Item Duping???

I was browsing for materias on Diabolos server, when i came across a Retainer selling 2 stacks of 99 Savage Might III.

Is this even possible???

Bots. RMT have several groups of spiritbond bots around. Smart ones tend to leave them in obscure locations just killing mobs 24/7.

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Originally Posted by RafeMacleod

Maybe market manipulation... Just buy up all lower costing items and sell for a higher price.

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Or this. I do this frequently, to be honest. Though it's usually for use, rather than resale. It's fairly rare to come across very cheap t3/4 materia though.

Maybe market manipulation... Just buy up all lower costing items and sell for a higher price.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

Bots. RMT have several groups of spiritbond bots around. Smart ones tend to leave them in obscure locations just killing mobs 24/7.



Or this. I do this frequently, to be honest. Though it's usually for use, rather than resale. It's fairly rare to come across very cheap t3/4 materia though.

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They were selling them for 6 or 7 k a pop, which was like 5-6k less than the next item for sale, doubtful it is market manipulation. Besides, they were not selling them in groups of 5 or less, it was complete stacks.

It would take far too much time to get 198 of One type of Materia, even if they were Spiritbond all day everyday.

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Originally Posted by RafeMacleod

Maybe market manipulation... Just buy up all lower costing items and sell for a higher price.

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A good reason why stuff off the AH shouldn't be relistable by those leeching off the efforts of others.

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Originally Posted by KraggyKor

A good reason why stuff off the AH shouldn't be relistable by those leeching off the efforts of others.

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Also a good reason why the AH should only allow you to undercut by 1 gil once every 3 and a half hours. Or something.

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Originally Posted by KraggyKor

A good reason why stuff off the AH shouldn't be relistable by those leeching off the efforts of others.

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I don't think it's really leeching. It's similar to playing the stock market. I bought a bunch of IV materias when they were down to 5k. Most have bounced back between 18-30k on Gilgamesh (as expected). I don't see why this isn't a legit practice. If people want to sell them that low, I'll be more then happy to buy them.

But to have 99 of a III materia AND selling far below market value? Yeah, likely a spirit binding bot.

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Originally Posted by KraggyKor

A good reason why stuff off the AH shouldn't be relistable by those leeching off the efforts of others.

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What? Buying low and selling higher is how a market works.

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Originally Posted by LordSaviour

They were selling them for 6 or 7 k a pop, which was like 5-6k less than the next item for sale, doubtful it is market manipulation. Besides, they were not selling them in groups of 5 or less, it was complete stacks.

It would take far too much time to get 198 of One type of Materia, even if they were Spiritbond all day everyday.

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I think you underestimate the efficiency of a party of 8 bots lol. I can mindlessly park my character in my normal SB area and spam a macro if I wanted to. In around 30-40min, almost all of my gear would be 100% bonded. Faster if I actually moved around (or used low ilvl gear). That's just one person mind you. Imagine what 8 bots that function better than someone spamming one hotkey can do lol. Chances are, that's not the only party they're using too. There's at least 2-3 party of bots somewhere. That's 16-24 (if not more) "players" spiritbinding gear 24/7 with a completion rate of under 1hr for a full set of gear (12-13 materia created per bot, 96-104 materia per party, per hour). Obviously, they won't all be Savage Aim, but it's fairly common to get.

It could very well be item duping though, as you think. This wouldn't be the first time people found ways to manipulate data on the servers for this game. The immediate possibility though (botting) seems much more plausible/realistic to me is all.

I guess I could be underestimating the power of a Korean Farm Bot

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Originally Posted by Vinroke

What? Buying low and selling higher is how a market works.

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^ Except people in XIV tend to buy low and sell even lower.

its the stuff people are selling way under price then the average is like 2-3 times more so there stupid undercutting is helping out the RMT. also the bot killing stuff can have materia in about 1hr 30min do that 24/7 then it adds up.

The biggest question here is why sell a stack full stack of 99 materia?

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Originally Posted by Hanabira

The biggest question here is why sell a stack full stack of 99 materia?

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Another question would be who would buy a full stack of 99 materia?

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Originally Posted by Seryne

Another question would be who would buy a full stack of 99 materia?

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thats what i meant.. why sell a stack of 99 because no one is going to buy it

Dat fifth overmeld. :eek:

People like that are the reason why we need the ability to buy singles out of stacks again.

I have seen this (listing multiple stacks of 99 of items that take time to accumulate via crafting, spiritbonding, or gathering) for a while and I've been swearing up and down to my FC that it is from item duping or botting.

