Botting on the marketboard. Impossible to sell anything.

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Originally Posted by Archaell

Some kind of anti-change-price mechanism sounds cool on paper, but look at how botched housing lottery is. What SE needs is better bot detection instead of harming real crafters. Until that happens gotta update the prices few times a day and anything gets sold.

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no, what SE needs to do is go after the RMT gil buyers, then there isnt a market for the gil from the bots, and they will dry up. "bot detection" has failed in games for years. if real dollars are there, the bots always have incentive to bypass any measure. the only way to decrease bots, is not better protection, its better enforcement of the "dont buy gil" policy.

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Originally Posted by Prrringles

I guess but those must be small profit items then. On my server all the items with decent to high profits that actually sell are sold by rmt bots. Even the most random items are sold by the same account.
No one should be forced into selling other/niche items because of bots run the rest. I know the reality is different but yeah, you get the point. It's just a dirty mess.

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On Coeurl, bots have flooded the market and killed the prices on what they sell to the point they're no longer the high profit items for players to produce. They're competing against each other plus the players who think that those are the high profit items without analyzing cost to produce.

Even without bots, what happens when one of those gil making videos circulates the hot new thing to craft to sell? Everyone watching the video starts selling that thing. They tell their friends and their friends start selling that thing. Soon the market is glutted.

Smart sellers out for maximum profit are going to switch what they're selling to take advantage of changing market conditions whether bots exist or not. That's free market competition. Those looking for easy money rely on the advice of others, usually to their disadvantage. Those willing to put in some effort to pay attention to the market profit.

Random items being sold by the same account is not going to be someone botting to produce the items. That would be a mess to program on a bot. Of course, they could still be using a bot for the price adjustments.

They're everywhere on migardsormr as well and it's extremely difficult to sell some items. It's clear square enix isn't interested on acting on these accounts, which only promotes more botting.

The perk of bots is that if you post something and are immediately undercut by 1 gil, you can repost a few times to verify it's a bot. Then do a super low undercut, wait for them to undercut you by 1 gil and buy up what you want/need, forcing them to take a huge loss. I got 10m gil items for just 10 gil before this way.

Play the bots game and you win. Wait for SE to do something and you will be waiting until the servers come down for the final time. Bot AI has some great ways you can bypass them if you get creative and the more we keep bot authors and users on their toes, the less useful they are. Look at auto-clicker bots when it came to housing and how many people lost all their gil because they were using bots when someone creative won the house.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

no, what SE needs to do is go after the RMT gil buyers, then there isnt a market for the gil from the bots, and they will dry up. "bot detection" has failed in games for years. if real dollars are there, the bots always have incentive to bypass any measure. the only way to decrease bots, is not better protection, its better enforcement of the "dont buy gil" policy.

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I have been saying this for years. In XI one of our ls members openly admitted, in ls chat, that he had bought upwards of 100m gil and was encouraging other members to do the same. After getting a ton of info out of him like what site he used, their prices and how the gil is transferred all in written chat, I broke his pearl and reported him. His ban? 3 days... and nothing he purchased with that gil was removed. He literally got a nearly free relic weapon since he used that money to buy the ancient currency for it.

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Originally Posted by AnimaAnimus

The perk of bots is that if you post something and are immediately undercut by 1 gil, you can repost a few times to verify it's a bot. Then do a super low undercut, wait for them to undercut you by 1 gil and buy up what you want/need, forcing them to take a huge loss. I got 10m gil items for just 10 gil before this way.

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That was someone who didn't know how to use their bot.

Most bots have a price floor. They will not lower their prices below that floor even if undercut. That price always represents profit to them. They might not be making as much as they would at the higher prices but they're also not taking an actual loss.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

That was someone who didn't know how to use their bot.

Most bots have a price floor. They will not lower their prices below that floor even if undercut. That price always represents profit to them. They might not be making as much as they would at the higher prices but they're also not taking an actual loss.

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agreed, I have "played" with quite a few bots on the board and they will never under sell their basement. they are -always- making profit

if it wasnt some actual player making a typo, which happens and I ruthlessly take advantage lol, it was someone who screwed up their market bot settings. doesnt happen often

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

On Coeurl, bots have flooded the market and killed the prices on what they sell to the point they're no longer the high profit items for players to produce. They're competing against each other plus the players who think that those are the high profit items without analyzing cost to produce.

