[Tyman]

The reason why it takes longer is that the whole design of the bot is different. The bots you see out there now work by reading standard memory information (health/mana and position, that's all they need/use) and then spamming win api calls to simulate you pressing the keyboard in timed events (say press 1, 2, 3, 4 with 3 second intervals inbetween).

Minion bots use an entirely different approach that rely fully on the core of the game, resulting in a far longer development time, but also far more features over the long run. A simple "move to spot X, press tab (grab nearest enemy as target), press 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 1, 2, 4 on a fixed interval (as an example), move to the next" would have been finished within a day... However, that is left to bots with names many of you probably know about, supporting like 30 games, with no specific features and functions related to the game they are 'written for' (<--- simply change the way some of the most basic information is obtained and throw it online, announcing bot #9348349).

Usually when a bot is released (other bots) they know where a game stores the most basic information, while when a minion bot (GW2/FFXIV) gets released, it means half the game's code has been traced down and enough is known about the design of the game and how it is coded that one could, in theory, almost create a clone 1 on 1 of it. This means it takes more time, but a design decision to have a long lasting experience, instead of the first 1, maybe 2 weeks (who would ever use those other bots for a whole year? Nobody I'd say).

I guess a good example would be a car. You could either drive it yourself, have someone else remote control it, or have a computer doing the driving for you. The first is what you don't want to do in a game, cause it can end up being really boring (farming non-stop etc), the second is what most bots do: they pretty much remotely turn the wheel, and push the gas pedals, hoping it all ends up going alright. Then there are the minion bots, which are essentialy autonomous cars with the board computer doing all the work for you. Fully aware of it's surroundings and the capabilities of the car.

If you can wait for the autonomous car, please wait a bit longer. If not, go pray you don't crash!

Great information! Thanks for this, I've been playing FFXIV a bunch and it's a ton of fun so far