Bots in Chocobo Racing

It was only a matter of time.

Sure, maybe you can't legitimately prove it. But a guy that enters a race and finishes (DNFs) at 100% stamina over and over is suspicious enough to me.

Me and a FC member of mine DNF'ed on purpose to see the rewards, and you still get MGP and EXP.

What am I asking here?


Well, I would love for BOTs to be banned :D (unlikely). But, I think the best solution is to eliminate the rewards for DNFing, or most certainly remove the EXP reward. I can't imagine a legimate player DNFing in a race so many times in a row at any point in time.

It's pretty cheap someone can just enter a race in AFK mode and just lose everytime, but still get rewards. Certainly not fair to many of the players working hard on their racing birds.

I think it's a bit bold to claim they're bots. More likely just AFKers, as you say.

Having gotten first place a few times, even once on the "open" bracket with a rank 2 chocobo...

Yeah, the rewards are lackluster.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

I think it's a bit bold to claim they're bots. More likely just AFKers, as you say.

Having gotten first place a few times, even once on the "open" bracket with a rank 2 chocobo...

Yeah, the rewards are lackluster.

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It's always been a difficult thing to eliminate the bots in this game, so yeah to call out people as bots is a bit bold, plus obviously proving it is difficult.

However, it's been about 5hrs since I've been racing, and between me and my friend he's been afking every single race we've encountered them. Probably longer I suspect. A race or two...maybe 3? But not for hours on end.

It's just too suspicious for me. Even though DNF rewards currently are weak, being capable of doing it essentially forever is pretty lame.

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Originally Posted by Angelusdemonus

It's always been a difficult thing to eliminate the bots in this game, so yeah to call out people as bots is a bit bold, plus obviously proving it is difficult.

However, it's been about 5hrs since I've been racing, and between me and my friend he's been afking every single race we've encountered them. Probably longer I suspect. A race or two...maybe 3? But not for hours on end.

It's just too suspicious for me. Even though DNF rewards currently are weak, being capable of doing it essentially forever is pretty lame.

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At the very least, I think rewards for performing well (say top 3? or even at least finishing) could be buffed a bit. Maybe a withdraw-esque penalty for DNFs, like 3 DNFs and you get a 30 minute lockout? It's really hard to see how even the newest, unluckiest players wouldn't finish if they're actually at the keyboard.

All that said. Unfortunately, I think it's only a matter of time before we start seeing bots that actually perform. This kind of limited-controls-on-the-rails content lends itself to being botable x.x

Gonna second the call for having the rewards for DNF removed. There's no reason placing DNF should yield MGP and XP, for just this reason.

What's "DNF"? The only thing I can come up with that would be relevant to a race is "did not finish", but that's not even possible in this game (unless someone disconnects in the middle or something, but I'm pretty sure that already eliminates any reward). It sounds like you're talking about coming in last, but since I can't come up with a way to turn that into the "DNF" acronym, I'm not sure if I'm even reading this thread right.

Anyway, I do think how you place in the race should have more than its current trivial effect on your reward. Compare it to the other big draw of the Gold Saucer: In Triple Triad, if you lose, you're out your entire entry fee. If the match ends in a draw, you're out part of your entry fee, though you get a portion of it refunded. (Actually, there I think TT is the one that's off. A draw should result in no change, giving you your entire fee back, but no profit.) Only if you win do you actually receive anything.

For chocobo racing, I think coming in last should result in a forfeit of your entry fee (though your chocobo could still gain some EXP). Coming in seventh should return as much as you spent to enter, but little if anything beyond that. Sixth and above can give enough reward to be a profit beyond refunding what you spent, but with the top three and especially first place being significantly higher than the others.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

What's "DNF"? The only thing I can come up with that would be relevant to a race is "did not finish", but that's not even possible in this game (unless someone disconnects in the middle or something, but I'm pretty sure that already eliminates any reward). It sounds like you're talking about coming in last, but since I can't come up with a way to turn that into the "DNF" acronym, I'm not sure if I'm even reading this thread right.

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DNF is indeed Did Not Finish. The race doesn't wait for every player to cross the finish line if someone takes too long. I don't know if every race has a hard cap time limit, or if it's based off of when the first player crosses the line, but there's definitely a DNF place.

For reference's sake, I DNF'd a race just to show what's being discussed. Note that my bird (Mars Gold) placed "DNF" at the bottom of the list, and that I received a small amount of MGP and experience points doing so.

