Will Bot's ever be punished?

[Dufer]

Preypacer, just wanna say it's awesome you mentioned Darkfall. Didn't know any other FFXIV players would know of it honestly. lol

edit: to stay on topic, I see 2 botters in Muy tuy 24/7. Gets kind of old but doesn't really bother me.

[Antipika]

It's not nearly that cut-and-dry.

Not all cheating is because "people don't want to do repetitive things". It's one reason of many.

In general, people cheat for things like competitiveness, convenience and laziness, among others.

People have been RMT'ing in Lineage 2 for years at the high end. These people have already gotten to level cap (botted) and have all the best gear (RMT'd) so they can beat others (who also botted and RMT'd). People buy gold and such in MMOs so they can just get the item they want without having to earn it.

People used speed-hacks in FFXI and in other games to get around faster than they should have been able to. People use radar hacks in games like Darkfall to locate other players they would otherwise not be able to see (behind walls, etc). People have been cheating in FPS games using aim-bots and the like in order to get an edge over other players. People have used hacks and cheats in RTS type games.

In other words, there are people who will cheat in video games, whatever the genre, what ever the play style.

People cheat because they want the pay-off without the effort or time required to obtain it. They want the victory without having to actually legitimately earn it.

>Competitiveness : Design flaw. You shouldn't be more competitive by using simple bots in MMOs.
>Convenience: DEV's job to make the game/UI convenient for players rather than a hassle.

A good example here, in DAoC (Yoshi-P played 5 years+), you could desynthesize heavy armors into metal you would then sell to NPC for making profit.

1 armor could yield around 30-40 ingots. These ingot had to be turned into some kind of item to be sold for a premium at NPC (ingot themselves worth nothing). That process required to craft items using ingots 2 by 2. It was long and tedious, because when desynthesizing 20 armors for example (800 ingots), you would have to click in total 400 times every 9-10 seconds to turn all that metal into the item you wanted.

What happened then? Lot of players started to use "auto-clicker" software that would simply click the macro every 10sec while they do something else like read a book, play a fun game, etc.

Eventually, DEVs realized how this process was stupid and how everyone was "cheating" to circumvent it. They then implemented a special item that could be made using 20 ingots instead of 2 and where you only had to click once every minute or so.

They turned something that was really inconvenient for players into something convenient. Sure you could still cheat, but there was almost no point anymore since you could just do armor recycling "normally" with this new method, without feeling like a brainless bot clicking every 9 seconds.

>FPS and RTS: That's a different story here, cheating software are far more advanced than what we are talking about in XIV. Also at high level (i.e. tournaments) cheating isn't possible and that's what matters. Complaining about cheats in FPS/RTS would be like saying: it is possible to cheat at local sports events by using illegal drugs. No one is gonna run blood tests for a low level competition, since no one cares.

[Madruk]

You're arguing from ignorance. Your ill-informed and equally ignorant stereotype of "Asian MMOs" only makes it worse.

Blizzard has fought RMT in WoW, to the degree of suing the developers of a botting program, as I recall. They are most decidedly not "an Asian MMO". LoTRO and DDO have RMT; Turbine is a US-based company. Rift Online has RMT, and Trion is based in California. The Old Republic has RMT, not an Asian MMO. Age of Conan has RMT; not an Asian MMO. Vanguard, a Western MMO, has RMT. DC Universe Online has RMT, not an Asian MMO. Everquest 1 and 2 both have RMT, not Asian MMOs...

Need I continue, or has the ignorance of your remarks been sufficiently illuminated?

Every single MMO out there with anything resembling a population has RMT - regardless of what style it is, who developed it, or where they're located - because every MMO out there has people playing it who would rather buy and cheat their way through the game than actually play it. The excuses they come up with, almost always blaming the game's design, is nothing but an attempt to justify their behavior to themselves. In their heart of hearts, I don't think even they believe their own BS most times.

