Botters

[Poppa]

well just reported some bots to a GM and guess what..... I get an automated response basically telling me that i have to do their work for them and fill out ANOTHER stupid form. Here's a solution SE, hire me to do this work. currently i am unemployed and i wouldnt mind the work. So from now on to report these (explict verbage) I have to write down all 10 names and report it to them via the site. If SE wants to crack down on these guys why dont they just hang around the r20 camps that I see these violators at every freakin day.

[Enfid]

I'm an honest crafter who enjoyed the crafting grind to an extent, though it is still categorically a chore. I'm now approaching rank 35 Goldsmith and I'm quite proud of that. However...

When I see people who have the characters sitting and crafting for hours on end, THEN sit there for another full real-life day or two without doing anything, I just know that it's a person using a bot. Then I go on forums and see people's signatures with Rank 50 craft all round in almost every craft. Is there a way to do that without a bot? Possibly, but I'm not certain someone can devote 24/7 of their life grinding; I mean at least they need to sleep.

As an honest crafter, I feel cheated. It's like you know the store opposite you use artificial additives (if not something downright illegal) in the food they sell, while you work hard to make sure everything you do is proper and right, but there is no law or regulations to do anything to the cheater opposite of you.

Not only that, I think this will be detrimental in the long run. In World of Warcraft, Blizzard allow the use of mods freely, and some come close to cheating the game. In fact, several respectable gamers in the community had pointed out that some boss/raid systems became obsolete as the mods were used, and some are even rendered pointless because of it. By allowing players to add their own systems to an MMO game, the company is limiting themselves as what they can develop.

I have not reported any botters yet, seeing as SE is not doing anything about it, but I'm becoming increasingly concerned about this aspect of 'cheating' in an MMO. When I heard that the same thing happened in FFXI and SE did nothing about this, it just killed me as a crafter.

[Rinsui]

Report them on the task force page
people are getting banned, just not fast enough

?

well just reported some bots to a GM and guess what..... I get an automated response

...is more what I recall from my experience.

In all likelyhood SE doesn't even want to ban the botters, because they
help with keeping up the illusion that the cities are alive and populated.

[Peregrine]

To give you an idea of what I had to do to get a gatherer and two crafters to 50:
Netflix burned while being there for every single synth:
1. 9 seasons of X-Files
2. 5 seasons of Dexter
3. 6 seasons of Mythbusters
4. 3 Mythbusters specials
5. 1 season of original Twilight Zone
6. 3 Seasons of Arrested Development
7. 2 Seasons of Archer
8. 3 seasons of Chapelle's show
9. 4 seasons of Heroes
10. 1 season of 24.
11. 2 seasons of merlin
12. 3 seasons of Death Note

...and about 15 movies.

They just set it and forget it. As some of the cheaters took to botting way back in November and have been doing it ever since, I figure the biggest cheaters on the server have put in a quarter of the time I have and still have me beaten by an average of 1 or 2 more R50 crafts.

It's already too late. They've gotten so far ahead of the group by cheating that they'll stop soon just to protect the ridiculously bloated asset, and unless SE retro-bans them they'll be the kings of the game forever, illegitimate.

When the level cap raises they'll set their bots overnight to ride the bubble of 3 and 4 crafts at once and garner even more money and power, then use that to dictate who can afford high-level crafting grind mats (them, not you) and then use that monopoly to jack their selling prices up. They'll be the only people who can afford functional amounts of everything. They'll take all the gold. All the mahogany. All the steel. Everything needed to level in any craft, they'll be the only ones with the money for.

They have this all planned out, and it's going like clockwork so far. They are jockeying for a position so that they bot through 10 levels of every craft for a profit, and by the time they're done you're doing the same thing they did through one craft for a loss.

Square's got to wake up and realize what a generation of leeches are doing to their game.

[Dubont]

Honestly, botters don't bother me. Maybe it's just because I dealt with it for years on Remora (FFXI) and got used to it or what...but it's really not a problem to me. Yes, they have tons of gil and can "try" to manipulate the market, but so far, I have yet to see an impact from botters.

[Shinigami]

Honestly, botters don't bother me. Maybe it's just because I dealt with it for years on Remora (FFXI) and got used to it or what...but it's really not a problem to me. Yes, they have tons of gil and can "try" to manipulate the market, but so far, I have yet to see an impact from botters.

Ask a fisherman what he thinks about botters

[Dubont]

Ask a fisherman what he thinks about botters

I fished in XI and didn't have a problem with them.

[Xandre]

Ask a fisherman what he thinks about botters

I'll be honest, I'm skeptical of the characters who have rank 50 fisherman. I know there are players out there who are ranking this class honestly, but when I see someone who has or is going to have capped it, it's like a red flag. Of course I am basing this off personal experiences and judgement.

[Eldaena]

Honestly, botters don't bother me. Maybe it's just because I dealt with it for years on Remora (FFXI) and got used to it or what...but it's really not a problem to me. Yes, they have tons of gil and can "try" to manipulate the market, but so far, I have yet to see an impact from botters.

You probably cannot feel the effects of botters like people that try to rank up crafts do. I see you have a rank 26 weaver, which is great, but as you get higher, it's much harder to obtain materials you need to keep ranking up crafts. If you are focusing more on battlecraft it hardly effects you. To you, you can get cheap gear, and could care less about battlecraft bots because most people just rank up on regional leves. However, crafting and gathering is a different ballgame. Bot gathers probably make the most of their money from bot crafters, however, legitimate gathers have tons of trouble trying to make a 'living' when bot gathers are raking in tons more to sell and sell it for less. Then Bot crafters do tons of crafts, get them all to 50, while other legitimate crafters struggle to get themselves in the position to make the same items to sell that bot crafters do.

Maybe on some servers it's not as bad as it has been in Bodhum, but when it feels like more than 50% of the population is cheating their way to the top, something is definitely wrong, whether you care or 'feel' like it effects you. It does, one way or another. Everyone is effected.

This is part of the reason I want signed equipment and a prompt telling you who owns a retainer. I do not wish to help support these botters and do my best to just buy and barter from players I trust.

[Radaghast]

The general market is worthless, what is there really to compete over for? NQ items you might as well give out for free, so that leaves HQ's. Getting an item to +1 or +2 is pretty much ezmode. The only true market we are going to see is for that elusive +3. Bot's aren't causing this particular issue, it's the market system itself. So long as nothing is being taken out of the market, the older the server gets the more worthless items get as more and more items enter the system.

Bots you can argue are able to sit on huge amounts of money selling shards/fish (as far as I know there's no bot for botany and mining) and with that particular issue can and will devalue currency. Competition on anything else besides +3's is basically pointless so long as the system remains as it is.