Being Called A Botter

[nuyu11]

From what I know, bot move underground undetected. I have a friend who doing alchemist all night long and I feel weird then ask him are you botting? He replied "I macro all with few button, then I use controller while watching movies, he doesn't even look at the monitor screen he said, just pressing the controller button while looking at his television.

[LunaHoshino]

From what I know, bot move underground undetected.

No, some bots move around normally. I've seen mining bots running between nodes in Thanalan-- I knew they were bots because they had the AFK symbol next to their names while they were moving.

[Anapingofness]

No, some bots move around normally. I've seen mining bots running between nodes in Thanalan-- I knew they were bots because they had the AFK symbol next to their names while they were moving.

I've seen a few players who were able to do that.
I thought they patched it so that movement will remove the afk symbol.
Is that a bug or can you really go around with the AFK symbol?

[LunaHoshino]

I've seen a few players who were able to do that.
I thought they patched it so that movement will remove the afk symbol.
Is that a bug or can you really go around with the AFK symbol?

It isn't movement that removes it, it's input in the game window-- things like clicking on something, performing an action, or typing. Pretty sure you can AFK while autorunning because you aren't actually interacting with the game window at all. However, in that case, you'd have to be autorunning in a single direction, because any sort of input to change your direction would cause you to lose the AFK symbol. The bots I'm talking about were very clearly traveling between nodes, which an actual AFK player can't do.

[KisaiTenshi]

Right, so do I, but I've taken it a habit to not stay there for longer than two hours each session. Especially because I am a black mage and like to wear AF body, I have been called a bot a couple times (people seem to not bother checking, or they'd realize that my AF body is glamoured over another piece of equipment). I just try to not look suspicious, even knowing I have every right to stay there for as long as I want. I don't like to make people angry at me.

The telltale sign of a bot is wearing inappropriate gear(eg no right-hand-side gear, or 10 levels below current level), no FC, no title, and "turning on a dime" if they're moving at all. The latter is always a giveaway, only slightly more of a giveaway than standing in the same place for days on end. If you search their info you'll usually also see they only have one or two classes with any levels in it. In the case of the BLM bots, it's always ARC 15, THM, whatever their current level is.

It isn't movement that removes it, it's input in the game window-- things like clicking on something, performing an action, or typing. Pretty sure you can AFK while autorunning because you aren't actually interacting with the game window at all. However, in that case, you'd have to be autorunning in a single direction, because any sort of input to change your direction would cause you to lose the AFK symbol. The bots I'm talking about were very clearly traveling between nodes, which an actual AFK player can't do.

Some of the bots use Busy instead. But yeah if you are using a controller and walking the entire way from Gridania to Ul'dah without a mount, it would do something like this before (go AFK while still moving.) But I think that's only because of the way analog controls are polled (eg there is always movement coming from the analog controls, that's why it's analog.)

The "turning on a dime" aspect is what reveals bots, particularly farming/gathering/mining bots. The bot programs use "gps waypoints" and tells the game client to change headings, moving straight. So you get a lot of point-to-point movement, where as real players are unable to do this 100% of the time.

But there are certain resources in the game that if you monopolize it too long, you are going to inevitably make someone rage. The bots prefer BLM, sometimes in parties with WHM's so they can stun things. There was one group of bots on my server that for a solid month were farming something outside the Ixal camp in North Shroud. Every day. I reported it on several different days, eventually reporting it one final time with a list of every date I've seen them there, and now they've been gone for about 4 days now. So either they finally got banned or they moved.

Figuring out if someone is a bot out on the field isn't really that hard, especially if you've played other games, you'll readily notice identical behavior... and even the same jerkass gold farmer sites being spammed.

Maybe I'm just really fortunate, but I've never experienced anything like this.

I don't really chat too much outside of my ls / fc unless someone speaks to me and I've never been accused of botting. I do play an awful lot, even when I'm not on vacation. /shrug

It does get tiring when the same person keeps inviting you to the same FC every few hours... then there are people who for some unknown reason out of the blue will use /tell and invite you to their FC as well ... like OMG, if I wanted to join a FC don't you think I would have by now. Like I don't ignore Tell's to be rude, I ignore tells because people regularly keep doing this in between the bot spam.

Tip for people who seem to think spamming FC invites is how to get large FC's. IT ISN'T, that only ensures a very large low-quality FC. Use the Lodestone and actually check when the player joined the game. If you don't see the green tree beside the name, they're not new.