Guild Wars 2

Is this allowed? This seems like it could easily be a large part of why so much stuff sells at garbage rates, and why undercutting is so aggressive.
Earlier I noticed someone selling the same item I was trying to sell with a large markdown compared to the previous seller. There were only a couple of them listed, and I didn’t want to lose a bunch of money because of this idiot, so I tried to just buy them out and relist them. But the second I bought them out, they were instantly replaced with the same cost and quantity. I tested this three times.
In the amount of time it took to finish saying that the item had been purchased, it was already back up.

So I looked into this, and yeah, trading post bots are easily available to anyone.
This seems really unhealthy for the market.

Allowed? No, botting isn’t permitted in any form.

How big a problem is it? Almost certainly not as big an impact as you think. There are millions of transactions per day, from tens if not hundreds of thousands of players. It’s easy to get into bidding wars with someone who is keeping track of their offers/competition via the API.

So report (via support ticket) any specific examples that you see that worry you (item name, time|date, transactions) and move on.

How do you know that they’re a bot?

Ayrilana.1396:

How do you know that they’re a bot?

Because the speed at which they were being relisted exceeds human ability. The item’s being relisted so quickly, it never actually even registers on screen as not being available.

Or of the thousands upon thousands of players, perhaps one of them listed theirs? I’m not saying that it couldn’t be a bot but suggesting that it could not be one as well.

Grimwolf.7163:

Ayrilana.1396:

How do you know that they’re a bot?

Because the speed at which they were being relisted exceeds human ability. The item’s being relisted so quickly, it never actually even registers on screen as not being available.

This does not explain how you know that it is a bot. It explains how you feel it is a bot. Items being relisted quickly, is a side effect of having a game spanning TP, everyone has access to it, which means that items can be added before it has time to register.

Grimwolf.7163:

As for reporting it to support, I’ve literally never had anything done about such a report in all the years I’ve played.

You can’t know that for fact. Anet isn’t going to tell you that they did something about it, nor should they. Also, Anet isn’t going to do something, if there was no wrongdoing.

Bear in mind the Trading Post is game-wide. All the servers from both regions share the same TP. (China has their own one however because they have a slightly different version of the game.) So activity you’re seeing is from all the players all over the world. It’s not totally out of the question that what looks like a bot because it’s too fast for 1 person to do it is actually 2 separate people, or 3 or 4, even on items that are rarely traded.

(And yes real players will do that. I’ve sometimes stuck an item up with a large mark-down because I don’t want to settle for the ‘sell instantly’ price, but I don’t want to wait ages either and the markdown isn’t significant for me – not because I have millions of gold and don’t care but just because I’m not that strict on how much I sell stuff for, 1g either way on a 20g item isn’t a big deal. Other times I’ll just match whatever the lowest price is because it’s easier than trawling through graphs and sales data trying to determine an ideal price.)

It could also be a bot – but since there’s no way to know who is creating buy and sell orders there’s no way to tell if they’re all from the same person or not.

Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t report activity you find suspicious – Anet can investigate and if it is a bot they can take action – just that you shouldn’t expect this kind of thing to completely stop, or take it as a sign that they don’t stop people using bots.

Also more generally remember that the Trading Post is not an auction system. If someone ‘outbids’ you that doesn’t mean they’ve won and you’ve lost and will never get the item. It just means they’ll get the next one to sell…and you’ll get the one after that. So unless you really need a quick sale there’s usually no need to re-list something just because someone else is offering a better price. I’ve seen my offer drop to 5th place or even lower in the list, gone to bed and woken up the next day to find I’ve got it.

Grimwolf.7163:

Is this allowed? This seems like it could easily be a large part of why so much stuff sells at garbage rates, and why undercutting is so aggressive.
Earlier I noticed someone selling the same item I was trying to sell with a large markdown compared to the previous seller. There were only a couple of them listed, and I didn’t want to lose a bunch of money because of this idiot, so I tried to just buy them out and relist them. But the second I bought them out, they were instantly replaced with the same cost and quantity. I tested this three times.
In the amount of time it took to finish saying that the item had been purchased, it was already back up.

So I looked into this, and yeah, trading post bots are easily available to anyone.
This seems really unhealthy for the market.

I bolded part of OP. It seems to indicate that there are in fact bots available to get. I do hope that OP sent links to said bots to Anet so they can try to block them.

Whether or not it’s these bots the OP has been hit by I can’t say of course…

Zohane.7208:

Grimwolf.7163:

Is this allowed? This seems like it could easily be a large part of why so much stuff sells at garbage rates, and why undercutting is so aggressive.
Earlier I noticed someone selling the same item I was trying to sell with a large markdown compared to the previous seller. There were only a couple of them listed, and I didn’t want to lose a bunch of money because of this idiot, so I tried to just buy them out and relist them. But the second I bought them out, they were instantly replaced with the same cost and quantity. I tested this three times.
In the amount of time it took to finish saying that the item had been purchased, it was already back up.

So I looked into this, and yeah, trading post bots are easily available to anyone.
This seems really unhealthy for the market.

I bolded part of OP. It seems to indicate that there are in fact bots available to get. I do hope that OP sent links to said bots to Anet so they can try to block them.

Whether or not it’s these bots the OP has been hit by I can’t say of course…

Actually, I don’t think that’s possible. You can’t even report a player for using a bot without selecting the player directly.
Support doesn’t offer any options for reporting things like that.

Grimwolf.7163:

Zohane.7208:

Grimwolf.7163:

Is this allowed? This seems like it could easily be a large part of why so much stuff sells at garbage rates, and why undercutting is so aggressive.
Earlier I noticed someone selling the same item I was trying to sell with a large markdown compared to the previous seller. There were only a couple of them listed, and I didn’t want to lose a bunch of money because of this idiot, so I tried to just buy them out and relist them. But the second I bought them out, they were instantly replaced with the same cost and quantity. I tested this three times.
In the amount of time it took to finish saying that the item had been purchased, it was already back up.

So I looked into this, and yeah, trading post bots are easily available to anyone.
This seems really unhealthy for the market.

I bolded part of OP. It seems to indicate that there are in fact bots available to get. I do hope that OP sent links to said bots to Anet so they can try to block them.

Whether or not it’s these bots the OP has been hit by I can’t say of course…

Actually, I don’t think that’s possible. You can’t even report a player for using a bot without selecting the player directly.
Support doesn’t offer any options for reporting things like that.

I suppose you could always follow the advice from the wiki:
“If you find an exploit, please contact exploits@arena.net or report in-game.”

In this case, I would send an email to that address with links to the bot programs you found.

Grimwolf.7163:

Actually, I don’t think that’s possible. You can’t even report a player for using a bot without selecting the player directly.
Support doesn’t offer any options for reporting things like that.

You can email the information to exploits@arena.net

they live
I googled the topic title and …

I’ve read some posts about a bug in the Trading Post will sell orders, as well. Perhaps, this is what you have encountered…

As for the CS Team not offering options, you can create a Support Ticket about any topic you so choose. Just because the specific issue isn’t listed on the drop-down menu, doesn’t mean they would ignore the ticket. That would be…odd.

Good luck.