Quote Originally Posted by TheLoveJenovan View Post
I don't agree that they should just allow bots. The only reason to play an MMORPG, instead of an RPG, is to play with other players. I don't want to play with bots, and I don't think other players want to either. It ruins the game. It ruins the marketboard; it ruins duties; it ruins the experience in achieving anything in-game.

Many of the bots are extremely easy to detect right now, and I could write a simple script to identify most of them, if they gave me access to their API.
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They're just being greedy.
I mean it is obvious they never will allow it, it would be admitting total defeat against them. But funnily it worked out in some older MMO which were very grindy and it made those games mildly enjoyable, I know this won't compare to FFXIV, as grinding is usually not needed for PvE content for example.

The problem I see is, there are (almost) the same type of bots since the release. They teleport around the map, they talk to the same NPC, in the past they unlocked the same crossskills for Blm (unlimited resources; when TP was a thing) so they could heal themselves with Physik and got Raging Strikes from Archer just so they could clear stuff faster. They still did that when it wasn't even useful anymore. They have their farming spots at specific locations on the map.
As you say they are extremely easy to detect. This happened for 7 years and they still don't think it is necessary to do something. They mentioned in some live letter or event that they don't wanna start a war with the botters, where normal players have to suffer because the anti cheat code gets too complex and influences game performance... But well how much blatant botting can you allow, how many hundreds bots are okay to pass through a mainstory npc during one hour? They start to go on other worldservers than their original home server too, I assume it helps them evade detection.
So in conclusion I feel like they gonna keep using that excuse "old code= servers implode, cant do much, its not that bad yet, just ignore and report" when there are cases where bots never got banned after years lmao.
This game got more popular recently, I assume sub numbers to be at least in the 1-2 million now too, more players attract more RMT/Botters as well, as they see their demand for RMT Gil is rising, every other MMO loses gil value over time as well and this game seems to be in a deflation right now. Some items rarity didn't change at all, but it becomes all cheaper. This is so unusual for MMORPG's. But it just shows that it has become hard to sell something to a good price, when a lot of it is in the hands of bot users.

The game has almost reached its demise, I don't see it happening anymore after 7 years, even though I feel they should.


And to @Jojoya: With outside evidence I mean stuff like socialmedia/discord screenshots mostly, people have been creating new accounts with the same avatar of persons they wanna talk dirty about.
Something like a Twitch clip is ofc way more useful than a screenshot of something like that.
If you compare the numbers with the ones of 2 years ago then you notice they are actually same or even lower. And botting is still only in the single or double digits. I don't look at those reports with much confidence, they would suggest that there is no real botting problem which is not the reality.
And STF used to be slow, idk maybe its changed - but for something like Ishgard Restoration where you only have a bit more than a week to act upon (before rewards are send out), it won't be able to achieve its purpose.
I guess chargebacks are considered under prohibited actvities aswell..It is obvious they don't wanna tell too much about how they operate and what they do, it might scare people from doing it after all, but I would take those numbers with a big grain of salt.