Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Kyrj]

SE doesn't fucking care. They never have and never will. Why would they? That's just more money for them.

[TheLoveJenovan]

I used to be pretty active on this thread. I quit a year ago because of botting problems in FF14, and I came back for 1 month (April 2023) to check in to the game a bit. My account will be lapsing in the next couple of days.

I have a few observations from Jenova (Aether) that might be helpful for some people:

- There are about 1-2 accounts that will undercut almost every item from level 60-90. (I didn't check the stuff <60)

- There are 6 accounts that undercut within 10-30 minutes on the Rinascita/Indagator items.

- Though these accounts appear to use automated tools to undercut marketboard pricing within 10-30 minutes, I believe that they're actively monitored accounts by multiple paid RMT employees throughout the day. (See reasoning below)

- Since RMT isn't very profitable--about $50 USD for 100M--I believe these accounts operate in countries with lax labor laws, like India or China, and they may use a VPN to connect to North American servers. (Kind of like scammer call centers that operate out of those countries.)

- I've concluded that these accounts are monitored because they have changed their behavior in response to some new undercutting approaches I've tried. Whenever one of these accounts cuts my offering my 1-10 gil, I undercut them by about 5-8%. I continue this strategy until I hit their bidding floor, then I sit above their price until their item is sold. Often, other bots/accounts will fill in that place for me, and I can place my item at a reasonably higher price for the next round of undercuts. In doing this, all of these accounts have significantly increased their price floors, and placed update timers that increase as the price gets closer to their price floor. Additionally, some have started to apply a higher bidding floor for my crafts in comparison to other crafters. I'll typically update only once an hour with my retainer ventures.

(We've discussed how these accounts can be identified earlier in the thread--as opposed to legit accounts--but you can tell them apart from their job profile and FCs.)

- My impression is that these accounts/bots disincentivize crafters, who then leave the marketboard. The accounts/bots are then able to place items at inflated rates, which are only accessible to veteran players or RMT buyers (e.g. 180k gil for a Manganese Sword, or 499k gil for a Renascita Earring).

- Even if all of their sales give them net gil, I believe these accounts are very protective of the size of their gil margins because it directly impacts the profitability of their work--in their local, real-world currency. For example, if one RMT employee manages 30 accounts on 30 different servers, and he/she can sell $1M gil net per hour on each server, that's $18 USD / hour (not counting the cut the RMT company takes). If that number drops to $500k gil net per hour per server, then the employee is making $9/hr.

(The RMT rates would obviously change as the supply goes down, but I don't think demand would follow. I could be wrong)

[TheLoveJenovan]

I'll just add another note for players who are stuck.

FFXIV doesn't reinvest any of the $12.99 monthly subscription, and it has a big problem with maintenance, cheating and lackluster content recently. Genshin Impact and Warframe are arguably better and more modern games, and they're free to play.* The Sereneteapot in Genshin Impact, for example, is what the Island Sanctuary should have been.

Don't give your money to a company that doesn't value your patronage. Big companies like Square-Enix only follow the dollars.

*: I spent less than $30 on each of those games to support them, and I had as much fun in them as FFXIV, which I spent over $350 on subs an 2 expansions.

[Prrringles]

snip

Your observations are correct. I think there are only a few big RMT accounts and they operate on all worlds. I have characters on US/EU/JP worlds and I see the same retainers (different names) sell the same items with the same pricing patterns on all worlds. They are very easy to spot. Problem is that eventhough you know who they are, there is nothing you can do. It is not worth it for normal players to start a war since we invest our valuable time into that while bots use automated scripts to update their prices. Nothing changed since bots/rmt infested this game. SE will gladly take their money and pretend all is right with the world.

I think the reason why players keep logging into this game is more because of addiction than anything else. Content is meh once the MSQ is done. Logging in just to log in is a thing.

[Shadow_Lilly]

I used to be pretty active on this thread. I quit a year ago because of botting problems in FF14, and I came back for 1 month (April 2023) to check in to the game a bit. My account will be lapsing in the next couple of days.

I have a few observations from Jenova (Aether) that might be helpful for some people:

- There are 6 accounts that undercut within 10-30 minutes on the Rinascita/Indagator items.

