Botting on the marketboard. Impossible to sell anything.

[Jojoya]

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.

It's more accurate to say what they're doing is ineffective. We do see some Maker's Signatures disappear from the marketboard but then new ones appear a week or two later.

QoL added for players is also QoL for botters, who take better advantage of it. Account bans are not an effective penalty when it's very easy to start over.

The only way to get rid of marketboard botting would be to get rid of the marketboard entirely.

[UkcsAlias]

QoL added for players is also QoL for botters, who take better advantage of it. Account bans are not an effective penalty when it's very easy to start over.

Depends on the QoL. In most cases because the QoL is enabling more, it helps botters. But limitations can also be a QoL. Because when a limitation is effective, it disrupts bots as they will face those limitations, while players shouldnt reach them quickly.

If you can list 50 items tax free per retainer per day, and afterward have to pay a 1% fee (a sold item adds 1 to the tax free items you can sell), botters will drain those 50 tax free listings easily, but the 1% will disrupt them a lot as that is going to be a money drain. It wont disrupt bots with 10x the same item listed (they will only relist 1 of them to undercut until they have free slots again), but that botter is already inefficient by using 10 slots for 1 item. Its more likely 10 or 20 seperate items they will be listing. And when spreaded acros markets, many players can undercut each other. And it will just drain relistings when botted. You will just reach a point where you have to accept either undercutting heavily, or accepting you lost for now. Best thing here is, if bots compete with each other, it hurts each other more, benefiting players.

This is also QoL. As instead of being forced to watch the market 10h+ a day to optimal use, it now can be done at a lot more limited times as watching too often is just draining the free relistings. Its relaxing towards the player on that.

For example another QoL based on limitations is the housing lottery. It gives less opportunities, but saves you a massive amount of time. And this disrupted botting quite a bit as no longer can you placard spam using a bot, each bot has to take the slow method, and more accounts costs more money (botters dont like that). It does not improve QoL against the housing issues as thats simply just a hard limit of houses being the problem. But it disrupts botters signficantly more than players, in such way players benefit and get improved odds.

The more a botter has to spend, while not affecting players, the better it is. That is a massive QoL to players.

[Jojoya]

Depends on the QoL. In most cases because the QoL is enabling more, it helps botters. But limitations can also be a QoL. Because when a limitation is effective, it disrupts bots as they will face those limitations, while players shouldnt reach them quickly.
[snip the rest char limit]

Since we're limited to 20 listings per retainer a day and the botters tend to have their items spread out over multiple retainers on multiple accounts, are they really selling enough items per retainer to reach your 50 item threshold? (I do understand the number is a random example)

Those selling items from gathering bots might but I wouldn't bet on it happening with crafted items. Even if it did, getting another service account to spread out the sales across even more retainers would eliminate the need to worry about the fee.

The fee also would only be effective if the limit was per account and stacked with each additional sale over limit. A 1% fee per excess item still means they only lose the gil from 1 out of 100 daily sales. If instead it was 1% for the first over limit, 2% for the second over limit, 3% for the third, etc. then it might get to the point where it would be prohibitive.

It's difficult to come up with deterrents that would only affect the botter and not actual players when we're effectively playing the game 2 different ways and botters can usually find an out by simply getting another service account to avoid limits or at least reduce the impact on their operations.

[PlanNeun]

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.

Does not matter when you have a billions as a bot, your suggestion will actually help the bots to total control of the market board.
But since we have a circle argument, my last answer is, I really hope SQE do not heed your advice at all.

[PlanNeun]

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.

Well you can certainly not search the person I have in mind or his Mules and some others, in "General" the Bots are searchable but that is another topic.

[PlanNeun]

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.

I have to laugh, you seriously mean that you should do the same as the bots sit all day and put the item 1 gil under and in that regard make sure they profit even more?
Well be my guest, I do not operate in that way on a bot infested market board in _any_ game what so ever.
Take for example Eve-Online, yes it is bots there to of course but the turn overs are so swift that you barely notice them as a problem.
Here it _is_ a problem because the bots has 89% of the market board on items worth selling.
So keep on playing fair against the "fair" bots I do something else.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

The only way to get rid of marketboard botting would be to get rid of the marketboard entirely.

