Bot Fantasy XIV: A Bot Reborn

Can't say I've played a p2p MMO before that has had this many bots in it (I played WoW for 3 years then again I don't think I was actually 'looking' for bots in that game, was it as bad there? I dunno). I've seen some bots like when I used to play Eden Eternal which is f2f, that one had a bunch of bots but FFXIV is p2p.

You got friends request spam bots, /tell spam bots, bots spamming /say and /shout combat bots that are as easy to find roaming around, gathering bots mining unbelievable amounts of shards I mean there's more money to be made on the market farming clusters so it doesn't make much sense for someone to mine 9999 fire shards or whatever that takes too long but bots have trouble working around the cluster spawn system I guess so they have an easy time just mining the shards / crystals nonstop.

I run around and see swarms of black mage bots gathered in one spot queuing for duty finder, I have run into heal bots in DF, tank bots in DF(I seriously have lol), black mage bots in DF. I see bots just camping one spot firing away at the same mobs over and over again not moving. Or moving in a pattern in the same areas farming the same crap over and over again. And the infamous: enemies being fired at by invisible bots that are hiding underground.

I realize stopping botting 100% isn't an obtainable goal but how about uhh... maybe trying or something? lol. As i continue to subscribe to this game, bots take away from my immersion and give me concerns over whether or not SE is concerned with the integrity of their game world and server economies. I do my part and drop reports whenever I feel confident that what I'm looking at is a bot but eh... what else can I do?

Perhaps my expectations of a p2p game are unreasonably high? If this was a f2p game I would literally just be like, "Typical f2p shenanigans" but I dunno. Or this isn't a problem on the JA servers and it's an isolated NA issue. I remember someone posted about some botters that were planning to come to FFXIV and I looked over their forum posts about how they were all QQing about being banned from WoW, oh so many laughs were had while reading their QQing. SE, please give me more laughs. I want to read more botter QQing. What's ironic is how justified they feel their cheating is like the logic hurts my head and causes brain cell melting.

TL;DR - bots

Yeah, other games have just as much bots running around..
They just have more stealthy ways to operate in other games.


Other than the spam bots this game has, which is very excessive, I don't think bots are any more prevalent than other games, shards are just obvious, other games have less obvious things to sell gobs and gobs of.. FF14 does not.

It's the very tedious design of this game that lets us know if somebody's likely a botter or not.. because somebody sits there and gathers thousands of shards and you know almost nobody would ever do that. But in other games you see people grinding mobs and skinning them for hours on end, or mining for hours and hours on WoW, you don't necessarily think "Oh, he must be a bot" because that's common behavior in that playerbase.

If there were mobs worth grinding in this game (Hippogryphs, raptors, fleece dropping things in Coerthas.. are they goats?) You don't see people grinding those mobs and necessarily think he's a botter because that's reasonable behavior. But if you see people killing thousands of water elementals, you have a good reason to be suspicious... Let's just say, a lot of the grinding in this game is as pointless as killing elementals for loots.. So you see somebody doing something so inefficient, it's a bot :)

Recently I've been seeing lots of elezen and roe archer bots with lore appropriate names. Makes a change from all the hyur black mages!

I know it may not be as well known, but I played Dofus for years... The botting was hideously bad. It was usually goldspammers. It was bad enough that you couldn't have a general chat (/s) on at all. You had to keep it shut off. For every one of them you'd report, 50 would take its place.

The friend invite spam here is awful (more easily solved by either having a filter that would either shut off tells/friend requests or being able to blacklist them immediately), and the tells are incredibly aggravating - but they haven't yet hit Dofus-level insanity.

They're literally moving underground, hard to detect them.

From my experience, bots is something you encounter in all p2p mmos. WoW is just as plagued as FFXIV, and it is not surprising.
There is a constant element in all mmos, and that is people. There will always be individuals with insecurity issues, and in order for them to feel better they must have items, wealth and gains they feel entitled too. As well as individuals that simply dont care what bots, or using the rmt service does to the economy and everyone else.

Should we be upset about the rmts? Yes but in the end they are not the biggest problem. We cant forget that there are alot of players that use the rmt service, we know this because of the large amount of rmts advertising their service. And without customers the rmt force wouldnt have enough resources to continue their operation.

RMTs use bots to generate resources in game, this makes some individuals that give into despair use bots aswell. People that use bots very often do not understand how the economy in the game effects all players in a game, even themselves.

People are selfish and they care only for the content that they themselves do, ive encountered this is World of Warcraft. Where alot of individuals had a heated discussion in regards to bots, and what content they where found in. And the pvp side of the discussions was furious about bots in pvp, but they didnt care that there where bots in pve. That didnt effect them. And on the other side it was the opposite, both sides failing to realize that bots anywhere effects us all.

RMTs has been around since first generation mmos, game developers have been trying since then to stop their illigal activities within their games. There are many things in FFXIV that where done to try and halt the rmt trade, most of the mechanics where only inconveniencing the player base. Mail managment for example, can only send mail to people on your friends list. The limit on how much money you're allowed to send in mail. Sure this might inconvenience RMT, it defenitly inconvenience the players that want to send something to a friend. And the RMTs dont care if they have to do 10 more steps to continue their pracctise.

I strongly dislike the RMTs, but they arent the worst in my opinion. The worst are the people that use the service, hiding that they do while complaining how much they dislike RMTs. That in my opinion is the worst.

All the rest of us can do is continue to report RMTs and individuals that we know have used the rmt service. Although some people might have issues reporting a friend, its still an issue that effects us all. Everyone knowns not to cheat buy gil etc, so if i happen to report a friend thats a friend i had but no more.

And in response to what else you can do, just as Square Enix has to uphold the integrity of their zero tolerance towards rmt and bots.
We must uphold our integrity without compromise. And i dont think your expectations towards a p2p game is to high, but i do think your expectations of a f2p game is to low.

I have a zero tolerance, towards cheating buying gil/gold etc in games. So in order for me to maintain my integrity i will report players even if they are my friends. Sometimes that is difficult but i am not in the wrong in doing so, they knew the consequence when they cheated.
And this should be the action everyone that dislike the rmts and cheating should take. Saying that you dislike something while allowing some of it, would just be fake.