Guild Wars 2

aeneq.1760:

DarkSpirit.7046:

aeneq.1760:

DarkSpirit.7046:

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Slight overreaction IMO, the only time that specific notifier was mentioned was by you in an earlier post and this thread has never been about a specific tool so calling out for name tarnishing etc is extreme (BTW maybe you should stop referencing that tool all the time, there are other ones out there and you don’t bring anything to the discussion when naming specific tools).

Again, no I did not say that bots should be allowed. If you think that I did, anyone is free to point that out.

I can understand the need to win the argument especially when it is ending in my favor, but you guys should not have to resort to lies and libel. Please do not create words out of thin air and pretend that I said it. It just shows the kind of person you are.

Don’t know where you are getting the idea that I specifically said that anyone thought bots were ok, I have not seen any such indication in any of your posts.

If you have not seen any such indication in any of my posts then do not insinuate that I have said this in another thread by calling it a “cross reference mistake”. I have never condone the use of bots in any other thread period.

DarkSpirit.7046:

If you have not seen any such indication in any of my posts then do not insinuate that I have said this in another thread by calling it a “cross reference mistake”. I have never condone the use of bots in any other threads.

The cross reference was referencing Jazzllanas post about a post I made in another thread and you werent mentioned/referenced in any way.

I am sorry but your posts are actually agressively claiming I have tarnished you which I haven’t. Thus by claiming this you are doing it to me and frankly I would expect an apology for making false assumptions.

aeneq.1760:

DarkSpirit.7046:

If you have not seen any such indication in any of my posts then do not insinuate that I have said this in another thread by calling it a “cross reference mistake”. I have never condone the use of bots in any other threads.

The cross reference was referencing Jazzllanas post about a post I made in another thread and you werent mentioned/referenced in any way.

I am sorry but your posts are actually agressively claiming I have tarnished you which I haven’t. Thus by claiming this you are doing it to me and frankly I would expect an apology for making false assumptions.

Since you were replying to my post which was accusing Jazzllanas of lying and you said: "The mistake here is the cross reference from the other thread which could cause confusion. " Then the insinuation here is that Jazzllanas was referring to my post from another thread where I was supposed to have said bots should be allowed. But the fact is, I didn’t say that.

I am sorry if I have misunderstood you, but I wish you would pay more attention to what you wrote because it can be easily misunderstood.

Ahh so that is where the defense came from. I should have quoted aeneq but instead it was a reply right under them earlier in the thread and I did not think it was necessary.. and you took it as you darkspirit -instead of you as aeneq.

Ehh I tried to add the quote I was referring to it but it is not working but anyways. Considering there are multiple people in the thread I am surprised it was taken that way.

DarkSpirit.7046:

aeneq.1760:

DarkSpirit.7046:

If you have not seen any such indication in any of my posts then do not insinuate that I have said this in another thread by calling it a “cross reference mistake”. I have never condone the use of bots in any other threads.

The cross reference was referencing Jazzllanas post about a post I made in another thread and you werent mentioned/referenced in any way.

I am sorry but your posts are actually agressively claiming I have tarnished you which I haven’t. Thus by claiming this you are doing it to me and frankly I would expect an apology for making false assumptions.

Since you were replying to my post which was accusing Jazzllanas of lying and you said: "The mistake here is the cross reference from the other thread which could cause confusion. " Then the insinuation here is that Jazzllanas was referring to my post from another thread where I was supposed to have said bots should be allowed. But the fact is, I didn’t say that.

I am sorry if I have misunderstood you, but I wish you would pay more attention to what you wrote because it can be easily misunderstood.

The only crossreference made before my post was Jazzllanas reference to my post in another thread, afaik you made no references so I thought it was clear that reference was not referencing anything you posted.

Further there is no mentioning of bots other than that I didn’t consider notifiers to be bots.

Just a suggestion; this is an online forum, you’ll find people who are not so well versed in the language used, are tired or are confused in general. Instead of assuming that they are adversary I suggest trying to read posts with the attitude that they are not.

And if they are adversary then whats the point in responding, nothing good will ever come from it.

jazzllanna.1278:

Really? I am by no means trying to start a flame war. I have a serious concern with these programs.

