July 2026 Version Update

maybe a more accurate phrase to get the idea across is "cooperative" game?

the issues with jobs being essential but not drawing in enough players to fill the gaps is a fascinating one to me because the contemporary dev answer seems to be making them less essential rather than making them more fun, interesting, or engaging. FFXIV's tank/heal issues come to mind, and i have plenty of suggestions for how to fix that because that game is new enough to have some wiggle room in design.

but XI's BRD looks like it's pretty boxed in at this point. songs work the way they do, that's extremely unlikely to ever change, and the way songs work is often confusing and annoying when it comes into contact with Oopsie! situations even if you spend the time to figure it all out and practice in advance. like with COR, they've worked in enough buff duration to make buff maintenance less of an all-consuming focal point, and the other things that BRD and COR do are....gain TP, spend TP. unless you're dealing with really specific gaol fights that have their own design issues. so, quite literally, what any other DD does but with more responsibilities and more steps.

part of why i really enjoy WHM in XI is that its buff maintenance is staggered out so i get that feeling of keeping the plates spinning on top of being strategic with decision-making under stress. deciding when and where to refresh a buff, top someone up, clear a low priority debuff, pop an important prophylactic JA, etc. is fun! and because newer games take more role-agnostic approaches XI is one of the last places i can get that experience.

It's a social game. Whether you choose to play it solo or not, it's designed specifically to force (or these days: strongly incentivize) group play. It requires coordination and planning between players, by design.

Sure, you can circumvent that by botting, but that doesn't change the intentions of the designers and developers.

I still play with my friends and chat about our lives, make jokes, and congratulate each other on achievements. We help each other through challenging times, we celebrate victories together.

Even outside of my static, I still socialize with other LS mates, we help each other out, we share stories, commiserate about abyssea NM farming, bad luck on malignance drops, and discuss the news of the day. We share memes and chat about upcoming campaigns, content, etc.

What the hell does socializing mean to you people if not this? If you're not experiencing this, then I'm sorry but your experience could be so much better if you stopped 6botting and actually spoke with another person while doing boring grindy ***. If it were meant to be a great solo experience, it would be designed very differently. It's not.

6 botting is a cancer on the population, community, and the people doing it.
Private servers are another great candidate for the worst problems facing the game, for similar reasons: removing players, support, and community.
RMT are not remotely close to the worst problems facing the game, I agree.
I don't think a lack of care or love for the game, from SE and the team, is even on the radar.

6 botting, did we coin a new term

That's what I call it because honestly, everyone playing 6 is botting and calling it 6boxing is an insult to 2boxers. Just my personal preference.

'Multibotting' is the general term because not every game has the same group size as XI.

I know its cool to Villanueva 6 boxers, but they dont do as much damage as you think. They probably dont have time to devote to groups or linkshells, so if they were forced to group up they would probably quit. And a lot do team up despiste what youre saying. They always include others or friends instead of doing everything solo. And if you look on here many people are recruiting for statics even tho they could easily fill with a mule. Its always more efficient to have a real person for the hardest content.

The people recruiting aren't 6 botters trying to replace one of their bots, they're 5 humans trying to find a 6th. IME, people who have an alt (or maybe 2) frequently help others and often drop their alt for another player. People with 6 play by themselves because they don't need anyone else. Sure, they may occasionally join up with others or help out, but they're much less likely to, again IME, because they are self-sufficient, among various other reasons.

I don't buy this "I'm too busy and my schedule is impossible" nonsense. Playing with others doesn't have to be a full-time commitment signed in blood, you can play with others twice a week, or once every 13 days on a random Tuesday at 10 am. People always make it out like it's a binary decision and that's why they HAD to bot, because they had no other choice. It's BS. I've known plenty of players who have weird schedules who have been able to find regular groups, plenty of others who randomly join/start/pop in to groups to do stuff with people. You can just send a random message to people in discord: I'm thinking of doing limbus tomorrow night, who wants in? I'd like to do this UNM, does anyone else want to work on it together? It's not a marriage proposal or a real estate contract.