Even without bots, what happens when one of those gil making videos circulates the hot new thing to craft to sell? Everyone watching the video starts selling that thing. They tell their friends and their friends start selling that thing. Soon the market is glutted.

Smart sellers out for maximum profit are going to switch what they're selling to take advantage of changing market conditions whether bots exist or not. That's free market competition. Those looking for easy money rely on the advice of others, usually to their disadvantage. Those willing to put in some effort to pay attention to the market profit.

Random items being sold by the same account is not going to be someone botting to produce the items. That would be a mess to program on a bot. Of course, they could still be using a bot for the price adjustments.

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I have been selling glamour items and crafting gear/tools (and others) for god knows how long. I always made big profits on those and they sold well. This was even with heavy player competition. Then the bots came in around shadowbringers and it all went to hell. Literally all the gear/tool/weapons/etc from lvl 50 and up are being mass produced and sold by bots. Prices are utterly broken. This never happened between real players in all the years I have been playing. Now also add in these RMT folks "importing" tons of items from the JP data centers for cheap and you have no way of competing anymore.

I have been playing this game from the start (1.0) so I know my way around. If I don't update my prices every 5~10 minutes I am not selling anything at all. If a bot sells an item a new one will be posted within 10 minutes. I dare to say that at least 75% of the retainers selling items are bots. I know all the "big" crafters on my server and pretty much no one is selling anything anymore.

Anyway, at this point I don't even care anymore. Haven't updated my prices for over a week now and I just run my ventures. SE ignoring "our" part of the community has totally ruined all the fun for me. I am not someone to easily give up but this is just pointless. Another good example of "crime pays".

We all know banning bots is only a temporary measure, and banning buyers might not be as temporary, but also cuts in on SE's income.

What I'd like to see happen is for SE to add a new "phase" to each server, and once a bot is accurately identified, to surreptitiously flag the entire account to use that new "phase". This "bot phase" would have its own "bot market board" that is isolated from the regular market, and all their listings would be moved to it. This would put all the bots together. They could all be in different zones, collecting things, advertising, listing on their "bot market board", but normal players would never see them or their advertisements since they would be in the "bot phase" just spamming each other with their adverts and phishing attempts. The "bot phase" tag could stick even if the character transferred servers or data centers so no matter where they try to flee with their ill gotten gains, they will never be able to sell anything.

This would allow SE to continue collecting revenue from the bot accounts (at least until they realized they weren't making any money and give up/start over), and minimize the impact on actual players. The trick to making this work would be to a) develop a system to quickly and accurately identify bots, and b) switch them to the "bot phase" discretely and seamlessly.

I'd take a certain level of satisfaction seeing such a system implemented. :)

my answer to this is don't hold you breath waiting for change its not going to happen.

Ill still never get how they cant just follow millions of gil flowing around... like, evertime a player gets more then 3-5 mill just trigger an investigation, or make certain patterns that trigger it...

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Originally Posted by Prrringles

I have been playing this game from the start (1.0) so I know my way around. If I don't update my prices every 5~10 minutes I am not selling anything at all. If a bot sells an item a new one will be posted within 10 minutes. I dare to say that at least 75% of the retainers selling items are bots. I know all the "big" crafters on my server and pretty much no one is selling anything anymore.

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That bolded part is the key problem. I'm ok with someone selling their items before me. There's a good chance that if, for example, 5 sell per day and I'm number 3 on the list, mine will likely sell without having to relist more than once per day. However, when dealing with an item that sells maybe once per day and coupling it with a bot that will undercut to the first sale and then have time to make another and always keep it in position #1 on the board... we get into this situation where many players can't sell much on the marketboard. Even if they are willing to camp the summoning bell and relist.

Bots do it faster and can do it without getting tired.

I've found that some markets are more amenable to only relisting 2-3x per day. But it all boils down to volume. If 10 sell per day, for example, there's a decent shot that I'll sell mine at some point. Maybe not first or second, but maybe I'll sell that one item per day. And if I find dozens of items that fit those circumstances, I can make plenty of gil. However, I'm well aware that the majority of sales go to a handful of bots.

