Bot Armies Are Flooding Starting Areas

Submitted a report to the STF just now about two armies, one in Bastok (Galka), and the other in San'Doria (Elvaan), all mass farming sparks on new characters. This is how they are doing it:

Have three designated "leaders" at level 11 Monk. These leaders invite new level 1 Monks to their party. They level these new characters up to level 11 by killing small prey in secluded areas. Once they reach 11 or close, the alliance is formed (might already be?) and then they level sync to 11.

From here, they mass farm low level mobs to gain sparks via the crystal gathering Records of Eminence. Once all new characters have capped sparks, they trade in for Acheron Shields and NPC them for 1m gil each. In one army, they could expect to make 15m per round, and it perhaps takes about an hour? I have not timed it, but it won't take long. Once this is done, they keep the leaders, delete the others, and create new ones to repeat the process.

I have witnessed them using the following third party tools:

1) Excessive movement speed

2) Clipping through walls

3) Pos Hacking across the zone
(They do this to place new characters in good camps without having to travel, or if a character reaches 50-60%)

4) Self healing
(I have no idea how they are healing so well, they just keep bumping up to 100% for no good reason)

This isn't just about gil, as it affects anyone wanting to gain experience points in the starting areas. I tried dumping Leaping Lizzy on one of these bots, but Monk's damage, along with the healing, meant it didn't do all that much.

There is a solution to all this though... Kill the crystal RoE objective. Either nerf it to the ground or remove it from the game. Only RMT abuse this, and it would certainly make these armies obsolete.

This has been a thing for a minute. Squares making like $9.99x ~400 every (other) week (effectively, they're mass bought during discount campaigns) While it is something they should do (remove crystal roe) they're not going to be willing to give up that free money and incredible metric (so many new players zomg look at them all!)

... at least, not in any meaningful timeframe. You know when sparks should've been addressed, years ago.

Im pretty sure the remedy will be more harmful than the disease.

All these RMT issues will go away if 3 days+ character deletion wait time is implemented.

They're level 10 on Odin, heh. I watched 3 Galkas zip in and out of Land Crabs in South Gusta while I was learning Blue Magic there on my LP guy. Move faster than flee. I threw off one's pathing a few times by out claiming him with Dia. It re-righted itself within 20 seconds, and zipped through a mesa, and killed a crab while inside of the mesa lol.

When you level up you get full hp .. ah the good ol days

Yes, been saying this for years. This is the only practical solution and it's so easy.

Unlikely. Who gives a ***about crystal roe?

Unfortunately, this.

They premake 16 chars on thursday, pretty sure they don't even have to delete any by the time they get banned.

Wouldn't they just set the bots to operate longer with the Conflict RoE, which does give a lot less, but still gives?

I mean, they're not just profiting from the Crystal RoE are they? They'd be profiting from the first time bonuses RoEs as well, right? Total damage taken, total damage 10000 etc.

What shocks me is that there is still a market for bought gil in s twenty year old game. I mean... I guess everyone that started this back in 2002 that still plays is like 35~45 years old now so they should have expendable income and rationalize spending real money for ingame currency is easier than spending real life time farming a mindless grind, but still.

Maybe it's the fact that I put so much effort into making gil a while back from AMAN Trove and now I just sit on it because so much stuff is free AF, but yeah. I guess the only people still buying gil must be the people that want to get all the REMA for e-peen.

Seriously, other than REMA, what is the gil sink people are buying gil for these days? Paying for merc clears? Paying for leech spots to burn up their multiple alts to Master? Maybe throwing gil at Crafting to brute-force their way to 110? That's all that really comes to mind. Maybe for mats to +1/+2/+3ing their AF/Relic/Empyrean? You can only hold two expensive AF weapons at once, still right? We don't have like 8 arms. There has to be something that my mind is just blanking on. Thoughts?

(I'm going to feel derpy when someone states something obvious).

Doesn't surprise me too much. Tons of endgame minds threw a lot of pride and self worth into having the most achievements/relics/being the perceived as the best etc.

Like them Salvage Bans back in the day. Didn't they occur due to JP being jealous that NA players were outpacing them on relic acquisition or something? Hence, the actual reason for the big gap between Salvage Dupes being exploited and Salvage Bans actually going forward?

With that kind of pettiness and pride, doesn't surprise me that people who have all RMEAs or are close to it, would just start up another character in case they lose one, bot and gil-buy it up to speed. Starting making multiple trophy characters? Maybe make trophy characters to sell?

Like I know there's some sorta market for people who buy characters. Never been sure who, how, why, and what it actually gets ya... but it's a thing so...

The crystal RoE composes 95%+ of their sparks. Conflict requires exp, so it probably doesn't work while level synced(no exp because sync is out of range). Even if it did, they'd no longer be financially viable.

18 accounts * $10 = $180 to make. They cap sparks in about 4 hours, and likely have 20k or less accolades by that point. They start late thursday, go through late sunday, so let's say best case they have 21 cashouts(6/day from fri-sun and 3 on thurs) on their 15 non-synced chars and 1 on their synced chars.

