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

[ElazulHP]

They may be, but that 3,577 has got to include a lot of bots.

I always assumed those numbers are the guys shouting in Limsa and other places advertising RMT. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[Nixxe]

From google searching on this, it seems MB bots are far less publicly available than gathering or combat bots. Probably the main reason is because releasing it to the public is impractical, for example 2 or more bots competing and the fact that for the average player it's just not worth camping a MB for tiny profit and grinding prices into the dust when your bot could be out gathering or gil farming. The usual ff14 bots won't add the feature. MB bots do seem to exist, but they're created and sold by commission, or used by, private developers.

I find that sort of thing rather interesting, but it's very disturbing how much of a botting community there is. I think the biggest issues for prices are gathering bots creating massive supply and the fact crafting is just far too easy now, with demand at an all time low since there are ten times more sellers, but far less buyers since more people can just make their own.

There was a rather prominent bot in WoW that was used for farming a PVP currency and while I was surprised to learn just how much of a community it had, I guess I really shouldn't have been. It forms for the same reasons as any other community: people have some sort of shared experience they wish to discuss. I think the fact that they saw the bot developers as helping them against Blizzard's "unfair" insistence that they actually play the game to earn the rewards helped.

Of course, then Blizzard found a way to easily and reliably identify people who were using the bot and was basically able to just nuke them from orbit. The people developing the bot finally gave up. The community that formed around it went supernova. Not sure SE is really capable of the same though, as I believe WoW did it with their Warden stuff, which basically just spies on your computer and keeps tabs of what programs are running and interacting with the WoW client (it's been a while and I don't remember exactly what it did anymore). I don't think SE has an equivalent for FFXIV.

I always assumed those numbers are the guys shouting in Limsa and other places advertising RMT. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

RMT advertising is its own category.

・RMT advertising
　・Accounts terminated: 922

[Sqwall]

The community that formed around it went supernova. Not sure SE is really capable of the same though, as I believe WoW did it with their Warden stuff, which basically just spies on your computer and keeps tabs of what programs are running and interacting with the WoW client (it's been a while and I don't remember exactly what it did anymore). I don't think SE has an equivalent for FFXIV.

1. SE has said in the past and still holds firm today that they do not and will not use anything to spy on your PC. This opens a lot of doors for litigation as Blizzard, Steam, Activision (lately) have gotten into hot water about. The one that springs to mind is DOOM eternal having a warden that had an software that went on the actual kernel to watch dog for cheating software. This ruins clock cycles and performance. Google this and you can clearly see the problems it introduces and for a game like WoW would be MUCH easier to implement as it requires much less in the resource department.

2. Sony and SE have strict understanding on how the game will work and operate through PSN and SE servers. PSN is merely the door to SE servers. If SE were to implement a program to watchdog something for PC they would have to introduce this for PS4 as well. I doubt SONY would offer that up anytime soon as the software/hardware is propriety and under lock and key outside the dev kits they issue. If you affect one part of the FFXIV world you have to assume they would do the other half of the world.

This is mostly why it is very hard for SE to fix this, and was the exact same situation for FFXI. When you cross console, it limits your control on the game as you have to abide by the rules of who you are having allow access. This is why FFXIV is NOT on XBOX 1 this console generation as SE and Microsoft's corporate values didn't line up, and I believe is was centered on how the patches were implemented is what SE walked away from. I think this has been addressed for XBOX series X iteration.

This is why DDoS attacks, security breaches, credit card information, and bank information is held in such high regard and is also very tricky to implement.

The only company that does this as a shinning example is probably Valve (steam). They seem to have figured it out and have been for some time, and have a good track record which the customer trusts.

[Nixxe]

1. SE has said in the past and still holds firm today that they do not and will not use anything to spy on your PC.

I was unaware that they had commented on that matter, but it makes sense. It's not like they couldn't develop a Warden equivalent if they wanted to.

And even if they did, botting is still a very difficult issue to tackle. I'm not sure what has transpired in WoW since the event that I mentioned as I quit over two years ago, but having monitoring software did not do a whole lot for Blizzard for a long time, and I even personally knew people who botted things like gathering with impunity, albeit for personal use and not for gold selling purposes. It was only during Legion that they seemed to get quite good at identifying botters, which probably has to do with how intrusive Warden or any similar programs are combined with game systems that increasingly make botting worthless, not some brilliant breakthrough in anti-botting strategies.

