Botting on the marketboard. Impossible to sell anything.

[Prrringles]

/cut...I know my items will sell.../cut.

Do they? Because if I don't keep undercutting the local bots, my items wil literally never sell. They auto update their prices every ~10min and restock on their next login if an item sold. So /doubt on that claim if your server has mb bots.

[Jojoya]

Do they? Because if I don't keep undercutting the local bots, my items wil literally never sell. They auto update their prices every ~10min and restock on their next login if an item sold. So /doubt on that claim if your server has mb bots.

Depends on what you're selling. There are thousands of items to craft that bots don't touch and that do sell on the MB daily.

[Prrringles]

Depends on what you're selling. There are thousands of items to craft that bots don't touch and that do sell on the MB daily.

I guess but those must be small profit items then. On my server all the items with decent to high profits that actually sell are sold by rmt bots. Even the most random items are sold by the same account.
No one should be forced into selling other/niche items because of bots run the rest. I know the reality is different but yeah, you get the point. It's just a dirty mess.

[Jojoya]

I guess but those must be small profit items then. On my server all the items with decent to high profits that actually sell are sold by rmt bots. Even the most random items are sold by the same account.
No one should be forced into selling other/niche items because of bots run the rest. I know the reality is different but yeah, you get the point. It's just a dirty mess.

On Coeurl, bots have flooded the market and killed the prices on what they sell to the point they're no longer the high profit items for players to produce. They're competing against each other plus the players who think that those are the high profit items without analyzing cost to produce.

Even without bots, what happens when one of those gil making videos circulates the hot new thing to craft to sell? Everyone watching the video starts selling that thing. They tell their friends and their friends start selling that thing. Soon the market is glutted.

Smart sellers out for maximum profit are going to switch what they're selling to take advantage of changing market conditions whether bots exist or not. That's free market competition. Those looking for easy money rely on the advice of others, usually to their disadvantage. Those willing to put in some effort to pay attention to the market profit.

Random items being sold by the same account is not going to be someone botting to produce the items. That would be a mess to program on a bot. Of course, they could still be using a bot for the price adjustments.

[Prrringles]

On Coeurl, bots have flooded the market and killed the prices on what they sell to the point they're no longer the high profit items for players to produce. They're competing against each other plus the players who think that those are the high profit items without analyzing cost to produce.

Even without bots, what happens when one of those gil making videos circulates the hot new thing to craft to sell? Everyone watching the video starts selling that thing. They tell their friends and their friends start selling that thing. Soon the market is glutted.

Smart sellers out for maximum profit are going to switch what they're selling to take advantage of changing market conditions whether bots exist or not. That's free market competition. Those looking for easy money rely on the advice of others, usually to their disadvantage. Those willing to put in some effort to pay attention to the market profit.

Random items being sold by the same account is not going to be someone botting to produce the items. That would be a mess to program on a bot. Of course, they could still be using a bot for the price adjustments.

I have been selling glamour items and crafting gear/tools (and others) for god knows how long. I always made big profits on those and they sold well. This was even with heavy player competition. Then the bots came in around shadowbringers and it all went to hell. Literally all the gear/tool/weapons/etc from lvl 50 and up are being mass produced and sold by bots. Prices are utterly broken. This never happened between real players in all the years I have been playing. Now also add in these RMT folks "importing" tons of items from the JP data centers for cheap and you have no way of competing anymore.

I have been playing this game from the start (1.0) so I know my way around. If I don't update my prices every 5~10 minutes I am not selling anything at all. If a bot sells an item a new one will be posted within 10 minutes. I dare to say that at least 75% of the retainers selling items are bots. I know all the "big" crafters on my server and pretty much no one is selling anything anymore.

Anyway, at this point I don't even care anymore. Haven't updated my prices for over a week now and I just run my ventures. SE ignoring "our" part of the community has totally ruined all the fun for me. I am not someone to easily give up but this is just pointless. Another good example of "crime pays".

[dspguy]

I have been playing this game from the start (1.0) so I know my way around. If I don't update my prices every 5~10 minutes I am not selling anything at all. If a bot sells an item a new one will be posted within 10 minutes. I dare to say that at least 75% of the retainers selling items are bots. I know all the "big" crafters on my server and pretty much no one is selling anything anymore.

That bolded part is the key problem. I'm ok with someone selling their items before me. There's a good chance that if, for example, 5 sell per day and I'm number 3 on the list, mine will likely sell without having to relist more than once per day. However, when dealing with an item that sells maybe once per day and coupling it with a bot that will undercut to the first sale and then have time to make another and always keep it in position #1 on the board... we get into this situation where many players can't sell much on the marketboard. Even if they are willing to camp the summoning bell and relist.

Bots do it faster and can do it without getting tired.

I've found that some markets are more amenable to only relisting 2-3x per day. But it all boils down to volume. If 10 sell per day, for example, there's a decent shot that I'll sell mine at some point. Maybe not first or second, but maybe I'll sell that one item per day. And if I find dozens of items that fit those circumstances, I can make plenty of gil. However, I'm well aware that the majority of sales go to a handful of bots.

There's certain sellers on the MB of gear that have been listing crafted Classical gear non-stop since it came out. At any time for the past 6 months, each bot has 1-2 of pretty much every piece up for sale. And when one sells, another populates its place in less than an hour.

[Prrringles]

..snip..

You are spot on with everything. Bots can keep doing this without any human interaction while we have to physically press buttons to update our prices. No normal human being with a decent life can keep that up (even humans without a life can not because they do need to sleep). So what you get is players getting angry/impatient and undercutting the bot by large amounts. Bots still always win. They have literally 0 time investment versus players who need to actually press buttons and can undercut to the point they would only make a small amount of profit. Since they can do this for like forever even those small profits add up. So yeah.

I'm sure the word profit if relative to the player. I have serveral gil caps so I can't be arsed to craft items that sell for 10k each or make 10k profit only anymore. Changing my scope is not an option for me. Until SE changes their stance on banning/cleaning the servers I will invest my quality time elsewhere. Sad but unavoidable.

[UkcsAlias]

Do they? Because if I don't keep undercutting the local bots, my items wil literally never sell. They auto update their prices every ~10min and restock on their next login if an item sold. So /doubt on that claim if your server has mb bots.

At some point too many bots compete with each other, dropping the prices that far that the botters will simply just let them focus on something else. Prices at that point have destabilized that far its not worth the bot time. So yes, generaly it ends up to sell at some point anyway. Retainers still have limited slots, if all the 20 slots are wasted trying to undercut other bots, its highly inefficient. Thats why it generaly changes over time which items are being botted.

(and yes, this doesnt work for all items, but thats the part of 'knowing what sells')