Skybuilder Botting Issue

[EmoPanther]

Just putting this out there, but the deal with gathering is.. actually kinda doable legit. But highly unlikely. The likelihood of someone actually using a polyphasic sleep cycle is pretty low. But the possibility is there.

[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.

[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).

[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 :/

[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

[Crushnight]

DoL is absolutely about how much time you can put into it, the more competitive the server the more time you need to put in, I spent minimum 4 lockouts a day in Diadem for season 3 so 12 hours a day for 10 days(some days I did 5 lockouts while others I'd go to 13-14hours only 1 day did I do only 12 and I was sick but if I didn't do that 12 hours I wouldn't have gotten top 12), I made top 12, happy I did, never want to do again.

Botting was prevalent then as it is now, it is possible to outdo them as they tend to be inefficient on how much they are gathering (sometimes getting stuck in the holy bot tree) but the amount of time needed is very high, and I was one of the more healthy people I actually slept and eat food properly, hate how I knew some were barely getting 4 hours of sleep a day.

[Dogempire]

I got my Saint title in season 1 and then decided that it's just not worth bothering with doing it again, considering it was literally eat, sleep only a little, craft.

I can't imagine what it's like now that there's probably botting software out there so now you basically need to get a full time job with overtime gathering or crafting just to make the top 12 rankings