Destroying Server Economies

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Originally Posted by supergiz

Have a feeling they are working towards systems in the expansion that make botting much harder to do especially with Crafters. They hinted at an endgame crafting system that's the equivalent of raids. Will be interesting to see what they come up with.

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I'd like to hope, but I seriously doubt it if they can't even tell that someone who literally never logs off and is always crafting and/or gathering is botting.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

Exactly, people keep repeating that gil is useless but really gil is the currency of convenience and time. You can rush level all your crafters in a month or less with sufficient gil, as an example of a lengthy grind which can be avoided with piles of gil.

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Great.. you have Max level crafters quickly.. for.. what?

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

Also, there's this argument that people are mad because their profits are being cut. Sure, there are some people who used to charge absurd prices on lesser populated servers that are mad.

But for crafters like me who are from servers like Balmung, I'm more concerned about bot farms/botters who drive prices so low, no legitimate player wants to compete.

For example gathering bots, even before World Visit, there are well-known gathering bots on Balmung, who gather nearly 24/7. You can tell by the way they drop down on nodes and the janky movement.

They price the stuff that they gather sometimes below 100 gil per item and we are not talking about low level gathering nodes here.

So legitimate gatherers usually try to find other stuff to gather/other niche items and pray that the bots don't catch on. But these niche items end up being temporary and the bots eventually always start gathering those as well.

Then some of the legitimate gatherers move on to crafting and flipping etc. But eventually the impact of botting is felt there as well. E.g. well known crafters who bot.

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So.. the price of the harvestable crafting mats becomes generally near Vendor sell prices (if you see someone selling items below vendor prices you should buy them and vendor them for a profit!). And all the crafters out there can now craft items for reasonable mat prices and charge for the HQrotation/time it takes alone.

I really am not on board with the idea that gathering classes are just made to rake in money for putting in time and cycling nodes.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

Also, it's not like these bots are just driving prices low, they are often engaged in RMT.

With World Visit, if bot farms/botters are not adequately addressed, we might see legitimate crafters/gatherers driven out from the Market Board and the 'competition' for pricing between bot retainers.

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RMT is not our problem, it's Squeenix's. It affects individual , rule abiding players very little.

Driven out... to.. what? Not craft anymore because it's not profitable? Stop the goal of having a huge pile of gil.. for.. reasons?

I honestly almost never see the bots on my server trying to sell crafting materials or shards.

If they're gathering, they're either funneling the mats to a DoH bot or they're gathering them for their own crafts.

That said, they aren't always doing new crafters a favor.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I honestly almost never see the bots on my server trying to sell crafting materials or shards.

If they're gathering, they're either funneling the mats to a DoH bot or they're gathering them for their own crafts.

That said, they aren't always doing new crafters a favor.

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Not sure at how many but it seems they're a bit better at hiding these days, sometimes if you have the auto camera thing up (sort of pans around random things near you, makes a fun screensaver sort of experience) you'll see them talking to NPC under the ground lol.

Players wont check all servers for the cheapest, they'll prob just check 1 server aside from their home world. And currently that server is Balmung xD.

Bruh, if I can server hop to get rep. dreadwyrm or primal weaps, or RAID FOOD AND POTS which cost millions of gil... I will...

As someone with alts outside of Balmung, I'm all for it. I hate how expensive things can get on other servers when they're much cheaper on Balmung, so it'll be nice to see things balance out if they do.
Until then...
Come to Balmung my wandering friends, buy my things... Au Ra has wares if you have gil.

should be like this for a few week, after that things should balance by itself. once people know that (let say) balmung has cheaper stuff, either they will increase the price itself or other server will lower it down.

in the end things should back to normal after a few week

Helluuuuuuuu

As someone from a cheaper world I welcome our price gouged brothers from less populated servers!

