Botters has RUINED PvP :(

[Rufalus]

Boting is not a necessary evil, it's a cancer and a mmo killer. Crafters hate them for a good reason..

I enjoy doing fates but it's getting annoying now on Ragnarok the new zones already have clusters of bots farming the fates - all the characters move same time and stand together on same position, all have same gear and same default yellow chocobo with the same barding and using smn with titan egi out, clone army.

[KageTokage]

When the bots start actively interfering with people's enjoyment of the game like this, that's when it becomes completely inexcusable to turn a blind eye to them like they've been doing.

If they can take the time to ban the endless streams of petty gil spammers, then they can sure as heck do something about ones like this, though I suppose it's mostly a matter of whether or not they want to do something about them, considering that all of these guys are paying customers.

I kind of wish someone would just straight up ask one of the devs or other higher-ups about this when they get the chance in an interview, seeing as they're unwilling to bring up the subject around here in any capacity other then those routine RMT spam ban counts that attempt to give the illusion they're making any meaningful effort to curb cheating.

[Kae_Berry]

They're putting themselves on auto follow, so they're reap characters just moving in a mob so they look like they're there but don't have to play. It sucks because they're easy to spot but we only get one kick per four hours and half the people are afk and can't even vote to kick so we get stuck with a zombie mob.

[ValarianHeartbreaker]

I just did a Frontline where a good HALF of my team (Adders) were bots. Stop saying they were just bad players, no no, I know bots when I see them. All mounted on their chocobos, because that's the only mount they have, all following the same guy, moving as a group, standing iddle for a while, then moving again, doing basic attacks.

Simple solution: eliminate the reward for the losing (3rd) team. I know it wouldn't fix everything, but it would be a start.

My biggest problem is that some day, I might group with a lazy mofo who leveled that way, and I can tell you right now, these players, who basically never really played their characters, are gonna suck in a MAJOR way.

[Rufalus]

This is quite untrue. PvP had a small but dedicated, ACTIVE playerbase well before 4.0. It gave no XP, and it wasn't as simplified as it is now (and arguably more fun still).
Let's stop spreading the wrongful idea that removing XP would kill PvP. If anything it'd bring some integrity back into the mode.

You quoted me, but I didn't say what you said I did. I wasn't talking about exp, I said rewards. If pvp had nothing: exp, wolf marks, tomes, none of that. You don't know what participation would be like, because it's never been that way in the history of pvp. There have always been rewards. My reply was to the person who said there should be no rewards period, and I think that would be a bad idea. If it's for fun alone with no reward, there wouldn't be enough players who stay.

[PharisHanasaki]

Just make it so that you need to have dealt damage x to either other players or crystals. At the very least people will have to try if they want to receive exp.

[Alleo]

Here's how I'd fix it, note that I'm not fond of PvP in general, but this feels like it would intentionally complicate things so that AFK and bot play would be detrimental without punishing PvP play itself.

a) Don't have safe zones. Give the player 5-20 seconds of being unable to be damaged after respawning them at the last claimed tower. If no tower claimed, drop them somewhere randomly and unpredictably.

b) Time spent dead counts against you. If more than 10% of the time is spent ko'd or inactive, no reward.

c) Remove mounts, remove sprint entirely. Create a PvP specific movement speed so that all players move at the same speed. Remove fall damage.

d) Put more entrophy into the map design. If there was ever a good business case for a procedurally generated landscape in FFXIV, this is it. This makes it hard or impossible for bots to be able to navigate because they can not use the existing game maps to predict where things will be.

a) Well the only thing this would do, is that a AFKler either just travels around the map (like a lot of them do per auto run) or just die and stand up again and again, while still giving points to the other team, which would make it even more difficult to the team that has those AFKler in it. So you would punish the whole team again.

b) I am fine if you have a certain amount of exp for just being in PVP (not everyone that is bad is someone that AFKs) and on top of that the people that are doing a certain amount of damage/heals gets some extra EXP on top of that. I am against things that are just punishments because you can have teams with only one healer and die a lot thanks to that but still try your best. Yet with your solution people would be punished for something which might be out of their hand. (I had more than enough runs where I stood next to a healer and died because somehow they did not heal me. Yet I always try my best till the end)

c) Then they should make the maps smaller otherwise traveling to crystals would be way to long and thus feels borings. Also fall damage is a nice way to kill enemy players. :P I love to kick them over the edge when I am healer and see them dieing thanks to the fall damage. (Also see no reason why this would help against botting?)

d) Instead of map design I really just wish that the next pvp frontline map is less PvE against some ice and more about PVP. I know that ice gives the most thus I try to get as much as possibly out of it, but I have the most fun in the map when everyone is waiting for the next spawn and kill each other. So more PVP against people and less PVE against some objects.

This is quite untrue. PvP had a small but dedicated, ACTIVE playerbase well before 4.0. It gave no XP, and it wasn't as simplified as it is now (and arguably more fun still). 3.5 and the Garo event overshadowed the fact that they made the biggest change the community had asked for for 2 years - the removal of GC restrictions, which in fact did far more to improve queues than the event did. And it STILL didn't give XP.

Let's stop spreading the wrongful idea that removing XP would kill PvP. If anything it'd bring some integrity back into the mode.

Someone said that we should take all rewards away from anyone but the winner team and this would imo be the death of PVP. I mean even if you lost you still got wolf marks, exp points for your pvp profil and stuff like that. Now lets take all of that away from the two teams that will lose it. Casual players only play PVP if there is a good incentive behind it (like Garo or ExP) so those would surely be gone. If you only have dedicated PVP players left you will still have two teams that will lose, even if all did their best. (Or have three winners with same points but thats probably really rare) How many of those players would truly keep playing if they did not even get wolf marks for their time?

Also even if there was a small active playerbase, it seems that its not enough for SE? I mean if they would be fine with only a small amount of people playing PVP, they would not try to do so much to get more players to play it. So it might be fine for the PVP players itself, but its SE that creates content and it was not fine for them. Otherwise they would not have done so much to make it easier for new players.

[Drakeos]

Here an example via REDDIT : https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...early_morning/

[Liii]

Came here half expecting smn ruin puns. Unsure if the lack of puns is disappointing or not

[Kasenai]

To those of you who haven't seen any bots, do you play during peak hours or very off-peak? "I haven't seen any bots at 7 pm" No shit, Sherlock. Of course there's less of a bot problem when large groups of players are queuing. Try a few games at 7 am if you're curious. The situation is very different then.