Should botting be somehow legalized?

[Saccharin]

I am not sure if SE plans to go the route of other popular mmo's in how they handle cheating but it seems that non teleport hack bots are not being targeted strongly. I trully feel that botting may need to be approached differently then how current mmo's are dealing with it. It is is a wound to those who play the game legitimate working on atmas/farming materials and leveling alts and ruins the entire mmo online side of the gaming industry with all these crap gil sellers/botters.

You can't win the 'war on bots' because it's part of human nature to be lazy. I think Carbine had a good idea and it's something other games do too and that's allow people to sell game time for in game currency. This is a big gil sink for people who have plenty of gil and it means they play for free, effectively. For people who buy gil they can just buy a time card and get gil safely and it benefits SE too. All the good stuff is obtained via other currencies anyway.

[Doki]

[DoctorPepper]

I also have to disagree with the OP, botting takes the fun out of the game to me and to be honest the botters in this game haven't had a major impact on me personally so I really don't care about them. If anything they've provided a surplus of reasonably priced materials on the market board for me to use when crafting. I think SE should continue to ban them and do what they can to stop them but I really don't find it to be a major issue.

Additionally, there are better ways to combat the RMT situation, both EVE Online and Wildstar allow you to buy in game items redeemable for 30 days subscription time (with real money) that you are able to sell on the market. Not only does it give people a legit option to buy in game currency but it also supports the devs by paying extra for the item compared to your actual sub cost. As a result I think a lot of people buy those items and sell them for in game currency rather than pay RMT. RMT are still in those games of course but aside from the occasional in game mail I really didn't notice them like you do in this game.

[Ruethryl]

You can't win the 'war on bots' because it's part of human nature to be lazy. I think Carbine had a good idea and it's something other games do too and that's allow people to sell game time for in game currency. This is a big gil sink for people who have plenty of gil and it means they play for free, effectively. For people who buy gil they can just buy a time card and get gil safely and it benefits SE too. All the good stuff is obtained via other currencies anyway.

TERA did the same thing, doesn't help the RMT too much though.

[Poringing]

Square Enix can make it such that botting is part of the game and legalized. But such an imaginative system is such that if implemented perfectly, FF14 will be 2014 & 2015 game of the year. If implemented poorly, the game will crumble into a million pieces, people will laugh at Square Enix for generations to come, and FF15 will truly be the final, final fantasy.

Like they will take such an insane risk.

[Ninix]

Maybe you should check the Lodestone more often, if you really believe SE is not taking action against bot's/rmt's. Just out of the last 4 weeks:

[snip]

That is within "just" 4 weeks and i am pretty sure those numbers will grow even more. And no, the numbers are not growing because more people are into rmt/botting, the numbers grow because SE finds more efficient ways to handle it.

These numbers could be randomized for all the difference it appears to make in-game. These waves never coincide with an increase or decrease in the amount of RMT spam I receive, which has remained about the same since January, nor with the prices they advertise, which have plummeted to $5/mil. If I recall correctly I was getting tells advertising "special offers" for $20/mil a few months ago.

[ZephyrAM]

These numbers could be randomized for all the difference it appears to make in-game. These waves never coincide with an increase or decrease in the amount of RMT spam I receive, which has remained about the same since January, nor with the prices they advertise, which have plummeted to $5/mil. If I recall correctly I was getting tells advertising "special offers" for $20/mil a few months ago.

This is pretty much the same as saying that Cops are useless because people still get robbed.

We have no idea how bad it would be if SE didn't perform these kinds of bans and punishments. No, they can't completely stop botting or RMT, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try, or that they aren't doing any good. It is, and will always be, a constant uphill battle.

It's still a battle worth fighting.

[Demeos]

Here's a couple questions:

What are the players who use botting trying to avoid by having an automated system do it for them?

If there's something that you think is fun to do, but getting to that fun part requires you to do a whole lot of things that you consider not to be fun, then should the developers make the not-fun portions automated or change the not-fun portion into something more enjoyable to take part in?

Which would you rather have?

[Ninix]

It's still a battle worth fighting.

I wasn't really implying otherwise, or nor was I supporting the OP's ridiculous idea.

But the weekly boilerplate "look at how many bots we've caught" thing that they've done for almost a year now has kind of lost its impact at this point.

[Kitru]

Make having to buy a new account and prep it cost them time and money but at this rate they already make 1000x profit of initial investment with the lax enforcement.

Gil sellers don't buy new accounts and build up characters. The hack/steal accounts, which allows them to gut said account for all of its money and start using a character that's already prepped for botting, if they choose to do so. It's way more cost and time efficient since it basically doesn't cost them anything.