Just to add to your edit- I never said that you said that bots should be allowed. It has been stated from people on both sides pro and con on the programs that they could be used to bot the tp. That is a huge concern and it should be for both sides of the argument. If a gold seller can go unnoticed trading on the tp with a program and rake in tons of gold is this not a problem? It may nor may not be happening but it could be. Please understand, because I think you may have misunderstood, I am by no means attacking you in anyway. My issue is with the programs, which I know you are for, but I am not against you.

In that case, then perhaps it is a misunderstanding between us and yes you replied just under my post so I assumed that you were replying to me. So we will not talk about that again.

As for your question on a gold seller using the tools, if the tools are free and available to everyone to download, anyone can use them, not just gold sellers. So if you look at both sides of the coin, the tools are not favoring gold sellers over non-gold sellers, they just help whoever uses them and possibly non-gold sellers are using said tools to compete against gold sellers also.

As long as the tools are free and available to everyone then it is a fair battle. I don’t see any unfair advantage here unless some people purposefully choose not to use them, then fine. That should remain their own choice. Actually we should encourage more people to use them. Why? Because gold sellers and obviously botters are probably using programs to gain an advantage in the TP whether you like it or not. So why not give them some competition from legit players?

It is a cyborgs vs bots battle! Power Xtreme! Man and Machine! Sorry I am a centurion fan…

Just to be clear

We are talking about notifiers now right, bots we all agree are bad (with bots meaning automating in game mechanics).

aeneq.1760:

Just to be clear

We are talking about notifiers now right, bots we all agree are bad (with bots meaning automating in game mechanics).

Agree!

Notifiers fills a role, IMO anyone who have tried to actively pursue any serious TP trading knows that after around 1-2 screens of trades you feel like you are punching yourself every time you check on their status.

As such they fill a beneficial role for anyone and anyone using the TP should probably consider using one.

However! It does violate the formal interpretation of the TOS (as long as you are directly interacting with the game client and not using external sites like gw2spidy et al). Since it is a violation of the TOS I can fully understand many players not being comfortable using one and thus the one could consider the “morally challenged” to have an advantage.

Unfortunately there is no way to resolve this conflict until ANet updates the core API that lies at the heart of this or alternatively updates the ingame UI to offer similar functionality.

Notifiers will not go away anytime soon imo and one can make ones voice heard to ANet (ticket/suggestion) but not much else would make a difference.

aeneq.1760:

However! It does violate the formal interpretation of the TOS (as long as you are directly interacting with the game client and not using external sites like gw2spidy et al). Since it is a violation of the TOS I can fully understand many players not being comfortable using one and thus the one could consider the “morally challenged” to have an advantage.
As such they fill a beneficial role for anyone and anyone using the TP should probably consider using one.
However! It does violate the formal interpretation of the TOS (as long as you are directly interacting with the game client and not using external sites like gw2spidy et al).

I am not going to pretend to be a lawyer and get into legal interpretations without formal training in law. What is more important to me is that ArenaNet gave the ‘ok’ for programs to use the unofficial TP api in the case of the gw2spidy situation. As long as we follow the same paradigm I see no reason why gw2spidy should be allowed and not other apps.

Another thing that I want to correct from your statement is that gw2spidy also has an app to directly interface with the game client. How else do you think they managed to get the in-game session key to check their gem conversion prices? You can check their source code doc here: https://github.com/rubensayshi/gw2spidy. As stated by him: “I do have a small tool (provided by someone else) that quickly grabs the session_key (by seaching for it in shared memory) without much hassle, I won’t be sharing it publicly but you could consider joining the IRC channel and asking for it”

That is not condoning bots though, as obviously they are disallowed and ArenaNet has made that very clear by taking drastic actions against them. A TP notifier app, however, is a different beast, we have checked with them many times, and we didn’t get any direct reply as they don’t want to set any precedence to be in the free app verification business and I can understand why.

If they were to start giving approvals/disapprovals to individual apps then more and more app authors would be knocking at their door asking them for approvals to many more apps. This is complicated by the fact that binaries can be infected with viruses in the future without an app store. Are people going to blame ArenaNet for approving an app that was later infected with a virus/trojan? Their usual reply to them is “use them at your own risk”, similar to how they categorized Textmod.exe during GW1 days, which incidentally also violates the GW1 TOS if used according to your interpretation.