In related news, some bonehead on Sargatanas (not going to name names) listed large stacks (55, 40-something, etc.) of Quickarm III materia for ~2K per item when it was going for 8K consistently. It immediately crashed the price to 2K and under as everyone else followed suit and undercut when they listed their individual pieces and single-digit stacks. I saw the same retainer doing the same thing on another item, though I don't remember which item it was. I really don't know what their motive is to dupe/bot so many items and deliberately crash the price unless they are just trying to move a high volume of goods as quickly as possible, even if it does mean making less gil and screwing up the economy for themselves and everyone else in the long run.

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Originally Posted by Sivara

I have seen this (listing multiple stacks of 99 of items that take time to accumulate via crafting, spiritbonding, or gathering) for a while and I've been swearing up and down to my FC that it is from item duping or botting.

In related news, some bonehead on Sargatanas (not going to name names) listed large stacks (55, 40-something, etc.) of Quickarm III materia for ~2K per item when it was going for 8K consistently. It immediately crashed the price to 2K and under as everyone else followed suit and undercut when they listed their individual pieces and single-digit stacks. I saw the same retainer doing the same thing on another item, though I don't remember which item it was. I really don't know what their motive is to dupe/bot so many items and deliberately crash the price unless they are just trying to move a high volume of goods as quickly as possible, even if it does mean making less gil and screwing up the economy for themselves and everyone else in the long run.

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That's online gaming economics for yah. A world where the uneducated/uninformed have equal control to everyone else in the market. Not to mention the corrupt (e.g. RMT) being willing to monopolize prices at rates far below the average players worthwhile time.

It sometimes works out to everyone's benefit though. A perfect example would be 2-star equipment. Sure, the profit margins dropped noticeably, but the sale rate has gone up even more (at least for my server). What used to sell once a month, if not longer, now sells several a day. If people simply focus on larger, immediate income (especially when it deals with something that sells slowly because of the cost), they're not looking at the big picture, and will likely fail miserably as a result. In the last week, I've made over a million gil, slowly selling things in a non-aggressive manner, and am nearing two mil. I know it'll sell eventually, and my profits are proof of that. A million is fairly significant on Leviathan's economy.

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Originally Posted by RafeMacleod

Maybe market manipulation... Just buy up all lower costing items and sell for a higher price.

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Not enough and not adequate to the situation.

Bots I hate and understand but people complaining that others are undercutting them... I have no pity for you. Everything in the game is obtainable for free if you invest the time to do so. The question is, how much time does a gil equate to?

Just because you spent money to buy X mats to make Y to sell for Z, and someone else went out and farmed X to make Y and sold for Z - 50% doesn't mean they are "breaking the market", it means they found a way to be more profitable with slightly more effort. If I can make 100% profit at 50% of the cost an item sells for and sell it faster vs making 20% profit (which may still be less than the farming person made by taking the time to do so), I'll take the larger profit option everytime.

Don't get me wrong, I tend to buy mats and items as I am not a huge fan of crafting or gathering but those who are are doing it right.

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Originally Posted by Hanabira

thats what i meant.. why sell a stack of 99 because no one is going to buy it

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I guess if someone was SUPER serious about penta-melding something, but why waste all that materia?

There's some small profit in buying bulk materia III's. If you're a 50 crafter, relic-required i55 items sell pretty good with needed materia already affixed.

I bought a small stack of savage might III's for like 4k each and have been slowly making a buck putting them in SMN books and listing for a higher price.

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Originally Posted by Kantide

If I can make 100% profit at 50% of the cost an item sells for and sell it faster vs making 20% profit (which may still be less than the farming person made by taking the time to do so), I'll take the larger profit option everytime.

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Here's where your point is lost - we both gather and make the same item, I sell for 3k, you decide to sell for 950g (typical undercut that happens) why would you assume the ones up there were purely bought mats thus deciding to floor the value?

You make a profit all the while screwing someone else doing exactly the same as you.

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Originally Posted by Tupsi

Here's where your point is lost - we both gather and make the same item, I sell for 3k, you decide to sell for 950g (typical undercut that happens) why would you assume the ones up there were purely bought mats thus deciding to floor the value?

You make a profit all the while screwing someone else doing exactly the same as you.

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So you want the game to do what exactly? Give standardized base pricing that nobody can go below despite the fact that the amount you're deciding to sell the item at is almost entirely based off a value of your own biased and perceived effort in gathering or crafting that item? You want an entire community to agree to that price on a player controlled free market?

Ha.

Haha.

Hahaha.

Good luck with that.

This thing probably worth an investigation. I agree having 198 same type of materias is definitely not something that can be done in just a few days. However we also cannot count out another possibility that maybe this person mass bought out materias from another world which is selling way cheaper than the current world you are in now. So he just practically did a world transfer and mass sold the materias.

It is something like a trade for him, using real money for world transfer to get immense amount of gold profit in return.

But still its too troublesome to do so, so I definitely go with either its botting or duping.

Well if the person played in 1.0 it's quite easy to have hundreds of cracked III/IV materia that you can turn into any materia of your choosing @ the salvage NPC.