Is it OK to use bots in FFXIV?

[ZeroRaziel]

Ehhh. Those are the easily noticeable RMT bots that mostly stand around Limsa. SE is horrendous was it comes to market board bots, gather bots and crafting bots. Even outright cheaters often got on to be ignored for years despite numerous reports. And the thing is, all they have to do is shadow these "players" to see them botting as it's fairly obvious.

Unfortunately, it seems the GMs aren't given much authority in this regard, and it's the STF that handles these bans. Which is hilariously understaffed. All in all, SE doesn't do a whole lot about bots.

There are a lot of "players" who bot, and over the years it's become sadly evident that SE isn't doing anything serious in regards to stopping them.
The obvious RMT farms from china are swiftly dealt with, but actual players who opt to use bots seems to get no actual punishment.

Maybe one day SE will crack down on these and they'll get the ban they deserve. It's very sad that legit players are surpassed by others using nonstop bots.

Part of the issue may very well be that the STF and director/producer/god Yoshi-P are both mostly isolated to the experiences of Japanese servers.
You look around you don't see RMT (as much) or cheaters botting their way nonstop (as much). It exists but from what I've gathered it's not by any degree close to other data centres.
So if the people in charge of dealing with it don't see a problem, then there is no problem. This is why things don't really get done unless brought directly to him by say a fan at a Q&A or a technical issue at an important time.
I like how the sound output issue we've had for years was solved within a week of Yoshi-P having experienced it during a Live Letter.

Well, thanks for your honest thoughts. Had some similar suspicions when was making this thread...
Yet, it's still better to hear this, than some delusional conclusions of people claiming that there are no crafting/gathering/market bots. Just very dedicated players who can be active for 750+ hours in a row repeating 1 singe action every minute.