Is it OK to use bots in FFXIV?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

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.

This isn't true, the livestream debuted the benchmark, and that already had the fix in place. They fixed it prior to the audio issues.

[Tsaranoga]

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.

That's because no game company is going to get rid of any of their sweet profit. Doesn't matter to them where the money comes from, doesn't matter if it's stolen, money is money. It won't hurt their profit and might insted be more or less a benefit so nothing is going to get done. Of course, they need to pretend they care but that's easy with people thinking SE is their friend or something.

Huh, i was sure running out of sub would mean i can't post anymore. I guess i was wrong.

[ZeroRaziel]

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.

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.

Well, thanks for your honest thoughts. Had some similar suspicions when was making this thread...
Yet, it's still better to hear this, than some delusional conclusions of people claiming that there are no crafting/gathering/market bots. Just very dedicated players who can be active for 750+ hours in a row repeating 1 singe action every minute.

[KageTokage]

You can't really take advantage of the undercut bots because they're able to set a price floor that they will not go under.

You can feel them out to figure out what their floor is and sell just below it, but the next time they check the bot, they'll just make the floor even lower and keep playing a game of "how low can you go" with their legit competition until they back off because the time/money ratio becomes too low to bother with.

These days, it feels like the only time you can make much profit via mainstream goods like consumables and crafted gear is within the first weeks of a major patch before the bots get updated and they start digging their feet in.

[Seturian]

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

1). This botting consist of a 1 account with a character usually with 1 lvl 80 Tank or Healer and all other lvl 80 crafters gathers. With some help from others it was observed for almost a month. This char is online mostly 23-24 hours a day. And never leaving an appartment for all this time never being AFK. This char is also a leader of a FC with 8 other members from 2nd account. All this characters are lvl 21-23 (levelled to retainers unlock point). This ones are active 24/7. Literally. Only time they are offline is a 5 seconds period when they switch between this 8 characters. Lvl 80 character from 1st account puts crafted items to a Company Chest, and those 22 lvl characters put them on sell. Also probably a measure to try and save this lvl 80 char. Of course non of those characters never responded to any /tells.
(Of course you can say that all this players just have an insomnia and play non-stop for a whole month without being AFK. Also those lvl 22 chars, some of which have those Ofgisdja Affndsaf names (of couse thats just their favourite nickname they use in all MMOs) just enjoy changing character every 20 minutes and updating prices of items made by theirs awesome FC leader... Who also has an Insomnia :P And of course they don't respond to even a simple hello because of naturall shyness :PPP)

2). Once character from 2nd account logged in, it immediately accesses Summoning Bell and scans prices of it's listed items and changes it to the current lowest -1 Gill. 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 just simply visit Ul'Dah/Limsa and observe those lvl 22 "not bots" performing theirs cyclic patters one after another for this whole month never changing anything.
(definitely they just enjoy theirs routine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

3). For some reason every time each character attempts to go from first to second retainer it completely exits summoning bell which can be seen cause it untargets Summoning Bell every time and then targets it again.
(most likely they are just new players who happened to sell almost all Sninryu weapons and simply don't know that you can access your 2nd retainer without completely closing retainers window and definitely not because of a poor monkey coding in a bot's script o_o)

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* )

5). And out of curiosity I checked other worlds on my server. And guess what, it turns out that almost every world has this exact same "not bot person" with just one lvl 80 tank/healer and all 80 crafters and gatherers who also is leading a FC with eight lvl 22 chars, which are occupying same market zones and all these Free Companies were created in the beginning of May and none of those chars never responding either.
(all that is just a one big coincidence and most obviously has nothing to do with RMT, right?... O_O ...right?...)

Lol.
Easily found two Bot-Farm Free Companies completely identical to what you described here on Light server in less than 60 seconds ^^
Insomniatic appertment's permanent-resident and eight level twenty characters who lost all interest in other game activities once they learned of wondrous summoning bell xD
All working like a clockwork not even bothered of concealing themselves. Doing one same thing yesterday in the middle of the day, in late evening and today early in the morning. Log in, check summoning bell, log off, repeat. As busy as a bee!

Sounds like I am also a creepy stalker now for noticing obvious botting right in front of me >_<

[KageTokage]

There's been one of those craft bots with an army of level 22 alts on Cactuar since late HW also.

They weren't too annoying on their own, but through the course of Stormblood at least four other gear spamming DoH bots showed up and started competing with them and each other, so the prices now tend to tank extremely quickly because of their constant price war.

[Canadane]

Well, thanks for your honest thoughts. Had some similar suspicions when was making this thread...
Yet, it's still better to hear this, than some delusional conclusions of people claiming that there are no crafting/gathering/market bots. Just very dedicated players who can be active for 750+ hours in a row repeating 1 singe action every minute.

There are absolutely people who do this. Maybe not 750 hours but I can sit and craft all day long sometimes I feel like a bot lol
But there is absolutely botting software out there, to deny it it would be crazy. Apparently the good stuff is paid for so someone’s making money off it. But hey, you just make back that money with some RMT of your own after taking advantage of the software right?
The things I’m told by some unscrupulous players is pretty disgusting at best, and I honestly do wish SE would do something.

[ZeroRaziel]

There are absolutely people who do this. Maybe not 750 hours but I can sit and craft all day long sometimes I feel like a bot lol
But there is absolutely botting software out there, to deny it it would be crazy. Apparently the good stuff is paid for so someone’s making money off it. But hey, you just make back that money with some RMT of your own after taking advantage of the software right?
The things I’m told by some unscrupulous players is pretty disgusting at best, and I honestly do wish SE would do something.

Heh, I think we all can be like that sometimes... But one, two or even three days isn't 50. Plus real people usually care to answer at least one out of twenty tells from different people (or at least put them on black-list o_o).
And I don't think that you use an army of those 22 lvl chars to scan if someone undercut you precisely every 5 minutes =P

You can't really take advantage of the undercut bots because they're able to set a price floor that they will not go under.

True, also tried that only to find out there was a certain limit they won't cross.
Though that player from Chaos server (reddit post from earlier) stumbled upon a bot-owner careless enough to ignore this threshold.
That's is how it turned out:
https://imgur.com/a/xkDLOE1

[Espritduo]

These days, it feels like the only time you can make much profit via mainstream goods like consumables and crafted gear is within the first weeks of a major patch before the bots get updated and they start digging their feet in.

It's not even weeks anymore. Typically the resident botters on any given server will tank the prices of the newest gear to pointless levels within days of release. Mateus's resident botters had the price of Neo-Ishgardian gear trashed before the first weekend even hit when the last patch dropped. I sold one full set of gear at basically no profit and called it quits, permanently, after that.

It's sad, because this is the first time ever I am basically not interested in the new set of crafting gear coming next patch. Usually I'm excited to bang out the new gear, meld it to the hilt, and grind out some money on selling the current battle and DoH/DoL gear with more efficient rotations, but now it's like, who cares? The new crafter gear serves no purpose because there is no money to be made by taking advantage of it anymore. Bots will just be there already controlling everything.

[Sindele]

It doesn't help that Shadowbringers has made the crafted gear barrier to entry much, much lower. I'm the laziest crafter known to man, I meld cheap if I meld at all, and even I was able to HQ Neo-Ishgardian with no major issue. Combined with crossworld marketeering, you're not just fighting the lowest price on your server, you're fighting the lowest price on the entire DC, and that almost always means you're fighting at least one person who's botting or utilizing some form of unrealistic labor.