Is it OK to use bots in FFXIV?

[Nedkel]

The solution to your problem is to place the same price as the price cutter and sell in bulk so that way you are going to be #1 on the list.
Btw you could take advantage of bots price cutting, just set price at low and buy them out, i dont see a problem here.

SE cant ban these bots as long as they are using their own custom bot to play with prices, as those are impossible to recognize by the system.

[ZeroRaziel]

The solution to your problem is to place the same price as the price cutter and sell in bulk so that way you are going to be #1 on the list.
Btw you could take advantage of bots price cutting, just set price at low and buy them out, i dont see a problem here.

SE cant ban these bots as long as they are using their own custom bot to play with prices, as those are impossible to recognize by the system.

Hmm, those are actually quite a good advices, thank you!
But then again, from what I said earlier:
1).

The solution to your problem is to place the same price as the price cutter and sell in bulk so that way you are going to be #1 on the list.

From #2

So far we only noticed what 5 out of 16 retainers sell and that's Primal's Glam Weapons, Neo-Ishgardian Gear and Facet Crafing Gear.

You can't place gear pieces in a bulk Plus bot most likely doesn't update price when it's just < than it's own, but also even if it <=

2).

Btw you could take advantage of bots price cutting, just set price at low and buy them out, i dont see a problem here.

Dude from that Reddit link did just that. After this from #4

4). And due to predictable and systematic patterns of them we were able to pinpoint exact time of a price scanning window of those retainers and just 1 minute before that we set a price for items selling for 2 000 000 Gill a price around 5 000 Gill to see how characters would react. Once they finished scanning, instead of setting price to 4 999 price remained unchanged. Bots got an upgrade since that reddit post and got new & shiny IF > conditional in a bot's script. And you know what? Once they were done scanning prices instead of visitting a Market Board and buying off more than five Shinryu Weapons for 5 000 Gill this character simply logs off and loggins with a next one.
(that's cause those lvl 22 players are of a very noble heart and do not wish to abuse a "miskate" of someone who "accidentally forgot" to add 3 extra zeros to a price... *stoic_nod* )

3).

SE cant ban these bots as long as they are using their own custom bot to play with prices, as those are impossible to recognize by the system.

This makes sense, yes. But then again this exact same botting has been reported from at least 15 worlds by now.
It took me around 5 minutes to spot those on 3 worlds out of 6 on my server. So that doesn't seem like it's a very private custom bot... On the other hand, who knows... It might be that all those 30+ clients are run by a one person.

[SamSmoot]

I don't see these myself because I only craft gear for myself, not for sale.
If I had something to undercut one with, I'd try to learn it's timing, then drop my item to maybe 1K just before it tweaks it's prices. If it undercuts, buy everything, then quickly remove your item before someone else buys it.
It's obvious that the bot can't recognize an insanely low price and buy instead.

[ZeroRaziel]

I don't see these myself because I only craft gear for myself, not for sale.
If I had something to undercut one with, I'd try to learn it's timing, then drop my item to maybe 1K just before it tweaks it's prices. If it undercuts, buy everything, then quickly remove your item before someone else buys it.
It's obvious that the bot can't recognize an insanely low price and buy instead.

Here you go, this guy did just what you adviced :P
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...games_economy/

Plus I did the same but 2 weeks later:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5365959

4). And due to predictable and systematic patterns of them we were able to pinpoint exact time of a price scanning window of those retainers and just 1 minute before that we set a price for items selling for 2 000 000 Gill a price around 5 000 Gill to see how characters would react. Once they finished scanning, instead of setting price to 4 999 price remained unchanged. Bots got an upgrade since that reddit post and got new & shiny IF > conditional in a bot's script. And you know what? Once they were done scanning prices instead of visitting a Market Board and buying off more than five Shinryu Weapons for 5 000 Gill this character simply logs off and loggins with a next one.
(that's cause those lvl 22 players are of a very noble heart and do not wish to abuse a "miskate" of someone who "accidentally forgot" to add 3 extra zeros to a price... *stoic_nod* )

[Ammokkx]

Is it okay?

lol, no.

Do people do it?

Yes, and they eat bans when caught.

[Canadane]

There are a lot of "players" who bot, and over the years it's become sadly evident that SE isn't doing anything serious in regards to stopping them.
The obvious RMT farms from china are swiftly dealt with, but actual players who opt to use bots seems to get no actual punishment.

Maybe one day SE will crack down on these and they'll get the ban they deserve. It's very sad that legit players are surpassed by others using nonstop bots.

