Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Kes13a]

There seems to be a bot out there that cycles retainers/alternate character and sets pricing at 1 gil under. You can determine timing, basement pricing by observing and being aware.

IF reported will Square Enix even look into these? They do not seem to care about RMT activity on market boards even if the people doing so are being obvious about it. So I am curious if there is a point to reporting this other activity since it is essentially cheating by having a bot "play" for you 24/7 (likely for rmt purposes)

[Jojoya]

Undercutting isn't RMT activity so that's irrelevant. SE will likely look into it if reported in enough detail but that doesn't mean they'll come up with evidence they feel is sufficient proof of botting to take action against the account. Certainly they will do nothing if nothing is reported.

The worst thing you can do to yourself is obsess over getting undercut by a gil. List your item at what you feel is a fair price and then enjoy doing other things. If the item hasn't sold within a couple of days (or sooner if you know the item should have a more rapid turnover on the MB), check to see how many times the item has sold since you listed it and at what price then adjust your pricing based on what has actually sold. But trying to engage in an undercut war with someone who might be doing nothing more than paying just as much attention to the MB as you are isn't going to accomplish anything.

[Kes13a]

Yeah, if it was another person, a real live person, that was not on 24/7 and slept on occasion, then I would not comment on it. I do actually know how to use the market playing with real people

I was just asking if SE bothered with bots. Because if they dont, rather than have an aspect of the game ruined by them, the consensus seems to be just get one and let it play for you.

[HyoMinPark]

I was just asking if SE bothered with bots

Unless it’s your level 1 GLA/ARC/MRD bots named Aalsdkjflaj Galskdjfalskjdf sitting in Ul’dah/Gridania/Limsa, then the answer is no. People have been reporting things like Market Board undercutting bots and crafting/gathering bots for years, and a lot of them are still around happily botting away.

[tierney12]

These bots have been rampant on Louisoix for about a month now and it's impossible to actually sell anything because of them, the Louis crafting community (we're a decently tight knit bunch) has been reporting the botters constantly but a month later they're still there, we know they're bots because we can predict to the second when they'll update and in the early days we could take advantage by forcing them to sell cheaper than the cost to craft, though now the bot owners have set floors so we can't take advantage of them anymore. Here's a great post a member of the Louis crafter group made with evidence against them: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...games_economy/

Anyway I was told to mention this on the official forums here rather than reddit to hopefully get in contact with a GM that can corroborate our evidence.

[Jojoya]

Anyway I was told to mention this on the official forums here rather than reddit to hopefully get in contact with a GM that can corroborate our evidence.

Game Masters don't come to the forums. The forums are monitored by the Community teams to gather general feedback.

What you need to do is open a ticket through the ingame Support Desk under Contact Us - Report Cheating. The GMs can contact you and give you information on how to submit your evidence if it's not something that can be done through the ingame ticket system. They will never share the results of any investigation of another player with you.

Keep in mind with Support Desk services being limited right now due to COVID shutdowns, it may be quite a well before you get any sort of response to your ticket.

By the way, that reddit thread has already bounced around here in the forums a few times. While very suspicious, there's nothing in it that constitutes actual evidence of botting. People do dumb things of their own free will all too frequently. Actual evidence would mean having a record of a program running on the player's computer that automates game play in some fashion. SE can't get that information, and certainly you can't as another player unless you had access to their computer.

If you think you're dealing with a MB bot, your best defense is to price match instead of trying to engage in an undercut war. When you do that, you end up looking like you're also a bot to the buyers who aren't part of your crafting inner circle.

Better yet, know the market and stick to your preferred price. If the item is actually selling and you've set a reasonable price, your item will still end up selling and you'll make that little bit of extra gil. While some players go for the absolute lowest price, other players actively avoid buying from the 0.1% undercutters. I've taken advantage on many occasions by setting my price slightly above the lowest one listed and had my items sell the same day.

[TwistedTea]

Better yet, know the market and stick to your preferred price. If the item is actually selling and you've set a reasonable price, your item will still end up selling and you'll make that little bit of extra gil. While some players go for the absolute lowest price, other players actively avoid buying from the 0.1% undercutters. I've taken advantage on many occasions by setting my price slightly above the lowest one listed and had my items sell the same day.

This doesn't really work against botters. For example, the Balmung community has reported gathering botters who are at it 24/7 for months/years but to no avail.

These botters have set the price of some mats, including those from timed nodes to less than 300 gil for more than 6 months at a time.

Because for a bot even selling for 1 gil is profit as they have not invested time like a human player has.

