Gold Farmers

[Tekoneiric.6817]

> @"Magnus Godrik.5841" said:

> Gold farmers? The market is crashing hard not because of gold farmers but because of PoF. it's way too easy to get materials now and no good sink. That is the problem.

 

The price of higher tiered wood and metals have suffered big time because of availability of materials. Mithril has really been hit bad. Most of the stuff on the TP have crashed down. I wish they would put in a massive gold sink; maybe a way to craft mystic coins in a way that consumes a lot of material. If they do player housing they could sink a lot of material there.

[zealex.9410]

> @"Tekoneiric.6817" said:

> > @"Magnus Godrik.5841" said:

> > Gold farmers? The market is crashing hard not because of gold farmers but because of PoF. it's way too easy to get materials now and no good sink. That is the problem.

>

> The price of higher tiered wood and metals have suffered big time because of availability of materials. Mithril has really been hit bad. Most of the stuff on the TP have crashed down. I wish they would put in a massive gold sink; maybe a way to craft mystic coins in a way that consumes a lot of material. If they do player housing they could sink a lot of material there.

 

Nah dud we dont need that economy is fiiiine : ^)

[Feanor.2358]

> @"Tiny Doom.4380" said:

> I completely believe there are TP bots but the main reason prices have fallen so much since PoF is most likely because ANet wanted them to fall. The huge effect PoF and LS4 had on the prices of many mats and items isn't an unforeseen side-effect of that content, it's by design. It's not as if it was the Auric Basin effect, which was players exploiting a mechanic in an unanticipated manner. This is just turning on the tap. Why they want lower prices we would have to guess but since they created all the faucets and chose not to add the sinks there's nowhere else to look for the cause of this effect.

 

TP bots have been around for ages. Istan farm hasn't. When looking for a cause you don't start with the factor that hasn't changed at all, you start with the one that has.

[Tigaseye.2047]

> @"maxan.7836" said:

> All I know is that everything has lost its reasonable value. Hardly worth collecting anymore but none the less I do and will just store it for better days if they return-

 

If you don't need quick gold, just stick it on the TP at that "reasonable price" and wait for the prices to go back to normal.

 

They probably will, eventually and if they don't, maybe consider your options re. playing the game, at all?

 

That is what I do, anyway.

 

Most of it sells in the end and if that stops happening and/or I find myself not making enough gold, in general, I will just stop playing, again.

 

...and if enough people do that, Anet will feel forced to act.

 

Great thing about GW2 is that your listings will never expire, at least.

[Boulder.3589]

Try buying gold from those sites if you think this is a problem and see how fast your account gets banned. This is one thing ANet is actually very strict on.

The right way to counter these bots is also not that apparent to average people without actual knowledge in the field. Check out this guy reverse engineering a GW2 TP bot if you want to better understand the situation:

part1

part2

[Faaris.8013]

Fact is, trading bots for GW2 exist. Life experience tells me that since people went through the effort to create them and there's profit to be made, there are people who use them. Can you tell as a normal player if the item you are trading is effected by bots? No. If it's a profitable item, there's a very good chance it is.

 

In real life, it's not even forbidden to use bots. Most stock exchange transactions are done by bots in fact.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-15/it-s-a-quant-s-stock-market-as-computer-programs-keep-on-buying

 

The guess is that only 10% of transactions on the US stock market is done by by an actual human being making a decision.

 

So yeah, markets have bots, and they ain't going anywhere.

[Xbon.9086]

what you're describing doesn't sound like botting in the slightest. materials are a highly traded/generated commodity, even f2p can trade materials afaik. so you're talking all 300k+ concurrent ppl on have a chance to sell the material if they find it, or however many ppl play on na/eu servers

[Patchwreck.2357]

Another thing people keep believe as normal market activity works like this.

