Botting: Good or Evil? lol

[ShizukuOikawa]

It's more evil than anything, but you probably won't go to the 7th hell for doing it lol.

Their motives and intentions aren't good, it's mostly greed, manipulating the market, and taking actual real money by doing video game cheats, which ain't right at all.

I don't remember the exact numbers, but WoW bots make hundreds of gold per second, thousands per minute, hundreds of thousands per I don't know, but basically more than millions per week. Their subscription token is $20, which is 100k-190k gold of value in the auction house. They make these websites and sell good deals at a lesser price than the actual official market, screwing them over, and you can get millions of gil for a few dollars, which is banneable if you receive their transactions.

For some it may be something to make a living, for others it may be for fun and wanting an advantage, everyone knows it's bad, but.. some habits just don't go away I suppose. cheating in certain games is a different kind of bad, but for MMO's it devalues the currency of the game so that's pretty damn bad.

[StriderShinryu]

Botting is absolutely not a good thing. That said, it's also an arms race, especially now that FF14 is even bigger than it ever has been. Everything that SE can do or does to combat botters will just lead to the botters upping their game as well. So, yeah, as bad as botting is it's also not going anyway completely any time soon.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Botting is absolutely not a good thing. That said, it's also an arms race, especially now that FF14 is even bigger than it ever has been. Everything that SE can do or does to combat botters will just lead to the botters upping their game as well. So, yeah, as bad as botting is it's also not going anyway completely any time soon.

And I'd much rather have bots than anti-cheat software. That stuff wrecks computers, and is just a haven for hackers...

[Katie_Kitty]

People are always missing the point when it comes to bots. Okay, so people bot for housing. People bot for the marketboard. That's all crappy and we should get rid of it, but it's not the main issue.

The main issue is that there is software available that completely automates gameplay for every class. Nobody ever talks about it, but it's there and you really never know if someone is actually playing their own class or not. I guess you know if they're really bad, but for the good players, who knows.

[Skiros]

People are always missing the point when it comes to bots. Okay, so people bot for housing. People bot for the marketboard. That's all crappy and we should get rid of it, but it's not the main issue.

The main issue is that there is software available that completely automates gameplay for every class. Nobody ever talks about it, but it's there and you really never know if someone is actually playing their own class or not. I guess you know if they're really bad, but for the good players, who knows.

They are good enough to be mostly undetectable and get rank 1 on fflogs on easier jobs like BRD/MCH.

[Roeshel]

And I'd much rather have bots than anti-cheat software. That stuff wrecks computers, and is just a haven for hackers...

I don't understand this. Why wouldn't you want anti-cheat software? How does it wreck your PC? SE being intrusive is not that big of a deal, your government already has access to everything you have online and your electronic devices. Personal space and online security are just an illusion created to keep people from growing too restless about being monitored constantly.

Your quote is the same as saying, I'd much rather have dumb online criminals than police specialized in preventing cyber-crime.

[Dragonblanco]

I don't understand this. Why wouldn't you want anti-cheat software? How does it wreck your PC? SE being intrusive is not that big of a deal, your government already has access to everything you have online and your electronic devices. Personal space and online security are just an illusion created to keep people from growing too restless about being monitored constantly.

Your quote is the same as saying, I'd much rather have dumb online criminals than police specialized in preventing cyber-crime.

I was going to answer as best I can with my own words, but I think it might be easier to refer you to good sites with articles on it. The short of it though is because they require a lot of access, can kill your computer, prevents another entryway to your own computer for online criminals to use, and can be an invasion of privacy. But if you do have time, check out the links below.

https://techplanet.today/post/the-bi...ware-in-gaming

https://levvvel.com/what-is-kernel-l...heat-software/

https://afkgaming.com/esports/news/3...-your-computer

Then different type, more of a history on anti-cheat I guess, that highlights the issue with why stopping cheating is so difficult :

https://superjumpmagazine.com/the-an...ce-c19343be1dd

[Dragonblanco]

Botting is absolutely not a good thing. That said, it's also an arms race, especially now that FF14 is even bigger than it ever has been. Everything that SE can do or does to combat botters will just lead to the botters upping their game as well. So, yeah, as bad as botting is it's also not going anyway completely any time soon.

Yeah, and in my prior comment where I mentioned to Kes13a about politics and "gray areas" I think this essentially makes the point. It comes down to the same for players. At what point do you go from a full "no botting" aspect to realizing people are always going to keep improving and introducing things and just accepting it...turning to botting yourself? It's something I'm battling with internally as I had wanted a house and found myself surrounded by bots at the placard. I've reported them and it APPEARS like nothing is really done about it, though I know it takes time for them to see tickets and respond. (they just now saw a video I sent them a month ago and responded to let me know they got it).

Because of that, I've wrestled with the idea of whether I shouldn't just create a macro and let it camp for me while I go off to do other things. But I just can't let myself do it out of fear of getting my account in trouble. Yet there's a part of the old saying, "if you can't beat them, join them" that echoes in my head. It's annoying and challenging, but I often do blame the developers for making things the way they have. They could revamp housing easily to eliminate bots and give everyone a fair chance at housing, for example. They could let collectibles be made quickly just like normal crafting does, but they make you go through the tons of button presses AND gave tons of incentives to make people want to go the Ishgard route on crafting.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Evil or not really depends on one’s perspective, but there’s really no denying that botting is harmful to the game’s health from objective point of view.

[Thaciscokidd]

Bots are bad.

The RMT bots got worse with the implementation of World Travel and like StriderShinryu said its a growing problem. But anti-bot/cheat software could be a bigger problem(specially for those in the community who solely gather/craft). Data center travel might be the make or break moment for botting depending on what they let you do while you travel.