Does Square intend to address Market botting?

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

I think they only have 5 people if they hired 2 more to make them tea. or maybe massage their feet and shoulders to relax them after all the hard work they put in.

I really have no issues with their development team but their anti cheat systems seem to be only designed to promote cheating. many other game makers at least seem to try and stem the tide of cheaters and botters, despite the fact that it may be a never ending battle. SE seems to have just either given up, or has a % of the RMT sales. I have a hard time thinking they are really this incompetent at detection.

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Yeah we discussed this before, and I totally agree. I really have no clue why their stance is so weak. Most gaming companies are at least outspoken about cheaters. SE seems to want to keep things under the table for some odd reason.

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Originally Posted by Prrringles

Yeah we discussed this before, and I totally agree. I really have no clue why their stance is so weak. Most gaming companies are at least outspoken about cheaters. SE seems to want to keep things under the table for some odd reason.

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I think its an "honour" thing.

they dont want to admit even to themselves it is out of control and they have let it slide to where it is today. there are companies doing evrything they can to make their games fair and to get rid of cheaters, SE just gets rid of the easy targets now and must feel pride for even that small accomplishment

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Originally Posted by Prrringles

Yeah we discussed this before, and I totally agree. I really have no clue why their stance is so weak. Most gaming companies are at least outspoken about cheaters. SE seems to want to keep things under the table for some odd reason.

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Because they don't feel like they can win the battle and it would have an effect on future content quality/quantity. So you would work on something that most likely won't fix it anyway, so they rather don't even work on it and focus on things they can improve instead.

The better approach would probably be to overhaul the whole marketboard, being able to make buyorder and not just sellorders, it would limit undercutting and bots will be happy with selling to buyorders. This marketboard/retainer style is just so time ineffecient and oldschool. You need to do so many clicks for just 1 thing.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

The better approach would probably be to overhaul the whole marketboard, being able to make buyorder and not just sellorders,

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I'm not very familiar with such systems.
With buyorders would buyers set the price and the sellers sell to the ones with the highest buy offer?

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

The better approach would probably be to overhaul the whole marketboard, being able to make buyorder and not just sellorders, it would limit undercutting and bots will be happy with selling to buyorders. This marketboard/retainer style is just so time ineffecient and oldschool. You need to do so many clicks for just 1 thing.

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This isn’t stock market. Buy orders, limits, etc. would just confuse the regular players.

When you go into a store, you look at what’s available and buy an item if you feel both the item and the price are acceptable. Average shoppers wouldn’t want to have research market price and market history (a mere 20 or 30 entries of last transactions, rather than days/months/years) before they decide whether to buy.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

I'm not very familiar with such systems.
With buyorders would buyers set the price and the sellers sell to the ones with the highest buy offer?

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Buyers would state "I'm willing to buy X amount of this item at this price per item."
Sellers would decide if they are willing to fill the order.

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Originally Posted by Seleni

This isn’t stock market. Buy orders, limits, etc. would just confuse the regular players.

When you go into a store, you look at what’s available and buy an item if you feel both the item and the price are acceptable. Average shoppers wouldn’t want to have research market price and market history (a mere 20 or 30 entries of last transactions, rather than days/months/years) before they decide whether to buy.

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It's not that confusing. Other games use buy orders without problem and they incorporate an easy to view/read sales history just as this game does.

If someone is confused by it, they can choose not to use it as regular sell listings would remain.

I played RIFT, which had both buy and sell orders. I rarely used the buy order system directly but I definitely benefited from its existence as the game would match sell orders against buy orders when either was placed. There were plenty of times I would list sell orders at the going market rate just to have it immediately matched to an existing buy order that paid much more than the price I listed.

That system also allowed purchase of partial stacks (it was optional, the seller could opt out and only allow the full stack to be purchased). If someone had 50 listed at a good price but I only needed 10, I could just buy the 10. The remaining 40 would still be for sale to other players.

I know some sellers hate the idea of partial stack purchases but most would end up benefitting because you'd be getting the partial stack sales faster plus it means more listing space available for selling other items. I could list a single 99 stack even though I know players only buy 4-6 of the item at a time with very high frequency while still selling 19 other items/stacks on that retainer instead of having 16 listings of 6 but only room to sell 4 other items. The marketboard is a convenience feature. The more convenient it is for a player to get exactly what they want (without being forced to buy too much), the more they'll buy.

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Originally Posted by Seleni

This isn’t stock market. Buy orders, limits, etc. would just confuse the regular players.

