Guild Wars 2

Are there trading bots?
If so, are they farming the TP and in the process making it more difficult for the rest of us to get items we want for the game?

With the success of efforts to stamp out combat and harvesting bots, the TP is the logical place for bots to farm GW2 gold. Not only is the TP a direct source of GW2 gold, the API provides a ready source of information for bots and the simplistic nature of TP trading provides very little information to identify bots.

I’ve been trying to buy some items with low turnover and a relatively wide margin between buy and sell prices for my characters and have noticed there is at least one trader out there (the offer quantities are always the same) that consistently outbids buy offers within a couple of minutes of placing them. I’ve noticed them doing this even when someone places a single buy offer far above the going rate. Looking at these items, I’ve also noticed the same happening on the for sale side, even when the someone posts a single item for sale far below the going market rate.

This could just be the behaviour of some fanatical traders.

However, the speed at which the buy and sell offers are being made and the mindlessly consistently nature of those offers has me wondering if trading bots involved.

Man, the TP is enormous. You just don’t comprehend the magnitude of trade on this thing. I’m not trying to condescend. It’s just that’s the root of all these misunderstandings about the BLTC.

^
That and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people doing nothing but playing the TP. These people keep a constant watch on whats goin on in the TP, and are constantly buying and selling. Are they bots? probably not, but even so it would be hard to determine who is a bot and who is not a bot. (yes, I did that intentionally). My guess would be not bots got lots of hot shot plots for the TP. :P

Short: Yes it is possible to program a TP bot to buy/sell, but only to a certain extent.

Long: Well let’s assume your theory holds merit. These bots are most likely running on stop loss and buy in algorithms. In simple terms, the program says to buy in on item A at the price of X and hold on to until it goes up to Y. Stop loss is step up so if X<Y by 2 weeks or so, then sell it. Also it would be running logic tests continually to see if they still have the bid or if they were undercutted. It defiantly is possible. Is it fully autonomous? Hell no. However can it be automatic in some respects? Absolutely! If you keep undercutting them, you can actually drive the price up or down without spending much money. It makes for easy market manipulation.

So while it may be possible, the question remains, is it actually going on?

Yes there are. I have spoken to people who have them and you can easily search for them yourselves.

But I think they are involved in markets with high velocity – so don’t blame them for precursor prices.

Hmm interesting…

I’m sure there are some trading bots in existance, but I am also sure that there are much more people playing the market (or at least trying to) than one would think.

There are certainly a few exceptions, but most people won’t get rich by the trading post as is always claimed here.

Then there is a whole bunch of people that think they are smarter than they actually are (usually the donators of profit). E.g. people that always undercut, no matter how the niche market they are participating in looks like.

And then there are just quite a few casual traders like myself that fill the time waiting for a dungeon run, a world boss or a pvp match with some trading.

Anyone want to start a stock brokers guild? Nah just kidding XD But yeah I have to agree with Matisse, listen to what this guy is saying becuase he’s on point.

Yes, I am a kitten Online Trader (bot).

On a more serious note, trade bots are faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar harder to get away with. For starters, there’s limited places they can do it and get away with it. Mostly because they need to speak with a TP agent to pick up gold and items. I’m sure people use “hacked” APIs to place automatic buy orders, but that’s the extent of it. Everything else requires interacting with NPCs at specific locations that can be watched for bots without people being aware of it.

If there are automatic buy order bots out there, that could create a serious imbalance in the market as they could effectively monopolise the cheap supply (‘offer’) end of the market.

There are definately trading bots out there but i doubt that they are very effective because you have to constantly update their parameters as the market is not static.
I guess its easier to program a farmbot because you can program a routine the bot will follow. As the AI is also programmed, its predictable but the TP is balanced by actual people and its easy to “cheat” the parameters the bot uses to determine, if he places a buy order or not. Those parameters are lowest listing and highest bid. However, the bot usually doesnt check value and volume below the highest bid and above the lowest listing.
When i suspect a bot placing orders for an item i want t oget on buy order, I use the following tactic:
We have an item that goes for 1g/2g highest bid/lowest listing and i want to flip it. If i suspect a bot bidding against me, i raise my offers to determine, which is the highest value the bot would buy for, lets say its 1.5g in this case. Buy constantly increasing my buy orders from 1g to 1.5g and then cancelling my lower bids (just like the bot) we end up with buy orders from other people at 1g, one buy order from me at 1.4999g and the bots orders at 1.5g. Then I add another buy listing for 20, 30 or 100 items at 1g1c, so once the bot get cancelled, i automatically have the highest bid after my high bid for 1.4999g filled.
This means the bot is eating direct sales for 1.5g until the owner stops him (or runs out of money). That usually takes a couple of hours to a day. Addtionally i sometimes even listed items at 1.75g in hope that i get undercut, so there is no flipping margin for the bot anymore.

After a day, the bot is gone and prices are at 1g/2g again.

Just glad to see there are more people acknowledging these bots do exist. What was it 6 months ago, maybe longer, when posts would suggest this they were only commented on to say that it was crazy and there were no bots. Maybe something will be done eventually.

Bots don’t just exist… they occasionally go crazy. Scan back through potato histories and you’ll see a spike that’s mind boggling. And was blatantly bot-driven.

Matisse.9356:

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Then there is a whole bunch of people that think they are smarter than they actually are ……

That statement is true for much more than the BLTP…..

Yes they exist. Programmers have repeatedly in this and other sections of the forum stated that they exist (some even acknowledged they used them). They all agreed how incredibly easy it was to write a bot script.

I think Wanze deserves a new title: Bot Slayer …

Do they exist? Yes def. are you impacted by them? Possibly…

What you need to realise is that writing a bot who flips items are hard, both due to the ingame pickup requirement as well as available inventory space and no means to easy index the inventory (for the bot program).

Its FAR more likely that people are using them to invoke special trade strategies, i.e. stock up on item X in anticipation of Y. Or buy item X cheap to transform to item Y etc.

On example would be way back when the sigils where really expensive (high median and large spikes for certain sigils). One strategy was to buy cheap yellow lvl 40 weapons (or sigils), dis to get mats and the chance for the sigil,

Throwing these sigils in the forge was about 20% chance of get a higher level sigil, on rare occasion a really expensive one. Now at that time if the cost of the sigil used in the forge was around 3.6s you would turn a profit (at that time certain sigils were going for 16g+)

Buying all these items manually and tracking outbids makes it very hard to get a decent turnaround profit but if you have a bot doing the buying for you its different.

I am not saying I participated in something like this but a lot of people on the forums reacted on the weird behavior of the rare weapons which normally had a low turnaround.