I think that by allowing programs to continue to interact with the client Anet is playing with fire.

There are programers out there that are merely trying to help, but there are also programers that are out for themselves. Those are the ones that we need to worry about. For them to be able to take this code and potentially create a program that can buy and flip in the tp with ease and basically run out completion by never letting them be the high bid is scary. Those programs will not be advertised or available to other players.

So where I am
1. A player should not have to use an outside program to be competitive in the trading market.
2. Allowing real time access to bids and auctions is a gateway for trouble from bots.
3. I was under the impression that Anet did not allow outside programs.

All and all I think that either we will see Anet take a stand at some point or we will see a flood of programs. I am completely fine with graphs that track past data for people to plan their auctions, it is the real time notices and access that is an issue.

jazzllanna.1278:

All and all I think that either we will see Anet take a stand at some point or we will see a flood of programs. I am completely fine with graphs that track past data for people to plan their auctions, it is the real time notices and access that is an issue.

Without the real time access of such programs, then we would all have to be constantly monitoring our bids in real time. I am glad the notifier apps exist so that I am free to play this game and get the items that I want at the same time instead of being chained to the TP checking my bids every few seconds.

In a perfect world, I would expect ArenaNet to provide this notification feature in the game and several other ‘must-have’ features. But considering that the TP even have bugs that are around since release, I doubt they are going to be adding any drastic features in the near future. This is where third party devs come in.

DarkSpirit.7046:

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Another thing that I want to correct from your statement is that gw2spidy also has an app to directly interface with the game client. How else do you think they managed to get the in-game session key to check their gem conversion prices? You can check their source code doc here: https://github.com/rubensayshi/gw2spidy. As stated by him: “I do have a small tool (provided by someone else) that quickly grabs the session_key (by seaching for it in shared memory) without much hassle, I won’t be sharing it publicly but you could consider joining the IRC channel and asking for it”

I am very familiar with the codebase from Ruben, I went over it way back (last year). The character/session key can easily be read from the awesomium cache database and the character id from snooping the http traffic.

DarkSpirit.7046:

That is not condoning bots though, as obviously they are disallowed and ArenaNet has made that very clear by taking drastic actions against them. A TP notifier app, however, is a different beast, we have checked with them many times, and we didn’t get any direct reply as they don’t want to set any precedence to be in the free app verification business and I can understand why.

Its true there are minute differences between the gw2spidy functionality/access methods and the one used by notifier. However to play the devils advocate (which my wife hate when I do) the gw2spidy codebase never access or make use of individual account/character informatio such as buy/sell lists and only uses the session/character key to be able to scrape the database.

A notifier however relies on scanning and processing the buy/sell orders and provide character/account specific actions based on this information. Its a minute difference in base functionality but the point could be argued nonetheless…

Unfortunately at this point it all comes down to personal view and opinion which are things rarely changed

aeneq.1760:

I am very familiar with the codebase from Ruben, I went over it way back (last year). The character/session key can easily be read from the awesomium cache database and the character id from snooping the http traffic.

Actually both can be read by snooping the http traffic. But that would require more manual steps than just running a program to read it off the client memory and I seriously doubt Reuben himself has never ever used the program to read it off the client memory for the past 1 year or so, which would mean he doesn’t even know if it has ever worked before advertising it. That seems highly unlikely.

Its true there are minute differences between the gw2spidy functionality/access methods and the one used by notifier. However to play the devils advocate (which my wife hate when I do) the gw2spidy codebase never access or make use of individual account/character informatio such as buy/sell lists and only uses the session/character key to be able to scrape the database.

How he makes use of the game session key has nothing to do with the TOS. The fact is that the session key was read from the client process memory using another program and that is the grey area with the TOS violation.

A notifier however relies on scanning and processing the buy/sell orders and provide character/account specific actions based on this information. Its a minute difference in base functionality but the point could be argued nonetheless…

A notifier doesn’t need to scan buy/sell orders. It simply obtains those from http JSON responses just like for the other web apis. Like I said, it has nothing to do with whether you use your character’s session key for your own buy/sell list or for the gem conversion rate. The point that you were trying to put forth all along has been a suspected TOS violation in getting that session key in the first place.

