Baz price scripts are getting out of hand

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Sindace, Sep 28, 2019.

  1. Duder Augur


    1 plat was an example. Also, I have no problem with being undercut. But by some one who's not at the keys, I am not okay with.

    Items need a chance to sell. What you describe is not how this game works. We are all playing the same GAME here. When you starting making up "this is what I think it should be so I'm gonna do it", you are breaking the rules of the game and ruining the potential fun of the game.

    When you play Monopoly do you just forego the rules? Nahh, I don't think I should go to jail and not collect my $200, I think I'll skip that and give me my $200 because I make the rules? Not much of a game when people self implement their own rules and circumvent the ones they don't like.

    Get with it.
    Nennius likes this.
  2. Duder Augur



    The only ones allowed to? You cant do that without your scripts? You are unable, aren't ALLOWED to manually update your own prices? Take a minute to think before you reply next time.
    Zanarnar likes this.
  3. Metapsyche Augur

    I never once said there was a problem with updating your own prices, or even undercutting the competition. Perhaps if you were a little more focused in your argument, we wouldn’t have to bounce between two very separate points.

    1.) unattended automation is out of hand (I agree with this)
    2.) I can’t sell my wares, because I’m greedy/lazy

    Very different points. You seem to be in both categories, and apparently attacking me on a personal level is how you seek to justify or support those points. My argument was quite clear, if you want to sell something- sell it at the lowest price you’re willing to take. It’s really simple. If no one wants it at that price, you’re not going to sell it.

    Perhaps if you spent more time reading my comments and the example from my original post, you’d actually be able to respond with more than a half witted attack or silly straw man argument.

    Again, I’ll repeat myself because you seem to have a hard time with comprehension.

    Automated botting isn’t good. However, it has little to no affect on the bazaar if you’re being honest about your prices. Being greedy and trying to get every last platinum for your goods will put you into the realm of battle with the automated bots. Selling something at the lowest price you’re willing to take, alleviates that issue.
  4. Metapsyche Augur

    I agree with you on this point so much. A clear line as to acceptable vs unacceptable along with enforcement of that line would be amazing.
  5. Zanarnar Augur

    No, in this case its you trying to twist the point to make automated, unattended, gameplay not against the rules somehow.

    Its so not good, its specifically against the rules. Period. There is nothing you can say that changes that point. Noone is that someone undercut them, they're upset that its automated, and there is nothing you can really do about it. Its not another player deciding to drop his price to be lower then yours... its a script playing the game and following a set of rules to auto-adjust the price to ensure they're the lowest price.

    Again, that automation is not permitted in Everquest. I'm not sure how else to make that point, since you seem to not get that simple point makes any justification you try to make irrelevant.

    (LINK)
    Corwyhn Lionheart and Duder like this.
  6. Duder Augur



    You never said any of those things before hand, am I supposed to be able to read your mind as to your original thought and intent? Say what you mean. What you had said before, all of the things I quoted, did not elaborate any of what you just said nor clearly communicate it in any way. Now you expand your thought and pretend like that's what you said to begin with. And asking you to actually apply thought before you type was not a personal attack, I don't aim to insult any one. If you feel insulted, its likely because you feel like you were made to look silly with good reasoning.

    As for personal attacks, look at your attack laden response. I have no problem comprehending what you actually say, say it next time and don't expect people to read your mind over the internet.

    You're also assuming a whole lot of my bazaar practices, when in fact, you couldn't be more wrong. This has become a conversation between you and I that has now diverted from the topic at hand. Let's let it get back on track. No hard feelings.
  7. Metapsyche Augur

    You are correct, automated game play is against the rules as they are written. The rules are also not being fully enforced.

    I propose this question, if 10 mph over the 60 mph speed limit is “OK”, is the speed limit 60, or 70?

    *shrugs* I don’t know the answer, I’ve always questioned the point of a rule that is not enforced. It doesn’t seem like a very effective rule.
  8. Narlee Scholar

    I am interested in helping to alleviate this issue and open to ideas of ways to implement a code fix that will help prevent this kind of action. Please suggest some additional ideas and or improve on some of the ones below:

    Some things that come to my mind are (ranked from easiest to hardest to implement):
    - Increasing the minimum time between searches (hurts everyone a little)
    - Limiting the number of searches per minute (a slight improvement on the first choice)
    - Each successive search increases the time the search is locked out from a repeated search (a significant improvement, over 1&2 because normal players that search 3 or 4 times won't be as impacted that much, but bots would)
    - Preventing searching if you are in /trader mode - then we could additionally limit the number of times you can enter / exit trader mode per hour. (this at least scales up the complexity for the bot and prevents constant searching while in trader mode).

    Just know you have been heard, and it is something I would like to address. So if we can focus on ideas that help us prevent the bot behavior with code, then let's do so. The concern is acknowledged. I am saying none of the solutions above are great, but they are ideas and all of them have some impact to non-bots, so if discussion can get more focused around how we can implement a deterrent measure that doesn't hurt all players or is at worst minimal impact, please let's get it on the issue tracker ASAP!

    P.S. Coming to test should be the other bazaar fixes as well (/barter and over cap traders), I tried to get them in September's patch but the code didn't make it through internal testing in time, but a little extra bake time is good with changes like this so please try it out on test once it is available.
    KC13, eepok, Kukaw and 10 others like this.
  9. CatsPaws No response to your post cause your on ignore

    How about a freeze on your traders price for X amount of time after you go into trader mode. Like 2 hours or something.

