Guild Wars 2

Milkshake.4038:

Behellagh.1468:

Now I know when I’m being out bid by using gw2bltc which beeps at me when any of my bids are no longer the leading one and I’ve always assume that or similar websites are the way other players realize they got outbid. None that I know off will notify them that their high bid is now more than one copper higher. I never saw this before.

The bold part allows you to “play” when you are afk. I would like to see a response from anet: is it legal or not?

For me, it seems to be too much and unfair as it gives you an advantage over other players who don’t use it.

Website uses the API and your API key to look at your current TP bids (or items for sale or history of bought or sold). So it’s totally legal. It does nothing but makes a sound if I have my bids up when I’m logged into their website. It’s not like I can buy or sell.

Behellagh.1468:

Milkshake.4038:

Behellagh.1468:

Now I know when I’m being out bid by using gw2bltc which beeps at me when any of my bids are no longer the leading one and I’ve always assume that or similar websites are the way other players realize they got outbid. None that I know off will notify them that their high bid is now more than one copper higher. I never saw this before.

The bold part allows you to “play” when you are afk. I would like to see a response from anet: is it legal or not?

For me, it seems to be too much and unfair as it gives you an advantage over other players who don’t use it.

Website uses the API and your API key to look at your current TP bids (or items for sale or history of bought or sold). So it’s totally legal. It does nothing but makes a sound if I have my bids up when I’m logged into their website. It’s not like I can buy or sell.

If I create a bot using the API it won’t make it legal. This automated alerting system gives you advantage, because you don’t have to check dozens of orders every few hours manually. You can work/cook/clean your room and when you hear a ding you just update your order.

I already wrote about this issue 16 days ago. ArenaNet should investigate this for sure. At first I thought it is some Chinese child workers clicking on TP and collecting gold for their gold selling slave master, but BOTs are actually more logical. It seems like somebody tapped onto the TP webpage and can access it faster than in game, thus making this possible.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Lower-sell-price-on-TP-Good-profit-No/5942314

I’m sure Jon Smith and his team have a lot of data and that appropriate actions will be taken.

After reading this and the other thread, well one thing is for sure: Everyone described the totally normal tp market behavior. Noone wrote anything that sounds like a bot.

If I got every post right, than here are at least 3 different market tactics discussed. I don’t have the time to explain all now (look in wanze’s threads or google), but at least for the main post from mystic:

Some basics:
1. ingame you don’t see all available items and orders.
2. over the API you only get the current state. Noone (yes Websites like gw2tp too) can have/use real time prices for all/large amounts of items.
3. market technics are not botting.

What mystic describes is a standard technic, mostly used on items that are highly traded. For example:
Let’s assume iron ore has now the lowest sell order value 3s1c, the highest buy order is 1s50 and I currently own 1000 iron ore. So what do you do if you are bored and want some gold?
You put in like 950 iron ore for 3s sell order and directly buy order for some hundret/thousand iron ore on 1s 51c and you put in 1-10 iron ore sell orders for 1s 52c.
Now you watch your sell order like a hawk and evertime your 1-10 iron ores are bought, you instantly sell more for 1s 52c, so no one gets a buy order above yours.

What happens:
1. at these highly traded items a lot of people just fullfill the highest buy order or switch to the buy order if the difference to sell order is only a few copper. So you gain thousands of cheap iron ores an noone can get a buyorder above yours.
2. Most people are buying these highly traded items in stacks/bulks. So many people will buy (probably by mistake) your 1 cheap iron ore and hundrets of your 3s iron ores.

Basically, if you are extremely fast with putting in new sell orders for 1c above buy orders, then you can play this usually for 5-15 min. until smart people begin to put sell orders under your 3s wall.
To be extremely fast I usually stand next to TP with it open and I already put in another ore, so I only need to click sell as soon as the TP window ‘has’ mony to take. That’s usually fast enough because other people will have to close the TP and reopen it to put in a new buy order, so luckly thanks to the TP system others can’t be as fast as you are.

It sounds easy, it is easy and it works extremely well. If you use some technics (or an excel file) to find every day highly traded items which match certain conditions, you can use this on 5-10 items each day and easily get ~100g in about 2 hours.

PS: That is a commonly and widely known TP technic, so I really wonder why mystic (and I’m sure you knew this technic?) thought there might be a bot???

Try to read it again Bomber. You missed some crucial parts of his findings.

BTW fuj!!! on your cheating jimbo jambo.

