Lack of action against gathering bots, it needs to be changed, and soon

[RareItems]

Heh, just trying to explain to the raiders why Selling Clears for RL Money is just as bad as a Gathering bot/aethersand bot, if not worse. But i'm sure they all know what i'm talking about already, they're just playing dumb xD.

Open up Party Finder, and there's 2 easy bans right there on the Top. If they can't even ban those, how can you expect to get the gathering bots/aethersand bots banned lol.

[ForteNightshade]

How do you know they unsub and don't sabotage PUG groups? How do you know if they helped ppl get their clears for free before Selling Clears was a thing? Selling Clears is against the TOS, its RMT, all it does is promotes Elitism, Toxicity and Griefing. Not to mention Abusing a naive player off his/her hard earned money.

"Hey guys we didnt' have any buyers today, lets unsub and give up" When was the Party Finder introduced again? These sellers have been here since Party Finder was introduced. You really think these guys just unsub? lol.

Clear Sellers are just a collection of regular Raiders who are elite enough to be invited to that Savage Clear selling Discord, and if they have a buyer, they ask around for 8 ppl who are interested and they all get a cut.

Even if we went along with this utterly nonsense. In what universe do you believe the average player in PF would suddenly decide to shell out upwards of 500 to 1,000$ because their pug was sabotaged? For the vast majority of people, that isn't pocket change. People buying content aren't random joes. They have money to throw around and had no intention of ever doing the content themselves. So sabotaging PUGs would accomplish next to nothing since people buying clears wouldn't be in PUGs to begin with.

[Enla]

Heh, just trying to explain to the raiders why Selling Clears for RL Money is just as bad as a Gathering bot/aethersand bot, if not worse. But i'm sure they all know what i'm talking about already, they're just playing dumb xD.

Most of the people posting here already stated they find RMT clear selling to be a bad thing they wished was regulated more? We get it, you dislike raiders. Please stop derailing this topic and purposefully ignoring what people post in response just because it doesn't suit your narrative. If you want to argue about raiders there's other topics available, or you could make your own.

As for the gathering bot situation I do think the suggestion of SE hiring more people to handle reports would go a long way, as well as expanding the capabilities of their GM's to actually police such matters. I get that some bots can be 'hard to detect' and that they don't want to ban legitimate players, but there has to be some way to take note of the actions and paths an avatar takes if enough people tip them off to a potential botting problem.

[RareItems]

Most of the people posting here already stated they find RMT clear selling to be a bad thing they wished was regulated more? We get it, you dislike raiders. Please stop derailing this topic and purposefully ignoring what people post in response just because it doesn't suit your narrative. If you want to argue about raiders there's other topics available, or you could make your own.

As for the gathering bot situation I do think the suggestion of SE hiring more people to handle reports would go a long way, as well as expanding the capabilities of their GM's to actually police such matters. I get that some bots can be 'hard to detect' and that they don't want to ban legitimate players, but there has to be some way to take note of the actions and paths an avatar takes if enough people tip them off to a potential botting problem.

I don't hate raiders. More than half of the people on my FL raid. My FC leader raids. I would be raiding too if the drops were BiS for a year. It's pointless to do it unless for glamour now and none of them looked great enough to warrant hours of wiping and watching videos for.


Just stating the double standard here. Raiders tend to turn a blind eye on the Blatant RMT going on the party finder for years now, and yet they're complaining Gathering Bots are driving prices down but they don't want to go outside the city and actually file the report? lol.

[Machi_Machiavelli]

How are you determining they are bots? Are you just reporting anyone who is gathering or crafting for longer than you would?

[KageTokage]

How are you determining they are bots? Are you just reporting anyone who is gathering or crafting for longer than you would?

Movement patterns, mainly.

Bots exhibit basically no variance in how they move between sets of gathering nodes and if there's more then one in the same zone they'll oft be following one another perfectly.

A lot of players who use bots are also too lazy to be bothered with ever crafting/gathering legitimately and thus conveniently only ever will be seen doing so late at night/early morning.

[Vnolan]

How are you determining they are bots? Are you just reporting anyone who is gathering or crafting for longer than you would?

One form of bot at max level will toggle the skill "Preparation" on and off at the start of every node. There is no reason to do this as Preparation stays on between nodes and it has no use for these gatherers. If it was only one player doing it, you might not think much of it, but multiple players are doing it.

That's for regular nodes. For timed nodes, one example is the 4AM node in the Rak'Tika Greatwood. There is a tree next to the node that has a space in it. Some bots will fly into the space and dismount while bouncing off the inside of the tree at the same spot every pass.

Example: https://gfycat.com/enormousfrequentamericanwirehair

While the two bouncing off the tree are clearly bots, the third player approaching from the left side is also a bot and has been using them for at least two and a half years (was also a bot I was talking about in the thread I linked earlier).

Saw another that would accidentally aggro a mob but then let the mob kill it, release, return and accidentally do it again later.

This doesn't cover all bots and only those that know they can do it so blatantly without consequence.

Some will exhibit inefficient patterns such as approaching or leaving a node in stealth while walking when they have flight unlocked. Again, doing it once or twice isn't odd, but performing those same steps along the same path during every pass when it still doesn't prevent them from aggroing mobs = automated gameplay.

It should also be noted that the bot count is actually higher than it looks since the instancing system is spreading them out.

[EaMett]

I expect some measures to either be in place by, or be set up after, the ishgard rankings start. Because bots will basically rule that

[BothFawn]

Out of interest, is anyone here who was/is playing on Japanese servers and could share if the situation with gathering bots is as much of a problem there too?

If the problem does not exist there, then wouldn't it basically mean that there's either 1. a lack of communication between NA/EU department and JP one, or 2. an assumption from the developers' part that if something isn't the matter in Japan, where people tend to be much more honourable, then it means it's neither the case on the West?

[Canadane]

It’s already well known they don’t take priority for non-JP issues.