Bots use to directly impact more when the game first came out. It use to be that you had competition with bots on mobs to grind ranks. I think their main purpose was to farm shards as it use to be the most effective way to farm shards. Then the fish to crystal synths where introduced and that effectively got the bots off the mobs and into their crafting corners. I hardly run into any gathering bots. Perhaps I am not looking hard enough. The bots on lindblum seem to stick to just shards/crystals. As someone that has been reluctant to spend gil I find it nice to look at hundred of stacks of shards cheaply priced. All the shards ill need for R50 blacksmith is going to come in at under 15 million. Instead of spending 60ish hours hasty handing the shards I need to be a cheap skate I can buy shards from the RMT bots at what I consider a more than fair price. Perhaps I am being short sighted but for now they seem to be helping me more than they are hurting me. Without the shard bots I can not imagine how expensive shards would be. Would we all be spending our time making shards to support crafting?

What I found interesting was that lodestone post. It was to the effect of, we know people are botting and you better cut it out before shit happens. Well, I haven't seen SE follow through on that threat. If they did we would perhaps see less players taking advantage of botting.