Unfortunately at this point it all comes down to personal view and opinion which are things rarely changed

Our personal views and opinions has no bearing on this, heck even the TOS or whether we think it has been violated or not is not important. What is most important is whether ArenaNet allows this or not for a notifier app, and so far the answer seems to be yes.

DarkSpirit.7046:

A notifier doesn’t need to scan buy/sell orders. It simply obtains those from http JSON responses just like for the other web apis. Like I said, it has nothing to do with whether you use your character’s session key for your own buy/sell list or for the gem conversion rate. The point that you were trying to put forth all along has been a suspected TOS violation in getting that session key in the first place.

Gaining access to the session key is a TOS violation, the TOS is very clearly defined in this aspect. How ANet decides to act/not act is up to them nothing Ill speculate in, its moot really people will still use the API even if they publicly stated it wasn’t allowed since there is no easy way to protect against it.

With regards to the buy/sell orders, i was referring to the notifier using the /me.json sub api to retrieve the accounts current buy/sell listings. Without this information the notifier has no means to know which items are ordered/listed by the account and thus has no means to decided if a notification is needed.

All the responses from the API comes as JSON encoded data, im not sure what your point was? Maybe you thought I meant scanning game memory for buy/sell listings but thats not the point I was making. The point I was making was that the notifier uses a part of the API thats meant for account specific information which puts it apart from how gw2spidy and others use the API.

edit: The reason I made this distinction was to bring to light that the notifier does more than what gw2spidy et al does, its a minor distinction but since it has been mentioned that there is no difference between them I thought it would be helpful to make this distinction clear

edit2: one could argue that the API is there and the session key is already extracted so what is the point of this distinction, well if one argues that the API is there why not use it then one would wonder why not use the buy feature as well?

It thus comes down to how the API is used to determine how “ok” it is, some people would argue that accessing /me is crossing the border, some might argue not. Likewise some would argue that using /buy is ok as long as it requires user input and the some would argue its not.

Anyway I think we made as much headway as we can in this discussions, its clear to me that there are a lot of opinions that vary and its unlikely well make any progress either way until ANet has an official stance on it.

In the meantime I guess well just keep pushing the limits until something breaks

aeneq.1760:

edit: The reason I made this distinction was to bring to light that the notifier does more than what gw2spidy et al does, its a minor distinction but since it has been mentioned that there is no difference between them I thought it would be helpful to make this distinction clear

The words “notifier does more than what gw2spidy et al does” is a very general argument. Does the notifier process gem price history like gw2spidy does? Does the notifier process and evaluates volume and price histories for each item as gw2spidy does? The answer is no, so who actually does more? In any case, I don’t see why who does more is significant with reference to the TOS.

edit2: one could argue that the API is there and the session key is already extracted so what is the point of this distinction, well if one argues that the API is there why not use it then one would wonder why not use the buy feature as well?

Just because you wonder about it doesn’t mean the app actually does it. I suppose you have to look at each app individually to be fair.

It thus comes down to how the API is used to determine how “ok” it is, some people would argue that accessing /me is crossing the border, some might argue not. Likewise some would argue that using /buy is ok as long as it requires user input and the some would argue its not.

I think you are looking at it too closely. I would say that a notifier app that uses the /me.json api would be more legal in ArenaNet’s eyes than a UI-driven autoit bot that doesn’t use the /me.json api. So assessing legality through the usage of one specific api just doesn’t make sense in the big picture.

I think that is how ArenaNet sees it, from a higher level view rather than on a per-api basis. If the notifier app has features that are used to enable more fun in the game, for example we don’t have to be shackled to the TP anymore to monitor our bids allowing us to play the game proper, then good. If the notifier app has so many automatic features that the player doesn’t need to play the game anymore, then it has become like a bot and ArenaNet would take action against it.

Many thanks Aeneq for your clear information on the issue. I learned a lot more reading through the responses.

So, could I summarize the real concern, the elephant in the room that only you went out to clarify in more detail, as follows:

Third part TP programs using a session key can be programmed to become buy order bots.

You said it clearest, in the post quoted below:

aeneq.1760:

They can be modified to be automated tools yes, that said its limited to putting in buy orders (i.e. overbidding and cancelling buy orders if they want to put in lower bids).

However I also stated that there is no easy way to block this behavior at present, the functionality is a core component of the in game Trading Post and I don’t believe ANet will modify this API anytime soon.