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It works perfectly well in guild wars 2 and is super responsive aswell. Think EvE has that system too. If you want a less abuseable game economy you have to try to mimic the real one.

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Originally Posted by Seleni

Average shoppers wouldn’t want to have research market price and market history (a mere 20 or 30 entries of last transactions, rather than days/months/years) before they decide whether to buy.

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Isn't that exactly how it is atm, I have to check the history tab of the item to see the last 30 buyers and see if the current price is acceptable.
If you have buy and sell orders you simply see the supply/demand, if you know 10000 people are willing to buy it at price 10$ then the price of 11$ is totally acceptable. It is very simple.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

It works perfectly well in guild wars 2 and is super responsive aswell. Think EvE has that system too. If you want a less abuseable game economy you have to try to mimic the real one.

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The MMO markets feel too small for the such system not to be easily abused/manipulated. But well if it’s just going to be additional option, I suppose from the point of view of players, as long as the top drop/quest gears/token gears are equal to/better than crafted gear, it won’t matter?

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

Isn't that exactly how it is atm, I have to check the history tab of the item to see the last 30 buyers and see if the current price is acceptable.
If you have buy and sell orders you simply see the supply/demand, if you know 10000 people are willing to buy it at price 10$ then the price of 11$ is totally acceptable. It is very simple.

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What I was trying to say, with that line, was that the game currently doesn’t provide enough in-game info to do a correct historical analysis of item pricing. A single person buying up a 20-30 small orders in spans of hours (minute?) is sufficient to wipe out previous price history and set a new price point. If people do a buy order based on that, then that probably will becomes the new price point.

Also the effectiveness is going to depend on how often the system performs the actual price check/purchase. Currently on the app it only does price check on your favorites once a day. If the buy order is done once a day, then the time you set for the check becomes rather important.

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Originally Posted by Seleni

Also the effectiveness is going to depend on how often the system performs the actual price check/purchase. Currently on the app it only does price check on your favorites once a day. If the buy order is done once a day, then the time you set for the check becomes rather important.

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It's realtime in other games, but we are stuck on a heavily improvised ancient 1.0 code and a game engine that is 15 years old. MMORPG are a dying breed otherwise FFXIV wouldn't be up to date anymore.
Legit the marketboard is one of the few things in this game which never got much of an update besides favorites, its so laggy and timeconsuming...

Aether DC Market got completely blown up this week by the influx of brazen crafter bots taking advantage of the game sale. So much fun...

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Originally Posted by Voidle

Aether DC Market got completely blown up this week by the influx of brazen crafter bots taking advantage of the game sale. So much fun...

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brazen is gear across a data center, all crafted by one person, being sold under retainers with the name of the world, then roman numerals etc as a variation across teh ENTIRE data center.

and SE just looking teh other way, because thats not an indication of RMT at all.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

brazen is gear across a data center, all crafted by one person, being sold under retainers with the name of the world, then roman numerals etc as a variation across teh ENTIRE data center.

and SE just looking teh other way, because thats not an indication of RMT at all.

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Same on Chaos. I bet hey are all the same organisation.

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Originally Posted by Prrringles

Same on Chaos. I bet hey are all the same organisation.

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I am sure SE thinks they are just one person trying to maximize gil on ALL worlds and data centers because of some ego thing.... or something

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

I am sure SE thinks they are just one person trying to maximize gil on ALL worlds and data centers because of some ego thing.... or something

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I don't think SE is thinking anything at all. The botting is -- if anything-- only increasing. When fun things stop being fun it might be time to pull the plug. I am probably unsubbing when the new exp launches. I can't see anything changing at all. Bots will level up and take over again after a few weeks. Frustrations will continue to dominate. Two years from now we would probably still be here complaining about SE not doing anything. Pretty sad, no? I have enough fun things I can do in my free time. Why use that precious time for something frustrating.

actually, I am hoping the the WoW streamers/refugees that they are welcoming with open arms start commenting on the bot situation

might be interesting to see what their reaction is to widespread bad publicity regarding their inaction on bots

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

actually, I am hoping the the WoW streamers/refugees that they are welcoming with open arms start commenting on the bot situation

might be interesting to see what their reaction is to widespread bad publicity regarding their inaction on bots

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Most new players won't notice any bots on the MB. Maybe the farm bots that teleport if anything at all. Streams also don't craft 24/7 because no one wants to see that. I would not expect much from those players.