Part of the issue may very well be that the STF and director/producer/god Yoshi-P are both mostly isolated to the experiences of Japanese servers.
You look around you don't see RMT (as much) or cheaters botting their way nonstop (as much). It exists but from what I've gathered it's not by any degree close to other data centres.
So if the people in charge of dealing with it don't see a problem, then there is no problem. This is why things don't really get done unless brought directly to him by say a fan at a Q&A or a technical issue at an important time.
I like how the sound output issue we've had for years was solved within a week of Yoshi-P having experienced it during a Live Letter.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

There are a lot of "players" who bot, and over the years it's become sadly evident that SE isn't doing anything serious in regards to stopping them.
The obvious RMT farms from china are swiftly dealt with, but actual players who opt to use bots seems to get no actual punishment.

Maybe one day SE will crack down on these and they'll get the ban they deserve. It's very sad that legit players are surpassed by others using nonstop bots.

Part of the issue may very well be that the STF and director/producer/god Yoshi-P are both mostly isolated to the experiences of Japanese servers.
You look around you don't see RMT (as much) or cheaters botting their way nonstop (as much). It exists but from what I've gathered it's not by any degree close to other data centres.
So if the people in charge of dealing with it don't see a problem, then there is no problem. This is why things don't really get done unless brought directly to him by say a fan at a Q&A or a technical issue at an important time.
I like how the sound output issue we've had for years was solved within a week of Yoshi-P having experienced it during a Live Letter.

This isn't true, the livestream debuted the benchmark, and that already had the fix in place. They fixed it prior to the audio issues.

[ZeroRaziel]

Ehhh. Those are the easily noticeable RMT bots that mostly stand around Limsa. SE is horrendous was it comes to market board bots, gather bots and crafting bots. Even outright cheaters often got on to be ignored for years despite numerous reports. And the thing is, all they have to do is shadow these "players" to see them botting as it's fairly obvious.

Unfortunately, it seems the GMs aren't given much authority in this regard, and it's the STF that handles these bans. Which is hilariously understaffed. All in all, SE doesn't do a whole lot about bots.

There are a lot of "players" who bot, and over the years it's become sadly evident that SE isn't doing anything serious in regards to stopping them.
The obvious RMT farms from china are swiftly dealt with, but actual players who opt to use bots seems to get no actual punishment.

Maybe one day SE will crack down on these and they'll get the ban they deserve. It's very sad that legit players are surpassed by others using nonstop bots.

Part of the issue may very well be that the STF and director/producer/god Yoshi-P are both mostly isolated to the experiences of Japanese servers.
You look around you don't see RMT (as much) or cheaters botting their way nonstop (as much). It exists but from what I've gathered it's not by any degree close to other data centres.
So if the people in charge of dealing with it don't see a problem, then there is no problem. This is why things don't really get done unless brought directly to him by say a fan at a Q&A or a technical issue at an important time.
I like how the sound output issue we've had for years was solved within a week of Yoshi-P having experienced it during a Live Letter.

Well, thanks for your honest thoughts. Had some similar suspicions when was making this thread...
Yet, it's still better to hear this, than some delusional conclusions of people claiming that there are no crafting/gathering/market bots. Just very dedicated players who can be active for 750+ hours in a row repeating 1 singe action every minute.

[Canadane]

Well, thanks for your honest thoughts. Had some similar suspicions when was making this thread...
Yet, it's still better to hear this, than some delusional conclusions of people claiming that there are no crafting/gathering/market bots. Just very dedicated players who can be active for 750+ hours in a row repeating 1 singe action every minute.

There are absolutely people who do this. Maybe not 750 hours but I can sit and craft all day long sometimes I feel like a bot lol
But there is absolutely botting software out there, to deny it it would be crazy. Apparently the good stuff is paid for so someone’s making money off it. But hey, you just make back that money with some RMT of your own after taking advantage of the software right?
The things I’m told by some unscrupulous players is pretty disgusting at best, and I honestly do wish SE would do something.

[ZeroRaziel]

There are absolutely people who do this. Maybe not 750 hours but I can sit and craft all day long sometimes I feel like a bot lol
But there is absolutely botting software out there, to deny it it would be crazy. Apparently the good stuff is paid for so someone’s making money off it. But hey, you just make back that money with some RMT of your own after taking advantage of the software right?
The things I’m told by some unscrupulous players is pretty disgusting at best, and I honestly do wish SE would do something.

Heh, I think we all can be like that sometimes... But one, two or even three days isn't 50. Plus real people usually care to answer at least one out of twenty tells from different people (or at least put them on black-list o_o).
And I don't think that you use an army of those 22 lvl chars to scan if someone undercut you precisely every 5 minutes =P

You can't really take advantage of the undercut bots because they're able to set a price floor that they will not go under.

True, also tried that only to find out there was a certain limit they won't cross.
Though that player from Chaos server (reddit post from earlier) stumbled upon a bot-owner careless enough to ignore this threshold.
That's is how it turned out:
https://imgur.com/a/xkDLOE1