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

[BothFawn]

1) If you don't care about gil and only care about the "fun" of crafting/gathering, then bots literally don't matter at all to you and don't affect you in a negative way at all (even in the rare cases they DO significantly drive down prices).

2) Botting isn't actually cheating. Bot gathering doesn't allow you to do anything that player couldn't normally do (unless they are teleport hacking). All it does is automate the process so you don't have to actually be sitting at the computer. Bots (in most cases) follow all the same rules as manually operated players. Botting is actually slower than manual gathering, but the trade off is that you don't have to be present, so you can just let it run a long time to make up for the slowness.

Yes, it's against the ToS just like any 3rd party program. But it isn't cheating (teleport hacks are a completely separate thing and not intrinsic to botting).

Alright, we have reached a point in the discussion where a person openly starts defending cheaters.

Guess I'm just gonna make 50 characters in one date centre, set up a gathering bot on them running 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, then go sell the stuff they gathered on the marketboard and I would still get defended by him, because "I'm not doing anything that player couldn't normally do".

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

Gonna call bull on that.

I 100% refuse to believe adding facial hair is too hard/can't be done when they are more then happy to add new clothes/hair to the mogstation.


And I would also like to add:

let's say it's 100% true.

WHY.
WHY has the code of the game been so abandoned and never been updated?

While this is just a guess on my part, it seems like the character creation UI is the issue SE has with adding new options. Like... it may have been originally designed to only accommodate X number of options for faces, tatoos, etc. Though they don't seem to have any trouble adding hair styles.

Ultimately though, its something that SE should invest the time and resources to address so they can add more face and detail options imo.

[Lunavi]

Not talking about high end DOW/DOM. Obviously people being able to sell savage clears make a lot of coin. I was more referring to the average player that doesn't have the luxuries. An average crafter still makes a hell of a lot more Gil than the average non crafter. Bots or no bots.

AH-Flippers are their own species entirely and best left out of this discussion.

With a statement like the one you did I did assume you meant high-end vs. high-end. My mistake I guess?

[Granyala]

With a statement like the one you did I did assume you meant high-end vs. high-end. My mistake I guess?

Naah, probably mine for not writing clearly enough. Don't worry.

[KageTokage]

They're apparently going to be revamping quite a few aspects of the DoL/H classes to coincide with Ishgard Restoration releasing...so it's going to feel pretty aggravating when they inevitably fail to address one of the most problematic sides of it when they're finally making a push to get more people interested in it.

[Kaedan]

Alright, we have reached a point in the discussion where a person openly starts defending cheaters.

I did nothing of the sort. I corrected a false statement, full stop. In fact, I've stated multiple times in this thread that I'm AGAINST botting. But me being against it doesn't change the fact botting isn't cheating.

[Oxidized]

I did nothing of the sort. I corrected a false statement, full stop. In fact, I've stated multiple times in this thread that I'm AGAINST botting. But me being against it doesn't change the fact botting isn't cheating.

cheat
/CHēt/
verb
1. act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, especially in a game or examination.

Botting fits this definition like a glove, am I really having to defend that botting is actually cheating now? I mean, it does not really seem like a 300 IQ stretch to label going against the ToS in order to gain an unfair advantage as cheating.

I agree with you that botting is not "hacking", but hacking and botting are both forms of cheating, plain and simple.

[NekoNova]

I did nothing of the sort. I corrected a false statement, full stop. In fact, I've stated multiple times in this thread that I'm AGAINST botting. But me being against it doesn't change the fact botting isn't cheating.

Sorry but I cannot agree with that statement.
You're using a tool to do the work for you, which is giving you the advantage because it's faster, doesn't require your input or effort to obtain results.
That's the very definition of cheating.

[Greywolfamakir]

I dont care about money making in ffxiv, i dont enjoy gathering or crafting. I get money just selling Goetias mats, so i dont have a lot of money.

I play just battle content (raid), but i need potions and foods, i have to buy both and being honest, if bots help me to get both cheaper, i have to say thank you bots, because i can buy potions and meals and keep playing this great game.

[SamSmoot]

Interesting bot side note: I encountered a couple characters in WoW running the same bot program. They'd kill beasts to loot bones and skin them. Giveaways were running into the same obstacle every tome, and making a 90-degree turn at the same point every loop.
After skinning, the bot would mount up, then ride to the next mob, even if it was 10 yards away. The bot also killed packs of mobs at a time.

I found that I could hit one of the beasts he was gathering up, pull it away, then hex it (60 second cc). This kept the bot in combat, so it couldn't mount up. Without mounting, it didn't go anywhere I'd keep him stuck in this mode until the operator came back and usually said ?? a couple times before disappearing.
(I also reported them every time, and they eventually disappeared after a couple weeks)