Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[KageTokage]

As far as I can tell, the bots are seemingly bypassing the standard retainer interface as the ones I've observed on my server never actually target the bell and will just run over to it, stand there for 10-20 seconds, then teleport to the next timed node they intend to gather from. During that brief time they're somehow able to adjust the prices on ALL of their retainers, which is blatantly impossible for an actual player as just cycling through that many retainers would normally take close to a minute due to all the loading and menuing.

That would suggest that they are actually hacking to make the retainer/price management faster, but SE doesn't seem to be able to pick it up for whatever reason.

I haven't really noticed them on Primal. Is it a problem on other datacenters specifically?

The JP datacenters have less of them simply because the RMT market is not as strong as it is elsewhere.

There is some level of botting activity regardless but it seems to be done more for personal benefit.

[Kes13a]

As far as I can tell, the bots are seemingly bypassing the standard retainer interface as the ones I've observed on my server never actually target the bell and will just run over to it, stand there for 10-20 seconds, then teleport to the next timed node they intend to gather from. During that brief time they're somehow able to adjust the prices on ALL of their retainers, which is blatantly impossible for an actual player as just cycling through that many retainers would normally take close to a minute due to all the loading and menuing.

That would suggest that they are actually hacking to make the retainer/price management faster, but SE doesn't seem to be able to pick it up for whatever reason.

I would love to know how they have managed that and how that is not bannable. I get it, SE has limited resources etc blah blah blah, but as you point out, without hacking/botting, thats impossible

[KageTokage]

It is particularly strange because they did swiftly crack down on the bots that were being used to simply gather data on marketboard prices due to how often they were pinging the servers.

You'd think they could see the abnormal speed of price changes/item transfers these guys are doing compared to normal players and respond accordingly.

I would love to know how they have managed that and how that is not bannable. I get it, SE has limited resources etc blah blah blah, but as you point out, without hacking/botting, thats impossible

If I had to guess, most of the slowness in the conventional retainer interface is client-sided, therefore if they're hacking they can basically just strip away all of the time-wasting elements so it goes faster.

This would, however, create a very obvious disparity between them and normal players.

[Jojoya]

As far as I can tell, the bots are seemingly bypassing the standard retainer interface as the ones I've observed on my server never actually target the bell and will just run over to it, stand there for 10-20 seconds, then teleport to the next timed node they intend to gather from. During that brief time they're somehow able to adjust the prices on ALL of their retainers, which is blatantly impossible for an actual player as just cycling through that many retainers would normally take close to a minute due to all the loading and menuing.

That would suggest that they are actually hacking to make the retainer/price management faster, but SE doesn't seem to be able to pick it up for whatever reason.



The JP datacenters have less of them simply because the RMT market is not as strong as it is elsewhere.

There is some level of botting activity regardless but it seems to be done more for personal benefit.

Are you certain you're looking at the correct character tied to the retainer with the listing?

I mean I could always be shuffling what I craft to one of my alts and listing on their retainers (have done this a few times when trying to increase how much gil the alt has).

If listings for multiple retainers are getting updated simultaneously, then there's some sort of multiboxing going on. The character you're watching could be getting moved with the characters being used for listing mules while they are doing the actual interaction. It would be so easy to hide mules in "plain sight" in the housing wards where almost no one ever goes.

[KageTokage]

I was feeling that particular bot out by trying to sell the same items as them and the undercuts always happened only whenever they stopped at the retainer bell (Which was extremely often as it was after literally every timed node they visited).

Some bot farmers run coalitions that consist of multiple crafters/gatherers working in tandem but as far as I could tell this particular individual was a solo venture as on some days they'd be gathering and visiting Limsa for retainer access, while on others they'd retreat into an apartment and be spamming crafts all day long.

[Kes13a]

If listings for multiple retainers are getting updated simultaneously, then there's some sort of multiboxing going on. The character you're watching could be getting moved with the characters being used for listing mules while they are doing the actual interaction. It would be so easy to hide mules in "plain sight" in the housing wards where almost no one ever goes.

strangely enough one of the more obvious bots on Zalera just has the mules in the major cities. back when I cared I tracked their login and out, knew who their retainers were etc, the crafter was obviously multiboxing since the main would stay in and only the other "members" of their fc would cycle in and out as they checked/changed prices. I suspect that the replacement gear was transferred via fc chest since the boards they stayed at were as close to the chest as possible.