There's certain sellers on the MB of gear that have been listing crafted Classical gear non-stop since it came out. At any time for the past 6 months, each bot has 1-2 of pretty much every piece up for sale. And when one sells, another populates its place in less than an hour.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

..snip..

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You are spot on with everything. Bots can keep doing this without any human interaction while we have to physically press buttons to update our prices. No normal human being with a decent life can keep that up (even humans without a life can not because they do need to sleep). So what you get is players getting angry/impatient and undercutting the bot by large amounts. Bots still always win. They have literally 0 time investment versus players who need to actually press buttons and can undercut to the point they would only make a small amount of profit. Since they can do this for like forever even those small profits add up. So yeah.

I'm sure the word profit if relative to the player. I have serveral gil caps so I can't be arsed to craft items that sell for 10k each or make 10k profit only anymore. Changing my scope is not an option for me. Until SE changes their stance on banning/cleaning the servers I will invest my quality time elsewhere. Sad but unavoidable.

Im looking forward the new craftig gear, prices will burn when raiders dont need to buy day one lol

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

Im looking forward the new craftig gear, prices will burn when raiders dont need to buy day one lol

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Always going to be those who don't raid and don't care about paying high prices to be among the first to have something. I expect weapons will probably still go for good prices since a lot of players don't want to wait 7 weeks if they aren't doing Savage or EX.

What I don't understand is, when Item X goes really good for let's say 89000 Gil and sells every single day a lot to that price, why do others drop that price to 48000 and lesser Gil just suddenly? The only logic point I see, is that some ultra rich Players tries to mess up the prices on purpose so that all other players can't get rich.
It is like Player X sells 9 Items for 89000 Gil each at a day and then the same Player X crafts more of those Items and sells them for 48000 or lesser Gil the same day. What is the point in that?

Sure but the prices were like fraction of what they used to be at 6.0, this time no one HAS to buy gear day one so prices will go south...

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Originally Posted by Aneshda

What I don't understand is, when Item X goes really good for let's say 89000 Gil and sells every single day a lot to that price, why do others drop that price to 48000 and lesser Gil just suddenly? The only logic point I see, is that some ultra rich Players tries to mess up the prices on purpose so that all other players can't get rich.
It is like Player X sells 9 Items for 89000 Gil each at a day and then the same Player X crafts more of those Items and sells them for 48000 or lesser Gil the same day. What is the point in that?

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Some are just bots , some just wanna sell and dont care, some are, just dumb. and sometimes im just annyoed of that bot that undercuts me for 1 gil every 30 sec lol

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Originally Posted by Aneshda

What I don't understand is, when Item X goes really good for let's say 89000 Gil and sells every single day a lot to that price, why do others drop that price to 48000 and lesser Gil just suddenly? The only logic point I see, is that some ultra rich Players tries to mess up the prices on purpose so that all other players can't get rich.
It is like Player X sells 9 Items for 89000 Gil each at a day and then the same Player X crafts more of those Items and sells them for 48000 or lesser Gil the same day. What is the point in that?

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I have a very specific relationship with competition - if I can't have a market none of us will have it. Before quitting a market that got too crowded I always try to ruin it as much as possible. Just out of spite.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aneshda

What I don't understand is, when Item X goes really good for let's say 89000 Gil and sells every single day a lot to that price, why do others drop that price to 48000 and lesser Gil just suddenly? The only logic point I see, is that some ultra rich Players tries to mess up the prices on purpose so that all other players can't get rich.
It is like Player X sells 9 Items for 89000 Gil each at a day and then the same Player X crafts more of those Items and sells them for 48000 or lesser Gil the same day. What is the point in that?

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Hard to say. Could be just an accident on the price. Could be the seller thinks that more will sell each day if the price is lowered.

In your example (assuming it's a real example) I suspect someone decided to bait a bot, the bot took the bait, then the other player withdrew the bait from the marketboard if it's not showing a sale for the lower amount in sales history. Was it Classical or Pactmaker gear by any chance?

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Originally Posted by Azuri

I have a very specific relationship with competition - if I can't have a market none of us will have it. Before quitting a market that got too crowded I always try to ruin it as much as possible. Just out of spite.