The only quick solution is behavioral analysis on identified traders who has a high/constant/changing buy listings. But even then it becomes a bit tricky and bots can be programmed to be more human like (with lower profit, but if you spread this over multiple accounts they would still be able to accrue the same profit as before).

Let me know if I adequately reformulated the concern above, in bold.

To be clear, I still think that notifiers cross the line by a mile (Aeneq understood; use of the session key by a 3rd party program is why), but that ship has sailed due to Anet’s irresponsible behavior (ie. doing nothing in this respect for far too long).

Buttercup.5871:

Many thanks Aeneq for your clear information on the issue. I learned a lot more reading through the responses.

So, could I summarize the real concern, the elephant in the room that only you went out to clarify in more detail, as follows:

Third part TP programs using a session key can be programmed to become buy order bots.

You said it clearest, in the post quoted below:

aeneq.1760:

They can be modified to be automated tools yes, that said its limited to putting in buy orders (i.e. overbidding and cancelling buy orders if they want to put in lower bids).

However I also stated that there is no easy way to block this behavior at present, the functionality is a core component of the in game Trading Post and I don’t believe ANet will modify this API anytime soon.

The only quick solution is behavioral analysis on identified traders who has a high/constant/changing buy listings. But even then it becomes a bit tricky and bots can be programmed to be more human like (with lower profit, but if you spread this over multiple accounts they would still be able to accrue the same profit as before).

Let me know if I adequately reformulated the concern above, in bold.

To be clear, I still think that notifiers cross the line by a mile (Aeneq understood; use of the session key by a 3rd party program is why), but that ship has sailed due to Anet’s irresponsible behavior (ie. doing nothing in this respect for far too long).

The problem here is that programming it as bots already violates the ToS (if the session key retrieval is the grey area, the bot part is pushing it to the black area) because you need to modify and spoof game memory to authenticate the buy order with the funds necessary – unless the reduction of gold ingame can be done via the unofficial TP API.

Just 2c.

Advent Leader.1083:

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The problem here is that programming it as bots already violates the ToS (if the session key retrieval is the grey area, the bot part is pushing it to the black area) because you need to modify and spoof game memory to authenticate the buy order with the funds necessary – unless the reduction of gold ingame can be done via the unofficial TP API.

Just 2c.

Two things are needed, one is the session key (which ties the session to an account) and the second item is a character id. After this you dont need anything from the game client and you dont need to modify anything.

Buy orders automatically reduce the money from character (now with the wallet I would assume character id isnt actually needed anymore). Canceled buy orders put the money into the TP pickup just as in the game.

edit: The commonality between the TP Bots, TP Notifiers, TP scrapers (gw2spidy) etc are only that they use the same API and that they violate the TOS to gain access to session/character keys.

However I wouldn’t classify that to mean that they all is on the same level of violation, notifers/scrapers are publicly out there and ANet has yet to act harshly on them (if they ever will), bots however automate in game mechanics.

Not sure why they havent acted on TP bots yet, it could be thakittens harder than farming bots or it could be that the TP bots dont add gold to the economy i.e. it doesnt break the game economy so its less of a concern.

Oh btw just wanted to clarify another thing as well, a TP bot is very different to a farming bot. A farming bot can be set loose with the only directive (in its simplest terms) to kill and loot and thus gaining profit.

A TP bot however doesnt automatically make you money, you will still need a valid TP strategy that turns a profit and then a TP bot can optimize this further by providing a larger flow of items for your strategy (whereas this is flipping or others).

As all know the biggest trick when playing the TP is actually finding a working strategy/niche (which gets harder and harder over time).

edit: if you suspect that you are working against a bot there is afaik only one strategy to disable it, make it run out of money. If he is forced to repost bids over and over eventually his cashflow could be drained and hell stop working. This is ofcourse not viable on low cost items due to the amount of trades involved but this little tip might help someone…

Buttercup.5871:

To be clear, I still think that notifiers cross the line by a mile (Aeneq understood; use of the session key by a 3rd party program is why), but that ship has sailed due to Anet’s irresponsible behavior (ie. doing nothing in this respect for far too long).