For anyone that doesn't do MB flipping or omni-crafting as a main activity, this should be a good news. I am of the opinion that the non-crafter, non-gillionaire population shouldn't be exluded from the majority (non rare / exlusive side) of the market. Hell, judging by the average wealth of our lvl70 non-crafter FC members, even the 300-500k per crafted armor / weapon is a hefty sum... and thats good. They should be affordable, but should still sting the wallet of the average Joe.

As for the bots thats a whole 'nother can of worms, but I sympathize with the number of non-price gouging crafters they might demoralize.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Great.. you have Max level crafters quickly.. for.. what?
So.. the price of the harvestable crafting mats becomes generally near Vendor sell prices (if you see someone selling items below vendor prices you should buy them and vendor them for a profit!). And all the crafters out there can now craft items for reasonable mat prices and charge for the HQrotation/time it takes alone.

I really am not on board with the idea that gathering classes are just made to rake in money for putting in time and cycling nodes.

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Because some people enjoy crafting/gathering and playing the Market Board?

These are aspects of the FFXIV; FFXIV's market boards are supposed to be player-run economies.

There was a huge ruckus(still ongoing?) about Blue Mage being a limited job.

For me as a crafter/gatherer botters limit how I go about crafting/gathering and interact with the Market Board; for example, gathering niche items, which botters haven't figured out yet/not competing with bots on many items because it is futile,flipping bot listed items,etc.

Also, I already pointed out legitimate crafters/gatherers already switch to flipping when faced with bots. But it becomes harder to flip when bots drive down the price of a whole swathe of items.

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RMT is not our problem, it's Squeenix's. It affects individual , rule abiding players very little.

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I disagree, it affects server economies and by extension players because RMT generally inflates prices. Combined with bots driving down gil income for legitimate players. After a while, it becomes very difficult to afford certain items as a non-botter. I have seen this happen in other MMOs.

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Driven out... to.. what? Not craft anymore because it's not profitable? Stop the goal of having a huge pile of gil.. for.. reasons?

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Again, it has been pointed out in this thread multiple times, having gil can bypass tedious grinds. E.g. gearing up for raiding/iLvl requirements without having to go through the tomestone route. Gil is the currency of convenience and time.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I'd like to hope, but I seriously doubt it if they can't even tell that someone who literally never logs off and is always crafting and/or gathering is botting.

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What if they took a system like those mining minigames in the gold saucer. I imagine it's pretty dang hard to bot those successfully. Even harder if they combined it with timed nodes. Just add something very active on high value rare nodes that makes it very difficult if not impossible to bot.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

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I disagree, it affects server economies and by extension players because RMT generally inflates prices. Combined with bots driving down gil income for legitimate players. After a while, it becomes very difficult to afford certain items as a non-botter. I have seen this happen in other MMOs.
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While true the key word on this is "generally". We've had bot issues for a while now, but the prices seem to go down and not up. I would guess that either they are not RMT bots, or not enough people buy Gil from them? (the caveat being: for the moment. Sure, if people start buying more Gil from illegitimate sources it would go downhill fast)

Anywho... you know what else inflates prices? Monopolies, cornered markets, MB flippers and a bubble of hyper-wealthy crafters, forming a market of their own, practically excluding the rest of the playersbase. And contrary to the RMT case, we have examples a plenty in-game for this case.

I'm not really up on the crafting and gathering game, but I grind out all my gil doing dungeons, hunts, stuff like that. It can take a while to earn and don't think I've ever had more than the 400,000 gil range. Most of my world's market board gets unbelievably expensive and it can be near impossible to get stuff.

I was just able to get a glamour I've really wanted using the world transfer system. Still had to grind for it, but I got it. My home world originally had a way pricier one and then that got snapped up before I could get near it.

Idk if this offers any perspective, but for me at least the world visit system has been a relief. I wouldn't necessarily feel the need to world hop scouring for the lowest price if I had millions of gil and this was just a drop in the bucket so to speak. It's just if there's something very specific I'm looking for and struggling to afford.

lol @ people not realizing capitalism is the real enemy.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

Because some people enjoy crafting/gathering and playing the Market Board?