[Kes13a]

If you think you're dealing with a MB bot, your best defense is to price match instead of trying to engage in an undercut war. When you do that, you end up looking like you're also a bot to the buyers who aren't part of your crafting inner circle.

Better yet, know the market and stick to your preferred price. If the item is actually selling and you've set a reasonable price, your item will still end up selling and you'll make that little bit of extra gil. While some players go for the absolute lowest price, other players actively avoid buying from the 0.1% undercutters. I've taken advantage on many occasions by setting my price slightly above the lowest one listed and had my items sell the same day.

a couple major problems with setting the same price. Falls apart when the RMT bots transfer over a boatload of items and sell for half or less of that price.

Right now, the prices on Zalera of neo gear is just over what it costs to make for most of it. You can certainly stick with your "preferred price" but when there are 6 to 10 listings cheaper, no one is going to care if they are 0.1% undercutters...

[Jojoya]

This doesn't really work against botters. For example, the Balmung community has reported gathering botters who are at it 24/7 for months/years but to no avail.

These botters have set the price of some mats, including those from timed nodes to less than 300 gil for more than 6 months at a time.

Because for a bot even selling for 1 gil is profit as they have not invested time like a human player has.

This isn't about trying to make things into a competition against the bots. This is about trying to get your items sold.

You absolutely can get your items sold while competing against bots. You might not like the price but you can do it. I do it all the time for my FC with ores and lumbers that come back from submersible voyages. Bots have the MB flooded with their stacks of 99 listed at 150-250 gil each item. I list my stacks of 20-30 that came back from the voyages at 350-400 gil. Most of it is sold by the next day because there are players who want those smaller stacks.

a couple major problems with setting the same price. Falls apart when the RMT bots transfer over a boatload of items and sell for half or less of that price.

Right now, the prices on Zalera of neo gear is just over what it costs to make for most of it. You can certainly stick with your "preferred price" but when there are 6 to 10 listings cheaper, no one is going to care if they are 0.1% undercutters...

If their price is lower, someone's not matching their price. RMT bots are smarter than players, they're not going to undercut their own listings.

Why are you even trying to compete in a dead market that's saturated with bots? Neo-Ishgardian is being purchased for 2 reasons at this point: glamour, or the player has hit level 80 but still isn't close to completing the MSQ. EdenVerse, Memoria EX, Allegory tomestones - all that gear is equal or better but doesn't cost anything to get but a little of the player's time, and people have had weeks to accumulate it. They don't need Neo-Ishgardian anymore.

Just because something sells at a high price doesn't make it the most profitable. Frequency of sales has more impact. I can throw up a Neo-Ishgardian or Facet item at 120k on the MB and sell maybe one a week. Or I can make HQ Sunstone Rings to list for 15k each and sell 3 a day. Assuming I gather all my own materials instead of buying them from vendors and other players, that's 120k profit a week versus 315k.

Fight with the bots and everyone else making Neo-Ishgard for that 120k profit if you want. I'll take my easy 315k profit and not have to worry about the bots. That's how my alts end up gillionaires before they finish the 2.0 MSQ. I don't make and sell the more expensive items. I sell the things players need at prices they're willing to pay when no one else is interested in selling at those prices.

Know the market. Sell the things in demand that not enough other sellers are supplying. That's how you make gil.

And yes, some players do skip over the 0.1% undercutters even if means scrolling down 6-10 listings. It's not every player but you can see the evidence of it in the sales history especially if you're one of the sellers checking back when it's time to relist what just sold.

[tierney12]

This is completely the wrong mindset to have, the bots shouldn't be there, period. What you've said boils down to 'suck it up, let the bots win, and be happy making a pittance selling things for low margins'.' On Louisoix there are 4 bots competing with one another on Neo-Ish gear, 2 for High Allagan/Dreadwyrm glams, and another 2 for weapon glams. These bots probably absorb 50M a day that the crafting communities could take and re-invest in helping their friends, novices or housing. Whereas the gil that these bots take is getting sold online. The sales of Neo-Ish gear in particular is still healthy on my server and could be extremely profitiable to human players if they could actually take part in it, but we are being forced out of the game, that we pay money to play, by cheaters. I've started messaging the novice netwrok in my server frequently warning them not to buy off the bots and list their names, whenever my items sell I send tells thanking people for not buying from the bots. People keep asking me who the bots are and why SE haven't banned them yet and it seems it's just lack of effort on their part. They must have a log of how frequently retainers check their prices and it wouldn't be hard to see trends of price updates every 10 or so minutes 24/7.