Bots are a serious issue that needs to be fixed ASAP.

[Skyrior]

Bots artificially inflate the supply and therefore cause prices to go down, hurting actual gatherers who gather with time and sweat.

This needs to be fixed. It's hurting the gatherer economy badly right now. It's why omnigatherer isn't really profitable while omnicrafters make millions. The dev team is willing to go so far as to ban chat in the Feast after the toxicity so it shows they have the capacity to stop botting too especially when more people are complaining about botting than with PvP.

[bardaboo]

Breaking news.... good find there Lois

[Vnolan]

The dev team is willing to go so far as to ban chat in the Feast after the toxicity so it shows they have the capacity to stop botting too especially when more people are complaining about botting than with PvP.

You misunderstand. PVP was behind gathering bots, not the other way around. They are able to avoid banning people for botting by ignoring it. They couldn't do the same with PVP, hence the removal of chat.

[LunaFaye]

I don't mind it, at least we have some materials on hand, that most level 50+ gatherers abandoned long time ago. Sometimes I can't be bothered to go and grab 5 low tier materials that you need as sub material etc, or the pain to gather shards if I forgot to sent out my 6 retainers, I am glad to get these items without any frustration. Same goes for crafting, you know how much money I make with items people abandoned years ago? I don't mind couple of bots undercutting me, at the end I still make enough gil to not care. It can't be compared with pvp bots since that's a complete different thing, and why nowadays everybody needs to move their actual topic of interest towards pvp, when trying to prove a point?

[Yudzster]

omg dude thats a cool info yo

[Pintsized]

Bots artificially inflate the supply and therefore cause prices to go down, hurting actual gatherers who gather with time and sweat.

This needs to be fixed. It's hurting the gatherer economy badly right now. It's why omnigatherer isn't really profitable while omnicrafters make millions. The dev team is willing to go so far as to ban chat in the Feast after the toxicity so it shows they have the capacity to stop botting too especially when more people are complaining about botting than with PvP.

Um .. XIV 1.0 had bots since early on, XIV 2.0 had bots on release day.

This game has always had bots, I've given up hoping SE will ever do anything about it, all they so is ban-waves then the next week there are literally SCORES of new ones power-leveling, you can see them leveling in the Black Shroud on Mondays regularly and by Friday they're 50+: you can see them using Search, there are usually two set of them, one with keyboard-mashed names the others with two names of 4/5 characters where you'll immediately see a pattern to how they've been generated.

One wave I reported over 30, three weeks later the 10 I checked were still here, level 50+ so I gave up reporting since there is no easy way to report bots you can only see a nameplate of that can't be targeted.

I twice reported the Free Companies they form, often with 24/24 active members, those FCs still existed 2 months later so I gave up reporting them.

[White_Devil]

Wouldn't it be possible to trace said bots to find out where their clients operate? It's obvious they're part of some RMT service (money for gil, money for level 60, etc.) which to some extent should be illegal.

[Sida]

The funny thing is, it's not exactly illegal. And even if it was, the first question would be, by which country's laws. It's against the Terms of Service, yes and bannable offense.

[azura84]

The funny thing is, it's not exactly illegal. And even if it was, the first question would be, by which country's laws. It's against the Terms of Service, yes and bannable offense.

I hate that i'm posting in a thread by He Who Shall Not Be Named's thread but if you think of the game as it's own separate country and the terms of service as the law then it kinda is illegal, that's not even stretching into RP either.

[Sida]

I hate that i'm posting in a thread by He Who Shall Not Be Named's thread but if you think of the game as it's own separate country and the terms of service as the law then it kinda is illegal, that's not even stretching into RP either.

That is a fine comparison to make, if you are fully aware what illegal means. However too often I see people use "illegal" when they meant "is not allowed" or even "I don't like it" and that's rather big disparity between the concepts.