These are aspects of the FFXIV; FFXIV's market boards are supposed to be player-run economies.

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I have my doubts about most of the people who set prices actually enjoying crafting, but that's gonna be a pretty subjective argument.
There is a player run economy, it runs on things that are not easily bottable. Things that aren't a pure time to dollar ratio. That's all bots can do. You find complicated crafts that require skill and adjustment as they develop and those will be the markets to "run".

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

There was a huge ruckus(still ongoing?) about Blue Mage being a limited job.

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.. uh? Non sequitur?

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

For me as a crafter/gatherer botters limit how I go about crafting/gathering and interact with the Market Board; for example, gathering niche items, which botters haven't figured out yet/not competing with bots on many items because it is futile,flipping bot listed items,etc.

Also, I already pointed out legitimate crafters/gatherers already switch to flipping when faced with bots. But it becomes harder to flip when bots drive down the price of a whole swathe of items.

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Sounds like you're still running markets. Same bots as always. In fact now you can take advantage of bot deflated markets on other servers to profit back on your home server. There aren't MORE bots just because the servers are accessible now.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

I disagree, it affects server economies and by extension players because RMT generally inflates prices. Combined with bots driving down gil income for legitimate players. After a while, it becomes very difficult to afford certain items as a non-botter. I have seen this happen in other MMOs.

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I thought the problem was the bots made it difficult to profit? Are the items cheap or are they expensive? The nodes don't run out of stuff, you can get the mats you can make the items and sell them for profit. Bots have been around since 1.0, not a new problem and they definitely haven't killed the economy.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

Again, it has been pointed out in this thread multiple times, having gil can bypass tedious grinds. E.g. gearing up for raiding/iLvl requirements without having to go through the tomestone route. Gil is the currency of convenience and time.

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Gearing up through crafting is it's own route. Buying all your gear is a shortcut, but not necessarily one I think they intended to be an "out" from grinding tomestones. .. and I also thought all the crafted items were going to be worthless to sell since the bots were going to undercut to hell? The money income will ebb and flow, but so will board prices. As they always have.

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Originally Posted by supergiz

What if they took a system like those mining minigames in the gold saucer. I imagine it's pretty dang hard to bot those successfully. Even harder if they combined it with timed nodes. Just add something very active on high value rare nodes that makes it very difficult if not impossible to bot.

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it is not hard, they simply do this 24/7 with a huge amount of bots and don't care about how much they get, they will simply always do 1 run and never go into "all in/double the amount"(or come up with a script that helps helps them get the most amount possible) like in the gold saucer games and still accumulate enough over time to drive the prices down. this would just make it harder on normal players. even if bots have to sell to npc, its still lucrative for them, ofc they sell on the mb because it works and they can get more gil faster.

ppl saying rmt doesn't effect normal players... why do you think publisher/developer are constantly battling them and banning them, because its healthy for the game economy and normal players aren't affected?

as to destroying the economy, i don't think it will really be destroyed or as bad as some imagine it to be. it always sux when the prices drop for what ever reason, but it also means that crafters will be able to also get some stuff much cheaper and wont need to invest the time to gather it themselves.

i must say i find it a bit amusing that non crafters/gatherers are so happy about dropping prices, even thou it also means they will make less of a profit from their own things they try to sell on the mb and will even need more time to accumulate the needed gil to afford the really rare stuff which is expensive on all servers (rare glamour,furniture,mounts, etc).
also the fact that a lot of ppl care so much about the economy on other servers, especially if they don't even play on those servers.

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Originally Posted by Lersayil

Anywho... you know what else inflates prices? Monopolies, cornered markets, MB flippers and a bubble of hyper-wealthy crafters, forming a market of their own, practically excluding the rest of the playersbase. And contrary to the RMT case, we have examples a plenty in-game for this case.

