Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[NamidaTekika]

Joy,

The issue is that your suggestions ignore even the fact that bots that have been operating for long periods of Months+ in the same manner the whole time aren't changing patterns or anything, they just operate and nothing is done. Your 'trust' is akin to going "they don't bother me personally and I don't care so whatever happens to them happens!", sorry but some people want something done to actually deal with those. Your statements would hold any water about SE taking action if we actually saw those long term bots go away, if even one was dealt with and I didn't see the same ones at nodes, or the same ones sitting in their apartment all, the, time.

Your ideas also aren't that well thought out because as has been brought up there are a myriad of tools and ways that they could identify the bots quickly without even changing game code and address them, in ways that it would be painfully obvious that false positive is highly unlikely, and they have ADDITIONAL means at their disposal that they could run that we don't have access to, yet we are already identifying bots with reasonable certainty. (things such as gil gained in a time period wouldn't be hard since inventory changes to a characters currency and all would no doubt be logged someplace for some time period, and who gold is sent to etc since they likely use such data for RMT tracking anyway). So your doom scenarios are pretty half hearted at best and more come off as crying that the sky would fall if they took a harder stand on the botting.

I don't think I can't have fun, I try to enjoy myself as much as possible with my FC members and where I can, I personally however feel the game could be healthier and more entertaining for the many by dealing with cheaters. Wanting the game to be entertaining and have a healthy PLAYER economy and fun for all PLAYERS without them needing to jump through hoops to play around cheaters is not such a horrible thing that you seem to make it out to be.

Your whole thing feels like if you joined any game where people were cheating and just told everyone else "Just play around them." while the cheaters kept coming through and messing up things for people. Then when they go "The developers should deal with these cheaters!" you come back and go "But you should just avoid them and it'll be fine." and now "The devs shouldn't make changes because it might break something to try to fix the problem! I don't have faith they could do that so best not try!"

[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.

[Kes13a]

what I find amazing then Jojoya, is that this issue is something other mmo producers deal with far more effectively.

You say SE can do nothing, so why can other companies? how is it FF XIV is listed in the bot forums as "VERY BOT FRIENDLY" yet you dont see the same in there about all other games?

I didnt see a mention of what SE could actually do thats well within their jurisdiction... hire an actual NA STF team. doesnt matter what code the cheaters break, having people investigating and banning offenders would serve as a deterrent, an option you failed to mention, and that is indeed... something SE can do.

[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

[Jojoya]

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?

I'm hoping some of these other posters will understand that it is a complex situation so there are no simple solutions such as "bots will disappear if SE bans the accounts", that SE does know what they're doing even if the visible results aren't what players are hoping to see, and that cheaters are always going to exist

One way or another, if they want to enjoy a multi-player game they're going to need to learn to find ways to do it despite the cheaters.

Players should continue to give feedback about how the bots are impacting their game experience. They should report any characters they suspect are cheating through the channels that SE has designated.

But they need to stop acting like they're doing SE's job better than SE can when all they're doing is compiling a list of names of characters showing suspicious behavior. SE has already done that and more.

what I find amazing then Jojoya, is that this issue is something other mmo producers deal with far more effectively.

You say SE can do nothing, so why can other companies? how is it FF XIV is listed in the bot forums as "VERY BOT FRIENDLY" yet you dont see the same in there about all other games?

I didnt see a mention of what SE could actually do thats well within their jurisdiction... hire an actual NA STF team. doesnt matter what code the cheaters break, having people investigating and banning offenders would serve as a deterrent, an option you failed to mention, and that is indeed... something SE can do.

What other MMOs developers are dealing with botting far more effectively? What specifically has happened to make you feel those efforts are far more effective?

I didn't say there's nothing that can be done. I said the deterrents SE can implement aren't a solution to the problem. The solution lies with the other side - they need to decide they're going to stop cheating then do it.

You say the bot forums call FFXIV "VERY BOT FRIENDLY". Well, pancake batter is VERY WOODEN SPOON FRIENDLY while meringue isn't. In other words, more context is needed to know what that rating is referring to - ease of set up and use compared to other game bots, or risk of getting banned for using it? Is that a rating based on maker analysis or player anecdote? How are other games described in comparison?

Why does there need to be a separate STF for NA? It's the exact same game on every server being run by SE.

I did mention banning as a deterrent near the top of my post. I said it's not a solution since it doesn't get all cheaters to stop. It's also something that SE is indeed doing even if they're not banning every character that a player has decided is a bot.

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

There are definitely third party tools getting used to facilitate market pricing, though not necessarily bots. Some price adjustments happen way too fast for a system that doesn't have a good scanning tool built in for player use and a clunky interface for making price adjustments.