 

I go to put buy and sell orders on the market. Glacial fragments have 1 for 55.88 and the the next one is 60. So I buy it adding it to my fragment then click to sell. Some other individual having already clicked his way to the point where he is ready to sell and dose so with exactly 1 item lining up in the second between my clicking buy then sell. I try again but here comes another person having already clicked the buttons previous to selling. I wait clicking refresh, the 1 item for 55.88 is still there and its still there, its still there, its still there. I try again and it happens again replaced with 1 item for 55.88 the instance between button clicks. come back 10 minutes later and someone lines up selling 1 item exactly in the instant between button clicks. This happens 6 time at random increments.

Seriously... this is what they want to believe or try to convince others they you believe?

Rather than people exploiting?

I almost want to ask some of the people in here how their bots are doing... if bots existed.

 

P.S. that "some" in the above sentence would be totally ignored if I didn't write this and we would get comments like "OOO!!! SO WE ARE ALL BOTS NOW!!! THIS GUY KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT BOTS BECAUSE BOTS CAN'T EVEN TYPE11!!!1!!!

 

[Patchwreck.2357]

> @"Boulder.3589" said:

> Try buying gold from those sites if you think this is a problem and see how fast your account gets banned. This is one thing ANet is actually very strict on.

> The right way to counter these bots is also not that apparent to average people without actual knowledge in the field. Check out this guy reverse engineering a GW2 TP bot if you want to better understand the situation:

> part1

 

> part2

 

 

Those were good videos but the issue is a security problem specific to that bot and can't be used other bots unless they have that same problem.

 

[Boulder.3589]

> @"Patchwreck.2357" said:

> > @"Boulder.3589" said:

> > Try buying gold from those sites if you think this is a problem and see how fast your account gets banned. This is one thing ANet is actually very strict on.

> > The right way to counter these bots is also not that apparent to average people without actual knowledge in the field. Check out this guy reverse engineering a GW2 TP bot if you want to better understand the situation:

> > part1

>

> > part2

>

>

> Those were good videos but the issue is a security problem specific to that bot and can't be used other bots unless they have that same problem.

>

 

Yeah I understand that, the author of that particular bot was not very smart. But valuable points made in the video, imo, are that TP bots are not that bad for the economy or players, maybe even good for the economy. But despite this, TP bots create negative emotions in players who notice them and this adds to a bad perception of the game.

[Patchwreck.2357]

> @"Boulder.3589" said:

> > @"Patchwreck.2357" said:

> > > @"Boulder.3589" said:

> > > Try buying gold from those sites if you think this is a problem and see how fast your account gets banned. This is one thing ANet is actually very strict on.

> > > The right way to counter these bots is also not that apparent to average people without actual knowledge in the field. Check out this guy reverse engineering a GW2 TP bot if you want to better understand the situation:

> > > part1

> >

> > > part2

> >

> >

> > Those were good videos but the issue is a security problem specific to that bot and can't be used other bots unless they have that same problem.

> >

>

> Yeah I understand that, the author of that particular bot was not very smart. But valuable points made in the video, imo, are that TP bots are not that bad for the economy or players, maybe even good for the economy. But despite this, TP bots create negative emotions in players who notice them and this adds to a bad perception of the game.

 

Its seemed as if he was only considering they would all be solo players and would only be buying and selling with them having a more natural effect of the market, as if each guy was just 40 or 50 more players added to the game dabbling in the market. He didn't consider that people would use them to either drive up buy prices or down sell prices.

 

ATM I'm not seeing a lot of driving down at all but this morning there were orders driving both the sell price down and the buy price up...... I can't think of any reason for players to want buy price up unless its to ruin the market. I remember going to 7 or 8 where they wanted 50 for 5s more, players not looking at the numbers jumped in with +1's then it would jump 3 then 1 to meet the sell order. Luck they were items that move at a good enough pace to clear it up, platinum doubloon took a wile to recover because it moves slow.

 

On a side subject if ArenaNet wants to put a tracking bot on my account to find red flags in need of looking into I'm fine with that.

