Market board botting is a problem

[NebiYuga]

how is the crafting community in this game supposed to thrive if were being driven out by these bots. We spend so much time and effort leveling our jobs just to be pushed out by these bots. Makes zero sense to me. These "people" shouldn't be crafting end game items or in the game at all.

[Jojoya]

Agreed that the bots are a problem upsetting game play balance, fairness and reward versus effort. SE need to stop ignoring the crafting/gathering/market bots.

But there are still plenty of ways to profit off crafting. The bots don't control the entire marketboard. Find the underserved portions of the market and sell those items. Profit is profit, whether it's 10k per item or 100k, and many times those 10k profit items sell much more rapidly than the 100k profit items, more than making up the difference.

[NebiYuga]

its not even about profit at this point.

i wouldn't have a problem with them if they stuck to their crystal farming ways but nowadays its crazy how they've evolved into becoming endgame farmers and crafters. that alone should be alarming

[Kes13a]

Agreed that the bots are a problem upsetting game play balance, fairness and reward versus effort. SE need to stop ignoring the crafting/gathering/market bots.

But there are still plenty of ways to profit off crafting. The bots don't control the entire marketboard. Find the underserved portions of the market and sell those items. Profit is profit, whether it's 10k per item or 100k, and many times those 10k profit items sell much more rapidly than the 100k profit items, more than making up the difference.

I agree with you, BUT.. most of the things you can carve out a little niche in are materials... and if people arent crafting because of the bots monopoly on crafted gear... then you have no market to sell into, even for a little profit

There has to be some end reward for spending the time and gil to work up to 80. selling on the MP is a "reward". if that carrot is removed, a large aspect of the crafting experience is gone. might as well just have us able to make trinkets of no use

[MilitaryVet123]

You can either focus on subsets of the market that are most profitable and gate (Neo-ishgardian rings cost ~30k to make right now on Crystal). Or you can move to markets such as: leve items, primal weapons (good choice if you can farm ex), Lv70-79 items (which can sometimes be worth more than endgame). Things that move too fast can't be controlled by market board bots: slithersand, sublimes are good options as long as you put it at a low enough price. Materias are good too though the exploit was removed recently.

Btw: when I say cost I'm including the opportunity cost. The total cost is material cost + opportunity cost. Given that rings cost around 30k, and that they move the fastest, you can make a good chunk of gil by focusing on that one market instead of all accessories. On Aesthete gear, the opportunity cost is so high that Aesthete's head, hand, and boots are the most profitable items given that people price them at the same level as body and bottoms even though they cost 20% less to produce. Accessories are too low and so even if they're 40% cheaper to produce they don't give the same returns as head, hand, boots.

And as always, whenever you enter a market, keep in mind that the market board system roughly acts as a N-player Cournot oligopoly game. That means the price will decrease when you enter, so subtract 10%~30% from the price when making the decision to enter/exit.

I'm sympathetic to the harm botting/market board botting has done to the markets and these are hopefully helpful to some players. You have a significant competitive disadvantage. But if you studied economics at a high enough level, you'll remember that the simple Stackelberg oligopoly game with fixed cost of entry shows that as F (fixed cost) decreases, competition increases and price decreases; firms entering later (bots) will be more incentivized to enter. But since bots are not profit-maximizing on the fly, you can exploit their unintelligence and laser-focus on the little pockets of profitability you can find. That means you have to use your brain.

All this theory means that the solution to your woes isn't really market board botting at the end of the day. It's to make crafting far, far harder (to increase the fixed cost of entry) and less bottable. If it takes 60 days to get a crafter to endgame-ready status instead of the current 5 (and to put lots of RNG along the way so that bots can't handle them), botting would be far less profitable and will disincentivize most botters. This is basic economic theory. It's also why, despite the prevalence of bots in 4.1, the significant entry cost during the Ala Mhigan tier held the price high enough on all but the most competitive servers. This solution will not be appetizing to most players. It's also why you should not expect this to change any time soon, since the economically sound solution entails SE backtracking on making the game more accessible, across all facets of the game.

And when making things more accessible, you start getting more botting: there are Savage rotation bots too, and bots that can farm phantasmagoria (most players don't know that). The undercutting bot that exists is also public, despite the common hypothesis held by most players that such bots must be private. On certain servers, you can have 5 players all using the same bot with the same frequency (undercut every 1 min). There are furthermore private undercutting bots that are even more sophisticated that can bypass the need to interact with the summoning bell. On the well-known damage ranking website that ends with "logs", certain top ranking players used hacks (in particular BLM) but have not yet been caught, though the problem is already acknowledged in that community. In other words, the dam has already been broken. Things are far worse than what most players realize, it seems.

