Is Botting Allowed?

[mage246785]

There is a guy on my server that just bots crafting 24/7, sitting in the middle of Sapphire Blvd, Ul'dah. Usual stuff.. set to do not disturb, on Lodestone is 80 in all crafting, and 80 in a single DoW. Guild of 1.

Report him... nothing. Day in and day out.

So, is botting allowed in this game because SE surely doesn't do anything about it. What is the point of leveling up crafting/gathering when everyone just bots? All I can assume is that SE is too frightened by the legal ramifications of accusing someone and figures that bots are profitable. Sad thing is... I'm not talking about the typical randomly generated waves, but someone with a "real name" so to speak.

I am quitting this game. It is absurd. I loved the FF lore, but I cannot even sit in the city without hearing a bot non-stop next to me.

[Caimie_Tsukino]

It's unreasonable to quit a game just because you saw 1 person botting. You will see people botting in almost ANY MMO anyway.

Botting is definitely not allowed in FFXIV, and SE always takes appropriate actions against anyone who bots. You need not worry.

I have reported bots many times myself, and after awhile, I never see those names again. So I assume SE has done the work of getting rid of those characters.

However, no companies and no games can eliminate bots entirely. If you can't stand the sight of seeing a single bot, you'll pretty much need to avoid MMO entirely.

[Vidu]

https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...87636a7ac27a25

There doing this on a weekly basis - will they catch every bot? Probably not. Which is probably a "good thing" aswell - I remember that they were much more agressive back in 2.0 and banned a few people who made their gil legitimately, so personally I rather have them double check instead of banning people who just craft a lot.

[Espritduo]

SE does not take "appropriate action" against player-ran bots. The bots they ban are the useless RMT ones that get remade by the hundreds the moment the old ones are down. SE does nothing against player botting, ever. You can report a player all day every day and if they go away, it wasn't because SE banned them, it was because they simply moved on or changed their names/servers. I have literally never heard of SE even once banning a real player for botting. They want basically impossible evidence before they will ever take any action, making it pointless to report them and, sadly, pointless to care.

And honestly, they need to go back to 2.0 banning if that was really how they worked. I would gladly have a 0.01% chance of being temp banned for 30 days if it meant the actual botters were also getting wiped out. A random false positive player every rare blue moon for the price of actually putting enough fear into botting players to stop what they're doing? Yes, absolutely worth it, even if I'm that false positive.

[Liam_Harper]

Agree with Espirit. This thread got me curious on exactly how often they do get banned or how bad it is, so I had a browse on their forum (which is an easy google search). Here are a few gems:

I have found <botname> an excellent device to fully raid with, I avoid healing and tanking though. I hit purple logs often

However, in case they don’t change how expert recipes work (i.e. they don’t include any new conditions and the new ones work the same as the old ones), <botname> should be able to do the new recipes just fine

I dont think SE even has ways to detect bots that inject code into the game, let alone <botname> that behaves like a player would

Nothing impressive I know, <botname> can make alot more gil in gathering and crafting, but this can be done 100% hiding in your private/inn room which is presumably very safe

Their general consensus is 24/7 botting carries risks but as long as you don't go overboard in public you're quite safe. They don't scan for player bots and rely on visual proof, like very long extended periods of the same behavior pattern while ignoring chat, or announcing you're a bot in chat (RMT). This exists and it's a very real issue.

[NanaWiloh]

Short answer? No
Long answer? No
Does the community accept it? No
Do we wish SE would come down harder on it? YES

[Lemuel81]

I personally think it is absurd to leave a game just because you saw a bot. SE is known to do ban waves, regularly but like any other MMO, bots do get through. But you will be banned, whether it is RMT or just using any type of 3rd party program.

[ElazulHP]

People may think it's absurd to quit a game over seeing someone bot, but that is legit the only thing Square is going to listen too: Their bottom line. If enough people followed this example Square would be forced to do something to retain players.

[Liam_Harper]

I personally think it is absurd to leave a game just because you saw a bot. SE is known to do ban waves, regularly but like any other MMO, bots do get through. But you will be banned, whether it is RMT or just using any type of 3rd party program.

They do ban waves mostly on RMT sellers, which openly break ToS because they can just make new accounts. If you're an individual player with a bot and you're smart enough not to announce it or use it all day every day in public areas, they have literally no way to detect you and you will never be banned. This includes crafting via bot in your house.

To be honest it's equally absurd to enjoy crafting and gathering but just sit back happily and say nothing while bots wreck it.

[Jojoya]

To be honest it's equally absurd to enjoy crafting and gathering but just sit back happily and say nothing while bots wreck it.

Bots haven't done a thing to wreck crafting and gathering. SE didn't make the changes to crafting and gathering that have people upset because of bots. Players are still capable of enjoying crafting and gathering as activities despite the existence of bots.

What bots have wrecked are the massive profits a tiny percentage of players used to get from selling some items obtained through crafting and gathering. Many players feel that's a good thing. They're not going to complain.

It's only a small number of players who feel they are being impacted in a negative way. It makes sense that we're only seeing a small number of complaints.