[rxantos]

Is interesting. As the prices on USA servers are way higher (2 to 100 times, depending on item) of the prices on Japanese servers. I bet there are still bots in JP servers. Just not used for RMT. You need high prices for RMT to be desired by players. The higher the prices, the more RMT is going on.

I guess is the RMT and not the bots that cause the high prices on USA servers. I long played on Japanese one. So I know the prices and was shocked when I went to play on a USA on how large the markup was (sometimes a 100 times the markup). If RMT have a ridiculous amount of Gil, then players will overcharge due to having a market in which cheaters have a ridiculous amount of gil. And high prices only serve for otherwise honest players to seek RMT. Meanwhile RMT get gil faster (due to ridiculous markups), So is a vicious circle.


Want to stop RMT? Then stop overcharging. You are supporting RMT every time you overcharge. Lower the prices and people won't have any desire to buy Gil. But of course you won't. Greed, even if is on a game, is still precent. So have fun with the RMT. You get what you deserve.

[KageTokage]

"Overcharging" is insanely subjective. You need to consider both relative cost as well the time/labor involved in producing crafted gear.

I have no reason to be selling stuff on the marketboard if I can be making the same or more gil doing something with immediate and guaranteed returns like spamming levequests. Even the RMTers seem to be realizing that with the increasingly larger amounts of bots farming treasure maps over crafting as at worse (Judging from current map prices), they'll break even in raw gil earnings from a map, but if they get lucky with the instance they'll make much more.

And yes, there is definitely botting on the JP servers. You need only check their FC rankings for those abnormal FCs with disproportionately high point gains vs. member counts that are populated strictly by DoH/L alts.

[Jojoya]

Want to stop RMT? Then stop overcharging. You are supporting RMT every time you overcharge. Lower the prices and people won't have any desire to buy Gil. But of course you won't. Greed, even if is on a game, is still precent. So have fun with the RMT. You get what you deserve.

It's a problem more complex than what you make it sound.

If you really want to blame someone for RMT, blame SE. They've stifled player ability to compete and profit on the MB by limiting the listings we have on the MB to just 40 - unless we pay them real money to increase those listings to 200. They've already set the precedent of spending real money to be able to get more gil.

Because we have fewer listings, there is less competition. Because we have fewer listings, we have to charge more on what we can sell to make it worth our time and effort.

Some players decide to bypass the real money plus more effort on the MB route to get more gil by paying the extra real money directly to the gil sellers so they get more gil immediately without additional effort.

If there was no cap on MB listings, prices would drop rapidly as more players were listing more items. There would be less need to pay real money to get more gil.

I used to do things to crash prices of certain commodities in WoW and bring prices down to what I thought were reasonable levels (at the very least they were much less than what other sellers were charging). I was able to do it because I could have as many active auction house listings as I wanted. I could cut my profit margin down to 10% but it wouldn't matter because I would have 500 listings selling daily to multiply that 10%.

I can't do that here. Here I'm limited to 40 listings so instead of setting my profit margin at 10%, I set it at 300%-400% (or more) so I can play the rest of the game and still make some decent gil instead of camping my retainers 24/7 to constantly relist what just sold.

If I try to price low, someone will buy to resell higher knowing there's a lack of competition to force the price to stabilize at the lower level. I might as well sell higher in that case so the gil goes in my pocket instead of into that of another seller.

Don't get me wrong, RMT would still exist here just as it does in any game even with a change to the market listing system. There will always be those who would rather use the money they have in real life to get what they want then to put in the effort. But at least, prices on the MB would be much lower for those who want to be able to enjoy the game without resorting to RMT.

[Sovex]

At every time of day, even during night, same retainers on every single piece of exarchic armor... undercutting by 1 with no more no less than four items. Every 5 minutes... all of them with Polish names... it's been like this for more than two months now. It's unreal how shit this game is at dealing with bots.

The only thing I can do is crash the prices and hurt their profits while hurting mine as well, and I don't care about profit anymore at this point, I just want to see them suffer.