Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[KageTokage]

Even the JP players are having issues with the map bots now if this topic is any indication.

Though with people being about as dismissive of the matter as they are on the English side of things, I doubt anything's going to happen regardless.

At the end of the day, the bulk of the player base enjoys the lower marketboard prices and couldn't care less about why the prices are lower.

[Eriane_Elis]

I know 2 people who dominate our server by using multiple accounts with bots undercutting by a couple of gil. They are absolutely annoying. I wish this game had a listing fee at this point. I doubt SE will do anything about the market bots. Whether it's 3am or 3pm, these people will change their prices within a minute of undercutting them.

[KageTokage]

It's not even remotely surprising how quickly the botting activity exploded the moment they were updated for Endwalker, and it's liable to end up worse then ever between more players increasing the demand for RMT and just the number of people cheating ingeneral.

Most of bot farming alts are still idling ominously in the capital cities, but I assume they're biding their time until a MSQ script gets released.

[dspguy]

It seems like the MB bots on Leviathan are gone. At least the ones I'm aware of. Maybe they changed names or made a new character, but it doesn't seem like they are there. I see people undercutting by 1 gil (which is normal). What I don't see is one guy with multiple levels of DoW/M/H/L gear up for sale that is always the lowest by 1 gil and then puts up another piece of gear to replace the one that sold within seconds.

Of course, it could be they just aren't ready to bot crafting/selling just yet? I don't know. But it has been nice. I have my doubts SE took care of them, but maybe they did.

[KageTokage]

It seems like the MB bots on Leviathan are gone. At least the ones I'm aware of. Maybe they changed names or made a new character, but it doesn't seem like they are there. I see people undercutting by 1 gil (which is normal). What I don't see is one guy with multiple levels of DoW/M/H/L gear up for sale that is always the lowest by 1 gil and then puts up another piece of gear to replace the one that sold within seconds.

Of course, it could be they just aren't ready to bot crafting/selling just yet? I don't know. But it has been nice. I have my doubts SE took care of them, but maybe they did.

The thing that's going on right now is that they do not have scripts to get bots through the Endwalker MSQ and likely even the post-patches of ShB, so the only bot farmers you'll see are ones that were manually grinded through the story.

The bulk of the bots you'll see for the time being are just lazy players on their main accounts though I see some of my server's usual suspects in farm mode already...

The fact that only seven people got banned last week across the entire game when I tend to see dozens of them on Cactuar alone says enough about how poorly the situation is being handled.

[TheLoveJenovan]

Hi everyone! I've been following the thread off-and-on for the last year, and I renewed my sub a few weeks ago for Endwalker. I've tried a few things differently, and I wonder whether these suggestions might be helpful for anyone else.

First, I think the "Report Cheating" and other support features like "Report a Bug" are handled in Japan and basically ignored. For example, on Dec 10 2021, I reported a fairly major bug on PS4 and PS5 in which limited battle effects showed no effects and even didn't display '!' notifications when fishing. I'm quite surprised that even a bug like this wasn't addressed right away with the last patch. I posted it in game and on the forums.

That said, report harassment is outsourced and the GMs follow the rules strictly. I've reported 2 clear bot accounts--those with crafters that haven't played the game and make items for the whole datacenter. When I did this initially, they disappeared for a few days. They're back now, and they make updates every few hours instead of minutes. I believe they may have been initially suspended then they switched to a semi-manual mode for updating prices, which would be good.

In my reports, I title the harassment as "Marketboard griefing/RMT activity," and I state exactly the crafter, retainers, the worlds of each, the items and exact times (with timezone) with the frequent undercuts, and I explain how the botting behavior prevents me from playing a major part of the game: the marketboard. I haven't observed bans of bots from this method, but I have observed a change in their behavior. I've tried filling a few harassment complaints, and I think a GM just sends the related account a tell to see if they're afk. In this case, I'd suggest sending these reports on off-hours, like 2am PST, in the event that the botter is really running afk.

An additional note: I've also noticed some other accounts that may use bots but that otherwise play the game, and I haven't reported those.

If you decide to try this approach, please let us know if you've noticed a change or not.

Happy playing!

[KageTokage]

It really should not take such an absurd level of specificity with cheating reports to get people properly banned.

I've seen a bot going around while maintaining an AFK flag for close to two weeks and reported it when I first noticed, but it hasn't been touched.

[Commander_Justitia]

I wish this game had a listing fee at this point

Or buy and sell order, you know, like in the real world..or like in other MMO's. They would just often sell directly to a buyorder then instead of undercutting. The whole system is outdated, which makes it very easy to abuse for those who have the tools. If they don't want to go more actively against bots with manpower, they have to make smart gameplay changes at least to reduce their effectiveness.

[QueenVanraen]

Or buy and sell order, you know, like in the real world..or like in other MMO's. They would just often sell directly to a buyorder then instead of undercutting. The whole system is outdated, which makes it very easy to abuse for those who have the tools. If they don't want to go more actively against bots with manpower, they have to make smart gameplay changes at least to reduce their effectiveness.

Which they probably aren't willing to do because it would upset a fraction of the playerbase,
or they can't because spaghetti code - like pretty much anything they don't touch.

[Irenia]

Which they probably aren't willing to do because it would upset a fraction of the playerbase,
or they can't because spaghetti code - like pretty much anything they don't touch.

Might be something worth asking the next time questions are being taken.