Guild Wars 2

So you are trying to put in a low buy order for that final mini you’ve always wanted. You are willing to wait a while, but you would like to put in the highest bid. So you add, say, one copper to the current highest bid price. Seconds later, the previous highest bid price is removed and instantly replaced with one maybe 1-5 copper higher than yours.

You think… hmm… that was a fast update. Maybe there is someone watching this position closely. So you update your price to be the high bidder again, only to find that the same “person” updates theirs almost instantly to cap yours. The speed with which this happens is inhumanly fast. Could this be a Bot? I suspect so, after all, who has the time to sit there and check a single post all day, every day?

So we, the normal users of the trading post, ask that Bot Traders be detected and banned from the game just as any other Botter would and should be. It is making it nearly impossible for a normal player to buy some items at low prices and is making a profit for cheaters because it is the Botter who forces us to buy at the higher price.

Something has to be done and we look forward to the change.

Thanks Anet.

The main issue here is that it is more or less impossible to actually prove that it is a bot.
There are after all people that spend most of their days sitting around watching the TP, and wouldn’t you also look like a bot if you updated your price as soon as the “bot” updated their price?

lordkrall.7241:

The main issue here is that it is more or less impossible to actually prove that it is a bot.
There are after all people that spend most of their days sitting around watching the TP, and wouldn’t you also look like a bot if you updated your price as soon as the “bot” updated their price?

Interesting question..

I do this all the time if I want to get a stack of something with high turnover relatively quickly and save a little gold. I think you’re jumping to conclusions a little too quickly.

I have witnessed bot trading in the past but it was only once about half a year ago. It was on a yellow armor piece. Literally as soon as I put up a buy order 5 buy orders would be put up a copper above mine. This occurred probably 10 times instantaneously until I gave up.

Clockradio.3257:

I do this all the time if I want to get a stack of something with high turnover relatively quickly and save a little gold. I think you’re jumping to conclusions a little too quickly.

Three issues here: 1. Speed of price changes, 2. strange human behaviour, and 3. there is an incentive for cheaters to use bots.

On the issue of the speed at which the prices are updated: I can touch type and consider myself a fast user of the mouse and the UI in game, but this behaviour I am witnessing that I think is botting updates the prices far too fast for it to be human.

On the issue of it otherwise being strange human behaviour: I understand why a real human would constantly monitor the market for something that is highly liquid – i.e. there are lots of trades in the commodity. Things like crafting mats have high liquidity because there are lots of them in game, so doing what you say by outbidding to get your items bought faster is logical and many people probably do the same. However, there are some markets such as the one for minis that are not so liquid, and it often takes a long time for buy orders to complete. I have bought all the minis in the past, and I know how long it takes to buy them at the lower price, especially the exotics. If a real person was to sit there for that amount of time and constantly update the price if they got outbid, I suggest they would go crazy. And don’t forget, they are doing it with inhumanly fast speed.

On the issue of the incentive for cheaters to use a bot on the TP: There are vast profits to be made if you constantly outbid the high bids of real players who are wanting to obtain the item per se and not to flip it. Doing so will cause such real players to end up buying at the sell prices, thus reinforcing the botter’s behaviour. Algorithms can be written that are very sophisticated and don’t send the bids above a certain level, thus ensuring the botter will make a profit.

As a final point, there are ways to detect such botting. I have written several programs that monitor user activity on the keyboard and mouse, and once you are able to compile simple statistics of such behaviour into a temporary memory location you can poll it every now and then to see how they compare with average user statistics. If the behaviour appears to be suspicious (i.e. not like an average human) then you can flag that account for closer inspection. The monitoring algorithm does not need to be constantly switched on, it can perform random tests to save on overheads (a bit like a random breath test on motorists). Closer inspection then comes in the form of a more detailed assessment of the behaviour by constant algorithm monitoring and Anet evaluation of the account.

I do this manually with buy orders. I’ll sit on the TP for an hour or two once or twice a week to buy rares for salvage. If I just put in bids and go away for that time I wouldn’t get much of anything as I get out bid within 5 to 15 minutes. So I stay to watch my bids and when I’m out bid I counter, as long as I don’t exceed my “limit” for the day. At the end of my session I pull all unfulfilled bids and and call it a night. Usually able to get 100 or so rares in that time frame.

I believe Op may also be forgetting the sheer volume of traders.

There is no way to identify WHO placed an order. If you place an order, someone outbids you within a few second. You update your order, happens again – this is by no means “proof” of a bot trader, the bids may be from multiple separate individuals, considering every player (With 2 million accounts and counting) shares a single trading post this is not unlikely.

