Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Rurouni_Auron]

But at least the FC bots make themselves easier to identify through activity. It's a place to start.

You do not need to identify shit..

All you need to do is find a worthy item (Check Shinryu's Gunblade and Chakarms for example) and see if there's someone undercutting the price by 1 Gil.
Check their profile and company of that character: If it is a company of 9 characters, 1 main omnicrafter with 1 LV80 DoM or DoW job and 8 mules and no company estate then BINGO you found the shit.

Took me less than 10 minutes to find all those botting companies on each server of Chaos.

Evidently; you don't need to be smart to do all this, which tells a lot about the intelligence and IQ levels of SE support and special douchebag team.

[TheLoveJenovan]

Identifying bots is easier than that. They could start by polling their databases for accounts that have been active (i.e. not AFK) for more than 36 hours. This is so easy to do--it would literally take someone 5-10 minutes to write and execute the SQL query script--that it leads me to believe that SE truly doesn't care about the problem.

[TheLoveJenovan]

I've been sending back-and-forths with SE Customer Support, and it appears that they've outsourced this service to act as a "firewall" from their users. My original query was about getting a World Transfer credit after transferring to a new server inundated with market bots.

Message 1

We apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, that service is not an available option. Although this service is not available, we will take this information and forward it as feedback to the appropriate department. While we cannot guarantee implementation, we would like to assure you that it will be reviewed by the appropriate party.

I’d otherwise be happy to pay for further transfers, but since the reason I am transferring is because Square Enix is not enforcing it’s TOS with bots, I’d like to at least transfer to a server in which there aren’t flagrant violations of the TOS. This wasn’t the case for my old server (Jenova) or the server I’ve transferred to (Zalera), which is why I’d like to try the Diablos server.

Ideally, it would be best if Square Enix just enforced its TOS. However, after months of reports in-game and reports to the Special Task Force, nothing has been done about these bots.

If you’d like more detailed information on this problem, I have participated actively on a thread.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Market-botting

I even spent about 10 minutes identifying all of the market botting rings on the Crystal data center. These rings are on nearly every server, they almost all have top-10 Free Company standings for their respective server, they appear to be tied to RMT, and they have basically ruined the marketplace for legitimate players.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5431506

[TheLoveJenovan]

Message 2

Greetings,

We appreciate you bringing this to our attention. It will be forwarded to the appropriate party. Thank you for taking the time to contact us today and we look forward to your opinions of our upcoming titles.

Thank you,
Paz

Frankly, there’s tons of content for new players and seasoned players, like myself. For the continued engagement of seasoned players, like me, we’re just looking for a fair game to play.

At this point, I’m not looking forward to Square Enix’s upcoming titles; I just want Square Enix to fix the product they’re already selling. This has been codified in the Terms of Service (TOS), but the TOS is not enforced by Square Enix. It’s like watching a game of football with no rules. At some point, there’s no point in engaging in a game when anything is allowed. For FFXIV, this means that bots are *allowed* to run rampant from 6 months to many years. They even have the top rankings for Free Companies and Ishgard rankings in the game.

Please fix the game with its pervasive and flagrant cheating before creating new content. We, as a community, have even done the legwork in identifying the most egregious bots. We’re just asking you to clean up your game.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5431506


Message 3

We appreciate your feedback. We apologize that the product/service you are referring to does not meet your expectations. Your feedback will be forwarded to the appropriate party. Thank you for taking the time to contact us today.

Thank you,
Jon

The product/service I am referring (Final Fantasy XIV) doesn’t even meet Square Enix’s expectations. As I’ve stated, they have outlined a Terms of Service for play, which prohibits bots, but they do not enforce penalties on bots.

I hope Square Enix can deliver a product/service that at least meets their own expectations.

[Kes13a]

this reminds me of Raiders of the Lost Ark

Maj. Eaton : We have top men working on it right now.

Indiana : Who?

Maj. Eaton : Top... men.

