running around, it is the same level of absurdity as in the Hildibrand quests.

Not punishable = allowed

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I cannot say that this viewpoint is wrong based upon my personal experiences.

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Originally Posted by Arrius

Stop making mountains out of mole hills here.

What the GM is meaning that you shouldn't exert punishment on your own, but instead report the suspicious individual.
'Vigilante justice' can always hit someone who isn't involved in all this, which is why support need those reports to investigate whenever those accusations are true or false.

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However, they never investigate these reports, this is the problem; there is no way to get justice through the "support channels they provide". This is not making a mountain out of a molehill, since the problem has been ignored and allowed to fester for so long that it is basically Mt. Everest at this point.

Bots are pretty inconsequential. They're like hyper weeds... if they ban one, two more come back in it's place. There's really no point in wasting time and effort banning bots.

SE focuses on the end result: RMT. Every ban wave, they ban thousands and thousands of accounts linked to RMT (either selling or buying), and ultimately that is the goal anyway.

Bots being at the same mining node really doesn't hurt you as a player. And the bots themselves don't do the selling on the Market board, that is done by other accounts.