I very much agree with the OP as I continually run into what seems to be bot behavior. I like to flip various items and there are around 20 of those that seem to have a bot working on them (I actually no longer bother trying to flip these because of the bot(s)). These are items that see very little traffic. They all have a buy order of either 3 or 4 near or at the top. After putting in my buy orders, which takes a couple minutes, I’ll go back through to see if I’m still on top and usually a few that have already been overwritten by a single buy order. Now, anywhere from right after I’ve put in the buy orders or around 8 minutes later, all the buy orders of 3 or 4 have been removed and are now back on top. It seems very likely these are from the same person. It’s hard to believe it’s someone just sitting there constantly checking all of their buy orders, because they are done almost all at once and are never not on top for more than 10 minutes, regardless of the time of day. I’ve tested this at every part of the day and it’s the same thing over and over.

These are not bots, they are flippers like yourself.

There’s flippers out there with less of a life than me (I’m looking at you, Mr. 4 bids for every exotic weapon XD). I swear, there’s 2-3 flippers in the market I’m in that don’t care about profit, and just out bid me the second I post a bid :P

Now if I find an item that brings in gold fast, I’ll keep an eye on it and keep my bids up for my entire play duration.

The closest I’ve seen to a bot was when trying to buy out someone who was underbidding one of my sales by a good amount. I tried to buy the 1 item they had at a way low price only to see there was still exactly 1 item for the same price for sale instantly. I thought maybe my screen didn’t refresh so I checked again and the 1 was still there. Now curious, I wanted to see how far this went. Over the next 5 minutes or so, I kept buying 1 at a time at the low price and every time there would instantly be another 1 available. I could not get the low ball price to stop showing up after buying near 50 items, one at a time, at the low price. I honestly can’t believe that a human would be intentionally selling something for 5 silver less than the next lowest seller, one item at a time for over 50 items. It looked much more like someone left a bot on to sell at that price if it would be lowest seller. Days later, they did stop and I was able to profit, but it was still questionable to see.

Earlywood.7438:

The closest I’ve seen to a bot was when trying to buy out someone who was underbidding one of my sales by a good amount. I tried to buy the 1 item they had at a way low price only to see there was still exactly 1 item for the same price for sale instantly. I thought maybe my screen didn’t refresh so I checked again and the 1 was still there. Now curious, I wanted to see how far this went. Over the next 5 minutes or so, I kept buying 1 at a time at the low price and every time there would instantly be another 1 available. I could not get the low ball price to stop showing up after buying near 50 items, one at a time, at the low price. I honestly can’t believe that a human would be intentionally selling something for 5 silver less than the next lowest seller, one item at a time for over 50 items. It looked much more like someone left a bot on to sell at that price if it would be lowest seller. Days later, they did stop and I was able to profit, but it was still questionable to see.

You just happened to be trading the same item at the same time with someone else in another part of the world.

There are only 24 hours in one day. There are also limited profitable items that you can flip. Seeing as many flippers flip for several hours, it’s no surprise things overlap.

I am saying I tested in a 5 minute span at random time intervals to see if it where a bot and EVERY time the results supported this. There is no human that can respond this fast and I know you REALLY want to support flippers, but the probability of 1 or multiple people all posting a sale at the exact same price at all the exact same time intervals that I used is no where close to the likelihood of it being an easily designed bot based on the games architecture. I would like to believe that bots in the TP don’t exist, but lets stop kidding ourselves and support the elimination of these bots.

Well, the bots exist out there at least. At least if we go by a quick google search. Wheter or not they actualy work and function like this is another matter.

I however wont try to prove this by using one to make sure it actualy works. I do invite a naysayer to test one to prove their stand that they dont exist tho.

The implications of these actualy working however, is something that we shouldnt take so lightly.

Earlywood.7438:

I am saying I tested in a 5 minute span at random time intervals to see if it where a bot and EVERY time the results supported this. There is no human that can respond this fast and I know you REALLY want to support flippers, but the probability of 1 or multiple people all posting a sale at the exact same price at all the exact same time intervals that I used is no where close to the likelihood of it being an easily designed bot based on the games architecture. I would like to believe that bots in the TP don’t exist, but lets stop kidding ourselves and support the elimination of these bots.

There are simply a lot of flippers.

You think flipping items means you are smarter than anyone else? A monkey can flip items. Tons of people are doing it every single minute, constantly refreshing certain items.

There can also be people who flip on the market and have written their own code to get notifications when they get outbid on items through constant API calls, however I’m quite sure something like that wouldn’t be instantaneous (or it could potentially DDoS the GW2 API through too many calls in a short span. It would also require a very powerful machine to sort through it that fast.)

