opinions wanted

i've recently seen some "activity" by a member in another LS, and i wanted your opinions on it

the "activites" i'm talking about refer to the ability to do ASTRAL BURN parties, in which a full pt of summoner's (synced to a lower level) get a high lvl healer (whm or rdm) to aggro EVERYTHING in the area and they all 2hr astral flow the army... to me, this is cheating the system and i was just wondering what you all thougth


the other thing that i "heard" about, is a "scripting" thing that programs your comp to hit certain keys at reg intervals, called Autoit, to me this is BOTTING your char cause you can leave the comp and your still getting skill up's (( AKA 3rd party software to get something free out of FF (as an example, casting all the summons for summoning skill ups and getting from like 140 to MAX at 75 in 2 days or so)) again, how do you feel about this?


should someone be banned from the game for these "activites"?? would you report them if you knew someone that wont listen to reason?

Yeah I would report the person for these things. More for the Scripting stuff then astral flow abuse. Yes it is annoying that they aggro the whole zone leaving HUGE respawn times for other parties (if they chose a regular party zone) But I dont feel this is really a reportable offense.. Just a flag that someone is a douchebag. But really depends on if they are affecting other parties from getting mobs with these tactics. Using astral flow really limits how much EXP they can gain from these tactics.

More so I dont like when people mess with scripting or hack the programing of the game.. When the game gets errors it screws it up for everyone. (More maintenence for them to fix the problem and more down time for us..) Fishing had to be dramtically altered due to bots. Now we have those "wonderful" gobbies roaming everywhere waiting to screw something up by bomb tossing a pt to death while they tried to fight a worm and got massive silence. (seen it)

while SE hasn't put forth any rules against astral burning, i agree that it is cheating ... not only are you getting a ton of experience points in one whollop, but you're actually gaining an unfair advantage over everyone else in the zone which IS against the rules set forth by SE ... i know people who are fans of this but i would never do it. i have a feeling at some point, probably soon, SE is going to find a way to counter this, tho i'm unsure how.

as for the auto scripter ... yes, that is botting and SE has ways of determining who is botting and that's a no no ... you see posts all the time about the STFU (special task force unit) discovering botters and banning them. bad idea to do this.

as for you reporting someone to a GM, unfortunately it's only hearsay and unless you have some viable proof that they are botting (the astral burn is fairly obvious) then the GMs probably won't be able to do anything, however, it may put a bug in their ear and they begin to watch this person closer.

If you're serious about reporting them then just go to the Special Task Force's page and send in a report to them instead of actually communicating with a GM. They'll investigate and yadda yadda yadda. I've done that with a couple of those random gil selling tells I've gotten as opposed to contacting a GM

I'm not really sure how I feel about the Astral burn thing, on one hand I see how it can be considered cheating, but on the other hand I don't know that I find it really that much different than having a PL. As far as the scripting thing goes I definitely think that is something that you should at least report to be investigated. If I gotta sit my ass in this seat to level or skill up, everyone else should have to as well.

i wanna report em, but like i said, there apart of the other LS Naughty and i r in (sure he can be a jerk at times but still) i dont wanna have anyone (other then him) pissed at me if he does get the boot, know what i mean? i think i'm gonna look into what Shui suggested and try to post on the task force page, maybe that way it can be an annonimous tip

well, if this is his first offense anyway he won't get booted. he'll get a temporary suspension of his account and told to cease the activities that go against the T.O.S. if this is a habitual offense, he'll probably get perma-banned.