Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[TheLoveJenovan]

I feel like the bots have been really aggressive as of recently in nearly all item categories. Perhaps their RMT masters are anticipating people wanting to buy gil at the last minute before 5.35 for housing.

I have been aggressively competing with them. As I work at home, it's easy for me to log in every hour or so to change prices. It's gotten to the point I think everything is crashing down.

Thanks LystAP,
I hope you're right. SE should have addressed these bot rings a long time ago, as some of them have been in operation for more than 2.5 years. If they cool down after 5.35, that would be great though.

[LystAP]

Thanks LystAP,
I hope you're right. SE should have addressed these bot rings a long time ago, as some of them have been in operation for more than 2.5 years. If they cool down after 5.35, that would be great though.

I also think they're operating on multiple servers - I see consistency in their markets, since I've bought some of their goods to sell on my alt servers - however, I mostly focus on Balmung, I don't have the time nor energy to keep on jumping servers - this market warfare is fun sometimes, but I like to vary my activities (like doing instances/pvp). I like to think I keep driving down their profit margins. This isn't just one person/machine. It feels like there's a strong correlation in operating procedures between all of them, at least on the Crystal Data Center, which indicates they may all be under one organized group. Even if you manage to take them all down on one server, as long as they have an account live on another, they can just transfer stuff from the survivors to a new account, and start over quickly. You can trade gil and items cross world/server if your on the same Data Center.

It was controlled on Balmung for awhile, but since it opened up they were able to make MB alts to expand their reach. There is most likely a RMT connection, which explains why they just keep on going - there's real world money involved. Even Blizzard gave up eventually and had their WoW Token. They'll keep trying as long as people keep buying their gil - which they will given the housing rush coming up. In the end, I'm just focused on driving them out of the market I want, even if it means minimum profit, although I confess it's starting to be less of that and more of defeating the enemy - no matter the cost.

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks LystAP,

I also think they're operating on multiple servers - I see consistency in their markets, since I've bought some of their goods to sell on my alt servers - however, I mostly focus on Balmung.

They definitely do. When I was playing on Crystal (Zalera server), I was able to identify the FC bot rings on each of the Crystal datacenter servers. On Balmung, the FC is the Alpha Knights (https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...9148295235275/), and they're currently ranked 6th for the server. There's also a datacenter bot on Balmung that crafts and sends items to retainers on all other servers--I won't name the bot because of forum rules on identifying individual users.

I agree that there are patterns. I surmise that the FC bots on every server are run by one RMT gil company, while the datacenter bots are run by a different RMT company.

They'll keep trying as long as people keep buying their gil - which they will given the housing rush coming up. In the end, I'm just focused on driving them out of the market I want, even if it means minimum profit, although I confess it's starting to be less of that and more of defeating the enemy - no matter the cost.

I did that for a couple of months while I was on Jenova (Aether), and I had some success. The FC bot would stop selling for a few days on some markets then come back. On Zalera, players have responded by selling most items below the FC bot's floor prices. This has crashed the market for a lot of items, and that bot has moved into selling most items to make money.

There are still some items which the bots won't touch, but these are for crafted items in which the market prices for mats are the same as the crafted items itself. To make a profit from these, you have to farm the mats yourself--ex: Nagxian Silk from maps.