botting.

[Pangy]

Crafting is mindless.

Before 1.19, we had to hit "down" one time between synths (to go from Requested to Recipes), and it was otherwise just enter-spam.

After 1.19, Recipes is the default option. We don't even have to look at the screen to hit down or anything else. Just spam enter, or Confirm Button on a controller.


Crafting is when I watch all my TV/movies. The rest of the time, I'm engaged in the game, probably in voice chat, having fun. Crafting for me is a thoughtless/mindless "in-between" time that lets me have more fun later.

I see people /wave to me all the time, and while I sometimes wonder if they think I'm botting, /wave doesn't even work while crafting. I might throw them a /em yay or a /tell, but probably not. I keep an eye on my chatlog for anyone looking to talk to me etc, but now that we don't even need to change menu options between synths, I pretty much just hit Confirm on my controller every 3-7 seconds for hours on end.


I'm a student with a very light semester and I have more time than most players (and no life!). Sitting here for 8-15 hours straight on a Wednesday while I watch 5-7 movies in a row isn't unpleasant.

That said, I have no doubt there are people on my server who think I've botted. Almost all of the time, the 'proof' or reference is that a player has multiple Lv50 crafts, and that just isn't possible unless they bot. After all, they'd have to sit there for like 8 hours and spam a button!

At this point I'm comfortable letting these people have their opinions. I've been hearing the same stuff about various players' crafting since December, and how they MUST be a bot because they have too many crafts etc.

At the end of the day players who use bots know the risks and will probably be caught and banned. I'll still be here skillfully repeating Confirm Button years from now, and more than likely so will the people thinking I'm using some kind of bottastic magic.

[Zeref]

I never said that crafting in an isolated area or instanced location, like a mission, was proof of booting, but combined with a non responsive player only someone that is hiding their shame wouldn't admit it looks suspect. Yes, if I had to do it the honest way I am going to not like people that cheat, how is that wrong? It's not like I said crafting is fun and shouldn't be improved.

So not only did you call us botters before, you're calling us botters again if we're not adamantly staring at the screen awaiting your communication? stop being so full of yourself, there is no clear cut sign to detect a bot, and you're just trying to sound smarter than you are, no you didn't said they're cheating, you said they're "hiding their shame" which is just the same as calling them cheaters, unless they were naked, either you're trying to use semantics or you're too slow to tell what you yourself are saying.

[Destain]

So not only did you call us botters before, you're calling us botters again if we're not adamantly staring at the screen awaiting your communication? stop being so full of yourself, there is no clear cut sign to detect a bot, and you're just trying to sound smarter than you are, no you didn't said they're cheating, you said they're "hiding their shame" which is just the same as calling them cheaters, unless they were naked, either you're trying to use semantics or you're too slow to tell what you yourself are saying.

Lol. I love how you take my opinion personal. Did I say anything about you or anyone else on this forum? Did I say I required an immediate response? Your putting words in my mouth. This threads over for me.

Bottom line, and hopefully this is something even you and I can agree on, bots are bad! In my opinion, there should be a way to report them, as you used to be able to via the support desk. Should SE ban all people reported? No. Sould they investigate reports? Yes.

I remember why I rarely post now. I wish you the best in ffxiv and in life.

Xoxo

[Deminia]

Lol. I love how you take my opinion personal. Did I say anything about you or anyone else on this forum? Did I say I required an immediate response? Your putting words in my mouth. This threads over for me.

Bottom line, and hopefully this is something even you and I can agree on, bots are bad! In my opinion, there should be a way to report them, as you used to be able to via the support desk. Should SE ban all people reported? No. Sould they investigate reports? Yes.

I remember why I rarely post now. I wish you the best in ffxiv and in life.

Xoxo

You claimed crafters who prefer to craft in areas with little traffic and therefore less lag "hiding in shame." Yes, plenty of us who are playing by the rules yet still get accused of botting will take that personally. I am not hiding in shame. I am also not likely to answer some random person's wave if I am in the middle of crafting.

Another reason we like to craft away from crowds is to not have to deal with people who assume that not responding to a random stranger equates to botting. I have had idiots walk all over me while I am sitting there crafting, deliberately being distracting. They either think it is fun to stand on my character or they are "testing" me to see if I am a bot. It is annoying as hell so I choose to craft away from areas with lots of traffic and therefore less people performing such "tests."

When I want to read shouts for a party or feel like being in the repair area to fix gear for people in between synths, then I sit out in town. Otherwise I am almost always hanging out somewhere with easy access to either my retainers (who store my crafting supplies) or a vendor (who sells materials I am crafting with or to whom I can toss my unwanted gazillion undyed pieces of junk I spammed to get 1/4 of a crafting level). If I need synth support and plan to craft on several classes, I park myself at an uncrowded camp to be near the vendor and synth support and be away from spam & lag.

