Botters/Cheaters/3rd party programs

[Dewd]

Hello FFXIVers,

I would like to create some discussion involving those using bots to farm and/or spiritbond in the game. It is probably my biggest pet peve, and the one thing that enfuriates me more than anything in the game.

I have put forth SEVERAL Gm reports, yet nothing seems to be getting done.

I need YOUR help! Help take a stance against these types of actions! Knowing that someone(s) is/are farming fleece/snurble tufts/etc. AND receiving plenty of IV materia all while AFK MUST present some issues for other players as well.

So FFXIVers, please assist in leaving feedback about those who use bots. Feel free to share any of your own personal experiences, world name, and location of bots. Though it may be tempting, refrain from using exact names, as this may be deemed as harassment (as a Gm has recently told me).

What are YOUR thoughts on bots? Is SE doing enough to deal with them?

Thanks,

Dewd Junior [Hyperion]

[Jasmine_Aurelia]

It's not my job to enforce anything, and the lack of a one click button to report something makes it way to tedious to care, seriously we need to be able to right click a name in chat and auto report spam at the very least, but until they basically make a feature where all I have to do is hit a button to report something without filling out a form, not worth my effort.

[MomomiMomi]

Never cared enough to wonder who might be a bot. I have better things to do.

[SirSaber]

I see them, sometimes I like to screw with 'em too but I don't feel bothered by them.
I just pity the person programing them, wasting more time to set up a bot rather then play the actual game.

Yet one thing is clear to me, if the bots weren't there I wouldn't want to imagine the price of shards and crystals...
I always though that we should be able to gather more than 1/3 shard per hit or 60 shards in 30min (retainer venture).

But that's off topic.

Yeah bots, meh, if SE doesn't do anything about them they'll sooner or later spread around, damage the community and when that happens if SE is going to swing the hammer we will go from 2.5 million players to 1.5 million. (ekoj)

TL;DR: I can't gather the same hate OP has about boters, I only pity the fools, I don't hate them.

[dayspring83]

Never cared enough to wonder who might be a bot. I have better things to do.

This. If I get an RMT tell I block em, report em and keep it moving. Other than that I couldn't care less. I prefer to spend my time logged in actually playing the game not worrying about what others are doing. Never understood why people spend so much time and effort with stuff like this.

[Shougun]

People are actually getting punished for 3rd party apps? Youtube is filled with people and their names uncensored using apps lol. I don't think SE really wants to ban people from the game and do it as a last resort, which is good for not getting mistakenly banned because you did something funny but not against the ToS. For third party tools though Yoshida pretty much said if you don't get caught we won't do anything, and he expects people to be using them. To be clear he didn't say bots, he was talking more like aggro tables and parsers - but he didn't say they were allowed as much as SE's priority wasn't to punish these tools.

Imo SE would be more successful catching bots with a VATs/Warden but there would be a number of players who will quit because those tools are very similar to spyware (if not technically already are).

Bots that use gil generating tasks do have a negative impact on everyone though, legacy servers had years of bots doing leves which is strictly a gil generator. Can cause weird things like some players looking at materia/housing as cheap (being part of the market wards = win) or hilariously eye stabbing (get into the market wards yo, lol).

[Dewd]

I am not speaking about RMT messages. SE has already made it much easier to blist these users (though i wish the blist was bigger than 200, I do periodically check it and remove the delted characters to make room for more).

I am speaking about bots. I have witnessed, along with many others on my server (who have also submitted complaints in game) 4-6 bots in Coerthas. The bots are attacking Ornery Karakuls to farm the fleece, and have also found a way to spiritbond and convert gear once spiritbonding is complete, then continuing the same process over and over. I have only witnessed this personally over the course of the past several days, but there are those that I speak with that have known the exact same characters to be at the exact same location doing the exact same thing for months now.

So, while some of us work hard to earn the gil we receive, it is frustrating to see there are characters out there that are clearly running programs and able to make heaps of gil while afk.

[Dewd]

A few messages that say things like "I have better things to do with my time", "not my job to enforce", "I couldn't care less", certainly aren't going to help change or fix the problem. This was part of my reluctance for posting about it on the forums int he first place. I would much rather be spending my time actually playing the game, and so would the majority of players. Those that use the forums are a minority. While it is indeed an extra outlet to voice any concerns we have about the game, it is not the most user friendly way of submitting a complaint, nor do I see any devs/mods chiming in with what their stance on this is. Why have a ToS in the first place if it is not going to be enforced?

Every day that goes by while I see the bots still performing their actions every time is frustrating. I simply wish more would be done about it. I know there are many others out there that are equally as annoyed that this type of behavior that clearly violates ToS is permitted to continue.

[RakaMaimhov]

Those spiritbond bots that are on every server in the same spot in North Shroud (y'all know the ones I'm talking about) have been reported repeatedly by many, many players.

On every server.

They might not even be bots, you know. They might be sweatshop workers.

Oh, yes. Those exist. For mmo's. For gold/gil/mmo game currency farming.

Not quite sure they know how to deal with the situation if "real players" are controlling those characters.

There's already so much gil laundering going on in the game, they'd prolly have to ban half the server population on every world for touching dirty money by accident.

[NoDRG]

I am pretty annoyed by this as well, but after stopping to report every single character I suspected of botting earlier in the game's life, only to see the same character the next
day, the next day and every day after that it started to become clear to me that SE just doesn't give a flying crap about ToS violations. I stopped wasting my time reporting cheaters and
bots forever ago.

You could do as I have done and stopped caring as SE obviously does not care themselves, and just enjoy the game or you could just quit for another game if it bothers you that much.
Pretty terrible that it comes to that, but it is what it is. Maybe a few years down the road after RMT have destroyed every aspect of FFXIV's economy, SE will do something about the problem.
History is repeating itself.