Visiting other worlds, economy effect?

[LalaRu]

... i often find things to make and sell because only one or two people are making an item, but they want to extort a huge gain, i will then make some and sell for 70% less, i still make a nice profit.

Not everyone values her/his time equally. If I get to the point of being able craft a given item after one year of suffering, I will not ask just the materials price plus some minimal tip.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

And how do you know they aren't legitimate players that enjoy making Gil, just because you sell cheap, doesn't mean you don't make a fortune in time.
For example, i often find things to make and sell because only one or two people are making an item, but they want to extort a huge gain, i will then make some and sell for 70% less, i still make a nice profit.

Putting aside many people, myself included, have actively seen these players botting. We're talking volumes of several thousand in days. No legitimate player can craft 10,000 Infusions within days nor would they list them well below market value.

You occasionally putting up items you find isn't nearly the same. And the person buying said item likely re-listed it for double the price.

[Mansion]

But is that a NA problem specifically?
Because I've only been on my current world, Zodiark on EU and I've never got any problem if I wanted anything on the MB, nor did my friends on Moogle or Shiva worlds. There are differences in prices of course, but not so much. That's why I think (at least in the current system on EU), prices would most likely just get balanced.

[KageTokage]

It really depends on the server, but lower population servers tend to have less bots, less crafters in general and by extension higher prices. I can tell just from browsing the list of top FCs on Lodestone that every region has issues with them, though (Including JP), because crafting items is by far the fastest way to amass FC credits, which means that any FC with craft bots is going to get significantly higher scores then legit ones (Unless they're packing a ridiculously high number of active members).

Also, some bot farmers try to maintain a facade of legitimacy by not listing large quantities of items but mass producing them then keeping a market board bot running to auto-relist stuff whenever it sells, so they might not be readily identifiable.

And how do you know they aren't legitimate players that enjoy making Gil, just because you sell cheap, doesn't mean you don't make a fortune in time.
For example, i often find things to make and sell because only one or two people are making an item, but they want to extort a huge gain, i will then make some and sell for 70% less, i still make a nice profit.

I don't just look at the price/quantity of items being sold and make it a note to monitor things like how much time the players in question spend online and active in the event I can't just spot them botting out in the open.

Honestly, though, I don't think anyone can reasonably think players who routinely keep several pages of stacks of 99 infusions listed at all times are legitimate. It would take several days of doing nothing but crafting to produce the quantities I see, and when players in question are only ever doing their crafting in the wee hours of the morning/night coupled with FC mates constantly gather botting the mats needed for what they make, it's really just a matter of putting two and two together.

[Liam_Harper]

And how do you know they aren't legitimate players that enjoy making Gil, just because you sell cheap, doesn't mean you don't make a fortune in time.
For example, i often find things to make and sell because only one or two people are making an item, but they want to extort a huge gain, i will then make some and sell for 70% less, i still make a nice profit.

Do you make 500 Rakshasa and Onishi items with an army of 20 crafters, put them onto a mule alt, transfer servers and sell them all at 2-600k undercuts as a legitimate seller? Because that's what these guys are doing.

Not to mention these bots have been banned multiple times. Every time I report them, they vanish on the next ban wave. The problem is they come in immediately after reset a few weeks later and ban waves only happen each reset, meaning they get a full week to stockpile gil and other crafters are stuck for a week, not to mention the damage to the economy.

But is that a NA problem specifically?
Because I've only been on my current world, Zodiark on EU and I've never got any problem if I wanted anything on the MB, nor did my friends on Moogle or Shiva worlds. There are differences in prices of course, but not so much. That's why I think (at least in the current system on EU), prices would most likely just get balanced.

Our bot on Zodiark is back. You can see yourself there, just search high-end gear on the mb (Onishi Kasa for a good example), look for the RMT-name retainers (asdfghlkl or such), check the crafter signature and do a Lodestone search. All of them are from Carbuncle.

This same bot, I recognize the crafter signatures, is on his third visit here and Enix have still failed to ban the source. Enix are now going to give bots like this the entire data centre as a market despite currently being unable to control them. I don't know how people fail to see this as an issue. When the cross-world kicks in, a lot of players will use third party market board websites for expensive purchases to find the cheapest on the data centre and the 400k undercutting bot will stand out like a sore thumb and gain a rush of business.

[KageTokage]

I find it odd that they'd ban the bot's mule accounts but not bother tracing the items back to their source.

It should be obvious as heck that something shady is going on when level 1 gibberish-named players keep showing up with mountains of crafted gear, but I guess they always only take things at face value instead of doing deeper investigations.

[Barraind]

You have it backwards. We've got lots of gathering bots driving the prices for raw materials down (items that are creature drops only being an exception) but few crafters actively selling. Lack of competition allows those crafters to set and maintain high prices.

I doubt there will be that many players realm hopping, though. A lot of people don't even bother traveling to the city state where the item is being sold to avoid the buyer tax as it is. Most will stick to the convenience of not having to travel around much even if they end up paying more and only resort to realm hopping if the item they want isn't available on their realm or the price is incredibly outrageous. That's far more likely to happen with the random drop items like emotes than with the crafted items.

We have enough people crafting that some things arent viable unless you're botting it(food and potions have a ~1k per combine profit, which is not really worth the time). On the other hand, theres quite a few markets where the only person crafting is me. I kinda welcome the ability to sell Replica gear to a new market, because it can sit for a long time until someone decides they want to redo glam.

Our mat prices are actually relatively high compared to Cactuar and Balmung. I was a little shocked when I first moved here how much I could get for raw mats.


I think prices will equalize across the datacenter, though I worry a little for crystal. If Balmung is locked to world visits but still has almost 40% of the datacenter population who can buy elsewhere... that sounds abysmal.

Yea people underestimating how lazy players can be. Seen people selling npc goods on MB for double/triple the cost no problem.

If its locked behind beast tribe faction, I get it. I know plenty of people I have to buy that stuff for. Its usually either small margins or small purchases though, rare to see people overpaying significantly in enough quantity to merit a retainer space selling it.