[Aridon.8362]

Gold sellers make their money on tp flipping dude. They also sell raids when not tp flipping. Do you honestly think they go around hunting skelks for hours just to sell a mere few gold? If you look around in the black market sites you get about 300g minimum per seller. That means they would have to farm for a three week span to get 20 dollars worth in gems. Also this isn't advocating the use of gold sellers I don't condone using them, but if you're going to make a point please use actual facts to support it, saying that gold farmers exist is not true because there's a mega huge gap of a difference between a farmer and just your average Joe selling gold.

[Patchwreck.2357]

> @"Aridon.8362" said:

> Gold sellers make their money on tp flipping dude. They also sell raids when not tp flipping. Do you honestly think they go around hunting skelks for hours just to sell a mere few gold? If you look around in the black market sites you get about 300g minimum per seller. That means they would have to farm for a three week span to get 20 dollars worth in gems. Also this isn't advocating the use of gold sellers I don't condone using them, but if you're going to make a point please use actual facts to support it, saying that gold farmers exist is not true because there's a mega huge gap of a difference between a farmer and just your average Joe selling gold.

 

Did you comment on the wrong thread? The only thing we've been talking about is gold farmers playing the market and screwing with it. Unless you're talking to one of the people who went off the rails because they didn't understand the subject.

[FrostDraco.8306]

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=irhcfHBkfe0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irhcfHBkfe0 "https://youtube.com/watch?v=irhcfHBkfe0")

 

There is an entire video series on why botting in Gw2 is actually a bad thing, and why Anet doesn't need to worry about it. The way the TP is designed, it actually punishes bot users and creates a gold sink every single time they relist. It actually takes more gold out of the game by using bots.

 

Also if you look on sites that have them, the people who own the bots are normally less than 100 users. And the players base that ever actually uses the bot is 30% of that numbers. Players that only use the bot a few times for short periods is more common than those that leave it running. And of the people that leave it running 24/7, there is little money to be make by playing the TP. The number of people actually using bots is so small in gw2, its pointless to waste resources on hunting them down. Hackers and people who blatantly ruin the competitive integrity of raids and pvp are higher in number, and more of a problem.

 

His experiment is reproducible as well.

 

TL;DR. Bot users are a non-issue in this game. Next question.

[FrostDraco.8306]

> @"Patchwreck.2357" said:

> > @"Aridon.8362" said:

> > Gold sellers make their money on tp flipping dude. They also sell raids when not tp flipping. Do you honestly think they go around hunting skelks for hours just to sell a mere few gold? If you look around in the black market sites you get about 300g minimum per seller. That means they would have to farm for a three week span to get 20 dollars worth in gems. Also this isn't advocating the use of gold sellers I don't condone using them, but if you're going to make a point please use actual facts to support it, saying that gold farmers exist is not true because there's a mega huge gap of a difference between a farmer and just your average Joe selling gold.

>

> Did you comment on the wrong thread? The only thing we've been talking about is gold farmers playing the market and screwing with it. Unless you're talking to one of the people who went off the rails because they didn't understand the subject.

 

You statement is flawed. ALL players in the game are gold farmers, and they all screw with the market. Your problem is that you think there needs to be a specific kind of player doing that. NO!

 

Anytime you farm items in this game and sell on TP, you are participating in exactly what you are complaining about.

[TheGrimm.5624]

> @"WARIORSCHARGEING.2637" said:

 

> you think trade post bots are a thing in this game

> then go tell it to anet and chris clearly . i am very sure they will be very interested in hearing all about these

> trade post bots you and op are trying to talk about .

 

People have reported on the forums many times, do your own research. If you do any mass buying or selling you will encounter what the OP is talking about. Now whether or not the bots are being used to drive down prices...I can't say. If it was a gold seller trying to drive down prices to encourage people to buy more gold, not sure there, that would have to be a large endeavor. I could see how people could layer in prices to drop them overtime but again, a lot of work that. See the overall prices drops as lack of sinks and either increased supply or less demand as some of the near recent sinks have been meet. Think more in its ANet's best interest for values to drop. As seen just in this thread, if people don't have gold they need they will use their credit cards. Not saying I haven't done that but that's also why I am not in favor of loot having no value. Unless NPC vendor prices drop for items then the more that loot is gathered and devalued the more expensive things like crafting that require NPC mats becomes.