Actually it could be easily solved. All they would have to do is revert to the Auction House system of FFXI, Prices listed are hidden and the only thing you see is the item and price history.

[Jojoya]

Actually it could be easily solved. All they would have to do is revert to the Auction House system of FFXI, Prices listed are hidden and the only thing you see is the item and price history.

How does that solve anything? Were buyers expected to buy items without being told the price they would be paying?

If a price gets displayed in advance to a buyer before a purchase is finalized, then it's also going to be displayed to a bot that can share that information with other bots. The "buyer" bot then cancels purchase. All you've done is put actual player sellers at a greater disadvantage.

[Prrringles]

OR you know, they can just step up their game and perma ban accounts.... Why waste time speculating about we can do this or that.. NO. Just perma ban these accounts. You know what happens when SE confirms that account x or y is botting? They get a TEMPORARY suspension. The main bots on Moogle got hit TWO TIMES already with a 3 and 10 day suspension. SO basically SE confirmed they violate the ToS and then lightly slapped them on the wrist. Man this is hilarious and sad at the same time. Just perma bans.

"But Prrringles that wil solve nothing because they will make new accounts". You know how easy it is to find these people? I can probably round them all up on EVERY server within 24 hours. And I am just a single random person with no aid from whatever SE has to their disposal. They should be perma banning 24/7, that's what the staff is for. All these things you guys talk about implementing is just restricting normal players from playing the game. Instantly perma banning all day long is the only solution.

And to speed things up SE should introduce a new report system. Right click a bot standing next to the bell > report third party software> send > staff will monitor with steps x and y > perma ban + perma ban anything attached to that. There ya go. Solved. And if SE is too lazy to do this themselves the mighty overlords can hire me and I will gladly clean up the servers for them.

[Jojoya]

OR you know, they can just step up their game and perma ban accounts.... Why waste time speculating about we can do this or that.. NO. Just perma ban these accounts. You know what happens when SE confirms that account x or y is botting? They get a TEMPORARY suspension. The main bots on Moogle got hit TWO TIMES already with a 3 and 10 day suspension. SO basically SE confirmed they violate the ToS and then lightly slapped them on the wrist. Man this is hilarious and sad at the same time. Just perma bans.

"But Prrringles that wil solve nothing because they will make new accounts". You know how easy it is to find these people? I can probably round them all up on EVERY server within 24 hours. And I am just a single random person with no aid from whatever SE has to their disposal. They should be perma banning 24/7, that's what the staff is for. All these things you guys talk about implementing is just restricting normal players from playing the game. Instantly perma banning all day long is the only solution.

And to speed things up SE should introduce a new report system. Right click a bot standing next to the bell > report third party software> send > staff will monitor with steps x and y > perma ban + perma ban anything attached to that. There ya go. Solved. And if SE is too lazy to do this themselves the mighty overlords can hire me and I will gladly clean up the servers for them.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...362e706b1c3834

・Botting activity (excluding RMT vendors)
　・Accounts terminated: 42
　・Accounts temporarily suspended: 8

Clearly some accounts are getting more than just temporary suspensions.

Know what most of those 42 individuals who had their accounts terminated are probably doing right now? Setting up new accounts (if they didn't already) so the "catch the bot" game starts all over again.

As much as we might like to believe there are simple solutions to the problem, there aren't. It's too easy to get new accounts as the previous ones get banned. It's too easy to set up free companies for easy transfer of items between characters. It's too easy to level up crafting and gathering. And it's a lot harder to get genuine proof that an account is botting if the account owner is smart. Gaming companies avoid jumping to conclusions that create false positives due to the bad publicity they generate. Most players will look the other way when it comes to having to deal with bots in their game versus potentially losing their own account over a false positive.