Why are pvp bots still a thing?

[Levy9]

Yeah, as a way to get players into PVP, the rewards are sky high.

Not to get all "Back in my day!" on everyone, but PVP used to have exclusive PVP stats, along witb materia and gearsets specifically tailored for PVP modes. This meant you played PVP modes to earn Wolf Marks to buy PVP gear to get better stats in PVP. Pretty straightforward stuff.

Grindable gear is a reward though. You're replacing the reward, rather than abandoning the concept of rewards. The ideal balance would be to find rewards that people who don't care about PvP won't go out of their way to get but the people who actually enjoy PvP casually can have something to grind. There's a middle ground here that I don't think is being met with the same old achievement prizes we've had for years and PvE tomes that incentivize PvE content. I liked someone else's idea of a weekly PvP currency that could be used to purchase wolf crates, essentially FFXIV's version of lootboxes.

We both believe that PvPers should have something to grind, although I'm certain that PvPers would eventually bot for functional PvP gear if PvP were to ever become popular. It happened a few years ago in WoW, forcing Blizzard to eventually take action against the armies of botters in battlegrounds. We could have a gear system if SE would police it, but even then, Blizzard has sharply flattened the PvP gear curve in WoW while giving every class the same base stats in PvP and it's still the most active MMORPG PvP game. Personally, I couldn't play the arena PvP in 2.0, not even in primetime on the weekends. I literally never saw it pop during my entire time with 2.0 despite trying.