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I sometimes ruin markets because I hate seeing sellers price-gouging buyers. I just don't ruin them so far that they end up unprofitable. I still believe in profit. I don't believe in outrageous profit unless something is a true luxury item (think things like the Night Pegasus Whistle).

I like being Walmart. Sell low but in volume. I still make gil. The buyer has gil left over to buy things from other sellers so the other sellers also make gil. Those sellers can then afford to buy other things I'm selling so I make more gil. Everyone wins.

Best way to get rich is to not spend your gil in the first place, or at least be smart about what you buy. It's amazing how many players will spend 5000 gil or more on an item even though the tooltip clearly states the item is sold by a vendor for 66 gil (*cough* Emperor's New Gloves *cough*).

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

I sometimes ruin markets because I hate seeing sellers price-gouging buyers. I just don't ruin them so far that they end up unprofitable. I still believe in profit. I don't believe in outrageous profit unless something is a true luxury item (think things like the Night Pegasus Whistle).

I like being Walmart. Sell low but in volume. I still make gil. The buyer has gil left over to buy things from other sellers so the other sellers also make gil. Those sellers can then afford to buy other things I'm selling so I make more gil. Everyone wins.

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I thought you were the guy advocating for a free market. Price gouging does not exist in a free market? It's called supply and demand? Kind of sounds you hate seeing players make good profits because supply is low. Call it what you want but that is what it sounds like. We all "hate" certain things but is that a valid reason to ruin someone else's fun? Are you (or anyone else doing these things) the market police? If that item is not your "core business" just let it go. I'm not trying to directly attack you or anything but I personally just hate this kind of behaviour. It's a game. I like to believe most people play games to relieve stress. Why make it more stressful for people by ruining their last bit of fun in this world? Different folks, different strokes goes the saying right?. Everyone should just mind their own business.

Btw, the Night Pegasus Whistle you mentioned gets imported from Japanese servers in bulk bt RMT circles. It's half the price it used to be now because of that. Same goes for all the other salable mounts. I remember selling the Eldthurs Horn for 12 million+ before EW and now it sells between 1-3 million. Just saying.

Edit: tons of spelling errors.

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Originally Posted by Prrringles

If that item is not your "core business" just let it go. I'm not trying to directly attack you or anything but I personally just hate this kind of behaviour. It's a game. I like to believe most people play games to relieve stress. Why make it more stressful for people by ruining their last bit of fun in this world? Different folks, different strokes goes the saying right?. Everyone should just mind their own business.

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lol so what is this new thing about selling only items part of a “core business”. Some people take the game a bit too seriously. Selling things on the MB shouldn’t be “your last bit of fun in the world”.

I can sell whatever item I want at whatever price I want and so can Jojoya. That’s my own business. Just buy my low priced item if you don’t like it and continue to sell high. The fact is that instead of doing just that, many people are so afraid to lose a sale or get stuck with their items on high volume items that they will immediately readjust their price just for one or two abnormally low priced items. It’s not just bots doing it: human players often willingly follow at prices even lower than the bots will.

Sometimes I sell high and sometimes I sell low depending on the item and what I want to achieve (make gils fast, gear jobs, help a friend, sell rare and valuable items, get rid of something fast, experiment, etc) . When I have rare items I am a patient seller. There’s different ways of having fun with the MB.

Also, I am pretty happy that classical gear is more affordable than the past exarchic gear. It facilitates gearing jobs and alts quickly and it is also beneficial for players who are new or those who enjoy raiding but don’t have much time to play outside of that and thus don’t swim in tons of gils. Sellers still turn a profit.

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Originally Posted by Prrringles

I thought you were the guy advocating for a free market. Price gouging does not exist in a free market? It's called supply and demand? Kind of sounds you hate seeing players make good profits because supply is low. Call it what you want but that is what it sounds like. We all "hate" certain things but is that a valid reason to ruin someone else's fun? Are you (or anyone else doing these things) the market police? If that item is not your "core business" just let it go. I'm not trying to directly attack you or anything but I personally just hate this kind of behaviour. It's a game. I like to believe most people play games to relieve stress. Why make it more stressful for people by ruining their last bit of fun in this world? Different folks, different strokes goes the saying right?. Everyone should just mind their own business.