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Agree with you,which is why I like the concept of World Visit balancing out Market Boards out across the data center in theory.

If bots were not an issue, I'm all for breaking up monopolies/cornered markets. MB flippers are limited by how long an item remains at a certain price/price range.

But many of those hyper-wealthy crafters/flippers do bot,at least from what I've observed on Balmung.

In essence,in one of the possible worst case scenarios, if botting remains unchecked, those who accumulated their gil wealth through dodgy methods will become grandfathered into that wealth.

When the only competition on market board pricing is between bot retainers, legitimate players will earn less and have less spending power. It will become a monopoly of botters instead. This can already be observed in the food/potions/crafted gear market of several servers.

People are actually buying my fish now that have been sitting on my Fish retainers for... lord the twelve knows how long.

Yay for destruction! :D

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Originally Posted by Maneesha

ppl saying rmt doesn't effect normal players... why do you think publisher/developer are constantly battling them and banning them, because its healthy for the game economy and normal players aren't affected?

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Because companies don't want other companies profiting off their investments without a share.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

Agree with you,which is why I like the concept of World Visit balancing out Market Boards out across the data center in theory.

If bots were not an issue, I'm all for breaking up monopolies/cornered markets. MB flippers are limited by how long an item remains at a certain price/price.

But many of those hyper-wealthy crafters/flippers do bot,at least from what I've observed on Balmung.

In essence,in one of the possible worst case scenarios, if botting remains unchecked, those who accumulated their gil wealth through dodgy methods will become grandfathered into that wealth.

When the only competition on market board pricing is between bot retainers, legitimate players will earn less and have less spending power. It will become a monopoly of botters instead. This can already be observed in the food/potions/crafted gear market of several servers.

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Yeah I agree. Botters are an issue and we really should get rid of them if possible. But for the moment they seem to be the lesser of two evils (as in they affect less people negatively).

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

I have my doubts about most of the people who set prices actually enjoying crafting, but that's gonna be a pretty subjective argument.
There is a player run economy, it runs on things that are not easily bottable. Things that aren't a pure time to dollar ratio. That's all bots can do. You find complicated crafts that require skill and adjustment as they develop and those will be the markets to "run".

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In essence, we're playing whack-a-mole with crafting/gathering/flipping against bots. Eg, we find things which are not 'easily botable' but eventually the botters move in on those maket segments as well, so we have to keep moving into different markets. This would be normal market board flow, if there were no bots, but on hyper-competitive market boards, these shifts occur in a matter of hours. And it's not like you can wait out the botters either and hope that the market recovers. Often, it takes months before, certain items are selling at 'normal' prices again.

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Sounds like you're still running markets. Same bots as always. In fact now you can take advantage of bot deflated markets on other servers to profit back on your home server. There aren't MORE bots just because the servers are accessible now.

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I think the Blue Mage analogy is apt, having to decide your Market board practice around bots is limiting for people who actually enjoy crafting/gathering/playing the MB.

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I thought the problem was the bots made it difficult to profit? Are the items cheap or are they expensive? The nodes don't run out of stuff, you can get the mats you can make the items and sell them for profit. Bots have been around since 1.0, not a new problem and they definitely haven't killed the economy.

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I'll make it simpler for you. Bots initially drive down prices to the point where legitimate crafters/gatherers can no longer compete. We could buy gathered mats/flip from the bots and craft/flip items for a profit. But the same bots who gather often craft/flip as well. Then they drive down the price of crafted items as well. So that pushes out the legitimate crafters as well.

When all the legit crafters/gatherers are gone, the bots have monopolies. This can be observed in some of the food/potions/crafted gear markets of several servers.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Because companies don't want other companies profiting off their investments without a share.

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I wish SE cared enough about people using their game as a source of income to start filing lawsuits, because pretty much all of the most popular botting programs are sub-based and thus profiting off of their product.

