Fishing bots: PWNED

[Xephoid]

I don't, bwhahaha :D

Originally posted by Nodoka
If you don't like pressing a fish macro for hours on end.........






Now here's the secret....





















Dont fish.

I don't (except when I'm waiting on the airship or lfg) lol. I like my sanity and my full head of hair too much. :D

But like I said, it's a source of money, and like any source of money, someone will try to get at it. Since SE made it so mind numbingly dull, those people who try to get at it will use bots. I can see where they are coming from. Not that I support them, but I can empathize. LOL. At least SE could have made it a little more fun than just type /fish + hit enter, that would have solved the botting problem. lol

[Deedlit]

People bot because it is free gil. Meaning, gil you don't have to "waste time" farming for by other means. Lots of the fish that you catch are sellable to NPCs, meaning, you don't have to waste time or AH slots to make your profit.

If people can bot, many of them will. I used to report bots a while ago, but even if they were banned for 3 days, they're always back. I have two accounts, one of which I use to fish while I play (my stuff is macroed, not hard to press a button while leveling). I never answer OMG u r a bot! tells from people standing next to me, but if a person asks for fishing advice, I will answer in /say. The first person usually shuts up then =P

But seriously, I don't think I could ever just straight up fish, without 2 boxing it with my main. Too damn boring.

[Nodoka]

I've fished for 13 hours straight once. It's fun for some people. o.x;

[Echo]

Originally posted by Nodoka
I've fished for 13 hours straight once. It's fun for some people. o.x;

I think it's fun when I'm in the mood for it. It is sorta like Tetris.. mindless activity with some slight hand-eye coordination. It's not much differnt than farming for other crafts (fortunately, there is no NPC that tells me how many crawlers I've killed for the miles and miles of silk thread I use.. that would be too depressing).

I dunno about 13 hours.. but I've done it for 4 hours on the boat with only occasional interruptions to play with the pirates.

[conaim]

good job SE, you did the rite thing ..... a real fisher alway know how to reposition himself/herself.....
I guess this is good enough for now until someone is comming up with another bot that know how to turn the char. around to the correct position, following is the couple thing that you can do to preventing bots:

- randomly turn the character 45 degree to the right or left.
- randomly move the character back 2-5 steps.
- if the broken rod is currently on, /equip command can't automaticly switching the new rod.
- don't allow /equip command with baits or lures.....
- add additional interaction when fishing. For example, the fish can move back and forth after bited the baits, the fisher much pull to the left or to the right depend on the fishs moving direction.


F*CK the botter.... I hate cheaters.....

[Nodoka]

I have yet to actually fish on the boat myself.. How is that?

Im curious, is there anti-bot codes out there? Or do you zone too fast with the boat and all?


btw.. more interaction doesnt sound like a good idea. I would never be able to fish for that much if I had to do a bunch of weird stuff. o.x; Bots could easily get around that. The only way I'd for for something like that is if they made the catchrate like 50x better and got rid of that stupid bot code.

[Mal]

I love that mentality of "IF IT WEREN'T FOR THESE CHEATERS, SE WOULDN'T HAVE TAKEN THESE PRECAUTIONS. DAMN THOSE CHEATERS >_<;;;;;"

How about this, if SE had made Fishing more FUN, people might not be cheating. (Well, LESS people will cheat. There will always be that one crowd...)

Think about it, it's the ultimate bot deterrent! You make fishing more fun, which in essence causes players to feel their $13 a month is well-spent. This in turn causes less bot programs, and less users to feel the need to use a bot.

Notice why there are bots to begin with: Because it's not too hard to emulate fishing. If they made it more of a minigame - more FUN - botting would be less likely to happen. I hear these arguments like "It's really not that hard to just sit there and press enter. I just read a book while I do it."

Sorry, no. I do not like the idea of paying per month for a game that encourages me to press a button once a minute while doing some other activity. I'm paying to play the game, not read a book and wear out my enter key. Furthermore, if some players are willing to spend literally eight hours hitting their fishing macro, then hitting enter when they get a bite, then waiting a few seconds and do it again, what makes it so bad that they have a program doing it for them? Why not just read a book while the program automates the process? If you're spending eight hours fishing, why should it matter whether the skin and nerves of your index finger are coming in contact with one key on your keyboard, or if an external program is doing it?