On Ultros we recently were blessed with a few weeks of the local bot being gone. Hopefully banned from all the reporting we did. Sadly, a new bot has take their place. 24.7 in their apartment, and the low 20's FC members logging in to run from the FC chest to summoning bell to undercut everyone by 1 gil. The main crafter was Samito Moshantu, thank god they are gone. Now we have Yozakura Byregot and their FC of 9 people...I was wondering why my gear wasnt selling, now i know why! I sent 2 complaints about cheating already, im sure ill send more or maybe just stop playing altogether.

They just posted a new "action against" post a bit ago.. looking at the number that was banned due to botting... not the RTM bots.. just general botting like market board and crafting bots.. 1 person was banned..

So the answer is no.. theyre not doing anything about player botting when it comes to crafting and market board manipulation..

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Originally Posted by Baxcel

They just posted a new "action against" post a bit ago.. looking at the number that was banned due to botting... not the RTM bots.. just general botting like market board and crafting bots.. 1 person was banned..

So the answer is no.. theyre not doing anything about player botting when it comes to crafting and market board manipulation..

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Any crafting/MB bots feeding RMT would be lumped under the RMT bans.

They did hit several accounts for non-RMT botting in April but we've got no way of knowing if those were crafting/MB bots run by players just looking to get rich or other types of bots such as PvP.

They are doing things, it's just not sufficient to keep on top of the problem. We see the occasional reports in this thread about the suspected bots who have disappeared.

Also, you don't need to bot to engage in marketboard manipulation. You just need to do a little advance planning and preparation.

So the lesson here is dont assume everyone is a bot. There are people who do just play the markets.

Also here to vote for RS. He is, as a previous poster said, just damn bloody good at it.
One would think a self proclaimed multi millionaire could find a better use for his/her spare time instead of retaliating on people who are dedicating time and effort to doing what they enjoy ingame.

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Originally Posted by Anya_Synia

So the lesson here is dont assume everyone is a bot. There are people who do just play the markets.

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It's doubtful they're going to listen to you anymore than they've been willing to listen to me. They'd rather believe everyone else is cheating instead of accepting that just maybe some of those other players are more dedicated to making crafting and the marketboard their game play.

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Originally Posted by Naiadini_Tyaka

Also here to vote for RS. He is, as a previous poster said, just damn bloody good at it.
One would think a self proclaimed multi millionaire could find a better use for his/her spare time instead of retaliating on people who are dedicating time and effort to doing what they enjoy ingame.

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Hate to say it but it's just a reflection of real life where some rich people focus on digging up dirt real or imagined to defame and push their competition out of business so they can get richer.

I have always told anyone that asks me how I was successful on the MB that you have to treat it like a job if you want to make gil at it. having some expectation that you can list and walk away expecting it to miraculously sell with the bots and competition is asking for disappointment. personally I always enjoyed competing against a real player, and you can tell, there are patterns just like with bots, its as close as I'll get to pvp lol

the bots can go, people knowing how to market, well, they can most certainly stay or it would be a dull part of the game indeed

The bots came out of the closet like crickets yesterday on my server. I've been selling stuff on the market for a longer period of time and it was easy for me to spot this abnormal behavior pattern, especially considering the server I'm on is one of the lowest populated there is and suddenly a rather modest market gets flooded with items at the same time. The bots probably awakened because the game has gotten much more popular lately. As OP says if the bots are allowed to reign the market board will be just another NPC, except the money goes to illegal gold selling against government rules across the world for tax evasion and money laundering. Wouldn't be surprised if SE got into legal issues over that if that's how it ends up.

Seems like it's the same story everywhere.

Some people were honestly assuming some botting circles had gotten banned as a lot of them suddenly disappeared a couple months back, but it seems like their subs just expired simultaneously because most of said bots are now back to their usual market flooding.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Seems like it's the same story everywhere.

Some people were honestly assuming some botting circles had gotten banned as a lot of them suddenly disappeared a couple months back, but it seems like their subs just expired simultaneously because most of said bots are now back to their usual market flooding.

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There is also a lot of new operations popping up. Unsure if it's older operations re-establishing themselves after a ban, or brand new ones. But with the influx of new players, there's suddenly a market to cater to and gather gil from. So, not a surprise.

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Originally Posted by Nepentha

There is also a lot of new operations popping up. Unsure if it's older operations re-establishing themselves after a ban, or brand new ones. But with the influx of new players, there's suddenly a market to cater to and gather gil from. So, not a surprise.

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let me correct that for you...

to SELL gil to.

whole new mess of people that dont like starting with nothing, so a larger market for their "product"

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

let me correct that for you...

to SELL gil to.

whole new mess of people that dont like starting with nothing, so a larger market for their "product"

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I said: market to cater to and gather gil from

So I touched on that, too. I mean, they have to get their mitts on gil, to sell to this new market they want to cater to.

