3rd Party Program Bot farmers everywhere!!

[Symbiant]

thats why /afk is useless so better use /busy so u cant stop the bot from moving about

I agree that it would stop you from trading a bot but, /busy does not always indicate a bot. I run w/ /busy all the time even in dungeons. I was getting spammed 20-30 times a day. I was filling up my black list every 1-2 weeks it was getting insane. So since they would never get rid of the spammers I put /busy.

Saying /busy is a bot is like saying a specific race of people are always criminals. I just do not pay attention to them any more it's not worth my time.

[Sadana]

No one is saying /busy is the only marker of a bot. People are pointing out that bots are mining/standing in the same place for days/weeks/months farming over and over. Used to be you could interrupt the program by trading; now they leave the status set to /busy so you can't interfere and stop the program. That's all. ^^

[LunarCain]

Ah a much clearer message o.o

[Gerolan]

I got reported for being a bot because I had quite a few full stacks of fleece on MB.
Someone asked in shout if they knew who the retainer belonged too and I said me.
They then said they were reporting me for botting. What they failed to realise is that I was doing weaver level achievement and the leve quest reward was fleece on most of them.
Never heard anything more about it but people do need to be careful , not all people who gather or list stuff are bots

[Baneus]

I got reported for being a bot because I had quite a few full stacks of fleece on MB.
Someone asked in shout if they knew who the retainer belonged too and I said me.
They then said they were reporting me for botting. What they failed to realise is that I was doing weaver level achievement and the leve quest reward was fleece on most of them.
Never heard anything more about it but people do need to be careful , not all people who gather or list stuff are bots

Plus pretty much every fleece dropping mob now has a chance to drop between 0 and 10 fleece at once. It normally takes about 10 - 15 minutes to get a stack of 99.

[ariaandkia]

You know what, i want to honestly know, with all that is true to my soul at least 1 person that will multibox 5 characters with legit intent. i need you to do that for me. i want to make these legendary people

If I have the PCs to do it, I can and have played as many as 7 games at one time. Hint: Feet, hands, voice, elbows. Windows has a function that allows you to control it using voice. And if you change your voice based on the PC, you can increase the number of PCs you can control at a time. So 2 hands, 2 feet = 2-4. 2 elbows = 1. 3 different voices = 3 so that is 7 on average. Though I also like to watch anime at the same time, lol. By positioning the speakers for each anime box slightly offset so that the sound arrives at a different timing and volume, you can organize which sound is coming from which box even if they have the same voice actor.

I'm the type that gets worse the fewer things I'm doing at a time though, with the exception of if I'm using a certain technique which forces me to focus on one thing.

Although whether or not I'm a bot depends partially on your definition of a bot. However, by MOST game company standards, I am not a bot since I'm not running a third party program or device. I simply trained myself to work and think differently than most people. However, as a result of my training, there are certain things I'm weaker at than your 'average' person.

And I'm not sure about legit, but I give away most of what I make to newbies because I want to help them progress faster.

Note: I do not multibox FF14. I can barely afford 13 USD a month, much less 91 USD.

As for what I have played at the same time... FF14 (Titan EX ps4), RaiderZ (solo pc), Agarest (Single Player), Terraria (Single Player), PKMN (NA DS), PKMN (JP DS), Fate (PSP), Urusei Yatsura (anime-pc). Of which FF14, RaiderZ and Terraria are reasonably fast paced. RaiderZ being a bit more fast paced than FF14. Though arguably, fighting bosses in Terraria is pretty fast paced as well, lol. However, FF14 and RaiderZ and Terraria are also really really slow paced in another sense. You don't have to think much once you have the patterns down. It is essentially just repeating the same patterns over and over again.

I have, as a result, healed things like Garuda EX in my sleep. Literally in my sleep. One of my friends knows me for healing in my sleep because I learn the patterns for healing and then go to sleep with the patterns recognized. Considering that I can barely see anyways, some people actually say I heal BETTER when asleep since I stop trying to see which saves me space in my processing area (In real life, I move around the city almost purely by sound. I use my eyes mainly to read things and to see lights with no blind assistance-though I sometimes use the position and directional speeds and deceleration/acceleration to tell instead). In other words, unused portion of my brain can then be used for other things. Main thing is that I stop chatting when I sleep though I might talk still (a very select few have heard me sleep talking-probably me using my voice to control the computer). Chatting requires sight in order to read the text.

