Botting on the marketboard. Impossible to sell anything.

[UkcsAlias]

What if I post 50 items and someone else just updates their prices 1min after mine?

With a fixed limit, they do that once, next day you only adjust 1 item, they undercut, and now your remaining 49 items can undercut as he already reached a limit. Alternatively, he might have undercut with just 1 item. But you can again do the same.

For botters its not beneficial, since instead of just 50 items, it often goes about a lot more items for them. Especialy since they dont place the same item 50x, they place it once or twice and refresh that one upon a sell. No need for 10x the same item, when 2 is going to do fine, and enables you to do maintain the supply for 5 items.

And on highly competetive markets, its unsustainable to keep undercutting.

Sure, you will face a limitation, especialy if you are only having 1 of each item on the market. And bots will be anoying for sure. But this limitation will hinder bots more than you. As without this limit, bots will keep undercutting you anyway. And then adjusting even 500 times wont help you.

[dspguy]

A relist limit isn't the solution. Just frontload the listing cost. Maybe drop the fee a bit since right now we pay something like 5% to list. Make it 1.5%. You pay when you list, not when you sell.

Imagine we are a week into the new patch cycle. The new DoH/L stuff isn't flying off the MB as fast, so the MB botters are relisting every 10 minutes to jockey for maybe 1 of the 10 sales for that day.

They list at 200,000 and let's say they drop the price 5 gil every 10 minutes (to counter the other 4 MB bots probably out there also doing this every 10 minutes).

0:00 - List at 200,000 pay 1.5% in fees - 3000 gil
0:10 - List at 199,995 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:20 - List at 199,990 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:30 - List at 199,985 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:40 - List at 199,980 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:50 - List at 199,975 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:60 - List at 199,970 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil

That's about 21,000 gil in just 1 hour spent relisting that one item. Not even counting materials, they are already down over 10% of their hopeful sales price.

Over the course of an entire day? They'd spend nearly 430,000 just in relist fees. They'd have to sell 3 items in one day just to turn any profit if they relist too fast. And they couldn't list all 3 of those items at the same time, since then the fees would just triple.

[Rock-Star]

Lowering the tax or paying a list fee instead of a selling fee isn't gonna do much of anything, currently the bots have basic low level character mules only levelled enough for retainers, this means they are limited to the first 3 cities, so they pay tax where the rest of us can avoid this by changing our retainer locations weekly depending on where gets the tax free break, Or at least a tax reduction.

I've never seen the first 3 cities get a tax relief.. This is probably why.

[Jojoya]

A relist limit isn't the solution. Just frontload the listing cost. Maybe drop the fee a bit since right now we pay something like 5% to list. Make it 1.5%. You pay when you list, not when you sell.

Imagine we are a week into the new patch cycle. The new DoH/L stuff isn't flying off the MB as fast, so the MB botters are relisting every 10 minutes to jockey for maybe 1 of the 10 sales for that day.

They list at 200,000 and let's say they drop the price 5 gil every 10 minutes (to counter the other 4 MB bots probably out there also doing this every 10 minutes).

0:00 - List at 200,000 pay 1.5% in fees - 3000 gil
0:10 - List at 199,995 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:20 - List at 199,990 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:30 - List at 199,985 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:40 - List at 199,980 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:50 - List at 199,975 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil
0:60 - List at 199,970 pay 1.5% in fees - 2999 gil

That's about 21,000 gil in just 1 hour spent relisting that one item. Not even counting materials, they are already down over 10% of their hopeful sales price.

Over the course of an entire day? They'd spend nearly 430,000 just in relist fees. They'd have to sell 3 items in one day just to turn any profit if they relist too fast. And they couldn't list all 3 of those items at the same time, since then the fees would just triple.

The problem with a list fee is we'd have to repay it every time we checked our retainers just to move something in or out of inventory. Check a retainer and all their listings are removed from the market. Finish interacting with the retainer and exit the menu, the listings go back on the market.