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Originally Posted by supergiz

What if they took a system like those mining minigames in the gold saucer. I imagine it's pretty dang hard to bot those successfully. Even harder if they combined it with timed nodes. Just add something very active on high value rare nodes that makes it very difficult if not impossible to bot.

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Unfortunately, they can and do regularly bot those games to farm MGP already.

Can't say how efficient they actually are at it, but I'm fairly convinced at this point that if people want to bot something badly enough, they'll find a way to do it.

Not even mendacity mats are off-limits for them, as people are known to actually form parties of bots that spam instances for the sake of farming such.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

In essence, we're playing whack-a-mole with crafting/gathering/flipping against bots. Eg, we find things which are not 'easily botable' but eventually the botters move in on those maket segments as well, so we have to keep moving into different markets. This would be normal market board flow, if there were no bots, but on hyper-competitive market boards, these shifts occur in a matter of hours. And it's not like you can wait out the botters either and hope that the market recovers. Often, it takes months before, certain are selling at 'normal' prices again.

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Sounds exciting. It doesn't sound like you can be shut out of crafting/gathering forever though. .. or playing the rest of the game for that matter.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

I think the Blue Mage analogy is apt, having to decide your Market board practice around bots is limiting for people who actually enjoy crafting/gathering/playing the MB.

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Limiting.. but not crazily restricted like the entire Blue mage experience.. that was a very far stretch. I guess I get what you're trying to say.. but I'm gonna say the comparison is poor.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

I'll make it simpler for you. Bots initially drive down prices to the point where legitimate crafters/gatherers can no longer compete. We could buy gathered mats/flip from the bots and craft/flip items for a profit. But the same bots who gather often craft/flip as well. Then they drive down the price of crafted items as well. So that pushes out the legitimate crafters as well.

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if all you ever wanted to do was have 10 items and their mats and just profit forever off of those I can see your problem. But right now it just sounds like they make you change up your tactics (some servers quicker than others). Not exactly ideal, but also still pretty open to actually playing something like a game instead of a spreadsheet.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

When all the legit crafters/gatherers are gone, the bots have monopolies. This can be observed in some of the food/potions/crafted gear markets of several servers.

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And yet in 6 years of bots the markets still retain player control over much of the crafts and materials.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I wish SE cared enough about people using their game as a source of income to start filing lawsuits, because pretty much all of the most popular botting programs are sub-based and thus profiting off of their product.




Unfortunately, they can and do regularly bot those games to farm MGP already.

Can't say how efficient they actually are at it, but I'm fairly convinced at this point that if people want to bot something badly enough, they'll find a way to do it.

Not even mendacity mats are off-limits for them, as people are known to actually form parties of bots that spam instances for the sake of farming such.

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Even if you can't stop it I imagine they could make it extremely inefficient compared to what they are doing now

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Sounds exciting. It doesn't sound like you can be shut out of crafting/gathering forever though. .. or playing the rest of the game for that matter.

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This is discussion about server economies/market boards. Bots could shut you out of certain markets for long periods of time. We'll have to see how it plays out, now that they can impact the entire data center.

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Limiting.. but not crazily restricted like the entire Blue mage experience.. that was a very far stretch. I guess I get what you're trying to say.. but I'm gonna say the comparison is poor.

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And I will disagree with you. Just like a Blue Mage cannot participate in all of the normal combat content, having to plan your market board practices around bots is similarly limiting for people who enjoy crafting/gathering/playing the Market Board.

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if all you ever wanted to do was have 10 items and their mats and just profit forever off of those I can see your problem. But right now it just sounds like they make you change up your tactics (some servers quicker than others).

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Already addressed, bots will move in your new markets as well. Your old markets will probably not recover for a long period for you to move back in. Essentially, the item pool you can compete in diminishes.

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Not exactly ideal, but also still pretty open to actually playing something like a game instead of a spreadsheet.