I don’t think that Bomber’s technic is profitable. First of all there are only a few highly traded items with a good spread. Imagine that there are only 10 people using this technic, they will eliminate each others profit quickly.

My question is: how do you prevent others from undercutting you? How do you prevent someone buying all of your ores for 1.52s? People are not dumb, someone will see what is happening, he will buy your cheap ores and sell them for 2.99s and you lose

Mortifer.2946:

Try to read it again Bomber. You missed some crucial parts of his findings.

Please explain what I missed? Because in his case I would have put in sell orders for exactly 7s again and again instantly until I would have figured that someone like mystic is really only paying one (so someone is actually actively trying to get through the technic).

For me it is ‘hard’ to figure out at which point someone is really only buying the lowest item because while mystic bougth the 7s item, another person might have bought 10 of the more expensive ones. It’s just because of the high amount of people selling/buying these items. Sometimes it takes 30-50 sells for me to someone directly only buying the lowest 1 item sell order until I get it that there is someone actively trying not buy the higher sell orders. That’s why you can do this only for 5-15 min. with highly selling items, because after that time too much people try only to buy the lowest order / to get their buy order above mine.

For someone the people trying to get the 1 item sell order away, well of course it looks for them, but thats totally normal.

To the other guy above: Of course this works and it works well, actually there are really few people that check more than the lowest sell order and put their own sell order above. Most just sell small amounts at the lowest sell order (which is great, so I dont’t have to put in more for a while) or with larger amounts most use the little down arrow and with that technic they switch to the buy order. Same with buy orders, most give up after they tried to buy the 1c above sell order for 1-2 times and just put their buy order on mine.

Milkshake.4038:

Behellagh.1468:

Milkshake.4038:

Behellagh.1468:

Now I know when I’m being out bid by using gw2bltc which beeps at me when any of my bids are no longer the leading one and I’ve always assume that or similar websites are the way other players realize they got outbid. None that I know off will notify them that their high bid is now more than one copper higher. I never saw this before.

The bold part allows you to “play” when you are afk. I would like to see a response from anet: is it legal or not?

For me, it seems to be too much and unfair as it gives you an advantage over other players who don’t use it.

Website uses the API and your API key to look at your current TP bids (or items for sale or history of bought or sold). So it’s totally legal. It does nothing but makes a sound if I have my bids up when I’m logged into their website. It’s not like I can buy or sell.

If I create a bot using the API it won’t make it legal. This automated alerting system gives you advantage, because you don’t have to check dozens of orders every few hours manually. You can work/cook/clean your room and when you hear a ding you just update your order.

Yes, it does give me and anybody who use it an advantage. Just like knowing what the trading range of an item via a chart can give someone an advantage in terms of setting a sale price gives me an advantage. Since we don’t get item price history in game do you think these charts are also illegal? After all not everybody is aware of sites like GW2TP, GW2Spidy or GW2Shinies which provides historical charts. How about sites that give near real time estimates of profits from various activities like the Mystic Forge or salvaging or crafting or if you should open bags and sell their contents or just sell the bag? Is using that knowledge illegal in your mind as well since it gives those who use it an advantage over those who don’t?

How about if GW2BLTC didn’t reload my current bid page every five minutes but required a manual reload to see which bids have been outbid or not? Would it be illegal then because you don’t have to click on every item while remembering the price your bid was at to see if you’ve been outbid? That’s a lot of grunt work eliminated if I only have to click 20% of my bids to update them on the TP.

So where do you draw the line in your mind between legal and illegal advantage based on information exposed by the API ANet provided?

Conspiracy theories are all very well but most of the behaviour described in this thread can also be explained by a very busy TP. When I post a buy or sell order I usually “undercut” the existing best one by one copper. Often, one second later, someone will undercut me. That’s not a bot. That’s another player doing exactly what I just did but a fraction later. The volume of trades on the TP is huge and almost all of it is driven by real people, just buying and selling stuff. Try this, choose a popular crafting material and place a buy order a few slots above the current best offer. That order will usually be filled within minutes. That gives you a feel for just how many trades there are.

It’s easy to think that a small handful of bots are running the show but, actually, it’s a large number of players making lots of independent trades. If you were going to make GW2 bots you’d make farming ones rather than trading ones.

Behellagh.1468:

Yes, it does give me and anybody who use it an advantage. Just like knowing what the trading range of an item via a chart can give someone an advantage in terms of setting a sale price gives me an advantage. Since we don’t get item price history in game do you think these charts are also illegal? After all not everybody is aware of sites like GW2TP, GW2Spidy or GW2Shinies which provides historical charts. How about sites that give near real time estimates of profits from various activities like the Mystic Forge or salvaging or crafting or if you should open bags and sell their contents or just sell the bag? Is using that knowledge illegal in your mind as well since it gives those who use it an advantage over those who don’t?

