The Market Board makes me sad.

[Dfess]

There are FCs/LS(s) which coordinate market segment takeovers and monopolies.

I think many of the gathering market segments are plagued by gathering bots/bot farms.

Even if they sell stuff at 1 gil each, it's profit for them.And since, it's not profitable for human players to compete directly with bots/bot farms, there are plenty of market segments which are basically bot monopolies competing with each other.

Are we talking actual bots or people who actually farm for hours?

Cause if it's the former, isn't that bannable? If bots are crashing the market why isn't SE banning them? Or is SE banning them and more just come? If that's the case why dont they hardware ban them so they cant come back?

[supergiz]

Are we talking actual bots or people who actually farm for hours?

Cause if it's the former, isn't that bannable? If bots are crashing the market why isn't SE banning them? Or is SE banning them and more just come? If that's the case why dont they hardware ban them so they cant come back?

It's impossible to get rid of bots. Like cockroaches, they keep coming back with new accounts after banned. Even hardware banning is not effective as there's ways around that. It's impossible to really ban people from services on the internet unless it's stuff like YouTube and their entire channel revolves around their real self on videos.

[KageTokage]

Are we talking actual bots or people who actually farm for hours?

Cause if it's the former, isn't that bannable? If bots are crashing the market why isn't SE banning them? Or is SE banning them and more just come? If that's the case why dont they hardware ban them so they cant come back?

There are tons of DoL/H bots around. The former aren't difficult to identify if you pay attention to their movement patterns and note how they're able to follow the exact same path between the gathering nodes consistently with no deviation whatsoever. You'll see them forming conga lines if there are multiple bots in the same zone. They also tend to either only show up in the dead hours of the morning or literally do nothing but gather 24/7.

It is bannable, but SE seldom bans them (Which is evident from their weekly illicit activity reports), and even when they do get banned it's rarely a permaban.

I've been reporting a trio of DoL/H bots that have been active since I started playing in late HW and they're still going strong even as I type this message.

It's impossible to get rid of bots. Like cockroaches, they keep coming back with new accounts after banned. Even hardware banning is not effective as there's ways around that. It's impossible to really ban people from services on the internet unless it's stuff like YouTube and their entire channel revolves around their real self on videos.

The types of bots at work here are not like the gil farmers who can be immediately replaced if they get banned.

These are characters that needed to be leveled all the way to 70 on a DoW/M class, then max out their DoL and/or DoH classes to start their farming.

If the STF actually did their job properly they could be easily kept under control, but...

its an competitive market. COMPETE

not every player going to go down by 1 gil like a mook.

You can't compete with bots who effectively have an infinite amount of time to invest into crafting/gathering and basically only care about how fast their stuff sells.

[Gariored]

You can't compete with bots who effectively have an infinite amount of time to invest into crafting/gathering and basically only care about how fast their stuff sells.

you're giving bots waaay to much credit, players buying crafting/gathering items from NPCs and reselling it are a bigger issue than any bot.

but it sounds like you need to jump to more unique items instead of trying to sell basic things ANY yahoo can obtain.


(also not to be a dick, but blaming everything on bots seems to be a convenience excuse its not that hard to get multiple stacks of 99 of basic gathering items in a hour or so)

[Driavna]

you're giving bots waaay to much credit, players buying crafting/gathering items from NPCs and reselling it are a bigger issue than any bot.

but it sounds like you need to jump to more unique items instead of trying to sell basic things ANY yahoo can obtain.

No, she's not. Real problem is: you don't know what you are talking about. Regular players botting and then selling high-end stuff are nothing new.

[LaylaTsarra]

(also not to be a dick, but blaming everything on bots seems to be a convenience excuse its not that hard to get multiple stacks of 99 of basic gathering items in a hour or so)

Have you ever watched gather bots in action? They are very easy to spot. They post stacks and stacks and stacks of content for next to nothing. They kill markets for high end timed nodes including aethersands and more. Please don't poo poo the effect these losers have upon the market and the negating of the effort real people put in to gather those items.

It would be nice if SE took a much more active roll in banning them and their fake FC's. They get reported endlessly and still are there.

[KageTokage]

(also not to be a dick, but blaming everything on bots seems to be a convenience excuse its not that hard to get multiple stacks of 99 of basic gathering items in a hour or so)

I honestly almost never see bots gathering basic mats except for personal use.

They're generally either farming ephermal nodes for aethersands (Which are most often being funneled to an infusion spam bot as opposed to being sold on the MB), farming enemies for material drops, or farming unspoiled nodes for scrips.

Also, I'm not trying to sell "basic" things. I want/try to push sales of the latest gear/consumables but those markets have basically been completely taken over by bots on my server, with three omnicrafters in a constant price war and a single infusion spammer who constantly floods the market with them faster then they actually sell (They basically have an infinite supply of mats between their personal DoL bots and ones owned by friends/associates).

[Liam_Harper]

Don't crash the market just because you want to "sell it faster and get it out of your inventory".

Not to be rude, but no.

Also on topic, for the HQ material prices, the only purpose HQ serves a lot of the time is for low level crafters, most of which are focused on leveling anyway rather than making HQ low level items in bulk. A while back I converted every material I own to NQ to save on retainer space. I can make almost anything in the game from NQ mats, thus HQ serves no purpose. If I'm buying materials, I ignore quality, so if someone has listed their HQ materials at twice the price, I'm not a potential buyer. I imagine it's the same for most others. Therefore low demand has driven HQ material prices down.

(also not to be a dick, but blaming everything on bots seems to be a convenience excuse its not that hard to get multiple stacks of 99 of basic gathering items in a hour or so)

To be fair, it's not always bots, but they are an issue. They're the reason food and potion markets are an absolute waste of time. They also attacked the high-end gear market for a month or two and literally flooded it with several thousand pieces of gear. I'm unsure if Enix dealt with them or it just isn't profitable enough for them this late in the expansion.