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

[Ardeth]

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.

I was speaking more to removing something the botters profit from somehow would negatively impact all of us. Like removing trading and limiting how often you can change prices on the MB etc. Though most bots have seemed to move on to spamming maps. It's one of those things where you could easily fix the problem to where the bots would find no value in the game, but in doing so I'd worry that the players would also see no value in playing the game. Because outside of removing gil there's no way they are going away. Because even if that goes away there's still prestige items and paid leveling, farming and etc. I just think in fixing it they would ruin the game for everyone. That is unless they actually paid GMs to handle nothing but bots on 12 hour shifts and let's face it these tech companies aren't going to do that.

[Jijifli]

That is unless they actually paid GMs to handle nothing but bots on 12 hour shifts and let's face it these tech companies aren't going to do that.

The STF is specifically meant, by description, to deal with people that cheat the system, either with hacks or automation, and give punishment if they are discovered in investigation to be doing such.

Well, the problem here obv is that they aren't, but that is a job, and people do get paid for it. It's just whether they're actually doing it or if they're just paid to slap ghuntgwn nhrwegh the 3700th for chargebacking.

[Fyrefox45]

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

Now do not get me wrong they are a problem and SE has always failed at handling them both their mmos so far.

But with that said...remove all the bots then what.

Crafters will still make 10xs the armor as needed by the market.
Gathers will mass gather 100xs the materials that crafters need.
And raiders/endgame ppl will continue to not buying stuff a month into raid patches because the gear is complete trash compared to tome/raid drops.

And due to the above this will lead to all those 100s of legit crafters per server to... well constantly undercutting every few minutes to try to off load their 10 armor pieces they just crafted along side a market that has 120 already on there with everyone else trying to mass sell before the prices crash.

There are plenty of markets to cover for real people to fill, there's not exactly an overwhelming supply problem. The problem is you have single bot crafters keeping the market supplied for the top 80% of items on the mb, while everyone else's items rot. You massively underestimate exactly how prolific the problem is.

[KageTokage]

Something I find particularly baffling is that they opted to remove the gil reward from Rowena turn-ins as well nerfing the sell costs on materia in interest of reducing how much gil is coming into the economy, which hurt both the bots and actual players alike.

Yet, they've left the gil drops from ARR dungeons in the game all this time when those have been heavily exploited from the earliest days of the game strictly by the RMT farmers, as only they can actually make it efficient via their usage of hacks and sheer numbers.

You'd think they'd look at whether or not a particular source of gil is lopsidedly in favor of cheaters before deciding to axe it, but I guess not. It's weird decisions like this that make it really hard for me to tell how much they actually care about the state of the economy among other things.

[Nepentha]

Mmm. Another RMT ban notice, another day of seeing the same botters running around as per usual. You know, they stopped banning botters in any significant way back in Sept of last year? Wonder why. Some sporadic banhammers going down the last few weeks. 1 botter here, 2 botters there. But otherwise, the aren't paying much attention to it.

RMT bot banning is down too. Peaked around Sept of 2017 with over 60k bannings for RMT/Illicit activities. Now it's a big deal if they ban 5k in a week if you check the slow news day articles written about it.

[Kes13a]

Mmm. Another RMT ban notice, another day of seeing the same botters running around as per usual. You know, they stopped banning botters in any significant way back in Sept of last year? Wonder why. Some sporadic banhammers going down the last few weeks. 1 botter here, 2 botters there. But otherwise, the aren't paying much attention to it.

RMT bot banning is down too. Peaked around Sept of 2017 with over 60k bannings for RMT/Illicit activities. Now it's a big deal if they ban 5k in a week if you check the slow news day articles written about it.

Its because they say this Nepentha "We will continue to take stringent disciplinary action against any accounts with confirmed involvement in RMT/illicit activity"

translated that means "If you send us an email, with a lawyers attestation, that you bot and use it in our game, with 5 confirmed witness testimonies, we will ban you for botting"

[Melichoir]

There are plenty of markets to cover for real people to fill, there's not exactly an overwhelming supply problem. The problem is you have single bot crafters keeping the market supplied for the top 80% of items on the mb, while everyone else's items rot. You massively underestimate exactly how prolific the problem is.

Frankly I disagree. I think people massively overestimate what bots do. Or rather, they incorrectly place bot influence in the wrong areas of the MB and extrapolate weird conclusions if bots didnt exist. There are a bunch of things bots do, for better or worse, that matter. For one, they pump more and more gil into the economy causing inflation. Inflation, however, isnt inherently bad if NPC goods remain static in price. So for example, if you had an item worth 100k, but inflation allows you to sell the same item for 1 million gil cause theres so much excess gil in the economy, this works out in your favor if your ultimate goal is to purchase a house because housing prices remain static. In certain situations, your buying power will INCREASE with inflation caused by bots. This, btw, also works in the cases of certain common goods (like crafting materials that are acquired by simple gathering). Bots end up driving down the price by flooding the market with the mats. Inversely, cause inflation is a thing, on high end items that are release specific (think new crafted Armor sets when a savage tier drops) those items will also sell 'higher' than what should be expected because there is so much Gil in the economy. You can game this aspect, even with bots, by doing a relatively massive undercut that still puts you ahead. You just wont have as large a profit margin if you keep competing by that 1 gil undercut. Reason this works, btw, is bots do undercut but they typically wont undercut something that is drastically lower in price. They will do 1 of two things: Keep their price about the same with a possible slight drop, or buy out your item and re-list (which is a risk to them). If they do the second thing, you get your money while they have to continue to compete. They may end up ahead a little bit in gil, but youll still be well off.

