Bot's on Market Board...? Really?

[Jojoya]

I've gotten into this argument in another thread, I'll summarize it again here.

Crafting is not busted because of the bots. Take the bots away and crafting actions will still be the same. Crafting recipes will be the same. Crafting rotations will be the same.

What is busted is your sales profit from items you previously found to be more lucrative to sell. Learn the difference between the two.

Even without the bots, the market would have ended up changing dramatically this expansion with the adjustments SE made to crafting and gathering so they would be more accessible to players. Increased competition would still have driven some prices down, though not to the degree the bots have done.

Why switch to other items that you wouldn't bother with in the past? Because a lot of those items are now just as profitable if not more so. Does it matter if you end up selling 2 each of 10 different items instead of 20 of the same item if the total net profit is the same? Lower level items are significantly cheaper and faster to make. That can be a form of profit in itself, leaving you with more time to do other things.

I get the frustration from the bot presence. I also wish SE would do something about it, though for different reasons.

Unsubscribing in protest is not a tactic that works unless you get a significant portion of the player base to do likewise for the same reason. It's only when players take a united stance that developers consider changing their decisions or how things are done.

Like I said in the other thread, it's hard to get other players to join you in support when you're argument is "I can't make as much gil as I used to". Most players were never making that much gil in the first place. They aren't going to care that you're getting richer at a slower rate.

This is an issue and one that shouldn't be overlooked. This basically cheating when you boil it right down. I can't be on 24/7 to gather mats as I have a life, and i'm not a computer program that can just run and run and run. This isn't like I put a rubber band on my controller! This is a program someone put the time into to make and exploit the game to make actual real money for personal gain. If that doesn't offend the EULA I don't know what will anymore.

The real way to report this I suppose is to put in a real help desk ticket, but this could lead to unsubstantiated evidence and consume the help desk team considerably. It WAS a real problem in FFXI and destroyed the markets there. It wasn't until around Aht Urgen expansion that SE started to really see it impacting the game as it was nearly impossible to buy anything on the AH as a new incoming player. Which lead to loss in revenue for the game.

When it starts hitting their revenue stream is the only way SE will attempt to counter this. Currently now it doesn't as the sub's just keep going up for this game.

I'm not saying it's something that should be overlooked.

I'm saying that crying "crafting is busted because of bots!" is the wrong argument to use because it's not. Proclaiming that you can't profit by selling things on the marketboard because of bots is the wrong argument to use because you can still craft things to sell things for profit on the marketboard (I'm still doing this daily).

The correct argument to use is that the use of bots to craft/gather and manipulate market prices is cheating. Players who put considerable effort into the game and don't cheat are now at a massive disadvantage to those who invested little effort and are cheating. That allowing the bots to proliferate has disrupted fair play and put the game's integrity at stake. The longer it continues, the more damage done to the game as players get fed up with a game developer that does nothing about cheating.

Make the issue one of how the game is damaged by the bots, not how a tiny percentage of players can't make as much gil as they used to.