Botting on the marketboard. Impossible to sell anything.

[Kes13a]

Some kind of anti-change-price mechanism sounds cool on paper, but look at how botched housing lottery is. What SE needs is better bot detection instead of harming real crafters. Until that happens gotta update the prices few times a day and anything gets sold.

no, what SE needs to do is go after the RMT gil buyers, then there isnt a market for the gil from the bots, and they will dry up. "bot detection" has failed in games for years. if real dollars are there, the bots always have incentive to bypass any measure. the only way to decrease bots, is not better protection, its better enforcement of the "dont buy gil" policy.

[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.

[Troxbark]

They're everywhere on migardsormr as well and it's extremely difficult to sell some items. It's clear square enix isn't interested on acting on these accounts, which only promotes more botting.

[AnimaAnimus]

The perk of bots is that if you post something and are immediately undercut by 1 gil, you can repost a few times to verify it's a bot. Then do a super low undercut, wait for them to undercut you by 1 gil and buy up what you want/need, forcing them to take a huge loss. I got 10m gil items for just 10 gil before this way.

Play the bots game and you win. Wait for SE to do something and you will be waiting until the servers come down for the final time. Bot AI has some great ways you can bypass them if you get creative and the more we keep bot authors and users on their toes, the less useful they are. Look at auto-clicker bots when it came to housing and how many people lost all their gil because they were using bots when someone creative won the house.

[AnimaAnimus]

no, what SE needs to do is go after the RMT gil buyers, then there isnt a market for the gil from the bots, and they will dry up. "bot detection" has failed in games for years. if real dollars are there, the bots always have incentive to bypass any measure. the only way to decrease bots, is not better protection, its better enforcement of the "dont buy gil" policy.

I have been saying this for years. In XI one of our ls members openly admitted, in ls chat, that he had bought upwards of 100m gil and was encouraging other members to do the same. After getting a ton of info out of him like what site he used, their prices and how the gil is transferred all in written chat, I broke his pearl and reported him. His ban? 3 days... and nothing he purchased with that gil was removed. He literally got a nearly free relic weapon since he used that money to buy the ancient currency for it.

[Jojoya]

The perk of bots is that if you post something and are immediately undercut by 1 gil, you can repost a few times to verify it's a bot. Then do a super low undercut, wait for them to undercut you by 1 gil and buy up what you want/need, forcing them to take a huge loss. I got 10m gil items for just 10 gil before this way.

That was someone who didn't know how to use their bot.

Most bots have a price floor. They will not lower their prices below that floor even if undercut. That price always represents profit to them. They might not be making as much as they would at the higher prices but they're also not taking an actual loss.

[Kes13a]

That was someone who didn't know how to use their bot.

Most bots have a price floor. They will not lower their prices below that floor even if undercut. That price always represents profit to them. They might not be making as much as they would at the higher prices but they're also not taking an actual loss.

agreed, I have "played" with quite a few bots on the board and they will never under sell their basement. they are -always- making profit

if it wasnt some actual player making a typo, which happens and I ruthlessly take advantage lol, it was someone who screwed up their market bot settings. doesnt happen often

[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".

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

We all know banning bots is only a temporary measure, and banning buyers might not be as temporary, but also cuts in on SE's income.

What I'd like to see happen is for SE to add a new "phase" to each server, and once a bot is accurately identified, to surreptitiously flag the entire account to use that new "phase". This "bot phase" would have its own "bot market board" that is isolated from the regular market, and all their listings would be moved to it. This would put all the bots together. They could all be in different zones, collecting things, advertising, listing on their "bot market board", but normal players would never see them or their advertisements since they would be in the "bot phase" just spamming each other with their adverts and phishing attempts. The "bot phase" tag could stick even if the character transferred servers or data centers so no matter where they try to flee with their ill gotten gains, they will never be able to sell anything.

This would allow SE to continue collecting revenue from the bot accounts (at least until they realized they weren't making any money and give up/start over), and minimize the impact on actual players. The trick to making this work would be to a) develop a system to quickly and accurately identify bots, and b) switch them to the "bot phase" discretely and seamlessly.

I'd take a certain level of satisfaction seeing such a system implemented.

[george357]

my answer to this is don't hold you breath waiting for change its not going to happen.