Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
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This is 100% to combat bots being able to direct gather clusters and influencing prices. Also likely confirms almost everything will be clusters at 80 but as long as the amounts aren't as bad as crystals at 70 then aetherial reduction and desynthesis will more than cover the need.
Bots don't bother gathering unspoiled shit that spawns once every 20mins though I don't think. As noted above this might also be only for Diadem nodes? Anyway bots don't really control the prices on these, people "failling" aetherial reduction while aiming for sands get thousands of clusters they don't need. Only the most active crafters even need a lot of clusters, the recipes use a few of them only and only the high tier recipes do. They MIGHT have done it if they're switching the main crystals to clusters, phasing out the current crystals like shards were phased out in SB and adding a new tier, so bot don't go for them though. If they do, that's gonna suck I only have about 5k clusters I maybe should have planned ahead more. It's also gonna take a while to resell 20k crystals if they're not used anymore other than leveling.
 

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
12,372
11,778
If the money is there, the bots are there. There were people claiming a total switchover to clusters in the week leading up (and I did grab some cheaper stacks using CW MB just in case).

The issue with the RMT level bots going for clusters is they are not going to be materia geared out with top tier gathering sets to aetherially reduce. The 60 and 70 stuff tends to get nerfed in amounts as well so the lowest hanging fruit is those unspoiled nodes. As an S rank spawner you don't even realize how many Fire Clusters I've accumulated because of Croque. Now automate that for every possible node, every cycle, times hundreds per server. Yeah they would do it.
 

Daidraco

Golden Baronet of the Realm
9,307
9,415
Reddit post - Bots that were caught in RMT are lumped into RMT bans.

Real money trading (RMT) and other illicit activities upset the balance of the game and, as such, are prohibited under the Terms of Service.
We have confirmed that a number of players are engaging in these illicit activities and have therefore taken the actions listed below.
Time Period: Jun. 20, 2019 to Jun. 26, 2019
Participation in RMT/prohibited activities
Accounts terminated: 7,098
Accounts temporarily suspended: 12
Botting activity (Using any number of third party tools that allow for automation)
Accounts terminated: 4
Accounts temporarily suspended: 9
RMT advertising
Accounts terminated: 1,975
 

Daidraco

Golden Baronet of the Realm
9,307
9,415
I havent cared enough to look into the bot situation all that much with FFXIV. I dont know how their security works or anything. Got pretty familiar with WOW's at one point, but I had always heard that FFXIV really didnt have much detection. So a ban wave like that kind of proves otherwise.
 

a_skeleton_02

<Banned>
8,130
14,248
The issue with botting in FFXIV is that the client allows for a lot of abuse and cheating, You have groups of bots that fly under the world and one shot mobs for materials in massive Lala piles. They can't fix these holes so they just keep banning the masses of players with every ban wave who just relevel and come back.

They could fix a lot of this if they just added a Captcha on the queue window for sub 50 dungeons that comes up every once in a while.
 

Pharone

Trakanon Raider
1,143
1,017
I understood why people cheated in EverQuest because if you didn't, you was playing the game at a MAJOR disadvantage, and the cheaters could literally block you out of content by not either resorting to cheating as well or paying the Krono/Plat ransom they were demanding. EverQuest was a shitty ass designed game that damn well made cheating mandatory.

FFXIV on the other hand is completely different. Cheaters don't matter in FFXIV. They can't block content from you. You don't need to compete with them nor anybody. The game is fully accessible to everybody with out any cheating or RMT what so ever.
 

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
12,372
11,778
When Gilgamesh was fully locked with no creation/transfers at Stormblood release the bots were all reported and banned over the duration of the lockout. Wind Crystals went as high as 1000 in response because so much of the raw gathering materials were collected by the RMT bots selling the simplest crafting materials on the market board.

Now, with being able to buy cross-world from other servers even if that happens again we can buy from elsewhere and it's not too much of a problem, but it clearly highlights the flaw in making even the subcombines cost 5 crystals per with final crafts sometimes requiring 3 subs + final combines for 20 crystals per on top of the other materials. So for 100 crafts that's 2000 crystals needed for 1 person in only an hour or two (assuming HQ, minutes for NQ). In other situations like during the shard days the sheer number of bots actually drove the price down due to multiple RMT sites trying to make gil vs each other.

Because this is end of expansion there isn't as much "real player" botting, where raiders or lazy ass people use the same bot programs to level all combat classes and farm their food and other mats. But that will make a comeback in 5.0 and much like the insane FATE bot train in the Fringes expect a crazy number of automated characters to be leveling or grinding reputation off FATEs even after the initial rush is over.
 

GuardianX

Perpetually Pessimistic
<Bronze Donator>
6,766
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I understood why people cheated in EverQuest because if you didn't, you was playing the game at a MAJOR disadvantage, and the cheaters could literally block you out of content by not either resorting to cheating as well or paying the Krono/Plat ransom they were demanding. EverQuest was a shitty ass designed game that damn well made cheating mandatory.

FFXIV on the other hand is completely different. Cheaters don't matter in FFXIV. They can't block content from you. You don't need to compete with them nor anybody. The game is fully accessible to everybody with out any cheating or RMT what so ever.

Housing is the only place where I would disagree on this front. If bots were smart they would buy ALL the houses in a district, maybe then FFXIV would implement a better system than what we have now.

Shit, I mean you could have a system where you have districts like we already have and then if you were in say...District 3 House number 7 and District 2, house number 7 opens up, your house would automatically move from 3 to 2. A simple fix like that would be helpful to curb there being a billion districts for houses.
 

a_skeleton_02

<Banned>
8,130
14,248
I understood why people cheated in EverQuest because if you didn't, you was playing the game at a MAJOR disadvantage, and the cheaters could literally block you out of content by not either resorting to cheating as well or paying the Krono/Plat ransom they were demanding. EverQuest was a shitty ass designed game that damn well made cheating mandatory.

FFXIV on the other hand is completely different. Cheaters don't matter in FFXIV. They can't block content from you. You don't need to compete with them nor anybody. The game is fully accessible to everybody with out any cheating or RMT what so ever.

No one cheats for fun or for an advantage it's just some chinese dude in a sweatshop farming gil.

Also Never cheated in EQ
 

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
12,372
11,778
So how legit is this 24 hour downtime? Server really going to be down that long?
For expansion patches and new raid tiers they will not open up the logins until the announced time. Actually, since Ultimates are released on what used to be the traditional "catch-up" patches of X.1 and X.3 i'd expect that is true for all major patches now.
 

Cybsled

Avatar of War Slayer
16,530
12,033
I didn’t cheat in EQ, but I know officers used showeq or whatever to see if raid targets had spawned
 

Fyff

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,703
5,141
At SB launch people would get 2-3hours queue in the evening every day. If you think they were doing that to make the game more popular, you'd have to be pretty stupid.
4am queues though? Sure prime time a couple days at launch of a new expansion. Last night my 2 man queue was legit...
 

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,762
Yeah the only reason to bot in FF14, and it's totally not necessary, was for me to learn new class rotations with how fast I was leveling up new jobs.

Once I got it down the rotation bot was a detriment and I would use it on a new one.

I once did a mining bot though for a while to see how that worked out and walked away and forgot and came back the next day. I am sure I was reported and I ate a 7 day suspension.