I digress. While it is possible (and potentially true) that there are bots on the TP. The fact that you, @Earlywood, claim that nobody can respond that fast means that you’re probably using a bot program with which it’s inhumanly possible to react (and then double check the price). Think about it, how else would you be able to know that someone else is outbidding you at a speed incapable of a normal human? Just a logical fallacy on your end…

LOL…

And there are API’s out there that can let you know when you are out bid, when the price reaches a certain amount. There are even apps that will send annoying messages to your phone causing your boss to look at you with laser beam death stares, every time a certain price gets reached . Im not sure whats worse the laser beam death stares or the fact your stuck at work and unable to act on the price spike !

Doesn’t surprise me.

Flash trading is legal in the real world. Computers buy and sell shares at lightning speeds. Thousands of orders of magnitude faster than humans could. The SEC in the USA is apparently trying to get support to pass a law that makes this illegal.

I suppose it would be quite difficult to spot one of these bots. Arena net could impose rules that would only allow you to place X orders in Y amount of time.

Or add CAPTCHAs.

I can confirm that bot trading does exist or it was one huge coincidence that makes hardly any sense. I watched myself get undercut within 5-10 seconds everytime and I kept changing my bid prices to see if he had the bot set to stop posting a bid after a certain price and it did. I had it down to a 1 copper differance.

I would list for 42g and get overcut.
I listed 45g, got overcut.
I listed 49g – was left alone.
I listed 47g was overcut.
I listed 47g-99s – was left alone
I listed 47g-25s – was overcut.
I listed 47g-49s – was overcut.
I listed 47g-50s 1c – was left alone.
(the pattern was simular to this, don’t know the exact numbers but I did it many times to test if it was a bot or player and it really seemed to be a bot).

So what I discovered is the bot would update the offer to a certain value, which was 47g 50 silver, anything over that it wouldn’t put a bid in for, not even for 2 copper higher. The reason I assumed it was a bot is because someone that is overcutting me within 5-10 seconds shouldn’t be canceling their offer over 2 copper. I’ve only experienced this once however, so either it’s not common or they were banned.

Esplen.3940:

I digress. While it is possible (and potentially true) that there are bots on the TP. The fact that you, @Earlywood, claim that nobody can respond that fast means that you’re probably using a bot program with which it’s inhumanly possible to react (and then double check the price). Think about it, how else would you be able to know that someone else is outbidding you at a speed incapable of a normal human? Just a logical fallacy on your end…

LOL, and here I was trying not to accuse the defenders of bots in this thread of using bots and there you go. Please explain to me where I needed this speed that I’m accusing them of. If there is 1 item selling for the low bid and I click “Buy” (blazing speed I know) the item goes away at that price and the list shifts up with the next lowest amount now being on top. Sorry but no reflexes required on my part to do that.

For the sellers, to replace the 1 item I just bought fast enough for the list on my screen to never shift and that 1 single item being replaced by another 1 item for the same price takes either coincidence or those faster than human reflexes. I fully believe the coincidence occurs all the time, no doubt, but when I test that coincidence at various times over 5 minutes, the coincidence becomes more and more unlikely.

What I really want to know now though is why a community is so against this topic? I know api’s exist for the TP and I’m sure that people using them don’t want ArenaNet to implement a program to detect bots that might think they are bots, but at least admit that’s your concern and not this ridiculous belief that bots don’t exist. If that’s not the reason for pushback, than please let the rest of us know.

There’s hundreds of thousands of people using the TP at any given time and anywhere from a few to hundreds of people looking at the same item as you. If someone is going to bot the TP, they’re only going to place 1 order at a time and always at +1c on items such as exotics, since a bot will instantly know when it needs to place a new order. To fully bot the TP, the game must be running and a character has to be logged in to pickup any items, which isn’t actually part of the TP website.

Detecting TP botting is no easy task. Doing so would most likely flag hundreds of real players. The only feasible way to stop it would be by limiting how many buy orders can be placed. The only real way to detect TP botting is by looking for hundreds of requests in a short amount of time. They could also track your history, since a legit client has to make requests in a specific order. This is where it can get tricky though, since any lag or errors could get you flagged, not to mention it would take a lot of resources to track so many people when the TP tries to use as little as possible, since it operates in real time.

Lisa.6102:

Im not sure whats worse the laser beam death stares or the fact your stuck at work and unable to act on the price spike !

With a little effort, the TP can be used with 100% functionality from any device capable of accessing the internet. Yes, you could play the TP from your phone. There are a few restrictions of course, depending on how advanced you want to get. In its simplest form, and something everyone can do right now using any web browser, you can view and place buy orders outside of the game. Selling and picking up is harder, since it requires interaction with the inventory, something that requires your character to be logged in.