Btw, the Night Pegasus Whistle you mentioned gets imported from Japanese servers in bulk bt RMT circles. It's half the price it used to be now because of that. Same goes for all the other salable mounts. I remember selling the Eldthurs Horn for 12 million+ before EW and now it sells between 1-3 million. Just saying.

Edit: tons of spelling errors.

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Free market means you're free to set your selling price to what you want without interference from some regulating agency. It does not mean you're guaranteed to sell the item at the price you want.

You're still going to have competition in a free market, and some of that competition will be trying to cut other sellers out of areas they consider their niche. You need to learn to adjust to what is happening in the market instead of thinking the market has to work around what you want.

Your item no longer generating the profits you want? Find something else. I've done that several times in the past.

Part of my fun is getting items players want on the marketboard at affordable but still profitable prices. I can't help it if that's at odds with someone else's way of having fun. Fortunately, there are thousands of items to gather, craft or get from other sources. If someone doesn't like how certain items are selling, they can always pick something else.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

I sometimes ruin markets because I hate seeing sellers price-gouging buyers.

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I was talking about this comment you made. This only happens when supply is low and probably for items you are not even selling since you claim to sell low and in high volume. To me this sounds exactly like ruining someone else's fun just because. That's my point and nothing else. I'm not talking about item x or y. Anyway whatever, I'm not on your server.

Back to the botting topic.

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Originally Posted by Prrringles

I was talking about this comment you made. This only happens when supply is low and probably for items you are not even selling since you claim to sell low and in high volume. To me this sounds exactly like ruining someone else's fun just because. That's my point and nothing else. I'm not talking about item x or y. Anyway whatever, I'm not on your server.

Back to the botting topic.

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I know that's what you were referring to. In response, I said.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Part of my fun is getting items players want on the marketboard at affordable but still profitable prices.

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The goal isn't to ruin that one person's fun. The goal is to improve the fun many others are having by giving buyers a good price so they have extra gil to spend on other items from others sellers. Buyer has more fun. Other sellers get to have more fun. The only one left out is the one who was selfishly price gouging.

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Originally Posted by Prrringles

I thought you were the guy advocating for a free market. Price gouging does not exist in a free market? It's called supply and demand?

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FULL STOP here. This is a game. What youre comparing is you working 100 hours to finish a piece by hand vs me doing it with some Star Trek Replicator wiping out 100 per hour...

I have noticed in the last 5 weeks that on all Light Servers are the same suspicious Players who ruins the Market for all. All those Players use a lot different Retainer Names but if you craft an Item you leave your Name on it. Following Players are on all Light Servers.

https://de.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...cter/38648930/
https://de.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...cter/39688898/
https://de.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...cter/28680052/
https://de.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...cter/35593816/

https://de.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...lang=fr&order=

I crafted the new 610 Maiming Gear and placed it for sale in one of my Retainers. Two of my Friends went other Servers, one on Lich, the other on Shiva. Everytime the first Player on that list dropped the price for that Gear, I underbid her price 1 Gil. While that Player underbid me on Twintania, she changed on all other Servers the price at the same time. How is that possible?

I have tried to find niches and to sell other Items but no matter what it was, those Market Board Botters destroyed 1 day later the prices.
The last Player of my List is on all Servers too and he must kinda browse with an AddOn the Market Boards and check if 1 Item is just a few times on the Market Board and if it gets sold. He sells then those Items to many different prices, in many different Retainers.
Like Sweet Pea Necklaces. I crafted some of each color and at that time there had been only 1 Rainbow Sweet Pea Necklace for sale. I crafted 4 of those and placed them in a Retainer for sale. The next day I check the Necklaces and suddenly there are 10 more for sale.
The one Necklace that was already there, then another one from a second Player and all others from the last Player of my List. Many different Retainers and a bunch of different prices.

I have tried:
580 Classical Gear & Weapons
610 Gear & Weapons
Furniture & House Deco
Byregot Necklaces in all Colors
Sweet Pea Necklaces in nearly all Colors
Materia, Demimateria, HQ Food, HQ Material, Blank Grade 3 Orchestrion Rolls, crafted Baits + Baits for Scrips, Aethersand and a lot of other Items. It is with all Items the same.