So expect the use of marketbots to gain even more traction and push out player run operations.

For those wondering what these bots look like or behave like. You can see it here, I took this screen a few minutes ago here: https://i.ibb.co/JK6vTfN/Evidence-day-2-edit.png

They update either at a set time window, or instantly (like after 10 seconds, you can see if their name vanish for a few seconds, that's when they update). Then you hoover over the item to see who made it. The creator and the seller is usually always the same person. You can also rob the bot for some cheap items this way, but best just to report them to Square Enix.

Here is another one from today, notice that the bot is using different retainers and the update would be impossible for a human to pull off (all came up at the exact same time):

https://i.ibb.co/2vqY9vS/Day-3-Avesna-3-Edited.png

I haven't really noticed them on Primal. Is it a problem on other datacenters specifically?

As far as I can tell, the bots are seemingly bypassing the standard retainer interface as the ones I've observed on my server never actually target the bell and will just run over to it, stand there for 10-20 seconds, then teleport to the next timed node they intend to gather from. During that brief time they're somehow able to adjust the prices on ALL of their retainers, which is blatantly impossible for an actual player as just cycling through that many retainers would normally take close to a minute due to all the loading and menuing.

That would suggest that they are actually hacking to make the retainer/price management faster, but SE doesn't seem to be able to pick it up for whatever reason.

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Originally Posted by SillyCrow

I haven't really noticed them on Primal. Is it a problem on other datacenters specifically?

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The JP datacenters have less of them simply because the RMT market is not as strong as it is elsewhere.

There is some level of botting activity regardless but it seems to be done more for personal benefit.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

As far as I can tell, the bots are seemingly bypassing the standard retainer interface as the ones I've observed on my server never actually target the bell and will just run over to it, stand there for 10-20 seconds, then teleport to the next timed node they intend to gather from. During that brief time they're somehow able to adjust the prices on ALL of their retainers, which is blatantly impossible for an actual player as just cycling through that many retainers would normally take close to a minute due to all the loading and menuing.

That would suggest that they are actually hacking to make the retainer/price management faster, but SE doesn't seem to be able to pick it up for whatever reason.

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I would love to know how they have managed that and how that is not bannable. I get it, SE has limited resources etc blah blah blah, but as you point out, without hacking/botting, thats impossible

It is particularly strange because they did swiftly crack down on the bots that were being used to simply gather data on marketboard prices due to how often they were pinging the servers.

You'd think they could see the abnormal speed of price changes/item transfers these guys are doing compared to normal players and respond accordingly.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

I would love to know how they have managed that and how that is not bannable. I get it, SE has limited resources etc blah blah blah, but as you point out, without hacking/botting, thats impossible

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If I had to guess, most of the slowness in the conventional retainer interface is client-sided, therefore if they're hacking they can basically just strip away all of the time-wasting elements so it goes faster.

This would, however, create a very obvious disparity between them and normal players.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

As far as I can tell, the bots are seemingly bypassing the standard retainer interface as the ones I've observed on my server never actually target the bell and will just run over to it, stand there for 10-20 seconds, then teleport to the next timed node they intend to gather from. During that brief time they're somehow able to adjust the prices on ALL of their retainers, which is blatantly impossible for an actual player as just cycling through that many retainers would normally take close to a minute due to all the loading and menuing.

That would suggest that they are actually hacking to make the retainer/price management faster, but SE doesn't seem to be able to pick it up for whatever reason.



The JP datacenters have less of them simply because the RMT market is not as strong as it is elsewhere.

There is some level of botting activity regardless but it seems to be done more for personal benefit.

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Are you certain you're looking at the correct character tied to the retainer with the listing?

I mean I could always be shuffling what I craft to one of my alts and listing on their retainers (have done this a few times when trying to increase how much gil the alt has).

If listings for multiple retainers are getting updated simultaneously, then there's some sort of multiboxing going on. The character you're watching could be getting moved with the characters being used for listing mules while they are doing the actual interaction. It would be so easy to hide mules in "plain sight" in the housing wards where almost no one ever goes.

I was feeling that particular bot out by trying to sell the same items as them and the undercuts always happened only whenever they stopped at the retainer bell (Which was extremely often as it was after literally every timed node they visited).

Some bot farmers run coalitions that consist of multiple crafters/gatherers working in tandem but as far as I could tell this particular individual was a solo venture as on some days they'd be gathering and visiting Limsa for retainer access, while on others they'd retreat into an apartment and be spamming crafts all day long.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

If listings for multiple retainers are getting updated simultaneously, then there's some sort of multiboxing going on. The character you're watching could be getting moved with the characters being used for listing mules while they are doing the actual interaction. It would be so easy to hide mules in "plain sight" in the housing wards where almost no one ever goes.

