Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Darkmoonrise]

Something which would help, but not really solve the problem is to deduce the tax when putting an item on sale and not when it is sold. Let's say you want to sell an item 100k and the tax is at 5%. When you put the item on sale, you pay 5k. And when it is sold you get 100k. If you change the price, you pay the 5% again on the new price. This will prevent undercutting a little bit because, well, you loose money each time you do it.

[Jojoya]

Something which would help, but not really solve the problem is to deduce the tax when putting an item on sale and not when it is sold. Let's say you want to sell an item 100k and the tax is at 5%. When you put the item on sale, you pay 5k. And when it is sold you get 100k. If you change the price, you pay the 5% again on the new price. This will prevent undercutting a little bit because, well, you loose money each time you do it.

What about when the tax is reduced to 0%? There's no tax to be collected. Botters probably would have little issue with leveling their market characters through the MSQ far enough to unlock the reduced tax markets if they could keep changing their list price at no charge.

Better just to make it a listing fee that's separate from the tax and non-refundable. Even 1% would probably be enough to deter the majority of repeat undercutting (someone might relist if their item still hadn't sold after a few days). Players would still have incentive to move their retainers to the 0% cities to avoid the additional 3 or 5% when the items sells.

[Darkmoonrise]

oh yeah sure. The idea is, as you said, a listing fee. How it is implemented doesn't matter. As long as changing the price cost something, the idea is here.

But I think only one "tax" is suffisent. So I would say, fix listing fee of 5% is a good deal.

More if you put a biiig fee (like 20+%) we'll see some chat market emerging to prevent to pay this big fee. I know this will never append because it goes against the "mainstreaming, less player interaction possible" way that SE is currently following. But this will prevent botting like crazy.

[Jojoya]

oh yeah sure. The idea is, as you said, a listing fee. How it is implemented doesn't matter. As long as changing the price cost something, the idea is here.

But I think only one "tax" is suffisent. So I would say, fix listing fee of 5% is a good deal.

More if you put a biiig fee (like 20+%) we'll see some chat market emerging to prevent to pay this big fee. I know this will never append because it goes against the "mainstreaming, less player interaction possible" way that SE is currently following. But this will prevent botting like crazy.

The reason the market tax is variable is to get players to move their retainers around to reduce strain on whatever system stores the market data (evidently one of those 1.0 holdovers). If every city had the same fixed fee, there would be no reason to move a retainer once "hired". 90% of retainers would end up in Ul'dah since that's the closest city when retainers get unlocked in the MSQ.

As a result, SE would still need to use a variable listing fee if the market tax were removed. Or they would need to find a way to create a truly global market system so where retainers are assigned doesn't matter (which would open the door to having all listings for an entire data center available on every world on that data center).

They won't ever increasing any market fee to as high as 20% unless who ever controls the decision has lost their mind. That would become an excessive burden to less wealthy players, especially those new to the game, while already wealthy players could shrug it off.. It would drive players away from the game. It would also make chatting about anything else other than what people are selling nearly impossible as chat channels of all types would get flooded with sale spam.

And no, a 20% fee is not going to prevent botting because it's impacting all sellers equally. All it would eliminate is the frequent undercutting. If you really want to eliminate botting, you need to heavily penalize those who are doing it to the point they're at a disadvantage compared to those who don't.

[Gojin]

no they dont

[ForteNightshade]

And no, a 20% fee is not going to prevent botting because it's impacting all sellers equally. All it would eliminate is the frequent undercutting. If you really want to eliminate botting, you need to heavily penalize those who are doing it to the point they're at a disadvantage compared to those who don't.

To quote someone who knew avid botter, "I could crash the consumable market to 500 gil per item if I really wanted to. It's still profit in the end."

You will never beat a botter through price scrunching since they aren't putting in any effort to begin with. Therefore, their time isn't being "wasted." What would scare people like this away is SE making an example out of known botters. It's become increasingly well known that SE does precisely nothing to non-RMT botters. So people aren't afraid to use cheat problems when they know they'll never get caught.

[Kes13a]

To quote someone who knew avid botter, "I could crash the consumable market to 500 gil per item if I really wanted to. It's still profit in the end."

You will never beat a botter through price scrunching since they aren't putting in any effort to begin with. Therefore, their time isn't being "wasted." What would scare people like this away is SE making an example out of known botters. It's become increasingly well known that SE does precisely nothing to non-RMT botters. So people aren't afraid to use cheat problems when they know they'll never get caught.