Yes, it may be a TOS violation or whatever, but I do not see what is morally wrong with it. SE has been lazy about a lot of things in this game (including the game itself - they couldn't have tried to make a bit more unique of an MMORPG experience?) and their answer to this fishing "problem" is "Let's just implement code to annoy everybody, including the botters." They took the quick fix route (and we all know "quick fixes" usually amount to "temporary solutions") instead of revamping something that should have been revamped from the getgo.

When I think "Final Fantasy" I expect standards higher than ripping off a craft from Ultima Online, one of the oldest MMORPGs out there.

[Paiku]

Square Enix should take a hint from Level 5's Dark Cloud 2, and base their fishing system around something similar. The initial snag requires some form of input from your end, and from there, whether you pull it in or not depends on a bit of player skill, and the quality of the rod you're using. And naturally, the kind of fish you attract depends on bait.

Fishing is one of those things I do whenever I'm traveling or waiting for the airship and thus I have 17 fishing skill over the course of my time on the game, but it needs improvement, period. I won't justify cheating since it's exactly that, but I won't condemn people either.

No matter how you look at it, the fishing system in its current form is extremely lacking. A bit of player input beyond the tapping of a button might help things out a LOT.

[Rigsta]

Originally posted by Mal
I love that mentality of "IF IT WEREN'T FOR THESE CHEATERS, SE WOULDN'T HAVE TAKEN THESE PRECAUTIONS. DAMN THOSE CHEATERS >_<;;;;;"

How about this, if SE had made Fishing more FUN, people might not be cheating. (Well, LESS people will cheat. There will always be that one crowd...)

It's not my fault I'm cheating, it's the GAME that's wrong not the botters!

Uhuh. Kind of backwards logic. It's the game's fault that someone is cheating. No. People cheat at it because they want the rewards without the effort. That's it. They want the gil or the lu shang's rod without earning them.




Note: "I" and its variations in the first sentence are not a reference to an individual.

[Gman]

Well, I went through every fishermans frustration last night trying to fish. It seems that S-E went out of their way to make that part of the game as far from fun as you can get. I caught a total of 3 moat carp in almost 2 hours, and I could count on one hand the number of bites I had in that time as well. Almost every catch was:

"You didn't catch anything"
"You didn't catch anything"
"You didn't catch anything"
"You didn't catch anything"

I actually saw this 18 times in a row at one point before getting "Something caught the hook"..."You lost your catch" then went back to "You didn't catch anything" again.

This is not fun... its not even remotely fun. The worst part is, in all the time I've spent fishing, which, admittedly is only about 5 hours total, I have a whopping 1 skill level.

Sure this part of the game can be profitable, but its so mind-numbing boring, and frustrating that you would have a hard time getting to the point where you start making good income.

In the time I've spent fishing, I could have killed hundreds of innocent creatures, and sold their drops.

I hate bots, BTW... can't stand that they basically get "free gil" while the rest of us have to work for it. THAT'S why it's against the TOS. It's cheating. Nothing anyone here can say will change that.

[Nodoka]

Well you have to factor in the moon, the bait, the rod, your location etc. Some days I get tons of misses and it really sucks.

[Gman]

Well, I'm still a new fisher, so just using bamboo rod, insect paste, think it was first quarter moon. Firesday/Earthsday... not sure which came first.

At least I didn't have to worry about losing all my bait...I wasnt hooking anything

My actual success rate of lost bait compated to catches is pretty good. I've used 2 stacks of insect paste, plus 1 from a 3rd stack, and I've caught 7 carps. My problem is getting the damn fish to bite. Nothing more frustrating than casting your line, then in 0.5 secs it says "You didn't catch anything"

[PetriW]

Originally posted by conaim
good job SE, you did the rite thing ..... a real fisher alway know how to reposition himself/herself.....
I guess this is good enough for now until someone is comming up with another bot that know how to turn the char. around to the correct position, following is the couple thing that you can do to preventing bots:

- randomly turn the character 45 degree to the right or left.

Doesn't help against good bots.

- randomly move the character back 2-5 steps.

Little bit harder but probably takes like 5 minutes to work around.

- if the broken rod is currently on, /equip command can't automaticly switching the new rod.

Trivial to go around.

- don't allow /equip command with baits or lures.....

Even easier to work around, you're just fucking it up for yourself here.

