Ai bots in ultimate raids.Pvp cheating. Crafting bots.

In my opinion. Bots, cheating and other unfair things make the game shallow. Maby add anti-cheat? I know this is an unpopular opinion but i wanted to adress this problem again.

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Originally Posted by UNDEAD10000

Sadly anti-cheat will not stop bots and cheaters at all when once the cheater or bot gets banned, they just come back and continue playing the game with cheats and/or bots.

Just look at any popular FPS multiplayer game, many of them have kernel level anti-cheat and they still have cheating problem.

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That's not entirely true, at least for Riot Games which certainly set the standard for anti-cheat. They can now detect cheating solutions which required purchasing additional hardware that cost several thousand US dollars. There are other anti-cheat solutions which are reasonably effective as well. Will you eliminate all cheating? Probably not but you can set the bar high enough to deter most players from attempting, especially if you make Secure Boot, TPM 2.0, HVCI, and VBS requirements to play the game. Battlefield 6, for example, is doing this on release in October.

If you want a nice read from someone that works on Riot Vanguard team: https://x.com/ItsGamerDoc/status/1958935350916915647

Square Enix have made the mistake of moderating FFXIV as a high trust society. The player base has routinely abused that (mis)placed trust and there should be a course correction.

PvP I agree with, since they directly affect you. Cheating to get weapons and stuff ... yeah, it sucks, but the bigger problem is people boosting others through boosting services.

Also, have you completed these ultimate raids yet? You can feel fulfilled for yourself regardless, especially if you record it without using auto markers.

pvp cheats? is there evidence?

people blame pvp opponents for being cheaters as long as i can think of in pretty much every pvp mode of every game even if theres nothing cheatlike about them

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Originally Posted by Asari5

pvp cheats? is there evidence?

people blame pvp opponents for being cheaters as long as i can think of in pretty much every pvp mode of every game even if theres nothing cheatlike about them

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There was a cheat being openly distributed via Discord shortly after the release of crystalline conflict in Endwalker 6.1. It would do things such as auto stun opponents when they'd Limit Break. Can't say I've heard much about it for a while but equally, I've been stunned suspiciously quickly after popping an LB a few times when I've dipped my toe into PvP this expansion.

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Originally Posted by Miradelle

PvP I agree with, since they directly affect you. Cheating to get weapons and stuff ... yeah, it sucks, but the bigger problem is people boosting others through boosting services.

Also, have you completed these ultimate raids yet? You can feel fulfilled for yourself regardless, especially if you record it without using auto markers.

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Yes i have cleared 2 of them. Problem is when im doing it in pf, most people want to use auto markers. Yeah i can record myself clearing it but i heard there are cheats that cant be seen on stream. Still a valid point of self fulfillment.

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Originally Posted by Zoreth

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Then report it? I get why people want to use certain types of assistance in those fights; but at the same time if you believe cheats that give an advantage are "unfair or shallow" and you know someone is (possibly) using them, reporting is a valid action to take. It won't stop cheats entirely but turning a blind eye also does nothing either.

If by anti-cheat, you mean one of those kernel installers that are active when you turn on your PC, then I want a refund. I will never pay for a game that wants to spy on you to such an egregious level. I have yet to see anyone botting in FF. The best systems are report and remove. It is in the best interests on the devs to actively support that. I really don't understand the crafting botting? There is a macro system already built into the game. When all you have to do is spam a macro where would the botting come into it?

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Originally Posted by syldon

If by anti-cheat, you mean one of those kernel installers that are active when you turn on your PC, then I want a refund. I will never pay for a game that wants to spy on you to such an egregious level. I have yet to see anyone botting in FF. The best systems are report and remove. It is in the best interests on the devs to actively support that. I really don't understand the crafting botting? There is a macro system already built into the game. When all you have to do is spam a macro where would the botting come into it?

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I hope this is enough. I dont mind anticheat checking my pc but i do understand that people dont want them. Your point is valid.

The bots in this game are mostly RMT bots, and I think the solution to those is to simply ban them. You see them constantly, but they only occasionally get banned in batches long after they've already done their job. What we need IMO is for even a single GM to be actively monitoring each DC and banning the bots as reports come in.

Adding anti-cheat would be very invasive and also kill all plugins and mods including harmless ones which make the game better. (e.g chat bubbles prior to the devs officially adding the feature)

I don't think anyone disagrees with you, and there are certain plugins that have absolutely clowned on Cosmic exploration

I just don't get the mentality around cheating in something that's supposed to be purely for enjoyment lol

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Originally Posted by RyoXander

I just don't get the mentality around cheating in something that's supposed to be purely for enjoyment lol

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Because it's no different from an addiction. Once it starts, you won't stop.