You can only sell your Items, if you are willing to check your Retainers every 10-15 minutes, to change their prices. And that is no fun. Otherwise you will sell nothing or make just a few Gil per day.

So SquareEnix when you gonna do something against those Market Board Botters?

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Originally Posted by Aneshda

..wall of text..

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Forget it man. "We" are having these problems for years already and SE turns a blind eye. As long as all these so called "ffxiv influencers" will not ask YoshiP any real tough questions about botting Nothing will change. So yeah, welcome to the party. Enjoy your stay

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Originally Posted by Prrringles

Forget it man. "We" are having these problems for years already and SE turns a blind eye. As long as all these so called "ffxiv influencers" will not ask YoshiP any real tough questions about botting Nothing will change. So yeah, welcome to the party. Enjoy your stay

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https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...b9da9f994e77cb

76 accounts terminated last week for non-RMT botting activity. It's not being ignored.

But it's also not going to accomplish much when those individuals will be able to have new accounts set up to be botting again by the end of the week.

Have any useful suggestions on how SE can permanently stop those individuals?

Evening! Don't do this very often, but here I am. (Or have I ever? *shrugs*) TL;DR I was looking for discussions on possible gameplay modifications/ideas and found myself here. I have felt the pain in thread and have too wished to alleviate this burden we all have to deal with. I'll keep the 'introduction' as short as possible so I can get to the meat and potatoes. As someone who was crafting pretty hard for a long while, it was my endgame, not gonna lie, lol. Tried dabbling in multiple markets at once, but found it best to latch on to a few for dear life. I had fierce competition as well, almost as determined as I was. Kid had spunk! lol. I also use to price check things constantly across the DC. During 'The Great Queue of 2021' my competition and I went savage. But as I'm essentially retired from that grind and have gotten fully back in the game; it was a nice detour when I was suffering burnout from the actual gameplay.

I might have missed a page, but I wasn't really seeing anything on it, but when I vowed to never be broke again and got serious in it; I employed the use of mannequins. It's worth it in any context you gotta do to get as many mannequins as possible, lmao. I know housing constraints are dubious at best, but a FC private chamber and an apartment will net you at least 8 for potential. Oh yea, the big part, I don't pay any taxes on anything. 100% profit. This allows me to undercut a lil further then one normally would due to exactly that. The ONLY major con for me is you gotta interact with every single one, but that also adds more steps for a bot. But that leads me to that John Travolta - Pulp Fiction meme of where the heck I'm goin' because I feel the system is heavily underutilized. A way to not only get traffic to our abodes, but possibly put more buying power back in to our hands by having better emphasis/expansion on the function.

Oh yea, that no tax thing works both ways, lol. xD I just hope the days of mass stack mats is over. *knocks on wood* Dark times..lol..That stuff was clearly botting in blind daylight, leaving all crafters in a crap predicament. I say crap, but at that point, the only best bet is to pump it out of the system ASAP. Which the buyer will most certainly appreciate. Mannequins force a name to the seller regardless if they wanna pull that 'Obtaining Signature' crap or not since you could go straight to the source, lol. But alas, this only applies to selling as sets, because you can't tell it's on a Mannequin otherwise! ugh!! Should force all Mannequin items to show, not just sets via advanced search...which you gotta click..every...single..time you search an item. Who the heck's gonna do that?! haha. I know I won't, and I've been at this a while. But I did do it to see, and the Lawless Jacket and Pants set still sits while the others sell and people pay that tax. D; Oh bother.

Good luck out there! I hope some of this helps someone and may your wallets be full!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...b9da9f994e77cb

76 accounts terminated last week for non-RMT botting activity. It's not being ignored.

But it's also not going to accomplish much when those individuals will be able to have new accounts set up to be botting again by the end of the week.

Have any useful suggestions on how SE can permanently stop those individuals?

