Botting on the marketboard. Impossible to sell anything.

[dspguy]

The thing is, Greed.

That is why I undercut by a huge amount, I just don't care about draining players wallets dry, I like to make or gather or earn things, to sell at a price that I think is fair and affordable.

If you are having trouble selling something, you're asking too much if you keep getting undercut.

The thing that large undercutters have to ask themselves is...

"What has this item been selling for recently? And why do I think that the market suddenly can't support that price, but rather 10, 20, 30, 40, 50% off?"

If someone's item isn't selling because they listed it for 100,000 gil and it was undercut to 99,999 gil and that one sold - then the price is fine. Those players aren't undercutting "to sell at a price that is fair and affordable." They are doing it out of spite.

[Jojoya]

The thing that large undercutters have to ask themselves is...

"What has this item been selling for recently? And why do I think that the market suddenly can't support that price, but rather 10, 20, 30, 40, 50% off?"

If someone's item isn't selling because they listed it for 100,000 gil and it was undercut to 99,999 gil and that one sold - then the price is fine. Those players aren't undercutting "to sell at a price that is fair and affordable." They are doing it out of spite.

Oh, I do check sales history when deciding on a selling price for my items. If the item truly has been selling well at the current market price, I'll match or stay close to it.

But that's not always the case, at which point I'll start undercutting by a good margin. I don't want to sit on an item indefinitely hoping to get max profit. I want the item sold so I can list more items and get them sold as well.

[dspguy]

Oh, I do check sales history when deciding on a selling price for my items. If the item truly has been selling well at the current market price, I'll match or stay close to it.

But that's not always the case, at which point I'll start undercutting by a good margin. I don't want to sit on an item indefinitely hoping to get max profit. I want the item sold so I can list more items and get them sold as well.

If that's what you do, then good. But many do not do that. Many get upset that their item didn't sell so they crash the market.

[Jojoya]

If that's what you do, then good. But many do not do that. Many get upset that their item didn't sell so they crash the market.

A true market price crash is a sign the item is either overpriced or the market is saturated with too many of the item for sale.

The latter is pretty common, especially when it comes to items being returned through quick ventures. It also happens when players newly entering the system think they've found a hot item to sell that will get them rich quickly and then proceed to list too many of that item because they didn't stop to consider what the actual demand is.

If the old price was good and the supply isn't exceeding demand, prices will rebound within a few days. I've watched this happen many times. I'll pull my item off the marketboard and sell other things while price corrects then list mine again.

If the price doesn't rebound, then the player needs to figure out why and decide whether it is worth continuing to sell that item.

[dspguy]

A true market price crash is a sign the item is either overpriced or the market is saturated with too many of the item for sale.

The latter is pretty common, especially when it comes to items being returned through quick ventures. It also happens when players newly entering the system think they've found a hot item to sell that will get them rich quickly and then proceed to list too many of that item because they didn't stop to consider what the actual demand is.

If the old price was good and the supply isn't exceeding demand, prices will rebound within a few days. I've watched this happen many times. I'll pull my item off the marketboard and sell other things while price corrects then list mine again.

If the price doesn't rebound, then the player needs to figure out why and decide whether it is worth continuing to sell that item.

Look at every time new crafted gear is released. Sure, it starts high because the tomestone-only items are in short supply with high demand while gatherers are trying to make their quick buck. But after a day, we start to see the market settle a little bit. But after just a few players (or just 1) crash the market, the bots don't buy up the lower priced item. They drop the price to it instead. Same with the legit undercutting players. So, an item that had a sale history of say...

500k, 499k, 498k, 497k, etc - about 20 times per day is suddenly 150k. But, now we have 10+ items listed at 150k. It simply won't recover. In part, because of crafting bots that just relist the moment their item sells. Or if it does recover, we are talking months. Maybe when their crafting or MB relist bot breaks, there is some breathing room.

[DPZ2]

They are doing it out of spite.

Or they just want to get rid of items in their bags and make more than selling to the store. Spite has nothing to do with it.

[Jojoya]

Look at every time new crafted gear is released. Sure, it starts high because the tomestone-only items are in short supply with high demand while gatherers are trying to make their quick buck. But after a day, we start to see the market settle a little bit. But after just a few players (or just 1) crash the market, the bots don't buy up the lower priced item. They drop the price to it instead. Same with the legit undercutting players. So, an item that had a sale history of say...