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Some people like raiding/Eurkea/Gold Saucer etc If they choose to focus on these areas of the game, it can't be held against them. And some people like crafting/gathering/playing the Market Board.

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And yet in 6 years of bots the markets still retain player control over much of the crafts and materials.

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Except, if you observe Balmung or several other servers, certain segments of the market are controlled by botters. These are not exactly small segments of the market either(food/potions/crafted gear etc)

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Originally Posted by supergiz

Even if you can't stop it I imagine they could make it extremely inefficient compared to what they are doing now

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it will be the same, since it is a bit luck/skill based, normal ppl who suck on it will also be inefficient. so it will be same as is now.
companys running bots wont care, since they have huge amounts of them which accumulate the wares which gets them the gil. normal players who use bots will play during the day and use the most efficient way like every other player and get the same amount as normal players, during his "afk/off" time he will use the bot and wont care how much he gets,because it will still be more then ppl who dont bot(are offline/afk).
trading/farming bots cant be countered as long as there is any kind of trade in a game. even if there wasnt, you can see they offer leveling services (normal/eureka) and so on. botting will always be a thing.

Three months back I was trying to buy armour for an alt I had made to play with a friend who was on Siren (because Siren had RT60 and my friend wanted a speedy catch up). I was playing PLD to get us both fast MSQ queues through the game. When it came time for Stone Vigil I went to the MB and tried to buy some lvl40 HQ crafted armour only to find not only was HQ unavailable, but that NQ cost 300k per piece, and as a newish character even if I had the funds for more that one piece, the brayflox armour had noticeably more defense than the lvl40 NQ set. So I wear the Brayflox into Stone Vigil and that caused a huge stink for a number of players - who wouldn't believe (even after I linked the two chests) that the lvl32 set had more defense than the lvl40 NQ crafted set, and then someone asks why I didn't buy the HQ stuff. They were astounded when I told them that the only HQ piece I'd seen in the last few days of looking was a belt that was listed for 800k, when they learned that the NQ stuff was listed for 300k they offered to craft me a HQ set for free but then realised we weren't on the same server.

As much as you might complain your high margins are being eaten into this change will make low lvl armours like the one I was trying to buy for the sanity of any group I was tanking for in DF easier for new characters to afford. I've moaned myself a number of times about undergeared tanks in various sub-50 instances but I'd never thought for a moment that maybe their gear was an issue because they did not have the funds to buy at the prices that some servers charged for gear. After my own experience I've been a bit more tolerant about it.

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Originally Posted by Lozza

Three months back I was trying to buy armour for an alt I had made to play with a friend who was on Siren (because Siren had RT60 and my friend wanted a speedy catch up). I was playing PLD to get us both fast MSQ queues through the game. When it came time for Stone Vigil I went to the MB and tried to buy some lvl40 HQ crafted armour only to find not only was HQ unavailable, but that NQ cost 300k per piece, and as a newish character even if I had the funds for more that one piece, the brayflox armour had noticeably more defense than the lvl40 NQ set. So I wear the Brayflox into Stone Vigil and that caused a huge stink for a number of players - who wouldn't believe (even after I linked the two chests) that the lvl32 set had more defense than the lvl40 NQ crafted set, and then someone asks why I didn't buy the HQ stuff. They were astounded when I told them that the only HQ piece I'd seen in the last few days of looking was a belt that was listed for 800k, when they learned that the NQ stuff was listed for 300k they offered to craft me a HQ set for free but then realised we weren't on the same server.

As much as you might complain your high margins are being eaten into this change will make low lvl armours like the one I was trying to buy for the sanity of any group I was tanking for in DF easier for new characters to afford. I've moaned myself a number of times about undergeared tanks in various sub-50 instances but I'd never thought for a moment that maybe their gear was an issue because they did not have the funds to buy at the prices that some servers charged for gear. After my own experience I've been a bit more tolerant about it.

