Botting: Good or Evil? lol

[Jojoya]

I hear you on most of your points and essentially agree. I do wish they'd change things, like housing. From what I have seen and heard, many players are griping about it and hoping for changes. Hopefully they get to it. That said, let me point back at this one section of what you mentioned. I think it's where I was discussing in my pros and cons. Some of the things really doesn't have impacts on anyone else's game experience. Like if Ruru used macros to do Ishgard Restoration crafting so they can level up their crafter. How does that help or hurt you? Does it impact you at all?

Macros are part of the game, not a third party tool. They're part of the limited automation SE has built into the game.

You still need to be present to start synthesis on the recipe then start the macro. You're going to have to use manual input at least every 45 seconds if not more often. You're not going to be able to walk away for 2 hours and come back to a stack of finished collectables.

Someone using a third party tool to bot can walk away for that two hours.

One is allowed by the game. One isn't. Playing by the rules is what makes the game experience fair for everyone.

Is using Razer Synapse, iCue etc etc botting then?

Depends on if you're using the programmable functions to do things that could not be duplicated using an in-game macro.

Bots in FF14 are TAME compared to some games.

In ESO when first launched, bots could be seen FLYING IN THE AIR across maps. Moving and killing underground in plain sight. Teleporting up through 3 storey buildings. Blatant teleporting to each node to harvest.

Ugh.

That was also happening here at the start of Shadowbringers. It took a while for SE to counter whatever they were doing so they were no longer flying in trains across the sky in various places.

Just because you perceive it to be more of a problem in other games doesn't mean it's not a problem here.

Camping the placards just is screwed up.

So don't camp the placards. It's not how players were intended to do it. Even resorting to a bot doesn't guarantee you'll get the plot. Plenty of players have managed to get a plot despite the presence of someone using a bot or auto-click scrip.

Macros pushing buttons for you = botting.

In-game macros are part of the game. SE controls what we can or cannot accomplish using them.

Macros that are created by using third party tools are outside of SE's control and may do things that SE does not want players to do. Therefore they are not allowed.

It shouldn't be difficult to understand that