How about if GW2BLTC didn’t reload my current bid page every five minutes but required a manual reload to see which bids have been outbid or not? Would it be illegal then because you don’t have to click on every item while remembering the price your bid was at to see if you’ve been outbid? That’s a lot of grunt work eliminated if I only have to click 20% of my bids to update them on the TP.

So where do you draw the line in your mind between legal and illegal advantage based on information exposed by the API ANet provided?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Policy-3rd-Party-Programs-Multi-Boxing-Macros/first

An automated outbid alerting system is a 3rd party program that gives you advantage. Based on the linked policy, I think this shouldn’t be allowed.

In my opinion as long as you have to do things manually it is fine. For example if Gw2efficiency alerts you to make charged lodestones now, because profit is good → it’s a no. If you browse the site and you decide to make it → it’s ok. Or if you check a historical chart you can decide to flip or not to flip → it is fine. But if the website alerts you to flip it is not ok.

I agree that there is only a little difference, but if you allow it then you can ask: if it alerts me to update bids, can it also copy the item name to the clipboard? Can it also alt-tab back into the game? Can it make a macro (1 key 1 action) to open the trading post, click on the search bar and then paste the item name there? You can bind every movement, every click to a key. And you can just type qwertyui and you outbid your competitor with 1 copper. You repeat it 10000x times and you are rich.

I would like to hear your opinion about it: where is the line between legal and illegal?

DoctorDing.5890:

Conspiracy theories are all very well but most of the behaviour described in this thread can also be explained by a very busy TP. When I post a buy or sell order I usually “undercut” the existing best one by one copper. Often, one second later, someone will undercut me. That’s not a bot. That’s another player doing exactly what I just did but a fraction later. The volume of trades on the TP is huge and almost all of it is driven by real people, just buying and selling stuff. Try this, choose a popular crafting material and place a buy order a few slots above the current best offer. That order will usually be filled within minutes. That gives you a feel for just how many trades there are.

It’s easy to think that a small handful of bots are running the show but, actually, it’s a large number of players making lots of independent trades. If you were going to make GW2 bots you’d make farming ones rather than trading ones.

You are right, the trade volume of popular materials is huge and you can see instant undercuts/outbids.

I posted charts of suspicious activity in a previous post of some low supply/low demand items (exotic daggers): 1 person (I know this, because he always bought 11 daggers and immediately cancelled his previous bid after creating a new one) outbid his own offers by 1 copper at least 40 times when there were no other competitors. Every outbid happened exactly after 5 minutes, I checked it ingame. I still cannot explain it, but it doesn’t look like human behaviour.

Milkshake.4038:

Behellagh.1468:

Yes, it does give me and anybody who use it an advantage. Just like knowing what the trading range of an item via a chart can give someone an advantage in terms of setting a sale price gives me an advantage. Since we don’t get item price history in game do you think these charts are also illegal? After all not everybody is aware of sites like GW2TP, GW2Spidy or GW2Shinies which provides historical charts. How about sites that give near real time estimates of profits from various activities like the Mystic Forge or salvaging or crafting or if you should open bags and sell their contents or just sell the bag? Is using that knowledge illegal in your mind as well since it gives those who use it an advantage over those who don’t?

How about if GW2BLTC didn’t reload my current bid page every five minutes but required a manual reload to see which bids have been outbid or not? Would it be illegal then because you don’t have to click on every item while remembering the price your bid was at to see if you’ve been outbid? That’s a lot of grunt work eliminated if I only have to click 20% of my bids to update them on the TP.

So where do you draw the line in your mind between legal and illegal advantage based on information exposed by the API ANet provided?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Policy-3rd-Party-Programs-Multi-Boxing-Macros/first

An automated outbid alerting system is a 3rd party program that gives you advantage. Based on the linked policy, I think this shouldn’t be allowed.

In my opinion as long as you have to do things manually it is fine. For example if Gw2efficiency alerts you to make charged lodestones now, because profit is good -> it’s a no. If you browse the site and you decide to make it -> it’s ok. Or if you check a historical chart you can decide to flip or not to flip -> it is fine. But if the website alerts you to flip it is not ok.