In theory, I can control as many as 6 without using my voice, but that would be pure PC and would require me to have a space set up specifically for gaming. Actually, depends on the game. Like I've played DDR while doing my homework while watching anime while playing several other games-none of the games being on the pc since at the time, I was using my PCs for watching 4+ animes at a time.

Almost any gamer can do it if they train themselves to from a young age. Just need motivation. My motivation? 1) Time. 2) Easily distracted if I'm only doing two things at a time. 3) Megatokyo-one of the characters used every piece of their body they could, even their mouth? to play a game. I thought, hey, I can do that too. 4) Because it is funny when I see characters in anime, manga, light novels, and visual novels that either match me almost perfectly (like the sister of No Game, No Life) or who can do almost the same thing I can but using a different method (like The World God Only Knows). 5) News stories of how artists learned to paint with their feet or mouth or w/e when they couldn't use their hands - proving it was possible (not that it simply being impossible would've stopped me considering some of the things I've done). 6) I should add this: I am a soloist. I don't trust normal humans. If I can play my entire dungeon party/raid by myself, why not? Then all I have to worry about is myself. Nobody else to blame, nobody else to blame me, it is all on myself.

I mean, heck, time is part of why I learned how to speed read (Though that is also why I ran out of books at my school library and started to play games so much, lol). I wanted to do more things in the little time I had. But now that I'm still alive, why not keep using what I already learned to do?

Fun fact: I don't eat with my feet not because I can't but because I'd probably not want to eat the food if I thought about the implications of doing so.

====

Anyways, back towards the original post. Just because they are doing mindless tasks all day doesn't mean that they are bots. You have people like me who have the ability to 'sleepwalk,' people like me with the ability to multitask, groups of people working together, and more.

(Note: For FF14 only (because it is sub and not F2P), I only sleep play when I fall asleep while doing something, I don't do something and then fall asleep while doing something (might not sound different, but one is on purpose and the other is unintended out of exhaustion from staying up for so much time without sleep).)

If sleep playing seems odd. Think of it this way. People sleep walk. And ever started walking somewhere, fell asleep, and then ended up at your destination before you woke up? I have and I'm sure you've experienced something similar even if in a lesser degree. It is where I get most of my sleeping time from. Since it is a 2 hour walk to work and then 2 hours back, why not catch up on sleep? And I did check the news for a while to make sure I wasn't breaking any laws or causing any accidents, lol. I pretty much stay up until I collapse or until I have to walk a good distance, then I just sleep for a bit.

I can't use a bot even if I wanted to for FF14 since I have a PS4 (No bots for PS4 yet, though there might be some for PS3).

Even busy and not responding isn't a clear sign. I mean, some random person runs up to you and goes: "TRADE WITH ME!" while you are grinding/farming. Would you stop? Some random person runs up to you and demands that you talk to them. Would you stop? Busy prevents RMTs from bothering them easily. If they sleep play like I do or multitask, they might not even realize someone is trying to contact them.

Also retainers do help with getting those stacks and considering you can get 4? retainers?

=====

Personally? People need to stop buying from the RMTs. I mean, if they are still advertising despite everything,then doesn't that mean that someone is buying from them?

And I seriously have to wonder about people who would report someone for being a bot when the person actually responded. I mean, honestly.

As for me, I tend to have a lot of mats and stuff in the market board because... well... Look at my stats, lol. I'm working on my crafting classes now and so excess that I have no need for keeping gets thrown to the market board.

I probably SHOULD sleep soon. I am starting to badly misspell stuff now, lol.

[KingOfAbyss]

You have to be careful with your reports. You can end up reporting innocent people unless you know exactly how to spot a botter.

Like you have to watch them for a while, if they are on a set path or not. How they target the mobs. How they kill the mobs. How long it takes for them to run between the mobs. If they do the same thing in the same place that you saw them a few moments ago then they are probably on a set path.

You cannot call everyone bots just because you see people farming though.

Does it really have to come down to be the responsibility of the players?

With limited playtime, and lots to do, I used to report some teleport botters, only to still see them again.

So nope, I want to help, but if they don't do their part (SE) - End of Story.

[FriendlyUncle]

SE doesn't ban accounts immediately, look back at FFXI task force. They try to find all accounts those bots are associated to and form a little web and mass ban as many of those accounts as possible together and at the same time. This eliminates their dirty currency and lowers the risk of them losing only 1 or 2 bots and being able to safe guard the Gil that they still have on any remaining accounts. Mass bans eliminate much more currency and make it a much larger investment to get back into the game.

It is much easier to dump 30 bucks into a copy of the game once a month because of a ban than to try and get back into it after you had 8 accounts banned in a single day this month.