SE: Why Are Gathering Bots Okay??

[seekified]

From a master crafter/gatherer bias I would encourage you to see the glass half full and not half empty. The bots keep allot of useful mat prices low for leveling crafters and actually keep the economy from skyrocketing like on smaller servers. Gil's sellers can get cancer for all I care, but the gathering bots don't spam your chat box and don't personally bother anyone. I say ignore em. Enjoy the game. \o/

Really? You realise that these bots make it more or less impossible for actual DoLs to be competitive on the market for many types of items, especially shards?

[Elamys]

Balmung has a ton of bots as well, to the point where legitimate players cannot make a noticeable profit on many items. The Ironworks market is absolutely hilarious, with the MB having hundreds of items listed, at 180k a piece max. The best part is, they're all posted and crafted by the same people who have been crafting these items for months.

https://image.prntscr.com/image/9f0f...d12a2d045d.png

Every single one is crafted by the same person. Absolutely none of the crafters I know bothers selling Ironworks anymore because they know the bots have the entire market. The same people gathering have been going around gathering and very obviously botting for well over a year now, since I started seriously gathering and crafting. I'd wager that almost every gatherer I see is a bot or is botting at least part of the time. They go to the same nodes (usually ones that have Ironworks-related materials - crystallized sap, lumythrite ore, smithsonite ore, etc).

There is absolutely no reason to condone this behavior, and if you played on a server as big as Balmung, you would see why. It is actively hurting the ability of crafters and gatherers to play the game they want to, to play the game the way it was meant to for DoH/L.

[Zojha]

It is actively hurting the ability of crafters and gatherers to play the game they want to, to play the game the way it was meant to for DoH/L.

I think if the market board has any bearing on the ability of crafters and gatherers to play the game the way it's meant to be, then the issue lies in the way it's meant to be, not in the market board.

If making profit is the defining feature of DoH/DoL, then these classes need to be removed from the game ASAP, because it means they can only function by being unpopular (since popularity means competition and would have the same effect on prices as bots). That's a huge, glaring design flaw. Abandon ship, back to the drawing board, these classes are a conceptual failure.

That argument only argues in favor of DoH/DoL removal, not against bots.
The argument against bots is that users of such gain an illegitimate advantage over others. It's the same as wintrading in PvP or even botted wintrading, speed- or other hacks to make PvE easier (which even benefit the other people in the group), exploiting bugs and other, similar activities. It's unfair, plain and simple. Profits don't matter.

[HaelseMikiro]

So we're going to argue that the point of crafting items in a game with a Marketboard and trading system is not to make gil or be somehow compensated for your time, and the first proposed solution is to delete all non-combat classes because ..... your opinion of "the defining feature of DoH/DoL" isn't the same as someone else's opinion that selling items on the MB is how the classes are meant to be? If you're going to call someone else wrong, the least you could do is also tell them the right answer. Unless it's subjective, and you just got ruffled because the way Elamys stated it could sound objective to some people who have a hard time telling the difference.
I think (note: an opinion) that the defining feature of them is gathering and crafting items. A bit of a simple view isn't it? The way a class is meant to be played, is defined by what it CAN do. But crafting and gathering on their own are 100% pointless. So then what? You have 3 choices:
1) Use it
2) Sell it
3) Dispose of it for nothing
In a supply and demand economy, it's not too hard to see which option bots can monopolize, forcing legitimate players into the other 2 options as the compensation for their time dwindles.

A better (although still asinine) suggestion would be to eliminate all trading systems in the game. Make all items bind on acquire. Crafters and gatherers can still do all the other things they like to do with the 100% unquestionable raison d'etre of being self-sufficient, as there are no other options.

[Elamys]

If making profit is the defining feature of DoH/DoL, then these classes need to be removed from the game ASAP.

There is literally nothing else for crafters to do with the things they make. As stated, it's either use it yourself, sell it on the marketboard, or dispose of it. The only other actual CONTENT crafters have is scrips (which are used to get materials and items for, you guess it, more crafting) and the custom deliveries, which is basically scrips with a storyline. Crafters exist in almost every MMO, their purpose is to supply non-crafters with items they need, which, yes, is done on the marketboard by and large.

[Levi]

I got back to the game a few days ago. Saw the same botter i always saw and more. And it seems the DEVs still don't bother. I hope the gathering will be made easier (more output or something) so we don't have to buy from botters anymore on the MB and waste less time on gathering.
I wonder if SE is selling bots . They could sell them on the mogstation though :/. Everyone would profit . Can't bots just be made legit pls? Kappa

[Alkel]

On Ragnarok, we have legion of bot / RMT farmers.
They are all well know, reported many times by many players, but they are still roaming around, spamming the MB with full stack of about everything.