I agree that there is only a little difference, but if you allow it then you can ask: if it alerts me to update bids, can it also copy the item name to the clipboard? Can it also alt-tab back into the game? Can it make a macro (1 key 1 action) to open the trading post, click on the search bar and then paste the item name there? You can bind every movement, every click to a key. And you can just type qwertyui and you outbid your competitor with 1 copper. You repeat it 10000x times and you are rich.

I would like to hear your opinion about it: where is the line between legal and illegal?

Except that policy is in reference to injectors, plug ins, overlays that ride on top of the game and by advantage in play they mean PvP/WvW. This is a website that anyone with a browser and their API key can use.

And you should at least look at what it can do before you come up with ideas about what it could do before you embellish it with God like powers because you are spinning some wild notions there about it controlling the TP interface in game.

Milkshake.4038:

DoctorDing.5890:

Conspiracy theories are all very well but most of the behaviour described in this thread can also be explained by a very busy TP. When I post a buy or sell order I usually “undercut” the existing best one by one copper. Often, one second later, someone will undercut me. That’s not a bot. That’s another player doing exactly what I just did but a fraction later. The volume of trades on the TP is huge and almost all of it is driven by real people, just buying and selling stuff. Try this, choose a popular crafting material and place a buy order a few slots above the current best offer. That order will usually be filled within minutes. That gives you a feel for just how many trades there are.

It’s easy to think that a small handful of bots are running the show but, actually, it’s a large number of players making lots of independent trades. If you were going to make GW2 bots you’d make farming ones rather than trading ones.

You are right, the trade volume of popular materials is huge and you can see instant undercuts/outbids.

I posted charts of suspicious activity in a previous post of some low supply/low demand items (exotic daggers): 1 person (I know this, because he always bought 11 daggers and immediately cancelled his previous bid after creating a new one) outbid his own offers by 1 copper at least 40 times when there were no other competitors. Every outbid happened exactly after 5 minutes, I checked it ingame. I still cannot explain it, but it doesn’t look like human behaviour.

Please read the answers you got in your thread again. Behellagh explained it in at least three posts how that works and what happened.

About the stuff if a website is ok for informing you in price changes: Basically everything that doesn’t mess with the gw2 client and the game itself is fine and of course ok by anet!

So it doesn’t matter if I use some excel algorithm to get the perfect flipping items or if you use a database to find out the best long term investment or if you for god’s sake create an big data cluster to predict future item prices for better speculation. Of course it’s totally fine to use any tool to get the information if you got undercut as fast as possible.

Well and again of course you have to manually go on the tp and put in manually your item/price^^ Important thing is every tool that doesn’t mess with gw2 or automates anything inside gw2 (like these drinking ‘clickmakros’ which of course are NOT OK) is good to use and the main reason why there is an API!

Behellagh.1468:

Except that policy is in reference to injectors, plug ins, overlays that ride on top of the game and by advantage in play they mean PvP/WvW. This is a website that anyone with a browser and their API key can use.

And you should at least look at what it can do before you come up with ideas about what it could do before you embellish it with God like powers because you are spinning some wild notions there about it controlling the TP interface in game.

It is difficult to argue with you. I did not embellish the API with God like powers, I made some examples what could be the next steps and asked you about your opinion.

So I will ask again: where is the limit in your opinion?

Bomber.3872:

Please read the answers you got in your thread again. Behellagh explained it in at least three posts how that works and what happened.

His answers were not accurate. These are low supply/low demand items, it means you can buy only a few in a day. If I check prices ingame I can see changes immediately. I could predict exactly when the next bid happened. After observing this for almost 1 hour I wrote down what I had seen. I also asked for confirmation, no one answered, but I am sure I can see the difference between the behaviour of a human and a bot.

Like I’ve been saying, this is a website that one selection will show you which bids and items you are selling are no longer the highest or lowest. It also tells you how many behind you currently behind at that price (ex: I bid 2.37s, high bid is 2.41s and there are 137 items currently above your bid).

Now to take advantage of that I need to alt tab between the browser and the TP in game to find the entries I’m told are no longer in the lead, update the bid and if I want pull my original bid.

That is nearly identical to using a site’s more advance TP search tool to identify potential profitable items to invest in and again, alt-tab between the browser and the game to put in the bids. There is still quite a bit of manual work required.

Obviously tools that could bot the TP directly are illegal. So in my eyes as long as a person is needed to take advantage of information from a sophisticated search and analysis tool, there is nothing wrong with it. As soon as a player isn’t required, the “Does this program allow someone to ‘play’ when he/she is not at the computer?” clause from Gaile’s post, then it’s illegal. Simply being better informed is not a “crime”.

