To adhere to site rules, I've blurred all names in pictures.
Baiting an undercutter bot, Louisoix server, 15th May 2020
More pictures: https://imgur.com/a/xkDLOE1
Since 2 weeks, I've been updating my marketboard prices, and then a few minutes later, the same person has lowered their price 1 gil below mine. I thought it was just a very dedicated person, but I now have proof that it's in fact a bot. If this bot exists on the Louisoix server, they probably exist on all servers. I've reported him, but Square Enix didn't ban him. Do something!
What they do and why this is a big issue:
Players usually buy the lowest price. The bots adjust their price to be the lowest price, once every few minutes, 24/7. This almost guarantees that players will end up buying the offer from the bot, which in turn indirectly supports RMT (the bot will sell the money).
Other sellers will be unable to sell their items, because their offers is only lowest for a few minutes until they get undercut by the bots again. This means that legit players have to keep lowering their price, get undercut, lower their price, get undercut, and so on.
Because of this, the prices on those items will continue to drop, until it's worth peanuts. Crafters will get discouraged from selling and probably stop selling the item because it's not profitable. Then you only have bots selling items, sellers are frustrated, and buyers support RMT.
How to find out whether you're competing against an undercutting bot:
The bot that I am dealing with sells pretty much all Neo-Ishgardian items and facet items on the Louisoix server. They're generally worth between 100k to 200k per item.
Since the bot always undercut me by 1 gil in a matter of minutes, I've lowered the price to 10,000 gil, which is extremely low and unprofitable. After a few minutes, all retainers of the bot again undercut me by 1 gil, putting the price to a mere 9,999 gil. At that point I just bought them.
Proof that it's in fact a bot:
Here are 20 (!) screenshots of me baiting the same bot into undercutting me at an unprofitable price:
https://imgur.com/a/xkDLOE1
The materials to craft these items cost at least 20k. The items sell for 100k to 200k. There's no way a real person would undercut you with 9,999 gil! You don't even cover half the material costs that way:
Only a bot would fall for this.
Furthermore:
- By using the player search, you can find out that the bot is standing in "The Hourglass" almost all day. That's the Ul'Dah Inn, where he's alone with the marketbell, not looking suspicious at all. (Exception: Once a day he goes to Limsa Marketboard, probably to buy new materials and craft new items.
- He has an FC that he made less than a month ago. By using SE's FC search, you can find out that he has 3 FC members, and all of them are level 1 characters that all have the same player model. These are his RMT accounts that he launders the money with. Square Enix has to check where that money goes.
- The inhuman ability to go through all prices of all his retainers every minute of the day and not doing anything else in the game (he has a bard level 80, all DoH on 80, 2 DoL on 80, and everything else at 0. A pure money-making account.)
The reason I made this post is to inform marketboard sellers what they're dealing with and spread awareness of this issue, so that Square Enix looks into it and finally bans these bots!
Since reporting him did nothing, does anyone know how we can reach the correct person to get this issue looked into?
submitted by /u/Tapurisu
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