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Originally Posted by RyoXander

I just don't get the mentality around cheating in something that's supposed to be purely for enjoyment lol

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MMOs are a power game. Ego becomes be all and end for some people. I have a passionate hate for cheating processes in games. Cheating isn't just a one off these days. It becomes a progressive abuse. I saw what Pindle bots and Meph bots did to diablo 2 in the early 2000's. It absolutely ruined an amazing game.

As for RMTs, there is so much money to be made from it that SE will never stop it. You cannot track the programmes these people are running. All they do is rewrite them with renamed code. They are literally making millions every day. Hiring a clever programmer is chicken feed compared to the pay off. There was a video posted on the EU wow forum about a guy talking to a botter from a Scandinavian country. This guy said he was earning a large amount per year from 3 bots running continuously (I want to say $40k, but it was awhile ago. sorry). This was on one machine. Professional RMTs run banks of system with hundreds of bots. They keep fresh accounts on stand by to put in place as soon as an account is banned. It literally takes minutes to get back up and running once a ban has taken place. As long as people are willing to spend real money for in game cash, then SE cannot prevent it.
I have to admit though, SE do a really good job of containing these people. I only ever see their spam in the three main cities. Something other games should strive to do.

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Originally Posted by syldon

If by anti-cheat, you mean one of those kernel installers that are active when you turn on your PC, then I want a refund. I will never pay for a game that wants to spy on you to such an egregious level. I have yet to see anyone botting in FF. The best systems are report and remove. It is in the best interests on the devs to actively support that. I really don't understand the crafting botting? There is a macro system already built into the game. When all you have to do is spam a macro where would the botting come into it?

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There's a lot of misinformation around kernel-level anti-cheat, any software developer can spy on their users without having a kernel-level component within the application. Not to mention the average user is more likely to blindly trust a game developer, surely they wouldn't abuse that trust by doing anything malicious. More importantly, cheating exists even if you don't see it and you can even benefit from it without seeing. If Square Enix were using a solution such as EAC (with enforced Secure Boot, TPM and HVCI/VBS), it would take one patch cycle/raid tier for the player base to see the actual extent of "cheating" within FFXIV. Even plugins to mass automate crafting macros, so you can AFK instead of nursing the PC every 30 seconds, are a form of cheating.

As for getting refund if they did add an anti-cheat, that's unlikely. GTA Online, for example, has recently implemented BattlEye and none of the PC store fronts which sold that game were providing refunds. Whether or not you, the individual, would want to keep playing afterwards is entirely up to you. I, for one, would still be here and wouldn't reduce my expenditure in the game (beyond just the core fees of expansions and the monthly subscription).

If anybody wants to read about why games use kernel-level anti-cheats, there are some good write ups out there including this one: https://vx-api.gitbook.io/vx-api/my-...de-anti-cheats

Anti cheat would be poor for this game lot of extra issues come with anti cheats.

To fix cheaters in pvp would propose just having the blacklist function block the players from queuing into the same instances so if for ex Ronso Hakeen ques in and is sandbagging and enough people run across him decide to blacklist him for it he won't be able to keep cheating that and barring free accounts from ranked pvp if it is not already done, it would make the process of making more sandbag accounts longer and likely become unviable.

14 is a low resource cost (client side resource cost) game it would be good if the MMO stayed that way it wouldn't answer the issues peps are having in pvp anyways because the peps sandbagging will still be able to do it they are using legit accounts to do so it's like.... using a hammer on a screw.

now if people were becoming immortal doing unlimited dmg and using dev tools that would be cause to ask for an Anti cheat.

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Originally Posted by BlisteringFrost

Because it's no different from an addiction. Once it starts, you won't stop.

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what does this mean, tho?

Also, I'm glad FFXIV doesn't have an invasive anti-cheat since many plugins apart from cosmetic are actually missing QoL features that might even make it to the real game like checking off collectibles and word bubbles were added later on. No one is harmed by them other than it makes our lives easier to overcome tedious parts that have aged poorly over a decade.

Kernel level anti-cheat would probably mean the end for me. (I'm planning to move to Linux for my next pc build, just sick of the windows environment.) This would also be bad news for anyone who is moving due to 11 making their hardware "obsolete."

