Botting on the marketboard. Impossible to sell anything.

[george357]

i have been playing this game sence the start of arr and botting has been in this game sence then and its not going away anytime soon so good luck with crying to the companty till they change this.

[Aneshda]

On Twintania are a few Botters, but one of them is really someone I would punch in his Face if I could. He underbids me every day 1000 times so, I sell now my HQ Classic Gear for 20000 Gil and destroy the Market for all those Items. If that is how it should be, then it is fine by me.

[dspguy]

On Twintania are a few Botters, but one of them is really someone I would punch in his Face if I could. He underbids me every day 1000 times so, I sell now my HQ Classic Gear for 20000 Gil and destroy the Market for all those Items. If that is how it should be, then it is fine by me.

Which might be fine as long as you continually sell your product for a near-loss. But the moment you give up (since that sounds like a waste of time), prices will jump back and the botter will just relist up to the next higher price... which might be a tidy profit for them. For the next 6 months or so.

[Liam_Harper]

Bots don't care. They'll take 20k gil when they're moving thousands of items. Eventually you'll burn out or won't have enough free time to keep up and they'll have the entire market again, but for now they're earning a steady stream of 20k's without even needing to be at the computer while you're burning all your free time for next to no profit.

[Prrringles]

Bots don't care. They'll take 20k gil when they're moving thousands of items. Eventually you'll burn out or won't have enough free time to keep up and they'll have the entire market again, but for now they're earning a steady stream of 20k's without even needing to be at the computer while you're burning all your free time for next to no profit.

This. Don't bother man.

Seems there was a good ban wave yesterday. Most big bots are gone from Chaos it seems. Let's see if they come back after 3 days.

EDIT: Some of the bots are back after exactly 3 days and some are not. So it seems SE is handing out 3 day bans to people caught botting/RMT instead of straight out removing them.. lol

[KageTokage]

The bots are one of those things that both sides of the playerbase are complaining about, but they haven't done anything meaningful to address it.

It wouldn't surprise me if the STF is so out of touch with the head devs that the latter think the situation is perfectly okay given all the other times Yoshi had to experience/be told something directly before changes happened. It took getting a RMT tell for the quick report function to be added for RMT chat spam, then it took someone directly asking him about the party finder ad spam in an interview to make content selling actionable according to the ToS.

[UkcsAlias]

The bots are one of those things that both sides of the playerbase are complaining about, but they haven't done anything meaningful to address it.

Its because effectively they cant. The root problem is simply that RMT can only be punished afterward. Which only hurts the buyer and not the seller. And its those sellers that are mostly botting.

You want to take them out at the source, but there is no coverage in laws that makes taking down those sites (and to sue the ones behind the site) easier. EULA's can at most ban a player, but you cant sue such player. Simply because its anonymous dump accounts.
The missing part in the law is that you can consider such site as participant in the game, and therefor require them to accept the EULA. The issue is that they dont have to accept that eula at all to run the site. Automatic acceptance is by that a very dangerous feature to have since its well abusable (someone posts something on a forum, the forum doesnt take it down, and now the forum somehow is considered as being such service). The law however can at least get rules that cover it in similar way to a certain piracy site (that i wont mention). In that case, even though they only rely on user generated data, the site is considered a host for such things, and therefor legaly responsible for their content.

But this can only be done when governments act (and for example in the EU, its not just a single government)... and guess what those governments rarely care about? Instead of purging such services in games, they rather purge games entirely... or instead promote such activities because its capitalism...

[Troxbark]

Its because effectively they cant. The root problem is simply that RMT can only be punished afterward. Which only hurts the buyer and not the seller. And its those sellers that are mostly botting.

You want to take them out at the source, but there is no coverage in laws that makes taking down those sites (and to sue the ones behind the site) easier. EULA's can at most ban a player, but you cant sue such player. Simply because its anonymous dump accounts.
The missing part in the law is that you can consider such site as participant in the game, and therefor require them to accept the EULA. The issue is that they dont have to accept that eula at all to run the site. Automatic acceptance is by that a very dangerous feature to have since its well abusable (someone posts something on a forum, the forum doesnt take it down, and now the forum somehow is considered as being such service). The law however can at least get rules that cover it in similar way to a certain piracy site (that i wont mention). In that case, even though they only rely on user generated data, the site is considered a host for such things, and therefor legaly responsible for their content.

But this can only be done when governments act (and for example in the EU, its not just a single government)... and guess what those governments rarely care about? Instead of purging such services in games, they rather purge games entirely... or instead promote such activities because its capitalism...

Like they can't tell who's botting. Take an obvious limsa bot for instance, online pretty much 24/7 and never moves beyond turning their head to the market board and to the summoning bell every 30s. The trade history of that character alone would be evidence enough, then just follow whos consistently trading items to this character, and the alts related to each account. Boom, you just killed an entire botting branch with minimal effort.

[dspguy]

Like they can't tell who's botting. Take an obvious limsa bot for instance, online pretty much 24/7 and never moves beyond turning their head to the market board and to the summoning bell every 30s. The trade history of that character alone would be evidence enough, then just follow whos consistently trading items to this character, and the alts related to each account. Boom, you just killed an entire botting branch with minimal effort.

They need to find a way to do this objectively. It can't be "some guy standing around LL." What if they are instead at the MB in front of the apartment complex? What if they move 10 steps to the left and 10 steps to the right daily? Does that count?

It seems easy for a human to "recognize" a bot, but much more difficult for a human to program a computer to do it.

[Nythia]

I think overall the bottom line on the botting issue, specifically market bots, is that the people using the bots are spending more money than the individual player. They need more retainers than one character can use, so they often have alts, and several I have looked at have around a dozen characters in their FC's (used to quickly move items among characters via the company chest). Going to guess that they buy an MSQ skip for each character to unlock retainers etc. on the alts (to save time). $11 to skip ARR, and essentially they're spending $88 per character, plus subscription fees per account every time they come back from being banned. As an individual, I have one account, and might job boost an alt once every couple months, or maybe purchase something from the store.

Plain and simple: Money is king, and the individual player doesn't make their pockets jingle as much as bots.

The individual can't even make a statement by quitting/un-subscribing, and so nothing is done until the number of individuals leaving reaches the point where the total income they provide is greater than that of the bots. If the player base consists of enough players who don't care or don't know about what is going on, then the individuals who are annoyed at it are expendable and are very likely looked on with disdain by the company.