So many bots

[Kantros21]

Yo, i don't usually post in here, this is my first time, but i think this is important.

I've been playing for nearly a year and i've enjoy the hell out of this game but omg there are quite some bots, more than there should be. You see them like teleporting with weird names and all that. I don't know why Square Enix doesn't fix this.

I play in Louisoux and i've find a guild of 100 people that are all bots, its called: "Qoqwibyn Sucudls". what the hell lmao .

I care a lot about the game and i know thats its going to get bigger in the next years and if this problem isn't resolved, it may hurt the game

[braxberry]

What's super freaky is when you're quietly trying to kill a few mobs for a quest and, out of nowhere, they get spammed with Aero 2 and Stone 2. Made it a little difficult to get kill credit for coeurls for a couple minutes.

[corydor]

I have seen 10 of them stacked on top of each other doing the blm job quest, lower paths near camp tranquil, it freaky because they raise up out of the ground spam moves on 10 mobs that spawn at the same time and then all 10 lower into the ground and interact with something and vanish again.

Only got the name of one because they are so neatly stacked they are literally all sitting in each others character space.

[moregano]

saw four bots in limsa, all wearing the same gear, same race, everything. just popped up outta nowhere and then three seconds later then all vanished xD bots are taking over the game and its a bit unsettling. i don't remember seeing so many back when i started

[CraftOs]

saw four bots in limsa, all wearing the same gear, same race, everything. just popped up outta nowhere and then three seconds later then all vanished xD bots are taking over the game and its a bit unsettling. i don't remember seeing so many back when i started

That would be me and my boyfriend Ash. We live together. We are not bots, haha. We just no-life the marketboard/crafting and enjoy making things affordable for people.

[Krojack]

It's only going to get worse on lower pop servers now that RMT scumbags can trade gil and transfer it to other servers now. These RMT botters can't create the armies on higher pop servers as easy.

[miraidensetsu]

Just one thing: there are games that lost its relevance due to bots. Ragnarok Online, for instance, almost went extinct due to those.

[KageTokage]

These bots aren't new. They've been around practically since 2.0. I've noticed their numbers fluctuate rather wildly and they've been significantly higher then usual (Close to 200ish by the end of the week just on Cactuar alone) which would explain why a lot of people are only noticing them now.

SE does ban them regularly but they come back so quickly that it's a wasted effort. They need to target their methods, not just the bots themselves.

They're really just the tip of the iceberg though, because any normal server tends to have a multitude of DoL/H bots that have a significant hand in manipulating the economy and those guys almost never get banned.

Just one thing: there are games that lost its relevance due to bots. Ragnarok Online, for instance, almost went extinct due to those.

Ragnarok was an odd case.

Its card system was integral to the game (They're akin to the materia in XIV, but much more powerful) but the drop rates on said cards were so insanely low (0.01% or one in 10,000 was the average rate) that people grew to be almost entirely dependent on the bots for them.

[Dustytome]

To defeat the problem, you need to attack it at its core.
But this game has many layers of BOT activity, the only way to curb at lest some of it, is have GM's actually police areas by acting on player reports of BOT activity.

I post this a lot, but GMs have no authority over botting/cheating reports. Everything has to be funneled to the Special Task Force (a handful of people in Japan that may or may not be fluent in the various languages reported in). Either local GMs need to be trained to handle these issues or each region needs its own local special task force fluent in the languages being reported in. As a user, the current report flow for these issues seems completely ineffective.