 

[mauried.5608]

What benefit is there for a gold seller to drive down TP prices?

Surely if they want to sell more in game gold , they would want to make the TP prices go up.

 

 

[Obtena.7952]

You can say whatever you want OP, but you still have no idea how significant a problem this is to the game. It's not about whether the bots exist, they do. It's about what fraction of the market they impact. You don't know that and I'm not even sure Anet would know that because the people that are making these bots are trying to NOT GET CAUGHT in the first place.

 

But here is another food for thought ... if Anet could even measure how much of the market activity is affected by bots ... and players couldn't .. .then why would Anet do anything? In otherwords, they can say they do all kinds of things and can't prevent bots from popping up daily ... which could be true and explain what you are seeing. The whole premise of your thread assumes Anet isn't doing enough, but you don't know what they are doing, because you don't know the difference between a game where Anet does nothing to the bots and a game where the bots don't exist. You simply don't know ... but you sure have assumed you do in this thread.

[Patchwreck.2357]

> @"FrostDraco.8306" said:

> [https://youtube.com/watch?v=irhcfHBkfe0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irhcfHBkfe0 "https://youtube.com/watch?v=irhcfHBkfe0")

>

> There is an entire video series on why botting in Gw2 is actually a bad thing, and why Anet doesn't need to worry about it. The way the TP is designed, it actually punishes bot users and creates a gold sink every single time they relist. It actually takes more gold out of the game by using bots.

>

> Also if you look on sites that have them, the people who own the bots are normally less than 100 users. And the players base that ever actually uses the bot is 30% of that numbers. Players that only use the bot a few times for short periods is more common than those that leave it running. And of the people that leave it running 24/7, there is little money to be make by playing the TP. The number of people actually using bots is so small in gw2, its pointless to waste resources on hunting them down. Hackers and people who blatantly ruin the competitive integrity of raids and pvp are higher in number, and more of a problem.

>

> His experiment is reproducible as well.

>

> TL;DR. Bot users are a non-issue in this game. Next question.

 

1st "to acquire in-game currency later selling it for real-world money." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_farming

 

Yes I saw how that 1 guy looked at that 1 bot and less than 100 users but we are talking about the 14 pages of Gold Farmers and how Gold Farmers are bad for the game economy especially when they use bots to jack up the market. Those 14 pages are also still there, gold farmer are still bad, they still use bots. Nothing has changed about the subject.

[Patchwreck.2357]

> @"Obtena.7952" said:

> You can say whatever you want OP, but you still have no idea how significant a problem this is to the game. It's not about whether the bots exist, they do. It's about what fraction of the market they impact. You don't know that and I'm not even sure Anet would know that because the people that are making these bots are trying to NOT GET CAUGHT in the first place.

>

> But here is another food for thought ... if Anet could even measure how much of the market activity is affected by bots ... and players couldn't .. .then why would Anet do anything? In otherwords, they can say they do all kinds of things and can't prevent bots from popping up daily ... which could be true and explain what you are seeing. The whole premise of your thread assumes Anet isn't doing enough, but you don't know what they are doing, because you don't know the difference between a game where Anet does nothing to the bots and a game where the bots don't exist. You simply don't know ... but you sure have assumed you do in this thread.

 

You keeps saying this as if any game that has ever had to deal with gold farmer has ever said we have a 32.685% problem with gold framers.... and if i can't say 32.685% then everyone should just SHhhhhhh No one talk about gold farmers! Ever! until you have the number just stop saying the word gold farmer!

