I feel like there should be a limit on how often an item's price can be changed.

[KageTokage]

So basically you were both doing the same thing for 12+ hours straight.
That's not really evidence. Especially since you would be right there alongside him.

It annoys me how much benefit of the doubt people give others when it comes to bots, because if I suspect someone, I'll investigate thoroughly before I start making conclusions.

This player in question is not just gathering and undercutting constantly, he's always exhibiting the usual janky repetitive movement patterns that are typical of a bot. I didn't spend excessive amounts of time watching him in person (I do, however, monitor suspect players with player search), but every almost single time I've been in Limsa Lominsa Lower Decks for the past week or so over the course of my somewhat excessively long play sessions he'd be sitting by the retainer bell and if he wasn't, he'd show up within about three minutes if I waited there.

While you can find his price floor and sell lower then him for a time, he'll eventually notice and drop it even lower, so you really can't win. There's also the fact that he's only one of multiple bots doing the exact same thing, so even if you can steal his sales away it's not uncommon for one of the others to start picking up his slack because they seem to operate in different time zones.

For all the claims that botting the MB is rampant, I've never seen any good evidence of it. Even when I directly invade the markets of people who are supposedly botting, I find they're really easy to beat and they just happen to be kind of active, making a few undercuts per day, which isn't even as many as I make when I'm really invested in this game and spend the whole day playing or whatever.

What I routinely see evidence of is that many casual MB users are instantly aggravated by any interaction with the MB and have a tendency to exaggerate how much of a problem it is because they're thoroughly upset. The system shouldn't be ruined for their benefit though, if it would even for their benefit. I definitely make items in large batches, so I often have more in my inventory I'm just waiting to post. If undercutting was limited, you'd post your item and I'd simply "undercut" by making a new post. The end result is a minor inconvenience for me and you're shut out of the market because you can't adjust the price of your item.

Craft bots are common, but people who use undercut bots are not. This player is only the second one I've noticed on my server; the other having been a longtime nuisance since the late HW days and whose name has become familiar to pretty much all of the legitimate crafters on the server due to how obnoxious they are. They play it safe by either using alt accounts to farm their mats or just buying it all straight off the MB and are holed up in their house crafting away about 99% of the time.

Some of them also do their selling on alt accounts, possibly to reduce the risk of their entire operation getting shut down if they do ever get caught. The latter one I mentioned has a trio of low leveled alts in their FC stationed in each of the three ARR cities that log on/off in a constant cycle whenever they're actively undercutting people.

[Nixxe]

It annoys me how much benefit of the doubt people give others when it comes to bots, because if I suspect someone, I'll investigate thoroughly before I start making conclusions.

It is my policy to never trust the judgment of randos and certainly not on their mere assurances that they know what they're talking about. People routinely grossly overestimate their competence.

Craft bots are common, but people who use undercut bots are not. This player is only the second one I've noticed on my server; the other having been a longtime nuisance since the late HW days and whose name has become familiar to pretty much all of the legitimate crafters on the server due to how obnoxious they are. They play it safe by either using alt accounts to farm their mats or just buying it all straight off the MB and are holed up in their house crafting away about 99% of the time.

Some of them also do their selling on alt accounts, possibly to reduce the risk of their entire operation getting shut down if they do ever get caught. The latter one I mentioned has a trio of low leveled alts in their FC stationed in each of the three ARR cities that log on/off in a constant cycle whenever they're actively undercutting people.

Sure, bots may be out there, but if the best they can manage is being inferior to me, a player who does not bot, then it's not worth treating it like a crisis and making drastic changes to the game in an effort to prevent it. By your own admission people actually botting the MB per se is rare, so what sense does it make to greatly alter the MB to prevent the rare occurrences? The nature of botting is such that you can basically make any changes you want and it will always be worth it to bot because botting is free progress. Who you end up hurting with draconian game systems are actual players whose time spent at the keyboard is made less effective.

[KageTokage]

Fair point.

I guess I'm just getting really frustrated with how consistently difficult these same few "players" in particular are making it to sell anything at reasonable prices. Though I also get annoyed when people repeatedly play the "You're just salty" card whenever I start making claims of people botting like it's extremely difficult to tell.

I enjoy crafting and enjoy selling stuff, but SE continuing to let people get away with this nonsense is stifling both. I don't like having to resort to niche items like furniture and glams that I'm lucky to sell once a week even with minimal competition, but it's certainly less frustrating then having to contend with automated undercutters.

[Edax]

Fair point.

I guess I'm just getting really frustrated with how consistently difficult these same few "players" in particular are making it to sell anything at reasonable prices. Though I also get annoyed when people repeatedly play the "You're just salty" card whenever I start making claims of people botting like it's extremely difficult to tell.

I enjoy crafting and enjoy selling stuff, but SE continuing to let people get away with this nonsense is stifling both. I don't like having to resort to niche items like furniture and glams that I'm lucky to sell once a week even with minimal competition, but it's certainly less frustrating then having to contend with automated undercutters.

149,999 gil isn't a reasonable price? Just what is it are you trying to sell? And just how much profit is reasonable?

[KageTokage]

That's what the running price for most of the crafted 450 pieces was, but it's gotten pushed even lower at this point.

I was used to seeing the stuff being moved for closer to 200K throughout SB even well into a patch cycle where the demand was lower, and that's what the prices had kind of stabilized at until this particular individual came around.

[Callinon]

The 5.05 crafted gear is right around 250k on my server. As with all things related to pricing, the market has the ultimate say.

[Nythia]

It annoys me how much benefit of the doubt people give others when it comes to bots...

Keep in mind that bot users will actively defend their way of life when the subject is brought up, just as griefers will go through incredible mental gymnastics to justify why the mechanic they exploit should be left untouched in a game.

[Lunavi]

The 5.05 crafted gear is right around 250k on my server. As with all things related to pricing, the market has the ultimate say.

If there weren’t thousands of bots artificially increasing supply while not increasing demand I can tell you that the value of that gear would be A LOT higher, this isn’t a natural market problem.

[svann]

The undercut bots can set a price floor they won't go under. In his case, it seems to be 150K on most of the 5.05 crafts.

It's really only exploitable for profit if the bot in question is not relisting items very often, but he's doing it every five minutes or so.

So undercut their 150k floor.

[KageTokage]

I already mentioned that while you can sell below their price floor, they (Or one of the myraid other bots) will eventually notice and just keep pushing the floor lower and lower until it's not even worth the time/effort to craft.

Crafting is effectively a time/cost free venture for them due to having a constant supply of mats they either DoL bot themselves or are stocked with from alts, so they really don't care how low they have to go in order to discourage their competition.