Lack of action against gathering bots, it needs to be changed, and soon

[RareItems]

Heh, just trying to explain to the raiders why Selling Clears for RL Money is just as bad as a Gathering bot/aethersand bot, if not worse. But i'm sure they all know what i'm talking about already, they're just playing dumb xD.

Open up Party Finder, and there's 2 easy bans right there on the Top. If they can't even ban those, how can you expect to get the gathering bots/aethersand bots banned lol.

[Enla]

Heh, just trying to explain to the raiders why Selling Clears for RL Money is just as bad as a Gathering bot/aethersand bot, if not worse. But i'm sure they all know what i'm talking about already, they're just playing dumb xD.

Most of the people posting here already stated they find RMT clear selling to be a bad thing they wished was regulated more? We get it, you dislike raiders. Please stop derailing this topic and purposefully ignoring what people post in response just because it doesn't suit your narrative. If you want to argue about raiders there's other topics available, or you could make your own.

As for the gathering bot situation I do think the suggestion of SE hiring more people to handle reports would go a long way, as well as expanding the capabilities of their GM's to actually police such matters. I get that some bots can be 'hard to detect' and that they don't want to ban legitimate players, but there has to be some way to take note of the actions and paths an avatar takes if enough people tip them off to a potential botting problem.

[RareItems]

Most of the people posting here already stated they find RMT clear selling to be a bad thing they wished was regulated more? We get it, you dislike raiders. Please stop derailing this topic and purposefully ignoring what people post in response just because it doesn't suit your narrative. If you want to argue about raiders there's other topics available, or you could make your own.

As for the gathering bot situation I do think the suggestion of SE hiring more people to handle reports would go a long way, as well as expanding the capabilities of their GM's to actually police such matters. I get that some bots can be 'hard to detect' and that they don't want to ban legitimate players, but there has to be some way to take note of the actions and paths an avatar takes if enough people tip them off to a potential botting problem.

I don't hate raiders. More than half of the people on my FL raid. My FC leader raids. I would be raiding too if the drops were BiS for a year. It's pointless to do it unless for glamour now and none of them looked great enough to warrant hours of wiping and watching videos for.


Just stating the double standard here. Raiders tend to turn a blind eye on the Blatant RMT going on the party finder for years now, and yet they're complaining Gathering Bots are driving prices down but they don't want to go outside the city and actually file the report? lol.

[Lunavi]

I don't hate raiders. More than half of the people on my FL raid. My FC leader raids. I would be raiding too if the drops were BiS for a year. It's pointless to do it unless for glamour now and none of them looked great enough to warrant hours of wiping and watching videos for.


Just stating the double standard here. Raiders tend to turn a blind eye on the Blatant RMT going on the party finder for years now, and yet they're complaining Gathering Bots are driving prices down but they don't want to go outside the city and actually file the report? lol.

If you can't spot the difference between people selling clears, which is not impacting anyone else in any way, and bots flooding the market with gathering and crafting material tanking the market to the rock bottom and constantly undercutting and therefore making it impossible for legit people to play and enjoy DoH/DoL content then I don't know what to say. Sure, people selling clears for real life money IS bad, but there are different levels of bad and to make a massive part of the game unplayable is definitely worse than carrying people through savage in my honest opinion.

[alimdia]

Heh, just trying to explain to the raiders why Selling Clears for RL Money is just as bad as a Gathering bot/aethersand bot, if not worse. But i'm sure they all know what i'm talking about already, they're just playing dumb xD.

Open up Party Finder, and there's 2 easy bans right there on the Top. If they can't even ban those, how can you expect to get the gathering bots/aethersand bots banned lol.

It's not "the raiders" selling content for real money, it's maybe 3-4 groups per data center, but each group has 7 people so you can have 1 group posting 3-4 different ads making it seem like this is a widespread issue.

Would you think it fair if I accuse you of RMT because some non raiders buy gil? Because that's exactly what you're doing with "the raiders".

[Machi_Machiavelli]

How are you determining they are bots? Are you just reporting anyone who is gathering or crafting for longer than you would?

[KageTokage]

How are you determining they are bots? Are you just reporting anyone who is gathering or crafting for longer than you would?

Movement patterns, mainly.

Bots exhibit basically no variance in how they move between sets of gathering nodes and if there's more then one in the same zone they'll oft be following one another perfectly.

A lot of players who use bots are also too lazy to be bothered with ever crafting/gathering legitimately and thus conveniently only ever will be seen doing so late at night/early morning.

[Vnolan]

How are you determining they are bots? Are you just reporting anyone who is gathering or crafting for longer than you would?

One form of bot at max level will toggle the skill "Preparation" on and off at the start of every node. There is no reason to do this as Preparation stays on between nodes and it has no use for these gatherers. If it was only one player doing it, you might not think much of it, but multiple players are doing it.

That's for regular nodes. For timed nodes, one example is the 4AM node in the Rak'Tika Greatwood. There is a tree next to the node that has a space in it. Some bots will fly into the space and dismount while bouncing off the inside of the tree at the same spot every pass.

Example: https://gfycat.com/enormousfrequentamericanwirehair

While the two bouncing off the tree are clearly bots, the third player approaching from the left side is also a bot and has been using them for at least two and a half years (was also a bot I was talking about in the thread I linked earlier).

Saw another that would accidentally aggro a mob but then let the mob kill it, release, return and accidentally do it again later.

This doesn't cover all bots and only those that know they can do it so blatantly without consequence.

Some will exhibit inefficient patterns such as approaching or leaving a node in stealth while walking when they have flight unlocked. Again, doing it once or twice isn't odd, but performing those same steps along the same path during every pass when it still doesn't prevent them from aggroing mobs = automated gameplay.

It should also be noted that the bot count is actually higher than it looks since the instancing system is spreading them out.

[Oxidized]

How are you determining they are bots? Are you just reporting anyone who is gathering or crafting for longer than you would?

Absolutely not, I love the crafting/gathering community on my home server of Zalera, and I frequently see them at nodes at intermittent intervals. Bots, on the other hand, exhibit a number of telltale signs:

--Not responding to tells, or in the case of some bots, responding to them in a nonsensical manner.
--Operating for hours on end along the same route, to the point that it defies being reasonable.
--Doing the same "order of operations" every single time (ephemeral bots tend to gather, pause for 3 seconds, reduce items, pause, mount up) without any variation. When I go for long gathering stints, I often craft a little bit in between, or pause because I am responding to a tell or taking care of IRL stuff.
--Move from node to node in an unnatural way (most gatherers will home in on nodes, whereas bots often fly overhead and "drop" onto them, causing them to exhibit the midair floating glitch quite often)

As for selling clears, I am against that as well, but it is also something that is much harder to police, since all of the transactional steps could happen outside of the game (although people getting away with PF listings is comically-sad). A gathering bot, on the other hand, must conduct its illicit activity in-game, since it involves interacting with the nodes themselves as well as the marketboard. I want to fight the battles that could actually be won with a little bit of awareness.

[EaMett]

I expect some measures to either be in place by, or be set up after, the ishgard rankings start. Because bots will basically rule that