Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[Sqwall]

Market bots
1. Frequent price cutting. Crafted items from a specific user will consistently undercut the lowest price by 1 gil within 10-30 minutes. (There are sometimes exceptions when another player buys one of these items at a low price and tries to flip it at a high price.)

2. Price Flooring. The bot will undercut an item by 1 gil every 10-30 minutes until a price floor is reached, in which case they will completely stop. For example, you might post something at 26,000 gil and take turns undercutting every 10-30 minutes with a bot to 25,589 gil, but then the bot won't undercut you by another gil. At the same time, the bot will still undercut on other items.

3. Perpetual log in. The account is logged in 24/7.

4. Engagement. The user only has DOH jobs leveled, the DOL jobs leveled or both, and the user may have one DOM/DOW job leveled to 70. Over months, no DOW/DOM progress is made, and the user never leaves a location with a Summoning Bell--like the apartments. The level 70 DOM/DOW job is consistent with an allowed paid progression, which I believe was done to get access to endgame zones.

5. Free Company. The user doesn't belong to a "real" Free Company. The makeup of these Free Companies varies, but frequently they'll have a few other accounts with a job at lvl 18-25. I'm not exactly sure why this is the case--perhaps it's to circumvent an existing anti-cheating system, these players partially help launder money by conducting RMT, these players offer additional retainers or some combination of the three.

(The market bots I've found check all of these boxes, yet I'm sure there are bots that only check some of these boxes)

DOL Bots
1. Perpetual login

2. Deterministic behavior. These players will run a circuit 24/7 and their behavior is 100% consistent as they go between nodes.

I have also seen this first hand. I am putting together an accusation against one that I believe to be suspect. Like you mentioned they check all these boxes, and have all the same behaviors you describe. I'm trying to get video of this happening but I play on PS4 and it can be problematic to block names, but at this point I don't care if it exposes a huge ring of botters destroying our markets.

Because this is affecting everyone on our server in the 70-80 range gear/mats/items. The undercutting is disgustingly out of control!

That seriously impacts my profits since there are some items that I do buy to make 490 HQ gear for sales. Where I spend 20-30k for sublime solutions or something and I expect a return since I DID put the work into farming and crafting.

For me this boils down to cheating and we need to address this since SE will or won't go out of their way

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks Sqwall; please let us know if your report and video leads to a ban for the bot FC.

On our server (Jenova), one bot used to only work the lvl 70-80 gear markets, but it has recently moved to about sixty different lvl 50-80 items. Many of the sellers and crafters have just given up on those items/markets, and the bot is the only seller at ridiculous prices--like 120k for a Mythrite Axe. I hope your bots don't move in that direction.

[Kes13a]

Thanks Sqwall; please let us know if your report and video leads to a ban for the bot FC.

On our server (Jenova), one bot used to only work the lvl 70-80 gear markets, but it has recently moved to about sixty different lvl 50-80 items. Many of the sellers and crafters have just given up on those items/markets, and the bot is the only seller at ridiculous prices--like 120k for a Mythrite Axe. I hope your bots don't move in that direction.

On Zalera we have several bots in operation, and one covers pretty much everything down to level 50. And a second is branching in that direction as well.

As someone that now works from home, and spends a fair bit of time er... watching my gaming computer >.>, I spent my day crafting to start then putting things up. I KNOW how mind numbing it is to stand on the market board and check my prices in order to get any sales. There is no way within human endurance that a real person can do it as fast as they do, day in day out for months. have I played for over 24 hours straight, of course, if I want to get through something or am running quests, but to cycle through different characters and retainers for changing pricing? no, thats just not a human doing it.

sure, its a sub... but I have a sub too and I actually PLAY the game. and, unlike a bot, chances are if I leave, a friend or two will come with me.

its past time for SE to tell us they are going after more than the low hanging fruit. face it, banning RMT barkers is easy. and a number doesnt mean anything to me. if the mp bots disappear from the mp.. THAT tells me they are doing something, because I dont even notice the teleporting bots with nonsensical names any more

oh, and TheLoveJenovan.. they are that level (20-30) because thats when they get retainers...

[TheLoveJenovan]

oh, and TheLoveJenovan.. they are that level (20-30) because thats when they get retainers...

Thanks, that makes sense.

I'll keep trying things until we get a response. I just posted a message to the FFXIV forum in Japan, using Google Translate.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...01#post5421401

English
Subject: Bots Ruin North America and Europe Game
Body: I am a player on North American server (Jenova). I don't speak Japanese, but I have visited Japan (Tokya, Kyoto) many times and love the country and culture. This is a message generated with Google Translate.

We have a major problem with bots on the North American and Europe FF14 servers. We love this game, but there are large parts of the game we cannot play because of cheating, like market bots and harvest bots. North American and Europe support does nothing, even after months. We are writing here in the hope that the developers will help us with dishonorable cheating in the game we love. Please help us.

