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.

[Zojha]

It makes maybe more sense in open world pvp, which I'm betting is where it came from.

It actually came from WoW's Arena and the concept of "Resilience", later changed to "PvP Power + PvP Resilience" and then... I think ditched entirely.

That PvP only stat was introduced during Burning Crusade along with Arenas and made people in PvP more powerful (the details of 'powerful' changing over the years), without affecting PvE. What did Morale do? Well, just that. Wolves Den had the same rules of engagement as WoW's arenas as well.

It was pretty much a paint job and they probably didn't expect it to flop as badly as it did because WoW could sustain it. Turns out there's several differences between the games, from playerbase over netcode to class balance and combat design.

[Joe777]

I wonder if anyone has ever tried to ask SE about their stance on the bots issue at conventions, with live letter, etc. Perhaps this needs to be pressed harder at such times... Forums are one thing, but if they dodge, deflect, or flat out ignore that then that means they are not acknowledging it, or have some reason to not acknowledge it. Either way, it should at least be acknowledged. I'm not big on PvP but I feel for the PvP community on this.

[Vnolan]

I wonder if anyone has ever tried to ask SE about their stance on the bots issue at conventions, with live letter, etc. Perhaps this needs to be pressed harder at such times...

lol at that customer service. Need a query answered? It's as simple as ambushing the director at a live event.

[Ametrine]

lol at that customer service. Need a query answered? It's as simple as ambushing the director at a live event.

Well, considering Yoshi-P and the other head devs were unaware of how terrible RMT was on the primarily English-speaking despite dealing with it for the 2.x era (to the point removing /tell and /shout chat was common, as was forever staying on /busy status), until the man logged in to hang out with NA players on a live letter, and was instantly bombarded with gibberish, gilselling /tells.

Literally asking him to fix the bots at Fanfest looks to be the next move.

If only PVP were big enough for a LL question about the botting to get a thousand votes....