Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[tierney12]

Oh threatening me is really productive.

[Yshtola]

You can kick and scream all you want my lala, but do know the little personal crusade you have against other players can, without any ambiguous interpretation, fall under two prohibited behaviors.

[Jojoya]

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.

You're right, the bots shouldn't be there. Players shouldn't want to cheat in a game.

But some do. There are people in the world who don't care about fair play. They're only interested in getting what they want by any means possible.

Game developers will always be in a neverending battle against bots they can't win because there will always be some way to counter something that's been programmed with something else that's also been programmed. Ban one bot and another one will show up the next day to take its place. That's why game developers do bot bans in waves spread out months apart. Once they know which account is botting, they can focus on that account to study the programmed behavior. Then they try to find ways to counter it that won't have an even greater impact on the game experience of those playing the game as intended. If they blindly ban the account, they've got nothing to watch to learn how to counter it. All you get is a never ending stream of new bots still existing in the game.

Until the world is rid of those who want to cheat, bots will continue to exist. You can sit there and stamp your feet about how they shouldn't exist but it doesn't change that they do.

Definitely encourage others to stop buying items from the MB that are listed by obvious bots. But you should think twice about naming specific sellers as bots because that can get you banned for harassment. Their wrong doesn't make your wrong a right.

[Kes13a]

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.

Things are different on my server, Neo sells very well still, even some of the weapons. I sell a few complete sets a day, its not a once a week kind of market unless you are listing for 750k

I know my market, and how to make gil. we play differently but still get ahead.

my question was about SE and their attitude towards market bots. I wasnt requesting an opinion on if I knew how to market or not.

but thank you for letting us know how things are on your server and your methods. much appreciated ^^

[bhuedhbiediobdgbr]

there are at least 2 rmt botting rings in all worlds and probably servers too, one guys has all his crafting characters with busy status 24/7 this bot plays 24/7 gathers mats crafts all Neo and facet gather/crafting gear undercut 1 gil repeat, the second one crafts all Neo and facet gather/crafting gear sends them to his alt in FC where the bot stands next to a summoning bell price botting by 1 gil every 20mish. A few small things i noticed the first bot i mentioned doesn't craft fishing rod but the second one does and i think the first one doesn't undercut below 50k but the second one does. even if u price hike ur sells the bot will price hike theirs 1 gil below urs.

[bhuedhbiediobdgbr]

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[bhuedhbiediobdgbr]

the bots using the limsa flag too? in crystal they all using it

[Waaltar]

They would choose the flag based on the tax rate. However the tax rate is based on how many players use each and the one with the least has the best low tax rate. If the tax rate is lower, then you pay less for an item listed as the same price somewhere else. But not a lot of people care about it as the tax only pops up in the middle of buying it already and is for most things not much gil. On Cactuar, Limsa was the best a long time ago but now they are all about even.

Anyways I came here today looking for answers as to how someone on Cactuar has huge numbers of retainers and is selling Darksteel Ore, Gold Ore, and Spruce lumber, among other things, at around 300-400gil with 5-10 stacks of 99 and they reload multiple times a week. I figure either they have a ton of retainers and send them out every hour, or they'd have to be botting the nodes. But seriously we are talking 30+ retainers just for those, maybe like 100+ retainers in their empire. They all have names like Cactuar''''''one or Gerberbaby''''''two etc. Can they do that exploiting free accounts?

I mean it just kills gathering because they've moved in on all the reasonably high demand gathering mats that used to reliably have prices around 900-1000 gil each. Things are slow in the markets now which isn't all that surprising, but it's bad enough for crafters and gatherers as it is.

[Jojoya]

Can they do that exploiting free accounts?

Free trial accounts don't have marketboard access, cannot join FCs and cannot trade with other characters. There's nothing stopping players from having multiple paid accounts, though.

[Voltron_HD]

Im starting to see things like this on Faerie server, and its getting on my nerves lol. Truthfully, im not sure how to combat this effectively as even matching the supposed bot prices is met with a price change of 1 gil cheaper (almost immediately). My things still get sold though as we have alot of traffic and although my item isnt the cheapest, it will be the cheapest after the "bot" item is sold. I just really hope it doesn't get worse, my ingress of gill is getting slower lol