How is the botting situation in this game?

[Melichoir]

I think the issue here is, the markets you sell in haven't been affected, so you attribute this to all markets. And yes, there are house sniping bots. A lack of imagination on your part does not make it a non-issue. The operation is simply multiple accounts, one bot sitting at the aetheryte and scanning the wards at the top of every hour and when something pops, it dings on an alt who then runs to relocate to the larger house. This is a problem mostly on larger servers where housing is difficult to attain. (Also they use FCs with housing attached to accomplish this. Either they sell the FC with the house, or sell it as a relocation.)

The serve pop distribution isnt that disparate from what I saw. In any case, sarg is a 'mid size' server and doesnt have the sniping issue from what Ive seen. However, Ive no doubt that there are some bots who do this to grab larger houses, but that still runs into the issue of transferring those houses via selling. Unless I completeley misunderstood the changes they made to the timers, or they reverted how it occurs, a plot is viewable on the Aetheryte as being 'open and up for purchase' but the timer when you go there may prevent you from actually buying it right that second. The timer randomly shuts off making it available for purchase. If you have a bot there spamming the buy option, then yeah theyll more likely get it. But even then, if its not an FC purchase, you run nito the issue aforementioned when the seller wants to pass it off to a buyer. I dunno how desperate people are, but I certainly wouldnt purchase a M or L house from anyone on the off chance that I could fail to get it (or the same botter just rips me off by buying it back up before I can do anything, but under a different account). If players are running that risk...well I dunno what to say. It's kinda silly.

Now the FC issue I think needs to be fixed. I wont contest that loophole. There are fairly easy active measures they could take to address this, like flag players who are speeding through the menu for purchase successively for long periods of time. Or requiring FCs to have a minimum active member count to stay solvent. Etc.

As for the marketboard, again, I think you aren't looking at the larger picture outside of the microcosm of markets that the bots haven't yet figured out how to dominate. If you take a peek at the Aesthete's gear, you'll probably find the prices are so ridiculously low that it barely covers the cost of making it. This is because full scale botting operations have taken over with crafters and gatherers automated to gather and craft 24/7. And they also have retainer bots who cycle through their retainers on a continuous loop to undercut by 1 gil over and over.

It doesn't take much to find these, either. Just look at the grand company rankings and you'll find most of these botting ring FCs are in the top 20, if not #1 or #2 on them.

This is an actual problem, you can insist it isn't, but that's only because you're not being directly affected by it.

Edit: Last thought. If the botters figured out how to send their bots into PotD's floors where you get those whistles? You'd see the marketboard flooded with them, driving the price down. So far the reason why that stays high in price is because they haven't yet.

I havent suggested that botting doesnt dominate the MB in some fashion. It does, but it's spread is limited by content that is harder for bots to effectively function in. There are things bots will do because its low risk with a decent yield. Those activities tend to be more 'common' activities. The more persnickety activities tend to rule out bots because theyre too basic to effectively complete the content in a cost effective manner. For example, Im actually confident bots could complete POTD all the way to 200. But the chance of them wiping is substantially higher due to their simple nature. It becomes less cost effective for them to do this activity. Because of that, this is where you can actually make money. If youre insisting you want to 'make millions' on farming low to mid grade crafting materials and selling those on the MB, then yeah youre gonna have a bad time. Even without bots, youd be competing against quite a few players because of how accessible it is. But it's not the best way to make money. Part of what keeps player interaction with an activity down is if they dont see a worthwhile rewards for it. Remove bots, and players will attempt to fill the gap.

Since you give me the aesthetes gear as an example, Ill provide a counter point: How long has that gear been out? If you watch gear prices on average, they will decline quite rapidly the longer the content is out. Even more so if the necessity for that content drops substantially. When that set came out, it was pertinent to some of hte content (IIRC Ishgard restoration tier listing) and a decent upgrade. This meant prices were actually pretty high. Now that both those aspects are removed, prices drop. It has probably dropped so much that it less cost effective for the average person to craft and sell it compared to a bot. Not to mention the sheer volume of them now, bot or no bot.

Furthermore, if youre really savvy about making money, you actually wait on things. For example, Indigo cloth was very expensive when it came out. Hard to get material that had some RNG behind it and was related to a popular glamour. So you could make good mney selling it. Given a few months, the price dropped substantially due to how ubiquitous it became. But prices are rising again for it now. Why? Because all of a sudden its harder to get. Give it another year, and the price will go up even more. It may not be worth the original selling price, but it is worth some money. This kind of future planning and prepositioning is a way to make money. This, btw, also applies to materials dropped from Expert Trials. If you save the materials that drop in current Experts, next xpac when the augmented weapon versions come out, youll make a killing on those mats because they go up in price because now its a new glamour piece.

This is kind of what I mean by the problem isnt as big as people say. If you are saying "I cant make any money within reason" using the MB, youre probably being to low with your standards. I would be directly affected by botting IF my revenue came from farming common materials. But that problem is less about bots and more about accessibility. Whatever is very low cost but high reward is going to result in more people going that route. If you made bots disappear with the snap of a finger, you still likely wont be making tons of money because you have less buyers (yes bots buy mats from the MB because at times its more cost effective to do so) with more competition from the average player farming and selling easy-to-come-by materials. This, btw doesnt even account for how market prices would fluctuate without bots. We are assuming that if an item sells for 100k with bots, that without bots it might sell higher. But that may not be necessarily the case. It could end up selling lower because there is less GIL in circulation so prices would be lower simply because people dont have money to afford said price points.

TDLR: The assumption that your server is overwhelmingly overrun with bots that dominate every aspect of the MB so it is impossible for you to generate any money from sales I think is likely more an overstatement than what is really the case. I expect there to be some level of market dominance by bots, but saying they cover every aspect and you have no recourse isnt likely. Bots arent gods. Theyll have their strengths as well as weaknesses. Knowing that and gaming where theyre weak is how you can generate money. And it doesnt require hardcore top 1% strats to do this.