Firmament Botting Out Of Control

[Frosthaven]

Just wanted to mention something said earlier. A fisher standing in the same location isn't evidence of botting. The most efficient 45k per lockout method requires you to basically live on one island other than hard-amiss dodging.

Because of this, I've grown quite accustomed to landing on my "favorite spot" on the island. By those standard - and if I didn't miss out from working so much - I'd probably be seen as a bot too.

Edit: to be clear, bots exist and are a headache. My post is not a rebuttal of that.

[KageTokage]

i wonder if the jp side thinks botting is an issue. i wish i knew the language better.

There is definitely botting going on on the JP side of things, too.

Or at least I can't think of any other explanation for the numerous FCs populated by naught but obvious alts on DoH classes that have disproportionately high FC rankings for how few members they have.

Whether that also applies to the Restoration is anyone's guess.

[RareItems]

Its funny to watch 2 marketbot users undercut each other by 25 gil every hour, that after i returned from a break the item that usually sells for 204k is now selling at 20k...

[Lecru]

For anyone denying botting is a serious problem. Two players on Lamia were caught outright admitting to it on discord. In fact, said discord is entirely dedicated to a plugin through ACT that automates nearly everything. Sadly, actually putting the twitter post itself would be counted as name-shaming. Botting like this has become increasingly rampant because everyone knows at this point SE doesn't do a thing about it.

Posting an outside link, instead of name dropping a player IN GAME, would not qualify. So you'd be fine to post it. I've done this in the past to prove points and been perfectly fine.

[Evrardoux]

You're seeing this because the design of The Firmament is a low-quality grindfest preying on your FOMO. Nobody in their right mind should be grinding points for it at all. It's a horrible abomination of game design and the only reason people tolerate it is both due to content drought making them desperate and an exclusive title for DoH/DoL which were finally made accessible to the casual player - hence everyone plays it.

The Diadem is atrocious, by the way - I'm not surprised people are botting it because it quite literally is begging to be automated. People often do not do these things out of some insane desire to cheat - risking an account filled with hundreds of hours of playtime and exclusive event rewards is not something most want to do, BUT they seek to cheat when things seem to demand an unreasonable effort for the reward given which has been a focus for FFXIV.

The Solution?
Devs: Stop dragging your feet with The Firmament and milking players. The map was long done well prior to the first phase completion, drip-feeding it to players in a Mor Dhona /Idyllshire style is cool only as a side piece, not a main feature. Also, the fact that DoH/DoL side content is eating away at Dungeons and Combat Content is really awful. Give combat players something to do again so they aren't converting to crafters en-masse.

Give DoH/DoL something to truly sink their teeth into, without abusing your player with awful currency grinds. Expert Recipes are a step in the right direction, but making them a giant eternally repetitive endless grind was a mistake. Honestly, all of the new high level crafts such as the Shinryu, Tsuku Weapons, Neo-Ishgard, etc, should have all been "Expert Recipe" style.

[Eriane_Elis]

Okay, I take back what I said. The scores weren't really that bad when I said it probably isn't a botting problem because they seemed tame but now it's really bad. I know there's a macro for crafting which I haven't used but apparently works most of the time. But even still, there's really no way people can craft over a million or gather 2million without botting. It's physically not possible.

Just be done with it, we want housing, not ishgard reconstruction.

[Eriane_Elis]

Its funny to watch 2 marketbot users undercut each other by 25 gil every hour, that after i returned from a break the item that usually sells for 204k is now selling at 20k...

Time for market captcha! lol

[KageTokage]

I won't deny I'm really disappointed that they didn't take any measures to make the Firmament/Diadem experience more interesting/fulfilling.

The FATEs in the former could've been a regular thing and also more a involved process; perhaps allowing you to actually craft things to use for the repairs and gain bonus skyward points as a result.

Diadem could've had collectables/aetherial reduction as an alternative to just brainlessly hitting nodes, and perhaps some "boss" monsters that take a collective effort from the players there to reap a large reward.

As far as the botting goes, almost all of the people from my server I see doing it there have an established history of doing it pretty much any time they're on DoL/H jobs though, so it's not like it pushed them over the edge or anything; they just find gathering/crafting fundamentally uninteresting. There isn't any actual risk to doing it, either, as SE's three strike policy means that unless you had prior offenses, you're just going to get a slap on the wrist if you do somehow get caught.

[Eriane_Elis]

I won't deny I'm really disappointed that they didn't take any measures to make the Firmament/Diadem experience more interesting/fulfilling.

The FATEs in the former could've been a regular thing and also more a involved process; perhaps allowing you to actually craft things to use for the repairs and gain bonus skyward points as a result.

Diadem could've had collectables/aetherial reduction as an alternative to just brainlessly hitting nodes, and perhaps some "boss" monsters that take a collective effort from the players there to reap a large reward.

As far as the botting goes, almost all of the people from my server I see doing it there have an established history of doing it pretty much any time they're on DoL/H jobs though, so it's not like it pushed them over the edge or anything; they just find gathering/crafting fundamentally uninteresting. There isn't any actual risk to doing it, either, as SE's three strike policy means that unless you had prior offenses, you're just going to get a slap on the wrist if you do somehow get caught.

I think the problem with Aehterial reduction is RNG. Statistics takes in consideration say 60% success but for a pool of 1000 people with a 0.2% margin. Meaning, there's a possibility of a few people who might almost always get whatever you're supposed to get with aehterial reduction so it's not 60% success for you, but as an average. But I get your point. My first issue here is that everyone gains a tremendous amount of gathering and crafting XP. This is upsetting because how many of us gained those levels by gathering and crafting things for like 2 months straight? Now you can level everything in a few days tops. It should have been more like PotD where your level goes up as you keep doing it. Adding to this point, and yours, the collectable idea isn't a bad idea per-se. But, to avoid botting there should be some kind of added dynamic to the mix and exactly what is hard to say but it could have been tied somehow to diadem-only gathering levels. It really comes down to how gathering is so dull in this game and how it easily invites bots. Plus, it doesn't help that SE doesn't monitor player bound positions so well. I get people can fall through the floor from time to time (I have) but bots are entirely different. They teleport from node to node and/or move irregularly. This should be an easy thing to monitor but it isn't. Oh well, whatever I guess. It's part of doing something new, lessons will be learned for the future. Kind of like how Eureka was an improvement to diadem.

[DrWho2010]

There is definitely botting going on on the JP side of things, too.

Or at least I can't think of any other explanation for the numerous FCs populated by naught but obvious alts on DoH classes that have disproportionately high FC rankings for how few members they have.

Whether that also applies to the Restoration is anyone's guess.

i didn't ask if botting is going on on the jp side, I wondered if they think it's an issue or not.