Regardless, it would take a lot longer for a list fee to impact bot listings than it would to impact player listings. Considering bots don't have a value on their time like players do, they're generally willing to take prices a lot lower than players will (especially if they're sourcing a substantial amount of their materials through other botting).

SE would have to completely overhaul how listings and probably the marketboard itself work so it didn't become an excessive burden to players. That honestly wouldn't be a bad thing, there's a lot of room for improvement, but I don't feel like it's anywhere close to the top of their priority list for QoL changes.

[Prrringles]

I also like to add that all these suggestions punish the player who posted their items first the most. If anything they should be the ones selling their item first. I don't mind waiting for a few players to sell their item as long as I know my items will be "next". But then again why should players be limited or punished because of bots/rmt?

Why isn't SE just banning the bots/rmt? WE all know who the bots/rmt are, WE hand them over to SE on silver platters, yet SE does nothing with this information? Why not? Why can't they be transparant and tell us what's going on behind the scenes? Why are bots/rmt never discussed during Q&A? Leaving us completely in the dark just confirms my suspicions that it's all about $$$$. SE would rather piss off a few players than lose out on god knows how much $$$$ on bots.

[dspguy]

The problem with a list fee is we'd have to repay it every time we checked our retainers just to move something in or out of inventory. Check a retainer and all their listings are removed from the market. Finish interacting with the retainer and exit the menu, the listings go back on the market.

It would only apply if you actually adjust the price, not if you check the price or check your retainer.

I disagree on who long it would take a affect bots. Bots relist more often, plain and simple. Relisting more equates to higher fees eating into their profits. They would take a greater hit if they relist too often. The solution is for bots to relist less often, which essentially blunts the advantage of marketboard bots.

[Jojoya]

It would only apply if you actually adjust the price, not if you check the price or check your retainer.

I disagree on who long it would take a affect bots. Bots relist more often, plain and simple. Relisting more equates to higher fees eating into their profits. They would take a greater hit if they relist too often. The solution is for bots to relist less often, which essentially blunts the advantage of marketboard bots.

If it actually worked as you want it to work so the fee was only charged if the price was changed, then I'd be fine with it.

Only SE knows if that is something technically feasible that could be accomplished. My instinct considering how the system currently works and some of the other apparent issues with their coding is that it would be a right mess to achieve and likely to introduce bugs to other parts of the market system.

[Midlithe]

I've reported suspected BOT/RMT in the past and it took awhile but they eventually disappeared. Couldn't figure out how every 10 min they would undercut me on expensive items non-stop nearly 24 hours a day. Almost every item I crafted they already had on the market as well undercutting others by 1 gil. Only time I would sell stuff would be in between them selling and reposting a new one. Stayed up almost 20+ hours two different times trying to figure out when they went offline (They never did).

So.. all I can say is report them as a potential bot/rmt with details in the ticket what you have seen. Might be legit or might be a couple that take shifts farming market board. Some people do actually enjoy that.

[dspguy]

If it actually worked as you want it to work so the fee was only charged if the price was changed, then I'd be fine with it.

Only SE knows if that is something technically feasible that could be accomplished. My instinct considering how the system currently works and some of the other apparent issues with their coding is that it would be a right mess to achieve and likely to introduce bugs to other parts of the market system.

I don't write their software, so maybe it is more difficult than I imagine it. As a software developer by trade that commonly has to rework other developers' code, it doesn't sound too daunting. They already take a fee when it sells. Set that fee to 0%. Add a fee when you list of 1% or whatever. That triggers anytime a player brings up the "Adjust Price" window either by clicking "adjust price" on an already listed item or "Put Up For Sale" out of your own (or retainer's) inventory.

However, maybe they are dealing with spaghetti code worse than I deal with daily and isn't a simple fix. Or maybe they just don't care to address it.

[DPZ2]

I've never seen the first 3 cities get a tax relief.. This is probably why.

Do people really pay attention to the 'tax' on items they put up for sale? Enough that they change retainer locations on a weekly basis?

This is no longer a game. It is a business.