After I started actively using the marketplace the last few days, I noticed that there are some very, very fast responses to the prices when you put something up. Earlier I've mostly just put up stuff I made while training crafting, so there hasn't bee that much competition, but when selling gathered stuff the changes you see in prices are almost immediate, making me wonder if someone has bots checking in every so often. Is this something Square Enix takes seriously and are checking into? Or are there mods available, and legal, for this use, as one often see in other MMO's?
Are there bots checking the marketplaces?
Printable View
-
06-09-2020, 07:51 PMAngelhearthAre there bots checking the marketplaces?
-
06-10-2020, 02:57 AMStepjam
It's definitely not allowed, but I dunno if there are any easy fixes to it. Nearly every week squeenix makes an announcement that they've banned a wave of bot accounts, but more inevitably pop up.
-
06-10-2020, 06:21 PMAngelhearthThere's an easy way to catch them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stepjam
1. Monitor all sales.
2. When someone adds a new item, watch the item.
3. If someone who already had the same item for sale makes a change within X seconds, watch them to see if they act as a human controlling them.
Should weed out the bastards rather quickly. There are probably algorithms one could put in place, to monitor their activities, but I know next to nothing about that. -
06-24-2020, 05:15 AMmilosralevic
I personally never heard of anyone investing bot mechanics onto marketboard price-fixing in FFXIV, although I am pretty sure it might exist somewhere somehow, unfortunately. With years of personal experiences selling items on the marketboard, I have never had an encounter with them.
I will say that experienced sellers often look up and update item pricing from retainers and that as much as they can for some players. Every time I log into the game for the first time in the day I collect Gil accumulated and update the pricing of unsold items. When I know an item isn't bought frequently, I want to make sure it stays to the cheapest and/or most rationable price possible, as much as it can, so I might even update the pricing in between duties or even on the Companion App. Another key thing would be an increase in item quantity. Sometimes item pricing drops by half just by people selling more of the same kind. We all know the laws of offer and demand. The same applies in-game. It's easy to confuse these two points for bot mechanics.
One thing that would definitely give it away as bots would be the timing and frequency of the price being updated. If you see someone's retainer price-fixing an item below yours repeatedly under quick and similar intervals, that would be a dead giveaway.
Although for the love of the gods I cannot understand why someone would do that, bots were more common in the past and are scarcely encountered now, believe it or not. This will probably reinforce the statement that SE has been working hard on this. I did read a similar post back when 2.0 launched in 2013 about a player finding a loophole with bots and managing to make a profit from them, but I can hardly recall the story and if it was related to the marketboard or not.