Botting on the marketboard. Impossible to sell anything.

[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.