Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Jojoya]

I think some people interpret your posts as having a defeatist attitude, and they're hoping to find a solution to the problem with this thread.

Get ready for massive wall of text.

The solution is not within the power of the player base to enact. It's not even within SE's ability to enact (outside of one extreme method I'll talk about below that SE would never do).

What is the solution? The solution is for players to stop using bots and RMT. Only those who use those things have the power to enact the solution.

That's not going to happen. Human beings are hardwired to do whatever it takes to get what they need or want, it's a survival trait. It takes a moral code being imposed on us at an early age to teach us to ignore the urge to cheat to get what we need/want if we can't get it through conventional methods. Obviously that moral code is not successfully taught to everyone. They're going to cheat. Block one of their methods and they'll find another to use.

SE can put deterrents into place but it doesn't solve the bot problem. Ban an account and the player who likes to cheat through botting will simply get a new account (sometimes using false personal information to make it harder to connect the new account with a banned account) and start botting all over again. It doesn't bother them, they've usually got plenty of disposable income to keep buying new accounts.

Change the game's code to block whatever hack bots are currently using and the bot programmers find new hacks to use. We know that SE does this on a regular basis because we watch the behavior of the RMT farming bots change over time. Remember the trains of flying bots through the cities and low level zones at the start of Shadowbringers? We don't see them doing it anymore because SE found a way to block that particular bot behavior. SE is not sitting on their heels ignoring the problem like some want to claim.

If they find ways to block the RMT farming bots, why aren't they doing the same with the market bots? There's a big risk in changing game code - you can cause problems for legitimate players as much as the bots. Do something that prevents a bot group from trading items between characters and you'll likely prevent players from being able to trade. Do something that keeps a bot from changing their prices and you'll probably keep players from being able to change their prices. You end up with the real players angry because their game play is hindered while those using the bots really don't care because the bot is doing all the work.

What to do? SE is stuck in the position of trying to balance the benefits to the player base with the potential harm done to the player base by any measures they enact to hinder the bots.

Could they be more aggressive in banning accounts regardless of it not solving the problem? Probably, but then they run the risk of having too many false positives. A player base might be angry that bots exist but it flies into a rage when too many players get swept up by false positives during a ban wave. Players begin to fear that they or their friends will be next, and that they'll have to fight with account support for weeks to get reinstated (which isn't always successful). In the meantime, the player using the bot returns on a new account and is back in business within a couple of days.

If someone can come up with a genuine, reasonable solution that lies with the hands of the player base or SE to enact, that would be great. Collecting lists of suspect FCs to send to SE isn't a solution, even if it makes someone feel better because they're doing what little is within their power. SE probably has a more extensive list of suspect FCs and characters they're already watching.

I know the subject of using something similar to WoW's Warden has come up many times. Evidently that sort of program has been ruled as violating privacy laws in some countries because PCs are commonly shared between users and only one of those users would be consenting to its installation and privacy policy. It's understandably not a legal mess that SE wants to tangle with and they're probably not inclined to remove those countries from the list of eligible countries of residence in the User License Agreements so they could implement a Warden type program.

SE could remove gil from the game completely since it's gil related activities that encourage most (not all) botting. I doubt that would go over well with players since face to face trading is impractical compared currency purchases off the MB. Players would just end up adopting some other game item as the new form of currency (Fine Sand, anyone?) then cheaters would start botting again to get whatever was adopted.

What's the one method I referred to above that SE could do to stop the bot problem but won't?

Remove all PC support for the game and limit it to PS4 (and PS5 once they're supporting that). As far as I know, the bots are run solely on PC/Steam accounts. I don't think there are any devices that can run programmed scripts and send the commands to a PS4 through the controller interface (I could be wrong about that). SE isn't going to drop support for more than half the game's subscriber base. That would be a major financial blow.

Am I a defeatist? A defeatist automatically expects to fail at their task.

I'm a paying customer here to enjoy playing a game. That's my task. I'm going to go do it and I'm going to it despite the annoyances that are bots.

If I encounter a character displaying behavior that's typical of something controlled by a bot and not a human being, I'll report it and detail what makes me think it's a bot.

If I'm buying from the marketboard I do my best to choose the listings from what I think are real players, not bots, even though that means I'm usually paying 2-3 times more. I don't mind paying more - I'm still making gil selling things on the MB myself. I have plenty to spend.

I trust SE to take what measures they reasonably can to combat bots without doing things that will negatively impact my game play. I know it's a hard job and they're working hard at it, even if to our eyes the results seem insignificant.

I haven't been defeated here. I'm succeeding at my task. I haven't let the bots stop me from enjoying the game though I do still feel the annoyance at times.

But some of the other posters in this thread are defeatists. Their task is the same as mine - to enjoy playing a game. They've decided it's impossible as long as bots exist and they refuse to look at the other options within their power to make it possible.

[TheLoveJenovan]

Jojoya, I'm replying to you even though I said I wouldn't. I read your post. What are you hoping to achieve in arguing your position? To have people stop complaining about bots on a thread about bots?

[Angelhearth]

Get ready for massive wall of text.

There is one solution, SE could implement a bot for everyone to use. That way we all have the same possibilities.

