Attention Firiona Vie AFK Bazaar Bots!

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

  1. zerkarinoh New Member

    First, a little about myself! I always have a trader up in some form. I'm self-employed and am super lucky to be able to keep a baz trader up while at work on top of running one while I'm at home. In short, it's rare I'm not watching over my trader in some form (at least, these days because I *have* to).

    Which brings me to this post. I've noticed a trend on FV that can only be explained by AFK or assisted scripts adjusting people's prices. How do I know? I'd love to explain!

    Let's say I list a phat lewt item for 234,786 pp. I like random numbers, and you'll see why!

    Uh oh! Suddenly 3 different traders have updated their prices! Hmm. Their prices are the same number: 232,438 pp. That's 99% x my original price. Must be a coincidence!!!!

    I change my price to a bit lower, but another random number and guess what!?!? 99% again by the same traders! Sometimes almost instantly, sometimes a few moments later.

    I play around, raise my prices, lower them, remove my items completely (that's when their prices go waaaaay up). Always 99% of what my (or the current lowest) price is.

    So there are two explanations, right? Either someone is super dedicated and sitting there going, "Okay, he just listed his items for X, so I multiply his price times 99% and relist my items super quick...inhumanly quick!"

    Or it's automated, and they're cheating.

    I start a new chat channel. Start talking to myself in that channel saying things like, "I'm going to relist these items for this price and I bet all my krono these specific bazaar traders relist their items for this exact price!" So far I'm never wrong on my guesses because guess what? It's always 99%.

    Well, just in case I record what I'm doing on my bazaar trader and my chat channel so when I send the videos in along with my petitions/reports, the GM's can follow right along and watch you all magically change your prices right along with me! I mean, it really is cheating magic!

    So cut it out, or don't---because to be honest I kind of enjoy it--but I would certainly love to go back to the days of listing my items and being able to forget about my trader for a few hours.

    I've been playing since Kunark , and I'm sure this kind of thing has been around for awhile, but I'm going to do what I can on FV to report every person I come across who is obviously using an AFK script to update their bazaar prices, with video evidence of course!

    To those of you who are honest traders on *any* server...pay attention! Those who always seem to undercut you by just a bit...test them! Record it! Put it on youtube and send it along with your petition!

    Thanks for reading and happy trading! I'm watching you! *wink wink*
  2. Duder Augur

    I explained this "phenomenon" in these posts:

    https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ader-for-silver-veterans.258639/#post-3805574

    https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...or-silver-veterans.258639/page-2#post-3805628

    It is scripted, it is a problem on BB too. I have begun petitioning those traders and have received a canned response and the traders live on. The code is available to see exactly how it functions if you do a search in google.

    These traders are ruining the value of items, devaluing peoples invested time, and making it impossible to sell any item that one of these scripted traders also has. It all amounts to tampering with the economy.

    And before some of you want to mention that you can lower your price to an obscenely lower value and when they undercut you you then buy it, to that I say that for one, it is not easy to determine their update interval time unless it is a very fast one. An hourly one can be difficult to get down to the minute. And why would that be necessary? Because it would be foolish to set, lets say an eok ultra rare at 10k in the bazaar for an hour and sit there and keep updating that cheating traders prices and hope it doesn't get bought before you can snag theirs. The chances are high that it will be bought by some one before the cheaters prices undercut you unless they have set a very fast update interval. I have had it happen with certain items, most the time the buyers are nice enough to send it back when I explain what it is I was doing. --- Also, I have encountered people who have the capability to set minimums for items to combat people doing exactly this. Which only allows you to get to their bottom and undercut it for so long, this destroys the items value very quickly.

    Surely DBG has bazaar logs that would be able to determine that this is unattended gameplay very easily, however, I have yet to see any slow down in these automated traders.

    Also, include the magebots farming draniks hollows or whichever OOW instance it is and selling 150k blue diamonds. diamonds, and similar numbers of all other gems and TS mats to Wollems in North Ro per month on EVERY server, equating to about 100million plat, the influx of this kind of quantity of platinum and devaluing of items threatens to destroy the economy.
  3. Duder Augur

    Just browsing the bazaar you can quickly see that there are lots of traders who use these scripts to price and put their traders in offline mode. That's not really devastating to the economy like the ones who leave their traders online running these scripts on timed intervals are.
  4. gnomeboss Augur

    yes! i saw these dudes in nro when i was doing epic ornament quest and i was stumped. it was such a mystery. and then, idk, a month later, i saw the same dudes, or some of them, running to an instance in bloodfields. every server? this guy is an overachiever!
  5. Sobmre Augur


    I also seen this, and did quite a bit digging on it, there are teams of mages on every server, FV having x5 the amount of them. they bind themselves in Ruined City of Dranik and get the Catacombs instance.
    once they plow through it they use the Slide gate thing to port to Nro sell at the vendor and gate back. they do this 24/7. if you wanna see them goto the magus camp in nro on any server and wait about 10-15 mins.


    EQ should follow the Plat and ban the holder accounts, then give us a cut like the irs does for whisle blowers. then do a press release on the massive plat farming biz taken down by players to some gaming sites and get some free advertisement.

    i await my cut of 1billion plats
    Boze, YellowBelly and Duder like this.
  6. zerkarinoh New Member

    So, to the people still using/doing this who think they've magically figured out, "I'll just change the percentage that I undercut...to 97!!! That will fool him!" You're mistaken. :)
  7. Moege Augur

    So you get these bots to set human looking prices. Well thanks I guess now I don't know who not to buy from.
  8. gnomeboss Augur

  9. Andarriel Everquest player since 2000

    Yea be nice if they could fix this problem its ruining the eq xp when you got people using automated programs to just beat your price and being able to do it easily since they don't have to reprice every manually like people who don't cheat have to do it. Got buyers that do the same thing its pretty annoying. your either gonna be buying at a high price or selling at a cheap one no fun. cant they detect these programs? its cheating and against the rules just like stupid bots.