Winning or losing in a video game is not that serious, so I don't care about encountering cheaters some of the time. But I use my computer for work and bills and all that other stuff my life depends on. There are a combination of risks and hassles that come with giving kernel access to what is, ultimately, a developer of a digital toy. For me, it's not worth it-- if something goes wrong, it's going to be a huge pain to deal with that effects other software or maybe even my entire machine. No thanks.

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Originally Posted by Miradelle

PvP I agree with, since they directly affect you. Cheating to get weapons and stuff ... yeah, it sucks, but the bigger problem is people boosting others through boosting services.

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All cheating should be banned regardless.

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Originally Posted by CCheshire

what does this mean, tho?

Also, I'm glad FFXIV doesn't have an invasive anti-cheat since many plugins apart from cosmetic are actually missing QoL features that might even make it to the real game like checking off collectibles and word bubbles were added later on. No one is harmed by them other than it makes our lives easier to overcome tedious parts that have aged poorly over a decade.

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Pretty reasonable question. There was a case study done with Destiny 2 a couple years ago, actually, because of how horrible the game was getting with cheaters, particularly in PvP. Most recently they just slapped over 3,600 accounts who cleared the newest raid on Contest mode (think Week 1 raiding but with extra mechanics basically, but it's only available for 2 days after the first clear, then the easy version unlocks for everybody to farm) in under 20 minutes (not mathematically possible). But I digress. This case study was a guy hunting down a lot of the cheaters contact, and not so much to do anything malicious, or vigilantism. The guy just wanted to ask a question. WHY? Even after they get banned and come back. Why?

The tl;dr is they literally just can't play the game without them anymore. It's too different for them to handle. It's not all that different from a bad addiction in a way. A good example was when Nintendo released LOZ: Tears of the Kingdom. There was a nasty glitch that let you duplicate items on a massive scale. Many players were using this to dupe Diamonds to hyper-generate Rupees and rare crafting materials. When Nintendo inevitably fixed this bug, there was a massive outrage over it. People literally refunded or dropped the game entirely, because they couldn't cheat anymore without reverting the game back to a previous patch state. Which, realistically, most people dunno how to do that. Their experience was too drastically different without it that they wouldn't play it anymore.

The same logic applies here. A lot of cheaters do it just because after their first time doing it, they can't even comprehend playing the game any other way. In some cases it's for RMT, or to self-inflate ego. For others, it's literally no different than an addiction.

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Originally Posted by BlisteringFrost

Pretty reasonable question. There was a case study done with Destiny 2 a couple years ago, actually, because of how horrible the game was getting with cheaters, particularly in PvP. Most recently they just slapped over 3,600 accounts who cleared the newest raid on Contest mode (think Week 1 raiding but with extra mechanics basically, but it's only available for 2 days after the first clear, then the easy version unlocks for everybody to farm) in under 20 minutes (not mathematically possible). But I digress. This case study was a guy hunting down a lot of the cheaters contact, and not so much to do anything malicious, or vigilantism. The guy just wanted to ask a question. WHY? Even after they get banned and come back. Why?

The tl;dr is they literally just can't play the game without them anymore. It's too different for them to handle. It's not all that different from a bad addiction in a way. A good example was when Nintendo released LOZ: Tears of the Kingdom. There was a nasty glitch that let you duplicate items on a massive scale. Many players were using this to dupe Diamonds to hyper-generate Rupees and rare crafting materials. When Nintendo inevitably fixed this bug, there was a massive outrage over it. People literally refunded or dropped the game entirely, because they couldn't cheat anymore without reverting the game back to a previous patch state. Which, realistically, most people dunno how to do that. Their experience was too drastically different without it that they wouldn't play it anymore.

The same logic applies here. A lot of cheaters do it just because after their first time doing it, they can't even comprehend playing the game any other way. In some cases it's for RMT, or to self-inflate ego. For others, it's literally no different than an addiction.

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Wait, is it still cheating in an offline single player game when no one else is involved? I mean, back then you could give yourself infinite money, HP, or power for free for PC games with mods or even paid DLC if the devs wanted the extra money. Also, no one would be affected other than letting me cut down on the grinding parts or so I could craft more items faster.

Finally, I understand why it would be bad to cheat in an online MMO with PVP mode since they used to give exclusive rewards, titles, rankings vs actual human players. Also, PvP is kinda ignored in FFXIV, but still I understand it would be frustrating if players want to farm the pvp achievements.

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Originally Posted by CCheshire

Wait, is it still cheating in an offline single player game when no one else is involved? I mean, back then you could give yourself infinite money, HP, or power for free for PC games with mods or even paid DLC if the devs wanted the extra money. Also, no one would be affected other than letting me cut down on the grinding parts or so I could craft more items faster.

