Botters

[Eldaena]

The general market is worthless, what is there really to compete over for? NQ items you might as well give out for free, so that leaves HQ's. Getting an item to +1 or +2 is pretty much ezmode. The only true market we are going to see is for that elusive +3. Bot's aren't causing this particular issue, it's the market system itself. So long as nothing is being taken out of the market, the older the server gets the more worthless items get as more and more items enter the system.

Bots you can argue are able to sit on huge amounts of money selling shards/fish (as far as I know there's no bot for botany and mining) and with that particular issue can and will devalue currency. Competition on anything else besides +3's is basically pointless so long as the system remains as it is.

You must be talking about gear? Because people buy NQ items from wards everyday. Mostly for crafting. And there is competition on those items because people need them to rank up their crafts and do not care to farm or gather themselves.

Then as far as gear goes, clothes for crafting - typically no one cares if it is HQ or not because it doesn't appear to make any true difference for crafting.

Then you get into HQ gear for lower and middle ranked classes. Again, not many people care if these are HQ because they will soon rank out of it.

Then for the high-end ranked gear, that depends on the player. Some people do not care about the HQ's slight boost to defense or other stats.

Overall, if the population was larger, we would probably see more of these gears selling more often. I don't think everyone that would play this game, if it were up to par and didn't have a poor reputation, would want to craft and thus would go to buy those items. But as it is now, most people that play the game now, not only fight, but craft and gather.

We have a lot of items in circulation and not many players. And on top of that, bots are bringing in even more and swaying things out of balance for people that work hard and can't make two gil to rub together. The more legitimate players will try to progress, the poorer they will become, whilst botters not only are free of the burn of grinding, but their pockets fill with gil, and once new things come out, they can bot and continue to monopolize.