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

[Xenor]

I don't even bother reporting botters any more and I encountered two blatant farm botters yesterday. It's just not worth it because no GM is going to come watch them.

[Akira-Niji]

To be honest, in my years playing XI, people who used bots didn't seem to impact the immediate enjoyment of my play time until I joined the HNM scene. Because that player demographic has the most (not all) players who want their best items now and at whatever cost. They have much to lose and will do whatever it takes to compete with other players in other HNM linkshells.

Mind you, that was just from my perspective. I know most of the core botting is developed and used by RMT to control the market--which impacts everyone whether they know it or not, but botting is unavoidable in MMO's. Developers and producers just have to do their best to minimalize the damage they cause.

[Azurymber]

To be honest, in my years playing XI, people who used bots didn't seem to impact the immediate enjoyment of my play time until I joined the HNM scene. Because that player demographic has the most (not all) players who want their best items now and at whatever cost. They have much to lose and will do whatever it takes to compete with other players in other HNM linkshells.

Mind you, that was just from my perspective. I know most of the core botting is developed and used by RMT to control the market--which impacts everyone whether they know it or not, but botting is unavoidable in MMO's. Developers and producers just have to do their best to minimalize the damage they cause.

theres a difference between "doing their best" and what SE has done which is suspend the special task force (i believe) meaning they are doing essentially -nothing-.

[kaboro]

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?

My thoughts are: LOL, omg some botter kid will have more gil than me so he will be more uber, more elite, zomg the world is ending! *runs away arms in the air.

[Tirem778]

I get the feeling that Square Enix has a way they plan to balance out the economy so they aren't worried too much. (Not sure what they plan to do.) As for the fact they got free levels with no effort. I'm sure right before the game hits PS3 they will actually take measures against the botters for once. If they are botting now they will be botting then. Sqaure Enix isn't as some think they are.

[KaiLarson]

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.

He said 'one of the most heavily botted games', but good try.

[kukurumei]

well rmt and bots are two separate issues... I mean who would RMT FF14 (laughs!)

Bots raise and fall with updates, and with so many suppose system changes, I doubt I would even care (as well as all the people who wouldn't care if they even played).

And really do you want to ban characters at this point in time? it's bleeding enough, isn't it?

[twinkles]

The only real use to money now is to collect it, build a giant money bin and swim in it like uncle scrooge.

^^You won my night with that, ducktales ftw.

Back on track though, yeah if they implemented a reset (ranks, money or otherwise) i would quit the game as well. While i agree that inflation could be a problem for new players, just as it can be in any game with a mix of new and old players, punishing the player base with any form of reset would be too much salt on the wound.

I was just thinking a possible solution for shielding new players against severe inflation is to put them on new servers and to not allow current players to transfer over. That plus forming some long term way to thwart new botters would keep these new servers and player bases clean, just my thought on it.

[Peregrine]

I'd like the new players to be shielded from the hustlin' ballers who plan on milking them as soon as they hit. Over the years people have perfected the art of fleecing newbies, and it makes their game harder than we had it. We had it ridiculously easy. Hundreds of people LFP. Thousands of materials for sale. Ample gatherers just grinding to grind and give things away.

But that's got nothing to do with botting.
One way to help stop the bleeding in this game is to get the botters and RMT out of it. They're the icing bad name on the cake of fail here.

Plus, it'd relieve a lot of market ward congestion.

[Cutriss]

Exactly like the Salvage bans that killed off alot of XIs endgame "leet" players.

Most of whom complained quite loudly, and then within 6 months most of them had since leveled or purchased a new character and were right back in it.