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strangely enough one of the more obvious bots on Zalera just has the mules in the major cities. back when I cared I tracked their login and out, knew who their retainers were etc, the crafter was obviously multiboxing since the main would stay in and only the other "members" of their fc would cycle in and out as they checked/changed prices. I suspect that the replacement gear was transferred via fc chest since the boards they stayed at were as close to the chest as possible.

Is interesting. As the prices on USA servers are way higher (2 to 100 times, depending on item) of the prices on Japanese servers. I bet there are still bots in JP servers. Just not used for RMT. You need high prices for RMT to be desired by players. The higher the prices, the more RMT is going on.

I guess is the RMT and not the bots that cause the high prices on USA servers. I long played on Japanese one. So I know the prices and was shocked when I went to play on a USA on how large the markup was (sometimes a 100 times the markup). If RMT have a ridiculous amount of Gil, then players will overcharge due to having a market in which cheaters have a ridiculous amount of gil. And high prices only serve for otherwise honest players to seek RMT. Meanwhile RMT get gil faster (due to ridiculous markups), So is a vicious circle.


Want to stop RMT? Then stop overcharging. You are supporting RMT every time you overcharge. Lower the prices and people won't have any desire to buy Gil. But of course you won't. Greed, even if is on a game, is still precent. So have fun with the RMT. You get what you deserve.

"Overcharging" is insanely subjective. You need to consider both relative cost as well the time/labor involved in producing crafted gear.

I have no reason to be selling stuff on the marketboard if I can be making the same or more gil doing something with immediate and guaranteed returns like spamming levequests. Even the RMTers seem to be realizing that with the increasingly larger amounts of bots farming treasure maps over crafting as at worse (Judging from current map prices), they'll break even in raw gil earnings from a map, but if they get lucky with the instance they'll make much more.

And yes, there is definitely botting on the JP servers. You need only check their FC rankings for those abnormal FCs with disproportionately high point gains vs. member counts that are populated strictly by DoH/L alts.

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Originally Posted by rxantos

Want to stop RMT? Then stop overcharging. You are supporting RMT every time you overcharge. Lower the prices and people won't have any desire to buy Gil. But of course you won't. Greed, even if is on a game, is still precent. So have fun with the RMT. You get what you deserve.

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It's a problem more complex than what you make it sound.

If you really want to blame someone for RMT, blame SE. They've stifled player ability to compete and profit on the MB by limiting the listings we have on the MB to just 40 - unless we pay them real money to increase those listings to 200. They've already set the precedent of spending real money to be able to get more gil.

Because we have fewer listings, there is less competition. Because we have fewer listings, we have to charge more on what we can sell to make it worth our time and effort.

Some players decide to bypass the real money plus more effort on the MB route to get more gil by paying the extra real money directly to the gil sellers so they get more gil immediately without additional effort.

If there was no cap on MB listings, prices would drop rapidly as more players were listing more items. There would be less need to pay real money to get more gil.

I used to do things to crash prices of certain commodities in WoW and bring prices down to what I thought were reasonable levels (at the very least they were much less than what other sellers were charging). I was able to do it because I could have as many active auction house listings as I wanted. I could cut my profit margin down to 10% but it wouldn't matter because I would have 500 listings selling daily to multiply that 10%.

I can't do that here. Here I'm limited to 40 listings so instead of setting my profit margin at 10%, I set it at 300%-400% (or more) so I can play the rest of the game and still make some decent gil instead of camping my retainers 24/7 to constantly relist what just sold.

If I try to price low, someone will buy to resell higher knowing there's a lack of competition to force the price to stabilize at the lower level. I might as well sell higher in that case so the gil goes in my pocket instead of into that of another seller.

Don't get me wrong, RMT would still exist here just as it does in any game even with a change to the market listing system. There will always be those who would rather use the money they have in real life to get what they want then to put in the effort. But at least, prices on the MB would be much lower for those who want to be able to enjoy the game without resorting to RMT.

At every time of day, even during night, same retainers on every single piece of exarchic armor... undercutting by 1 with no more no less than four items. Every 5 minutes... all of them with Polish names... it's been like this for more than two months now. It's unreal how shit this game is at dealing with bots.

The only thing I can do is crash the prices and hurt their profits while hurting mine as well, and I don't care about profit anymore at this point, I just want to see them suffer.