Does Square intend to address Market botting?

While I agree that bots are a huge problem, I fear that going on witch hunts for bots is going to catch a bunch of MB aficionados in the crossfire.

It happened to me in WoW. Someone reported me as a bot because I managed to take their market away from them and dominate it for the 4-12 hours a day I was on. Bliz in their infinite stupidity simply banned my account without doing any research at all. I DID eventually get my account back but it was a horrid process. I wasn't even using TSM. I was just checking the AH between each activity and adjusting prices. So maybe every 30-60 minutes.

Be careful who you report. Be VERY sure they are indeed bots. There are people out there who like I used to be live and breath for the MB. Some of them might be hard to distinguish from a bot.

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Originally Posted by Myrany

While I agree that bots are a huge problem, I fear that going on witch hunts for bots is going to catch a bunch of MB aficionados in the crossfire.

It happened to me in WoW. Someone reported me as a bot because I managed to take their market away from them and dominate it for the 4-12 hours a day I was on. Bliz in their infinite stupidity simply banned my account without doing any research at all. I DID eventually get my account back but it was a horrid process. I wasn't even using TSM. I was just checking the AH between each activity and adjusting prices. So maybe every 30-60 minutes.

Be careful who you report. Be VERY sure they are indeed bots. There are people out there who like I used to be live and breath for the MB. Some of them might be hard to distinguish from a bot.

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I imagine that even you, in your living and breathing the market, took breaks, ate, went to sleep, maybe even left the house and were not online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

as you stated, 4-12 hours a day... thats simply lack of observation on the part of blizzard and the other player. We have people who are so brazen the only time they are "offline" is after maintenance" and they havent logged the bots back in. thats it. the rest of the time they are on and marketting.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

I imagine that even you, in your living and breathing the market, took breaks, ate, went to sleep, maybe even left the house and were not online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

as you stated, 4-12 hours a day... thats simply lack of observation on the part of blizzard and the other player. We have people who are so brazen the only time they are "offline" is after maintenance" and they havent logged the bots back in. thats it. the rest of the time they are on and marketting.

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Agreed but my point is that there are "Bad Actors" who will use the witch hunt to get rid of honest competition. Which is basically what happened to me. It is also possible that there will be some who don't do their research into possible bots well enough.

Like I said in my post be very sure before a report is written. Please do not mistake my intention here. I am actually all for getting rid of the bots. I am just saying be very careful in who you label as one.

Is it a fact that japanese DCs have drastically less botting happening? Even in the Worlds "adopted" by English speakers?

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Originally Posted by Myrany

Agreed but my point is that there are "Bad Actors" who will use the witch hunt to get rid of honest competition. Which is basically what happened to me. It is also possible that there will be some who don't do their research into possible bots well enough.

Like I said in my post be very sure before a report is written. Please do not mistake my intention here. I am actually all for getting rid of the bots. I am just saying be very careful in who you label as one.

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if SE is going to assess penalties without any investigation so that in your scenario these "bad actors" can get rid of competition, then we might as well let the bots have the market and the game. its a poor argument to blame doing nothing on a fear that people will misuse it. people are already cheating, so on the off chance that someone innocent might get banned we should continue to allow them to do virtually nothing to combat the bots?

no thank you.

It's a little ridiculous how many different individuals seems to be running DC-wide bot farming operations.

I make it a note to check who crafted the gear on each of the bots on my server, and there's multiple cases where all of their gear was made by a "primary" bot on a different server, and further investigation would turn up still more bots geared up by that same individual on other servers, which suggests that it's a collective operation.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

It's a little ridiculous how many different individuals seems to be running DC-wide bot farming operations.

I make it a note to check who crafted the gear on each of the bots on my server, and there's multiple cases where all of their gear was made by a "primary" bot on a different server, and further investigation would turn up still more bots geared up by that same individual on other servers, which suggests that it's a collective operation.

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It is. With the sole purpose of gil generation for RMT transactions. I mean why else would a crafter need to sell their wares across multiple worlds?

Something a inept 5 year old could figure out... but seems beyond the people at SE as to what is going on.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

...but seems beyond the people at SE as to what is going on.

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Doubt it. They know but just don't care about taking action. I mean, how many people are actually complaining about this you think? 20? 50? 100? How much money do those people generate compared to bots with their retainer spam? SE is simply ignoring us.

To whom it might concern:

I made a final report to the STF maximizing the character count. It is VERY extensive and leaves pretty much no room for doubt. I gave them the chance to redeem themselves and regain our confidence by doing the right thing. I closed it off by reminding them to honour their own statement about RMT;

"Square Enix has a zero-tolerance policy for third-party tools and RMT. Items and gil obtained through third-party tools or RMT can affect the game’s economic stability and disrupt gameplay balance."

And that's all she wrote. My "fight" here is done. I am not expecting SE to do anything with the info I sent them (like all our previous reports and efforts fell on deaf ears). SE has proven we are not important to them eventhough they claim otherwise. You can all draw your own conclusions. But who knows, SE might surprise us (lol).

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Originally Posted by Prrringles

I made a final report to the STF maximizing the character count. It is VERY extensive and leaves pretty much no room for doubt.

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Any chance you could share it with us here?