Behellagh.1468:

Like I’ve been saying, this is a website that one selection will show you which bids and items you are selling are no longer the highest or lowest. It also tells you how many behind you currently behind at that price (ex: I bid 2.37s, high bid is 2.41s and there are 137 items currently above your bid).

Now to take advantage of that I need to alt tab between the browser and the TP in game to find the entries I’m told are no longer in the lead, update the bid and if I want pull my original bid.

That is nearly identical to using a site’s more advance TP search tool to identify potential profitable items to invest in and again, alt-tab between the browser and the game to put in the bids. There is still quite a bit of manual work required.

Obviously tools that could bot the TP directly are illegal. So in my eyes as long as a person is needed to take advantage of information from a sophisticated search and analysis tool, there is nothing wrong with it. As soon as a player isn’t required, the “Does this program allow someone to ‘play’ when he/she is not at the computer?” clause from Gaile’s post, then it’s illegal. Simply being better informed is not a “crime”.

I agree with you. As long as you have to actively play/click/browse to get the information you want → it is fine for me.

I’m pretty sure according to the ToS. Using a program to “alert” you through the API is legal. Meaning for example if an item move to certain price, the API beep you a sound.

People may say it gives advantage, but that’s what API is for, to give people advantage. That’s say a wvw camp flipped, there are API alraming you that certain camp is flipped.

But I think the problem is there are definitely really weird things going on. My person experience is people seemed to be able to do things on the TP so fast it seemed only possible through automation.

If I try to sell an item x to the lowest buy order, it instantly refresh another buy order with the same price. It’s definitely something weird. Either a bug or glitch or something weird.

Also no point prove is there are bots. Google have the answer to everything.

AysonCurrax.3254:

Baldrick.8967:

I can imagine a clever programmer doing exactly this, hundreds of small transactions every time leading to enormous profits as it runs 24/7.

Whether someone is actually doing it or not will never be admitted by Anet in any event, so it’s pure speculation.

But if someone was running one, this is the sort of thing they would target rather than any of the more obvious higher ticket items.

a programmer working at a bank did exactly that at some point in the past, of sorts.
he transfered the fifth digit after the decimal point of each transaction to his own account. he got busted some time later though, as it was odd for a programmer to have something in the million range on his account.

2 comments on this:

1) That is an urban legend (see numerous myth-busting articles about this).

2) It’s not the same at all. The TP scheme involves taking advantage of prices, and the embezzlement scheme (known as the Salami technique) is theft.

I’ve been noticing way strange TP behavior too. Normally it’s no big whenever stuff takes longer than usual to sell but prices taking a serious dip the same day says something. Why all of a sudden is the value of something an entire 50s or more lower sometimes within hours?

Agemnon.4608:

I’ve been noticing way strange TP behavior too. Normally it’s no big whenever stuff takes longer than usual to sell but prices taking a serious dip the same day says something. Why all of a sudden is the value of something an entire 50s or more lower sometimes within hours?

Can you put that in more context? A price dropping by 50s doesn’t give enough information to imagine what could be happening. Can you give examples of items and their before/after prices? There are many reasons for a price drop – the most common being simple undercutting.

polarbear.2497:

Agemnon.4608:

I’ve been noticing way strange TP behavior too. Normally it’s no big whenever stuff takes longer than usual to sell but prices taking a serious dip the same day says something. Why all of a sudden is the value of something an entire 50s or more lower sometimes within hours?

Can you put that in more context? A price dropping by 50s doesn’t give enough information to imagine what could be happening. Can you give examples of items and their before/after prices? There are many reasons for a price drop – the most common being simple undercutting.

Let’s say you have an Elonian leather square that sells for 11g 50s then someone immediately undercuts by 1c then 20 other guys undercut them by 1c then someone undercuts them by 30s with a big stack. I don’t mean a precursor which wouldn’t be unusual but this much undercutting never usually happens in such a short timeframe. If it continues then people will simply sell mats for things individually as it’s lost money making the finished product eventually.

Agemnon.4608:

polarbear.2497:

Agemnon.4608:

I’ve been noticing way strange TP behavior too. Normally it’s no big whenever stuff takes longer than usual to sell but prices taking a serious dip the same day says something. Why all of a sudden is the value of something an entire 50s or more lower sometimes within hours?

Can you put that in more context? A price dropping by 50s doesn’t give enough information to imagine what could be happening. Can you give examples of items and their before/after prices? There are many reasons for a price drop – the most common being simple undercutting.