If a game has activities you find repetitious and unenjoyable, it's a reason to not do those activities. If the game doesn't offer enough else that you enjoy, then it's a reason to decide maybe it's not the game for you and you'd find better entertainment for your money elsewhere. It's not a reason nor justification for cheating, RMT'ing, hacking, exploiting, etc. Ever. Those EULA's and ToS's you agree to when you log into a game aren't there because developers like paying Lawyers to draft up lengthy documents for them.

Thank you for that insightful dissertation on how RMT are in every game. The big difference with all of those games is money is never really an issue. I've played all of them and in no other game has gil been such a focal point to where you have to spend hours upon hours farming. Even EQ, the game you could argue FFXI took alot of influence from, never had the degree of money farming (if any) FFXI had.

And that was my original point. The more repetitive bullshit you put into a game the more prevalent RMT's are. FFXI had designs put in place that allowed RMT's and bots to control a sizeable part of the game. Do you think RMT's have that much control in a game like WoW? Hell no, they don't. You see this type of design in most Korean MMO's too (which in most recent AAA ones, is thankfully starting to phase out). Guess what happens there?

Blizzard sued because of how popular that particular bot had become, not withstanding the guy made alot of money in the process (the bigger reason they cared).

[PSxpert2011]

Some people say "cheaters are going to cheat" as if that's a good defense. Is this person with them?? IDC People break the rules IRL too and it causes an impact on others through many means. If you read the terms of service/ user agreement, it says to not use 3rd party tools. Plain and simple, no matter their reasons or justification. I have chosen a side, and that's the side of right not wrong.

People break the rules, they cheat and maybe get away with it 'yaaaay'.... >.>

"When you have no fear of repercussions or respect for you fellow persons and care only for yourself righteous indignation(whether it be a game or IRL), you deserve to made an example of. When everyone else is doing it the right thing, the right way, working hard and 'earning' their just payments, we don't need corruption around."

Game or no game, if there's any sort of competition involved, your only as good as your "will to win" and succeed. What else can I say that hasn't been said already?? I just wouldn't cheat because I believe in liberty without restrictions! The more out-of-hand the game gets, more limitations and restriction are applied creating a more convoluted system. It's also giving the company more work and setting back more updates we as a community would rather have in the future.

Please play fair or don't play at all!

[Matsume]

Speaking about bots, The Vedis mentioned in another post having seen someone using a new hack/bot that gathers the same node repeatedly past the 8 strike threshold until the node is tapped out. Any other confirmations of this one existing?

[Fear]

Speaking about bots, The Vedis mentioned in another post having seen someone using a new hack/bot that gathers the same node repeatedly past the 8 strike threshold until the node is tapped out. Any other confirmations of this one existing?

I wouldn't believe this, as far as I'm aware the nodes are delt with server-side which would be impossible for any bot to alter.

[Griss]

You say that now but it might lead to a economic crash and burn if rampant rmt botting persists too long.

Good thing square preemptively crashed all of the markets by making the game hose you down with gil by looking at anything then.

[Airget]

Speaking about bots, The Vedis mentioned in another post having seen someone using a new hack/bot that gathers the same node repeatedly past the 8 strike threshold until the node is tapped out. Any other confirmations of this one existing?

I wouldn't believe this, as far as I'm aware the nodes are delt with server-side which would be impossible for any bot to alter.

Baed on gathering the checks seem to go
-Start-
-Choose-
-Cut-
-Gain-
-Check attempts left-
-repeat-

If you think about it Fishers can already do this when they fish at a random location that isn't a school of fish. If this is actually happening odds are hackers looked at the checks while fishing at a random location and found a way to imitate it so that they could make it happen at a logging/mining point. All they have to do is remove the check that says how many cuts they have left and they are free to cut as much as they like.

[Fear]

If thats true then its stupid, SE could very easily add an auto-detection tool for 9+ gathering attemps = instant ban (besides fishing)

[Matsume]

If thats true then its stupid, SE could very easily add an auto-detection tool for 9+ gathering attemps = instant ban (besides fishing)

There are a lot of obvious and easy Anti-bot/RMT solutions SE could implement...and i'm still waiting for them.