I give up, the bots win AKA: My flight is scheduled for departure

[Kes13a]

it is somewhat strange, that people who likely wouldnt bat an eye at someone quitting over bots ruining pvp or something else basically call down someone quitting over an aspect of the game they enjoy more than others.

bottom line is, regardless whether its over not making enough gil or just trying to out compete cheaters, bots introduce an unfairness to the equation that a regular person with a job, sleep and eating cannot compete. It needs to be addressed, and SE is failing to do that in any way. if you craft because you love the crafting system and the rest of the game is just meh to you, then having that invaded by bots and ruining your enjoyment, is a good reason to leave. we all play differently with different priorities.

I think most people can agree on we would rather not play with cheaters, or play a game that the company producing it allows cheating without punishment. and the only real way is to vote with your wallet, since I doubt SE gets feedback from NA or EU forums....

[Jojoya]

it is somewhat strange, that people who likely wouldnt bat an eye at someone quitting over bots ruining pvp or something else basically call down someone quitting over an aspect of the game they enjoy more than others.

bottom line is, regardless whether its over not making enough gil or just trying to out compete cheaters, bots introduce an unfairness to the equation that a regular person with a job, sleep and eating cannot compete. It needs to be addressed, and SE is failing to do that in any way. if you craft because you love the crafting system and the rest of the game is just meh to you, then having that invaded by bots and ruining your enjoyment, is a good reason to leave. we all play differently with different priorities.

And yet in the bot thread in the Markets forum we do get players saying certain bots they were tracking disappeared from the marketboard. It's false to claim that SE is failing to do anything when clearly they are. They may not be getting every character players suspect of being a bot but they are definitely getting some.

Now it is fair to say their efforts aren't keeping on top of the problem as it's easy for a bot to get established then easy to get re-established on another account once banned on the previous account. That's the price paid trying to make content more accessible to all players. Anything done to benefit us for QoL, etc. is going to benefit the bots as well and they're usually a lot more efficient at taking advantage of those changes.

You're never going to find a game where there aren't players aren't finding ways to cheat. The gaming industry has taught players that cheating is the way to go thanks to all the cheat codes they've incorporated into games over the years and mods that allow players to change how the game is played. It is a permanent part of gaming culture.

Voting with your wallet is a meaningless gesture that will be lost in the internet. Over six million players vote with their wallet against Blizzard in Warlords of Draenor and Blizzard didn't care because they still had enough players left for WoW to remain highly profitable.

If cheaters (or anything else) are ruining the parts of the game you mainly enjoy for you, then just quit and find a different game to play. It's not about trying to make a dramatic statement to force developers to change. It's about doing what's right for you. There's no use wasting time and money on something you're not enjoying when you could be spending that time and money on something you do enjoy instead.

If it's just a small segment of the game that's been ruined for you and the rest is still enjoyable, then ignore that small segment and stick to what you do still enjoy. Toxic player attitudes in PvP ruined PvP for me but I'm still able to enjoy games that have PvP in them by staying away from it.

[Kes13a]

Jojoya,

you are wrong. its that simple.

SE plainly states botting and cheating are against their rules, as such, it is on them to enforce it. there is no middle ground for you to sit on. If they arent going to enforce it, then they need to remove from their TOS that its against their rules to level the playing field. if bots and cheaters are here to stay, then they NEED to revisit their terms of service and let everyone know, that you can use them to play the game.

it has been said before, but your attitude of "its pointless to do anything" is why they can do what they do. you say you are against bots and cheaters but advocate against anything that might call attention to it.

regardless, it is on SE to do something about it as this is THEIR property. they need to do something about it, or remove it as a bannable offense. SE doesnt have the luxury of having millions of people "vote with their wallet" so you are wrong there too. if they want to fight the issue, then a 3 person team is useless. it doesnt take a rocket scientist to know they have failed in this aspect, and a "great story" only gets you so far.

so fire the 3 person team, change the tos and then everyone can compete at a fair and equal level again.

wins all around right? can cheat and bot to your hearts content

[xbahax92]

Economy in game involves all aspects of the game, simply saying "ignore or dont participate in it if you dont like it" wont solve it. Sure OP's made a statement and thats up to them. But gil involves every aspect in the game. Be it materia for savage, buff food and potions, be it dye's for your glamour and a plot for housing.
Those bots are the reason why gil is getting cheaper on websites, just as there ARE a lot of gil buyers as well. And that one or other person using bots is making a hella living just by running programs over and over.
Saying "dont do it" is the same as being ignorant. Giving up is basically a win for any botter out there. You buy stuff from the market board, the botter fills his bag, some other person buys the gil and buys from the market board (bot) again. The cycle is endless and SE should of adressed this years ago.