- Though these accounts appear to use automated tools to undercut marketboard pricing within 10-30 minutes, I believe that they're actively monitored accounts by multiple paid RMT employees throughout the day. (See reasoning below)

(The RMT rates would obviously change as the supply goes down, but I don't think demand would follow. I could be wrong)

I play on an other server, but I guess it is botting when you stand next to a summoning bell, qeuing for pretorium, checking the retainers and adjust prices, duty pops, run the dungeon, after dungeon stand next to summoning bell again. Que again for the next run, check and adjust prices again, etc, etc etc...

[dspguy]

I play on an other server, but I guess it is botting when you stand next to a summoning bell, qeuing for pretorium, checking the retainers and adjust prices, duty pops, run the dungeon, after dungeon stand next to summoning bell again. Que again for the next run, check and adjust prices again, etc, etc etc...

This is why SE can't really do anything about MB botting. It seems easy to a player to claim someone is botting but a different story entirely to actually prove it.

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks for responses. There are definitely bots in and out of the market board. My point was that at least 4 of the 5 aggressive under cutters on my server are actively "played" by multiple people around the clock--they're not fully bots. I know this because I see them going to collect some of the 2-star (lvl 90) mats or running around town. At the same time, they'll undercut almost any bid (above a floor) within 10 minutes, but their patterns change depending on how you're undercutting.

Altogether, it's my conclusion that each of these accounts is "played" by a few employees at RMT companies based out of a different country, like India or China. You don't need bots when you can pay humans almost nothing to do a repetitive task. In the end, I think that reporting these as "bots" is the wrong approach because they don't behave deterministically. I've reported them as "accounts managed by a team of employees at an RMT company." I'm not optimistic that this approach will work, but simply reporting them as bots in the past definitely didn't work.

(Again, I think the ultimate solution is to let your sub lapse, as I'm doing.)

[Jojoya]

Altogether, it's my conclusion that each of these accounts is "played" by a few employees at RMT companies based out of a different country, like India or China. You don't need bots when you can pay humans almost nothing to do a repetitive task. In the end, I think that reporting these as "bots" is the wrong approach because they don't behave deterministically. I've reported them as "accounts managed by a team of employees at an RMT company." I'm not optimistic that this approach will work, but simply reporting them as bots in the past definitely didn't work.

You might want to make it even simpler and state you suspect account sharing due to 24/7 activity on specific characters. Stating RMT pushes it to the Special Task Force. Account Sharing is within the general GM scope of duties.

[dspguy]

I have to wonder if there will be a net benefit to the average player when patch 6.4 drops and they allow players to see prices with the tax built in. It might change how/who players buy from if the MB can be loaded "lowest full price first." It will make undercutting by 1 gil only matter if the items at the top of the list are sold from the same city.

Depending on how often market tax rates change, they should follow it up with a tax to change cities. Add another gil sink and something that might make players second-guess changing cities to get the lower rate.

[Jojoya]

I have to wonder if there will be a net benefit to the average player when patch 6.4 drops and they allow players to see prices with the tax built in. It might change how/who players buy from if the MB can be loaded "lowest full price first." It will make undercutting by 1 gil only matter if the items at the top of the list are sold from the same city.

Depending on how often market tax rates change, they should follow it up with a tax to change cities. Add another gil sink and something that might make players second-guess changing cities to get the lower rate.

The buyer tax was changed a long time ago so it's a flat 5% regardless of where you purchase. Seller tax is not going to affect listing order.

There's nothing in the patch notes to indicate that we're getting a new sort order option. All they're doing is changing the Total column to display total price including the 5% tax. It really is no more than buyer QoL so they know they're going to be paying 210,000 for that minion they want and not the 200,000 the seller is asking.

Might want to say fee to change cities instead of tax to make it clearer what you're suggesting. I'm not certain that will help what SE is trying to accomplish with the reduced tax rates.

While the gil sink has an importance to player economy, trying to get the retainer loads balanced at the city-state level seems to be more important to SE at the technical level. I think it will only change if SE is able to create that truly global marketboard system they've been trying to create once the planned infrastructure updates are done.