The bot problem is rising and real.

[KageTokage]

This can have other effects as well....

I actually sometimes get nervous when I am out gathering, esp when it comes to fishing ever since HW when I was fishing for icepicks by that little pond and I was standing on a rock. My other half came running up and was like...what are you doing? Apparently while I saw myself standing on the rock, they saw me standing inside the rock on the ground. So now, since everyone's bot detection is on hyperdrive, I never stand on rocks to fish and am very conscious of my screen. This also happens when you are sitting on a chair while fishing. There are some cases, where if you are not flat on the ground surface, you sink into the map a little bit, not on your screen, but on other ppls. We have checked it out between our two PCs.

I was fishing in Il Mheg recently and was sitting on my chair, had someone who was killing things, come up and stand near me for a moment, I could see their head turned so they were looking at me, then after a few minutes run away.

It was too long to be just a casual glance and I had 0 pieces of gear glamoured….I just kept thinking to myself. Do they see me half sunk into the ground or something? Are they just watching my patterns to be sure I'm not botting? I immediately stood up and decided its just not worth using that feature anymore. A dude can't just go gather anymore these days without fearing a wrongful report and its thanks to the multitude of bots. Next time just say hello if you wanna be sure someone isn't a bot. I just wanna fish, man. Come on.

If you're not actually botting, you have basically no reason to worry if someone wrongfully reports you when people who are very obviously botting routinely escape bans for months/years on end.

Also, I wouldn't assume that people are sizing you up because they think you're doing something wrong. Fishers in general are uncommon enough that they tend to draw attention just by existing and I also regularly get people pausing to look at me while I'm casually fishing up the Western Thanalan/North Shroud S ranks.

[Mistyregions]

If you're not actually botting, you have basically no reason to worry if someone wrongfully reports you when people who are very obviously botting routinely escape bans for months/years on end.

Also, I wouldn't assume that people are sizing you up because they think you're doing something wrong. Fishers in general are uncommon enough that they tend to draw attention just by existing and I also regularly get people pausing to look at me while I'm casually fishing up the Western Thanalan/North Shroud S ranks.

Jokes on everyone, everyone who is gathering near me I am on the lookout to report for botting.

[HappyHealer]

I would like to to just add my name to the hat here and say that the botting really is unsightly and discouraging. It's not uncommon for me to see a line of bots just flying over head in Gridania, zipping from the aetheryte to the Adder's Nest. I've roulette into dungeons before with bots. It's very out in the open in a way that I've frankly never experienced before in an MMORPG. It's just blatant and in your face. That alone in enough to degrade the experience for some of us.

[Nythia]

The difference a night makes. I was really thrilled with the way ARR looked to me as a free trial. Had I waited just 12 hours before actually purchasing, I would have chosen to move on. It wasn't until just after I bought the game that I was in Camp Drybone and for 15 minutes watched an endless stream of bots hitting up the MSQ NPC and moving on.

For a company that chose to completely re-make a game from the ground up after a disaster of a launch years ago, with all the talk of dedication to the game and the players, it seems like they have fallen back into the same mind set that got them in trouble in the first place. There are smaller companies that run free to play games that have bot issues under control.

It's also discouraging to see talk of the crafting-market bot combinations as well. FFXIV has some amazing detail. A stunning world, peppered with quality of life things that I haven't seen in a very long time. Now I understand why so many people just focus on DoW or DoM jobs/classes. DoL and DoH are rendered useless by the bots, and with the amount of gil you pick up with battle related quests, you're never lacking gil to buy anything you might want. If I craft something and want to sell it, but have to deal with another person undercutting me, that's how economies work. If I have to deal with marketbots that automatically update prices etc., there are other games I can get plenty of that in without a monthly fee.

The story is good, but I'm not seeing much incentive to buy anything beyond the base game at this point, nor to keep a sub active beyond the level cap in ARR.

[Nedkel]

Why would they even care? As long as bots are not big on JP server then its all fine, nothing to watch here citizens.

I know private servers that do better job than SE ever did with bots.

[NessaWyvern]

Every time I see a thread saying the problem is getting worse, I roll my eyes.

It's not getting worse, it's never getting worse. You're just noticing it more, but it's always been there.

Nah, I've been here since 2013, and it's getting worse. Back in my day you could Q for Amdapor keep, and not have to wait for the instance to be reserved for you, or worry about being put in with bots.

[KageTokage]

I find it a touch baffling that even some bots that are doing things that are blatantly impossible for normal players like maintaining AFK status while actively crafting/gathering (It normally goes away if you make any kind of mouse/keyboard/controller input whatsoever) or keeping things targeted from several hundred yards away(Generally aetherytes) still don't get banned if I report them.

It seems like only the most blatant of impossibilities like the teleporting hacks used by the gil farmers actually get caught.

Even monitoring something simple as how much active time a player has on a daily basis would readily give away whether not they're botting as the game makes a distinction from simply being marked AFK and being "inactive" for the purposes of staying online and/or in the Novice Network. People routinely spend 24+ hours active without logging off are almost assuredly using a botting program as I've noticed that known botters will never be kicked from the game/novice network even if they're observably just idling in a city or elsewhere for several hours straight, presumably because their game client is permanently flagged as "active" as long as they have a bot client running in the background.

Why would they even care? As long as bots are not big on JP server then its all fine, nothing to watch here citizens.

I know private servers that do better job than SE ever did with bots.

There's still gil farm bots on the JP servers, just not as many.

If you FC search their data centers you'll see several gibberish named FCs in the listing.

I've also seen some very blatant bot-farming FCs filled with nothing but DoH/L players and also had disproportionately high rankings for how small their FC was compared to the ones packing 200+ active members.

[Dogempire]

Sometimes when afk in Limsa my idle camera will focus on random bots floating below the map, it's kind of funny but also kind of sad

[Kurando]

There's still gil farm bots on the JP servers, just not as many.

If you FC search their data centers you'll see several gibberish named FCs in the listing..

There are often several pages of bots in the Player Search menu, so there is enough for devs to know it's a problem. The funny thing is I've noticed nearly all of the bots have client language listed as EN and not JP or the other two languages. Gil selling seems to be very much be a Western venture, but hey they'll go to whichever world they can if there are customers ready to take advantage.

[KageTokage]

There are often several pages of bots in the Player Search menu, so there is enough for devs to know it's a problem. The funny thing is I've noticed nearly all of the bots have client language listed as EN and not JP or the other two languages. Gil selling seems to be very much be a Western venture, but hey they'll go to whichever world they can if there are customers ready to take advantage.

I've noticed there are some pretty massive English FCs on the JP data centers, so I guess they really will just go anywhere the English players do.