Not so much never get caught, because obviously we notice them, and report, so if it was looked into properly, busted.

I think its more they arent afraid to use cheat programs because nothing is being done about them because they are silent cheaters

[TheLoveJenovan]

I think the community is on its own for this one.

For the bot-type originally discussed at the start of this thread, one I will call the Market-Crash-Bot, a suggestion that might be useful is to coordinate with other sellers in your world to each take a set of, say, 5-10 items cornered by the bot and to undersell so that the bot can't sell and profit for RMT. My experience is that the bot sets its price floors to the cost of mats, and for poly-DOL/DOH players, this should be easy to beat. These sellers will have to take one for the team (the server) to let the well run dry, but I don't think it'll take more than a month to eliminate the bot if profits aren't coming in. The RMT merchant will probably bot something else, like crystal selling, but I think the market bots are the most damaging to the health of a server.

As I said before, I'm quitting after my sub lapses at the end of the week, specifically for the poor support for bots and fair play. I also have to say that SE USA's support has been pretty pathetic, and I don't really want to give them any more money. We haven't even received a form response on the forums or an acknowledgement of the issue. With email, I only receive template emails that don't address my message comments. They don't have to tell us whether or not they're investigating specific bots; they just need to at least acknowledge that they've received the issue.

[KageTokage]

I think the community is on its own for this one.

For the bot-type originally discussed at the start of this thread, one I will call the Market-Crash-Bot, a suggestion that might be useful is to coordinate with other sellers in your world to each take a set of, say, 5-10 items cornered by the bot and to undersell so that the bot can't sell and profit for RMT. My experience is that the bot sets its price floors to the cost of mats, and for poly-DOL/DOH players, this should be easy to beat. These sellers will have to take one for the team (the server) to let the well run dry, but I don't think it'll take more than a month to eliminate the bot if profits aren't coming in. The RMT merchant will probably bot something else, like crystal selling, but I think the market bots are the most damaging to the health of a server.

As I said before, I'm quitting after my sub lapses at the end of the week, specifically for the poor support for bots and fair play. I also have to say that SE USA's support has been pretty pathetic, and I don't really want to give them any more money. We haven't even received a form response on the forums or an acknowledgement of the issue. With email, I only receive template emails that don't address my message comments. They don't have to tell us whether or not they're investigating specific bots; they just need to at least acknowledge that they've received the issue.

I can't see that working unless there's only one bot on the entire server as bigger servers like Cactuar have several bots who are fighting with each other on top of the actual players which has basically just turned the marketboard into an undercutting warzone where the bots are the only winners.

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks KageTokage. I think it could still work with multiple bots, but it would require more work.

Another suggestions: Start a temporary FC called "No Marketboard" with other legit sellers on your server. Advertise your FC in all Markets with a note like "We are legitimate players who love FFXIV and are protesting the prevalence of bots on the marketboard. We'll sell items you need until SE fixes this problem." (I haven't checked the word limit)
The goal is not to make this a long-term solution, but to raise awareness. Squeaky wheel.

This behavior would not violate the TOS. The relevant parts are:

3.2 Disruption. You may not in any way disrupt or interfere with the Game experience of other players, including the disruption of Square Enix's computers and servers.

As long as you don't tell, harass or force players to use the FC instead of the marketboard, you will be ok. You're merely offering an alternative to players who want this broken system fixed. Players are still free to use the marketboard.

3.6 Any Illegal Activities. You may not conduct any illegal activities whatsoever in connection with the Game. This includes every illegal activity not specifically highlighted above, including without limitation gambling, defamation, harassment, and fraud

Don't defame SE in your world messages. Don't write stuff like "We have to do this because SE su***!"

3.9 Non-Commercial Spamming/Spimming. You may not use (or abuse) the in-game chat and message services to harass other players.

Even though people Tell to recruit for their FCs, I wouldn't do that for this FC.

I would do this myself, but I don't have time right now with my job and covid-19 preparations for the semester. You could also do what I did and let your sub lapse. If you do this, I'd suggest sending SE a note to let them know why.

https://support.na.square-enix.com/c...382&la=1&fty=1

I posted mine under Contact Category "In-game", Contact Sub-Category "Other" and in "Summary of your Inquiry," I wrote: I am quitting because of bots.