Will Bot's ever be punished?

[Matsume]

oh i know, what i was saying is we as a community cant do much about the rmt bots

its all the others we can actively do somethibng more then just report about

and what i was outlining is what we should do



wish i could put names/shells on here who have been caught botting on my server without getting a forum suspension, i so would

Well i'm in a similar boat. I caught a couple linkshell members botting dragonhead the other day but I wont mention their names.

There really isn't anything other players can do other than excommunicate them, which is a bit harsh to be honest.

But I provided an easy to implement anti bot solution: Aggro Mobs. I don't know if you've done any mining in Halatali or Dragonhead as of late but I can guarentee you the reason they bot dragonhead and not halatali is because of agro mobs. A bot cannot stealth and dodge aggro mobs so they bot where there aren't any: dragonhead. I just don't understand why SE didn't patch in some ixali on the way to all the mining nodes like they did with the lalafell assassins in halatali...

[TheVedis]

Well i'm in a similar boat. I caught a couple linkshell members botting dragonhead the other day but I wont mention their names.

There really isn't anything other players can do other than excommunicate them, which is a bit harsh to be honest.

But I provided an easy to implement anti bot solution: Aggro Mobs. I don't know if you've done any mining in Halatali or Dragonhead as of late but I can guarentee you the reason they bot dragonhead and not halatali is because of agro mobs. A bot cannot stealth and dodge aggro mobs so they bot where there aren't any: dragonhead. I just don't understand why SE didn't patch in some ixali on the way to all the mining nodes like they did with the lalafell assassins in halatali...

wait wait, excommunicating people who cheat is harsh?
no it isnt
they deserve everything they get

and its especialy easy to deal with when they are in your own shell, and you can boot them for it, and then perhaps announce in uldah what they did so others know their crime

[Hyrist]

wait wait, excommunicating people who cheat is harsh?
no it isnt
they deserve everything they get

and its especialy easy to deal with when they are in your own shell, and you can boot them for it, and then perhaps announce in uldah what they did so others know their crime

Player reputation is a way of keeping people clean, that's for sure.

But it's dangerous too - because the mob mentality can be abused against the innocent as well.

There's a Extra Credits episode on Harassment that could really be effective to this point - let me go find it.

[Matsume]

wait wait, excommunicating people who cheat is harsh?
no it isnt
they deserve everything they get

and its especialy easy to deal with when they are in your own shell, and you can boot them for it, and then perhaps announce in uldah what they did so others know their crime

I just don't think it's fellow players responsibility to denounce botters. It's the GMs job and the designers should make the game intelligently in a way that prevents botting or stops them in their tracks. It shouldn't be that hard to do as I've suggested...

[Hyrist]

I just don't think it's fellow players responsibility to denounce botters. It's the GMs job and the designers should make the game intelligently in a way that prevents botting or stops them in their tracks. It shouldn't be that hard to do as I've suggested...

I have to disagree.

The GM's have a limited scope of the game itself, so much that they had to dedicate a Special Task Force to deal primarily with Botters and RMT, and even then it's reliant on our input.

If we fail in our responsibility to assist such efforts, the ours is not the right to complain about the presence of botters and RMT in the game. We spot them often when the GMs are not there or dealing with other matters.


Improvements can be made both in the community mentality of responsibility, and the active participation and ease of communication with the Special Task Groups. RMT is only going to get more intrusive the more successful the prospects of this game get.

[Matsume]

I have to disagree.

The GM's have a limited scope of the game itself, so much that they had to dedicate a Special Task Force to deal primarily with Botters and RMT, and even then it's reliant on our input.

If we fail in our responsibility to assist such efforts, the ours is not the right to complain about the presence of botters and RMT in the game. We spot them often when the GMs are not there or dealing with other matters.


Improvements can be made both in the community mentality of responsibility, and the active participation and ease of communication with the Special Task Groups. RMT is only going to get more intrusive the more successful the prospects of this game get.

hmm, i should have spelled out Game Makers instead, I did not mean to refer to the Game Masters...