[TheLoveJenovan]

Including Nazi face melting

[Liam_Harper]

Had a glance at the Zodiark MB and it's the same thing. The main sellers come from a few 6-9 person FC's (one is rank 8 on the server), consisting of a single crafter or two (always with 1 lv80 DoW class, maxed DoH/L and only the story minion/mounts) and a set of low level retainer classes using jobs that start in Limsa for easy MB access. One of them originates from Lich, so they use trades to retainer alts on multiple worlds to cover the entire data centre. It's rampant and quite a few Neo-Ishgard pieces are below material price.

This first started happening on a large scale around 4.5 onwards, when endgame gear crafting was made much easier and cross world was implemented. Both these changes created a bot heaven, simple crafts, easy to obtain mats and the entire data centre as your market. It's a shame.

[TheLoveJenovan]

1. I reported a phishing attempt yesterday, and support replied within 10 minutes. At least they take phishing seriously. (In case you're wondering, I reported a user that sent a tell asking to comment on the removal of some content).

2. I've updated my list of FCs that dominate the markets. I found all of the FCs on the crystal datacenter. Congratulations!

Crystal

1. Alpha Knights [Balmung] — they’re ranked 2nd for the whole server! (https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...9148295235275/)
2. Malazan [Goblin] — they’re ranked 6th for the whole server! (https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...1773411659411/)
3. Simps United [Malboro] — they’re ranked 6th for the whole server! (https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...7348481549738/)
4. Ballers [Zalera] — they're ranked 7th for the whole server! (https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...2273877462814/)
5. Heavenswrath [Mateus] — they’re ranked 8th for the whole server! (https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...9323924029532/)
6. Danktown [Brynhildr] — they’re ranked 11th for the whole server! (https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...7111458975017/)
7. SeeDs of Shinra [Coeurl] — they’re ranked 23rd on the whole server! (https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...6610993167589/)
8. bro [Diabolos] -- they're ranked 80th on the whole server! (https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...7761132928999/)

Aether

1. Free Folk [Jenova] — they're ranked 5th for the whole server! (https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...1536389089046/)

Chaos

1. Anonymous Neets [Cerberus] -- they're ranked 23rd on the whole server! (https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...727.1588716301)

[Aniona]

A new person on the Chaos, Moogle server, but here is another problem, he sells goods on all the Chaos servers, he is everywhere..absolutely.

Guild ArtsAndCrafts (Moogle).

[TheLoveJenovan]

Hi Aniona, thanks for the post!

Market bots, and bots in general, are a pretty pervasive problem. There are the FC bots we've been discussing as well as "lone-ranger" bots like the one you describe. On the Crystal Server, I've found at least one of these "lone ranger" bots that sell items on multiple servers. I bet your server also has the FC bots like the ones we've been discussing as well.

Altogether, after spending a lot of time on a few servers, I've found that each server has a minimum of 4-6 market bots, which I would characterize as follows:

1. 1-2 FC bots. Each server has at least one FC with one crafter and about 8-9 dummy accounts for RMT trading. These FCs are typically in the top 20 ranking for the server. I suspect that these FCs are all run by the same RMT company (like 4000GOLD) or RMT person, and from what I've seen, they've contaminated all servers and datacenters in the US and Europe.

2. 1-2 Lone-ranger bots. These are bots often don't participate in an FC. They spread their goods to all servers in a datacenter and drop prices, like the FC bots, within tens of minutes on a 24/7 basis. I found at least one of these on each of the Aether and Crystal datacenters. I suspect this is a different RMT company using a different way to exploit the market.

3. 3-4 Player bots. Many players have realized that the only way to compete with market bots is to run their own bots. These player bot accounts will play the game during normal hours then they'll go into market bot mode to undercut competitors within tens of minutes. It's not unusual to see these player bots in price wars with the other bots by taking turns undercutting 20-40 times per day. The number of these is a bit difficult to identify, but if you spend a day in a market, you'll notice them.

This is not to mention the DOL bots that everyone has seen and identified. In the level 80 zones, it's pretty common and typical to see 3-6 or more bots stacked on top of each-other, doing the exact same script in mining ephemeral nodes.

Quality job SE.