How botting may Kill this game (even if the game rebounds)

[rainfish]

This is and was designed to be a casual MMO, gil won't ever be much more than for pocket change stuff. They will make armors r/e and fairly easily dropped to stop mercing, this will never be FFXI mkII, they have stated the desgin of the game from the start.

People hording and collecting gil are going to be sorely dissapointed if they think they will be in a powerful position at some point.

[Frebaut]

There is no question that FFXIV is one of the most heavily botted games out there right now. However, SE still hasn't done anything about it, and doesn't seem to intend to any time in the near future.

Even with a great new battle system and amazing new content, this game may not ever have success due to the large amount of botting/cheating

here is why:

1.
The large amount of botting has led to serious gil inflation. As a result of this, a large amount of players have well over 20mil (some having upwards of 50 or 100+).

what does this mean?: New players will have an -incredibly- hard time catching up. This means if elite gear (like the equivalent to ffxi p-charm, hauberk, etc) is released, new players (ex. ps3 players) will be unable to afford it for years or without botting themselves.
And i realize many people say "well SE will implement gil sinks". But honestly from an economic perspective, gil sinks will be nearly impossible to properly implement at this point. Further, FFXIV's economic track record is one of -pure failure-. And further, when hyperinflation took place in FFXI they were unable to gil-sink it out and had to mass ban rmt's and wait about 2 years for the economy to stabalize.

2.
New players will feel unable to ever become elite or catch up to the huge amount of people that have multiple rank 50 jobs. This is especially detrimental to people who want to play the game as a crafter main, as it will be practically impossible to compete or profitably level up crafts when your server is full of people who have multiple crafts at rank 50 from botting.

what does this mean? New players will switch to games where they actually have a chance of being "elite" players. Why? Because humans are on average happier by having relative games than absolute gains. That is to say that people want to have more than the other people around them (this has been scientifically proven to be a characteristic of our brains through neuroscience experiments across the world and across cultures). If FFXIV is released and new players see huge numbers of people with 5-10 rank 50 jobs and realize it could take them months just to get one job to rank 50 (especially crafts) they are likely to move to another game where they can be more competitive.

3
Botters will essentially be the players who end up with all the elite stuff, since they have spent months botting millions of gil and will continue to do so since nothing is being done about it.

what does this mean?: Imaginee FFXIV introduced dynamis tomorrow for hardcore elite weapons. Now lets say a legit player wants it. What are the chances they can compete with the 200+ people on every server who are botting/botted all their gil and can afford to pay high prices for currency. The chances are pretty well 0. Elite gear that is sold or gained with gil (ex. dynamis weapons, p-charm, o-kote etc) will first go to those that botted before it will land in the hands of legit players. Since many people won't want to wait, they will take up botting themselves in order to have a chance.

Why can't SE just ban the bots?
Because from what i've read they currently don't have that special team working on finding out who is botting. And I'm assuming it would be very difficult to mass ban people in the future based on recorded data without banning a number of innocent players. So its very likely those who have botted to this point have gotten away with it.

What will be the future?
It's obviously impossible to predict exactly what happens with the game, but there are a few likely scenarios.

First: Botting leads to constant hyperinflation. Gil sinks fail to remove gil out of the game and as such, the game turns to having all elite gear as rare/ex.
As a result crafting and gathering jobs are no longer nearly as important (other than materia wise).

Second: SE manages to magically combat inflation (incredibly unlikely)
However, there are still 100s of people who have botted numerous jobs. As a result a number of jobs (fishing and crafting) that are easily botted end up completely unprofitable resulting in no one leveling them. In essence, the amount of jobs you have to choose from is cut in half.

Third: SE tries to implement a gil-sink. it fails. The game continues to be one of the most heavily botted games out there. New players see no reason to join a game that is filled with obvious cheaters, and the game essentially fails or stays at its current population. (this seems to be the most likely)

Possible Solutions?

There is probably no viable way to fix the gil problem quick enough in time for a PS3 release unless it is delayed 2 years.

SE could make it -really- easy to get to rank 50 and up the cap to 75 making 50 to 75 the "hard part". If they actually banned bots at this point it would at least make the game more "fair" and allow new players to have a chance at competing for "eliteness". Gil would still be an issue but they could put in more of the current NMs just at higher levels, so that people could farm rare/ex gear to level up with.

Note: I believe many on this forum (not mentioning names but should be obvious) will argue that people play this game to look at the pretty forests and have fun, and don't care about "eliteness" or good gear. I would like to point out that FFXI servers had -massive- amounts of drama over gear, and further that many end game linkshells of FFXI had serious drama over items like byakko haidate, with people getting the item, then quitting the ls. Once again it is scientifically proven that people IN GENERAL (not every single person) prefer relative gains to absolute gains. So please don't just point out that "people don't care about having more than others."

