Botting on the marketboard. Impossible to sell anything.

[Prrringles]

So, I have been following the big bots on Chaos and this is just funny and sad. I have been reporting all of them for quite some time now and it seems SE did suspend their accounts. The funny and sad thing is that they first got a 3 day suspension. They came back after 3 days of absence and weeks later they got a 10 day suspension. Today some of them came back online again after exactly 10 days of absence.

So SE seems to be punishing their accounts (thus acknowledging they are violating the TOS) with TEMP suspensions!! I mean...wow..no words. So far for their "zero tolerance policy" rofl.

Now I probably have to wait a few more weeks for them to get their 20 days suspension and then their final permanent suspension. This is just a joke at this point.

[Tyrann-O-saur]

If SE just watched the MB and followed the top selling mat's/gear's or looked in to the most prolific sellers a few times a week. It would be easy to follow the trail back to some type of botting by a MB bot or some gatherer's/crafters botting. Ban the account and anything that goes with it.

The MB is where there mostly making the gil to be able to RMT, knocking that out and there's less of a market for RMT

[dspguy]

If SE just watched the MB and followed the top selling mat's/gear's or looked in to the most prolific sellers a few times a week. It would be easy to follow the trail back to some type of botting by a MB bot or some gatherer's/crafters botting. Ban the account and anything that goes with it.

The MB is where there mostly making the gil to be able to RMT, knocking that out and there's less of a market for RMT

The thing is... being prolific sellers is NOT against the TOS. However, it is hard to justify how someone can legitimately relist hundreds of items every 5 or 10 minutes, 24 hours/day. In the same way that gathering isn't against the TOS, but hitting up nodes non-stop for 24 hours is clearly a sign of inhuman feats. Where do they draw the line? How do they differentiate between players that simply spend way too much time crafting/gathering/relisting and those that just start some script and walk away.

[ShinyChariot]

Tbh, report every single character with unglammed crafter/gatherer bis gear that only have one DoW/DoM at max and all DoH/DoL at max, no mounts, no minions, usually in an FC where the botter's actual character is in so they can get their gil through FC Chest. These days they seem to be avoiding keeping them in the same FC in case they get traced.

I throw up a little when I see someone wearing crafted gear made by a filthy bot.

[DioK]

While I will not deny that the market bots are certainly an issue and make it difficult to sell anything, a couple little experiments I've done recently reveal that one can actually take advantage of the bots, particularly the RMT bots. One thing that I've noticed is that many of these bots that auto-undercut may not have a properly set minimum. This means you can drive them down to the bottom, buy them out, and then resale their wares for profit. I successfully did this against 3 separate bots. However, I will say that in doing this, you do need to do some calculations to understand what your price points are going to be for buying, selling for profit, and breaking even. The basic formula one would follow for this is simply

y = x*(1 + p) *(1 + b)/(1 - s)

where y is the price you list to sell an item, x is the listed price at which you purchased an item (when reselling the bot's item), b is the tax fraction at which you buy (which is always 5%), s is the tax fraction at which you sell (this is determined by the city from which your retainer is selling), and p is the desired profit margin. To determine your break-even price, you would just set p = 0. For example, let's say you buy an item that is listed for 100 gil and you want to resale it for a 35% profit. Further, let's say that you resale the item on a retainer in a city with a 3% tax. So, what price do you need to list the item in order to obtain a 35% profit. In this case, p = 0.35, b = 0.05, s = 0.03, and x = 100. Plugging these numbers into the formula, we obtain

y = 100*(1 + 0.35)*(1 + 0.05)/(1 - 0.03) = 146.134

Since we can only set integral number prices, we set the list price at 147 gil because we want a profit margin at 35% or better. Choosing 146 gil for the list price would make the profit margin slightly less. Of course, you don't have to be that persnickety about it, but that's a personal decision you make. The break-even price for this case would be

y0 = 100*(1 + 0.05)/(1- 0.03) = 108.247

So, you wouldn't want to list for less than 109, else you'll be losing money.

The other thing that I noticed is that the market bots, specifically the RMT market bots, are not able to obtain special mats such as those dropped from bosses are purchased with tomestones. This is because they generally don't engage in dungeons, EX content, or savage content. So, they have no means of obtaining these mats other than market board, and they tend to buy a large amount of these mats. So, this is means that normal players could profit off the RMT bots by selling these mats to them, since normal players do tend engage in these activities and obtain these mats.