500k, 499k, 498k, 497k, etc - about 20 times per day is suddenly 150k. But, now we have 10+ items listed at 150k. It simply won't recover. In part, because of crafting bots that just relist the moment their item sells. Or if it does recover, we are talking months. Maybe when their crafting or MB relist bot breaks, there is some breathing room.

I will admit that the items the bots also sell are a different situation since they're programmed to undercut whatever is lowest until their floor is hit.

In a lot of those cases, I suspect those doing the massive undercuts aren't even thinking about the other players that may also be selling those items. They're only thinking about messing with the bots. That's part of why I tend to stay away from selling end game items on the market and sell direct to other players on request instead. I get what I feel is a reasonable price and the buyer is generally happy as well. If I end up with a lot of leftover materials after i've helped those I usually supply, I'll list a couple of items on the mb but I don't annoy myself by going into it deeply.

[PlanNeun]

A relist limit isn't the solution. Just frontload the listing cost. Maybe drop the fee a bit since right now we pay something like 5% to list. Make it 1.5%. You pay when you list, not when you sell.

Imagine we are a week into the new patch cycle. The new DoH/L stuff isn't flying off the MB as fast, so the MB botters are relisting every 10 minutes to jockey for maybe 1 of the 10 sales for that day.

They list at 200,000 and let's say they drop the price 5 gil every 10 minutes (to counter the other 4 MB bots probably out there also doing this every 10 minutes).

0:00 - List at 200,000 pay 1.5% in fees - 3000 gil
0:10 - List at 199,995 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:20 - List at 199,990 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:30 - List at 199,985 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:40 - List at 199,980 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:50 - List at 199,975 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:60 - List at 199,970 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil

That's about 21,000 gil in just 1 hour spent relisting that one item. Not even counting materials, they are already down over 10% of their hopeful sales price.

Over the course of an entire day? They'd spend nearly 430,000 just in relist fees. They'd have to sell 3 items in one day just to turn any profit if they relist too fast. And they couldn't list all 3 of those items at the same time, since then the fees would just triple.

It will still only benefit the Bots, you are talking about a "gamer" not with 500 mill, or 700k, he has billions spread across his Fc that usually contains 8 to 12 mules as standard and that is the mules we know of.
All the mules are level 30, and the botter is also keeping tabs on every gamer that is on the market board.

Also the Fc leader in the bot Fc's is none searchable, + the master crafter is non searchable all the mules are none searchable. You can stand right beside them, search result zero.
While they can search you and your activities. What happens when I or anyone else go and harvest, run Nier, doing dailies f.ex Allies, all the products is changed without exception.
Or go to another server to check market prices.

To address a _flawed system with even more _flawed solutions is not the cure on this topic at hand. It will make it worse for any regular crafter like me and others. The winner will be the bot's.

SQE knows very well who the botting FC's are, that they also buy houses for extra placeholding of items, that they increase from mules with 8 and go up to increase retainers and ten retainers pr mule you get the picture.
SQE/FFXIV should commit a bot market massacre once pr week and if that do not help even more often. On all servers these bot FC's are build up identical, and should be eradicated as such.

A simple market board script with a FC profile identifier should be able to do this seamlessly along with is this "person "searchable".
SQE could for example implement and have this rule: is this "gamer" searchable the answer is no, avatar is removed and the assets are frozen.
The avatar is auto logged out and when trying to log in gets a message, illegal script activity detected, account is stopped.

[Prrringles]

Also the Fc leader in the bot Fc's is none searchable, + the master crafter is non searchable all the mules are none searchable. You can stand right beside them, search result zero.
While they can search you and your activities. What happens when I or anyone else go and harvest, run Nier, doing dailies f.ex Allies, all the products is changed without exception.
Or go to another server to check market prices.

What do you mean? I can search all these folks... I know exactly who they are on Chaos. The FC leader, their fc, the mules, the retainers.. all of them.

[dspguy]

It will still only benefit the Bots, you are talking about a "gamer" not with 500 mill, or 700k, he has billions spread across his Fc that usually contains 8 to 12 mules as standard and that is the mules we know of.
All the mules are level 30, and the botter is also keeping tabs on every gamer that is on the market board.

I feel like you didn't grasp my theoretical solution (or mitigation). The more you relist, the more you pay in fees. If bots were to relist an item as frequently as they do now, they'd pay more in fees than in sale price of the item. That's the point. Discourage players (and bots) from relisting as often. If a system is made that penalizes more relists, then the players (or bots) that relist more will pay more in fees. It will not benefit bots. It would only hurt them more.

But it is moot. It isn't like SE is doing anything about this problem anyway. MB bots have been around since at least Stormblood.