Do you feel that you have the "right" to AFK bot, or take other necessary measures?

[SenorPatty]

I've done it three times since launch, just so I could drive to pickup my food. Knowing that I'd be out more than half an hour but less than an hour, I had my brother just keep watch.

That's the extent of it. I'm not gonna pretend that I feel bad about it because I really don't. I just didn't want to face another 2hr queue for food pickup.

[IdowhatIwant]

Is it a consumers right to do this? If they are using third party software to do this then it would be against the ToS so no. Is it a consumers right to be online as much as possible though, yes. Every one pays the same amount per month and people can be online for how ever long they want for that month they paid for.

Is it the right thing to do? I don't think it is right or wrong. See next answer.

Is it making the problem worse? No, the problem is the number of players that are trying to play during prime time hours vs max amount of players able to play at any given time. If we had better servers that allowed more players, or had more worlds this would not be as much of a problem as it is, and this discussion would not be happening. If you removed every person that was AFK botting this problem would not go away its an amount of space needed vs available space issue.

[Raoul9753]

Honestly, people who do it are scum, and in my opinion should be permabaned if found out, even if its a first wrongdoing, just by account of how many people they fuck over.
Play when you have time. If you dont have any more time, log out.
News Flash:You are not more important than anyone else! The people who use Bots to not AFK are the same that, when stuck in a traffic jam to leave a highway, cut back into the flowing traffic to cut back into the traffic jam line a few hundret meters adead, now causing a second line of traffic jam, because they were too good to wait their time like everyone else.

[HazyAssaulter]

Is it a consumers right to do this? If they are using third party software to do this then it would be against the ToS so no. Is it a consumers right to be online as much as possible though, yes. Every one pays the same amount per month and people can be online for how ever long they want for that month they paid for.

Is it the right thing to do? I don't think it is right or wrong. See next answer.

Is it making the problem worse? No, the problem is the number of players that are trying to play during prime time hours vs max amount of players able to play at any given time. If we had better servers that allowed more players, or had more worlds this would not be as much of a problem as it is, and this discussion would not be happening. If you removed every person that was AFK botting this problem would not go away its an amount of space needed vs available space issue.

But everyone afk botting is taking up a slot on the server. They are literally making an existing problem worse.

[PredatoryCatgirl]

Nice try FBI.

[Packetdancer]

I haven't done so, though I admit I'm privileged in the fact that I haven't felt like I ever needed to in the first place either; I work from home at present, so I put myself into queue several hours before I'm done work, keep an eye on things, and when I'm done work (or 30-45 minutes after I'm done) I'm logged in. Then for however long I play in the evening, I just make a point not to step AFK longer than 30 minutes; I set a 20 minute timer on my watch and make sure I get back to the keys as quickly as I can after that. When done, I log out.

I like to think that even if I didn't have that option I wouldn't be tempted to AFK-bot, because I've watched enough of my FC struggling to get online and finish MSQ that it just seems like it would be cruel and selfish to eat up an online slot for hours and hours while not there.

That said, like some others, if someone has a dog to walk or dinner to go drive out and pick up quickly or whatever and might be gone just a little over 30 minutes if the dog is slow, or whatever, I'm not really going to begrudge them it either. Given the imprecise nature of the queue, they might've been like "Okay I'll log in at 3pm, I finish work at 5, I'll go pick up dinner, be back at about 5:30, and it'll probably have logged me in by about 6 so I can play with friends." and then it unexpectedly lets them in just before 5, and they can see they'd idle out while going out to pick up dinner... stuff like that.

So, yeah, in those cases, they're not eating a player slot while doing nothing for hours and hours, they're actively playing, but very temporarily AFK and going to return ASAP.

But the folks who do use tools to stay online and then walk away from the keys entirely to do other things for a prolonged time, be it work or sleep or whatever? I can understand the desire to do so, on an intellectual level -- especially for folks who can't start their login several hours before they finish work -- but on an emotional level I find myself a bit peeved at the folks doing that. Because they're definitely exacerbating the already-terrible login problem, and I honestly wish SE could find a reliable way to prevent things like this.

(On an engineering level, I know that's not practical. On a person-playing-this-game level, it doesn't stop me from wishing it were.)

[HolyReign]

NO, and people caught doing it, encouraging it, or making up some excuses as to why it's ok or they've done it. Should be punished, repeat offenders banned, ect. Pretty crazy what a selfish person comes up with for excuses to cheat.

[Eli85]

Let us be clear: no one has the right to do anything related to the game. It's amazing, still, how many people do not understand what rights are. Anyway, I digress.


No one should be mad at the players for doing this. If you work from home, or are otherwise able to stay logged in by hitting a button every 29 minutes, I don't blame you for doing this. Why? The queues are awful. If other players are truly mad about this, direct your ire towards S-E. If the company wasn't so frugal with servers in NA/EU, this problem wouldn't exist.

[IdowhatIwant]

But everyone afk botting is taking up a slot on the server. They are literally making an existing problem worse.

If the AFK botters were making the existing problem worse you would see long queues during non peak hours, which does not happen. The number of players that are doing this would not make a significant enough difference in the grand scheme of things because the number of people trying to play during peak hours is simply too massive. Do they make an existing problem worse, probably but it is likely not to the extent that people believe it to be. Other wise you would be seeing issues during non peak hours if this was making a significant difference.

If you base the numbers on what you can find online, the number of players that play per day is about 3.5 million. The number of players subscribed is almost 30 million. Now assuming the servers are all at max capacity 24/7 the fault lies in the fact that the server space was never capable of supporting all subscribers before the exodus or after the exodus. I would say the game supports roughly 6-7 million player capacity for it to be capped 24/7 which again is still not enough space to support the full subscription base before or after the exodus. Fortunately the servers are not at max capacity 24/7 they typically reach max capacity from around 2:30pm EST(11:30am PST) until about 12:30am PST(3:30am EST). You can easily log in outside that window of time which shows that AFKers, are not significant enough to prevent players from playing.

You can make this same arguement about free trial players that log on in the morning and may still be playing during peak hours that they are taking up a slot for you to play. If they were booted off the server once peak hours hit, there would not be any not noticeable difference. Sadly that is where the witch hunt started was stopping all free trial players.

Witch hunting and pointing fingers will not change that the servers have not been able to support the number of players that are subscribed to the game.

[Rolder50]

Same as the top comment on that Reddit thread, I understand since the queueing system is basically broken and people I know tend to use macros to queue up while working from home or something and use them to keep it active until they are ready to play.