Bot problem getting worse on Dynamis

[LianaThorne]

Gonna put my tin foil hat on here for this:
https://www.ign.com/articles/square-...nal-fantasy-16

I would not be the least bit shocked if Square is ignoring their own ToS to keep as many people subbed and continuing to sub as possible. Hence why things like brothels are fine, bots are rampant, people can stalk you around the entire map for days without consequences...

Maybe they make up a number every week to tell people or maybe they ban a very small portion to keep appearances up but I've always been under the impression that they don't necessarily "care" about the problem, especially since RMT is basically normalized in FF11.

[Saraide]

Gonna put my tin foil hat on here for this:
https://www.ign.com/articles/square-...nal-fantasy-16

I would not be the least bit shocked if Square is ignoring their own ToS to keep as many people subbed and continuing to sub as possible. Hence why things like brothels are fine, bots are rampant, people can stalk you around the entire map for days without consequences...

Maybe they make up a number every week to tell people or maybe they ban a very small portion to keep appearances up but I've always been under the impression that they don't necessarily "care" about the problem, especially since RMT is basically normalized in FF11.

There is no need for conspiracy theories. This game is a for profit business. The actual harm caused by botters is less then what SE would have to invest to meaningfully combat it. PR damage is minimal, players arent significantly hindered. Many players are secretly benefitting because bot crafters push prices down through increased supply. Free trial ad bots in the big cities are so easy to make that the ban numbers SE posts are entirely realistic. Incentive to ban gil or clear buyers is also low because that's not money redirected away from SE. FF14 is not a free2play game and therefore doesnt need to concern itself nearly as much with grind circumvention to protect its profits.

[UkcsAlias]

Many players are secretly benefitting because bot crafters push prices down through increased supply.

To some degree yes, but at the same time: not realy.

Most bot crafters have automated undercuts. But here is a catch: you cant spam these updates (unless you want to get detected as botter).
So lets say only once per minute an undercut happens (maybe 10 bots with 10min tresholds between updates), and you end up with 1 undercut per minute on average. Thats 1440 gil per day worth of undercutting.

As top tier items can go for 400k all down to 100k over time. Even that undercutting is barely going to do it until its saturated. Players arent like to undercut by 1gil every time. Taking steps like 10k are far more efficient if you want to push sales. Bots dont change this behaviour.

Sure, bots will get players to do this faster and with higher values. But as those players will quickly leave, the progress slows down quickly.

Most of the time when bots are involved they only craft a new item after a sale, this means there is a gap for others to sell, yet this is deliberate and beneficial for botters to do. As otherwise other botters will push your price down, so efficiency goes down. Why bother selling 2x the same item at 200k, if you could also do it once at 400k?

Dumb botters will crash markets, and yet those are also the ones who cannot even automate those crafts reliably enough, or waste lots of gil. And guess what: the other botters will be able to provide proof of botting easily.

The less a botter shows he bots, the less likely they are caught, and they will often look like players. And sales prices generaly match here.

Not to mentioning that botting crafts isnt even the most profitable anyway.