Destroying Server Economies

[Lersayil]

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.

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).

[TwistedTea]

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[KageTokage]

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

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.

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.

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.

[Krotoan]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[supergiz]

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.

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

[TwistedTea]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

.

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.

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

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)

[Maneesha]

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

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.

[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.

[Lersayil]

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.

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.

[Challe83]

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