The red line is crossed now - Bots, cheaters, hackers, gil-seller

[NYCAcimStudent]

Melichoir gets it.

World of Warcraft did 2 things to successfully combat bots. They decided to become the RMT directly, thus eliminating the need for RMT bots. They also cracked down hardcore on farm bots.

Result: Massive inflation + Scarcity of raw materials. The scarcity just drives up the price even more. There are less and less goods and players have more and more gold. It is a vicious cycle. The majority of people have an obscene amount of gold because they can just buy it (rather than earn it) and will pay whatever is charged. There is no free-market mechanism to control prices because Blizzard is essentially printing money.

FFXIV does not want to copy WoW policies. Is there some way to ban the bots in FFXIV without annihilating the in-game economy?

[KageTokage]

Melichoir gets it.

World of Warcraft did 2 things to successfully combat bots. They decided to become the RMT directly, thus eliminating the need for RMT bots. They also cracked down hardcore on farm bots.

Result: Massive inflation + Scarcity of raw materials. The scarcity just drives up the price even more. There are less and less goods and players have more and more gold. It is a vicious cycle. The majority of people have an obscene amount of gold because they can just buy it (rather than earn it) and will pay whatever is charged. There is no free-market mechanism to control prices because Blizzard is essentially printing money.

FFXIV does not want to copy WoW policies. Is there some way to ban the bots in FFXIV without annihilating the in-game economy?

There are multiple differences between XIV and WoW's gathering/crafting systems that make me think things wouldn't necessarily play out the same way.

Probably the most key difference in WoW is that gathering nodes are shared and do not respawn instantly. This effectively places a hard limit on how quickly a particular resource can be brought into the market, and also creates stiffer competition between players as a zone can only support a few players before people have to start waiting for node respawns.

Another major difference is that while crafting/gathering are much more accessible (You only need an easily procured tool to gather or craft and there are little to no upgrades that actually improve your performance), you're limited to only two crafting and/or gathering professions per character, meaning that unless you're an altaholic you will have to turn to the marketboard to get certain things. You're still further limited by crafting/gathering specializations.

The restrictive nature of WoW's crafting/gathering naturally lends itself to high prices.

XIV is restrictive in a different way by placing a high entry barrier for endgame crafting/gathering due to its gear requirements, but once those have been met, a player effectively has access to everything and never needs to rely on others or the marketboard to obtain/craft something.

[Alucard135]

Melichoir gets it.

World of Warcraft did 2 things to successfully combat bots. They decided to become the RMT directly, thus eliminating the need for RMT bots. They also cracked down hardcore on farm bots.

Result: Massive inflation + Scarcity of raw materials. The scarcity just drives up the price even more. There are less and less goods and players have more and more gold. It is a vicious cycle. The majority of people have an obscene amount of gold because they can just buy it (rather than earn it) and will pay whatever is charged. There is no free-market mechanism to control prices because Blizzard is essentially printing money.

FFXIV does not want to copy WoW policies. Is there some way to ban the bots in FFXIV without annihilating the in-game economy?

You know what would be the best option in this case?? Giving players an ingame bot for crafting and gathering. In an MMO called Forsaken world, they literally give you a menu to set up a combat bot so that you can just leave it to kill 200-300 mobs. Now I'm not saying let SE add combat bots. But it should be for gathering and crafting. Botters are taking the advantage that a lot of the players are afraid to use botting tools because they will get banned. So now they control the market. But what if everyone has an equal footing? Then you won't see just a handful of players controlling the market and the prices will also be cheap.