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

[Nepentha]

Very much what I've put in bold. It is the same for housing. I fought against a lot of people for housing and I never begrudged the people who put a lot of man hours camping for it getting them, because they're putting the effort in with a system that's broken and aren't taken the unfair exploitative easy answer out. It means I always drew a lot of joy when I saw a bot continuously click on a person's pet and somebody else got the house. And joy when I found out that people relocate and set up a retainer with items to sell so the person botting/using an auto clicker spends all their gil.

Undercutting is annoying as heck and it's just gonna happen, but at least it requires effort to be on the ball. Bots just add that much extra unfair edge that it is taking it too far and makes for a bigger problem.

I feel like maybe there ought to be a restriction on how frequently you can update a market price or limit how many times a day you can adjust it. This would address both bots and people who excessively undercut people.

This. What we want is a player run economy, not a bot run economy.

[Liam_Harper]

I love how people think Bots are what is wrong with the economy.

No one said bots are the entire issue. We're well aware crafting is in a terrible state. However, bots just take a bad situation and make it far worse. They're taking that excessive supply issue and multiplying it. Just because crafting itself needs work too doesn't mean players breaking ToS should be ignored.

[Saefinn]

As people not buying stuff. Raiders aren't your main income source, and never have been after the initial first few weeks. It's the midcore and casual players who buy that gear. Back in Stormblood I made millions months into each patch primarily on people I suspect never touched Savage, or maybe were playing an alt job. Either way, selling stuff only became an issue towards the midway point of Stomblood when more people realized SE does absolutely nothing to bots. Come Shadowbringers and it's a running joke on Discord, Reddit and so forth how incompetent they are handling bots.

Speaking as a midcore player, this is spot on. I have lots of jobs to gear and I have no real incentive to do that when patch drops when my gear is fine as I'm not diving straight into Savage and gearing them all through the MB can be expensive, especially on patch day. I'd say casual and midcore players probably outnumber hardcore players and probably are more likely to gear more than 1 job with this method.

[Puremallace]

fat chance. they have three people that look into bots and I think they dont really care about any server that isnt based in Japan.

they have been sent tons of evidence by people doing their job for them, and RMT rings and bots are being run without consequence while they ban RP'ers.

SE has a weird priority set. but do not delude yourself, they do not listen to verifiable evidence either.

Man this is still a developer that has comments turned off on their Youtube videos and Up/Down voters still disabled. I PROMISE you they are still super sensitive to bad press on FF14 lol

[xbahax92]

You've said more than enough. Take a break from the game.

You're aware the same ppl using bots also sell gil on "special" websites for their own profit right?
Its obvious that mb botting is far more than just some "bargains" for the players.

[Jijifli]

fat chance. they have three people that look into bots and I think they dont really care about any server that isnt based in Japan.

I wanna go back to this post (since someone just recently responded to it) to point out another potential problem.

There's actually also a good chance that it might not be that the STF just doesn't give a lick of a care (though that'd shock me), but that the translation team isn't providing them any information, since the entire 3 people are all Japanese.

Let's not forget Ungarmax was a huge issue in Mid SB's raiding scene for O6S for months without any fix, simply because (And they admitted this) the translation team never actually sent that information over, so the JP never even knew.

I mean, I think the simplest solution is to just have more STF members (as 3 is already way too little for this) that cover more languages. If we have one's designated for NA and speak English, that means that we'll at least know 100% someone is seeing it and understanding the report. Currently it's hard to tell which end's being the problem and I'm stuck here doubting both because of it.

[Nepentha]

I mean, I think the simplest solution is to just have more STF members (as 3 is already way too little for this) that cover more languages. If we have one's designated for NA and speak English, that means that we'll at least know 100% someone is seeing it and understanding the report. Currently it's hard to tell which end's being the problem and I'm stuck here doubting both because of it.

This. 3-4 people who only speak Japanese handling reports for all data centers is overwhelming, and it doesn't help that they're not getting the reports we send in translated and sent to them. We need specific STF teams for NA and EU as well. Who speak the languages for those DCs. (Also, more than 3-4 people would be nice, should be at least 1 person per SERVER, not just a handful for a DC with multiple servers.)

But that's just a thought. Until someone forces SE to take a hard look at this, we get this.

[ItMe]

As people not buying stuff. Raiders aren't your main income source, and never have been after the initial first few weeks. It's the midcore and casual players who buy that gear. Back in Stormblood I made millions months into each patch primarily on people I suspect never touched Savage, or maybe were playing an alt job.

Don't forget about the people (like me) who get that gear week 7 so they can raid after getting their weapon and gear prices drop.

[Ardeth]

The botting is getting absolutely ridiculous in this game. Though I'm not sure exactly how to fix it without it having a negative impact on the gameplay of average players.

[Nepentha]

The botting is getting absolutely ridiculous in this game. Though I'm not sure exactly how to fix it without it having a negative impact on the gameplay of average players.

Tbh the average game players will likely be just fine. Without having to compete with bots anymore, they can easily do some incidental auctions and make enough money from that to buy whatever they want. I remember being a new player with no understanding of the marketboard back in ARR. Even then, I made enough money selling a few things here and there to buy gear I wanted and donate to the FC housing fund.

I don't think it will ever return to that, but I think casual, average players will be just fine.