Bot's on Market Board...? Really?

[Saidosha]

At this point, I'd just say to put relisting/trade cooldowns based on the level of the item. The closer it gets to max level, the longer you have to wait before you can adjust price/relist. It won't eliminate undercutting, but it will stop bots from constantly shaving a few gil off every few minutes unless they're massively overstocked. At which point, I'd argue it becomes even easier to identify them if routine scans find x of the same item on cooldown despite having multiples listed.

FFXI-style AH wasn't any better and prone to its own exploits, imo.

End of the day, player-run economies in games tend to fail precisely because of bad actors, where you either have to join in on the cheating or suffer through its effects as a more casual player. I'm kinda nearing the point where I'd just prefer solely interacting with NPCs, selling and buying things at nominal prices instead of dealing with the proper time of the day/week to sell things, hopping servers because mine is backwater on value, etc.. Major patches/expansions only temporarily reset that sort of decay, which on its own, doesn't address the bot problem that, given the age of this thread, seems to be half a year strong now.

[Ronzeru]

I'm laughing so hard right now. After all that back and forth I decided to take that one players advice. So, I just googled it. Low and behold, on the first page, not only did I find requests of people asking for it.. I found someone selling it, a discord name of the individual, a discord server promoting it and the price the app was being sold for. All within the span of 1 minute.

[Chiibors]

One of the GM's told me to put in a form to their task force for bots, HAH! I did about 50 times, probably the most laziest bunch of people I've ever seen. The guy who I reported harassment to was right on the money, those guys do fine, but whoever is in charge of bots, cheating, RMT's, etc are just flat out lazy and enjoy a free paycheck just like the botters do probably won't ban them out of the fact their kindred spirits and doing so would result in hurting one of their own. The team who handles the harassment though, very good at their job.

[Lothian]

One of the GM's told me to put in a form to their task force for bots, HAH! I did about 50 times, probably the most laziest bunch of people I've ever seen. The guy who I reported harassment to was right on the money, those guys do fine, but whoever is in charge of bots, cheating, RMT's, etc are just flat out lazy and enjoy a free paycheck just like the botters do probably won't ban them out of the fact their kindred spirits and doing so would result in hurting one of their own. The team who handles the harassment though, very good at their job.

This made me laugh so hard, lmao.

[Coletergeist]

I live on night, and my roommate on day, we checked basically 24h to see if "Mjare Kirin" disconnect, but no, he's always connected, never absent. And drop price every mins, he's a lvl 71 whm, with only crafters at 80, in a FC with 9 people, and closed, he is as the same spot h24, an appartment. I went check others servers, to see if i find people like that. And yes, i finded one in each, with 1 lvl 70 or 80, and only crafters/gatherers full 80, with an FC closed of around ten people too.

This doesn't inherently mean they're a bot; there's tons of people I even know personally that like, never ever log out. I also know folks that stand around the summoning bell day in and day out just to make gil, and undercut by a single gil.

As for the free company, I know of soooo many companies that are 'solo' because folks hate getting invite spam from others, as already mentioned.

Be careful if you're reporting these people who may or even may not be bots if you are; some may be actual players trying to simply make gil; I undercut by a single gil too sometimes.

[kiagenwa]

Yesterday I found a bot party as I was doing my botanist things. They just don't move like normal people... They warp around as soon as a monster appear.
Too bad I didn't know how to report them. And no, it's not gonna be easy remembering aknsdbrvw-like names to put in the form.
I think it's a good strategy for them using random names. It's gonna be hard for the reporter.

[MilkieTea]

Yesterday I found a bot party as I was doing my botanist things. They just don't move like normal people... They warp around as soon as a monster appear.
Too bad I didn't know how to report them. And no, it's not gonna be easy remembering aknsdbrvw-like names to put in the form.
I think it's a good strategy for them using random names. It's gonna be hard for the reporter.

Isend them tells or use emotes on them. This way I have their names if I want to report.

[kiagenwa]

Ah... I forgot about that.
Will do that next time seeing them.

[Sqwall]

Looks like the next 5.5 patch is addressing collision detection. Translation is a little loose, but this partially to address the player or bot position between the client and the server.

This has been normal for quite a while, but is subject to the original 1.0 code of x,y,z coordinates being constantly reported.

Bot's get around this by running a third party software that alters the incoming and outgoing packets by offsetting their x,y,z cords. So this allows them to be undetected.

Now with that out of the way. Improved collision detection will be changed to feedback of a character/player/bot interacting with the world. FROM MY UNDERSTANDING this means SE is monitoring the environment and how it interacts with the client positions.

When you think of a three dimensional space you can have it empty or full of something. Water for instance is an asset, once you break the plane you are now in water, swimming animation, refraction filter added, you can basically fly in the area. You have this transition when you go below the surface and the assets are "loaded" and your client is altered to be "underwater".

Improved collision detection would work the same way if I think this is how I would program this. You fall below the world..."loading" loading would take place. Your client is now in "floating" state. This would be a red flag to the server as saying.... "floating" can not take place in this area.....you are breaking the rules.

Water = "swim" mode if/then statement = water surface -2meters = true
Flying = "mount" mode if/then statement = ether currents unlocked = true
Floating = "bot" mode if/then statement = floor plane broken = true

This is kind of genius and would mean if you fall/through the plane of land, wall, edge, surface you're client would be in an altered state.

Same could go for run speed, mount speed as well.

To Fast = "cheater" mode if/then statement = beyond acceptable movement speed (accounting for all values allowed on mount/walk/run/party bonuses)

I would really like to see this.

Dispatch = "bot" mode if/then statement = amount of material farmed in zone abnormally high (undisclosed amount of mats). Flag player. Case statement = list retainers on account /follow sales and report to data export.

Data includes:
Time played
Time to Max (80)
Jobs maxed
level of chat activity
friends list
mog mail history
Gil transactions

Prolly never happen, but I would like to see that data vs. some of the known bot's on my server to see how it stacks up.

[Neddy08]

I have an issue with a bot inside the MB it's unfair to those people bargaining on the market, but this bot constantly changes prices by 1 cent lower of the original price I tested it out the item name Aesthete's Doublet of Gathering was going over 200000 Gil and I changed the price of 75000 the bot match my 75000 Gil .That can't be a human being changing those prices that's ridiculous and a normal human being will know better not to sell it at that price it's definitely a bot. There is proof of me manipulating the bot. Sorry it's a long video but you can skip a couple of minutes to see what happens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEg5eCb8mhY

I reported them to the GM but it's been two weeks and nothing has been done but my guess is that SE knows about this problem but the gm's not wasting their time because you get rid of one cockroach another one come back