With these techniques, I've been able to make roughly 10+ mil gil over the past couple of weeks. I've mostly focused on just selling the special mats; tricking the bots into driving their prices to the bottom and then buying them out can be a risky option, and it's slow. However, if you have the stomach for it and are willing to do some careful calculation with tracking of your sales, you could do reasonably well, piggy-backing on their work.

[Gserpent]

Bots are also what keeps a lot of things affordable. Can you imagine how expensive shards and crystals would be if not for botters driving the price down into the basement? Once every three minutes you can sometimes haul in enough crystals for like... six or seven crafts of something. If you're lucky. And your gatherer is level 76 or above.

You want to know why Square-Enix doesn't really care about bots that aren't actively engaging in RMT? Because they'd have to wrestle with this game's incompetently laid-out economy if not for the botters providing a constant flow of cheap, available commodities.

I don't have trouble making plenty of money on the marketboards. People whining about botters and undercutting probably don't really understand how to make it work for them. They're probably focused on selling one or two things for a ton of money - those things will move slowly, so being undercut actually matters. But if you're selling someone people tend to buy frequently and they probably buy like three stacks of at a time? It doesn't matter if someone undercuts you by like 3 gil per, you're still going to sell it.

Housing items are often a good investment. Look up what kinds of items are necessary for the latest "modern loft" craze and produce them in bulk. Square imitation windows have always been a very consistent income source for me. Send retainers to get the logs, spend your poetics on the urushi, and just buy the glass lenses and steel ingots from a vendor.

If not that, things like leather or most other "monster goods" are often worth going for. They're needed for multiple crafting professions and unless you're having a retainer do it for you (limited income), it's kind of a pain to farm up 200 monster skins or bits and bobs.

[Bobby66]

People complain now about bots they all disappeared people would complain about the price increase. Sucks all around.

[Aneshda]

If you would have 1 Bot that sells Rinascita Gear, Jewelry, Weapons for every single Job on your Server.
Every single piece 2-5 times which makes 75 x 2-5 Items.
And that from his Apartment Room, which he never leaves.
That Bot undercuts all prices every 10 Minutes, 35 seconds.
And now tell me how should someone sell something?

I have 9 Retainers and no matter what niche i choose to sell something ... max. 2 Days later someone will come and flood the Market with 15-20 of those Items, and while that someone does that, he undercuts everyone by 10k-50k in one swoop.

No matter how often you report those Bots, the next day, week, month they are still there and maybe one day after many months that Bot is gone for 3 days, 10 days ... but never perma banned, like it should be. So how should someone earn enough Gil? None likes to sell their Stuff for 5000 Gil.

There is only one way right now ... you don't Play, stand at the Market Board, use a timer and call your Retainer right before the Bot calls his Retainers, to undercut the prices. That Bot will not notice that you sell your Stuff 5k cheaper and so it will keep his price. But by god to do that you need a lot nerves, till something gets sold. It should be not this way.

[Prrringles]

I don't have trouble making plenty of money on the marketboards. People whining about botters and undercutting probably don't really understand how to make it work for them. They're probably focused on selling one or two things for a ton of money - those things will move slowly, so being undercut actually matters. But if you're selling someone people tend to buy frequently and they probably buy like three stacks of at a time? It doesn't matter if someone undercuts you by like 3 gil per, you're still going to sell it.

I play this game since the start and have multiple gil caps. I still complain about bots. I think you are missing the point. Bots are automated while players have to be physically present and input commands. Do you know how much time poeple need to waste to craft 100's of items in batches and update prices every 10 minutes? Right. It's not even about the gil. It's about fun. And "competing" against bots is all but fun (and fair).

[UkcsAlias]

Bots are also what keeps a lot of things affordable. Can you imagine how expensive shards and crystals would be if not for botters driving the price down into the basement? Once every three minutes you can sometimes haul in enough crystals for like... six or seven crafts of something. If you're lucky. And your gatherer is level 76 or above.

They wouldnt become too expensive. Like with every market, if prices are starting to get a bit too high, some people will start investing time into obtaining that item to sell it again. Shards are on that no exception.

Sure, a shard might rise from 8 gil to 80 gil, but on a craft that takes several 2k items and can bring 100k in the end, that rise of 1000 from just shards wouldnt be notible. That extra cost is only a problem when you are trying to compete against bots as they will just push all the profit margins away.

And in the end, you can keep an expensive item that costed 10k each in ingredients on the market for a week at 100k, or sell it 5x at 50k. This competition will also remain there and push prices down. Since in the end, even at 11k, it will make profit (a very low one on that), so undercutting here can be beneficial.

And if without bots something would become problematic to obtain, they can always adjust the balance. But its highly unlikely this would be needed.