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

[RareItems]

No, it does not.

Me and and others I keep in touch with have collectively reported several different obvious bots on our server since as far as back as HW and they're still here.

If it did actually work, I think we'd be seeing way more people getting banned according to weekly illicit activity reports but instead it consistently maintains an average ban ratio of less then one bot per server.

Gathering Bots have been out since 2010 on 1.0 and People have been selling clears since 2013. One is supposedly destroying the economy the other is supposedly promoting Elitism and Toxicity. Is the Game's Economy Destroyed? no. Is the Game getting more Unfriendly and Toxic? Yes.

[Oxidized]

As for Gathering bots? If you see one, grab your entire FC and have them mass report the botter. SE's banning system works if you actually report instead of complaining about it on the forums.

If this were actually true, I would have never created this topic in the first place; did you even read my original post before deciding to take this discussion in another direction?

Is the Game's Economy Destroyed? no. Is the Game getting more Unfriendly and Toxic? Yes.

Both of these assertions are questionable at best.

If you really think content-selling is the root of growing toxicity in the game, please by all means create a new discussion about it; it is nearly impossible to prove and is only loosely-related to bot gathering in that they are two activities that people get away with that violate the ToS.

[sideshowsam]

At this point, I would be happy to just see the bots we've all known about for years upon years get banned one time. No just the gibberish bots, but the player owned gathering bots that people have been reporting all this time, need to go.

[HyoMinPark]

Raider thinking: Oh you need help clearing content? Sure! That will be just 500 dollars per Eden Savage drop . Oh you cant pay? Then get out of here your wasting my time.

You still have your tinfoil hat on too tight.

The raiders that sell content don’t go into random Party Finders and try to harass players into purchasing their services. They don’t need to—because the ones doing the buying are usually the ones who would never step foot into the content anyways. They want all the shinies while putting in no effort to obtain them. You’re really hardcore into conspiracy theories, aren’t you?

The ppl selling content are not some tight knit group of individuals selling content, its a collection of regular players in different "Endgame Raiding" FC's in a special Discord Channel.

[citation needed]

These players join PUG savage groups/learning parties and purposely make it fail so ppl can't complete content. lol. How else are they going to sell Clears to people.

[citation needed]

Maybe if SE stopped making raids/Ex Trials and actually made meaningful fun content that everyone can easily play like an instanced open world PVP with a mix of Eureka and Frontlines, that would probably be better than them creating content for a small percentage of the playerbase.

Raids and EX primals get along just fine. They’re content designed for a subset of players, just like PVP, Eureka, and the like were designed for a subset of players. This is a theme park MMO, meaning it has something for everyone—there’s content some people like, and then there’s content that those same people don’t like. Not every piece of content needs to be designed for everyone.

Personally, I don’t see the need to spend money on Open World PvP because I don’t even like PvP—and PvP is probably the least popular activity in this game with only a small set of players participating in it. I also don’t like the idea of more Eureka elements, because that completely killed my love for doing the relics back in Stormblood. I think both are content for a small percentage of the playerbase and don’t need more funding put into them. See how that argument can be flipped?

I don’t think I need to repeat that Ultimate garnered this game the most positive attention its ever received on Twitch. I don’t think Eureka or PvP ever managed that, even when SE was heavily into turning this game’s PvP into some sort of “eSport”.

As for Gathering bots? If you see one, grab your entire FC and have them mass report the botter. SE's banning system works if you actually report instead of complaining about it on the forums.

Really? It works? Is that why the same three bots that I reported multiple times throughout Stormblood are still playing and botting away at just about every ephemeral node in Shadowbringers areas? Is that why the bots that have been present on Cactuar since HW are continuing about their business to this day? What about those RMT middlemen that have also been reported? Something tells me that your “solution” isn’t actually working as intended here.

There have been multiple complaints before this thread about DoL/DoH botters getting off scot-free after multiple reports. There was even a Q&A back in Stormblood where multiple questions were posted begging the developers to address the DoL/DoH botting problem this game has. I think only one was answered, and it was answered with an explanation of how the reporting and reviewing system works. But, if I’m recalling correctly, it didn’t offer any answers as to what the STF is actively doing to mitigate this issue. All it really shed light on was that they were obscenely undermanned—I think there’s only 4 individuals on this team, and GMs are not allowed to respond to reports of suspected botting, which really only exacerbates the issue.