    Andarriel
  10. Kursis Paracelsus Journeyman

    hmm maybe you could automate a counter strategy.... have 2 bots... one that lowers price to 2plat... and 2nd bot buys it fast.... other bots lower their prices and you buy all the 1plat stuff that was preventing you from selling :)
  11. Kursis Paracelsus Journeyman

    or fish for the buy threshold on items they are selling... and set your price 1.01% above it... his stuff lowers to that threshold, then buy his stuff... and then sell it all at the price you wanted in first place...
  12. Duder Augur

    Apparently you cant read
  13. FawnTemplar Augur

    I, for one, do not buy from people who do this. When I look at prices I don't go for the lower one unless it is significantly lower. #dontsupportjerks
    Brovaar, Coagagin and Duder like this.
  14. Snowman Augur

    from all I have seen - m q is allowed on FV !
  15. NameAlreadyInUse #CactusGate

    I have a couple of questions and an observation:

    1) How do you know this is a hack? (Other than being faster than you can comprehend.)
    2) How do you know this is not DBG's own programming? I think it is perfectly reasonable that they may be doing this themselves to ensure high /baz prices, to encourage krono sales.

    Observation: IF this is a "hack", the only thing that makes this sort of thing "bad" is that DBG only allows "rule breakers" to do it.

    Automated price monitoring and matching is how all REAL LIFE stores operate now. One of the most absurd parts of the EQ equation is the idea that you can prevent people from being creative or that you can prevent people from using real life tools. I'm pretty sure that almost all of DBG's attempts to control human nature have resulted in punishing the majority of their "above average" player base in an attempt to keep the mindless whiners happy.

    What I'm saying is: would you have a problem with these price-matching bots if YOU could do it legitimately? Of course not, it's literally how all resellers work.
  16. Andarriel Everquest player since 2000

    talking on this forum ive noticed someone who selling the exact stuff as a a person b4so either they got warned or something and changed names. I know because it was the same person selling a stack and half of primodial radiance's. so yea maybe there doing something but its not fixing the problem. Get caught on one account they just move to another.

    Andarriel
  17. NameAlreadyInUse #CactusGate

    If your personal role-playing rules force you to use a parchment and quill to track all of your items and sales in the /baz, good for you! But it's silly to think that the other guy is not going to use a spreadsheet, or a log reader, or a memory viewer (to read HIS OWN COMPUTER's memory).

    I'm not saying you should use a spreadsheet any more than I'm saying you should use any other tool. I'm just saying it is very "head in the sand" to think that other people won't take shortcuts that are available.

    And it is even more unreasonable to think that people wouldn't use them when the other games (like WOW) have provided these capabilities to their players and encouraged them to use them for...ever?
  18. Duder Augur

    -I know because for one, like I said, google it, it is against forum rules to post links to that type stuff.
    -Two, I know its not DBG because I found out that a trader I has suspected of doing this, on auto update, actually belonged to some one I knew and when I talked to them they stopped.
    -Three, it is too predictable, I question if you read the fellas first post at all about predicting the price updates. Not to mention my addition of intervals. Im not sure about you but do you make sure to update your trader by 1% lower than everyone elses prices at exactly 7 minutes after every hour?(Example of predictable timing) Is it reasonable to believe that these people are doing this manually?
    -Four, reiterating, go look up the code, see that the behavior follows it to a T.
    -Five, I do undercut people legitimately (by a significant amount to persuade people to buy from me), that isn't the problem. Undercutting is fine, automated undercutting destroys an items worth because the automated undercut gets undercut, then that gets undercut, then that gets undercut until its worthless. Also because this code is so widely available as well as the programs that employ this code, it is not beyond anyone's reach to use it. I would not and do not use things like this by choice.
    -Six, EQ developed its own "auction house", it functions the way it was designed, all games are different. The economy has developed around the design and design limitations, if you start changing things it could and likely would severely jeopardize the stability of the economy.

    I don't want a game deciding what MY time is worth. The bazaar allows me to do that and allows other players to determine what their time and others time is worth. If pricing were automatic then how would competition work?

    Seven, save catman.
  19. NameAlreadyInUse #CactusGate

    I remember not too long ago, people on these forums were screaming for the head of a player who posted a video or screenshot and they had timestamps in their chat windows. Were the timestamps part of the game client? No, they were added by a modification.

    The EQ handlers could have banned the player, but did they? No. They recognized that this was simply a "quality of life" improvement that really should have already been in place, and the devs added it to the game.

    I think this /baz phenomenon is the same thing: the people who are using a perfectly reasonable quality of life modification are being vilified. The reasonable thing would be for DBG to simply expose an API for the /baz that allowed everybody to see all the prices, all the time (like other games).

    However, DBG's self-professed lack of resources/inability to fix more glaring /baz bugs (like the inappropriate plat cap), means that the more likely outcome will be a slap on the hand, maybe a ban or two, and maybe an official rule change to give lip service to the people who think it is unfair.

    But I am certain that the behavior will not stop, because that is human nature.
  20. Duder Augur

    You're right, it is unreasonable to think that they wouldn't. I stated in my original post that the people who use these programs to load their trader now and then, once a day, less, are not a real issue even. It is the automated short interval undercutting that is destroying items value and making it impossible for other people to sell anything that the scripted traders are selling. That is unfair and there are rules against it. Compare it to whatever you want, doesn't make it right, it is against the rules, it is cheating. No amount of applied reason can change that.