Regarding Bot-driven Gil Farmers

[birdy_reene]

Just a question, how do you know that those retainers are tied to that account?

that bot makes crafter items from time to time, and throws them up. when seeing the item on the mb you can see the retainer name and player signature

[Simpicity]

I see this guy around all the time. It made me sad when I started seeing him at the legendary nodes...but I feel a bit better trade blocking him from going to the next area. If someone were sitting at that computer they wouldn't just stand there for 10 minutes while someone messed with them. I'm relatively new to the crafting/gathering scene and it's just kind of disheartening. Hopefully something happens..

Harassment and impeding another players game play is probably not the way to go. Posting about definitely not the way to go.

[Larkyspur]

Harassment and impeding another players game play is probably not the way to go. Posting about definitely not the way to go.

Hey..I get that. But if they come down on me for messing with a computer-run program, then this really isn't a game I want to play. Would seem kind of silly, yeah? I'm not worried.

[aesteval]

that bot makes crafter items from time to time, and throws them up. when seeing the item on the mb you can see the retainer name and player signature

I can put an item crafted by someone up for sale on my retainer. My retainer is then selling a crafted item without my name on it. Having their name on an item may make it more likely that the retainer is their's, but it is not definitive proof. The bot could be offloading crafted items to another bot for sale and it could be that second bot updating the prices while bot 1 is in the field.

[aesteval]

Your point?

The point is that just because prices are being updated on certain retainers while that character is in the field doesn't mean that the prices are actually being updated by that character. The point is to present a reasonable explanation to one part of the discussion. The point is to make sure your argument is solid and doesn't contain any loopholes. Botting is a serious issue in regards to the market, nail down what is most relevant and drive that home, don't add in extra stuff that has an obvious loophole in its validity as proof. You say they're updating their listings while in the field? You do not have the means to definitively validate that statement and it does nothing to help the argument that they're a bot.

[Renius]

He literally does the bot skipping, from node to node in the area, and only truly teleports to leave the area.

Also, we have confirmed that he somehow even while out in the field can change market prices. Cause just to test this the other day, I fallowed him around out in Dravania and while he was farming, A friend of mine threw up a load of crystals for less than him, and immediately his prices changed while I still had eyes on him.

That just plain SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Seyoun]

I've surveyed servers: Coeurl, Siren, Cactuar, Jenova, Faerie, Hyperion, Leviathan and have found the operation exists on
those listed in bold.

The identification process is fast, simple, and will tell you what characters on your server are botting Ephemeral nodes for mad, mad profit.

- Open Player Search.
- Click "Search Conditions"
- If on PC, right-click any icon in the Class/Job list. That will unselect all of them.
- Click the Miner and Botanist job icons. Bottom row, first two.
- In the "Level" section. Limit your search to Min: 60, Max: 60
- In the "Location" section. Limit your search to Coerthas, Abalathia, Dravania
- In the "Language" section. Choose all languages.
- Search.

The result set should not be large since we typically don't see dozens of max-level miners and botanists in just those three regions unless a patch with new gathering items just dropped. Right click each name and "View Search Info'. Skip people who are AFK. Your candidate will have one job leveled to 60 and maybe another leveled to 15 but no others leveled or even unlocked. I've found BLM 60, ARC 15, and ACN 1 (for 1337 healz) to be the setup in use.

If you find a character on your server that matches the above descriptions, you may have a problem.

Go to a marketboard and look at these items: Crystals, Clusters, (NOT shards), and Adamantite ore. You are looking for stacks of thousands of crystals and clusters being sold by a small number of retainers (3 or less) and multiple 99 stacks of adamantite ore.

Now go to the "Character Search" page on the Lodestone. Enter the candidate's name and limit the search to your world.

On their profile, click the link to view their Free Company. You should find that it is a closed FC with a very small number of members (4 or less) with the other members being all level 1s though there may be a second gathering bot in the FC.

If the candidate meets all criteria listed in this post, you've likely discovered the gathering bot supplying the retainers selling on the marketboard.

[Ksenia]

I've always stuck up for bot farmers. If they can get away with it, all the power to them. I've mined shards and crystals ATK. It's brain dead grind on a whole other level and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Until that changes, go go gadget bot.

[Rufalus]

We have bots on Ragnarok but I can report and wait a few months and they will still be doing it.

So my problem with S-E allowing bots is that it's like saying you must bot if you want to be competitive. The bots basically get a free jump to level cap (fate bots), unlimited company seals, unlimited materials and catalysts and gil (gather bots) with zero human time or effort spent.

Considering the above, it's inefficient to actually play the game, as this takes time and effort to achieve less than what bots are doing since they don't need to take breaks.

I would like to know if Yoshida is actually aware of the scale of the problem on NA and EU worlds. Any kind of comment about this from Yoshida himself would be very appreciated.

The game is still doing ok. While there are a substantial amount of bots, they are a minority, and it hasn't reached a critical state of breaking the game. But if they are never dealt with, it could get worse and reach that point.

I don't expect them to necessarily spend money researching the programs people use and writing detection software to automatically ban people, but at the least it would be great if they could get moderators who will investigate reports and just use their eyes.

Just by looking you can be 100% certain of certain characters cheating, especially ones who use position hacks to jump from node to node. If you can ban these notorious bots who've been doing that for months or years, it will be a much more fair environment and better experience for legitimate players.

[Dustytome]

-redacted because I wasn't paying enough attention to the search window settings-