I don't use any devices or programs at all to craft. I also don't tape down the enter key. I sit at my pc and hit enter or click my mouse while talking on the phone, watching youtube, or talking with my ls mates. I am very often not aware of anything else going on in the game around me because I am not interested.

[Physic]

best answer, either SE make automated crafting, or they make crafting more complex, and heck even entertaining. I really see no difference to spamming a button while looking at the screen, or not looking at the screen. Why is the minigame spamming a button. Thats the problem.

[Burn]

The crafting reforms can't come fast enough.

[Zeref]

Lol. I love how you take my opinion personal. Did I say anything about you or anyone else on this forum? Did I say I required an immediate response? Your putting words in my mouth. This threads over for me.

You're kidding me right? you basically called all of us filthy cheaters who "hide our shame" simply because we craft in secluded places without staring at the chat window without blinking, why wouldn't I take it personal?

[ellohwell]

By now, you could be pretty casual and have all crafts to 50, so if players have all crafts to 50 then that doesnt proove that they are botting.

But I know for a fact that certain people bot because they've said so. People who think it doesn't happen are deluded, because I know people who bot. They've admitted it.

The situation of players passing around a bot to other members of their LS is something that actually happens.

[ShepardG]

This disscusion is hilarious.... I mean does no one who has ever participated in a video game realize that manually crafting..... WHILE LOOKING AT SOMETHING ELSE (forums/YouTube/hulu/comics) ISNT REALLY PLAYING THE GAME? The problem isn't bots, it isn't Turbo controllers, it isn't the economy. No the problem is that the DoH and DoL is a (and I'm capatilizing this so people get the message clearly) FAILED VIDEO GAME CONCEPT. Blacksmiths don't fight dragons, the build/repair armor for the people who do... you shouldn't play this game to work a job. The mechanics are broke but even above that, the entire concept of crafting in an adventure game should be an after thought, not a job class.
The game is going to a more traditional job system right? What does 30MRD/15WVR unlock? Or better still what does FSH/BOT unlock?
This bothers me more than anything because to fix it, they would need to redo crafting completely, Ala full wipe. These folks who burned a year of their life grinding 5 crafts and fishing and mining would be screwed and they already said this won't be happening...so they basically are sol when it comes to the inherent fundamental flaw of this section of the game.

[Mirh]

The problem isn't bots, it isn't Turbo controllers, it isn't the economy. No the problem is that the DoH and DoL is a (and I'm capatilizing this so people get the message clearly) FAILED VIDEO GAME CONCEPT. Blacksmiths don't fight dragons, the build/repair armor for the people who do... you shouldn't play this game to work a job. The mechanics are broke but even above that, the entire concept of crafting in an adventure game should be an after thought, not a job class.

You're entitled to your opinion, and we should all respect it. With that said, it's very rare for someone to come about and suggest the concept of crafting classes as jobs was an error. It's arguable what sets FFXIV apart from most MMOs on the market today is the thought and detail involved in crafting, and I'd like to think that I speak for many when I say changing this takes a big part of FFXIV's heart and rips it out. They don't have to redesign it entirely, they just have to rework recipes and the attributes so that you can't spam a button. it's easy, and I believe it's in the works.

This isn't necessary an adventure game, it's an MMORPG. SquareEnix's goal was to appeal to people of all shades, and some people don't feel that playing an MMO should involve strictly killing dragons. In fact, it wasn't until certain MMOs recently released to more casual players that an MMO could be summed up a strict mix of maxing levels and killing baddies.

Prior to World of Warcraft, and its dozens of clones, there were players in MMOs that did nothing but craft, and they got their money's worth from the game. An MMO wasn't defined as "casual-friendly and/or hardcore" but by what you could do in the world.

I think the real issue with DoH/DoL strictly lie in design that really required a developed community that worked together and communicated. The new era of MMOs ("Adventure games" as you'd perhaps say) bred an intense sense of wanting to single-handled to kill the gods, or single-handedly craft legendary weapons. This is why there are people who spent a year maxing all their crafting jobs.

Also, no one puts a gun to your head and tells you that you must level everything in the game. If you're compelled to do it and compelled to bot to do it, you have your priorities derped, and you can't really blame S-E's horrible skew of difficulty on that.

Clarification: The problem isn't that you have to level a craft as a job, it's that the minigame for it has lost its reward/penalty system and it's now marginal at best in difference between trying to succeed or just hammering a button, trying to HQ or not. It was actually fun and it felt like you could HQ when you tried to, before Yoshida took over.