We know scanning tools exists. They were feeding data to the marketboard websites that SE kept getting shut down. I'd be pretty shocked if someone hasn't developed a partial version of TSM for FFXIV. That's not truly a bot since it does require some player input to function instead of doing everything on its own once started but it can certainly seem like a bot to those who only see changes happening faster than should be humanly possible.

Whether bot or not, third party tools are against TOS and suspected use should be getting reported to SE for review and action if appropriate. If SE goes the "don't ask don't tell" route with these tools, they are opening up a can of worms since player markets are directly impacted. The ACT parser doesn't directly impact another player's game experiences (it's misuse of information the parser compiles that can).

At least in WoW, everyone had the opportunity to download TSM or other add-ons with similar function so a player upset by the advantage an add-on might give could use it themselves. That's not an option here for PS4 players. It's probably why the other multi-platform MMOs keep their player bases and account licenses segregated by platform type. The third party tools that PC users can install won't impact the game experience of the console users who can't install them.

[TheLoveJenovan]

Time to reply to the bot sympathizers….again.

1. “Just try selling something else—the bots aren’t selling every item”

This is a specious (dumb) argument. You should be able to play all parts of the game. Some people like playing the marketboard, some people like farming Allegory Tombstones for gear. If you had to drop out of 1/2 of the Expert Roulettes because crappy bots were ruining the runs, would you feel the same way? Work around the bots!

Also, on some servers, bots have moved into almost every item.

2. “Square is doing everything they can to fight bots”

This is patently false. Look at the FC rankings for every server. You’ll find 3-5 bot FCs. Some of these FCs have 1 account that generates more FC activity than FCs with over 300 accounts. There are bots that have existed for years.

SE sucks at addressing bots. Doing something about bots as a community is already doing more than SE is doing about bots, which is basically nothing.

Finally, why wouldn’t they want our help? They clearly need it.

3. “What other MMOs are bots dealt with better?”

Warframe, Nioh. Honestly, I’m willing to bet that FFXIV is the absolute worst at it.

4. “The STF is large enough, and it’s ok that they are all in Japan”

The STF should have team members that can read and understand reports from all languages. According to the Forum, that would be Japanese, English, French, German. I’m fluent in 2 of those, and I wouldn’t want to read reports in the other two. The STF can stay in Japan, but they need members that are fluent in all languages of the game.

The STF is not large enough. How large does it need to be? At least large enough that bot ring FCs don’t show up in the top 100 rankings of every server. SE has more than 60 people in QA to find bugs in their game. Having dozens of people to find bots in their game wouldn’t hurt. They have the money.

Again as a PSA, if you’d like to block the comments of users that don’t add to a conversation:

1. Click “Settings” at the top of the page
2. Click “Edit Ignore List” on the left-hand menu bar
3. Type the username you’d like to add and click “Okay"

[Nixxe]

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

The implication of course being that I'm botting and/or buying gil, which I'm not, which is exactly the sort of thing that makes me not trust your judgment the rest of the time when you go ranting and raving about how it's bots all the way down. You see bots everywhere and think everything that doesn't immediately conform to your personal beliefs about what can be done and how things work is further proof of botting. You're basically the FFXIV version of QAnon, and I don't take you people seriously. The last time I said something similar, people yelled at me for multiple pages and after that one person produced solid evidence of one single bot on one single server. Not exactly supporting the argument that bots control the market board.

There are definitely third party tools getting used to facilitate market pricing, though not necessarily bots. Some price adjustments happen way too fast for a system that doesn't have a good scanning tool built in for player use and a clunky interface for making price adjustments.

...

At least in WoW, everyone had the opportunity to download TSM or other add-ons with similar function so a player upset by the advantage an add-on might give could use it themselves. That's not an option here for PS4 players. It's probably why the other multi-platform MMOs keep their player bases and account licenses segregated by platform type. The third party tools that PC users can install won't impact the game experience of the console users who can't install them.

If you want me to believe that there are rampant problems with third party software that only indirectly affect the market board, I'm much more willing to listen. For instance, I know gathering bots are widespread and they have a very noticeable impact on the economy at the lower end, even if the bots purpose isn't really to interact with the market board itself. People keep trying to say it's all market board bots though or just generally refuse to distinguish between the claim "I don't see good evidence of market board bots" and the claim "I don't see good evidence of bots," which is just tedious.

I miss TSM. I didn't know it was possible to love an addon. I used to maintain an inventory of well over 1,000 listings, yet posting them took like a minute.