Final Fantasy XIV has a serious cheating problem.

[Pounding]

Every single legendary node/white scrip node is botted to hell nowadays. If you went to any EW white scrip node, you'd see at least 3 to 6 bots even at dead hours. On top of that, the botters over at the Frozen Fissure pond in Mare Lamentorum are quite crazy, they cancel the ENTIRE hooking animation and recast immediately lol.

How do they not get banned is just beyond me, they have very obvious patterns and a simple GM jailing them for questions would expose them so fast. The only explanation is that they enjoy the 10 retainer services most of the bot accounts have.

Who cares about players trying to make gil using gathering/crafting when they can make money from the bots subscriptions? lol.

[hynaku]

I see cheaters all the time in alliance raids. I see one's all the time running by me when I'm using sprint and see one's teleport trice the distance, they should be able to.

[Kuroka]

Yup bots running rampart, meanwhile chat bubbles and QoL mods are the issue... Then again bots don't tend to stream and rat themselves out.

Qol... yes like access to the MB everywhere, all the time, totally not an advantage.... or chaining macros etc...

[Risvertasashi]

The problem, I think, is SE lumps in crap like this with chat bubbles and then goes "Oh but it's so hard to make any kind of distinction, we just can't do it!" (Please pay no attention to the many other games that can and do make distinctions just fine).

So then the community battles along the same lines. I bet virtually everyone can acknowledge stuff that actually hacks the game like these is bad, and probably doesn't want it in the game. But a lot more people might want the QoL things that mods provide but SE has failed to deliver on. But since they're lumped together, you get a lot of people fighting and arguing that would probably agree with each other - if SE didn't insist on such a super wide shotgun approach that divides the community.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I still find it a touch baffling that these RMT companies can seriously be making enough money to warrant having 30+ paid accounts going when their methods aren't exactly raking in the gil by the millions; moreso when the ones relying on crafting/scrip farming are having to compete with each other.

It makes me question if they're resorting to some manner of fraudulent "free" method of getting game time that will not result in the accounts they're actually using to farm getting purged.

They mostly use stolen credit cards and/or chargeback fraud to make new accounts. Most VPNs, or a pile of other spoofing methods, will hide their IP address enough that they never get caught. And since the entire process is largely automated, they can make new accounts faster than they're banned.

[Hoodcat]

You also have to remember some countries, in order to sell their game in it, Argentina for example they are not allowed to perma ban them or suspend them over x amount of days.

Thats why blizzard had to after decades do something about it with the billing. No longer use game cards ect to pay for the said accounts in that region. There are many more countries like this with similiar rules that get abused.

Im not saying the country residents themselves are doint it. The account itself is registered there. removing gamecards from that country forces another method of payment that they cannot produce, you cant just go there and ask for a bank account =p and paying from home country would reveal all other accounts linked.

[LianaThorne]

Qol... yes like access to the MB everywhere, all the time, totally not an advantage.... or chaining macros etc...

Clarification: the MB anywhere thing only let's you check prices, not list things. You still have to return to a retainer. Pretty sure that plugin just regurgitates whatever is posted on Universalis which everyone has access to, console or PC.

[Saraide]

There are two aspects where those videos linked are entirely unproductive imo:

Firstly cheating on FFlogs is a problem FFlogs has to deal with. We cant expect SE to help anyone out there, the only thing they would ever do in relation to it would be to shut it down entirely. Top logs are already of questionable reliability with silly optimization strats and target kill times, cheated logs are just adding to the pile of shady strats in the top ~5% or so.

More importantly however is the idea that somehow someone else having cheated their way to legend titles, savage clears or whatever makes you achieving that shallow. You are giving cheaters far more power than they deserve. Dont let them live rent free in your head. If you managed to clear savage or ultimate legitimately you should be proud of yourself, what does it matter that someone else didnt. The important part is that you did. We need to stop putting random weirdos we know nothing about on pedestals just because we see them on a savage mount or with an ulti glam. Get to know them, then you can consider admiring them.

[Hoodcat]

You guys remember on ARR release the direct hacks to characters, stealing all the gil? lvl 1 npcs standing at marketboard gettin ya soon as you interfaced with it?

Those were good times =p

[Risvertasashi]

Clarification: the MB anywhere thing only let's you check prices, not list things. You still have to return to a retainer. Pretty sure that plugin just regurgitates whatever is posted on Universalis which everyone has access to, console or PC.

"Last seen" prices at that. Someone has to share what they see when they look at the in game marketboard. And there's also discord bots that you can look up marketboard prices with, but they share the same limitations.