Is it OK to use bots in FFXIV?

[Gothicshark]

If they do, how comes this bot is still there for a month now? Despite numerous reports?

I've seen this exact botting pattern mentioned on this forum before, but this thread was moslty ignored:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Market-botting

If had a bit more ruckus on a reddit though:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...games_economy/

Lots of people undercut and don't need a bot to do it. I check my Retainers fairly regularly every day and adjust the prices to undercut when possible. No bot needed.

[ZeroRaziel]

Lots of people undercut and don't need a bot to do it. I check my Retainers fairly regularly every day and adjust the prices to undercut when possible. No bot needed.

Gothicshark, please read through my previous post =/
This one, to be precise:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5365959

I higly doubt that your regular retainers check would match this kind of behavior...

And you most likely haven't looked at that reddit link
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...games_economy/
you quoted neither.

[SamSmoot]

I don't see these myself because I only craft gear for myself, not for sale.
If I had something to undercut one with, I'd try to learn it's timing, then drop my item to maybe 1K just before it tweaks it's prices. If it undercuts, buy everything, then quickly remove your item before someone else buys it.
It's obvious that the bot can't recognize an insanely low price and buy instead.

[Gothicshark]

Who told anything about a cheaper price?
Thats highly unlikely that it's not a bot, buddy.
Let's see:

1. Creepy stalking much.
2. Since you can disable the auto-logout from being AFk, I've been online for 24+hours on occasion.
3. How would you even determine these people are alt accounts?

Literally the only evidence of gold sellers is the random letters jumble making a name. And they don't need bots to do that, usually, they do actually play a game for 20+ hours at a time. I've read articles from a Gold seller and how they do it, and why. It was quite fascinating, and no they don't need bots, they have no life, and make almost no actual money.

Yes gold sellers are an issue, but usually, they don't use bots, they are just sleepless slaves. No who does use bots? Usually, the type of person who buys coins, they are willing to remotely play and do things the lazy way, and they don't actually care if they lose an account, because they can afford to make a new one.

[Ammokkx]

Is it okay?

lol, no.

Do people do it?

Yes, and they eat bans when caught.

[ZeroRaziel]

1. Creepy stalking much.
2. Since you can disable the auto-logout from being AFk, I've been online for 24+hours on occasion.
3. How would you even determine these people are alt accounts?

Literally the only evidence of gold sellers is the random letters jumble making a name. And they don't need bots to do that, usually, they do actually play a game for 20+ hours at a time. I've read articles from a Gold seller and how they do it, and why. It was quite fascinating, and no they don't need bots, they have no life, and make almost no actual money.

Yes gold sellers are an issue, but usually, they don't use bots, they are just sleepless slaves. No who does use bots? Usually, the type of person who buys coins, they are willing to remotely play and do things the lazy way, and they don't actually care if they lose an account, because they can afford to make a new one.

1. As I mentioned, I wasn't the only one who payed attention to this concrete case so that's a result of a collected info of several people checking this character quite often for a past month.
2. What I meant wasn't that they were supposed to be logged off due to inactivity but that this characters never had that "red chair" afk status while being online for a whole month. And I don't think there is a way to disable auto-afk status.
3. This people don't alt accounts but alt characters from 2nd acount (those eight level 22 chars from 2nd account). And you can tell that quite easily. Just look at a profile of that botting Free Company for their nicks, at least one of them is always online, find one in Ul'Dah/Limsa, get to a nearest summoning bell to find it and then just observe how it logs out and 5 seconds later another one from that FC pops up in it's place. And that repeated 8 times for each char in the exact same pattern without any other responses, interactions or activities for a whole month without any breaks and vacations. Believe it or not, once you just started paying attention to this kind of matter - it's hard not to notice.

[ZeroRaziel]

The solution to your problem is to place the same price as the price cutter and sell in bulk so that way you are going to be #1 on the list.
Btw you could take advantage of bots price cutting, just set price at low and buy them out, i dont see a problem here.

SE cant ban these bots as long as they are using their own custom bot to play with prices, as those are impossible to recognize by the system.

Hmm, those are actually quite a good advices, thank you!
But then again, from what I said earlier:
1).

The solution to your problem is to place the same price as the price cutter and sell in bulk so that way you are going to be #1 on the list.