[Obtena.7952]

No, I'm saying that you have no idea what the impact of gold farms to THIS game is, so you can't make any sensible argument that they need to be addressed. You might be complaining about something that can't reasonably be dealt with. You just DON'T know. You might be complaining about something that Anet deals exceptionally well with. You just DON'T know that either. You have literally no idea how much of a problem this is ... or isn't ... to make a sensible discussion out of it. You have no idea about any of what you are complaining about here. Detecting the presence of a bot ... or many bots ... does not qualify you or anyone else to say how significant a problem this is.

[Vargamonth.2047]

> @"FrostDraco.8306" said:

> [https://youtube.com/watch?v=irhcfHBkfe0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irhcfHBkfe0 "https://youtube.com/watch?v=irhcfHBkfe0")

>

> There is an entire video series on why botting in Gw2 is actually a bad thing, and why Anet doesn't need to worry about it. The way the TP is designed, it actually punishes bot users and creates a gold sink every single time they relist. It actually takes more gold out of the game by using bots.

>

> Also if you look on sites that have them, the people who own the bots are normally less than 100 users. And the players base that ever actually uses the bot is 30% of that numbers. Players that only use the bot a few times for short periods is more common than those that leave it running. And of the people that leave it running 24/7, there is little money to be make by playing the TP. The number of people actually using bots is so small in gw2, its pointless to waste resources on hunting them down. Hackers and people who blatantly ruin the competitive integrity of raids and pvp are higher in number, and more of a problem.

>

> His experiment is reproducible as well.

>

> TL;DR. Bot users are a non-issue in this game. Next question.

 

While not dangerous for the game economy, those bots can be, as explained in the videos, definitely unfair for the players who manually try to play the market efficiently. Unless we're talking about food and other items I could need ASAP, I'll rarely buy anything from a direct sell listing. I'll always put buy orders, sometimes to keep or use the item myself, sometimes to relist it as markets bots do.

Since many players could be interested in the same items, be it for personal use or flipping, most of those buy orders can and will be eventually outbid every day, and since checking the whole list of buy orders for possible outbids takes time, I'll only check for those situations every now and then (once or twice a day, in my case).

If the competition is also human, then that's perfectly fine. The time each if us stays at the top of the buy order list will be somewhat evenly shared based on the amount of competitors and the time each one is willing to invest checking for outbids.

However, if the competition is a bot checking its own list over and over every few minutes, then we are all doomed. We're all out of that market unless we behave like a full time bot (which doesn't seem specially healthy) or use a bot ourselves. So yes, bots are still a problem, or better said, letting those possibly illegal bots run unpunished creates a really unfair and unhealthy gray are for some players.

In any case, I'm with the video series author on looking for an easy solution through game design. It could be possible, for example, to force buy orders to stay for several minutes or hours, so it's not possible to run a full cash, constantly updated buy order list. It's far from a perfect solution, but might be an improvement.

[Patchwreck.2357]

> @"Obtena.7952" said:

> No, I'm saying that you have no idea what the impact of gold farms to THIS game is, so you can't make any sensible argument that they need to be addressed. You might be complaining about something that can't reasonably be dealt with. You just DON'T know. You might be complaining about something that Anet deals exceptionally well with. You just DON'T know that either. You have literally no idea how much of a problem this is ... or isn't ... to make a sensible discussion out of it. You have no idea about any of what you are complaining about here. Detecting the presence of a bot ... or many bots ... does not qualify you or anyone else to say how significant a problem this is.

 

You keep insisting that someone other than you has ever said "significant problem" even though this was already explained to you once before. ...

 

So basically you may absolutely know you have rats but shouldn't jump to a conclusion that these rats are bad rats, ones that live in a neutral state with the household or the one's making ball gowns for stepchildren. As far as I'm reading in your posts you seem to make it very clear that you believe gold farming is such an incredibly complex topic no player should ever bring it up to the devs or each other (what im doing here and now) or speak their opinion without mouths of data so they can say 32.68%.