[Shinzan]

maybe you find it interesting? please comment or like:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../blog/4571972/

/shin

[ShaliaK]

maybe you find it interesting? please comment or like:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../blog/4571972/

/shin

Thank you for the update on the STF report feature. I had no idea about it until now. I will be utilizing this shortly!

[Xoto]

This bot situation on the market is out of hand. Does anyone KNOW if SE plans on doing anything?

[NanaWiloh]

Well I'm not crying about it at all. I'm simply privy to this information and it makes sense that I have to constantly check the MB as there is this insane undercutting game going on behind the scenes. This ruins the crafting gameplay, and I don't have the time to out bid a computer program as it's going to win every time. This isn't about profits or costs of materials, it's about manipulating a market from a game that the BOT controller has NO STACK IN.

This individual or group that admins 20-30 or even 50 bots do this not to upset the players. They do it because it's actually lucrative real money business. If they made $250 a day selling gil for real money that's $7,500 a month! this is still a win for the them as it covers there costs of subs for the month, and more money then I can generate in a month given my career. This is cheating and a sheer exploit. WoW had this. FFXI had this. LoTRO had this. And countless other MMO's.

If I was a company and a select few people were EXPLOITING and USING my product for there own personal gain, they would be in violation and I would bring the ban hammer down hard on these people, as well as legal action and seize there capital gained.

This is NO different then cheating in an eSports tournament when real money is at stack. Or rigging a gambling event (poker, slots, blackjack). Or someone writing a song and someone else downloading it for free (napster gone, limewire gone) Or someone infringing on patent regulations until the patent runs out. This is called fairness. There is NO SKILL in cheating, that's why it's called cheating. Same goes for making a bot program do all the work for you to attain real money.

How in Hydalens butt, does one play the MB and not care about profit?? The bots undercutting effects your ability to sell goods at prices you agree with. Which is why you are complaining about them cause they are killing your selling power. If you dont care about profit then it stands to reason you should not care about undercutting.

[Sqwall]

How in Hydalens butt, does one play the MB and not care about profit?? The bots undercutting effects your ability to sell goods at prices you agree with. Which is why you are complaining about them cause they are killing your selling power. If you dont care about profit then it stands to reason you should not care about undercutting.

I suppose what I meant there the principal is that bot's don't care about profit. If they have a nearly unlimited supply due to not sacrificing time they can price however they want. The simple explanation: The village get's it's water from the man that owns the well, the well is bottomless and infinite, everyone in the village needs his water and they don't want to go to the next village over as it would require 3 hours one way by walking.

The man that owns the well understands he is the only supply of water which everyone needs, so he starts to increase his prices to quit his job. The village isn't happy, but pay the man anyway because they need the water to live. The man continues to raise his prices alongside the villages ire towards him. Until one day another villager has had enough of paying for exuberant prices and attempts to find his own water source. He drills on his own land and finds a water source deep and infinite. He installs a larger pump which can pump water faster and without any maintenance or supervision. It just run's day and night pumping and pumping.

Well the original man selling water is outraged of this and tries to undercut the man, but he can't keep up with demand as his pump is small and requires many repairs. The man never invested to keep his operation running, which allowed for competition to destroy him.

"How can you sell water so cheap and make a living?" asked the man.
"Easy" said the new water mogul. "It's your water I tapped into. It just so happens to stretch to my land. The only difference is I don't care about profits to be happy, but the villagers don't care where the water comes from, as long as it's cheap."

Moral of this "story" is. Economics is delicate and everything can be taken from those that don't defend it. If you don't care about profits? How do you combat that?.... These bot's only care about selling, and selling fast. Profits don't matter to them as long as they have an infinite supply over us.

Fix the gathering....Crafting will take care of itself.

[Fyrefox45]

This bot situation on the market is out of hand. Does anyone KNOW if SE plans on doing anything?

Seems to be a negative. I just keep reporting, the bots just keep botting. Not a word in any threads here from SE