There is a distressing amount of DoL bots in the Diadem and it has to be stopped.

[KageTokage]

I already made a Restoration-related topic about a related issue, but this one has blown up rather suddenly and felt it needed to known about immediately.

I saw almost 10 different bots in a recent Diadem instance in the wee hours of the morning, which when split among the entire data center does not seem like much, but with only 12 Saint of the Firmament spots available to each DoL class per server, it is definitely a potential problem depending on whether or not they can actually catch up to the legit players who really dug their feet in before the new botting scripts were publicized.

These guys are almost certainly trying to cheat the rankings as the amount of profit to be made in there is rather small with how flooded the market board is with materials from the myriads of other players chasing a top spot through legitimate means.

There are players who have been pulling long shifts of 12+ hours legitimately to get into the top 12 for the DoL classes, and it would be awful if any of them got kicked out by these lazy do-nothings who want all the rewards with no effort, especially considering how limited the Saint of the Firmament title is going to be according to present information (The next ranking period was claimed to only be starting in 5.3).

It was never acceptable for botting to be as prevalent as it's been up to now with the impact it's had on the market board and other aspects of gameplay, but when it's now actively interfering with a ranking system that has limited rewards it's crossed a new line. However, when my previous reports on bots have literally never yielded any results, I'm feeling a touch reluctant to even bother trying anymore.

TLDR: Diadem botters are trying to cheat their way to the top and they need to be purged immediately.

[MelodyCrystel]

I'd report any bot in the game no matter where they are or what they do, but the devs haven't given me yet a button for that purpose.

Even worse, this forum doesn't support the idea of calling people directly out when they do stupid / unacceptable things.

[KageTokage]

Naturally, whenever the topic of bots comes up, people are going to wonder "What makes you think there's bots around", so here's the answer.

I expect to be ridiculed for how I go about I identifying them (Since it also happened when I pointed it out in the instance itself), but there are three major things I feel one should look out for that makes these players stand out from the crowd. The latter two are universal traits, while the first seems to be specific to a particular botting program that has gained a lot of steam as of late due to being part of a multi-purpose toolkit (Most of the additional functions still being very much cheating).

1. Both in/out of the Diadem, they will generally have the nigh-useless Preparation skill toggled on (Which from what I've observed is seemingly how they start up the botting script once they have the associated third party program running in the background), which is even more unusual when considering that you cannot even HQ the MIN/BTN items in there, which makes it completely useless there.

2. They possess a distinctive, jerky movement pattern that is largely devoid of gradual turns and instead zig-zags about awkwardly like they're playing a game of connect the dots with map coordinates; which basically is how their script paths them around the map; having a standard route/circuit they will travel along until they detect a node nearby, after which a secondary pathing script kicks in to guide them to it. This leads to them forming conga lines if there are multiple bots gunning for the same node or monster.

3. Their behavior after gathering from a node/taking flight. They pause for a few seconds before mounting up, pausing again, jumping in place to take flight, then suddenly veering off towards their next destination, not pivoting at all throughout the entire process. It's a pattern of behavior that while not initially suspicious becomes such when you see the same individual endlessly repeating it with no significant deviation in its timing or execution and even moreso when others in the vicinity are replicating it to a T.

I intend to actually make a GIF of this to show more clearly what I'm talking about some time in the near future.



Do keep in mind that these are just possible signs of a bot, and there's an odd chance you may encounter an actual player who conveniently happens to be doing all of these things for no real reason in particular (Though also keep in mind that some people bot while simply multi-tasking at their PC and thus can still be responsive at times), but I've personally found these traits to be observable in the vast majority of bots since as far as back as Heavensward whether they be dedicated farm bots or just lazy players who can't be bothered to partake in certain tasks they consider tedious.

Feel free to dismiss me as crying wolf and/or being stupid anyhow, since I'm used to it at this point.

[micropanther7]

Nah you're not stupid nor crying wolf, I've seen this behaviour myself, can confirm at least three players on Louisoix, who were on the same farming route (for previous Skybuilders items, and in Shadowbringers areas) showing similar kind of behaviour. Except I've seen them fly to a node, stand there with no animation, then fly to the next one, and this behaviour is over a long period of time which I happened to see because I was farming at the same nodes myself. These are definitely players and not farming bots, somebody posted about this on reddit and he/she got dismissed by pretty much everyone who posted in that thread :/ Not much we can do really, apart from reporting them, but I'm starting to feel there's no point, bit disheartening for people who want to get on the rankings by legitimate means.

[ElazulHP]

There are also people crafting on the leaderboards getting skyward score per day that isn't possible unless you're literally going 24/7 non-stop. I mean I knew this was going to happen, but its still really really annoying to see.

[micropanther7]

There are also people crafting on the leaderboards getting skyward score per day that isn't possible unless you're literally going 24/7 non-stop. I mean I knew this was going to happen, but its still really really annoying to see.

Yeah I agree I mean, I'm usually not fussed about rankings myself, never have been the competitive type but this kind of thing really grinds my gears. To the point where I hold the unpopular opinion there should be a daily turn-in limit for this kind of thing, can't see that going down well though lol.

[Moonlite]

There are also people crafting on the leaderboards getting skyward score per day that isn't possible unless you're literally going 24/7 non-stop. I mean I knew this was going to happen, but its still really really annoying to see.

I call this into question. Not saying there aren't cheaters on the list. I am going to say that probably the 500K+ are a different type of player. A cheater would be smart and be in the 200k enough to break top 12 but not high enough that SE might want to check them. It would be nice if they waited a month reviewed all the top 12s and then handed out the rewards.



I can craft 41 level 80s per 30 minutes. An expert seems to take triple the amount of steps. So lets be generous and say they can craft 10 an hour. 8000 points an hour times 12 hours is 96000 a day. Some of these players 12 hours play time might even be low. Not to call a certain group of omni crafters no lifers, they definitely seem to attract a certain type of player who can put in a certain amount of time. If they have the time to craft the only thing stopping them is materials. Again this group of players also generally has a large sum of gil stashed. Also the mats they need are generally cheaper since only a small group can use them.

[NessaWyvern]

Yeah, this is a huge problem in FFXIV , they introduce a competitive mode, but don’t do anything to stop cheating. Feast? Speed hackers and match fixing. Triple triad tourneys? Match fixing. Crafting and gathering? LOL theres been an abundance of bots since ARR.

At least it’s just a title, I don’t care too much about those, but I’m sure it sucks for those who do care, though.

[XiXiQ]

I'm seeing what looks like normal players cheating with scripts. Went to the one of the fishing islands, 30-odd players sitting on top of each other. Very odd behaviour if people were doing that manually. There's an entire island and everyone choses to stand on top of each other? ... nah, I don't think so.

[Kuroka]

Yeah I agree I mean, I'm usually not fussed about rankings myself, never have been the competitive type but this kind of thing really grinds my gears. To the point where I hold the unpopular opinion there should be a daily turn-in limit for this kind of thing, can't see that going down well though lol.

Yes. there should be a limit or a max score per week so ppl can actually catch up at some point...