Let’s say you have an Elonian leather square that sells for 11g 50s then someone immediately undercuts by 1c then 20 other guys undercut them by 1c then someone undercuts them by 30s with a big stack. I don’t mean a precursor which wouldn’t be unusual but this much undercutting never usually happens in such a short timeframe. If it continues then people will simply sell mats for things individually as it’s lost money making the finished product eventually.

That’s totally normal. And yes right now crafting an elonian leather square might be better and 30 seconds later you would have gained more gold by only selling the mats.
Nothing strange there

Agemnon.4608:

Let’s say you have an Elonian leather square that sells for 11g 50s then someone immediately undercuts by 1c then 20 other guys undercut them by 1c then someone undercuts them by 30s with a big stack. I don’t mean a precursor which wouldn’t be unusual but this much undercutting never usually happens in such a short timeframe. If it continues then people will simply sell mats for things individually as it’s lost money making the finished product eventually.

If you can afford to lose some gold then you can try to play with the prices to discourage other players from trading those items. Sometimes I have the same issue, and it is a tough decision to relist and lose profit or leave the item on the tp for weeks or months.

Agemnon.4608:

polarbear.2497:

Agemnon.4608:

I’ve been noticing way strange TP behavior too. Normally it’s no big whenever stuff takes longer than usual to sell but prices taking a serious dip the same day says something. Why all of a sudden is the value of something an entire 50s or more lower sometimes within hours?

Can you put that in more context? A price dropping by 50s doesn’t give enough information to imagine what could be happening. Can you give examples of items and their before/after prices? There are many reasons for a price drop – the most common being simple undercutting.

Let’s say you have an Elonian leather square that sells for 11g 50s then someone immediately undercuts by 1c then 20 other guys undercut them by 1c then someone undercuts them by 30s with a big stack. I don’t mean a precursor which wouldn’t be unusual but this much undercutting never usually happens in such a short timeframe. If it continues then people will simply sell mats for things individually as it’s lost money making the finished product eventually.

Thank you for the clarification, and yes that would be absolutely normal. I don’t think there’s any indication of something strange going on.

There are TP bots available for download. I won’t link them, nor give the names. But a google search will reveal that there are some out there, specifically for the Guild Wars 2 TP.
Of course using such a thing is highly discouraged and should never be done, unless of course you want to get banned….

Bomber.3872:

Please explain what I missed? Because in his case I would have put in sell orders for exactly 7s again and again instantly until I would have figured that someone like mystic is really only paying one (so someone is actually actively trying to get through the technic).

I think what he’s referring to is the response time. At first I thought this was someone or a bot that was refreshing these sell listings as they were bought. how long would you say it takes you to refresh yours? 1/2 second to realize your have gold to pick up, 1/2 second to select to sell iron ore, 1 second to open TP sell window, 1 second to select price and hit sell. so maybe 3 seconds total? probably 5 when not trying for a speed record? what I observed was less than 1/2 second total (click ‘buy’, click ‘ok’, new listing is there again, no delay). I’m not so sure a bot is capable of doing that within the confines of GW2 (it takes time to get responses from the server), which is why I asked what people thought in this post.

Mystic.5934:

Bomber.3872:

Please explain what I missed? Because in his case I would have put in sell orders for exactly 7s again and again instantly until I would have figured that someone like mystic is really only paying one (so someone is actually actively trying to get through the technic).

I think what he’s referring to is the response time. At first I thought this was someone or a bot that was refreshing these sell listings as they were bought. how long would you say it takes you to refresh yours? 1/2 second to realize your have gold to pick up, 1/2 second to select to sell iron ore, 1 second to open TP sell window, 1 second to select price and hit sell. so maybe 3 seconds total? probably 5 when not trying for a speed record? what I observed was less than 1/2 second total (click ‘buy’, click ‘ok’, new listing is there again, no delay). I’m not so sure a bot is capable of doing that within the confines of GW2 (it takes time to get responses from the server), which is why I asked what people thought in this post.

Ah^^ well with the time: Like I wrote I let the tp window open on the item. So click sell as soon as in the little corner on the left is any silver incoming, basically I guess that wouldn’t take longer than a second, but I’m not sure how long it takes until the Server sends me my silver if someone bought it.
Actually the basic idea is that you as the ‘only the one item buyer’ have not time to get the higher buy order, because I’m faster with the sell listing.
So that might just have been what happend (especially because the items you named are highly traded ones) and I usually can keep that up for only some minutes (after some minutes are just too much people buying, so somone usually gets to undercut/pit an higher buy order), so that might be the reason why you only has to buy some items until the seller gave up.
On the other side if someone can keep it up for a long timespan/hours with these 1 item low sell orders and he alwasy only needs a sec or so I would agree that it is suspicious.