---

Ok cool PR from SE. What were these accounts banned for? PVP botting? PVE botting? Gathering botting? MB botting? My guess almost all for pvp/pve since people brag and make oopsies giving SE proof to ban them. ALL the accounts I reported multiple times over the last months (from all across my data center) are still active. Every single one of them. Talking gathering bots and marketboard bots. So who are they banning? This message from SE means exactly nothing. Oh wait I lied, the bot on my server SEEMS to have gotten a 3 day ban (was offline for exactly 3 days) but is now back in business. My limited sample proves that SE is AT LEAST ignoring complaints from MY data center. And from what I read online (here, discords, reddit) SE is just ignoring complaints in general lol.

Solution?
- Bring out the third party tools to scan certain activities. I have nothing to hide. Who cares? Only guilty people will object. Privacy is a scam anyways in this "smartphone age" lol.
- Expand the STF to have teams in the EU and the US too. Expand the GM teams across the board and give GM's more rights to investigate AND act. It's not like SE is tight on money or anything.
- Restrict certain cross-data center item transfers.

Less effective but still useful:
- Block credit cards
- Block IP addresses
- Block whatever other private data they collect when someone registers an account

And probably the most simple one of them all > preemptively investigate people with multiple accounts or an excessive amount of characters. There should not be THAT many and would at least filter all the classic RMT circles (free company with 1 crafter main and 9 lvl ~26 alts who bots the prices). No normal person runs multiple accounts for just playing the game. And the people who run x amount of characters to sell more items..not that many. Investigation will clear them if they are legit.

I made all this up as I was writing this. Imagine allocating some resources to this and giving it some real thought. Will this remove all bots/botting? Probably not. But is will sure as hell make it harder and less attractive for them.

PS: Me and my friends found out a way to tell if someone is using a bot for undercutting prices. I can't disclose the method for obvious reasons but it is works 100%. We tested this on multiple endgame items and it showed that generally 8/9 out of 11 crafters are using a bot to sell said items. That's around 80%. Not far off from my guess of 75% before any actual research. For popular lower lvl items with fewer crafters this is often 100% bots selling those items. Let that sink in.

PS 2: I also help new crafters out with tips and tricks for making gil. Many of them give up after a month because they can not compete with the bots. This botting plague is litterally killing the crafting scene. I think the only people still around are people like us who are "invested". It's just sad in every way.

I still say the only solution to the bot issue is ban the gil buyers. as long as they can buy without consequences people doing botting for RMT have a reason to create legions of bots.

if SE starts banning teh buyers, and since this against the ToS they have every right and should be enforcing it... but when the buyers dry up... so will the bots. they will never leave, but their numbers will not be replaced because its not worth it.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

I still say the only solution to the bot issue is ban the gil buyers. as long as they can buy without consequences people doing botting for RMT have a reason to create legions of bots.

if SE starts banning teh buyers, and since this against the ToS they have every right and should be enforcing it... but when the buyers dry up... so will the bots. they will never leave, but their numbers will not be replaced because its not worth it.

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They should just nuke both sides man. Order 66. Externinatus. Wipe them out, all of them. You get the point. Buyers will also keep coming as long as there is supply and vice versa. They keep eachother in business.

Listen, right. SE has 3 whole people to manage this pile of doodoo. And they are Japanese and probably use google translate to translate our reports. Multi-BILLION $ company using "small indy company" excuses. THIS is the problem. If SE had any real intention to tackle this whole fiasco both sides would have been externimated already. This is 100% on SE.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Have any useful suggestions on how SE can permanently stop those individuals?

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Technicaly this is impossible, since even if they use machine learning, botters can set limits and randomize some things to make it appear more human.
For example:
- they can disable activity at night. The ending timestamp can be 3am there, but if the bot just remains inactive for 8h after that, it appears human. While night sales are unlikely.
- instead of instantly responding at the exact 10minute mark, they can randomize it and for example make it respond a random time between 1 and 15 minutes later.
- they could lure a bot into undercutting by mimicing a retainer themselve, the problem is this allows botters to exploit that very same system and get items cheap (although, maybe when they try to buy it it just says the item is already gone)

It will disrupt it during daytime for a bit, but not enough to realy stop them from doing it. And detecting that it is a bot is nearly impossible to do as the actions are very basic and mouse movement can be faked quite well if that would become part of the check (not to mention that being excessively resource intensive).

