worth reprinting...

Tyrion

Tyrion

Artifact Armor
Adventurer
Joined
Jun 28, 2004
Messages
999
Location
Mt. Pleasant, MI
Website
www.livejournal.com
Sorsh from VN Boards said:
Personally, when it comes to this whole botting issue, I think SE is full of ****!!

Randomplayer: "Mr. GM, I don't understand. Why is it that everytime I try to alt tab, I lose connection to the game? I find this to be an immense inconvenience."

GM/Dev: "Oh please pardon the inconvenience, Randomplayer, but we don't allow the use of alt tab in FFXI because we feel that disallowing it discourages bot programs."

Randomplayer: "Well what about auto-sort for my inventory??" Do you have any idea what a pain in the *** it is to max out at 50 inventory slots, spend thousands of gil just to get that pitiful number of slots and have to MANUALLY sort every five minutes to keep your pack from filling up??"

GM/Dev: "Well you see Randomplayer, we feel that auto-sort for inventory would assist botters, and therefore, in order to protect our legitimate players, we have decided not to implement auto-sort."

Randomplayer: "You see that guy over there? Yeah, the one with the fishing pole. The one who has 5 other characters around him that look just like him with a name that looks almost identical to his. Yeah well he's been standing there for the last two months. He must be really tired because he never sleeps. And some guy in my linkshell bought gil from him the other day. Evidence suggests he is a duck...erm, I mean bot. Any chance you might check into this?"

GM/Dev: "Unfortunately, Randomplayer, we have no means for determining who is botting, and we don't involve ourselves in disputes between players. However, if you do something to disrupt his botting..erm, playing, you will likely be taking a vacation from FFXI. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"
Click to expand...

Hah!
 
How do you even create a bot? I mean, I've seen Applejuice sitting in pretty much the same space since I started playing a month ago and thought "That's someone with waaaaaaaay too much time on their hands" before I realized there might not be a driver behind the metaphorical wheel. Is it just a macro thing?
 
Halifirien said:
How do you even create a bot? I mean, I've seen Applejuice sitting in pretty much the same space since I started playing a month ago and thought "That's someone with waaaaaaaay too much time on their hands" before I realized there might not be a driver behind the metaphorical wheel. Is it just a macro thing?
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there are several programs out there that allow you to "bot". it is basically a macro program that you program to have you walk from place to place, trade, sell, fish, anything you can program, you can do. i've even heard of people botting for XP.... O_o.

_Lu
 
Applejuice is most probably a bazaar mule, a character mainly used to store excess items and sell them through the Bazaar functionality. There is no bot behind that, as there is no regular input required to set up a bazaar.

Bots are characters controlled by another program, which implements keystrokes into the game so the player doesn't have to. For instance, a simple fishing bot will be programmed to run the /fish command regularely, listen to communication coming in for the "Something caught your hook" message, and press Enter right after that last message. It'll loop through those actions continuously, without the user having to ever press a single key.

The problem with bots is that it provides an unethical (and illegal according to the Terms of Service) advantage to those who use them. Those people can go to work, and let the bot do all the work for them, fishing out loads of stacks of fish by the time the user gets back home. Let's say the bot was fishing Moat Carp, and he got 10 stacks over the course of 8 hours. That gives that player around 40k in Gil for doing absolutely nothing, while most honest players who can average 10k an hour will have to spend a full evening in their work week to get that kind of money.

Bot usage is not only illegal, but also dangerous. Like all 3rd-party programs, they can be used as trojan horses to listen to the user's keystrokes and send them to the person who wrote the trojan. Information can be related to FFXI as well as other inputs done while the program was running. It can be used to listen to your PlayOnline password, thus hack your account. And if you ever change your credit card information while the program is running... That would be extremely damaging.

Edit: There are also bot programmers with a twisted sense of humor. I've heard stories of a player being banned because the bot was sending /shouts exposing the fraudulent player.
 
Halifirien said:
How do you even create a bot? I mean, I've seen Applejuice sitting in pretty much the same space since I started playing a month ago and thought "That's someone with waaaaaaaay too much time on their hands" before I realized there might not be a driver behind the metaphorical wheel. Is it just a macro thing?
Click to expand...

Sort of. Using the macros that come with the game is not considered botting (so for example, if you set your character on autorun and set across Windurst Woods and then forget about it, and your character sits there running against a wall for a few hours, it wouldn't be considered a bot). Leaving a character connected with a bazaar up (like Applejuice) isn't botting, either--it's just sitting there, not actually doing anything. It's when you try to automate more complex things (usually with a third party program) than you'd be allowed with what's provided in the game that you fall into botting. So for example, the most you can macro for fishing in FFXI is /wait N, /fish. But then you have to be at your desk to respond if you catch a fish, sort your inventory, and cast again. That's the stuff a bot would do.
 
Thought I'd share my fishing macro

- /echo -----Fishing Queued-----
- /equip Ammo "Little worm"
- /wait 14
- /fish

I always launch that macro right after I get the compass back on the screen. I also turn the music down and increase the volume of my speakers when there aren't any other fishermen around, so I can hear the cracking of my rod when something gets caught on my hook.

I kinda wish I had a PS2 FFXI for fishing. The vibration function would greatly help me. And I'd be able to chat online at the same time too. Fishing does get lonely over long periods of time...
 
That's pretty much what mine looks like, except I also change the rod depending on the bait and echo the type of bait I'm using. Cause I've broken one too many carbon rods by using it with big fish bait :(

The line tug noise from other people fishing nearby throws me off though, even though my speakers aren't turned up (I turn them up really loud too when I'm by myself).
 
Well, this sums up my attitude:
botters-die.gif
 
/em agree

Cheaters and Botters are all in the Same Boat, and i could help it, that Boat would be at the Bottom of the Ocean.
 
Ellah said:
/em agree

Cheaters and Botters are all in the Same Boat, and i could help it, that Boat would be at the Bottom of the Ocean.
Click to expand...

Playing with the Sea Horror. ><

*remembers trying to camp Argus and Mee Deggi*
 
What about those ppl who use auto-programmable controllers to "rapid fire" provoke to take NM spawns. They think its fair game since 'everyone' else does :p
 
I know botting is seen as horribly wrong and I would never do it but I think as long as the botters are not making huge undercuts and fudging with the AH and making moat carps worth 2 gil a stack I dont mind them, If people are too lazy to sit and enjoy the game and just want to be some rich elitist, they can go straight ahead and do that as long as they aint undercutting, As for NM bots I think they are poopy heads.
 
Tyrion said:
Daroth, one word:

Inflation.
Click to expand...


bah I think we sould all go back to the crude trading system of diablo where we dropped stuff onthe ground and picked it up and prayed the other person dropped it lol
 
Not being able to alt-tab is one of the reasons I am not playing FFXI anymore.

Not even because of bots, there are plenty of bots out there that don't require alt-tab, but because I feel that I, the user, ought to have the ultimate control of what is happening on my computer, and if I wish to use Trillian as I play a game, then no fucked-up nerdy developer should be able to ruin my day, thank you very much.

And one more thing, bots in any MMO are for the most part not for the average user. Some people who are comfortable fiddling with scripts and such find bots useful, but bot developers ususally try to keep the functionality at a level that is above the average player, thus only the technically inclined end up as potential user group.

In addition, botting is a bannable offense in most every MMO, why would anyone risk losing the character that one has invested countless hours in just to make a few thousand gil, if it is just as easy to skip your morning coffee and just buy those gil from reputable sources.
 
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