I’ve got screenshot evidence!

Today I went to sell 2 Gossemer Gloves Panels instantly. Only 1 of them sold and immediately a new order for 1 popped up at the same price. Immediately after selling the second glove panel another buy order for 1 popped up at the same price!

This is not “playing the market”, and is way too coincidental, going by my experience earlier with another item I mentioned here, as well as others having similar experiences when buying/selling items in the trading post. Something is seriously wrong.

Give me 1 good reason why a buy/sell order for a single item with a specific low quantity ordered would keep immediately popping up as you’re buying/selling them? It just doesn’t make any sense to me other than the possibility that someone is using some sort of bot program to automate their TP transactions.

In the first screenshot you can see I sold 2 Gossemer Gloves Panels, but only 1 at a time for 6 silver 19 copper. In the second screenshot you can see there is a buy order for 1 Gossemer Gloves Panel at that same price. If I had more gloves panels to sell, I’m sure I’d be selling them 1 at a time for that price until I sold a few, before the rest are sold to the next highest buy order.

Edit: It is a bot program somebody is using to make sure their buy/sell orders are always outbidding/undercutting by 1 copper so they are the highest/lowest and their bids can go through.

Charrbeque.8729:

I’ve got screenshot evidence!

Today I went to sell 2 Gossemer Gloves Panels instantly. Only 1 of them sold and immediately a new order for 1 popped up at the same price. Immediately after selling the second glove panel another buy order for 1 popped up at the same price!

This is not “playing the market”, and is way too coincidental, going by my experience earlier with another item I mentioned here, as well as others having similar experiences when buying/selling items in the trading post. Something is seriously wrong.

Give me 1 good reason why a buy/sell order for a single item with a specific low quantity ordered would keep immediately popping up as you’re buying/selling them? It just doesn’t make any sense to me other than the possibility that someone is using some sort of bot program to automate their TP transactions.

In the first screenshot you can see I sold 2 Gossemer Gloves Panels, but only 1 at a time for 6 silver 19 copper. In the second screenshot you can see there is a buy order for 1 Gossemer Gloves Panel at that same price. If I had more gloves panels to sell, I’m sure I’d be selling them 1 at a time for that price until I sold a few, before the rest are sold to the next highest buy order.

Edit: It is a bot program somebody is using to make sure their buy/sell orders are always outbidding/undercutting by 1 copper so they are the highest/lowest and their bids can go through.

Gossemer Gloves Padding: same exact thing. A buy order for 1 at 53 copper. I had 1 to sell and after selling it another buy order for 1 at 53 copper was up, and I could see it pop up when the buy/sell window said ‘Success!’ before I even closed this window..

Charrbeque I tried it, bought 10 paddings and sold one by one to the 53c order. It seems like a bug to me, as there is no way to create a new order without using mouse clicks and it would take some time even for a bot.

Edit: I made an order for 54c, there was no instant outbid. After that I made an order for 53c, bought 2 paddings directly and sold them for 53c. I didn’t get the padding, so the displayed number on the 53c order is wrong (it remained 2 after I sold 2). So it is a bug.

It doesn’t have to take time to bot if somebody managed to hack into TP website. Everything can be done through commands, no graphical representation of TP is neccessary. It would be nice to know if ArenaNet is investigating the issue.

Mortifer.2946:

It doesn’t have to take time to bot if somebody managed to hack into TP website. Everything can be done through commands, no graphical representation of TP is neccessary. It would be nice to know if ArenaNet is investigating the issue.

This bot behavior and the insider knowledge market swings before a patch has even started downloading has been around for a LONG time. I doubt it will ever be addressed just realize the TP is rigged.

Mortifer.2946:

It doesn’t have to take time to bot if somebody managed to hack into TP website. Everything can be done through commands, no graphical representation of TP is neccessary. It would be nice to know if ArenaNet is investigating the issue.

There are a couple thousand things that are more reasonable. Maybe there is really just some view bug, that might be something for anet to really investigate, but I’m sure John Smith would see/find such a bug very fast.

Charrbeque please read my whole post again, especially the edited part, I made the following:

I placed an order for 1 padding, price was 53c.
There were 2 orders for 53c, one of them was mine.
I sold 2 paddings for 53c.
I didn’t get a padding as expected.
The 2 orders for 53c were still there.
After I removed my order only 1 was there.