People in my LS regularly ask if anyone wants to run a random seg farm. We just had an impromptu aeonic thrown together. Every time I run limbus, I ask in ls if anyone wants to come along. You don't have to be in a monogamous relationship with a contract to play with others, and, crucially, you don't need bots if you engage with people like this. You will make different bots called friends.

-boxer vs -botter is mostly to distinguish who is actually playing their accounts vs who is mostly toggling automation on or off. The number of accounts isn't really that important. I think it's fair to say that only one of these methods is 'gaming', which is probably why the alternative is banned in so many other MMOs as well.

All multi-boxers cheat. Yes, you too.

All non-XI client third party tools are cheats. Stop pretending, it's cringe af.

You can argue one is harmful one isn't - both are still cheats. SE doesn't care you just use windower to have a superior alt-tab experience with your manually controlled 2-box.

They would ban you for using third party tools just the same if they didn't care more about the $$$ subscription fee than the fact you're cheating.

Now, there are a ton of reasons people multi-box to the degree that they do. Several of my in game friends are multi boxers which I group up with occasionally. The primary reason they multi-box so heavily is because of their time constraints around gaming.

They don't have uninterrupted hours they can spend on gaming, they have lives, families, several children. Their XI time is typically their working time so they plan their activities around low human interaction so they can mostly focus on their work. I don't like it, and clearly they have a job that both lets them wfh most of the time and also doesn't require 100% of their focus - it's not something I could ever do with my work.

They don't have an alternative though. If they could not multi-box so they could run something - won't call it playing since they're not there most of the time - they would just not be subscribed.

And here is the truth. Without all these multi-boxers, would the game survive? Take away all the $$$ from multi-box armies, what do you have left? A couple hardcore no lifers clinging to their alt-tabbing superiority, grouping up with humans or people pretending to be humans. What then. You think SE will cater to these folk?

You think the supreme grind in recent content is catered around humans with lives? You think SE doesn't see who really drives profit in XI, you think they don't have stats on single account vs multiple? Get real.

Also, it must be pretty tiring having all these multi-boxers living rent free in everyone's heads, thinking up of new clever ways to put them down for their choices. Hate to break it to you but none of them give a flying saucer frak what you or anyone else thinks and will continue to box and bot regardless what anyone says.

What really really grates with me though are the multi-box armies with people that will turn around and pretend they're alt-tabbing if you ask them about it. You know who these are.

No one's buying it bro, it's cringe. Stop it.

That goes for "I'm not cheating bro, just alt-tab" guy that has no problem with Leaden Saluting statues from 40' away without engaging in Dyna too. Can vanilla do that? No? Cheating then. Stfu, I don't care.

In a case of cause-and-effect, however, the fact that XI is propped up by multi-box subscription fees leads to content designed around multi-box. That leads to content that is grindy AF and heavily automated. That leads to a miserable experience for everyone, leading to yet more automation and yet more multiboxing.

Great, if you receive subscription fees. Not so great, if you actually like to play sometimes and want content that doesn't require you to no-life it to make any meaningful progress. I don't have a way forward, only a cancelled subscription.

Travel for work, haven't had time to join a static or any regular linkshell. I would not play without multiboxing. I also wouldn't play if multiboxing 6 meant tabbing through 6 chars, you can't cure effectively that way. Ok maybe you, you special special person you, you can effectively heal alt-tabbing through 6 chars, but I can't.

attackwithme, send, without them you're just shooting yourself in the foot when multiboxing. Anything more than that, I'd consider botting, which also who cares? This game has not been "competitive" since HNM shells died decades ago. Your epeen is yours alone, no one else cares.

"In the beginning there was Trust magic, or so the legend says",

if the trust support gets Giga buffed there will be no issues at all.