So lately there's been a lot of discussion over people using third party tools to automate playing the game, AKA botting. With the completion of the first phase of Ishgard rankings a lot of accusations have been thrown around on users automating their gameplay to gather large amounts of points in a short periot of time.
There are two major users of bots: RMT and gil farmers who sell the items/currency on the black market, and casual players who use bots to automate the more tedious parts of gameplay.
Whilst Square Enix do issue bans for botting, the numbers are relatively small. Every week they release numbers on how many accounts have had actions taken against them for RMT or other illicit activities. In the above link a total of 19 bots were actioned, with 3 terminations and 16 temporary suspensions. Whilst I don't know how it is determined that accounts are botting, as of October last year there were a reported 1.18 million active accounts. I think it's fair to assume that less than 0.001% of active accounts are botting each week.
Everyone has seen the hoardes of ARC/BLMs teleporting around low-level zones blasting away mobs, and this seems to come in waves with hundreds of players appearing at once, usually in off-peak times. Lately they are even more blatant, teleporting to aetherytes or walking out of bounds.
Square Enix seems to mainly focus on the RMT and gil farmers when banning users, however there is blatant bot use from casual players, too. If Walking around the world it is not uncommon to see players travelling between gathering nodes on set paths, performing the same actions in sequence with very little variation. I've also noticed bots doing relatively inconsequential content - The most obvious being the "Leap of Faith" GATE in the Gold Saucer. The bots are very obvious - They are inaccurate, often jumping to their doom or deliberating on their jumps, standing on the spot and turning left and right. The most recent addition of the new GATE zone has made this all the more obvious, with many players simply jumping off the edge at the first hurdle.
Square Enix clearly do not support third party tools when playing the game - This has been reiterated multiple times in live letters, and emphasised with the changes to waymarks to restrict automatic tools. Obviously world first raid content is used to reflect the game as a whole, with many potential players watching the streams to gauge their interest in the game. If Square Enix were to "allow" these tools it would reflect badly on the game. However once a player has created an account one of the first things they will be greeted with is hoardes of faceless characters nuking everything within a 5 mile radius of the city states.
Will Square Enix ever counter this blatant abuse of the ToS? Do you think it actually impacts regular players, or is it just a harmless way to make the game less grindy?
submitted by /u/Beegee7730
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There are two major users of bots: RMT and gil farmers who sell the items/currency on the black market, and casual players who use bots to automate the more tedious parts of gameplay.
Whilst Square Enix do issue bans for botting, the numbers are relatively small. Every week they release numbers on how many accounts have had actions taken against them for RMT or other illicit activities. In the above link a total of 19 bots were actioned, with 3 terminations and 16 temporary suspensions. Whilst I don't know how it is determined that accounts are botting, as of October last year there were a reported 1.18 million active accounts. I think it's fair to assume that less than 0.001% of active accounts are botting each week.
Everyone has seen the hoardes of ARC/BLMs teleporting around low-level zones blasting away mobs, and this seems to come in waves with hundreds of players appearing at once, usually in off-peak times. Lately they are even more blatant, teleporting to aetherytes or walking out of bounds.
Square Enix seems to mainly focus on the RMT and gil farmers when banning users, however there is blatant bot use from casual players, too. If Walking around the world it is not uncommon to see players travelling between gathering nodes on set paths, performing the same actions in sequence with very little variation. I've also noticed bots doing relatively inconsequential content - The most obvious being the "Leap of Faith" GATE in the Gold Saucer. The bots are very obvious - They are inaccurate, often jumping to their doom or deliberating on their jumps, standing on the spot and turning left and right. The most recent addition of the new GATE zone has made this all the more obvious, with many players simply jumping off the edge at the first hurdle.
Square Enix clearly do not support third party tools when playing the game - This has been reiterated multiple times in live letters, and emphasised with the changes to waymarks to restrict automatic tools. Obviously world first raid content is used to reflect the game as a whole, with many potential players watching the streams to gauge their interest in the game. If Square Enix were to "allow" these tools it would reflect badly on the game. However once a player has created an account one of the first things they will be greeted with is hoardes of faceless characters nuking everything within a 5 mile radius of the city states.
Will Square Enix ever counter this blatant abuse of the ToS? Do you think it actually impacts regular players, or is it just a harmless way to make the game less grindy?
submitted by /u/Beegee7730
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...