    But you do have the choice to take the item off so its not for sale so if you make a mistake you just pull the item and then can relist it later.
    eepok and Skuz like this.
  10. Crokker Lorekeeper

  11. yosco Augur

    All of these fixes would also adversely impact people trying to setup a legit trader, depending on how tight your "limits" were. It sounds like the intention would be to slow down updates rather than eliminate them in their entirety, which I'm not sure is an effective way to combat the problem.
  12. Duder Augur



    I agree, a fix of sorts is very difficult.

    Really its not that the automation is occurring instantly. The very quickly updating traders are not so common in my experience. However, I have discovered many updating on 1hr, 90m, and 2h intervals.

    So increasing the limit between searches would only hurt the normal trader and consumer and not effect the scripted traders whatsoever.


    This is a decent idea. However, again, time limiting will not hurt the automated traders. They will still accomplish their goal, listing their prices without little to no effort and reaping the benefits. Its not hard to loot, track down, hold onto, or organize items to sell when all you have to do is put it on a trader and push one button. They don't know how much its being listed for and don't care. They have things to sell, that's all that matters.


    Even if traders were moved to offline only, there would be scripts to log back in at set intervals and readjust prices.

    I am void of solution ideas, but I am very glad that the problem has been acknowledged. Thank you.

  13. Odiiusx Elder

    How about instead of trying to fix this problem in different area's of the game one at a time, you just go straight to the source of the problem and figure out a way to script seeing those unmentionable 3rd party programs. Start with 7 day suspensions so those users know DBG is back in control, 14 day second offense, perma-ban 3rd offense....problem solved.
    HoodenShuklak, Duder and Boze like this.
  14. Boze TLP complaint factory

    Nuclear option: make offline trader/buyer the only option. Would at least solve scripted live updates.
    Leigo, oldkracow, Coagagin and 6 others like this.
  15. Jhenna_BB Proudly Prestigious Pointed Purveyor of Pincusions

    If I'm thinking it, cheaters will think it: Logging in a free account and swapping back and forth between the toon on /trader and the free toon undoes some of these ideas. You will have to adversely affect silver accounts in a very punishing way to make this code work.

    Since eyes are on this thread, you can help players equal the playing field and combat people cornering markets and resellers with larger Trader Satchels. Player UI's have always been built for 200 trader slots since Luclin, bags just didn't go larger than 10 back then. The more inventory that can be placed, the more Capitalism gets to come in on competitive price due to availability.
    Mintalie likes this.
  16. Zanarnar Augur

    So, really, I think auction house style sorts most of this out ;)

    But, here is my take (without knowing how the automation is working.)
    I'm going to assume that the scripts are searching out the prices, updating the local ini file as they go, and once they finish checking them all, they make the trader ingame close the window, and open trader again and start trading. I believe opening that window causes the game to read in the ini file.

    If those are correct assumptions (can't verify at the moment); then first of all, only read the ini file on zone in. That simple change should make it much harder for these scripts to do their thing as they'll have to camp or zone in/out every time they run. That would be a good start.. but it will only really hurt the scripts that update quickly. Ones that update slow probably wouldn't care about the time it takes to log out/in...

    Now even better? apply some analytics to your logs and see which traders are doing things like this on a repeating schedule, have someone go over the log data to verify then ban that account. Keep doing it until you can't find any more people matching the patterns. The lack of enforcement of the rules has made this issue so much worse.

    Most of my other ideas, would only be temporary fixes until the scripts adapt their behavior. With the bazaar system the way it is, my best ideas revolve around detection and actual followup with consequences by a human. It'll take a bit of work initially, but eventually if cheaters get banned and lose everything on their trader accounts, it will stop being more then a rare problem before too long.

    Thanks for being open to both ideas and that its being worked on. I hope someone much smarter then I chimes in with a solid way to handle this, I couldn't come up with anything good after a weekend of pondering.
  17. Lianeb Augur

    Make seller and buyer modes require offline mode with a 24hr or whatever lock on the character entering the the world. With the ability to kick it offline but still incur the lock in case you mispriced something
    Jhenna_BB, Duder and Boze like this.
  18. yosco Augur

    If the scripts are advanced enough to do the things people are complaining about, then it would probably be trivial to code in some variance in percentage change and/or update periodicity. Instead of saying "update every 60 minutes" a scripter/botter or whatever you want to call them would say "update every 60 minutes, +/- 1-15 minutes." An update would happen 45 minutes after the previous update, but the next one wouldn't happen until 70 minutes later, etc. etc.

    *shrug*
  19. Lidwen Elf Stalker Journeyman

    Really I think this is a Mountain out of a Mole Hill, Automating pricing is a Devil is basically what i am reading when its really not such a Big deal just folks annoyed other folks undercut them Screaming OMG must be a bot.. Really the Only TRUE way to make this not an Issue Would be to Charge a Listing Fee for items. And make the Bazaar not require Us to be In Trader mode. be it Offline or Online.

    Neither Option Do i think is good Honestly I see no Problem with the status Quo

    What Might be a Good Option is To Include Item prices when u go to list an item So You can price your item accordingly if u want to sell it quick. Cause i dunno about you right before i list anyitem I look it up, Then price mine based on prices that are present.
    Duder likes this.
  20. yosco Augur


    lol, so people who only have one account and have a trader toon and their main toon on that same account are screwed?
    Moege and Corwyhn Lionheart like this.