DNF'd race

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Originally Posted by alt_key

For reference's sake, I DNF'd a race just to show what's being discussed. Note that my bird (Mars Gold) placed "DNF" at the bottom of the list, and that I received a small amount of MGP and experience points doing so.

DNF'd race

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Your image puts up an error for me. o.O

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

Your image puts up an error for me. o.O

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Try again; I was told that it worked for someone else after a refresh.

I'll help you out.

http://s13.postimg.org/dc6qb6alz/l_Pnuu6_I.jpg

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Originally Posted by alt_key

For reference's sake, I DNF'd a race just to show what's being discussed. Note that my bird (Mars Gold) placed "DNF" at the bottom of the list, and that I received a small amount of MGP and experience points doing so.

DNF'd race

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To be fair, it is quite possible to get hit with DNF circumstance while legitimately playing. I had a race a couple nights ago where it was just me vs 7 NPCs in the 2nd circuit. That match was some Mario Kart style of bullshit. Started off with every damn NPC cock blocking me, then after a good 20sec, they finally let off and most of them sped far and fast (meaning they were tuned to high rank stats). Items did little for me, since most of the good items I claimed were stolen before I could use it (was spamming the key to avoid that, but nope). The ones behind me constantly hit me with Heavy and Frenzied (sometimes combined). When I started to catch up to some, they would Briar and follow or block me when I tried to move, speed up, or slow down (NPC, so they can easily determine your movement if it's set that way for the match). To top it off, one of them used Meteor... while I was around the 60% mark of the race, stamina was drained anyway, GG hate you all. EDIT: Oh wait nm, wasn't DNF, was 8th. I'm guessing it would have been DNF if it took me a little longer and not manage to use a dash though.

But yeah, it's definitely something folks will look to abuse. But I guess that's not a problem for them since it doesn't affect too much besides personal gain? /shrug The situation I had was definitely rare to be THAT bad.

I'm hoping that's the Maiden bracket. Seriously? The difference in MGP reward between 1st place and DNF is less than 30 MGP less? I mean... What? I actually get 1st place nearly every single time I race, but it hardly seems worth it since the MGP reward is weak to begin with, and to see how richly rewarded people are for afking during the race... Ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by Hiruke

I'm hoping that's the Maiden bracket. Seriously? The difference in MGP reward between 1st place and DNF is less than 30 MGP less? I mean... What? I actually get 1st place nearly every single time I race, but it hardly seems worth it since the MGP reward is weak to begin with, and to see how richly rewarded people are for afking during the race... Ridiculous.

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Sorry, I should have included that in the original post. This was in R120 race, so that's probably why the DNF rewards look so high. First place in R120 is 300 XP and 141 MGP.

Ah, I hadn't seen a DNF before and didn't realize the race could end before everyone got to the finish line. With the way it's set up for the chocobos to continue running towards the finish line non-stop (albeit at varying speeds), I'd assumed all races would wait for everyone to get there, since it's guaranteed that everyone eventually would. Ok, now that I understand that part, I agree that it shouldn't provide a reward. It should be something like:

DNF: forfeit entire entry fee. No EXP
Last place but finishing: forfeit a portion of the entry fee, but your bird does gain EXP
Seventh place: Get back your entry fee (and perhaps a few MGP more, but not much), gain EXP
Sixth and up earn increasingly higher MGP prizes, especially for first place.

I think it was 30seconds after first place finishes before dnf applies?

Anyway yeah,remove rewards for dnf's.

how did you color your chocobo?

I assume these people are using some program that handles registration and commencing over and over? Since otherwise they'd have to hit the buttons to commence every few min in which case they might as well do the race right? Allowing people to bot for rewards like that isn't fair to PS4 players since we don't have a way to continually register and accept commencing a race without being at our console... so while they can just rank their Chocobo up overnight while they're sleeping, those of us who can't are placed at an unfair advantage (as compared to a fair advantage another player who levels up legitimately would gain).

I doubt they are bots. They are probably just players AFKing for free stuff.

Bots would probably at least spend their stamina going in a straight line.

All i can say is who cares if they are afk, think of it like this your chance to come first has increased so you can get that win 500 match achievment. why does someone going afk bother you?

If someone is manually queueing up 1x per each race just to lose than more power to them. It's only if someone has a program running them through 100 races while they're at work, sleeping, or whatever else prevents the typical person from being able to play the game that I see as a problem.