Botting on the marketboard. Impossible to sell anything.

[Toutatis]

If that item is not your "core business" just let it go. I'm not trying to directly attack you or anything but I personally just hate this kind of behaviour. It's a game. I like to believe most people play games to relieve stress. Why make it more stressful for people by ruining their last bit of fun in this world? Different folks, different strokes goes the saying right?. Everyone should just mind their own business.

lol so what is this new thing about selling only items part of a “core business”. Some people take the game a bit too seriously. Selling things on the MB shouldn’t be “your last bit of fun in the world”.

I can sell whatever item I want at whatever price I want and so can Jojoya. That’s my own business. Just buy my low priced item if you don’t like it and continue to sell high. The fact is that instead of doing just that, many people are so afraid to lose a sale or get stuck with their items on high volume items that they will immediately readjust their price just for one or two abnormally low priced items. It’s not just bots doing it: human players often willingly follow at prices even lower than the bots will.

Sometimes I sell high and sometimes I sell low depending on the item and what I want to achieve (make gils fast, gear jobs, help a friend, sell rare and valuable items, get rid of something fast, experiment, etc) . When I have rare items I am a patient seller. There’s different ways of having fun with the MB.

Also, I am pretty happy that classical gear is more affordable than the past exarchic gear. It facilitates gearing jobs and alts quickly and it is also beneficial for players who are new or those who enjoy raiding but don’t have much time to play outside of that and thus don’t swim in tons of gils. Sellers still turn a profit.

[Jojoya]

I thought you were the guy advocating for a free market. Price gouging does not exist in a free market? It's called supply and demand? Kind of sounds you hate seeing players make good profits because supply is low. Call it what you want but that is what it sounds like. We all "hate" certain things but is that a valid reason to ruin someone else's fun? Are you (or anyone else doing these things) the market police? If that item is not your "core business" just let it go. I'm not trying to directly attack you or anything but I personally just hate this kind of behaviour. It's a game. I like to believe most people play games to relieve stress. Why make it more stressful for people by ruining their last bit of fun in this world? Different folks, different strokes goes the saying right?. Everyone should just mind their own business.

Btw, the Night Pegasus Whistle you mentioned gets imported from Japanese servers in bulk bt RMT circles. It's half the price it used to be now because of that. Same goes for all the other salable mounts. I remember selling the Eldthurs Horn for 12 million+ before EW and now it sells between 1-3 million. Just saying.

Edit: tons of spelling errors.

Free market means you're free to set your selling price to what you want without interference from some regulating agency. It does not mean you're guaranteed to sell the item at the price you want.

You're still going to have competition in a free market, and some of that competition will be trying to cut other sellers out of areas they consider their niche. You need to learn to adjust to what is happening in the market instead of thinking the market has to work around what you want.

Your item no longer generating the profits you want? Find something else. I've done that several times in the past.

Part of my fun is getting items players want on the marketboard at affordable but still profitable prices. I can't help it if that's at odds with someone else's way of having fun. Fortunately, there are thousands of items to gather, craft or get from other sources. If someone doesn't like how certain items are selling, they can always pick something else.

[Prrringles]

I sometimes ruin markets because I hate seeing sellers price-gouging buyers.

I was talking about this comment you made. This only happens when supply is low and probably for items you are not even selling since you claim to sell low and in high volume. To me this sounds exactly like ruining someone else's fun just because. That's my point and nothing else. I'm not talking about item x or y. Anyway whatever, I'm not on your server.

Back to the botting topic.

[Jojoya]

I was talking about this comment you made. This only happens when supply is low and probably for items you are not even selling since you claim to sell low and in high volume. To me this sounds exactly like ruining someone else's fun just because. That's my point and nothing else. I'm not talking about item x or y. Anyway whatever, I'm not on your server.

Back to the botting topic.

I know that's what you were referring to. In response, I said.

Part of my fun is getting items players want on the marketboard at affordable but still profitable prices.

The goal isn't to ruin that one person's fun. The goal is to improve the fun many others are having by giving buyers a good price so they have extra gil to spend on other items from others sellers. Buyer has more fun. Other sellers get to have more fun. The only one left out is the one who was selfishly price gouging.

