Botting on the marketboard. Impossible to sell anything.

[Kes13a]

I still say the only solution to the bot issue is ban the gil buyers. as long as they can buy without consequences people doing botting for RMT have a reason to create legions of bots.

if SE starts banning teh buyers, and since this against the ToS they have every right and should be enforcing it... but when the buyers dry up... so will the bots. they will never leave, but their numbers will not be replaced because its not worth it.

[Prrringles]

I still say the only solution to the bot issue is ban the gil buyers. as long as they can buy without consequences people doing botting for RMT have a reason to create legions of bots.

if SE starts banning teh buyers, and since this against the ToS they have every right and should be enforcing it... but when the buyers dry up... so will the bots. they will never leave, but their numbers will not be replaced because its not worth it.

They should just nuke both sides man. Order 66. Externinatus. Wipe them out, all of them. You get the point. Buyers will also keep coming as long as there is supply and vice versa. They keep eachother in business.

Listen, right. SE has 3 whole people to manage this pile of doodoo. And they are Japanese and probably use google translate to translate our reports. Multi-BILLION $ company using "small indy company" excuses. THIS is the problem. If SE had any real intention to tackle this whole fiasco both sides would have been externimated already. This is 100% on SE.

[UkcsAlias]

Have any useful suggestions on how SE can permanently stop those individuals?

Technicaly this is impossible, since even if they use machine learning, botters can set limits and randomize some things to make it appear more human.
For example:
- they can disable activity at night. The ending timestamp can be 3am there, but if the bot just remains inactive for 8h after that, it appears human. While night sales are unlikely.
- instead of instantly responding at the exact 10minute mark, they can randomize it and for example make it respond a random time between 1 and 15 minutes later.
- they could lure a bot into undercutting by mimicing a retainer themselve, the problem is this allows botters to exploit that very same system and get items cheap (although, maybe when they try to buy it it just says the item is already gone)

It will disrupt it during daytime for a bit, but not enough to realy stop them from doing it. And detecting that it is a bot is nearly impossible to do as the actions are very basic and mouse movement can be faked quite well if that would become part of the check (not to mention that being excessively resource intensive).

But 1 thing though, if its a mass botter, they have other activity that should be detectable. For the random person, detection has a very high risk as losing your acount then does some damage to your efforts. If these sort of systems disrupt the mass botters a lot, then that would be something. But its those lone people that generaly also take the more interesting items (for mass botters there are better ways to obtain gil).

[Jojoya]

Technicaly this is impossible, since even if they use machine learning, botters can set limits and randomize some things to make it appear more human.

Which was pretty much my point. Trying to block the bots doesn't accomplish much because attempts to filter can always be countered by ways to avoid the filter. IP bans don't work when VPNs are now commonly used even by normal players. Credit card bans don't work when it's easy enough to get another credit card (assuming the botter isn't using some other payment method such as game time codes that can't be traced to a specific credit card). It's easy enough to fake private information by using real information belonging to another individual - verification of the information only happens in the case of an account compromise where the owner of the account is trying to get access back. Someone botting who gets compromised isn't going to draw attention to their account, they'll just start over.

To get rid of bots, you need to eliminate the reason why they exist and that's to profit from selling services to a customer. That means getting rid of the customers who want to use the service. When there aren't enough customers willing to pay for a service, sellers of that service start disappearing because it's no longer profitable. They move to where profit can be made.

[dspguy]

I can't think of a single MMO that has successfully dealt with currency buyers and sellers. Maybe there is one, but none come to mind and I've played a lot of MMOs. A partial solution to the MB bots is to enforce a listing price. A minimum fee to list plus X% of the item. Drop the MB sales fee but instead exchange it for a smaller (say half of what it is now) to list it. The moment you list it, the server takes their cut. Make that percentage high enough and bots will go out of business by relisting.

It won't stop botting (crafting, gathering, etc) but it would curtail MB botting.

We might actually get to the point of deflation. Where the gil we have on hand suddenly is worth more. We might see more bartering or inter-player trades off the marketboard.

[Prrringles]

You do understand that to be able to sell gil to players they need to sell things right? The selling is being done by BOTS. I can probably point out at least 3/4 of the bots on the market board by myself without any help that the STF might have. Find the bots > find the crafter/gatherer/free company they belong to > follow the money/gil > nuke anyone who touched that money/gil and everyone in between.

I posted this earlier but I will say it again. SE needs more people dealing with this. Expand GM teams and give them the power to ban. And expand the STF to abroad with people who understand English.
You dont need sophisticated systems or change the way the MB works. Just get more people in who pro-actively search out these people and nuke them.

[dspguy]

You do understand that to be able to sell gil to players they need to sell things right? The selling is being done by BOTS. I can probably point out at least 3/4 of the bots on the market board by myself without any help that the STF might have. Find the bots > find the crafter/gatherer/free company they belong to > follow the money/gil > nuke anyone who touched that money/gil and everyone in between.

I posted this earlier but I will say it again. SE needs more people dealing with this. Expand GM teams and give them the power to ban. And expand the STF to abroad with people who understand English.
You dont need sophisticated systems or change the way the MB works. Just get more people in who pro-actively search out these people and nuke them.

I don't want bots either, but why would SE bother? How many millions of subs do they have?

If SE's pocket isn't being hurt, why fix it? The same argument applies to housing.

Until players leave en masse due to a problem like bots (or housing), SE doesn't have an incentive to do anything about it.

[Prrringles]

I don't want bots either, but why would SE bother? How many millions of subs do they have?

If SE's pocket isn't being hurt, why fix it? The same argument applies to housing.

Until players leave en masse due to a problem like bots (or housing), SE doesn't have an incentive to do anything about it.

Yes. This has been established already. SE doesn't care.

[Drip]

Yes. This has been established already. SE doesn't care.

To say they don't care is a little silly. They care, it's just not a high priority.

[dspguy]

To say they don't care is a little silly. They care, it's just not a high priority.

It would be one thing if it was like saying I don't care that my house is on fire because my kid is drowning. However, considering what we see in patch notes, it clearly is the bottom priority. Remember when they added the ability to add retainer comments? That was a higher priority. Being able to select which currency we see in the currency window... that was a higher priority than marketboard botting. Fixing the name of a few items from ARR... that was a higher priority.

Let's just make it clear. Of course MB botting is not the highest priority. But SE is telegraphing to us that it is pretty much the lowest priority considering everything else they are addressing.