How is the botting situation in this game?

[Xoto]

Are market board bots a thing? I hold some pretty strange hours, but it seems that a few certain items created by a few certain people instantly undercut my postings the instant I put them up.

Yes. They 100% plague the market board. But here's a quick breakdown of the large scale RMT operation we have observed across the Crystal data center.
Gathering bots (which are everywhere in end game) gather materials for the crafting bots (the name on the merchandise) who then crafts the goods. These bots pass the merchandise off to other bots who sit at a summoning bell and run undercutting BOT program.
Some side notes:
-There are FC's who run this same gameplan.
-While I gather end game materials one or two of the other gatherers are typically human but the other 5 or 6 are bots.
-Exarchic/Aethete's gear on the market board is 90% bot made, which run undercutting programs. Crafters get frustrated that they can't sell anything and "tank" the market. Bots follow the prices down to a set pricing ceiling . . Cuz they are bots.
-Botting plagues this entire game not just ARR.
-These bots will never get banned.
-SE doesnt uphold ToS against botting only RP's
-Botting is very easy to spot. Just open your eyes and play a while.

[Ashua]

Also, a large number of actual players run bots that automate healing and DPS rotations. A bit of searching and you can easily learn to spot these rotation bot users because of the youtube guides the bot makers post. There is nothing underground about them promoting these bots since the guides are full posted on youtube for all to see. If you are a console person I would be livid and push SE to stifle this game-busting and server economy-busting programs.

[AutumnsHollow]

ARR and heavensward there were bots that would spam dungeons as black mages to make gil. Sometimes they'd cluster farm in north shroud, south shroud and corthas. There were gatherer bots back then but they weren't very prevalent. But it only really got bad in stormblood.

In stormblood I don't know what happened but suddenly botting became very wide spread. It sucks because I used to be a high end crafter. I used to know all my fellow crafters and we'd compete against each other while making money. We had a community kinda. It's impossible to complete on the market board these days. Players will say "go to a different market!" But I shouldn't have to branch out of end game markets because of bots. There's something inherently wrong with that. Literally it's only the first week of new patches where you can make money on end game items before the bots get updated and go back to their nonsense.

Same with gathering. I know lots of players who used to gather to make money. Fishing specifically because it was a pain so it was the most lucrative. But gathering mats are chump change these days because of bots so gatherer mains make pathetic amounts of money.

It's actually really embarrassing that the situation is what it is. People on these forums for some reason like to diminish bots or advocate for them but there's tons of players who play this game for different reasons. I do a bit of everything and I enjoy ultimate so although it sucks to not be able to play the markert board like I used to I have other avenues of content to do. I have friends who litterly only gather abd craft. Almost all of my friends who rarely participated in battle content have quit since then because the situation has deteriorated so much. You just can't compete against market board bots.

Luckily for me I cashed out on heavensward relics so I don't have to worry about gil so much but if I was new and trying to make gil these days.....lol good luck to you it looks very hard.

[KageTokage]

Also, a large number of actual players run bots that automate healing and DPS rotations. A bit of searching and you can easily learn to spot these rotation bot users because of the youtube guides the bot makers post. There is nothing underground about them promoting these bots since the guides are full posted on youtube for all to see. If you are a console person I would be livid and push SE to stifle this game-busting and server economy-busting programs.

I'm not sure what you're seeing is actually a rotation bot (Though I know they do exist).

There is a popular overlay that visually displays a class' optimal rotation so you know what buttons you should be hitting next, but I'm pretty sure it's not actually doing the inputs for them...or at least I'd like to hope that's the case with how frequently I've seen it.

[Themarvin]

People clicking placecards trying to buy a house often am botting as well, it gives an unfair advantage against others on the market.

[White_Wolf_X]

The only bots i really see for the most part are those spamming in main citys.

[Metalwrath]

There is deffintly healers botting for DR relic grind.I dont know about if the bots for detecting s ranks and a ranks are still a thing but i know when i was on odin there was deffintly 1 or 2 fcs that did this the whole time.although afaik one fc moved to ragnarok over a year ago and i moved to zodiark.Even with Crossworld travel hunting doesnt seem to be anywhere near as bad as it used to be with afk bots to scout out spawns.
There was at one point issued with the armies of archer bots coming from grinadia but i dont see them on quite a while.
I only see the occasional blm bot tping at quest markers.They may have done something to stop the running through walls glitch the bots used to use.Im not to sure.
The main bot activity seems to have been still with gatherers and crafters.Its been especially rampant on a lot of servers for the ishgard title.Not sure why though.the titles arent even good.

[Fyrefox45]

Look at your servers marketboard. 70% of the lowest items are gonna be made by 1 crafter. That crafter will be in an FC, live in an apartment room 24/7 crafting, and his alt marketboard bots will be undercutting 24/7 selling everything and then restocking from the FC chest in town. They aren't remotely subtle about it.

[SavishSalacious]

The markets ARE RUN BY BOTS. And the gathering and crafting is ALSO run by bots.

[KageTokage]

I dont know about if the bots for detecting s ranks and a ranks are still a thing but i know when i was on odin there was deffintly 1 or 2 fcs that did this the whole time.although afaik one fc moved to ragnarok over a year ago and i moved to zodiark.Even with Crossworld travel hunting doesnt seem to be anywhere near as bad as it used to be with afk bots to scout out spawns.

The "hunt radar" functionality is just baked into most of the common bots these days, thus if a S rank happens to spawn in a ShB zone, every single user of that particular bot is immediately privy to its location. This resulted in hunts frequently being picked off without a server's local hunters even being aware that something had spawned.

It got bad enough that a lot of the hunt trackers/discords are now linked to those very bots to ensure that nothing escapes the notice of those who actually try to maintain some semblance of order to the hunting by logging kill times and relaying.

Just another example of how the prevalence of bots has pressured players into changing how they play the game. I personally find it rather vexing that I can seldom spawn a S rank hunt these days without a huge horde of players instantly knowing where it is.