Skybuilder Botting Issue

[Avatre]

As someone with the Saint title from last go, I still think the title itself should have just been overall score related instead of a timed competition that is barely monitored and allows for re-ranking of people with the exclusive title already.

The system should honestly check for that, and if someone who already has them ends up ranking again, it removes them at the end and brings the person who is ranked 101 up to 100, and so on and so forth until everyone who has the titles already is removed from ranking.

[Jojoya]

This would honestly fix a lot of complaints. You could still keep the leaderboard for 'Worlds best botter', but just having a score threshold to reach would be much more beneficial to peoples sanity.

We've got plenty of other Firmament related titles we can earn by reaching thresholds.

[XX] of the Firmament for reaching 500k Skyward Points on a DoH or DoL class
The Nest's Own [XX] for 100 Expert deliveries as crafter, 50,000 Artisanal material deliveries as MIN/BTN, 300 Artisanal fish deliveries as FSH in Phase 2 items
Featherfall's Finest [XX] for 100 Expert deliveries as crafter, 50,000 Artisanal material deliveries as MIN/BTN, 300 Artisanal fish deliveries as FSH in Phase 3 items
The Risensung [XX] for 100 Expert deliveries as crafter, 50,000 Artisanal material deliveries as MIN/BTN, 300 Artisanal fish deliveries as FSH in Phase 4 items
The Hand of Creation for reaching 500k Skyward points on every crafting class
Divine Provider for reaching 500k Skyward points in every gathering class

The Saint and Beatus titles were for beating out the other competitors. If you don't want to be taking part in the competition, then seek one of the other titles that can be done at your leisure. That's why Grade 2 and 3 Artisanal materials are still available in Diadem.

[Xeronia]

We've got plenty of other Firmament related titles we can earn by reaching thresholds.

[XX] of the Firmament for reaching 500k Skyward Points on a DoH or DoL class
The Nest's Own [XX] for 100 Expert deliveries as crafter, 50,000 Artisanal material deliveries as MIN/BTN, 300 Artisanal fish deliveries as FSH in Phase 2 items
Featherfall's Finest [XX] for 100 Expert deliveries as crafter, 50,000 Artisanal material deliveries as MIN/BTN, 300 Artisanal fish deliveries as FSH in Phase 3 items
The Risensung [XX] for 100 Expert deliveries as crafter, 50,000 Artisanal material deliveries as MIN/BTN, 300 Artisanal fish deliveries as FSH in Phase 4 items
The Hand of Creation for reaching 500k Skyward points on every crafting class
Divine Provider for reaching 500k Skyward points in every gathering class

The Saint and Beatus titles were for beating out the other competitors. If you don't want to be taking part in the competition, then seek one of the other titles that can be done at your leisure. That's why Grade 2 and 3 Artisanal materials are still available in Diadem.

This would be all well fine and good if the competition was at all moderated, it isn't. Every bot I have reported in the last three seasons was never removed, despite them being stuck in place jumping for long periods of time or constantly trying to remount. The worst part is most of the ones I caught have placed(or are are currently) 1-20th ranking. Again I would be fine with competition if they had at all watched it for cheating, they haven't.

[Espritduo]

It would be nice if the gathering portion was actually monitored. Not sure how feasible it actually is to legitimately get that many points in a day like some of the others are.

I got just 15,720 points as BTN in the 3 hours I spent in there yesterday, using my Aetheric Auger on the plant monsters only...and some people got between 80k and 120k...in one day worth of ranking. In fact, the most points earned yesterday that I see is 122,919. All I'm gathering is the Artisinal stuff, and getting the weather nodes when they pop. I do not see that being able to be done legitimately.

Your first mistake is going after the weather nodes. Those are traps most of the time since they involve stopping what you're doing and flying all the way across the map for stuff that is basically worth the same as regular node mats. You're gonna lose tons of points if you keep doing that. Same thing in fishing. If you just plop yourself down wherever and reel in everything, then go flying all around chasing weather fish, your not going to make anywhere near the points people that know what they're doing make. Big points is not some botting scheme, it's just knowing the most efficient way to make points and then doing that for the maximum amount of time you're willing to do it.

Me personally, I had to work last two rankings, but the points I made showed me I could rank world first in fisher if I just had the time off to do it. I took the time off and now I am doing it, fully legit, while also catching up on a mountain of movies that have been on my backlog for years. I'm actually accomplishing MORE of my personal minor life goals here while I grind than I do regularly as odd as it seems.

When this short 10 day event is over I will go back to my job working in a hospital lab with covid patients and samples all day long, none the worse for wear, but hopefully with a better understanding of my own capabilities and limits and what I can do when I put my mind to a task. Hopefully that meets our social warrior's standards of how I should be spending my own personal time. If not, well...get over it. I'm having fun.

[Avatre]

Your first mistake is going after the weather nodes. Those are traps most of the time since they involve stopping what you're doing and flying all the way across the map for stuff that is basically worth the same as regular node mats. You're gonna lose tons of points if you keep doing that. Same thing in fishing. If you just plop yourself down wherever and reel in everything, then go flying all around chasing weather fish, your not going to make anywhere near the points people that know what they're doing make. Big points is not some botting scheme, it's just knowing the most efficient way to make points and then doing that for the maximum amount of time you're willing to do it.

Yeah, I realised my mistake of doing that and actually now only hit it when I am right there, not flying across the area just to do so. I highly doubt(actually can guarantee I won't) I will make it into the top 12, but maybe I can keep hold of a top 100 spot...if I do 6 hours a day for the remainder, which I'm going to hopefully do.

[KageTokage]

There's been an...appropriately-named individual trying to score in the top 12 of as many rankings as they can on my server and likely not through legitimate means judging from how insanely high their combined score total is.

It's a bit unfortunate that the ranking system isn't functional enough to just reward the next player in line the top 12 reward in the event of that happening.

[Louvain]

The reason you see some of the same people reranking is because they are achievement hunters. A lot of my friends are doing top 12 ranking for a third time not because of any interest in having a 3rd copy of the title or bragging rights, but because SE made the achievements themselves separate. Therefore they must rank to get the achievement points. Many of them were actually annoyed on learning this.

If SE had not made it so that the achievements and their points were unique for each phase, I suspect the boards for top twelve would be a lot more open.

[KageTokage]

It's not the re-ranking part that bugs me (Considering that I'm also doing that); it's the "trying to top 12 multiple rankings" that does, as it serves strictly to deny others a spot if you already have a top 12 on lock.

But yeah. I'm not sure why SE opted to cater to the minority by having distinct achievements for each phase because the majority would've preferred to be able to just ignore the rankings after getting top 12 once.

[Espritduo]

Yeah, as much effort as I am putting into it this time, I would not have bothered in the first place if there wasn't a new achievement for it. I don't know why Yoshi-p was so insistent on the idea of "having proof you were there" as the rationale for keeping the achievements distinct. Like, no one cares about achievements in that way, dude.

If he really wanted unique achievements for each phase, what he could have done was have a one-time ranking achievement, but also have a participation achievement for each phase as well that was like "submit 10,000 points during phase X" That way you still have your fixed, relatively lenient achievement that exists just to prove you were there for that phase (Yoshi-P's desire), but the actual ranking achievement only needs done once (the playerbase at large's desire).