Finally, I understand why it would be bad to cheat in an online MMO with PVP mode since they used to give exclusive rewards, titles, rankings vs actual human players. Also, PvP is kinda ignored in FFXIV, but still I understand it would be frustrating if players want to farm the pvp achievements.

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Of course it is. It's just, because you only affect yourself and nobody else, most reasonable people don't care. There's no reason to care, after all. Your game. Do what you want with it. Or in it.

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Originally Posted by Evermomo

Kernel level anti-cheat would probably mean the end for me. (I'm planning to move to Linux for my next pc build, just sick of the windows environment.) This would also be bad news for anyone who is moving due to 11 making their hardware "obsolete."

Winning or losing in a video game is not that serious, so I don't care about encountering cheaters some of the time. But I use my computer for work and bills and all that other stuff my life depends on. There are a combination of risks and hassles that come with giving kernel access to what is, ultimately, a developer of a digital toy. For me, it's not worth it-- if something goes wrong, it's going to be a huge pain to deal with that effects other software or maybe even my entire machine. No thanks.

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Agreed. I play on Linux. Kernel-level security wouldn't even allow an anti-cheat to be installed, and I'll be damned if I'm going to put a spyware OS like Windows on my machine. I would walk away in an instant.

For now, they won't put an anti-cheat as it would be costly in terms of dev resources and Yoshi-P even addressed it when he was talking about the modding culture this game has which was pretty interesting to read. I don't like how invasive anti-cheats are, you could be using a program for totally legitimate reasons and you can be banned even if it's not running at the same time as the game. This has happened many times in WoW with their anti-cheat that bans you for detecting certain programs that are used for people working from home and such that have nothing to do with the game. Programs WoW will flag you for include software used for macros for your mouse and keyboard. Having an anti-cheat would drive many players away and I'm glad Yoshi-P doesn't want to use one for the game too, so the best you can do for now is report the cheaters and go about your day.


Here is the announcement from Yoshi-P regarding his anti-cheat stance.
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...5eb456d2183251

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Originally Posted by Zoreth

Maby add anti-cheat? I know this is an unpopular opinion

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I don't think it's unpopular at all. If anything it's more popular of a wish than ever. Devs probably just don't want to do, you know, work.

why is there not a report button for cheating like they have rmt in general chat, there could be one by right clicking there name . the only option is opening up a ticket writing a log of time, place and name. if they had a report target button there would be more report on individuals that cheat. if there was a lot of report on a individual they could look into why.

The people who think reporting works. (Insert whatever laugh out loud meme here). Seriously imagine a whole server reporting bots and mpking those bots. It took a whole expansion for those bots to stop logging in. Not even sure if they were banned or just moved on. Or do MSQ and see all the bots underground or see players not removed from pvp lists till the end.


Yes they do remove bots, no months later is not appropriate. I am not sure what GMs do in 14. But in 11 they actively banned bots. If someone got reported too much they would pop in. Nothing like seeing a gm move players to see they were botting. Someone I know who was trying to get banned because he was leaving for WoW. Actively botted skill ups. GM sent him a tell and the bot didn't respond and he got banned. If you aren't going to do anticheat, you need more man hours looking after the game.

Not sure which bots they're banning in those waves, but it sure isn't the most obvious ones.
You just have to check your weekly GC standings and chances are most if not all in the top 10 are bots.

Here on light here's a couple of bots going in and out of duties 24/7 infront of every GC on most servers.
You just have to stand there for a few minutes and see the same ones from the Leaderboard pop in and out every couple minutes, farming a raid or trial. They do this at every hour, morning, midday, night.

If you trade them, it interrupts their program for a few seconds and they attempt to fill the trade with the materials they're buying with seals. The ones they'll sell to farm gil.
It's the most blatant form of botting. And yet they've been doing this since 2024, topping the GC standings every single week for a year now. Reports do not work.

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Originally Posted by BlisteringFrost

The same logic applies here. A lot of cheaters do it just because after their first time doing it, they can't even comprehend playing the game any other way. In some cases it's for RMT, or to self-inflate ego. For others, it's literally no different than an addiction.

