Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Kes13a]

Honestly with GM tools it would be almost brainlessly easy to identify many of the worst offenders. A simple online time report, then start going and observe the longest online times for about 5-10 minutes and you could quickly tell if they are a bot.

That would probably axe a large percentage of them quickly enough. Market ones you could probably just go and look at online vs what zone they've been in the whole time. I've yet to know a REAL person who would sit in one zone for all of their online time. To nuke gathering bots, just head over to Duskbloom spawn and/or Ephemeral node for Levin mint. Watch the bots SWARM. Pick a few to follow and check online times...within like 2 hours you could scythe through the bot population and destroy many of these long standing gil farmers.

I think thats what makes their (SE's) inaction and the long time bots continued existence so perplexing. they have all the tools, it doesnt require new code to be written to automate the process, and for the bot makers to figure out a way around, it just requires a person/team to look into them.

[TheLoveJenovan]

That's too bad the mods pulled the nice, detailed post naming a bot. Arguably, a bot isn't a playing character but rather a non-playing character (NPC), which is not capable of being harassed.

[Kes13a]

whats worse is, now we know they monitor this.... and I doubt any word of this has reached anyone that can make a difference

[TheLoveJenovan]

Hey Kes13a, I just tried switching data centers to see if I could find a server with a better bot situation. I picked Crystal and Zalera because they were less congested. It didn't strike me that that's your server. I'm guessing, from your contributions on this thread, that it has a bad marketplace bot problem too

I've spent only a few minutes on there, and I think I've found at least 2.

I guess you can't escape the problem, even with server switches. I'll take a look at the other servers on Crystal, but I suspect they're not much better. In the end, I'll probably just let my sub lapse until/if something is done about bots.

ps: I did have some success pushing bots out of markets on Jenova by blocking bot sales with prices just under their price floors. I estimate that I was costing the bot about 1-1.5M a day in blocked sales, and I got the bot to move out of about 8 markets in 2 weeks.

[Kes13a]

Hey Kes13a, I just tried switching data centers to see if I could find a server with a better bot situation. I picked Crystal and Zalera because they were less congested. It didn't strike me that that's your server. I'm guessing, from your contributions on this thread, that it has a bad marketplace bot problem too

I've spent only a few minutes on there, and I think I've found at least 2.

I guess you can't escape the problem, even with server switches. I'll take a look at the other servers on Crystal, but I suspect they're not much better. In the end, I'll probably just let my sub lapse until/if something is done about bots.

ps: I did have some success pushing bots out of markets on Jenova by blocking bot sales with prices just under their price floors. I estimate that I was costing the bot about 1-1.5M a day in blocked sales, and I got the bot to move out of about 8 markets in 2 weeks.

overall depends on how you market I guess.

welcome to Zalera lol

there are two for sure, 2 or 3 I have strong suspicions on, then the usual batch of importers and RMT posters that put up batches at 1/2 value and leave them at that price so, really... nothing you havent see previously

The one thing I have noticed is in the last 3 weeks or so the floors have dropped considerably. that used to be a reliable option here as well, but they have brought them down from about 2 x cost to to just over what I calculate cost to be now.

did get a good deal on some things last week though, obviously had been an update or something, but put a run of things up for the default selling price >.> I felt bad buying it all up.. NOT. I got 6 or 7 Aesthete pieces for about 9k total. bad day for some cheater lol

ps. I know there are a few servers that I do not often see things from on Crystal, not sure if that means they have fewer bots or just not many things get imported over

[TheLoveJenovan]

Your server is in really bad shape. It looks like a few players have also started using bots to compete with RMT market bots. I started seeing this on Jenova as well, when players would undercut bots 20-30 times over a 24 hour period.

You know the problem is bad when real players have to use bots to compete with RMT bots.

In any case, if I see some of your high-end crafting stuff, I'll make sure to buy those. I still need the Aesthete stuff.

[Rurouni_Auron]

The immediate action of removing a post naming a bot and the lack of action in dealing with them tells a lot about SE's priorities and exactly proves my point in my deleted post that they actually promote botting.. after all bots are loyal paying customers too so they have to toss their salads and we can all go to hell
SE, their service desk and special douchebag force are a bunch of C U Next Tuesdays.

[Rurouni_Auron]

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post: the FC of that cockroach has 9 characters.. since you can have a maximum of 8 that means that there is a backup character in that FC who can pick up all the Gil that they have been botting and hoarding for the past few months from the company chest which I suspect they keep all their gil in..
So even if the good for nothing dipshits take an action and terminate the account, the cheater will keep all the gil and pick up from where they left with the second account, and they can level up their crafting job in a matter of a week since its so easy now.

[SteppeSister]

They have to have two service accounts so the crafter can trade with or mail the mules. It's one service account with a single omnicrafter and another with 8 mule alts. They have the same setup on every world on Chaos.

The people who remove posts that make accusations and name names on the forums (which is actually a good policy) are not the same people who take action against bots. Deleting your post doesn't promote botting. Not doing anything about bots promotes botting.

I have no idea why they don't do anything about them, but everyone knows who they are and they've been reported loads, so at this point I'm just assuming they're never going to do anything about them, so it's pretty much just live with them or quit at this point. Which is pretty frustrating.

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks Rurouni_Auron. I noticed that in your original post, and that hadn't occurred to me. It makes sense.

So I visited a few other servers on the Crystal Datacenter, and I can pinpoint the market bots within 30 seconds on each. These bots all behave so similarly that I suspect it's one guy or one company running all of them on all servers.