Now, this isnt to say botting cant be a problem. It does limit some of where you can generate money. Youre not going to be as successful generating money from crafting low to moderate level items or anything that is accessible to bots without extreme effort or luck. So gathering mats probably wont make you rich, nor will crafting items that have a MB lifespan, like armor sets. But there are other avenues which bots cant effectively tap into that you can and can make money off of. An immediate example: Casual coffer price points are still pretty high (1.7-2.2 mil depending where and when you look). Bots dont effectively flood this market, so its price point is taking quite a while to decay. Certain deep dungeon items are also items that are difficult for bots to grab. Maps are hit and miss with bots, and it takes a little while for current tier glamour materials to drop in price point.

Beyond that, to many bots do degrade server stability (they can cause server wide lag in high enough numbers), as well as degrade subscription counts as people generally dont want to play a game where a majority of the people they encounter are bots. To much inflation to quickly can also cause problems because it makes it harder and harder for entry level players to catch up (though inflation is inevitable, bots or no bots.)

I think, however, that the big take away is that while bots can and generally are overall bad, this idea that bots stop wealth generation completely or that theyre the cause of all the problems on the MB is a misplaced idea. They do cause problems, but there are things that inadvertently prove beneficial to the broader player base. I think most companies that run MMOs know this fact and have just figured out that the game probably runs better with a certain level of botting. Im very skeptical of the idea that for how many years MMOs have been around, and all the research thats been poured into studying all the Big Data that these games produce on a daily basis, that no company has figured out simple counter measures to wipe out most of the bot population in a game.

Seems more reasonable that these found out bots are probably a necessary evil, but dont say anything cause players would refuse to accept it (or would consider it a tacit approval to bot). Not a popular opinion, and I know Nepenthe has choice words about it, but I think again people arent critically looking at the whole picture. Bots are bad, therefore no good can come from bots and etc.

[Jijifli]

I think, however, that the big take away is that while bots can and generally are overall bad, this idea that bots stop wealth generation completely or that theyre the cause of all the problems on the MB is a misplaced idea. They do cause problems, but there are things that inadvertently prove beneficial to the broader player base. I think most companies that run MMOs know this fact and have just figured out that the game probably runs better with a certain level of botting. Im very skeptical of the idea that for how many years MMOs have been around, and all the research thats been poured into studying all the Big Data that these games produce on a daily basis, that no company has figured out simple counter measures to wipe out most of the bot population in a game.

Seems more reasonable that these found out bots are probably a necessary evil, but dont say anything cause players would refuse to accept it (or would consider it a tacit approval to bot). Not a popular opinion, and I know Nepenthe has choice words about it, but I think again people arent critically looking at the whole picture. Bots are bad, therefore no good can come from bots and etc.

People likely wouldn't accept it because it's quite literally admitting that breaking the rules is okay. This already feels true enough when they do nothing at all, and at that point, why am I going to care? I'm only subbed at this point because of my house, and if I managed to lose that, my money is going to 100% go elsewhere because I don't enjoy paying my $15 a month to sit here and constantly see people literally cheat (for the record, not just botting, I'm referring to things such as teleport hacks to quickly traverse fates for relic too.)

Also, you are right, bots do have a bit of good in them... For people who do literally nothing that matches what the bots do. If you get on the game to just do expert roulette and level in dungeons, then yes you're going to benefit as gear for those would be super duper cheap for you. But are you gathering? Enjoy all those botted mats you're competing with. Crafting the new stuff? I hope you enjoy all the bots undercutting you. Oh, I could make leveki-- Nope those're posted by bots too. Maybe I can just do maps inst-- OH WAIT THEY'RE JUST BOTTING MAPS NOW TOO.

It's actually disgusting I can find the bot underground in 5 minutes with a player based feature, while it's taking weeks for the guys being LITERALLY PAID TO FIND THEM to do the same, and those guys are capable of using a lot more useful tools than /icam.

Last I checked, being super lazy and crap at your job usually would get you fired. Here at Square Enix however, we consider it "having a paid vacation" I guess.

[Nepentha]

Snipping because lol.[/I]

My problem with your take on things is you clearly have no idea how the markets even work. And you like to act like an authority on it.

Of course people can make gil selling lower level stuff, it happens all the time. Lower level items and materials can be the meat and potatoes of any market buff's diet. However, we have a overabundance of bots at the moment, making sure that doesn't happen.