What are your thoughts?

This is for your first sentence. I actually question that FFXIV is the most botted MMO out their. You would think WoW would have more bots purely because it has so many more subscribers. So ya i do question it.

[Xatsh]

this thread is about new players not about current players and not about now.
This happened in ffxi, a lot of players quit because they couldn't afford the -good- gear and didn't enjoy spending a month farming non stop for one peice of gear. Thats what will most likely happen in this game.

This is a misconception. something soaring to 25mill looks crazy, but when you can make 300k/hr instead of 30k/hr it is not bad.

Example:

Which item is more expensive to Buy

A Hauby selling for 25mill (hyper inflation in XI), but tree cutting selling for 100-120k a stack

Or

A Hauby for 2.5million Gil (Pre Hyper Inflation Prices and the summer after inflation) with tree cuttings selling for around 10-12k a stack.

Hyper inflation did not just increase the price of good gear, it increased the price of everything with value.. including the things people farmed.

So if Hyper inflation happened you would make alot more money but have to spend alot more as well, that is how an economy works it reflects the cost of the market. If 10fold the currency entered the economy the only thing it would devalue is Leve rewards, anything farmed that has value would still have the same purchasing power.

Honestly atm the economy is in massive deflation, ridiculous deflation. Nearly nothing sells.. seriously I can buy a weapon for my rank 50 for the reward I get from 2 leves, my iron plate body costed 45k....... seriously.

Honestly the game needs inflation... everything should cost about 10-20 fold what it does now. Even some Endgame HQ items are becoming dirt cheap.

[Kassad]

Why can't SE just ban the bots?
Because from what i've read they currently don't have that special team working on finding out who is botting. And I'm assuming it would be very difficult to mass ban people in the future based on recorded data without banning a number of innocent players. So its very likely those who have botted to this point have gotten away with it.

This thread is long and I did't read it all. I may have a solution.

1) Let the players the ability to flag someone as being a botter

2) If someone is flagged as a botter and is engaged in a combat (or gathering, crafting), nothing happens until the end of the combat. When it is time to reap the benefits (exp, items, gil, etc) the game delays the rewards until the suspected botter correctly answers a question. A picture is then submitted to the screen with fuzzy text (just like when you create a new hotmail account). If the suspected botter type the text right (could add voice to help), he (and his party) can have all the rewards. After 3 tries the botter account is locked for review by SE and no reward is granted.

3) If someone is flagged as a botter and is not engaged in a combat (or gathering, crafting), nothing happens until a combat is engaged. Then proceed to point 2.

If you like this idea please click "Like".

[Draven]

This thread is long and I did't read it all. I may have a solution.

1) Let the players the ability to flag someone as being a botter

2) If someone is flagged as a botter and is engaged in a combat (or gathering, crafting), nothing happens until the end of the combat. When it is time to reap the benefits (exp, items, gil, etc) the game delays the rewards until the suspected botter correctly answers a question. A picture is then submitted to the screen with fuzzy text (just like when you create a new hotmail account). If the suspected botter type the text right (could add voice to help), he (and his party) can have all the rewards. After 3 tries the botter account is locked for review by SE and no reward is granted.

3) If someone is flagged as a botter and is not engaged in a combat (or gathering, crafting), nothing happens until a combat is engaged. Then proceed to point 2.

If you like this idea please click "Like".

This is a really bad idea since it would surely result in abuse of this function. The XI team did a pretty damn good job their way on cracking down on RMTs and Bots and I'm sure eventually they'll do the same here.

Look. In FFXI the problem with Bots and RMTs was that players needed very specific gear to be good at their job and the community expected you to step up in almost every situation. There was a strong understanding that you needed these rings, eat this food, wear this armor. From there, RMTs took over and monopolized those items for a long time.

Money was also not a very easy thing to come buy either unless you were taking some serious time out of your job leveling to craft, gather, ect.

In XIV its completely different. Not only do players have access to the same leves that give large amounts of gil, but any new player can quickly pick up almost any craft, ANY gathering profession and make good money on the side without sacrificing a large amount of time from leveling their job.

The other major difference is in XIV, we have access quickly to NMs that drop amazing gear and fast. The game isn't nearly as demanding of the player to maximize every little stat point as XI was. Even if the game turns up difficulty to XI, SE is not going to make the same mistake in gear availability. I don't have the biggest faith in SE, but Im pretty sure they understood well what happened in XI.

So with large amounts of gil that anyone can make, gear dropping left and right from Leves, Chests, NMs ect, there's no shortage of wealth for everyone, even the new players.

RMTs using bots and people that aren't RMTs and using bots are not ruining this game anytime soon. Simply because, everyone can get money.

Am I saying there isn't inflation? No there is, but it's not botting or RMTs imo. The players have pushed their crafts and gathering probably harder than SE expected and the way the game is built, not botting, has caused almost everyone to be filthy rich and THAT is driving the cost of everything up.