This is one of many threads on the subject:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Market-botting

Thank you

[Kes13a]

nice,
I never would have thought of that

[Auriya]

Thank you guys for bringing this to more players' and (attempting) SE's attention. Now I know I'm no longer alone with this! I've reported this several times and I've come short because SE see it as an undercutting issue and I'm a hurt player who can't get my items sold (!!!). Which is not alone the case. It's far more serious than that..but you guys already know that. To you TheLoveJenovan - great job!


On the whole Data Light Center Market Board botting has become a huge problem as well.
The whole crafted glamoring market, mid range market (lvl 50-80) for all crafting and gathering related gear, armor and tools are dominated by one single lvl 80 craftername with many altnames scattered all over the data light servers and gazillions of retainers that frequently have name changes. The alts are also used to buy off huge amounts of mats from other servers in an attempt to conceal it's the same player in various disguises seemingly with neverending gil-wallets, which could imply RMT activities.. It's not hard to check the history of items sold.
Most crafters on the servers have given up already and only sell a thing here and there. You put one thing up and there's immediately 10-15 items being put up to undercut you. You try to adjust your prices – don't bother, it's a fight lost if you can't stay in the game 24 hours a day. Too many have given up already, cause on some of the data light servers the competition is completely non existing.

In the 2 years I've played it has never been so obvious as it is at the moment. You have to look at the Market Board with CLOSED EYES in order to not see this!!

[Aniona]

Cerebrus EU is in the same condition.
It's really hard to sell anything, you should check your retainer and change prices, at least every 20-30 minutes.
An all board is filled with 1 or 2 crafters. And they are absolutely the same, as it was mentioned before..
For example one of them...

[TheLoveJenovan]

Thanks Kes13 and Auriya.
I've only been playing for 4 months, and learning that the problem has only recently gotten worse is interesting. The major bots on Jenova were created around May 2020. I wonder whether this is Covid-19 related--which would still be weird because the cheating reports can be processed remotely.

Just an update on my thread on the JPN board.

I've received a lot of views and a couple of posts. The posts basically say that there are some measures to track bots, but it's a bit pointless because bots circumvent these measures almost immediately. One poster suggested that the thread might be closed (I'm not sure why, as it doesn't violate Forum guidelines, TOS or anything). The same poster also said that they had taken measures last year because of a bad botting problem on Europe servers.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...727.1588716301

Does anyone know anything about this?

This was my posted reply. (Note that if you decide to post on there with Google Translate, I suggest that you first start by apologizing for the difficult-to-read message and state that you used Google Translate)

English->Japanese->English
Thank you for your reply.
We apologize if the message is difficult to read. Translated by Google Translate.
Our problem is that the bot is never investigated. When I create a detailed report about the bot, nothing happens. The bot is easy to identify. The bot logs in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and does not play games. They change the market price every 10 minutes or harvest temporary nodes. Their behavior is 100% consistent.
Better bot detection is good, but we just ask people to read the cheat report. Square Enix bans 6-9 bot accounts per week. In other words, it takes 20-30 weeks (4.5-7 months) to ban one bot per server (68 servers).
Does Square Enix have to pay more staff to solve the problem? We just want to play honest games.

[Kes13a]

Zalera used to have just one bot, but in the last month or two there have been 2 more that have shown up and I suspect a 4th. I could care less about being undercut, so SE is so wrong there. 1 gil under me is irritating, but I am not going to report someone for that. If they READ the reports, I suspect most crafters dont complain about that as much as the 24/7 nature of the activity, likely included proof of potential cheating etc. if SE discounts that, then not sure they really deserve my subscription

in all honesty, the only reason I make any headway is...

1. I now work from home, and my job is slow, so it gives me time to do this. but, I would suggest, if possible, only set aside a block of time to do nothing but craft what you are going to sell, and stand on the market board.
2. make sure the board and summoning bell are close together, there are many place like this.
3. dont put everything up on the same retainer if possible. because it pulls everything off the market when you price change
4. spend that block of time checking prices, if undercut, undercut again immediately. your aim is to hit that 10-20 minute window while their cycling through their other retainers. if you only have a few things up per retainer, you can undercut and be back up selling fairly quickly
5. know without a doubt, what your costs are. decide before you list anything how low you are willing to go. if it goes lower, pull it off until later or simply stop undercutting (I generally pull and wait for price to go back up)

I wont lie, competing against bots is very hard and a lot of work, but can be done. I would prefer to be doing other things, but as they say, it is what it is. one thing to keep in mind is, you arent alone. I for one refuse to let cheaters who likely dont even play the game beat me.

[tierney12]

Hi everyone, so this thread has over 5000 views now, which is evidence that a lot of us are really annoyed at the inaction regarding this topic, so I've typed up what i think would be an appropriate statement to send through the in-game 'leave a suggestion' feature, and hopefully with enough people sending the same/similar posts we can finally get some GM/developer eyes on the problem.

I've replied to this, it's the next comment in the thread with the post.

I'm also going to post this on reddit and hope for a good response.