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This one is a big nope to me. No one should be expected to have full HQ / dungeon armor pre 50. Even as a tank mostly in level appropriate NQ whites there shouldn't be any real issue assuming normal pulls and a half competent healer.

Also... I don't think anyone sells HQ crafts for that level range to be actually used by people. I think the intended market for that stuff are crafters doing turn-ins, thus the ridiculous price.

So is there a quick way to look up prices on the different servers without having to transfer to another world?

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Originally Posted by Lozza

They were astounded when I told them that the only HQ piece I'd seen in the last few days of looking was a belt that was listed for 800k, when they learned that the NQ stuff was listed for 300k they offered to craft me a HQ set for free but then realised we weren't on the same server.

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iirc, there are vendors that sell NQ items for a few thousand gil, no need to spend 300k on a NQ item for tank leveling.
If you want gear that's a bit better than NQ, there's always the GC seals green items that can be good, depending on your level. I used the GC seal ones when ARR came out, since I didn't have any gil to rub together. The seals were easier to get, due to old gear from dungeons.

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Originally Posted by Lersayil

This one is a big nope to me. No one should be expected to have full HQ / dungeon armor pre 50. Even as a tank mostly in level appropriate NQ whites there shouldn't be any real issue assuming normal pulls and a half competent healer.

Also... I don't think anyone makes HQ crafts for that level range to be actually used by people. I think the intended market for that stuff are crafters doing turn-ins, thus the ridiculous price.

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Players were complaining about the Brayflox set in Stone Vigil. They'd have been happy with a NQ which I hadn't picked up from quests because I took one look at the defense values and and the fact that only one piece had a whole extra 1 vitality and quickly figured my current set was better than the quest rewards. But apparently even after linking the sets to show that Brayflox was better than NQ, groups were still bothered by my being in Brayflox. My solution to players throwing a fit about seeing a tank in Brayflox gear in SV was to lvl up ARM high enough to craft the lvl40 set (I already had ARM at 30 so it wasn't a hard task) and just glammed it over the Brayflox and the issue disappeared.

As I said, my experience completely changed the way I saw undergeared tanks in pre-50 content. If I couldn't afford a full set of crafted (NQ gear) then other new characters/players may have been in the same position.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

This is discussion about server economies/market boards. Bots could shut you out of certain markets for long periods of time. We'll have to see how it plays out, now that they can impact the entire data center.

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And I'm saying that the bots will be no worse than before. If anything people will probably be happy that the average price of most goods across all servers is going to fall. There are the same amount of them and they cannot sell on more than one server.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

And I will disagree with you. Just like a Blue Mage cannot participate in all of the normal combat content, having to plan your market board practices around bots is similarly limiting for people who enjoy crafting/gathering/playing the Market Board.

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Irreconcilable then I suppose. A job that cannot participate in ANYTHING the other jobs were built for besides the basic world exploring isn't comparable to a job where you have to rotate through other content to stay ahead of bots in any way other than you can say its "limiting".

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

Already addressed, bots will move in your new markets as well. Your old markets will probably not recover for a long period for you to move back in. Essentially, the item pool you can compete in diminishes.

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If that was the case then by now ALL markets you participate in would have stayed saturated with bots forever. This is not the case. The item pool you can compete in moves.
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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

Some people like raiding/Eurkea/Gold Saucer etc If they choose to focus on these areas of the game, it can't be held against them. And some people like crafting/gathering/playing the Market Board.

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Which is fine, but opening up the markets benefits more of the player base than it harms in my view.

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

Except, if you observe Balmung or several other servers, certain segments of the market are controlled by botters. These are not exactly small segments of the market either(food/potions/crafted gear etc)

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Segments though. Not entire markets. They cannot hope to control all markets and there is nothing expanding the potential amount of bots.