But 1 thing though, if its a mass botter, they have other activity that should be detectable. For the random person, detection has a very high risk as losing your acount then does some damage to your efforts. If these sort of systems disrupt the mass botters a lot, then that would be something. But its those lone people that generaly also take the more interesting items (for mass botters there are better ways to obtain gil).

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Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

Technicaly this is impossible, since even if they use machine learning, botters can set limits and randomize some things to make it appear more human.

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Which was pretty much my point. Trying to block the bots doesn't accomplish much because attempts to filter can always be countered by ways to avoid the filter. IP bans don't work when VPNs are now commonly used even by normal players. Credit card bans don't work when it's easy enough to get another credit card (assuming the botter isn't using some other payment method such as game time codes that can't be traced to a specific credit card). It's easy enough to fake private information by using real information belonging to another individual - verification of the information only happens in the case of an account compromise where the owner of the account is trying to get access back. Someone botting who gets compromised isn't going to draw attention to their account, they'll just start over.

To get rid of bots, you need to eliminate the reason why they exist and that's to profit from selling services to a customer. That means getting rid of the customers who want to use the service. When there aren't enough customers willing to pay for a service, sellers of that service start disappearing because it's no longer profitable. They move to where profit can be made.

I can't think of a single MMO that has successfully dealt with currency buyers and sellers. Maybe there is one, but none come to mind and I've played a lot of MMOs. A partial solution to the MB bots is to enforce a listing price. A minimum fee to list plus X% of the item. Drop the MB sales fee but instead exchange it for a smaller (say half of what it is now) to list it. The moment you list it, the server takes their cut. Make that percentage high enough and bots will go out of business by relisting.

It won't stop botting (crafting, gathering, etc) but it would curtail MB botting.

We might actually get to the point of deflation. Where the gil we have on hand suddenly is worth more. We might see more bartering or inter-player trades off the marketboard.

You do understand that to be able to sell gil to players they need to sell things right? The selling is being done by BOTS. I can probably point out at least 3/4 of the bots on the market board by myself without any help that the STF might have. Find the bots > find the crafter/gatherer/free company they belong to > follow the money/gil > nuke anyone who touched that money/gil and everyone in between.

I posted this earlier but I will say it again. SE needs more people dealing with this. Expand GM teams and give them the power to ban. And expand the STF to abroad with people who understand English.
You dont need sophisticated systems or change the way the MB works. Just get more people in who pro-actively search out these people and nuke them.

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Originally Posted by Prrringles

You do understand that to be able to sell gil to players they need to sell things right? The selling is being done by BOTS. I can probably point out at least 3/4 of the bots on the market board by myself without any help that the STF might have. Find the bots > find the crafter/gatherer/free company they belong to > follow the money/gil > nuke anyone who touched that money/gil and everyone in between.

I posted this earlier but I will say it again. SE needs more people dealing with this. Expand GM teams and give them the power to ban. And expand the STF to abroad with people who understand English.
You dont need sophisticated systems or change the way the MB works. Just get more people in who pro-actively search out these people and nuke them.

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I don't want bots either, but why would SE bother? How many millions of subs do they have?

If SE's pocket isn't being hurt, why fix it? The same argument applies to housing.

Until players leave en masse due to a problem like bots (or housing), SE doesn't have an incentive to do anything about it.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

I don't want bots either, but why would SE bother? How many millions of subs do they have?

If SE's pocket isn't being hurt, why fix it? The same argument applies to housing.

Until players leave en masse due to a problem like bots (or housing), SE doesn't have an incentive to do anything about it.

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Yes. This has been established already. SE doesn't care.

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Originally Posted by Prrringles

Yes. This has been established already. SE doesn't care.

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To say they don't care is a little silly. They care, it's just not a high priority.

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Originally Posted by Drip

To say they don't care is a little silly. They care, it's just not a high priority.

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It would be one thing if it was like saying I don't care that my house is on fire because my kid is drowning. However, considering what we see in patch notes, it clearly is the bottom priority. Remember when they added the ability to add retainer comments? That was a higher priority. Being able to select which currency we see in the currency window... that was a higher priority than marketboard botting. Fixing the name of a few items from ARR... that was a higher priority.

Let's just make it clear. Of course MB botting is not the highest priority. But SE is telegraphing to us that it is pretty much the lowest priority considering everything else they are addressing.