[Nutshell]

Economy in game involves all aspects of the game, simply saying "ignore or dont participate in it if you dont like it" wont solve it. Sure OP's made a statement and thats up to them. But gil involves every aspect in the game. Be it materia for savage, buff food and potions, be it dye's for your glamour and a plot for housing.

As someone with an alt that's fully self sufficient I strongly disagree. At no point do you need to use the marketboard in this game.

While I find crafting for myself and my friends far more rewarding than chasing gil I don't expect others to feel the same. That being said I do agree with Jojoya. We've known about these cheaters in this game for a long time now and SE still hasn't done anything about them. We need to decide as individuals if that's something you're willing to live with in the game or not. I also don't think "voting with your wallet" does anything as I feel SE would just put ff14 into maintenance mode before doing anything meaningful about the bots.

[xbahax92]

As someone with an alt that's fully self sufficient I strongly disagree. At no point do you need to use the marketboard in this game.

While I find crafting for myself and my friends far more rewarding than chasing gil I don't expect others to feel the same. That being said I do agree with Jojoya. We've known about these cheaters in this game for a long time now and SE still hasn't done anything about them. We need to decide as individuals if that's something you're willing to live with in the game or not. I also don't think "voting with your wallet" does anything as I feel SE would just put ff14 into maintenance mode before doing anything meaningful about the bots.

The average player does use the mb and it is more convenient to do so. Practically speaking, if you have the time to gather and grind the materials you want or the lets say mount from PotD, feel free to do it. But if you have limited time per day, you want to earn gil so you can afford yourself some nice stuff (submarine minions for example), then indeed you have to use the mb.
Sure, its a playstyle thing, but that doesnt erase the marketing problem. And if you want to earn a lot of gil in short time, selling crafted things on the market board should be one of the easiest actually.
Why would I have to grind treasure maps for 4h, just for a small CHANCE to get 1 valuable cloth/leather/whatever, to sell it for 1-2million anyway?
If you want to afford a L house +decoration, thats quite a sum and an unrewarding one at that.

Imo its not about voting with your wallet thing, its about making a higher "call" so the devs catch the wind of this problem. It has been indeed a long time now those botters got away and I think its time to end it, no?

[SavishSalacious]

I find it funny that people have to compete with bots. My self, if there is something on the market I can drive down from 160k gil (with out spending a penny) I will drive its prices right down to 1000 gil so I don't have to fight with the people that use bots. Popular items tend to have people underselling and undercutting. I always list for 1k gil under the previous (150, 140, 130 ....all the way to 1k) I am not loosing gil as I never invested in the mats to craft that many. But I do find when I say list 10 items from 160k to 60k the bots and others come out and will undercut from 60 to 20k. Which then forces me to list under theirs just so my stuff sells, this is the annoying part - the serious undercutting. Alas square will never do anything about this. Other games like Eve online don't have an undercutting market, people are generally not d**ks.

[Nutshell]

The average player does use the mb and it is more convenient to do so. Practically speaking, if you have the time to gather and grind the materials you want or the lets say mount from PotD, feel free to do it. But if you have limited time per day, you want to earn gil so you can afford yourself some nice stuff (submarine minions for example), then indeed you have to use the mb.
Sure, its a playstyle thing, but that doesnt erase the marketing problem. And if you want to earn a lot of gil in short time, selling crafted things on the market board should be one of the easiest actually.
Why would I have to grind treasure maps for 4h, just for a small CHANCE to get 1 valuable cloth/leather/whatever, to sell it for 1-2million anyway?
If you want to afford a L house +decoration, thats quite a sum and an unrewarding one at that.