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Originally Posted by Lozza

Three months back I was trying to buy armour for an alt I had made to play with a friend who was on Siren (because Siren had RT60 and my friend wanted a speedy catch up). I was playing PLD to get us both fast MSQ queues through the game. When it came time for Stone Vigil I went to the MB and tried to buy some lvl40 HQ crafted armour only to find not only was HQ unavailable, but that NQ cost 300k per piece, and as a newish character even if I had the funds for more that one piece, the brayflox armour had noticeably more defense than the lvl40 NQ set. So I wear the Brayflox into Stone Vigil and that caused a huge stink for a number of players - who wouldn't believe (even after I linked the two chests) that the lvl32 set had more defense than the lvl40 NQ crafted set, and then someone asks why I didn't buy the HQ stuff. They were astounded when I told them that the only HQ piece I'd seen in the last few days of looking was a belt that was listed for 800k, when they learned that the NQ stuff was listed for 300k they offered to craft me a HQ set for free but then realised we weren't on the same server.

As much as you might complain your high margins are being eaten into this change will make low lvl armours like the one I was trying to buy for the sanity of any group I was tanking for in DF easier for new characters to afford. I've moaned myself a number of times about undergeared tanks in various sub-50 instances but I'd never thought for a moment that maybe their gear was an issue because they did not have the funds to buy at the prices that some servers charged for gear. After my own experience I've been a bit more tolerant about it.

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the ppl you played with had arbitrary standards and have no idea what they are talking about, lots of times dungeon gear has better stats then some crafted hq gear which might be higher in ilvl/lvl, as you could see yourself by comparing the items.
newbies shouldn't buy stuff of the mb, especially gear/weapon/acc's while they level, only if its cheaper then the npc prices, because they get everything they need during leveling/questing and the required dungeons (if a bit lucky with the drops ofc). crafted hq gear is, as someone already mentioned, mostly for crafters or for ppl leveling their "x"number of job ( ppl who played for a while,maybe reached max lvl). if they wish to buy pets/bardings or other misc stuff, its up to them, but not very advisable since they are newbies and don't have sources to get a good income(yet).

the real reason players are undergeared in dungeons is because there is not a "loose" ilvl requirement or they simply refuse to spend money on npc gear, not the mb prices. as mentioned before, npc gear is good enough for everything during leveling phase.

also why is no one thinking about asking ppl to craft for them, even if you have to shout in the cities, buy the mats,look for crafters, maybe give them 20k (thou most high lvl ones will do it for free if they see a sproud/low lvl char). 80% of the times it will be cheaper to buy the mats and get it crafted then to buy of the mb. this also used to be a thing in a lot of other mmos.

(stupid 3k limitation)

The fact that the bots are able to control even just the markets for mainstream items like crafted gear and infusions is enough of a problem as that's where the vast majority of gil is being spent.

I've also noticed a slow, but definite increase in the number of bots on my server as time has gone on, too, and not just transfers from other servers as I've spotted a number being leveled up from scratch.

It isn't always cheaper on Balmung. Went to Mateus and Goblin for items earlier that were way cheaper.

I actually just dropped into Diabolos and bought some stuff cause it was the only server that had what I wanted HQ. Thanks for the fish, guys. I really needed it for my GC turn-in.

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Originally Posted by Maneesha

it will be the same, since it is a bit luck/skill based, normal ppl who suck on it will also be inefficient. so it will be same as is now.
companys running bots wont care, since they have huge amounts of them which accumulate the wares which gets them the gil. normal players who use bots will play during the day and use the most efficient way like every other player and get the same amount as normal players, during his "afk/off" time he will use the bot and wont care how much he gets,because it will still be more then ppl who dont bot(are offline/afk).
trading/farming bots cant be countered as long as there is any kind of trade in a game. even if there wasnt, you can see they offer leveling services (normal/eureka) and so on. botting will always be a thing.

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Yeah that's unfortunate. Hopefully somehow in the future these companies will figure out a surefire way to combat botting effectively.

Always been against world visit now this even furthers my stance.