Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Jojoya]

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

MB has hit a lull with this patch lasting longer than usual due to the COVID interruption and a lot of players taking breaks to play other games. Things should pick once 5.3 is released.

[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.

[Liam_Harper]

I'm seeing it on Zodiark too. There's one gathering bot who just cycles timed nodes all day on the exact same flight and movement pattern for months now, that I actually caught in a broken bot loop, dismounting/remounting endlessly on one spot and unresponsive. I reported that a few times and they're still botting away. I don't know if they don't care, or if the team simply isn't allowed to scan for third party software and literally has 0 tools to confirm player bots. RMT spammers basically announce "I'm engaging in RMT!" in /say and are easy bans, but a player gathering/craft bot will never give such evidence.

That said, I'm not even sure they're the entire reason for crashed markets. It is bot heaven of course, easy crafts, easy to gather mats and Extract Materia but crafting itself for profit is essentially dead, with every player in the game having easy access to it. Even the suspicious craft bots are undercut by 8 random people within half an hour. It's not that Neo-Ishgard gear doesn't sell, on the rare occasions I list things to sell I can move 20 pieces in 2 days, it's just that it's ridiculously easy to make.

It'll be interesting to see how it works long term. The value of gil has changed considerably, far less people are reeling in 10m a day or such and even 1m is quite a lot now. I imagine even the removal of gil from collectibles has affected it too, with the players spamming syrups for scrips and materia no longer pushing raw gil into the economy. The amount you need to be considered "rich" will probably drop considerably. Not saying that's good or bad, just interesting.

[adarel]

Just wanted to add that this has been happening on Midgardsormr for probably two months now. I took these images today, because I got so frustrated. If the bots were just selling one or two items, fine, but they're selling dozens of the same item and undercutting every ~90 seconds. It is unreal.

11:01
http://imgur.com/seFw4wK

11:02
http://imgur.com/wdhg5sM

11:03
http://imgur.com/PcaoVLS

11:05
http://imgur.com/jlxaP2t

[Kes13a]

Just wanted to add that this has been happening on Midgardsormr for probably two months now. I took these images today, because I got so frustrated. If the bots were just selling one or two items, fine, but they're selling dozens of the same item and undercutting every ~90 seconds. It is unreal.

according to some people here thats just normal gameplay. I mean you can change a ton of prices that fast cant you? Its a list of items or one in every item, which they change at the same rate.

and somehow.. that cant be detected?

[adarel]

according to some people here thats just normal gameplay. I mean you can change a ton of prices that fast cant you? Its a list of items or one in every item, which they change at the same rate.

and somehow.. that cant be detected?

There is no way they can change 4 retainers' item sets that quickly as a real person. I play on PC, and there are just too many menus for that even with the speed of kb/m when you're an actual human being checking prices and adjusting. The whole MB UX/UI is a separate complaint. Sure, it's normal to price change and undercut by 1g, but not on multiple retainers (who also undercut each other), for multiple items, predictably and instantly.

You'd think that seeing a consistent and predictable change like this across many retainers for an extended period of time would trigger something. It's not normal. You'd have to be an actual robot to do this.

[KageTokage]

The bots seem as though they're able to somehow override the standard retainer interface or something as I've noticed one of the undercutters on my server doesn't even target the retainer bell whenever it stops at one to adjust prices/deposit items between node spawns.

It doesn't really surprise me because the botting in XIV apparently functions little different from hacking and is just sending commands directly to the server; the only difference being that the latter is sending commands that would be impossible under legitimate circumstances. I've actually witnessed multiple "normal" bots doing janky things like targeting enemies from hundreds of yards away and/through walls, so you'd think they'd have to be leaving some kind of red flag the STF could pick up on.

[RealHounder1971]

I wonder if we can abuse the bots. If they update their info fast enough, and you are patient, maybe you can force the bot to drop the price down to a point you can buy their stuff ultra-cheap compared to the usual expected price. I would love to see something that sells for a few thousand dropped to like... 10 gil or less.

[Kes13a]

they usually have a price floor set.

right now you can pick up neo gear for between 30 and 50k on my server and a couple of the bots undercut 35k... granted, you can go lower than that, but why bother with the market at that point

[NamidaTekika]

Bots certainly don't seem to get dealt with in any reasonable time frame. Market or Gathering. I've seen the same ones and report the same ones each day, that literally sit online 24/7 non-stop.

If they wanted to do anything about them they'd break the Gathering bots because then the market bots wouldn't have the supply to constantly undercut, strangle the weeds by destroying the roots.

It wouldn't even be that much work to nail any of the bots. Heck if they use SQL database you could do a query literally for how long their session for the character has been active. Heck, sit a person at gathering nodes like Sandalwood Sap and Ala Mhigan Rock Salt and you'd net at least 2-3 bots an hour. For the market bots just do a check on number of actions per minute and items on market and how long they've been in a given zone/not afk. Pretty easy you could automate that whole query set to identify and ban.

One week and you'd break the backs of most bots that are currently out there.