I find it strange that SE makes the Market Board so difficult to use for someone that wants to make GIL. The search engine is total crap since there are no ways to use it to find what products to sell, only what products to buy. You get no notification if someone place something below your price. Etc. etc.

Just make it easier to sell and the bots won't have any advantages, thus eliminating them all together.

I would also have combined all servers on all data centers into one market place, to make the Market Board much, much larger (the time delay can easily be overcome by making the transaction take a second, in stead of a few milliseconds).

And finally, if you post an item it should only stay on the Market Board for a limited amount of time, something like 48 hours, before it is automatically removed into a special container that keeps it for another 48 hours, before it's discarded, so you have some time to get it back and try to resell it.

[Nixxe]

There is one solution, SE could implement a bot for everyone to use. That way we all have the same possibilities.

I find it strange that SE makes the Market Board so difficult to use for someone that wants to make GIL. The search engine is total crap since there are no ways to use it to find what products to sell, only what products to buy. You get no notification if someone place something below your price. Etc. etc.

Just make it easier to sell and the bots won't have any advantages, thus eliminating them all together.

I would also have combined all servers on all data centers into one market place, to make the Market Board much, much larger (the time delay can easily be overcome by making the transaction take a second, in stead of a few milliseconds).

And finally, if you post an item it should only stay on the Market Board for a limited amount of time, something like 48 hours, before it is automatically removed into a special container that keeps it for another 48 hours, before it's discarded, so you have some time to get it back and try to resell it.

Giving people notifications when they're undercut would just encourage anyone who cares to sit at their bell and constantly update prices, which would make it easier to shut casual sellers out of a market or force them to drastically undercut and go somewhere else. Likewise, throwing people's items out would benefit more hardcore sellers at the expense of casual sellers.

Bots will always have an advantage because it's free progress. Even the most devoted player will eventually need to eat or sleep or go the bathroom or... get bored... A bot never will. A bot will sit there clicking over and over and over if it needs to until SE removes it from the game. Pretty much anything a bot can gain is better than not running the bot.

[Angelhearth]

Giving people notifications when they're undercut would just encourage anyone who cares to sit at their bell and constantly update prices, which would make it easier to shut casual sellers out of a market or force them to drastically undercut and go somewhere else. Likewise, throwing people's items out would benefit more hardcore sellers at the expense of casual sellers.

Bots will always have an advantage because it's free progress. Even the most devoted player will eventually need to eat or sleep or go the bathroom or... get bored... A bot never will. A bot will sit there clicking over and over and over if it needs to until SE removes it from the game. Pretty much anything a bot can gain is better than not running the bot.

Well, if you aren't a hard core seller, what's your problem with bots? And what is a hard core seller anyway? I follow up my retainers 6-12 times a day, so I guess I'm hard core. I would say that if you have a problem with bots then you are updating them at least that much, otherwise bots aren't your problem, but hard core sellers.

[Nixxe]

Well, if you aren't a hard core seller, what's your problem with bots? And what is a hard core seller anyway? I follow up my retainers 6-12 times a day, so I guess I'm hard core. I would say that if you have a problem with bots then you are updating them at least that much, otherwise bots aren't your problem, but hard core sellers.

I'm not sure why you think bots are a problem for hardcore sellers. They mostly suppress prices in lower end markets that you should be buying from because those items aren't worth the time it takes to produce them. It just makes selling more efficient.

Despite what the forums would like us to believe, I still see little evidence of the market board being directly botted. I was easily able to sell aesthete's gear in the wake of 5.31 when it temporarily became worth selling, for instance. What I saw ruining the market wasn't bots, but the same nonsense that always plagues gear markets: they're an "obvious" choice to make gil, so clueless crafters flock to them, overstock the market, and make stupid pricing decisions because apparently nobody knows or cares what opportunity cost is.

[Auriya]

Despite what the forums would like us to believe, I still see little evidence of the market board being directly botted.

Really Nixxe? Did you read anything of the previous threads? Or do you simply just not want to see it? There's plenty of experiences shared that bots do exist on the marketboard.
And picking out a sale situation where you happened to sell something doesn't prove anything and definately not that there aren't bots.

It's hard to have a valid discussion here if players just want to be white knights defending the game no matter what, closing their eyes to what's happening and keep on claiming that the game itself is healthy and it's all the players' own fault because they themselves encourage RTM activity.

Pardon me - that's just such a twisted statement. It shouldn't really be such an issue IF the game actually had tools and procedures to reduce that activity more efficiently hence preventing players from even buying gold.
We also shouldn't have any criminals in society if people were behaving - but they aren't. So the government shouldn't do anything to prevent crime because it's all people's own fault if they are exposed to crime?! Of course they should!
It can never be the player's fault that the game is suffering from criminal activity. It's SE's responsability to prevent it from happening – to protect the game AND their customers.

When that is said what we try here is actually to find a way to make SE aware of the extended bot issues and are offering our help to find solutions (simply because we love the game) and we're ...sorry to say..long past if it's happening or not, because it is, even if a few claim it isn't. So if you can't find ”evidence” as you say, it's on you, and noone else.
It get's tedious treading water around the same statements from players who just occationally had succes selling some items, and hence feel justified to jump into a forumthread and miscredit all evidence other players have spent months on colleting

I keep on wondering though why the same few on this forum are so eager and persistent in claiming that there is no market board bot problem..gives food for thought