[Kuroka]

I thought you were the guy advocating for a free market. Price gouging does not exist in a free market? It's called supply and demand?

FULL STOP here. This is a game. What youre comparing is you working 100 hours to finish a piece by hand vs me doing it with some Star Trek Replicator wiping out 100 per hour...

[Aneshda]

I have noticed in the last 5 weeks that on all Light Servers are the same suspicious Players who ruins the Market for all. All those Players use a lot different Retainer Names but if you craft an Item you leave your Name on it. Following Players are on all Light Servers.

https://de.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...cter/38648930/
https://de.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...cter/39688898/
https://de.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...cter/28680052/
https://de.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...cter/35593816/

https://de.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...lang=fr&order=

I crafted the new 610 Maiming Gear and placed it for sale in one of my Retainers. Two of my Friends went other Servers, one on Lich, the other on Shiva. Everytime the first Player on that list dropped the price for that Gear, I underbid her price 1 Gil. While that Player underbid me on Twintania, she changed on all other Servers the price at the same time. How is that possible?

I have tried to find niches and to sell other Items but no matter what it was, those Market Board Botters destroyed 1 day later the prices.
The last Player of my List is on all Servers too and he must kinda browse with an AddOn the Market Boards and check if 1 Item is just a few times on the Market Board and if it gets sold. He sells then those Items to many different prices, in many different Retainers.
Like Sweet Pea Necklaces. I crafted some of each color and at that time there had been only 1 Rainbow Sweet Pea Necklace for sale. I crafted 4 of those and placed them in a Retainer for sale. The next day I check the Necklaces and suddenly there are 10 more for sale.
The one Necklace that was already there, then another one from a second Player and all others from the last Player of my List. Many different Retainers and a bunch of different prices.

I have tried:
580 Classical Gear & Weapons
610 Gear & Weapons
Furniture & House Deco
Byregot Necklaces in all Colors
Sweet Pea Necklaces in nearly all Colors
Materia, Demimateria, HQ Food, HQ Material, Blank Grade 3 Orchestrion Rolls, crafted Baits + Baits for Scrips, Aethersand and a lot of other Items. It is with all Items the same.

You can only sell your Items, if you are willing to check your Retainers every 10-15 minutes, to change their prices. And that is no fun. Otherwise you will sell nothing or make just a few Gil per day.

So SquareEnix when you gonna do something against those Market Board Botters?

[Prrringles]

..wall of text..

Forget it man. "We" are having these problems for years already and SE turns a blind eye. As long as all these so called "ffxiv influencers" will not ask YoshiP any real tough questions about botting Nothing will change. So yeah, welcome to the party. Enjoy your stay

[Jojoya]

Forget it man. "We" are having these problems for years already and SE turns a blind eye. As long as all these so called "ffxiv influencers" will not ask YoshiP any real tough questions about botting Nothing will change. So yeah, welcome to the party. Enjoy your stay

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...b9da9f994e77cb

76 accounts terminated last week for non-RMT botting activity. It's not being ignored.

But it's also not going to accomplish much when those individuals will be able to have new accounts set up to be botting again by the end of the week.

Have any useful suggestions on how SE can permanently stop those individuals?

[mR_iOuS]

Evening! Don't do this very often, but here I am. (Or have I ever? *shrugs*) TL;DR I was looking for discussions on possible gameplay modifications/ideas and found myself here. I have felt the pain in thread and have too wished to alleviate this burden we all have to deal with. I'll keep the 'introduction' as short as possible so I can get to the meat and potatoes. As someone who was crafting pretty hard for a long while, it was my endgame, not gonna lie, lol. Tried dabbling in multiple markets at once, but found it best to latch on to a few for dear life. I had fierce competition as well, almost as determined as I was. Kid had spunk! lol. I also use to price check things constantly across the DC. During 'The Great Queue of 2021' my competition and I went savage. But as I'm essentially retired from that grind and have gotten fully back in the game; it was a nice detour when I was suffering burnout from the actual gameplay.

