Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Jojoya]

I don't see why they don't just move the gimped, weird tax system currently in place, and make it so that you're taxed when posting an item. This would render the 1gil undercutting useless, as you'd quickly devalue your own item from posting it over and over, which is much preferable to crashing the market.

5% fee for listing your item, helps with people stalling the market with ridiculous over pricing as well, also requires RMT gil buyers to have 5% of the Gil they're looking to buy before posting an item at 500,000% markup.

Wouldn't do much good unless SE removed the 0 tax incentive to get players to distribute their retainers to the less used city states (makes me curious exactly how the marketboard data base works behind the scenes). There was only about a 7 week period back in the middle of Spring when I didn't have a 0 tax option on my world. The massive flood of new players in June and July snapped Ishgard, Kugane and Crystarium from 3% back to 0 tax fast, and Kugane and Crystarium have remained at 0 tax since (Ishgard went back to being reduced around the start of August).

Leave the 0 tax incentive in place and the bots just MSQ skip their mules to get Kugane access. It's not like a MSQ skip is expensive compared to how much those rings are probably making.

If SE is starting to take a harder look at gil sink effectiveness(like the teleport fee and Aetheryte ticket changes announced for Endwalker), they probably should review market taxes as well. Go from 5-3-0 to 7-5-3 perhaps, though that would be a burden on new players. Any attempt to temporarily relieve tax burden on new players for X period would result in the botting rings constantly rotating in new listing mules. Or just drop the 0 and leave taxes at 5-3 to continue to encourage retainer distribution across the different city states.

I dont think we would lose the bots doing that. while their sole purpose is gil generation, a tax would cut into that process a bit, the bot isnt going to care. it only stop real people from trying to compete with the pots because of the tax. so actually, would aid the bots in their market control.

the only effective control is going to be remove the pool of RMT gil buyers. "vacations" and bans get the message across that its not allowed and eventually the slice of the RMT market diminishes enough to lessen the gil generation bots on the MP.

The bot wouldn't care. The bot operator would.

If they're doing these 1 gil undercuts every 15 minutes, then all their profit has disappeared if their item is still listed 5 hours later. But it would also take a fair number of sellers for that particular item to appear to make it happen. If there is no new listing, there's no reason to undercut.

[Truman]

Late to the crafting game and just started trying to sell Exarchic/Aesthete on Diabolos a few weeks ago. There is a person who has been logged on for at least the last seven days, 24 hours each day. They have one of at least 80% of all Exarchic and Aesthete listed on their numerous retainers at any given time. No matter when I adjust my prices for any item I list that they also have the same item listed, they will reprice theirs 1g below mine within 15 minutes of my price update. Doesnt matter what time of the day, I have tried several random times over the 24 hours period - like clockwork, they will undercut in that 15 minute window. I have luckily sold a few things , but it is just luck that someone bought it when I fell into that small 15 minute window before the inevitable undercut.

Like all other bots, they are /busy all day and locked away in an inn room in Limsa. I've reported the player, but dont expect anything to happen.

I'm considering just trying to find something else to make some gil with, but it stinks that I even have to consider that because the bots make the market I want to sell in impossible.