Attention Firiona Vie AFK Bazaar Bots!

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by zerkarinoh, Jul 19, 2019.

  1. Duder Augur

    Systematic short interval untercutting is not reasonable and not a QoL feature that should be added. How would anything be worth anything? When a 2nd person places a like item for sale should they both instantly drop to 1 copper? EQ has a free-enterprise system and I want it to stay that way. You can reason all you want with the guy stealing from the rich to feed the poor, he is still a thief.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  2. Duder Augur

    Also note, Im not saying that those programs don't offer a lot of things that would be QoL improvements. Like you said, many of the tools they provide have been implemented into the game over time based on QoL. Regardless, I am saying this is absolutely not one of those things.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  3. NameAlreadyInUse #CactusGate

    First - I love you catman :p Seriously, one of my favorite people in all of EQ! I wasn't able to find anything with a quick search, but I absolutely take your word for it, that there are automated /baz hacks for eq.

    Well, yes - I do believe it is reasonable, especially if the interval was hourly. But I agree that very fast intervals (several minutes or less) would be indicative of, but not proof of, automation. When I bothered to do /baz trading, I set up a couple of toons and very quickly realized that updating prices through the game's interface was ridiculous. I switched to editing the .ini files and maintaining spreadsheets. I did this manually - but FAR FAR FAR faster than the /baz interface.

    I could totally see somebody doing searches for the items they are selling, and manually update all the prices in their spreadsheet. They only have to copy/enter the lowest selling price from the /baz - less than 10 keystrokes per item, the spreadsheet would automatically change all the prices to 99% of that and output the new .ini file - which is then loaded all at once into the game (through the default, built-in mechanics).

    I am by no means saying that this is what is happening, or denying automation exists - I only want to point out that this is exactly a thing I used to do all the time - and it is perfectly legit.


    I don't believe that EQ's economy is anything that is in danger, and certainly not from anything in the /baz. The /baz is what it is: an insufficient, outdated, artificially capped craigslist-like tool that is better than nothing for some people. I believe that the /baz's artificial cap is already far more damaging to EQ "economies" than automated price matching ever could be.

    While automated price matching is frustrating to sellers, who must up their game to compete, it is generally AWESOME for consumers.

    My first remark, joking of course, is that the game already decided that your time was worth at least $9.99 per month. To DBG. Unfortunately, your time has a negative dollar value to yourself, if you abide by DBG's no-3rd-party-transaction rules - which I'm sure we all do. OK - joking out of the way :)

    Competition would work exactly like it does right now. And how it always has :) Competition breeds innovation, and innovation breeds change. I think we are witnessing change in action, with this automated price matching.

    Oh and also, change leads to fear. Fear is the path to the dark side…fear leads to anger…anger leads to hate…hate leads to suffering.
  4. gnomeboss Augur

    I set up a buyer to purchase some coins. Went 100k higher than the best offer. Checked the prices of some of bazaar enemies. Found an item or two I could camp just to undercut them for spite. Nice! Checked the buy offers and my coin price had been jumped. OK, I will up my offer. Sent some tells. Checked barter. Jumped again by the same guy! Thought great, automated trader. That sucks. Upped my price again, played some ForumQuest. Got back on trader and of course was jumped again. Only I now had a tell. The guy upping the offer repeatedly suggested we should just match prices because he could do this all day until we were both paying bazaar prices. I laughed and logged because I got owned on my coin adventure.

    tl;dr: OP you aren’t the only crazy person checking prices constantly all day long. i know there is some automated pricing happening, but it’s not all automated.
    Killaas_FV likes this.
  5. Xyphen Maximum Augur

    This isn't true at all. To begin with, automated price competition is a very real and very critical thing in economics (see: the stock market). The basic fundamentals of an MMORPG's economy share the same characteristics of a real economy such as inflation, price elasticity, supply & demand, etc. There are several scientific papers on the subject that you can find on Google Scholar.

    The only real argument against this is that it's cheating, and I'm not advocating that. Ultimately what this does is hedge against inflation, which is more or less a good thing considering the damage Kronos have done to the economy.