I might have missed a page, but I wasn't really seeing anything on it, but when I vowed to never be broke again and got serious in it; I employed the use of mannequins. It's worth it in any context you gotta do to get as many mannequins as possible, lmao. I know housing constraints are dubious at best, but a FC private chamber and an apartment will net you at least 8 for potential. Oh yea, the big part, I don't pay any taxes on anything. 100% profit. This allows me to undercut a lil further then one normally would due to exactly that. The ONLY major con for me is you gotta interact with every single one, but that also adds more steps for a bot. But that leads me to that John Travolta - Pulp Fiction meme of where the heck I'm goin' because I feel the system is heavily underutilized. A way to not only get traffic to our abodes, but possibly put more buying power back in to our hands by having better emphasis/expansion on the function.

Oh yea, that no tax thing works both ways, lol. xD I just hope the days of mass stack mats is over. *knocks on wood* Dark times..lol..That stuff was clearly botting in blind daylight, leaving all crafters in a crap predicament. I say crap, but at that point, the only best bet is to pump it out of the system ASAP. Which the buyer will most certainly appreciate. Mannequins force a name to the seller regardless if they wanna pull that 'Obtaining Signature' crap or not since you could go straight to the source, lol. But alas, this only applies to selling as sets, because you can't tell it's on a Mannequin otherwise! ugh!! Should force all Mannequin items to show, not just sets via advanced search...which you gotta click..every...single..time you search an item. Who the heck's gonna do that?! haha. I know I won't, and I've been at this a while. But I did do it to see, and the Lawless Jacket and Pants set still sits while the others sell and people pay that tax. D; Oh bother.

Good luck out there! I hope some of this helps someone and may your wallets be full!

[Prrringles]

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...b9da9f994e77cb

76 accounts terminated last week for non-RMT botting activity. It's not being ignored.

But it's also not going to accomplish much when those individuals will be able to have new accounts set up to be botting again by the end of the week.

Have any useful suggestions on how SE can permanently stop those individuals?

Ok cool PR from SE. What were these accounts banned for? PVP botting? PVE botting? Gathering botting? MB botting? My guess almost all for pvp/pve since people brag and make oopsies giving SE proof to ban them. ALL the accounts I reported multiple times over the last months (from all across my data center) are still active. Every single one of them. Talking gathering bots and marketboard bots. So who are they banning? This message from SE means exactly nothing. Oh wait I lied, the bot on my server SEEMS to have gotten a 3 day ban (was offline for exactly 3 days) but is now back in business. My limited sample proves that SE is AT LEAST ignoring complaints from MY data center. And from what I read online (here, discords, reddit) SE is just ignoring complaints in general lol.

Solution?
- Bring out the third party tools to scan certain activities. I have nothing to hide. Who cares? Only guilty people will object. Privacy is a scam anyways in this "smartphone age" lol.
- Expand the STF to have teams in the EU and the US too. Expand the GM teams across the board and give GM's more rights to investigate AND act. It's not like SE is tight on money or anything.
- Restrict certain cross-data center item transfers.

Less effective but still useful:
- Block credit cards
- Block IP addresses
- Block whatever other private data they collect when someone registers an account

And probably the most simple one of them all > preemptively investigate people with multiple accounts or an excessive amount of characters. There should not be THAT many and would at least filter all the classic RMT circles (free company with 1 crafter main and 9 lvl ~26 alts who bots the prices). No normal person runs multiple accounts for just playing the game. And the people who run x amount of characters to sell more items..not that many. Investigation will clear them if they are legit.

I made all this up as I was writing this. Imagine allocating some resources to this and giving it some real thought. Will this remove all bots/botting? Probably not. But is will sure as hell make it harder and less attractive for them.

PS: Me and my friends found out a way to tell if someone is using a bot for undercutting prices. I can't disclose the method for obvious reasons but it is works 100%. We tested this on multiple endgame items and it showed that generally 8/9 out of 11 crafters are using a bot to sell said items. That's around 80%. Not far off from my guess of 75% before any actual research. For popular lower lvl items with fewer crafters this is often 100% bots selling those items. Let that sink in.

PS 2: I also help new crafters out with tips and tricks for making gil. Many of them give up after a month because they can not compete with the bots. This botting plague is litterally killing the crafting scene. I think the only people still around are people like us who are "invested". It's just sad in every way.