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

[Callinon]

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.

It kind of is actually. If we look at real world trading economies we see it a lot. China, for instance, has been big on flooding markets they want to control with below-cost goods to drive other manufacturers out. It sucks, but this kind of thing is hardly new.

[Big_Bap]

Oh look, it's that thread again.

[KageTokage]

Oh look, it's that thread again.

I'm assuming you're saying this under the assumption I'm just salty about being undercut in general.

I don't mind getting undercut by actual people because they're taking time out of their lives to check their prices regularly.

It's the market board spambots that annoy the heck out of me because they lack some of the main weaknesses the former have. Players can be beaten through persistence or undercutting at hours where you know they aren't awake/active. These guys can't. Going under their price floor generally just leads to them lowering it by another 50K or so, and if I'm required to sell things at less then 100K because of them it ceases to be worth the effort when I can move things like materia or glams for considerably more profit for the amount of time spent.

I suppose all we can really do is pray that the JP players notice them and convince SE to start doing something about them because they seem to actually have taken some kind of more lasting measure against the RMT bot hordes now that someone on their end complained.

[Shurrikhan]

Could just use the age-old WoW solution: ditch the % fee and instead just add a registry fee. No, it's not refunded when you cancel the item out of its sale (including by adjusting its price).

I'd personally rather prices remain adjustable, but /shrug.

[Lunavi]

It kind of is actually. If we look at real world trading economies we see it a lot. China, for instance, has been big on flooding markets they want to control with below-cost goods to drive other manufacturers out. It sucks, but this kind of thing is hardly new.

People in china have the same needs as we do as human beings, unlike bots in this game. It takes a person in china the exact same time to do the exact same thing as it would for us. They just accept selling things cheaper than we do and live at a lower standard.

Bots, however, are not playing by the same rules as we do considering they can fly through the air and walk below the surface which means they can gather faster than a normal player can ever do. They also don’t require a person to sit and give it commands, which means one person with a basement of bots running can provide Gathering materials at a highly increased rate (XYZ, where X is the amount of bots running and Y is the amount a normal person can provide it and Z being the increased speed of what a bot can provide compared to a human being, so let us hypotheoretically say someone has a bot farm of 100 accounts running and each one can provide materials at 1.5 times the normal speed for a human, that person would flood the market at 150 times the speed of one player, or alone represent 150 full time gatherers, Assuming a full time gatherer gathers 8 hours per day and the botfarmer goes out of their way to hide that they are a bot by having a natural playpattern of only 8 hours per day per account).

This is a huge problem in the economic environment for crafters and gatherers caused by ARTIFICIAL means, and is therefore an artificial problem in the game’s economic value.

[Shurrikhan]

Oh look, it's that thread again.

Oh look, large parts of this thread's content are still painfully relevant.

But, hey, feel free to harass any of the threads requesting that SE crack down on bots, since those threads have likewise been here since ARR?

[KageTokage]

People in china have the same needs as we do as human beings, unlike bots in this game. It takes a person in china the exact same time to do the exact same thing as it would for us. They just accept selling things cheaper than we do and live at a lower standard.

Bots, however, are not playing by the same rules as we do considering they can fly through the air and walk below the surface which means they can gather faster than a normal player can ever do. They also don’t require a person to sit and give it commands, which means one person with a basement of bots running can provide Gathering materials at a highly increased rate (XYZ, where X is the amount of bots running and Y is the amount a normal person can provide it and Z being the increased speed of what a bot can provide compared to a human being, so let us hypotheoretically say someone has a bot farm of 100 accounts running and each one can provide materials at 1.5 times the normal speed for a human, that person would flood the market at 150 times the speed of one player, or alone represent 150 full time gatherers, Assuming a full time gatherer gathers 8 hours per day and the botfarmer goes out of their way to hide that they are a bot by having a natural playpattern of only 8 hours per day per account).

This is a huge problem in the economic environment for crafters and gatherers caused by ARTIFICIAL means, and is therefore an artificial problem in the game’s economic value.

The sad thing is most of these guys make basically no effort to actually conceal their activities and leave their bots running 24/7.

The Lodestone FC rankings are a pretty easy way to get an idea of which FCs on a given server are involved in illicit activity when you start seeing massive disparities in the amount of active members vs. the amount of FC credits they're generating.

[Valoiz]

Market fee should be charge for placing the items and everytime someone change the price to stop this.

[Chrisnetika]

Oh look, it's that thread again.

O look it someone going around discouraging people from their opinions and suggestions, while offering nothing constructive themselves... awesome!

[Fym]

Recently I have taken more interest in making gil than I did in the past. I think some people just like playing the MB, and I don't think they are all botting, chinese gold sellers.