Because of the protection to the TP api, you need the game session key in order to get useful data from the TP. Even gw2spidy uses it as it would not be able to work without it. This is not a fault with the apps but with the design of the TP api being overly restrictive with the gem exchange rates calls, listings, etc.

aeneq.1760:

edit: The commonality between the TP Bots, TP Notifiers, TP scrapers (gw2spidy) etc are only that they use the same API and that they violate the TOS to gain access to session/character keys.

Yes, even gw2spidy has to use the session key to work and it was given an approval. They should have implemented OAuth2 with the TP api, so that apps would not need the game client session key so no grey area TOS violation any longer. But that would mean ArenaNet releasing an official TP api, wouldn’t it?

aeneq.1760:

edit: if you suspect that you are working against a bot there is afaik only one strategy to disable it, make it run out of money. If he is forced to repost bids over and over eventually his cashflow could be drained and hell stop working. This is ofcourse not viable on low cost items due to the amount of trades involved but this little tip might help someone…

Doesn’t work if the bot has UI driving functionality to take its money back from the trading post NPC after canceling its bids. I am sure many bots already have that feature since it is easy to implement.

DarkSpirit.7046:

…
Doesn’t work if the bot has UI driving functionality to take its money back from the trading post NPC after canceling its bids. I am sure many bots already have that feature since it is easy to implement.

Works just fine, sure the bot can have a UI interaction to allow pickup but it wont fix it. Cancelled money orders are queued just as pickups, i.e. if there are a lot of items before the gold from the cancelled order then you wont see the gold.

Since inventory space is limited and we can assume the bot is actually buying something then he will run out of inv space and thus wont be able to pickup gold from TP anymore.

Ofcourse this trick is restricted to bots who actively adjust their buy order down (i.e. if someone below cancels an order the bot adjust the price to the lower mark). Otherwise youll just ramp up the bot to his maximum limit.

Ofcourse raising it to the maximum limit is an alternative way to combat the bots but since they can track several hundred orders its hard to realise it.

aeneq.1760:

Works just fine, sure the bot can have a UI interaction to allow pickup but it wont fix it. Cancelled money orders are queued just as pickups, i.e. if there are a lot of items before the gold from the cancelled order then you wont see the gold.

Since inventory space is limited and we can assume the bot is actually buying something then he will run out of inv space and thus wont be able to pickup gold from TP anymore.

If there are items in its queue, I am sure it would be picking them up regularly to flip them, otherwise the bot wouldn’t be generating income. As it is picking up items, it would also be picking up any gold from cancelled buy order since they come in through the same queue, unless there is something I am missing from your statements.

It shouldn’t be running out of inventory space if it has sell functionality which can be enabled through driving the UI and I would expect any TP flipping bot to have that.

Ofcourse this trick is restricted to bots who actively adjust their buy order down (i.e. if someone below cancels an order the bot adjust the price to the lower mark). Otherwise youll just ramp up the bot to his maximum limit.

Ofcourse raising it to the maximum limit is an alternative way to combat the bots but since they can track several hundred orders its hard to realise it.

I would expect most bots to actively adjust their buy order down (i.e. if someone below cancels an order the bot adjust the price to the lower mark). Otherwise it is too easy to ramp it up and let it over pay all the time. There may also be a concept of break-even price, which changes according to how much the bot thinks he can sell the item for when flipping so it may only go on a buying bid war up to a certain price and not try to outbid you above the break-even price.

I would also expect a sophisticated bot to detect if someone tries to undercut its sell order with a ridiculously lower sell order price so much so that it would buy it up and resell it as part of his own sell order and still generate a profit after TP tax. It would do its internal calculation to check for this.

These are just some of the TP “tricks” I would expect that can be programmed into bots depending on their levels of sophistication.

Thanks Aeneq and Darkspirit. Your combined thorough knowledge on this sheds light on some of the darkest stuff I’ve read since release.

I did not know it had already gone this far. If it’s indeed possible, and you guys know it can be done, TP botting is very real.

Have you guys talked to John about solutions? You guys need to put your minds together and figure this out. Seems to me the current TP road will lead to a dead end in the long run.

DarkSpirit.7046:

aeneq.1760:

Works just fine, sure the bot can have a UI interaction to allow pickup but it wont fix it. Cancelled money orders are queued just as pickups, i.e. if there are a lot of items before the gold from the cancelled order then you wont see the gold.