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Sounds a lot like what happened with the whole mare debacle on here.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

pvp cheats? is there evidence?

people blame pvp opponents for being cheaters as long as i can think of in pretty much every pvp mode of every game even if theres nothing cheatlike about them

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If you lived under the rock, that is your fault. There are currently many pvp cheats available and yes people use them regularly. Including Frontlines and Crystaline Conflict. Anything from job automation to "no lag / stuck animation" is used there. There are plenty of ways to check if someone is using cheats:

- WHM that instant polymorphs you when you are about to do LB. Specially if you are WHM as well, effectively cancelling your entire lb. Most of the time these players will auto walk to you like bots just to poly, no sprint or anything, just auto walk. There have been cases where WHM stops even dragoon from entering his lb.
- Monks that do earth replies faster than what is possible and other abilities where they remove anim lock. Plenty of people in high elo have seen this.
- In frontlines there are people who abuse teleport bug and just come straight to base in order to not die. This still works.

And there was plenty of evidence on discord servers, leaks and if top players say that they are seeing cheating, then why you wouldn't believe it? Unless of course you are one of them kek.

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Originally Posted by Verty

Not sure which bots they're banning in those waves, but it sure isn't the most obvious ones.
You just have to check your weekly GC standings and chances are most if not all in the top 10 are bots.

Here on light here's a couple of bots going in and out of duties 24/7 infront of every GC on most servers.
You just have to stand there for a few minutes and see the same ones from the Leaderboard pop in and out every couple minutes, farming a raid or trial. They do this at every hour, morning, midday, night.

If you trade them, it interrupts their program for a few seconds and they attempt to fill the trade with the materials they're buying with seals. The ones they'll sell to farm gil.
It's the most blatant form of botting. And yet they've been doing this since 2024, topping the GC standings every single week for a year now. Reports do not work.

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Those are super obvious, they constantly been doing that. Also players who teleport under texture to farm fates and mobs.

They don't care about hackers or the 95% of raiders who cheat with plugins to some degree. I don't even know why Yoshi P keeps pumping tryhard raids when Splatoon, zoomhack, pixel perfect and cactbot are like the absolute starter pack for almost all raiders. And yes, even dmg meter is a cheat, stop moving the goalpost. Now here comes the mouthbreather bluh bluh WoW bluh has bluh addons as well bluh, well, WoW is designed around people using addons, even Vanilla was.

As long as the JP region (console players) is content with the game and the mogstation sales are on point they won't give a fuck about anything. Unsubscribe and speak with your wallet, everything else falls on deaf ears or at least stop treating this game as some sort of honorable competition, because it's not.

Well that would explain how people were suddenly SO good at stunning my limit break every. single. time. There were days when I couldn't get ANY limit breaks off at all, no matter what job I was on, usually.

the less accesible content the more the cheating it's been like that since forever no game is safe and it's in every game the best solution comes from accesabiltiy towards the content.
at least for PvE

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Originally Posted by Myotis

the less accesible content the more the cheating it's been like that since forever no game is safe and it's in every game the best solution comes from accesabiltiy towards the content.
at least for PvE

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people also bot the hell out of cosmic exploration, which is very accessible imo.. or diadem, or deep dungeon hoards, or even retainer ventures and market undercutting
every aspect of the game can be automated with bots and lots of people make use of it

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Originally Posted by Johners

if you make Secure Boot, TPM 2.0, HVCI, and VBS requirements to play the game.

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lol no way this is gonna happen in the near future, too many players would be suddenly unable to play the game due to having older PCs that don't support one or more of those things.

They're never going to add anti cheat to the game because the role players who use mods are way too much of their revenue.

hard to compare those two since crafting is basicly made to be boring there is nothing to exciting about - i envy that they tried to change that with ocean fishing for me crafting should be like some minigames instead of button mashh for points over and over.

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Originally Posted by Myotis

hard to compare those two since crafting is basicly made to be boring there is nothing to exciting about - i envy that they tried to change that with ocean fishing for me crafting should be like some minigames instead of button mashh for points over and over.

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They already have the gold saucer for minigames. Crafting/gathering is for people who enjoy repetitive gameplay you don't need to pay a whole lot of attention to like OSRS. The sort of stuff where you just turn your brain off and tink-tink away for no real reason aside from "I want to veg out on something while listening to someone try to beat FF1 without spending gil". It's also nice in the space exploration area because you can actually just chill and chat with people while you wait for your craft to finish. On the flipside I hate ocean fishing for how it just makes you busy busy busy spam spam spam if you want your points.

I've not heard of Bots in Ultimate... I'm not even sure what that would entail.

The only bots I've seen hide under aetherytes spam their RMT links.

And then bots that noclip under ARR starting zones killing random mobs for what I can only imagine is very paltry profits.