Regarding Bot-driven Gil Farmers

[Seyoun]

Dawgs,

By tracking the activity of certain retainers, I have discovered:

- The person(s) behind the character I mentioned earlier in this thread who has controlled the FC III market since before Heavensward launched also owns the character performing the 24/7 automated farming of the aetherial and legendary nodes. How do I know? At the time I made this discovery, the character had only archer and leatherworker unlocked; all other jobs were dashes. However, one of the retainers they use to sell FC III was also selling clusters and crystals by the hundreds. How do I know this retainer is connected to that character? I regularly war with them in the FC III market. Since I closely track the character, I already know which retainers it owns that sell FCIII. I see which retainers are taken down while they are at the summoning bell, are never taken down when they are /not/ at the summoning bell, and are taken down immediately after they return to the bell after desynthing bridesmaid sandals and have a fresh batch of FC III, a metric ton of spruce lumber, and hard hippogryth leathers to sell.

- They are also responsible for the mass importation of items and materials from the Chocobo and other JP servers. Since the prices on Chocobo are a fraction of those on Zalera, they will undercut us below the point Zalera crafters begin taking losses while still making a profit themselves. Last week, they dumped dozens of luminous fibers into our market. They've also dumped every ilvl 195 crafter/gatherer gear/tools, DoW/DoM Eikon gear, highly priced minions, and other expensive items.

This next development has me worried and I believe every crafter needs to be aware of what's going on, but first a little background:

For nearly two months, I have been at war with this character in an attempt to drive them out of FC III and return that market to legitimate players. In doing so, I have become well-known to the operator and have engaged them in undercut wars that continued for 10+ hours straight on several occasions and 16 hours (1pm-5am) on the most recent. (Yes, I stood at the MB for 16 hours doing nothing but undercutting, only stopping to use the bathroom or grab liquid energy/food from the fridge) The last war crashed the price from 50k to 33.2k though it has stablized at 33.8k. I am now well-known to the bot operator for my extreme hostility and they make it a point to try to deny any sale I attempt in that market. To prevent the bot operator from making any appreciable profit from FC III, I maintain a wall of over 200 FC III above theirs. When the price rises, I launch nukes.

Now let's talk profitability: The return rate of FC III from bridesmaid sandals is approximately 20%. This means that statistically, and when ignoring sales tax and other items returned from the desynth, you will have a zero gain/zero loss if you sell your FC III at 30k. A 5% tax rate bumps this number to 31,579k. So as it stands, the FC III bot factory gains about 2.2k gil per sale. This number seems respectable at first glance, but is only realized for a statistically significant number of sales. Any given run could do better or worse than this. In other words, it's just not worth it for a normal player.

Now let's consider the other items dropped by the desynth: spruce lumber, hard hippogryth leather, and CD III. There are specific ways to use these items to enhance your profit. You'd be forced to take advantage of these profit lines when someone like me forces you to cut your FC III price to 33.8k (or lower.) However, this character is not doing that. That's just plain madness...unless, of course, you are running a bot operation that has plenty of time to sell a statistically large number of FC III. Despite that, of course the operator wouldn't be pleased at such a drastic reduction of their profits and would be looking into making it up in other ways - which brings you up to speed so I can speak of my latest finding:

A couple weeks ago, I noticed the desynth bot had leveled LTW beyond 30 - the minimum level required to unlock desynth. This was curious so I monitored him and watched as he brute-forced LTW to 50, unlocked another craft, brute-forced that one up to 50, and so on. As of last night, he has only CUL(42) and ARM(24) to level to 50 before starting the climb to 60.

Now, let's keep it real - they aren't spending that gil and time to level for fun. Also keep in mind we're talking about someone who has a virtually limitless supply of crystals and node materials. They will want to maximize their profits on these assets by selling crafted items and materials. I speculate we will see the market flooded with NQ (and possibly HQ) starred items at ridiculously cheap prices sometime in the not too distant future.

Another tidbit: You will find this character: same name and same FC name (with the addition of one character at the end) on Shinryu, Mateus, and Garuda (but no FC there yet).

So, where does that leave us? We've done what SE asked: supply reports with sufficient information to conduct an investigation. Despite us having done so, month in and month out these operations not only continue, but also expand in scope and affect a growing number of markets. On the day I login and see level 60 crafted items bearing that character's signature and competing items being auto undercut, I'm out. I'm not going to get angry, flip tables, or hijack donkeys and goats like a straight-up OG (#DonkeyGate), I'm just out since that will be my only remaining recourse of action.

In the meantime, I'll be working on something to leave the crafting community that will hopefully serve you all for years to come. You can consider it "Veena's bones"...nah, that sounds bad.