How can it be fixed....I have no idea. High Level Gil sinks of some kind are the only real thing I can think of. But even that isn't going to cut back on the surely ridiculous amount of gil floating around in this game.

The way I see it, as long as the new comers can get lots of money to buy the things they need and the market at the top doesn't become completely out of hand than I see nothing wrong at this point.

[Koronos]

I think the RMT fishing bots are the biggest problem. Take away those and there probably wouldn't be enough crystals to support the non-RMT botters. Also, the non-RMT botters definitely are not getting rich. It takes serious amounts of gil to get a craft to 50 in most cases. (along the lines of 100M for GSM for example, or so a LS mate told me) And once you get to 50 there are not many profitable synths, because there are dozens and dozens of others with crafts leveled. Just my opinion for the most part, but I think people have serious misconceptions about the issues at hand.

[TheVedis]

I think the RMT fishing bots are the biggest problem. Take away those and there probably wouldn't be enough crystals to support the non-RMT botters. Also, the non-RMT botters definitely are not getting rich. It takes serious amounts of gil to get a craft to 50 in most cases. (along the lines of 100M for GSM for example, or so a LS mate told me) And once you get to 50 there are not many profitable synths, because there are dozens and dozens of others with crafts leveled. Just my opinion for the most part, but I think people have serious misconceptions about the issues at hand.

most gear is profitable, you almost never make gear at a loss regardless of what you make
the problem is people arent making uber profit off single pieces, which is what people usualy mean when they talk about profit

i can easily make 20-30k profit a piece, and mass produce tons of easily sellable pieces
the problem is, why do this when i can farm for better profit?

botting is an issue, and alot of the ideas here are utterly rediculous

just report them to the STF and let them deal with it, it isnt our job to be able to do something directly about it as there is NOTHING we can do in all honesty

[Koronos]

most gear is profitable, you almost never make gear at a loss regardless of what you make
the problem is people arent making uber profit off single pieces, which is what people usualy mean when they talk about profit

i can easily make 20-30k profit a piece, and mass produce tons of easily sellable pieces
the problem is, why do this when i can farm for better profit?

botting is an issue, and alot of the ideas here are utterly rediculous

just report them to the STF and let them deal with it, it isnt our job to be able to do something directly about it as there is NOTHING we can do in all honesty

Yes I suppose I was thinking of profit more as it relates to time and effort involved. I made a bunch of lowbie gear at R20 ARM and actually made a couple mil my first two weeks, but its a lot of work and the market gets saturated very easily with such a small player base right now. I agree that botting is a huge issue, and hopefully SE will address it soon.

[Maverick_Hawkeye]

Wow.. in browsing through this post its pretty clear that there must be a lot of botters posting in here... or should I say.. "people who are letting their kids play" or who are "watching netflix while they play so I couldn't respond to you"

Either way, botting is a major issues that is decimating the economy..... the fact is that when you bot, you can make free money.

For example, you're turning 1000 traded gil into 10,000 personal gil. Which may not be significant to one person, but when you have hundreds of people doing this 24 hours a day... you will see a lot more gil entering the economy. Simple as that. As other players have mentioned, there is nothing significantly taking money OUT.

New players that are coming in are now up against a majority of players who have multiple R50 crafts (which takes FOREVER to accomplish ((unless you bot))) and have little oppurtunity to enter into the market. Their prospects at making money will involve Gathering (which is heavily botted so the supply and demand are screwed up), Leves (this can be seen as your basic 'allowance' and the price for items will likely reflect this) or crafting (Which as mentioned in this thread- when heavily botted the ability to make gil in this for new players is rapidly decreasing)

As for those stating: who cares, economy doesn't effect me. You're being really ignorant. There will be items that you want to buy. Currently, money is flowing from the skies- but expect the prices of 'have to have' items increase along with that. Now all of a sudden, you can't pay for your sneak oils/invis powder, and you're trying to find a way to make money.

Lastly,
If you think you can level up faster than/equal to a bot... you're wrong. Simple as that. You cannot play 24 hours... a bot can. I don't care if you're getting 600 sp, while the bot is getting 200... they will easily outpace in the long run ,not to mention you're probably failing a couple of those 600 synths, while the bot is just mashing enter to complete it....

[TheVedis]

Yes I suppose I was thinking of profit more as it relates to time and effort involved. I made a bunch of lowbie gear at R20 ARM and actually made a couple mil my first two weeks, but its a lot of work and the market gets saturated very easily with such a small player base right now. I agree that botting is a huge issue, and hopefully SE will address it soon.

its not even the botting that is oversaturating the gear market
its the materials market being hit by it(and the crafters suffer there honestly)


yet you still have people stating we gouge prices, make sense of that, we barely make a profit unless its hq