[Hyrist]

hmm, i should have spelled out Game Makers instead, I did not mean to refer to the Game Masters...

Well to be honest. There's no way to make a game bot proof.

Technically speaking, the game is a program. If you can program specific inputs, you can make a program to intelligently read the game and respond by putting in those required input. Make a harder to bot game, make a better bot.

It's just not possible to be constantly on top of new technology before it exists. Additionally, there is only so far you can go before you start to punish your players for the botters attacks.

Now, what you can do is make botting ineffectual in the long run.

For example, on aggressive monsters, if you agro them before the botters start attacking, the credit is yours even if they kill them. Meaning a player spotting a bot could screw with them for quite a long time. Not by botting, but by simply staying still and getting agro.

SE's done a pretty good job of making the influence of Bots pretty non-important. They're hoarding gil... ok, what's that going to do? Players can make their own gil easily and all SE has to do is ban the accounts they intend to flood the system and monopolize the auction house with. OR, they can just prevent monopolization on the auction by enforcing a price cap for goods.

Right now the botters are nothing more than an eyesore and they're going to learn the hard way that a lot of the economy is built against them already. I just hope the Auction House is built against them too.

[Hyrist]

Here is that episode of Extra Credits I was talking about.

In it, it overviews an idea of a "Guild Reputation" meter. This can be done on a personal level as well if needs be, but it would help discourage the idea of Botting as well as Harassment.

[Antipika]

and its especialy easy to deal with when they are in your own shell, and you can boot them for it, and then perhaps announce in uldah what they did so others know their crime

Doing so could get you suspended for harassment you know? You have absolutely no right to start shouting claiming that player X or Y is a cheater, no matter how many evidence you have. That's purely and simply harassment.

SE is the only entity that can decide if someone is violating the rules or not. Based on evidences they have (their logs) and not some youtube video or screenshots made by a third party.

Boot players from your LS is the best you can do, as you are entirely free to boot whoever you want. Reporting them to GMs/STF, same, you can do so. Shouting in Ul'dah, making threads on officials forums etc. = no.

It would be kind of sad to get suspended because a cheater reported you for harassment. It works exactly the same in real life, claiming that someone is a criminal while that person hasn't been judged guilty isn't allowed. (At least where I live.)

Well to be honest. There's no way to make a game bot proof.

Whoever wants a game that is bot proof is retarded. However what you want is a game design that encourage "human actions" over simple repetitive actions that can be botted.

Sadly that demand good game designers and that's not something we have right now on XIV ><. If something very simple and repetitive is rewarding in any kind of way, there is a design flaw.

I'll take gathering as an example. In Rift, the last tier of gathering materials (used for level max armor / endgame items) could only be found in lv.50 dungeons. Therefore RMTs couldn't access these resources, since dungeons cannot be repeated as many as you want + you needed a proper party and proper gear. In the end, even if a group of geared RMTs decided to "farm" dungeons for resources, they would still have to play the game the normal way (defeat bosses and trash mobs on the way, have a proper party setup etc.).

Gathering lower tier resources was just pointless for most of crafts because the value was too low. Epic recipes required last tier materials. Same goes for last tier of consumable that were used for raiding.

(It's not like the game was RMT-free, there was other things that could be done to earn money easily by RMTs (like spamming daily quests with multiple accounts), yet at least legit players could make profit with content that wasn't accessible by RMTs).

That's what SE should do instead of putting a material like Karakul Fleece, used for Felt/Wool which are "high tier" materials needed for lv45+ recipes, on lv41 monsters that can be killed by a software...

It would be great to have gathering node inside dungeons and also have boss drop crafting materials. Make drop for lv45+ items hard to get, on lv53+ monsters, which cannot be killed by a software and would require human attention.

The whole drop system on XIV makes no sense. You kill lv53 wolf in Natalan, you obtain Wolf Hides that are lv20 and completely useless. Yet lower level monsters can be more profitable...