I mean... your suggest is people just sell dificult to get items? The night Pegasus comes only from deep dungeons. The casual coffer is a rare items you get from kupo cards, that's an entirely RNG based item you're not likely to get. That's why it's so highly priced right now. That's the solution?

tl;dr: You talk down to people who know more about this than you do.

[Melichoir]

People likely wouldn't accept it because it's quite literally admitting that breaking the rules is okay. This already feels true enough when they do nothing at all, and at that point, why am I going to care? I'm only subbed at this point because of my house, and if I managed to lose that, my money is going to 100% go elsewhere because I don't enjoy paying my $15 a month to sit here and constantly see people literally cheat (for the record, not just botting, I'm referring to things such as teleport hacks to quickly traverse fates for relic too.)

Also, you are right, bots do have a bit of good in them... For people who do literally nothing that matches what the bots do. If you get on the game to just do expert roulette and level in dungeons, then yes you're going to benefit as gear for those would be super duper cheap for you. But are you gathering? Enjoy all those botted mats you're competing with. Crafting the new stuff? I hope you enjoy all the bots undercutting you. Oh, I could make leveki-- Nope those're posted by bots too. Maybe I can just do maps inst-- OH WAIT THEY'RE JUST BOTTING MAPS NOW TOO.

It's actually disgusting I can find the bot underground in 5 minutes with a player based feature, while it's taking weeks for the guys being LITERALLY PAID TO FIND THEM to do the same, and those guys are capable of using a lot more useful tools than /icam.

Last I checked, being super lazy and crap at your job usually would get you fired. Here at Square Enix however, we consider it "having a paid vacation" I guess.

These are personal bones to pick. My points talk about the econ of the game broadly. When you break it down to the individual level, it can be frustrating, because many people see it like "Im just one guy against an army of bots", when its more accurate to say "Im one guy against one bot.(at best)" The simple truth is bots have limited complexity. Not that it doesn't allow them to complete all sorts of tasks, but its more indicative that the tasks dont require that much thought to complete. They mainly require time, something bots have an abundance of. Ironically, the push from the player base to dumb down content actually makes bots more prolific. The more simple tasks that dont require nuance exist, the more areas bots can function in. Raising the player base level, which in turn means raising game complexity, would actually hamper bots. But I digress.

As I suggested, given the age of the MMO experience and how much money and study has been poured into it, to suggest that no company has figured out a way to deal with bots seems unlikely, especially since they can use bots to catch bots. More likley they figured out the math on whats best bang for their buck overall and are running with that model. That might not be something the player base wants to hear so they probably dont say anything about it.

My problem with your take on things is you clearly have no idea how the markets even work. And you like to act like an authority on it.

Of course people can make gil selling lower level stuff, it happens all the time. Lower level items and materials can be the meat and potatoes of any market buff's diet. However, we have a overabundance of bots at the moment, making sure that doesn't happen.

I mean... your suggest is people just sell dificult to get items? The night Pegasus comes only from deep dungeons. The casual coffer is a rare items you get from kupo cards, that's an entirely RNG based item you're not likely to get. That's why it's so highly priced right now. That's the solution?

tl;dr: You talk down to people who know more about this than you do.

I understand markets well enough that the suggestion you made in the last thread that it was impossible for you to generate money via the market board was bunk. I also am suggesting that the concept that bots are a 100% net negative to the games economy is unlikely to be true. The stances that are often brought up tend to ignore what bots are doing and make vague suggestions that "If it werent for those dang darn bots, wed be swimming in cash and the market would be 100% healthy." That is a load of bunk and an over simplification of the issue. It is literally behaving like players are all faithful actors and wont do anything to abuse the MB system at the cost of the game's economy.

If you want to tackle bots, you need to be looking at the entire picture, and not discarding information because "Bots are bad". Sometimes the info thats pretty key to understanding whats going on is information that hurts your hypothesis. Or are we giong to suggest that SE, Blizzard, ArenaNet, and virtually every single company whos ever produced an MMO has not figured out how to handle bots, let alone mathed out what the impact of bots are and the effect they have on MMOs.

This being said, the general TLDR is if you want to make a lot of money, like oodles of it, then yes. You need to target sell items that are a bit more complex to acquire. Any activity that is simplistic will be monopolized by bots. This is why casual coffers and those whistles stay high in price, and even with bots in maps, map materials are generally a decent source of income with less and less value the longer the item has been out. But thats to be expected. My argument isnt to protect bots, its to get to the core of the issue and understand where things are coming from. And as I suggested above, if you really want to tackle bots, increasing the games complexity will hurt their efforts to be prolific. But that argument is never made cause "Games gotta be easy." But hammering on about "Bots are Evil, SE lazy, Game is stupid" isnt accomplishing anything. It's not even an academic exercise, but just you venting because Bots exist and are the source of your income woes. It offers nothing to the discussion, and saying SE just lazy or stupid I think is just another exercise in catharsis.