Skybuilder Botting Issue

[TurtlesAWD]

With maybe 5 hours of crafting a day on weaver in season 3 I was able to get a pretty solid 2nd on my server. Gathering is pretty definitely even more about time spent but I'd hesitate to say people would bot in such a high visibility environment. Unhealthy lifestyle or highly flexible schedule seems more plausible to me. My experience with Firmament basically seems to indicate that if you don't have those 18 hours a day to dedicate to it for any future restoration events in other cities, it's probably better to stick to the crafting for ranking week.

[KageTokage]

I don't even bother with the DoL rankings mostly because of bots (Though also because it's much harder to make up for lost time there compared to DoH).

Granted, people did actually get banned/purged from those rankings last season, but I'm not going to count on it happening to all of them. Still, I would be aggressive about reporting any obvious bots in the Diadem in the odd event they do decide to punish them again.

If you see anyone in there using Preparation (The magnifying glass buff), I'd suggest scrutinizing them to see if their movement patterns are unusual/overly consistent as almost all of the bots I've spotted in there were keeping that buff active at all times despite being completely useless (It displays perception needed for HQ...except no MIN/BTN items can be HQ in the Diadem). People who are using MSQ mounts like the company chocobo or basic magitek armor also draw my attention as the botting scripts default to using mounts that all players have access to.

Gathering is pretty definitely even more about time spent but I'd hesitate to say people would bot in such a high visibility environment. Unhealthy lifestyle or highly flexible schedule seems more plausible to me.

You'd be surprised. Over the course of a couple hours yesterday I saw/reported nearly a dozen different individuals who were very obviously botting.

I'd assume this is mostly due to a lack of fear of getting banned since at this point the STF have a reputation for inaction.

It doesn't help that the three strikes rule always applies, so even you do manage to get caught the most you'll lose is your spot in the rankings and however many days of time you get banned for if it's a first/second time offense.

[Liam_Harper]

From a google search, the changes to crafting Conditions has actually disrupted some of the crafting bots a bit, though not eliminated them entirely. Which might at least mean a reduced bot presence this season. There's even a good chance the reason they added new conditions in the first place was to attempt to disrupt botting programs.

Gathering is just a lost cause. Don't even bother.

[NealSnow]

I think the worse part about the ones botting for gathering is it kinda taints the title/achievements. Instead of seeing someone who put in the hours manually, people will be skeptical "Did they bot tho? Did they truly earn it?" ruining it for the people who are actually trying to give it their all without cheating. Sucks either way.

As for crafting I had assumed from the get go experts were meant to disrupt the chance you can bot those and I think you can't due to all the different effects but I don't craft much so idk if people can program bots easily to deal with it.

[KageTokage]

As for crafting I had assumed from the get go experts were meant to disrupt the chance you can bot those and I think you can't due to all the different effects but I don't craft much so idk if people can program bots easily to deal with it.

It kept the DoH rankings fair for the first season, but by the time the second ranking season started they had worked out a logic script that could reliably get crafts to minimum collectability or the cap depending on how good the RNG was.

The new conditions in season 3 don't seem to have hindered them much as I've already seen some of the usual suspects (Who regularly use bots for basically any "tedious" activity like FATEs, gathering, crafting, etc) churning out expert crafts at an unreasonably fast pace.

[NealSnow]

It kept the DoH rankings fair for the first season, but by the time the second ranking season started they had worked out a logic script that could reliably get crafts to minimum collectability or the cap depending on how good the RNG was.

The new conditions in season 3 don't seem to have hindered them much as I've already seen some of the usual suspects (Who regularly use bots for basically any "tedious" activity like FATEs, gathering, crafting, etc) churning out expert crafts at an unreasonably fast pace.

Wow that sucks to hear it is effecting crafting too :/

[Infindox]

I know that not all the top scores are bots and there are definitely people who do it legitimatly, but it's definitely a competition of who has the time/who is willing to push themselves hard enough. Just for a title/achievement is a bit unhealthy to me and I feel like they should have spaced out shorter periods and maybe more then one (so the Firmiment gets done faster, it takes forever after the rankings are done).

[AngelCheese77]

Now it's no surprise people are botting for this, and for the people who are botting and turning the stuff in instead of waiting, its kinda easy to tell who is or isn't (being top 1/2 with a 200k difference to the rest and getting in 109k gathering score in a day seems highly unlikely accounting for sleep, food breaks ect) so this won't be a "what can be done" thread no, instead I am curious.

Has the botting demoralized you and made you give up, knowing that you likely can't compete with a AI that doesn't need to sleep? OR has it rather encouraged you to try and beat the botters? I am curious to which effect it has had on people.

Oh I flat out gave up, mainly because I believe that SE has 'screwed the pooch' on this event. Bit of a tangent incoming ...

But even at creation, I don't feel SE took this seriously. Maybe it's a difference of gaming (East vs West), but I've found westerners (esp Americans) enjoy that instant gratification. If they want it, they will get it at that moment or the easiest way possible.

I was in the first part of the Ishgard event. Not only did we have people from other servers coming into our server's Firmament instance (I was on Mateus at the time), but actively stating they intended to pull other there to, which they did. This is turn locked out the Firmament for actual people on that server having them miss the FATEs as well as making things for their server's standings. SE didn't take it seriously and it continued to happen until they said they would fix it for the second part.

I wasn't there for the second part ....

Came back to the game for the third part and entered the Firmament to see how it progressed. I think it looks nice. SO I'm like, okay let's see if I can help with this part. Boy I was wrong.

Read in notes they were giving titles to those in certain rankings and making a statue for the highest ranked crafting class? (I think I read that right .. correct me if wrong). Well my crafters are all around level 60 so lo and behold, I can't do much in the fancy stuff to give in. Fine, I'll work on gathering since they added that. Oh wait, I can't do FSH as you need to be level 80 to use the bait in Diadem. So leaves me with BTN and MIN ... both that can't get the good lvl 80 materials.

I think I gave up at that point. So now I just focus on leveling my crafters/BTN/MIN, and if I can make something I will ... you know like some ink. And an ingot. I just think of it as helping someone have ink to write up a ledger or something.

And don't get me started on the bots and SE's lack of caring about them.

Made me soured to look forward to any more of these events in the future that SE makes.

[Jojoya]

Came back to the game for the third part and entered the Firmament to see how it progressed. I think it looks nice. SO I'm like, okay let's see if I can help with this part. Boy I was wrong.

You weren't wrong. What you contribute still helps with the Restoration whether it's level 20 or level 80. There are still the FATEs to do each time the stockpile gets completed. The Restoration itself is going to take weeks if not months for each server to finish.

It just doesn't help with the 10 day competition. That was intentionally designed as end game content, not leveling content.

[AngelCheese77]

You weren't wrong. What you contribute still helps with the Restoration whether it's level 20 or level 80. There are still the FATEs to do each time the stockpile gets completed. The Restoration itself is going to take weeks if not months for each server to finish.

It just doesn't help with the 10 day competition. That was intentionally designed as end game content, not leveling content.

Figures. RL comes first. Missed the Fates but got to see the pretty cutscenes. Ooooo lol