Botting on the marketboard. Impossible to sell anything.

[Endless1X]

I can't sell a single thing on the marketboard to make money for ports. Every time I try someone undercuts me within a few minutes. I doubt there are people changing 15 item's prices once every few minutes. Is there nothing that can be done about this? Maybe making it so people can only change prices once a hour/day?

[Adephagos]

This is an issue that has been since years ago.
People use bots to drop prices for either 1 gil to 1k.
I have reported so many times these people and... guess what? They are still out there. Making millions in gil.

I dedicated two whole days in research for these characters and their retainers, learned their "timers", spawn spots, even their names, free companies, etc.

Nothing... they still out there. So... for now, you are in the same boat as many of us.

[Adephagos]

You can see more of this issue from posts since 2020:

Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...games_economy/

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

You can google this "issue" and is present in ALL datacenters.

[Jojoya]

With respect to the bots, the most you can go is report them to the STF for investigation.

With respect to making gil selling crafted items on the marketboard, pick different items to sell. I'm selling some low level items for more than what Classical is currently priced at on my world. There are thousands of items to choose from and always something that will yield a profit.

Also, don't worry about getting undercut. If you're choosing smart and the supply is less than demand, your item will still end up selling. Use sales history to compare how many of an item have sold recently versus how many are currently listed for sale to figure out what items are underrepresented.

[Bad_Luck]

I’ve been selling a bunch of stuff, and no idea why you’re struggling.

[DPZ2]

Commodities may be rapidly undercut, but those are generally sold in lots of 50-99 items. When I go looking for a commodity, I will purchase 1-3 items for a slightly higher price and leave the lower-priced '99 item' entries alone.

Best to sell commodities in small lots for slightly higher price. Note that, in general, hides and cloth materials are best sold in quantities to match recipes (2 flax, 4 hides, etc).

[Prrringles]

I’ve been selling a bunch of stuff, and no idea why you’re struggling.

This isn't helpful at all. Define "bunch" and "stuff". Because 2 might be a bunch and fishing bait might be stuff.

Anyway, as a market board guru myself I have also been struggling to sell items in meaningful quantities for a decent profit. I sell my usual lower lvl items for high prices but they sell slow. There has definately been an increase in bots. Prices have never been this low across the board and the amount of RMT free companies (1x 90 crafter + 8x lvl 22~23 mules) popping up is rediculous. Then there is the new hype too. Server transfer to Japan, buyout the market board and resell for x2 on the US/EU server. Luckily this destroys itself as prices on my datacenter have totally collapsed for these items. The Faux Leave mounts used to go for between 12-14 mil. Now they are going for 6-8 mil because of above mentioned. Same goes for the other mounts and high end minions.

I never cared about bots and always kept improvising, adepting and overcomming (thanks mister Grills). But recently I kind of lost interest in crafting/selling overall because of the exploding bot/rmt problem. To me this says a lot.

TLDR: OP is right. No matter if "anyone" is selling a "bunch" of "stuff". Botting/RMT has increased dramatically and is a real problem. I don't think any real market board player can deny this.

EDIT: Inb4 "sell other items no one is selling". This is not a solution to the problem. Anyone should be able to compete over selling any item they want. Bots totally defeat any form of competition. Since SE rarely takes action against said bots/rmt I think a solution is, unfortunately, far off and all we can do is complain and ventilate our frustrations.

[Kes13a]

SE does need to take action, and the years have proven targeting the bots does not work

I mean, lets be serious, all of us know how quickly they come back. you can look at the numbers that SE posts about how many they have removed. and yet, bots run rampant, and at this point they infest the game, all aspects and all levels.

there is a viable solution, it does not require spyware on player's computers, it does not require new detectors to track down people using peskie botting software. what it requires is that SE ban the buyers. the bots do not care if they get banned or lose their accounts, they make enough real money they'll just buy 50 more. people playing their characters actually will care and stop doing it, or they know they will lose their account. right now SE removes the risk of buying because they do not action against the buyers, so all they see is the rewards of buying, spend a little real money, get in game currency, life is good. they are happy, the people running the bots are happy, and more bots start up to get in on the action.

remove the reward and add a lot of risk on the player side of that equation, and people...stop.... buying. if there is no money coming in, bot empires collapse. we will still have bots, never going to get rid of them sadly. but trying to control the bot population through banning bots will never work, we know that, even SE knows that. we all sign the ToS about RMT and not doing it. time for SE to put on their big girl panties and enforce it.

[Galasomeone]

SE does need to take action, and the years have proven targeting the bots does not work
...
...what it requires is that SE ban the buyers. the bots do not care if they get banned or lose their accounts, they make enough real money they'll just buy 50 more. people playing their characters actually will care and stop doing it, or they know they will lose their account. right now SE removes the risk of buying because they do not action against the buyers, so all they see is the rewards of buying, spend a little real money, get in game currency, life is good. they are happy, the people running the bots are happy, and more bots start up to get in on the action.

remove the reward and add a lot of risk on the player side of that equation, and people...stop.... buying. if there is no money coming in, bot empires collapse. we will still have bots, never going to get rid of them sadly. but trying to control the bot population through banning bots will never work, we know that, even SE knows that. we all sign the ToS about RMT and not doing it. time for SE to put on their big girl panties and enforce it.

And there we have it. The solution is to have people see consequences of buying this stuff more. With no customers there is no market.

People who buy gil are the problem.

[Prrringles]

I don't even think SE are banning the big problematic bot/rmt accounts. Talking about the "1 crafter and 8 mule character" free company accounts. I seldom see those disappear. So I have no clue which thousands of accounts they are terminating each week, but not the right ones. Seems like at least 75% of the sellers are bots these days. I think the solution for me is to just quit the market board. Can't be bothered with competing against bots who automatically update their prices every 10 minutes anymore. I will happily invest my time in something else.