Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Shinzan]

since my topic "24/7 market-manipulating-bots ... frustrating!" was deleted without any notification or feedback I will not invest any more energy into this topic,
my 5 months long fight is over now!
@Vaen don't expect more to happen when using the website link, I've sent really many with enough details to terminate accounts, but nothing happened with the
obvious bot free companies, 2 masters sitting 24/7 in gridania/limsa appartments and all their automated bots still active since June, and those are single players
with legacy accounts ruining the market. there are many obvious sings that those activity come from single legacy accounts because the crafter of the items selling
on the market is same on every server. my personal view is that market manipulation in European datacenter is handled like homelessness in Japanese culture.

[Prrringles]

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I get it man. Just do what I do, find the bottom price of these bots and sell your items under that price. Even if you make 10k profit per item, 100x10k is still 1 million a day. Also, Ragnarok is kind of a difficult server. There are a few legit players on there camping the retainer bell 24/7 and crafting like a bot. Like the guy standing in front of the Limsa market board all day long with the black/purple outfit. I'm sure you know who I mean. (can't mention his name for obvious reasons). He also sells cross server.

[Jojoya]

since my topic "24/7 market-manipulating-bots ... frustrating!" was deleted without any notification or feedback I will not invest any more energy into this topic,
my 5 months long fight is over now!
@Vaen don't expect more to happen when using the website link, I've sent really many with enough details to terminate accounts, but nothing happened with the
obvious bot free companies, 2 masters sitting 24/7 in gridania/limsa appartments and all their automated bots still active since June, and those are single players
with legacy accounts ruining the market. there are many obvious sings that those activity come from single legacy accounts because the crafter of the items selling
on the market is same on every server. my personal view is that market manipulation in European datacenter is handled like homelessness in Japanese culture.

It wasn't entirely removed. A few of the posts in that thread were moved to this thread. Moderators have been combining active threads on the same topic lately to consolidate feedback. There's a sticky in every forum reminding players not to start new threads when there's an active thread available to post in.

What did get removed was the posts where you included screenshots with player names. A couple of those names were real players, not just bots, captured at the edges of the screenshots. Several posters did warn you that was a way to get your thread deleted because it is against the forum rules but you openly stated you didn't care about the rules and would not remove them. So the moderators enforced the rules and removed them. They could have hit you with a forum suspension as well but it looks like they chose not to. I'm sure they understood that you're frustrated.

I hope you're still able to find enjoyment in the game even if the bot situation is frustrating.

[Shinzan]

nothing was move to this thread, all that is here from me were my original posts to this thread, my topic has been deleted without informing me. all pictures were only showing bots or bot's account retainers, no real players, also not at the border or corners. this is even handled worse than homelessness in Japanese culture, it is censorship like in China!
they don't want to see the evidence in form of pictures or videos, they look away! well, not relevant for me anymore, my fight and my journey is over on December 14th latest, close friends and I will leave this game, 106 Euro to spend elsewhere every 6 months :-) just preparing a "clean" exit giving away all goods and dumping the retainers as soon as everything was sold. good luck for you and have a safe journey!

[Sauteed]

I got ticked off at Black Friday traffic, so came home hoping to find some items sold on the mb and instead found some same suspects undercuts and decided to just email support to take out my frustration. I haven't gotten to making spreadsheets and plotting market trends yet, but I've noticed these suspected automaters are really ramping things up this holiday season, probably to sell their ill-gotten gil for holiday present funds or just be sitting on multi-gil capped retainers and bragging how they dominated the market and lie about how legit they did it too. If by legit they mean they made their own code strings to set their little bots up , ok. I don't suspect anything will legitimately happen, but I hope it does. I don't know anyone saying they're legit going to pack up and go to some other MMO over it, but it is for me at least one more little thing that is bothersome and unlikable about this game.

PVP automation/afk/abuse is also something that should be seriously looked in but I'll leave that alone as there is a slew of feedback on that topic and this thread isn't for that.

Anyhow, hope everyone had a wonderful holiday here in the United States, and hope you do find some enjoyable things to get into other than marketboard warrior'ing and white maging.

[Seyoun]

... my fight and my journey is over on December 14th latest, close friends and I will leave this game, 106 Euro to spend elsewhere every 6 months :-) just preparing a "clean" exit giving away all goods and dumping the retainers as soon as everything was sold. good luck for you and have a safe journey!

Good luck to you and godspeed. I wish I had your resolve. I need to just go ahead and pull the trigger as well but I just can't bring myself to do it.

[Prrringles]

just preparing a "clean" exit giving away all goods and dumping the retainers as soon as everything was sold. good luck for you and have a safe journey!

Can I have your gil? Im on Moogle. Send me a tell, I will "keep it safe" if you ever return.

[Shinzan]

Can I have your gil? Im on Moogle. Send me a tell, I will "keep it safe" if you ever return.

after checking the market I'm selling some remaining goods for 98 gil (unfortunately in stacks of 99 mostly since I had 9 full retainers), and my remaining 50k shards/crystals/clusters already sold for 7 gil.
I'll keep some gil on my character if I should decide to return for the free to play campain, or my FC pays for the monthly cost because they would like me back. the rest is already distributed to my FC friends. They really deserve it, we had so much fun time together e.g. running Syrcus Tower or The Wolves' Den FC internal only in the old days.

to keep it on topic of this thread I'll add some market related information: the "random name" market bots were not reappearing at my summoning bell since 2 days, but the 2 "master rings" were not detected yet. since the "random name" market bots were only responsible for quick shard price manipulation the prices went up a bit and the manipulation is slower since the 2 "master rings" (i have detected easily, maybe there are more) are throttling their spawns, using smart city rotation and even change summoning bells from time to time (but mostly they use the far end of the market). all this aggressive botting is an effect of COVID-19 and one day it will go back to normal levels for sure, I wish everybody good luck and have a safe journey!
and to the moderators and STF teams who eventually read this and talk about it: after so many years of playing this game (/ptime = 1783 days, 19 hours, 29 minutes) i can clearly tell the difference if a character is logging in, or raising from below ground level!

[Prrringles]

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I don't know you but it's sad to see you leave the game. SE won't care though, but their success will be short lived once more and more veteran players leave the game. End of the day this is just a game. Once a game stops being fun and turns into frustration it's better to quit.

Oh well at least our lives are better than those of the people running the bots. Let them craft 24/7 in their sweatshops with no light at the end of their tunnel. But a sub is a sub..right SE?

[Kes13a]

for anyone just joining this thread in the hopes that Square Enix will do something about the bots taking over the game in its entirety... here is the tldr version.

No.

From all appearances Square Enix provides lip service to the idea that they are against RMT and cheating, but the reality is far different. Reported bots function with immunity from any kind of action from the makers of this game. In the botting community this game is known to be "very bot friendly". The STF, if it is anything more than a group that organizes staff parties, is 4 people that apparently do all of the bot investigations for Jpn, NA and EU.. the ONLY activities they seem to ban are those that a 5 year old could figure out, such as the RMT barkers in major cities. The GM's are not allowed to act against blatant botting/cheating and refer you to the 4 person "task force"

While other games seem to try at least to go after botting and cheaters, Square Enix has taken a "head in the sand" approach and the business unit, developers and I suspect even the STF have decided to ignore the problem in combat, in maps, in crafting, in the market, and hopes it will just go away one day.

So there you have 34 pages in a nutshell. You're welcome ^^