In fear i get banned now i will post it anyways to put up some clarification on your Bot Stories:

Since i worked for Burda:IC in the Anti Cheating Department for their MMOs i decided to check out the "Bots" people use in this game. I got my hands on them and actually tried them out just to see if all your horror stories are really true. If you dont believe me that i only tried them but used them to level be sure to check my Lodestone page with the achievements because i was at my levels way before this test. I also hope the moderator lets this post through or at least sends it to the dev team if he decides to delete it. Actually this here is something the dev team should have done long ago by themselfes.

Crafting Bots:

The standard version of this has about 20 lines of code and not a single one more. Of course its stupid and cant do much in this basic state but it can repeat the first recipe in the list of the recently made recipes. To be exact it isnt even a bot. Its a combination of simulated keystrokes every macro script for windows can do. Send down, send enter, send enter, send enter, send enter ... and so on. These bots scan the clock icon at your crafting window beside the timer bar to see if the craft is still ongoing. If that is the case the script hits enter and rechecks after that. When the clock is gone the thing hits enter again and then restarts the loop to pick the first in the recent recipes list to continue. The newer versions also scan for the scroll bar as soon as a skill pops up and navigate to the skill by sending up followed by sending enter. Thats the whole trick to it. Same thing works for NPC navigating and everything else to sell stuff.

Solution 1:

Change the clock icon to a random generated picture or remove it entirely as well as the timing bar. If there is no way for the bot to scan if he is still crafting or not even the most advanced one that is currently available on the internet will die out. That change takes a total of 10 minutes to implent.

Solution 2:

Remove the menu like UI for the PC version and make it Mouse navigated. Hotkey scripts can simulate mouseclicks but thats alot harder to achieve. Currently every 12 year old script kiddy can bot in this game.

Solution 3:

Randomize the "recent recipes list" so the last crafted recipe isnt always on the top. let it variate between the first two for example and that would be enough to stop most of the bots while being almost no nuissence for the players. Some smart people might catch on with a solution but you can at least give them a huge bump for some time. Best solution in my opinion.

Gathering Bots:

I didnt really stumble upon any usefull ones here. The ones found work the same way the crafting bots do which makes them rather useless. They can harvest completly on their own by scanning the screen for certain keypoints again but their problem is that they cannot run around between trees and probably wont be able to do it in the future because SE did a good job with the games memory. I wont tell what they did exactly but i can say that it makes it currently impossible to create a bot that completly emulates the client which is a very good thing. I doubt these bots are used much because it just doesnt make sense when you have to run in between trees anyways which is actually the most boring part in gathering. People who use bots are lazy and want to be AFK while it happens which definitly isnt the case here.

Guildleve Bots:

Despite all the horror stories i didnt find a single one of them and if you look at what i just said in the gathering section it is currently impossible to make a bot navigate on its own especially to random spawning locations and monsters. If you see a group of people auto following each other you can be sure the first guy is actually playing. There is a reason why bots usually camp in a cave or any other location where they dont have to navigate which brings us to the next type...

Leveling Bots:

These required some actual skill before the target changes i bet. Remember the time when they followed you when you got near them and no mob was close? Those times are over after SE revised the target system. By making it possible to target only enemies they pretty much enabled them to make their new toys. All you need is a hotkey script again that hits tab , locks on, presses forward for a few secs and then spams enter. This will be even worse after auto attack comes into play because they dont have to do anything anymore beside targeting and pulling their weapon. These kinds of bots also cant reclaim your claimed mobs. If they do than it is a hack that i have not encountered yet. They can however jump on cliffs you cant that is totaly true. There are position hacking tools available.

Solution 1:

Remove the lock on key and make it auto lock on after hitting the monster the first time. That makes it impossible for most bots to reach the monster because all they can do is press towards the locked mob they are facing. Also encrypt coordinates in the memory!

Solution 2:

Remove the enemy only target system again. Create an algorythm to switch the values between x, y and z coordinates in the client so botters cant read them out. Switching them around between locations doesnt help to much when the tool always checks right before its usage.

Well than. I hope i brought some light into this topic and enjoy my time in the forum until i get banned.