Since inventory space is limited and we can assume the bot is actually buying something then he will run out of inv space and thus wont be able to pickup gold from TP anymore.

If there are items in its queue, I am sure it would be picking them up regularly to flip them, otherwise the bot wouldn’t be generating income. As it is picking up items, it would also be picking up any gold from cancelled buy order since they come in through the same queue, unless there is something I am missing from your statements.

It shouldn’t be running out of inventory space if it has sell functionality which can be enabled through driving the UI and I would expect any TP flipping bot to have that.

I would assume the opposite, building a working UI driven TP bot is not this straightforward. Also since you are describing a flipping TP bot you would have to assume he would have to hold off selling certain items due to existing sell orders which in turn would clog up the inventory.

I am very confident that TP bots in majority is all about getting the buy, selling is a more “sensitive” and in most cases requires some hands on experience (or if the user is not flipping but doing something else).

Anyway, I bet there are efforts to automate UI process as well however I dont think they are viable for a number of reasons. If ANet had a working sell API then it would be very straight forward indeed…

Buttercup.5871:

Thanks Aeneq and Darkspirit. Your combined thorough knowledge on this sheds light on some of the darkest stuff I’ve read since release.

I did not know it had already gone this far. If it’s indeed possible, and you guys know it can be done, TP botting is very real.

Have you guys talked to John about solutions? You guys need to put your minds together and figure this out. Seems to me the current TP road will lead to a dead end in the long run.

Not directly, however the API is out there and being used and I would assume ANet knows whats possible when using it. Ideally they are working on a solution but I dont think its become a large enough issue yet…

You dont see comments about bots that often, its about once a month or less when someone mentions TP bots on the forum which hopefully means they arent that common.

I’m sorry, i’m a bit a nobody concerning API’s and programs outside the game. So there’s an approved API that people use to communicate with the TP? And if so, did that API come with some kind of do’s and don’ts so that I can check if the program I would use, based on the approved interface, is not going beyond the gray area? Or something similar? Forgive me for my ignorance in this respect, my specialty is very different (law).

No there is no official API, the API used has been reverse engineered from looking at data traffic between game client and the TP server.

aeneq.1760:

I would assume the opposite, building a working UI driven TP bot is not this straightforward. Also since you are describing a flipping TP bot you would have to assume he would have to hold off selling certain items due to existing sell orders which in turn would clog up the inventory.

I am very confident that TP bots in majority is all about getting the buy, selling is a more “sensitive” and in most cases requires some hands on experience (or if the user is not flipping but doing something else).

Anyway, I bet there are efforts to automate UI process as well however I dont think they are viable for a number of reasons. If ANet had a working sell API then it would be very straight forward indeed…

I disagree with you. Most of the existing bots I know are UI driven thanks to tools like Autoit that has been perfected through many years of work. It is not necessarily a tool for botting but automating UI, however because of its power, it is commonly use by botters. You can read all about it from their bot forums which you can find by just googling. I don’t think you are familiar with their tools. I read a post from a botter in a GW2 bot forum describing how he used the PixelSearch functionality of Autoit to help him navigate the UI for selling.

To write an autoit script, you don’t even need to know a programming language, it uses a BASIC-like scripting language. All you need is a script kiddie with lots of time in his hands to get it up through trial-and-error. Automating UI is quite straight-forward.

http://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/

Botters go for profit as number one. If there is no selling then where is the profit coming from in running a bot? If the bot has sell capability, it should not clog up its inventory, furthermore unless you are trading things like armor, same items do stack. I don’t think inventory clogging is as a big problem with TP flipping bots as you think. If it is, then TP bots would be hardly viable as they lack the profit which is the main reason for running a bot in the first place.

Wow. This thread explains so much of why the trading post has been getting gradually more of a headache for me to deal with.

There have been items that I keep getting outbid on and it seems like it’s by one person. I will put my bid in, then very soon afterwards it is outbid. There are long stretches where that bid is the top one, but as soon as I bid again, I have been topped.

I had thought there were people who just spent their whole day checking to see if they had the highest bid. But that is just way too much work, and there’s no way to play the game while doing that. That work + the inability to play is the HUGE advantage in these programs. Holy cow.

