Skybuilder Botting Issue

[NealSnow]

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.

[Shadream]

Did a full three hour run in Diadem as Botanist, only taking what gave the most points. After delivering at the end, I split the points over my three hours to get an hourly average and multiplied it with 24.
That's when I realised that If I gave up all sleep, didn't eat any proper food and replaced my gaming chair with a toilet for the next 24 hours each remaining day. Only then I would perhaps have had a chance for the title.

Take it however you wish, but yes, I gave up at that point.

[NealSnow]

Did a full three hour run in Diadem as Botanist, only taking what gave the most points. After delivering at the end, I split the points over my three hours to get an hourly average and multiplied it with 24.
That's when I realised that If I gave up all sleep, didn't eat any proper food and replaced my gaming chair with a toilet for the next 24 hours each remaining day. Only then I would perhaps have had a chance for the title.

Take it however you wish, but yes, I gave up at that point.

Rough. I gave up on it as well for top 12 just cause theres no way for me to compete with an AI unless I somehow could cleanse myself of those stupid human needs.

[Kaurhz]

I called it..

It's doable for a few people, especially with the Pandemic going on (100K per day is approximately around 5-7 hours of crafting), and of course, there's a lot of people that do indeed use a bot, this doesn't detract from that, but it is perfectly feasible to rank in up to 170K per day. I don't like it simply because it either encourages botting or an exceptionally unhealthy style of play/competition, which they have spurred away from in some other areas of content and in the majority of the game itself. For crafters anyway.. Gatherers should be pulling in around 23K~ per session of diadem which can also still easily reach 100K daily. Whether that is healthy or not is a different issue entirely though!

That being said, if they decided to keep this endeavor going my only wish is that not only do they design it to where it's more engaging (Part of me still feels as though doing the Supra/Master Book IIs were more challenging than Expert recipes), but they and put everyone on the same pedestal and make it strictly a competition of skill between all participants, as opposed to a competition of who has the biggest wallet and melds. Don't get me wrong, that's not bad but it scales like trash on lower population servers where adequately geared crafters are very few. Not only that but make the number of turn-ins be capped per day/ranking period.

As far as encouraging people to beat bots.. Nope, the rewards for participating don't outweigh the mental exhaustion that you go through to participate seriously enough to compete, let alone overtake people that do indeed bot. The rewards have been the same since season one, the mounts, minions, and such are all things you can get through doing the regular recipes, which is a lot more efficient per hour than doing experts.

I will say though, the rampant unhealthy style of play it creates, in combination with the very few rewards is the biggest factor for myself, and probably many others for that matter; though their biggest issue in the first place is sufficiently melding their gear to even have a chance in participating. Although the botting does take a factor in it too.

[NealSnow]

I called it..

It's doable for a few people, especially with the Pandemic going on (100K per day is approximately around 5-7 hours of crafting), and of course, there's a lot of people that do indeed use a bot, this doesn't detract from that, but it is perfectly feasible to rank in up to 170K per day. I don't like it simply because it either encourages botting or an exceptionally unhealthy style of play/competition, which they have spurred away from in some other areas of content and in the majority of the game itself. For crafters anyway.. Gatherers should be pulling in around 23K~ per session of diadem which can also still easily reach 100K daily. Whether that is healthy or not is a different issue entirely though!

That being said, if they decided to keep this endeavor going my only wish is that not only do they design it to where it's more engaging (Part of me still feels as though doing the Supra/Master Book IIs were more challenging than Expert recipes), but they and put everyone on the same pedestal and make it strictly a competition of skill between all participants, as opposed to a competition of who has the biggest wallet and melds. Don't get me wrong, that's not bad but it scales like trash on lower population servers where adequately geared crafters are very few. Not only that but make the number of turn-ins be capped per day/ranking period.

As far as encouraging people to beat bots.. Nope, the rewards for participating don't outweigh the mental exhaustion that you go through to participate seriously enough to compete, let alone overtake people that do indeed bot. The rewards have been the same since season one, the mounts, minions, and such are all things you can get through doing the regular recipes, which is a lot more efficient per hour than doing experts.

I will say though, the rampant unhealthy style of play it creates, in combination with the very few rewards is the biggest factor for myself, and probably many others for that matter; though their biggest issue in the first place is sufficiently melding their gear to even have a chance in participating. Although the botting does take a factor in it too.

And as far as I've heard the botters, some of them anyway are trying to be smart about it, hoarding the turn ins til the last minute to then dump them all in so who knows how many people are botting and just not turning in yet.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I gave up on the top titles in the first round of rankings because of the bots. Now I just do enough to get the scrips for rewards I like, then come back a couple months later for the story quests. It's really badly-implemented content.

[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.

[Kuroka]

I gave up on the top titles in the first round of rankings because of the bots. Now I just do enough to get the scrips for rewards I like, then come back a couple months later for the story quests. It's really badly-implemented content.

Same, i ranked 27 at the first one, then just gave up over ppl getting few 100k in a day lol

They shouldve never released it that way make it tiered, or the top 30 get the same reward, anything would be better then what we got.