Imo its not about voting with your wallet thing, its about making a higher "call" so the devs catch the wind of this problem. It has been indeed a long time now those botters got away and I think its time to end it, no?

I play the game as if there's no other way to get said items besides grinding them out myself. If I don't have the time or I don't want the item a "grind" will get me I just don't do it.

Imagine how much more special it'd be to have a treasure map glam if you couldn't buy the materials or the crafted item on the market board. Instead within a day or two everyone's running around in the glam and it gets stale and too common for anyone to care that you've worked hard for it.

Not everyone should have everything and if you want to have everything then it should take a lot of time that everyone may not have.

We've had a lot of threads about the bots and yet the "call" still hasn't been heard. I don't think it ever will be but I know I'm fairly pessimistic on this. I promise I'd rather they did get rid of the bots as at least that'd help make stuff you buy on the MB at least a little bit special to own.

[Jojoya]

Jojoya,

you are wrong. its that simple.

Wrong about what specifically? If you're arguing against all my points as usual simply because I refuse to hop on the "SE is evil and imcompetent" bandwagon with you, it goes to show how ignorant you are of all the systems in the game and how they interrelate.

They are making efforts to enforce botting. Players would not be going into that other thread saying "such and such character I was tracking as a bot has disappeared from the marketboard" if there was zero enforcement.

We can't know why other tracked characters are still there other than the possibility that SE is not finding any evidence of bot activity. You cannot know what another player is doing unless you're looking at them. Spending time in an apartment is not evidence of botting. And if a player wants to spend that time crafting while in their apartment, that is not a crime either. Crafting is only against ToS if there is automation via third party app being used. I've spend 5-6 hours at a stretch before in my house crafting. Does that make me a bot?

Is enforcement inadequate? Probably. I won't deny that because it's inadequate in every MMO I've ever played. Every MMO has its bot problems.

But to claim SE is doing nothing at all is patently false. And if you thinking changing the TOS is going to get people to stop cheating, you are ignorant of human nature beyond all belief.

The average player does use the mb and it is more convenient to do so. Practically speaking, if you have the time to gather and grind the materials you want or the lets say mount from PotD, feel free to do it. But if you have limited time per day, you want to earn gil so you can afford yourself some nice stuff (submarine minions for example), then indeed you have to use the mb.
Sure, its a playstyle thing, but that doesnt erase the marketing problem. And if you want to earn a lot of gil in short time, selling crafted things on the market board should be one of the easiest actually.
Why would I have to grind treasure maps for 4h, just for a small CHANCE to get 1 valuable cloth/leather/whatever, to sell it for 1-2million anyway?
If you want to afford a L house +decoration, thats quite a sum and an unrewarding one at that.

Imo its not about voting with your wallet thing, its about making a higher "call" so the devs catch the wind of this problem. It has been indeed a long time now those botters got away and I think its time to end it, no?

Except those who are only buying from the MB benefit from the bot activity because the bots are generally willing to sell substantially lower than a normal player is. People don't complain about having to pay less to get what they want.

It's the normal players who are selling on the MB that feel the negative impact because they are earning less gil.

Whether you call it "Voting with your wallet" or "making a 'higher' call ", it comes down to the same thing - a pointless gesture if you're trying to influence development. If you're unhappy, decide to make a change for your own sake and not because you think it's going to influence others. If players would do things because it's what they enjoy rather than doing them because they think it's what others expect them to do or they might be able to influence others by their choices, it would be easier for developers to figure out what players actually like.

[KageTokage]

SE obviously is doing something as far as the bots go, but it's clearly not enough when there's virtually no fear of being banned and cheating is a norm even amongst players who aren't in it for RMT reasons; the Ishgard Restoration rankings being a chief example of that.

I've personally yet to see any of the usual suspects vanish from my server's markets and some of them have been around since the HW days.

I do think that overwhelmingly bad press is pretty much the only way SE is liable to take this more seriously, though, as they've historically been rather quick to react to issues that were blowing up on Twitter and other media.