I’m undecided about how I feel about them. Part of me wants to use one, part of me wants them to be banned. I feel like the advantage should go to people who work harder. I’ve made my own excel sheets and put tens of hours into making trading more efficient. But this is an advantage that is both automated and requires no work for the end user. That’s an undeserved advantage.

If some can use this, everyone should. But if everyone used it, buy orders would be a frenzy of outbiddings until they met parity with sell orders, and the whole purpose would be defeated. That fact tells me these programs aren’t good for the game.

Clark Skinner.4902:

I’m undecided about how I feel about them. Part of me wants to use one, part of me wants them to be banned. I feel like the advantage should go to people who work harder. I’ve made my own excel sheets and put tens of hours into making trading more efficient. But this is an advantage that is both automated and requires no work for the end user. That’s an undeserved advantage.

If some can use this, everyone should. But if everyone used it, buy orders would be a frenzy of outbiddings until they met parity with sell orders, and the whole purpose would be defeated. That fact tells me these programs aren’t good for the game.

The programmers who did the work probably deserve it and the problem is that they share that with the public. Just like if you were to share your spreadsheet with everyone they would share the advantage that you have put in through your hard work. Because you put in the hard work, you now have a spreadsheet that gives you an advantage in the TP, the difference being that you chose not to share it. Maybe they shouldn’t be sharing their work with everyone then?

DarkSpirit.7046:

…

I disagree with you. Most of the existing bots I know are UI driven thanks to tools like Autoit that has been perfected through many years of work. It is not necessarily a tool for botting but automating UI, however because of its power, it is commonly use by botters. You can read all about it from their bot forums which you can find by just googling. I don’t think you are familiar with their tools. I read a post from a botter in a GW2 bot forum describing how he used the PixelSearch functionality of Autoit to help him navigate the UI for selling.

To write an autoit script, you don’t even need to know a programming language, it uses a BASIC-like scripting language. All you need is a script kiddie with lots of time in his hands to get it up through trial-and-error. Automating UI is quite straight-forward.

http://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/

Botters go for profit as number one. If there is no selling then where is the profit coming from in running a bot? If the bot has sell capability, it should not clog up its inventory, furthermore unless you are trading things like armor, same items do stack. I don’t think inventory clogging is as a big problem with TP flipping bots as you think. If it is, then TP bots would be hardly viable as they lack the profit which is the main reason for running a bot in the first place.

I am also very familiar with aoutit, its a great little utility ans can be used for things like blocking windows key, eliminate the need for doubleclicking and even to eliminate the “Are you sure?” dialogue clicks.

You an also use things like socket libraries to interact between autoit scripts and a tp program, they also have OCR libraries to extract textual descriptions from the in game UI. The functionality is def there to do UI navigation and thats not the reason I am sceptical about anyone using it for full automation.

The imagesearch function is not 100% guaranteed due to nuance difference of the ingame UI (alpha interactions etc) this can be worked around in most cases, however the ingame delays of popup and UI transitions are very much an issue and using these techniques in a massive scale is just too slow. Also since UI assets are NOT UNIQUE for a lot of items the imagesearch will most likely get you to the wrong item so you cant rely on that and need to use OCR and OCR has a pretty poor success rate atm.

Furthermore my experience with the TP (which is extensive) is that flipping is usually a long term strategy, if you are looking at mats then youll have a large turnaround and small profits and with the sell queue you dont have to turn it around immediately. With specific items with larger margins they usually sell slower so youll either have to match your inflow with your outflow or hold on to items and in this scenario you have the risk of underbidding etc.

The only possible option imo for your strategy to keep the pickup line empty is if the bot is only flipping items and thus just flips any item in the inventory for the maximum sell price.

IMO if you have the funds then there are more profitable strategies than flipping on the TP and anyone running a TP bot is most likely not flipping…

So I am finally back from my week long vacation. I am not going to comment further on how easy/difficult it is to write a sell bot. You may indeed be right that it is not easy, however, I could still find existing GW2 bots that advertise a sell functionality. Of course, I can’t comment whether they actually work or not.

There are many working strategies to flipping. Some flip over a long term while others would cancel all their buy orders after 24 hours and start flipping other items. And yes there are more profitable strategies than flipping, I have found some myself but not going to disclose them here.