Is anyone annoyed by the HUGE number of people using bots on this game?

[Radaghast]

Some people actually like the crafting system. From what I hear the whole grinding-ness of it is fairly attractive to japanese players. Personally I kinda enjoy it. It's boring by itself but fun to do when watching university lectures or netflix. Saying "people bot because the system sucks" isn't a good argument because there are alternatives in the game like levelling dow/dom. If crafting is too tedious and boring then don't craft. Wasn't that the point of the game in the first place? That people could choose different jobs to -MAIN- so if you didn't like crafting you could just stick to dom/dow?

Would like to touch on this simply because of the repair system. If you don't have crafts leveled you either have to find someone to repair for you or use the npc. No other game does this to this extent where it basically feels like crafting is required.

[Azurymber]

Would like to touch on this simply because of the repair system. If you don't have crafts leveled you either have to find someone to repair for you or use the npc. No other game does this to this extent where it basically feels like crafting is required.

you can pay NPCs to repair. its expensive but not -that- expensive. I managed to push mrd to 50 by doing that since at the time there were like only 2 ppl on the server who could actually repair my axes. But you are right.

[Xenor]

The only way to put players on a level playing field with bots is to disallow people to take more than one craft past rank 50, like in XI. Force people to specialise in one craft and reward them for it. Otherwise bots will rank up every craft to the cap and make money on the best of everything. There's bots on my server well on the way to a billion gil.

[Joeking]

Domo Arigato Mr ro-BOT-o
Link in there.

[Xenor]

The funny part is if you got rid of bots you'd be paying about 2k gil for a wind shard. Well I wouldn't, I still make my own despite having tonnes of useless gil.

The bad part is all these botters will get away with it, because as soon as the STF get off their lazy arses and do something about it they'll stop botting. By then they'll have nearly all classes at 50 and it won't matter.

[TheVedis]

The funny part is if you got rid of bots you'd be paying about 2k gil for a wind shard. Well I wouldn't, I still make my own despite having tonnes of useless gil.

The bad part is all these botters will get away with it, because as soon as the STF get off their lazy arses and do something about it they'll stop botting. By then they'll have nearly all classes at 50 and it won't matter.

lol speaking of that
i made a good 30mil off shards, helping to jack the prices to 600gil + for wind before the bots and rmt took control of the shard market

damn i miss those days, i made a fortune

[whoopeeragon]

I may be a minority, but I actually do enjoy the crafting system. Though I can see where people are getting at; doing low-level synths just to create a part will get tedious and boring.

From this topic, I can see two solutions to the problem:
- Banning all botters reported, and repeatedly banning any that emerge, system unchanged, stricter GM observations.
- Changing the crafting system in the future so it's more interactive/fun to use ingame, no idea about level of banning about bots in the future.

Lets go through the advantages and disadvantages of each one:

Mass Area of Effect Banning
Advantages
- Instant reduction in the amount of people botting.
- Works efficiently and quickly, with people reporting, GMs observing, and eventual action.
- Dissuade current bots to think about botting when ten people around them have mysteriously disappeared.

Disadvantages
- System still equally as dull, players still bored. New players to game will be equally inclined to bot to get out of doing the same boring reptition over and over again.
- Population drops will be assumedly high, according to opinions, if total annihilation of botters is performed.
- Banned users will either move to new game, continue botting, or make a new account, log in, and continue botting.

New Crafting System
Advantages
- Fun, innovative (hopefully) which draws more people into experiencing crafting firsthandedly.
- More focus on crafting as a 'class', rather than as a 'side content' or 'ghost class'.
- New players to game will see crafting as something worthwhile, and perhaps spend their time on grinding away at logs.

Disadvantages
- Current botters will most likely find new ways to bot new system, rendering botting population still existent.
- Not certain about effect, may be a deterrent or an attraction. Will build up its effects slowly.
- Will take longer to implement than above option.
- Will still be repetitive, no matter how it is implemented, incentive for gil will still be there.

Botters will exist, no matter how the game is designed or implemented. Those who live for botting, will bot, and that will not change, no matter what ideals we throw at them. Those who have botted, will most likely keep botting because they're used to it, and won't think about it.

The most the game can do is either repeatedly ban botters whenever they emerge, or design the game in such a way that future players will be encouraged to play with their hands and minds, not just the machine and mouse.

Nuru's and, to a certain extent, Kuro's suggestion involve the second option, while Vedis' is more the first. I am generally inclined to the introduction or implementation of a new system, one that will be more engaging then the current one, since I think the first option will just involve a cycle of botting, banning, botting and banning.

This may be my personal opinion, but in the long run, the second option will eventually see less botters than the first. While the first will be a fast way to get rid of any botters, new players to the game will have the same impression as the veterans, and a certain portion of them will turn to botting to ease their suffering. However, with the introduction of a (hopefully) fun crafting system, the majority of new players will choose not the bot, and, while the initial population of botters are present, the numbers adding to the population will be less and less.

If anybody can provide more options, that will be nice, and debate my points if you disagree.

On the same note, perhaps we can suggest ways to improve the crafting system so people are encouraged to actually use it, rather than the endless *enter* spam I see people do? To me, there's more to just that, but since people tend to just use standard synthesis, I can see where they are coming from. I was thinking of perhaps having different crafting options for different classes, or perhaps using more than just one key at a time.

Example: Take spinning threads e.g. making Cotton yarn. Perhaps instead of the normal synthesis, we can have the spinning option, where we can use the number pad's 2, 4, 6, 8 to do a "spinning" motion, while perhaps pressing shift/control/other buttons to limit the speed or control how it is spun, resulting in the NQ or HQ items depending on how those other buttons are used.

The crafting process does not need to be paused much like now, where the character pauses after each synthesis before we choose what synthesis we want to use.

I don't know much about this, but with some creativity, perhaps some results can show it for what it's worth.

[Azurymber]

even if crafting was more fun it would have to be repetitive like everything else in an MMO so the people botting now would probably still bot. Plus a lot of people bot for gil so that incentive would still be there.

Mass banning botters on the other hand would create a risk that many people would not take, so less people would bot in fear of losing their account.

[Shinigami]

guess my proposition wasnt that good uh well i tried . I wonder tho, is it possible for a botters to do botany and mining?

[viion]

even if crafting was more fun it would have to be repetitive like everything else in an MMO so the people botting now would probably still bot. Plus a lot of people bot for gil so that incentive would still be there.

Mass banning botters on the other hand would create a risk that many people would not take, so less people would bot in fear of losing their account.

I dont see how a mass ban would create a "fear" as, if I was to bot, and didnt get banned on a mass ban, then I'm obviously good enough not to get detected and would continue botting as my ego would be hitting the roof. It would make it worse, if they were banning left-right center as a person is detected, I'd be continuely thinking "my turn is any time now". And it'd be worse as I'd become more careless and do even more botting! such as 2accounts or something haha.

But in traditional sense what I saw on XI was a lot of people would do some hack to test/try it out then go back to legit in gear, then 8 months later get a ban haha. SE is consistent!

I've not bothered following this thread. Just ended up like the other 30 threads on this topic.