I give up, the bots win AKA: My flight is scheduled for departure

[Kaurhz]

snip

Sure, though you still aid the point that many of them aren't using money from legitimate means and thus will get chargebacks, either directly from the bots themselves, or from the legitimate owners of the credit card when they notice the transaction, so yes, still largely not profit on their case. With each subsequent chargeback possibly incurring operational and processing fees, so it does as much harm than good in this case if/when they're incurring these fees.

Any legit botter they ban each month sure is fewer profits on their end, but let's not kid ourselves if they show themselves to keep openly embracing this selfsame mentality that is being preached "Well don't ban them because they get profit from them" - Then as the game grows in popularity as does the number of bots that incurs, until eventually, it grows utterly out of control, even on a legitimate player perspective, at which point this will significantly deteriorate the quality of the game for many that are genuinely playing until eventually, those players will just go elsewhere to play games, case in point the entirety of this post. So they stand to lose profits either way, and it just happens that allowing botting to grow rampant not only makes genuine players quit but equally just tarnishes their reputation which accounts for a lot more than simply doing a bot cleanout.

snip

As above, they stand to lose something either way. When bots grow more and more rampant as do the number of people getting fed up with them, so embracing this mentality of not banning them because they account for some margin of profit is utterly ridiculous when it deters legitimate players from the game, much like this poster and many others before them. When a friend of this person asks whether he recommends FFXIV. What's he going to say? "Yeah it's a good game with a nice story and all, but the botting is out of control now, so I couldn't enjoy aspects of the game I was previously invested in" - That is a potentially prospective customer lost, they won't gain anything from their subscription, and they certainly won't have an additional purchaser for the game. Semantic, but accounts are not deleted, they are locked. By extension of this disgusting defeatist argument, they shouldn't even be enforcing their own terms of service in any capacity barring that which constitutes hacking because "They lose 'munny'"

In due time, publicity will equally get just as bad with this, especially if it gets much more out of control.

EDIT: Ironically enough as you make this absurd proposal that players shouldn't get banned under the premise that they'd lose money because those actual players using regular bot software, or automated services- They don't even need to outright ban them, a suspension is more than likely to act as a sufficient enough deterrent in the cases where people are paying genuine money, they'll get a suspension, they'll more than likely return as chances are they enjoy aspects of the game. Besides, someone paying money doesn't exclude them from the terms of service, and nor should it be grounds for SE to not outright enforce them, or at least try to implement a deterrent beyond saying "no". It's a disgusting 'precedent' to set.

[SturmChurro]

Being blunt, this has been an issue raised countless upon countless of times in huge megathreads before over several years and expansions.
Threads of people saying they're leaving due to bots aren't going to make Square take anymore action than any of the much bigger threads have in the past.

Not to mention these kinds of 'farewell, so long' threads barely break 100 posts even in the most popular of them and the devs much preferring megathreads rather than tons of small threads, these threads are effectively tantamount to nothing of worth as far as attention from the devs.

I don't think the devs, or even the mods, even actively read the forums. That's the funny thing.

[Lastelli]

It's baffling that SE hasn't yes introduced solutions like:

1) You can sell a max of X items on the MB at any given moment (additional retainers should be for inventory space and ventures only);
2) Set a cap of X units for every stack of consumables sold (20 pots, 20 foods and so on);
3) Set a cap for the daily number of price adjustments you can do.

Indeed crafting is dead. You can't compete with bots on activities that require low or no skill and adaptability and can be fully automatized once you reach certain thresholds of parameters.

[LianaThorne]

It's baffling that SE hasn't yes introduced solutions like:

1) You can sell a max of X items on the MB at any given moment (additional retainers should be for inventory space and ventures only);
2) Set a cap of X units for every stack of consumables sold (20 pots, 20 foods and so on);
3) Set a cap for the daily number of price adjustments you can do.

Indeed crafting is dead. You can't compete with bots on activities that require low or no skill and adaptability and can be fully automatized once you reach certain thresholds of parameters.

Just pointing out that non-bot bulk sellers exist, me being one of them with pots. So I'm personally not a fan of the idea of having my potential income limited. Also, all it will do is force people onto the PF to sell which will make it even more cluttered than it is during peak hours right now.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

-snip-

It actually doesn't matter how low they set the price floor. They can sell it as low as 10g and it will still be a profit for them because they don't spend time like human player do to perform all those tasks.

[KageTokage]

It actually doesn't matter how low they set the price floor. They can sell it as low as 10g and it will still be a profit for them because they don't spend time like human player do to perform all those tasks.

It does eventually get to a point where they'd be better off trying to get their money from some other source...which is presumably why treasure map farming has suddenly been gaining popularity among the RMTers now as they're getting raw gil on top of valuable items to pawn off on the marketboard.

There was only one party of them on Cactuar for a while, but now I've counted as many four different parties operating in tandem as of the past few days.

[Shin96]

I don't think the devs, or even the mods, even actively read the forums. That's the funny thing.

I agree. One of the reasons certain users were able to create trolling threads that went on for days. These threads are wasted energy as much as I sympathize with OP.

[Colt47]

My feelings on botting are sort of polluted by feelings on the crafting market in general and savage tier. Tinctures are just obnoxious and shouldn't even have an HQ version because of the sheer volume someone needs. I don't really care if someone who is a penta-melded omni crafter says those are easy to make: He's a penta-melded omni-crafter! Just make the HQ quality result in double the amount or something like that! Same with food items.

The issue is you get this massive lull near the end of the expansion. Everyone is off doing other things, bots become the major sellers or you get a few dedicated people doing the crafting, they monopolize the market and set the price, and unless you also are a penta-melded crafter, there's no way to compete.

[Bsrking5]

It's baffling that SE hasn't yes introduced solutions like:

1) You can sell a max of X items on the MB at any given moment (additional retainers should be for inventory space and ventures only);
2) Set a cap of X units for every stack of consumables sold (20 pots, 20 foods and so on);
3) Set a cap for the daily number of price adjustments you can do.

Indeed crafting is dead. You can't compete with bots on activities that require low or no skill and adaptability and can be fully automatized once you reach certain thresholds of parameters.

Probably because the feedback on change to the MB has been to make it more bot friendly. Like changing the seller tax to be on listing rather than when it sold had a very strong push back. Like they want the ability for one player be the only one visible with a bot relisting once someone uncuts, even by a single gil. The feedback on the forums is for the devs to allow or incentives botting and or RMT while pretenting its a non-issue because they don't do it.

[Lastelli]

Just pointing out that non-bot bulk sellers exist, me being one of them with pots. So I'm personally not a fan of the idea of having my potential income limited. Also, all it will do is force people onto the PF to sell which will make it even more cluttered than it is during peak hours right now.

You can still be a bulk seller with those changes. You'd still be able to sell 40*20=800 pots at any time, that's 6 hours or more worth of crafting. I have a hard time believing that non-bot crafters can or are willing to produce much more than that to be honest. And selling via PF is still better than leaving everything to the bots tbh. Of course this is not a definitive solution, but it's at least something. In general, unlimited selling potential and continuous and automatized undercutting by bots is what damages the in-game economy the most. Something has to be done to somehow contain what a bot can do. Bots thrive when mechanics are based on repetitition, high frequency and trivial actions, and since I believe SE has proven that they want crafting to be as easy and accessible as possible, the only thing they can do to contain bots is reducing the frequency by much players can operate on the MB. I'm afraid there are very few alternatives.

Anyway, it's not like I really care anymore, this was just for argument's sake. Thankfully I was able to amass a small fortune before botting became so rampant and unless a sudden hyperinflation occurs, I won't need any more gil until the final days of this game.