Please, just stop. You’re embarrassing yourself at this point, and detracting from the point of the thread with your continued “raiders and content sellers are promoting toxicity and elitism because they force players to buy clears for things”.

If this were actually true, I would have never created this topic in the first place; did you even read my original post before deciding to take this discussion in another direction?

I’d wager, no, they did not. They’ve been in multiple threads the last couple days going off about how raiders are ruining the game, so I guess they wanted to hijack your thread as another avenue to push their rhetoric.

[Oxidized]

Just an update, if you see any of these bots operating, please do not attempt to take matters into your own hands and decide to use a "friendly" A rank to "temporarily disable" the bot if the opportunity presents itself. I just received word that one of my good friends who is also sick of seeing our economy being ripped to shreds received a warning for doing exactly this, and although this presented my friend an opportunity to talk to a GM, the only response to his explanation of motives was "we will look into it" and "don't do it again". Although I learned of this story today, the event in question happened weeks ago, and guess what? The bot is still fully operational.

In short, this may be the only MMO ever where the GMs actively protect the bots, which shows just how much the system needs the change and how much the priorities need to shift.

[KageTokage]

A lot of bots are alt accounts being monitored by their mains while they play or even just their mains being watched while they play a different game entirely, so it really is for the better to not try to do anything to disrupt them. I similarly got pulled aside by the GMs for finally snapping after having the same annoying DoL bot buzzing around by me every night through HW and SB and tried to break it through a combination of different methods at a hour I presumed it would not be being observed at (They were nice enough to not actually put a bad mark on my account, though).

Even if they don't witness you doing it firsthand it's still easy for them to read back in their chat/combat logs to determine if anyone was trying to slow them down while they were absent then file a report about it.

It really is stupid that they keep the hands of the GMs tied when they're a far bigger and more active team then the STF is, not to mention one you can actually communicate with properly.

[BothFawn]

Judging by what I see people saying in this thread, is it safe to assume that botting is ultimately... allowed? I mean, if you are currently cheating and see another player who tries to disrupt your gathering bot, and then you can report this player who is then punished by a GM who literally doesn't care that there is a cheater running around, it is the same level of absurdity as in the Hildibrand quests.

Not punishable = allowed

I really wonder what is Naoki Yoshida's stance on this. And I mean what he is REALLY thinking about it. Does he want us to just don't give a damn about it and we should just enjoy the story and lore in FFXIV for ourselves?

[Arrius]

Judging by what I see people saying in this thread, is it safe to assume that botting is ultimately... allowed? I mean, if you are currently cheating and see another player who tries to disrupt your gathering bot, and then you can report this player who is then punished by a GM who literally doesn't care that there is a cheater running around, it is the same level of absurdity as in the Hildibrand quests.

Not punishable = allowed

Stop making mountains out of mole hills here.

What the GM is meaning that you shouldn't exert punishment on your own, but instead report the suspicious individual.
'Vigilante justice' can always hit someone who isn't involved in all this, which is why support need those reports to investigate whenever those accusations are true or false.

[Oxidized]

Judging by what I see people saying in this thread, is it safe to assume that botting is ultimately... allowed? I mean, if you are currently cheating and see another player who tries to disrupt your gathering bot, and then you can report this player who is then punished by a GM who literally doesn't care that there is a cheater running around, it is the same level of absurdity as in the Hildibrand quests.

Not punishable = allowed

I cannot say that this viewpoint is wrong based upon my personal experiences.

Stop making mountains out of mole hills here.

What the GM is meaning that you shouldn't exert punishment on your own, but instead report the suspicious individual.
'Vigilante justice' can always hit someone who isn't involved in all this, which is why support need those reports to investigate whenever those accusations are true or false.

However, they never investigate these reports, this is the problem; there is no way to get justice through the "support channels they provide". This is not making a mountain out of a molehill, since the problem has been ignored and allowed to fester for so long that it is basically Mt. Everest at this point.

[Kaedan]

Bots are pretty inconsequential. They're like hyper weeds... if they ban one, two more come back in it's place. There's really no point in wasting time and effort banning bots.

SE focuses on the end result: RMT. Every ban wave, they ban thousands and thousands of accounts linked to RMT (either selling or buying), and ultimately that is the goal anyway.

Bots being at the same mining node really doesn't hurt you as a player. And the bots themselves don't do the selling on the Market board, that is done by other accounts.