DaShi.1368:

Or add CAPTCHAs.

Only method I can think of to disallow image recognition type automated TP usage….it would be a PitA for humans, but would both slow down the TP a tad and thwart automated trading (until someone figured out how to get around it…I doubt it’s impossible).

Brother Grimm.5176:

DaShi.1368:

Or add CAPTCHAs.

Only method I can think of to disallow image recognition type automated TP usage….it would be a PitA for humans, but would both slow down the TP a tad and thwart automated trading (until someone figured out how to get around it…I doubt it’s impossible).

It’s not only possible, but trivial.

Any idea involving CAPTCHAs, is a terrible idea.

I don’t think there is an issue here. But CAPTCHA is horrible user experience.

Simple solution to counter bots here is add a listing cost for offers like a token amount (i.e. 10c). If bot tries to relist every time someone else bits, it will eat into their profit real fast.

What you describe is probably not a bot. If it was, there must be more than one. What would happen if 2 bots were buying the same thing?
23g54s12c
13c
14c
15c
16c
17c
18c
…
80g11s82c
all within a few minutes

btw: a bot wouldn’t be sitting in LA searching the TP. There are web interfaces for placing buy orders and getting item prices. (such as spidy API)

Hey

There has been tools around for sometime that allow for the tracking of a users posted listings and alert of they are over/underbid (just check the app stores).

With that said there are a very simple reason why someone could instantly react to your changes.

On the topic of “real” bots (the one I described above is not considered a bot) there are no way that anyone sane would suggest writing code that runs on a players machine and analysing what he is doing. Period.

Writing a tool on the backend that tracks/alerts for usage on a specific account (like listing requests every 10 seconds) is def. doable, however that would also cover the “alert” apps listed above (as well as gw2spidy).

In short you would have to pair the known listings for an account with the number of listing queries and track each items change in price in correlation to speed of change and frequency.

This is most likely NOT doable with the large customer database/trading post players out there todo in a general way. It would be more likely that they would have to change the trading post API not to work with third party applications which means a redesign of the current backend (which they most likely will not do).

Mystic.5934:

What you describe is probably not a bot. If it was, there must be more than one. What would happen if 2 bots were buying the same thing?
23g54s12c
13c
14c
15c
16c
17c
18c
…
80g11s82c
all within a few minutes

btw: a bot wouldn’t be sitting in LA searching the TP. There are web interfaces for placing buy orders and getting item prices. (such as spidy API)

Most bots have higher/lower limits for how far they are allowed to take things… an unsupervised bot without limits would be a big risk for a user…

AntiGw.9367:

Brother Grimm.5176:

DaShi.1368:

Or add CAPTCHAs.

Only method I can think of to disallow image recognition type automated TP usage….it would be a PitA for humans, but would both slow down the TP a tad and thwart automated trading (until someone figured out how to get around it…I doubt it’s impossible).

It’s not only possible, but trivial.

Any idea involving CAPTCHAs, is a terrible idea.

Yeah wouldnt be an option in this case, the same API thats used by third part applications are also used by the ingame TP browser for such simple things as listings/searchings… Wonder how many would be ok with a captcha popup ingame every time you access it…

I’ve heard of an easy way around a captcha:
you’re a bot, you come across a captcha.
copy the image, post it on your owner’s site as a captcha that someone needs to get through to get to ‘free’ movies or w/e.
the user solves the captcha, answer is sent to the bot, it fills in the answer where it needed it.
captcha solved.

Ruith.5861:

So you are trying to put in a low buy order for that final mini you’ve always wanted. You are willing to wait a while, but you would like to put in the highest bid. So you add, say, one copper to the current highest bid price. Seconds later, the previous highest bid price is removed and instantly replaced with one maybe 1-5 copper higher than yours.

You think… hmm… that was a fast update. Maybe there is someone watching this position closely. So you update your price to be the high bidder again, only to find that the same “person” updates theirs almost instantly to cap yours. The speed with which this happens is inhumanly fast. Could this be a Bot? I suspect so, after all, who has the time to sit there and check a single post all day, every day?

So we, the normal users of the trading post, ask that Bot Traders be detected and banned from the game just as any other Botter would and should be. It is making it nearly impossible for a normal player to buy some items at low prices and is making a profit for cheaters because it is the Botter who forces us to buy at the higher price.

Something has to be done and we look forward to the change.

Thanks Anet.

Are you even sure it’s the same person and not a third who wants that same mini?

And wouldn’t repeatedly overbidding reduce profit margins by a large degree? If it’s a cheaper mini, he’s sinking a silver every time for a potential 2 silver profit.