Unless people are on board with making the game hardcore and go back to the Gordias/Midas days this is not going to change.

You could, however, get some reprieve by starting a game of cats and mice between the devs and the bot creators. Mild RNG or unknown issues that botters have to deal with can easily tank the profitability. Things such as DCing if you teleport in PotD (which is implemented currently). It's not a permanent solution though. The solutions I've seen suggested in this forum don't work at all so don't bother.

Hmm, also some light commentary if anyone is interested: https://old.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ering_botting/

[Sqwall]

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-%28Aug.-27%29

You can't deny the issue, as SE has been deleting accounts and RECENTLY started dropping automated bot driven accounts. This is Aug 20-27 of accounts breaking the EULA, ToS agreement when you "Click yes to agree". This isn't rocket science here, it's just business. Cheating is theft and I think some fail to see that. We NEED to report these bots as all they do is undermine our REAL hard work with their programs that just run and run. The people defending this are already suspicious for botting, and if I reported them would SE find anything? If no...then my work here is done.

Stop denying this isn't a problem and start taking action. In 3-4 years time this will be a HUGE cancer that will be impossible to cure.

[Kes13a]

You can either focus on subsets of the market that are most profitable and gate (Neo-ishgardian rings cost ~30k to make right now on Crystal). Or you can move to markets such as: leve items, primal weapons (good choice if you can farm ex), Lv70-79 items (which can sometimes be worth more than endgame). Things that move too fast can't be controlled by market board bots: slithersand, sublimes are good options as long as you put it at a low enough price. Materias are good too though the exploit was removed recently.

Btw: when I say cost I'm including the opportunity cost. The total cost is material cost + opportunity cost. Given that rings cost around 30k, and that they move the fastest, you can make a good chunk of gil by focusing on that one market instead of all accessories. On Aesthete gear, the opportunity cost is so high that Aesthete's head, hand, and boots are the most profitable items given that people price them at the same level as body and bottoms even though they cost 20% less to produce. Accessories are too low and so even if they're 40% cheaper to produce they don't give the same returns as head, hand, boots.

While your theory is good, it falls down when the bots control the market. On my server, the bots have a listing in every item from about 40 to 80. And by every listing I mean.. EVERY LISTING. When the first bot I noticed was starting out, I only saw them in some of the neo-ishgardian gear. Now I have noticed they have the entire range from 40 to 80 covered.

[Jojoya]

While your theory is good, it falls down when the bots control the market. On my server, the bots have a listing in every item from about 40 to 80. And by every listing I mean.. EVERY LISTING. When the first bot I noticed was starting out, I only saw them in some of the neo-ishgardian gear. Now I have noticed they have the entire range from 40 to 80 covered.

A single listing per item is not a threat, even if it's slightly undercutting what's already listed. Not every player automatically buys the cheapest item. Many players will buy the item from the player who set the reasonable price, not the one who undercut it by 10 gil.

It's when multiple bots are listing multiples of the same item so they're undercutting each other rapidly as they compete that problems occur.

[Kes13a]

A single listing per item is not a threat, even if it's slightly undercutting what's already listed. Not every player automatically buys the cheapest item. Many players will buy the item from the player who set the reasonable price, not the one who undercut it by 10 gil.

It's when multiple bots are listing multiples of the same item so they're undercutting each other rapidly as they compete that problems occur.

You keep saying that, but my experience is different. People see the hq, and buy the first item with that. I have seen zero evidence that anyone, let alone "many people" buy anything but the cheapest item, be it 1 gil, 10 gil or 1000. cheapest HQ item is teh one thats bought, every, single, time.

[MilitaryVet123]

While your theory is good, it falls down when the bots control the market. On my server, the bots have a listing in every item from about 40 to 80. And by every listing I mean.. EVERY LISTING. When the first bot I noticed was starting out, I only saw them in some of the neo-ishgardian gear. Now I have noticed they have the entire range from 40 to 80 covered.

I know what Zalera is like. There are pockets of profitability. However they are shrinking and I wouldn't be surprised if they will be nil soon. But you ever wonder how they can have the entire range covered? It takes a lot of time and investment to cover that big of a range. But actually, it doesn't. Because it's trivial to craft endgame gear and leveling gear. Yellow scrips are done in 6 steps, 3 with HQ mats. Aesthete takes 17 steps. Neo-ishgardian takes 14 steps. Compare this to Heavensward and Ala Mhigan. This is the real problem and this is why botting is prevalent. If people want bots gone, first they must demand SE implement RNG mechanics (not skills, but quests that change every time etc. that serve as disguised captchas) across the entire crafting leveling experience. Recipes must be far harder to create. It should take a month to level all crafters to 80, not 2 days.

And this is never going to happen because Square Enix wants to game to be easier and simpler across the board.