The current state of Cosmic Exploration rewards cheaters

[Sourcy]

Hi everyone, Minor nitpick regarding the new DoH/DoL content here.

Normally these things come with a large amount of very expensive, exclusive items that cost a premium earned currency to buy. The prices of these are very high first, then crater and eventually stabilize some. Things like mounts, dyes, emotes, outfits, ect.

I went to sell a spare cosmosuit outfit I won and lo and behold the price cratered more than expected. And there was a single retainer selling TWENTY of them. And below them another selling fourteen more! After some digging around websites and talking to people, the source was found.

The issue is, this time around there are people mass farming cosmocredits and Lunar Credits using a third party tool to craft recipes automatically. It abuses the macro system to automatically calculate and perfect recipes based on gear and runs it. It auto eats for you to refresh buffs. It auto repairs with dark matter when gear drops low. Hell it auto extracts materia on soulbond.

My question is simple. How is this allowed? How is this any different from running a bot to do combat? It's still content. There are people sitting in corners of the moon at the base 24/7 just farming these crafting recipes over and over. I even saw one person hit the achievement for 500000 contribution points on Friday!

I don't have a solution for this sadly that isn't just "Make Crafting actions unusable in macros." But something really should be done.

[SophiaDL]

Hi everyone, Minor nitpick regarding the new DoH/DoL content here.

Normally these things come with a large amount of very expensive, exclusive items that cost a premium earned currency to buy. The prices of these are very high first, then crater and eventually stabilize some. Things like mounts, dyes, emotes, outfits, ect.

I went to sell a spare cosmosuit outfit I won and lo and behold the price cratered more than expected. And there was a single retainer selling TWENTY of them. And below them another selling fourteen more! After some digging around websites and talking to people, the source was found.

The issue is, this time around there are people mass farming cosmocredits and Lunar Credits using a third party tool to craft recipes automatically. It abuses the macro system to automatically calculate and perfect recipes based on gear and runs it. It auto eats for you to refresh buffs. It auto repairs with dark matter when gear drops low. Hell it auto extracts materia on soulbond.

My question is simple. How is this allowed? How is this any different from running a bot to do combat? It's still content. There are people sitting in corners of the moon at the base 24/7 just farming these crafting recipes over and over. I even saw one person hit the achievement for 500000 contribution points on Friday!

I don't have a solution for this sadly that isn't just "Make Crafting actions unusable in macros." But something really should be done.

Yeah because crafting is oh so hard in this game, you dont even need any third party tool, there are websites that are completely legit to use and not ToS since they're on your browser in which you can maximize your stats and get perfect recipes by simply copy pasting the macro in game

also I'm very sorry but repeating the same thing for a million times is not entertaining, not saying you should do as they do, but it's really not a massive test to do those, its honestly boring and extremely repetitive content.

[Catwho]

You.... you don't need third party tools to create or even optimize macros - in fact, the macro system I came up with is meant to let someone craft at peak efficiency with a limited set of macros used programmatically. I assume my method is working considering the dozens of anons I see in the Google doc I shared with my macro list.

The bot that auto-crafts though? Nuke it to the ground and ban all the accounts.

[Atreides]

It always has been that way, even with Ishgardian restauration, when a ton of people do said content and stuff is easily available or RNG rewards they become cheap af quickly.

[DivineP]

Yeah because crafting is oh so hard in this game, you dont even need any third party tool, there are websites that are completely legit to use and not ToS since they're on your browser in which you can maximize your stats and get perfect recipes by simply copy pasting the macro in game

also I'm very sorry but repeating the same thing for a million times is not entertaining, not saying you should do as they do, but it's really not a massive test to do those, its honestly boring and extremely repetitive content.

Actually Sophia it used to be before it got simplified. Sneak was a slow on you to get past mobs that would one shot you and actual crafting rotations used to be hard.

It was the best gil earner in the game before housing.

Now you get simple macros amd nothing outside of crafting patches.

First time?

On topic:

It was always going to be botted. Outside of the battle zone coming up, it won't be stopped. SE has done nothing about this for a decade sadly - which makes it unfair for players like you and ppl on consoles. You just learn to live with it, sadly.

[Kaurhz]

Crafting used to be a respectable activity that actually demanded something from the player...

That being said, I wouldn't completely blame the simplification of crafting for the supposed insurgence of botting... That was an inevitability as the game grew, to be honest. e.g., if they could bot/automate expert recipes then there would be very little reason why it couldn't be applied to when crafting was more involved.

There is no real... solution because crafting has fundamentally been... 'solved', and removing macros is only something that detriments legitimate players since bots and the sort... They have no concept, time or concern of efficiency, whereas a player does.

The only thing Square Enix could really do is actually apply their terms of service, instead of treating it like it's just an obligatory use statement, rather than actually something to govern behavior and activities. If you don't punish players in any capacity, then that boundary only continues to get pushed and pushed, hence why we actually have a plugin for stalkers now.

[Saraide]

Hi everyone, Minor nitpick regarding the new DoH/DoL content here.

Normally these things come with a large amount of very expensive, exclusive items that cost a premium earned currency to buy. The prices of these are very high first, then crater and eventually stabilize some. Things like mounts, dyes, emotes, outfits, ect.

I went to sell a spare cosmosuit outfit I won and lo and behold the price cratered more than expected. And there was a single retainer selling TWENTY of them. And below them another selling fourteen more! After some digging around websites and talking to people, the source was found.

The issue is, this time around there are people mass farming cosmocredits and Lunar Credits using a third party tool to craft recipes automatically. It abuses the macro system to automatically calculate and perfect recipes based on gear and runs it. It auto eats for you to refresh buffs. It auto repairs with dark matter when gear drops low. Hell it auto extracts materia on soulbond.

My question is simple. How is this allowed? How is this any different from running a bot to do combat? It's still content. There are people sitting in corners of the moon at the base 24/7 just farming these crafting recipes over and over. I even saw one person hit the achievement for 500000 contribution points on Friday!

I don't have a solution for this sadly that isn't just "Make Crafting actions unusable in macros." But something really should be done.

Are you atleast having fun crafting and gathering on the moon?

[DivineP]

It is such a shame it can be botted. I don't do craft or gather much - but I did actually see our server first 1st contributor chatting. They said they went wild to get it. They did an insane amount of hours.

It's a shame if it's been botted already. Atleast the battle zones ones can be spotted and excluded from things.

Suppose the good thing is the contribution points? Silver lining I guess?

I've seen prices on the things gained from CE drop drastically though so i feel you.

[Kaurhz]

It is such a shame it can be botted. I don't do craft or gather much - but I did actually see our server first 1st contributor chatting. They said they went wild to get it. They did an insane amount of hours.

It's a shame if it's been botted already. Atleast the battle zones ones can be spotted and excluded from things.

Suppose the good thing is the contribution points? Silver lining I guess?

I've seen prices on the things gained from CE drop drastically though so i feel you.

I usually like giving benefit of the doubt to these things, e.g., no way to determine for certain, as a lot of it is built on the whole "If I can't do it, then you're definitely cheating/botting".

But honestly, it would not surprise me if we are in this realm already... I would imagine the framework for doing it was already sort of created way back in the day with the original phase 2 Ishgard Restoration, and everything has only got more advanced since then.

[Doki]

If you pilot mechs every chance you get, you end up with a LOT of mounts, and doing weather missions gains you a LOT of all points.