From #2

So far we only noticed what 5 out of 16 retainers sell and that's Primal's Glam Weapons, Neo-Ishgardian Gear and Facet Crafing Gear.

You can't place gear pieces in a bulk Plus bot most likely doesn't update price when it's just < than it's own, but also even if it <=

2).

Btw you could take advantage of bots price cutting, just set price at low and buy them out, i dont see a problem here.

Dude from that Reddit link did just that. After this from #4

4). And due to predictable and systematic patterns of them we were able to pinpoint exact time of a price scanning window of those retainers and just 1 minute before that we set a price for items selling for 2 000 000 Gill a price around 5 000 Gill to see how characters would react. Once they finished scanning, instead of setting price to 4 999 price remained unchanged. Bots got an upgrade since that reddit post and got new & shiny IF > conditional in a bot's script. And you know what? Once they were done scanning prices instead of visitting a Market Board and buying off more than five Shinryu Weapons for 5 000 Gill this character simply logs off and loggins with a next one.
(that's cause those lvl 22 players are of a very noble heart and do not wish to abuse a "miskate" of someone who "accidentally forgot" to add 3 extra zeros to a price... *stoic_nod* )

3).

SE cant ban these bots as long as they are using their own custom bot to play with prices, as those are impossible to recognize by the system.

This makes sense, yes. But then again this exact same botting has been reported from at least 15 worlds by now.
It took me around 5 minutes to spot those on 3 worlds out of 6 on my server. So that doesn't seem like it's a very private custom bot... On the other hand, who knows... It might be that all those 30+ clients are run by a one person.

[ZeroRaziel]

I don't see these myself because I only craft gear for myself, not for sale.
If I had something to undercut one with, I'd try to learn it's timing, then drop my item to maybe 1K just before it tweaks it's prices. If it undercuts, buy everything, then quickly remove your item before someone else buys it.
It's obvious that the bot can't recognize an insanely low price and buy instead.

Here you go, this guy did just what you adviced :P
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...games_economy/

Plus I did the same but 2 weeks later:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5365959

4). And due to predictable and systematic patterns of them we were able to pinpoint exact time of a price scanning window of those retainers and just 1 minute before that we set a price for items selling for 2 000 000 Gill a price around 5 000 Gill to see how characters would react. Once they finished scanning, instead of setting price to 4 999 price remained unchanged. Bots got an upgrade since that reddit post and got new & shiny IF > conditional in a bot's script. And you know what? Once they were done scanning prices instead of visitting a Market Board and buying off more than five Shinryu Weapons for 5 000 Gill this character simply logs off and loggins with a next one.
(that's cause those lvl 22 players are of a very noble heart and do not wish to abuse a "miskate" of someone who "accidentally forgot" to add 3 extra zeros to a price... *stoic_nod* )

[ForteNightshade]

Every week. They purge every Thursday.

Ehhh. Those are the easily noticeable RMT bots that mostly stand around Limsa. SE is horrendous was it comes to market board bots, gather bots and crafting bots. Even outright cheaters often got on to be ignored for years despite numerous reports. And the thing is, all they have to do is shadow these "players" to see them botting as it's fairly obvious.

Unfortunately, it seems the GMs aren't given much authority in this regard, and it's the STF that handles these bans. Which is hilariously understaffed. All in all, SE doesn't do a whole lot about bots.

[Canadane]

There are a lot of "players" who bot, and over the years it's become sadly evident that SE isn't doing anything serious in regards to stopping them.
The obvious RMT farms from china are swiftly dealt with, but actual players who opt to use bots seems to get no actual punishment.

Maybe one day SE will crack down on these and they'll get the ban they deserve. It's very sad that legit players are surpassed by others using nonstop bots.

Part of the issue may very well be that the STF and director/producer/god Yoshi-P are both mostly isolated to the experiences of Japanese servers.
You look around you don't see RMT (as much) or cheaters botting their way nonstop (as much). It exists but from what I've gathered it's not by any degree close to other data centres.
So if the people in charge of dealing with it don't see a problem, then there is no problem. This is why things don't really get done unless brought directly to him by say a fan at a Q&A or a technical issue at an important time.
I like how the sound output issue we've had for years was solved within a week of Yoshi-P having experienced it during a Live Letter.