Today, I witnessed the procession of bots.

[Cyrocco]

And I saw something really interesting. Now, hopefully I'm able to start with a screenshot here.

https://i.imgur.com/tcTGFgS.png

I was redesigning my HUD since I decided to pick up tanking, and while I was checking to see if certain things overlapped, I saw what seemed to be an extreme case of rubberbanding.

But it didn't happen with one player. It happened with eight.

I saw something similar the night before, a player spawned in the gridanian inn, and rubber banded, I thought it might've been an issue with my network, a small blip. But this time around, I saw these characters warp in, one after another, directly on top of the NPC, to unlock the same achievement, and immediately warp out again after a short pause.

The most interesting part is it's only -some- bots that do it, some of them just run through the town to this NPC. But now I'm wondering, do bots have some way to warp around? An actual hack? Or are they just hurting server speeds -that- badly?

Update:

I decided to check the desk itself, since the network issues could be on my end, but the invisible wall makes it impossible to stack directly on top of that NPC.

https://youtu.be/yWdVaARrjiU

So it does look like a legitimate warping hack.

[InkstainedGwyn]

There are scripts and stuff I'm p sure that allow them to warp and clip under the ground. It happens in every game, unfortunately.

[Kisagami]

They basically have found a way to flood data into the game somehow. I’ve seen these guys do this over and over again. It is thpically late at night. My friend and I spent hours watching them fly around and do the impossble. I tried reporting as many of them as I could, but they were so fast I could only use the achievements they earned to get their names.

[Cerbolt]

They clip underground. I've seen a few pop up when questing. It's pretty odd watching enemies die around you with seemingly no cause until a group of bots pop up and then disappear.

Edit: spelling.

[Cyrocco]

Oh wow, so they completely clip through the ground then. It's pretty freaky to see for the first time.

[Texa]

You can see them underground sometimes if you have the idling camera on.

[Tiraelina]

You can see them underground sometimes if you have the idling camera on.

Yep!

This is a teleport hack. If you just stand around the main city aetherytes like Ul'dah or Gridania where bots are spamming the market boards. You will eventually see them pop in for a brief moment and then vanish somewhere else. You can also find them killing things from underground in northern thanalan where the imperials are.

[SigmaOZ]

Are these bots Gil sellers!?...

Why would people bother with them otherwise!?...

They must have a reason to be doing all of that, I've seen them in Northern Thanalan jumping from monster A to monster B just like the mighty Godbert would do for any given reason!...

[Moonlite]

What is kind of amusing is a couple things. So they teleport from NPC to NPC. Some NPCs their name will hover at ground level. But some NPC interactions will pull them up like you see. A good location for watching these bots is by the sylph dailies their is multiple run back and forth talking to NPC. If you lock on you won't lose the lock it slides across.

The other interesting thing is the people who use the excuse we need gated content because it stops bots. They can finish crappy MSQs faster then any regular player. They have no tedium of travel for fetching or talk to NPC only to come right back.

I would be curious to see how it works inside a dungeon for a quest. Do they even have to acknowledge the bosses or can they just go to the end. Is that why some dungeons aren't about kill but travel to X spot. Not that makes much diff it is one more teleport.

[Texa]

The other interesting thing is the people who use the excuse we need gated content because it stops bots. They can finish crappy MSQs faster then any regular player. They have no tedium of travel for fetching or talk to NPC only to come right back.

The only thing I can think of that could reliably stop them is more visual-based no chat prompt randomization. Like, having to count and sort mechanics by color in Sophia. Tedium is nothing for bots but having to do simple math based on a random amount of colored objects that can't be directly interacted with might be more of a step in the right direction. This is all purely speculative though and I don't see SE making any big adjustments to existing content to alleviate the issue of how gil sellers obtain their gil.