Anti Bot System

[Fyrebrand]

I could be way off, but it seems to me that a lot of bots seem to do gathering mainly. And we have this neat gathering system in FFXIV, where you have multiple items per node, and you can select which item you're after. What if the item placement in the gathering window were randomized each time you accessed a node, and among them were "dummy" spots that would heavily damage your gathering tool and even kick you out of gathering completely? It would be completely obvious to an actual player, but a bot might not have any way of telling the difference. Would this be possible, or just something the botters could easily bypass with clever programming?

[MilkieTea]

I could be way off, but it seems to me that a lot of bots seem to do gathering mainly. And we have this neat gathering system in FFXIV, where you have multiple items per node, and you can select which item you're after. What if the item placement in the gathering window were randomized each time you accessed a node, and among them were "dummy" spots that would heavily damage your gathering tool and even kick you out of gathering completely? It would be completely obvious to an actual player, but a bot might not have any way of telling the difference. Would this be possible, or just something the botters could easily bypass with clever programming?

Something that botters could bypass - also when grinding out gathering levels could harm players in the long run. IDK about others but I ended up relying on muscle memory to level MIN, knowing what was where was a lifesaver for me.

[Liam_Harper]

Would this be possible, or just something the botters could easily bypass with clever programming?

Sadly bots could bypass this. Bots are intelligent enough to clear Savage and spam Expert Recipes.

For gathering and crafting, since they can't scan player computers developing a system to defeat bots is difficult. Probably the only viable option is to implement weekly limits. For example, a character enters an account-wide fatigue state after gathering 2000 current content Timed Node items or crafting 200 (non-material) current expansion items per week. Sure it'd suck for those legitimate players who just want to gather/craft all day to relax, but most normal players would be unaffected and bots would hit a wall fast. It would even promote mb trade and add value to items. Extract Materia could use a 2 day cd on each slot after use too.

I don't know, personally I dislike when bot measures impact gameplay for normal players, but facts are they have no power to detect them and they have to do something. I'd take a compromise at this stage.