- add additional interaction when fishing. For example, the fish can move back and forth after bited the baits, the fisher much pull to the left or to the right depend on the fishs moving direction.

Prolly not hard to fix but at least this idea would be a bit more fun for fishing, pity it would also prevent people from doing other stuff when fishing (I watch anime, read or do homework while fishing. Force feedback is thx~)

Seriously, most ideas for preventing bots ruin fishing for legit players rather than fixing bots. All these ideas of preventing /equip, moving the character a little are just little traps for the truly n00b fishing bots.

Originally posted by Gman
Well, I went through every fishermans frustration last night trying to fish. It seems that S-E went out of their way to make that part of the game as far from fun as you can get. I caught a total of 3 moat carp in almost 2 hours, and I could count on one hand the number of bites I had in that time as well. Almost every catch was:

"You didn't catch anything"
"You didn't catch anything"
"You didn't catch anything"
"You didn't catch anything"

I actually saw this 18 times in a row at one point before getting "Something caught the hook"..."You lost your catch" then went back to "You didn't catch anything" again.

This is not fun... its not even remotely fun. The worst part is, in all the time I've spent fishing, which, admittedly is only about 5 hours total, I have a whopping 1 skill level.

Sure this part of the game can be profitable, but its so mind-numbing boring, and frustrating that you would have a hard time getting to the point where you start making good income.

In the time I've spent fishing, I could have killed hundreds of innocent creatures, and sold their drops.

I hate bots, BTW... can't stand that they basically get "free gil" while the rest of us have to work for it. THAT'S why it's against the TOS. It's cheating. Nothing anyone here can say will change that.

Your issues has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the anti-bot features, NOTHING AT ALL!
1) You have 1 fishing skill, don't expect to catch much, especially not 4 stacks or so of moat carp an hour.
2) In the 5 hours you've spent fishing you can't even have learned the basics on how moon, time of day, day of week, season and weather affects fishing.
3) With your example of how fishing "sucks" not even bots would be there, it would be a waste of time too since they also could run around killing innocent creatures.
4) If you know how/where to fish all these anti-bot features ain't an issue. Something you pick up while fishing and yes, fishing skill rises slower than a snail slowing down to take a corner.

[PetriW]

Originally posted by Gman
Well, I'm still a new fisher, so just using bamboo rod, insect paste, think it was first quarter moon. Firesday/Earthsday... not sure which came first.

At least I didn't have to worry about losing all my bait...I wasnt hooking anything

My actual success rate of lost bait compated to catches is pretty good. I've used 2 stacks of insect paste, plus 1 from a 3rd stack, and I've caught 7 carps. My problem is getting the damn fish to bite. Nothing more frustrating than casting your line, then in 0.5 secs it says "You didn't catch anything"

I've never seen a "You didn't catch anything" after only 0.5 seconds, usually it takes at least 15 seconds, minimum is like 5 seconds. Getting "You didn't catch anything" after 0.5 seconds is however an issue bots have.

You also fail to say where you were fishing, I bet Windurst, the bane of all Moat Carp fishermen.

Last night I was catching Moat Carp and Tricolored Carp without a single "You didn't catch anything" for an hour in Zeruhn.

Originally posted by Nodoka
I have yet to actually fish on the boat myself.. How is that?

Im curious, is there anti-bot codes out there? Or do you zone too fast with the boat and all?

Since you're zoning more often than a it takes for the anti-bot features to kick in I've never encountered a bad streak due to "fishing too much in one spot".
As for how boat fishing is... Unless you have very high skill or fish Nebimonites just cliffing in sarutabaruta with anti-bot features and all is better.
Caught my first Titanicus a few days ago, on the second cast that session none the less, made that fishing session an economic success story.

[Gman]

Well, I might have been exaggerating over 0.5 secs, but it's like cast - 1,2 "You didn't catch anything". You know, sometimes the game just cancels you out right away. It's frustrating after having to wait 15 secs to cast.

Also, yes I was in Windy, tried every zone with fresh water, and zoned regularly (does warp count as zoning?)

I cant understand it. I mean, I don't expect to catch fish every time, but it was borderline ridiculous. How can they make the game so frustrating? Do they get some sick pleasure out of watching us waste hours with no results? (hmm, come to think of it, they do... $$$ )