So the displayed number must be wrong.

See? And this one is pretty simple because it works with the game client. I’m telling you. This is not players but bots, and ArenaNet should smash them with their banhammer ASAP

Mortifer.2946:

See? And this one is pretty simple because it works with the game client. I’m telling you. This is not players but bots, and ArenaNet should smash them with their banhammer ASAP

These bots can be detected easily. The way you move your mouse, the time you need to click or type is unique to you. Of course a more advanced bot that reads these data while you play is able to copy your behaviour, but if you can make a bot like this you will earn more money if you work as a programmer

Milkshake.4038:

Charrbeque please read my whole post again, especially the edited part, I made the following:

I placed an order for 1 padding, price was 53c.
There were 2 orders for 53c, one of them was mine.
I sold 2 paddings for 53c.
I didn’t get a padding as expected.
The 2 orders for 53c were still there.
After I removed my order only 1 was there.

So the displayed number must be wrong.

Hmm…..

After looking around https://np.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/43u88p/trading_post_bug/

It seems the trading post was confirmed to be down for a while about 9 days ago and it was updated. So it’s possible this could be a bug brought on by the recent problems with the TP.

But……….how do you explain the bot in the video I linked doing exactly what we have described, that you believe is just a bug?

The video was uploaded in August 2015, but as I said, the most recent info I found on the software is that the program was still being updated and working as of the end of January 2016.

I think someone in this thread earlier mentioned that bot programs you have to pay real money for are all just a scam. But the thread for that program on that forum was created September 2015 and the created of the bot (and thread OP) was the one who posted at the end of January that it was still being up to date. So to me it appears this bot program is not a scam at all, and that it possibly still works today.

1/30/2016 by the person who created the bot:
It is still fully functional and being updated, so the video in the OP or on [redacted].com is still an accurate demonstration of how it works (except that number of additional features have been added since).

Edit: And based on the info, the bot can be set up to randomize what it does. It places a few orders to automatically outbid by 1 copper. If it did that all day it would be detected easier. Same goes for the quantity when buying/selling items.

If you read the OP, my post on page 1, and others who posted they’ve witnessed similar TP behavior, then watch the video I finally posted, it isn’t hard to figure out that something seriously strange is going on.

Charrbeque.8729:

too long, I won’t quote it

I know that bots exist. However I doubt that this one is 100% undetectable. Anet can simply buy this bot, study it and ban all those players who use it.

And 99% of these programs/softwares/cracks/bots are scam or malware. You cannot trust anything nowadays.

Milkshake.4038:

Charrbeque.8729:

too long, I won’t quote it

I know that bots exist. However I doubt that this one is 100% undetectable. Anet can simply buy this bot, study it and ban all those players who use it.

And 99% of these programs/softwares/cracks/bots are scam or malware. You cannot trust anything nowadays.

Perhaps. It would be nice if ArenaNet would at least look into the matter.

Milkshake.4038:

Charrbeque.8729:

too long, I won’t quote it

I know that bots exist. However I doubt that this one is 100% undetectable. Anet can simply buy this bot, study it and ban all those players who use it.

And 99% of these programs/softwares/cracks/bots are scam or malware. You cannot trust anything nowadays.

Well all these posts will be deleted probably anyway so….

Everyone knows about that bot, because it’s the first google result

Two things are sure: That bot doesn’t work and anet banned everyone who tried to use it already ~2 years ago!
Don’t underestimate anet, they have some very good and smart programmers and they find AND ban bots regulary. The side from where he found ‘the bot’ has and sells the same bot anet lucky banned hundrets of accounts last wintersday.

Behellagh.1468:

I’m starting to believe as well. Now I’m accustom to having my bids getting ratcheted up by a copper but after a battle with another I decided I wasn’t going to win and since my bid is now 10c higher than the next highest I would drop them back to be one copper above the 3rd place. My bidding nemesis did the same almost immediately.

Now I know when I’m being out bid by using gw2bltc which beeps at me when any of my bids are no longer the leading one and I’ve always assume that or similar websites are the way other players realize they got outbid. None that I know off will notify them that their high bid is now more than one copper higher. I never saw this before.

I think you may be underestimating how obsessively some people watch an active item on the market.

I made a screenshot video of the issue in question:
https://youtu.be/3-Roe3sf1ME
1 listing at 6s54c. I buy it, and when the page refreshes, it’s there again (I guess that’s even before ‘OK’ button). 6 times.

There are TP bot programs on the internet so yeah these weird quirks are probably bot related