318 cashouts at 1.2m = 381.6m. If chinese resellers buy it at 60c/m, they make $49 per alliance. With 20ish alliances, their whole shop is making $1k a weekend or so(likely 4-5 workers cycling easyfarm and stuff, then they remake the SE accounts during the week). It's a good enough margin for bugmen, but they can't afford too much of a hit to output.

(It is possible that the keys are cheaper in some way for chinese, I have no idea where they source them. But, either way, removing crystal roe would reduce their output to essentially nothing and they would disappear.)

Oh, and I liked this thread more when it was called:

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/56175/dem-galka-bots-doe/

Anyway, I'm sure nothing said on this primarily English-speaking forum will affect anything a Japanese game company is going to do. Complain on the official English forums, I guess. It will have the same affect as:

the longer it takes to farm gil the higher the real money price for gil becomes. ofc there will always be some lunatic rich ppl with a shut up and take my money approach.

however, there are most likely not enough rich ppl playing FFXI to sustain many RMT and anyone who has to work for their money would probably opt out at that point.

A ton of "adults" with terrible mindsets.

Throw hundreds or thousands at this game and then have what to do?

There's a guy who posted here looking for basically all contents clears and says he AFKs all the time.

Pathetic.

Conflict doesn't require EXP.

why wouldn't they cut out the middle man and sell it directly themselfs? are there so many chinese speakers among the customers?

Yeah, I saw that post. Gotta AFK in the best lockstyle because endgame is just vanity/glamour lockstyles.


Yes.

Can confirm they are on Odin too.

I was trying to level a low-level the other day and they kept stealing my mobs. They are located across the whole zone at every decent camp. So you can’t avoid them. Must make leveling 1-10 as a returning player quite annoying.

My mistake. It's still 1 spark/mob, only when in exp range. Crystals are 60-80 sparks/mob zonewide.

There are lots of new players coming into the game from ff14, I've met a lot over the past year. I can think of at least 3 of them that bought metric tons of gil and have lots of REMA, Ody gear etc now

The thing about FFXI is it's kind of unique and so has never been replaced, most modern games are really casual. Grind and work are seen as dirty words these days but there are still lots of autists that like it. The problem is, we aren't numerous enough to sustain some new 100m mmorpg and so it's this or nothing now.

When I stopped playing XI I played so many games to try find a replacement, they were either crap or I was burning through them laughably fast and had nothing to do. I came back to XI cause there was nothing else on the market and there still isn't.

When you go out into the wilds and find there isn't anywhere else to move to, your mindset changes.

That new car smell can keep you going for a while but it won't keep you long-term, I did enjoy a few games I played but in a year or so I was done. Warframe, Tera, ESO are good in the short term.

The longest I've managed to not play FFXI is about 4 years. OTL She's a seductive mistress.

Its not just Crystal ROE its also Spoils ROE. In the starting zones its very easy to get a bunch of spoils if you have 18 mules spread through out the zone fighting different things. You can get Flint Stones, Zinc, Honey, Bat Wings, sheepskin, etcs etcs and its just 2/2 for 100/10 S/A, on spoils which is zonewide too. So nerfing crystals ROE is not the solution cause then you gotta nerf spoils too.

Another way to put a big dent in their current method is to put a delay of X time since character creation in exchanging sparks/accolades. There's going to be a tipping point where it's too slow to generate gil to be worthwhile.

I don't think your typical new player has an idea of what's going on in the game for a bit, so I can't imagine it would affect much for legitimate players.

SquareEnix does get off on putting 40-days-since-character-creation limits on other things. 40 days is the magic number because that means they can get at least two billing cycles out of it, I think.

The truth of the matter though was stated earlier (and in many other threads). RMT paying for keys is income for SquareEnix. Ideas for solutions to any RMT issue posted on this forum isn't gonna do anything to change this.

Just accept / ignore. Not like it takes more then 20 minutes to get out of the starter areas anyway.

SE tolerating RMT and profiting from it is a roundabout (and dishonest) way to do its own RMT. There is only one way to fix this that makes economic sense: SE would have to officially do its own RMT, and open a store where for $$$ you can buy job points and items.

That crosses the line.

Players are naive enough to believe that square is on their side. They don't "allow" the botting, it's just really really tough to ban them all. And they'll just come back anyway so what's the point. And well, they have so little staff, it's a tough ask. and excuse after excuse after excuse. (I guess the obvious sarcasm isn't obvious) They don't grasp the simple concept that FFXI is a for profit business first and a game a distant second.

Square gets the money without dropping the curtain.

There have been RMT out there for YEARS and reported non-stop and never banned. Even low staff counts shouldn't take this long to react. That's why they come back. This is what lends to the idea that some are protected and/or they DO allow botting.

If SE were to remove the RMT from the game completely, wouldn't that destabilize the economy? and other aspects of the game that people currently take for granted? Let's say RMT have been gone for a 1+ years...what would the game look like from an ordinary player's perspective?

Edit: yay, 1000th post ....nobody cares.