How is the botting situation in this game?

[Nepentha]

It's a balancing act that has to do with 'best bang for buck'.

Botting is generally a net negative to any game because it typically gets out of control if left unchecked. But spending a million dollars to go after 2 bots (as just an example) isnt worthwhile. So they probably dont go after every bot all the time cause it's just expensive to do so, relatively speaking. Furthermore, botting might be necessary for market balancing. This is only a thought I have on it, but considering how laissez faire the MB can be, if there were NO bots, you could really end up with detrimental monopolies on items. The items that bots tend to drive down in price are 'common items' - or items that are obtainable by very rudimentary tasks. More 'rare' items tend to be sold by players actually doing the content where botting is incredibly hard to pull off. By having a 'third party' interact wtih the market and actively push down pricing on certain common and universal items, it may help against janky shenanigans on the MB. Particularly since there is no 'government regulation' of the MB. It literally about as close to a capitalist free for all as you can get.

To be fair, it doesnt always play out the way I suggest, but it's a thought. But I do wonder how much of an influence Bots provide in the market one way or another.

Not really. Bots have taken over every market worth selling in on my server. So not only can more dedicated players like myself not sell anything, but players who are more low key about it can't either. It's gotten to the point that there are at least 91 full scale botting FCs for both the marketboard and gathering on the Crystal, Aether and Primal DCs. This doesn't include housing snipers bots that scan the wards every hour on the hour and snap up every medium and large house that demos before any legit players realize they're there (then sell them at outrageous mark ups) or the dungeon bots or the map group bots (yes this is a thing now). Botting was long ago out of control, and it's only snowballing.

If bots were gone, sure you'd have to pay more for certain materials. But you can also make more money on them at the same time and with a proper profit, be able to afford the price of things that've increased once bot activity is brought under control. Plus, you will never fully get rid of botters. It will always be a thing in MMOs. Just right now, the botters run the economy, they aren't merely incidental to it.