    Outside of that, this sounds like a rotary telephone company complaining about cell phones.
  6. Duder Augur

    It sounds like you are advocating for automated quick interval undercutting. Its not competition if its automatically lower prices with no judgement being applied. Any provider of goods of any type may undercut all they want, when they undercut to the point where they are costing themselves money that is different. If they want to do it, that's fine. In the real world they go out of business if they do that. Keep trying to apply all the reasoning to this that you want, it isn't the real world. It isn't WoW, this is Everquest. Welcome.
  7. Xyphen Maximum Augur

    I'm not advocating anything. I haven't set up a trader in the bazaar since PoP so my only bottom-line is the price point.

    What DBG should really do is lock prices that are set for a certain amount of time (hours or days). For example, if I put a Cloth Shirt up for 100pp, I shouldn't be able to change the price for a few hours afterwards.

    You could then implement an option to pay a higher fee for the option to alter prices sooner. That would level the playing field a bit by de-incentivizing price manipulation since the margins would be lower (but the overall current system is still in place).
  8. Tappin Augur


    A client side injection is not only against to EULA it is cheating. I don't care if you use 3rd party programs to play the game, but stuff like this needs to stop - it ruins people's ability to enjoy the game.
    Duder likes this.
  9. Tappin Augur

    I still stand by what I said before... the best thing DBG can do for the bazaar is delete it. Problems solved.
  10. svann Augur

    take a break!
  11. Tsunomi New Member

    Just a thought but could you beat these sellers by putting a trader up with same items and price super low. Then go buy up all the items from them at the new low rate?
  12. Schadenfreude Augur

    The ability to automate EQ bazaar functions has existed for a long, long time. I first read about it on the Safehouse forums if you can remember those a good 15 years ago.

    I won't tell you what to Google but a combination of the zone where it happens and the affectionate nickname for something that made Apple famous decades ago should bring up some hits.
    Barton likes this.
  13. svann Augur

    I once needed 12 semi rare drops for crafting. Bazaar price was 50k. Buyer price was 100p with quantity 999. Obviously a reseller, right? So I setup a buyer for just a little higher. It became a buyers war with each of us alternately reraising the other. I didnt really have any choice. So I sent him an in game email. "I only need 12 widgets and then Ill be out of your hair. Just let me get the next 12 and then you can continue to buy them all for 100p. If not we will continue to outbid each other. Be reasonable". He never responded but kept overbidding me. So we kept on and I eventually got them for 900 each. Thing is, now the going price is 900, and I kept my buyer up with a 1 widget buy for 900 so forever after that he would have to buy them for more than 900. He would have been much better off letting me get my 12 widgets without a fuss but he was stupid about it.
  14. BadPallyGuildLeader Augur

    rs

    Daily reading list back then:

    1) LOS - Legacy of Steel guild website for lulz ingame tells
    2) Safehouse - for lulz and who figured out what the devs would never guess in a million years someone would figure out.
    3) FOH website : PGT and Reetaard rickshaw; The occasional furor rant was worth the stop as well.
    4) Graffe's wizard compendium - Because whizbang, samahdi, rombus, and the crew were always wrong and arguing about something.
  15. Andarriel Everquest player since 2000



    Yea been there done that. I have 2 sellers figure I make 3rd account to have one buying stuff I need and there was always just one buyer that would barely beat me change price surely pretty fast would barely beat me again. It gets to a point were its no fun and you just give up as they can redo all there prices very fast and I have to manually do it very very slowly. So is this type of program or whatever they use legal? Im getting to the point cant beat join them kinda what Durant did lol.

    Andarriel

    ps now I just have 3 sellers now. be awesome some day you could buy and sell from the one char both at the same time.
    svann likes this.
  16. Duder Augur


    No
  17. Tappin Augur

    The two most widely used programs use a client side injection - they are against the EULA.
  18. Duder Augur


    He asked if they were legal, I responded "No", as in, No, they are not legal.
  19. NameAlreadyInUse #CactusGate

    I'm pretty sure that's not something that players can determine (you, me, or anybody else). You can believe that the written rules are clear (I do not share that belief). But if the games' handlers do not say anything on the subject or take action against anybody, it seems more obvious to me that it is acceptable.
  20. Duder Augur

    Yeah, the interpretation is very left to the open with other "3rd party" programs staunchly supported and even suggested by the devs. I hadn't thought about it that way. Without definition, it cant even be claimed whether any certain program may be against the EULA to use.

    In the end though, it isn't the Software that is illegal, but what this software does for them. It allows their prices to be automatically updated without them at the keyboard, unattended gameplay. And that IS defined to be illegal/against the rules.
    NameAlreadyInUse likes this.