Guild Wars 2

Buttercup.5871:

It’s all automatically checked – and sometimes automatically incremented – by programs.

If ArenaNet allows it, then who are you to say otherwise? Also why do you think that they have released an official API which has been giving third party programs and websites even further advantages?

The programs and websites have been free and publicly available, if you choose not to use them yourself then don’t blame others who do. Learn to take responsibility for your own decisions rather than throwing a tantrum on the floor and crying “not fair!”

Kaon.7192:

I was wondering why all these people are defending the clearly broken and unfair status quo that allows people to cut in front of queues with negligible costs…

Define “negligible costs”. What is “negligible”? What is “negligible” for me may not be “negligible” for you and different for someone else. How much should “negligible cost” be, exactly?

Again having a fixed percentage of 5% does not work in all situations as I have pointed out. If you want to propose a blanket-wide TP modification then you have to ensure that your proposal works on ALL items, not just some items.

Risingashes.8694:

As to your point on the irrelevence between 1c or 5s overcutting, the point is that the limit should be percentage based. If you undercut by 0.5% then that’s competition, complaining about that is just sour grapes. But currently the price of undercutting is 0.00000001%- that may as well be 0%, and that’s simply unfair.

The OP’s suggestion doesn’t work. If the limit is 5% of the selling price of say 1s, then it is only 5c. If 1c is not a significant increment, is 5c then a significant one? I don’t think so.

And happens if the selling price is just 20c, 5% increment then you brings you back to 1c increment, a full circle.

And at higher prices, it destroys flipping market due to the higher increment. Setting it up as a fixed percentage (5%) of the selling price doesn’t work in all situations.

Buttercup.5871:

The answer as to why Anet didn’t say anything on zicore is in the paragraph you quoted. Anet said enough in the various legal instruments you agreed to. I’m sticking to those.

That is also wrong and I hope you would stop trying to lie further by claiming your personal opinions to be also ArenaNet’s official opinions.

ArenaNet didn’t want to set any precedence on them giving app certifications. However, we did made it clear what the program does and we had always been waiting for an answer from them. After they have provided OAuth2 authentication in their official API, then we wont need the game session key anymore.

As far as advantages is concerned, the fact that ArenaNet released an official API is already giving third party apps an advantage. They believe in supporting third party developers to use their API to provide a compelling experience to their customers. Whether you personally like that or not is unimportant to me. The game belongs to ArenaNet, not you, so they set the rules, not you. And we would abide to their rules as much as we can, just not yours. You are giving yourself too much credit in this game, when it is not even yours to control.

Buttercup.5871:

They can’t “disallow” these programs openly because they can’t enforce it without a complete overhaul of the TP, and you know it Darkspirit. In fact you know it so well that you have several scripts running at all times to cheat everyone in the most efficient way. A cheat is a cheat, I don’t care about what Arenanet doesn’t say, I care about the contracts I sign.

Wrong again. Zicore promised in the forum here that he would discontinue development in this program if ArenaNet states that they disallow it. Obviously ArenaNet never stated that they disallow it.

The only person that calls it a cheat is YOU, not ArenaNet. You can do all of us the justice of at least claiming it to be your personal opinion rather than pretending to be ArenaNet’s spokesman and declaring your stance as also ArenaNet’s stance on the matter. That is deceptive and just not right to misrepresent someone else who always has a voice of their own, if they so choose to speak.

Furthermore, like I have always said in this forum, if this program is not allowed, ArenaNet can always ban us. My game user id is clearly shown here and so is Zicore’s. As far as I am concerned we have been honest and aboveboard with what we do in this issue so far.

Risingashes.8694:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Why should he be forced to pay so much more than you?

Because that’s what a market is.

Remember that there is another side to this transaction: either a buyer is paying more than they would under proper competition, or a seller is getting less than they would under proper competition.

The 1c undercutter is taking money out of the other person’s pocket without giving up anything themselves.

You talk about normal traders like they’re somehow doing something wrong- like they should make huge profit sacrifices to reach some impossible state where undercutting by 1c will no longer be profitable. Do you get that doing so would require eliminating profit completely? Most likely even taking a huge loss on items?

The only way to stop 1c undercutting is to make your offer plus 1c no longer worth it, and no one can operate in such a system.

Why would they not be giving anything up? If the max offer price is 5s and they bid 5s1c then they are giving up 5s1c in order to get the item first. And like the OP, they bid by 1c because they don’t want to pay too much. What is unreasonable about that?

The OP is welcome to spend time in a bidding war with them or even bid a much higher price to discourage further competition, or buy it straight if he wants to. The OP has many choices to take.

Buttercup.5871:

And don’t tell me to also use a 3rd party program, I know for a fact that it violates the user agreement I signed.

Wrong. We asked ArenaNet many times and they didn’t say that it is disallowed. We even told them what the program does and also made it open source here:

http://notifier.zicore.de/

As far as we are concerned we have already done all that we could to clarify this with ArenaNet. If it is really disallowed, then we would have been banned by now. Since ArenaNet themselves did not disallow this program, it is only you who is trying to take this program on as your personal war against it by spreading lies by pretending to speak for ArenaNet when they have never authorized you to represent them.

Right here in this official forum, ArenaNet always have the opportunity to say so, if this program is disallowed. So when have they ever needed you to speak on their behalf here? Even if you are still too timid to take the risk to use it yourself, you shouldn’t blame others who are bolder than you are.

Qaelyn.7612:

If I bid 4g and someone else wants to pay 4.5g, then more power to them. They are actually offering more money. Someone offering 4.00.01g is not (for all intents and purposes) offering more money. He’s just trying to cut in line.

Why should he be forced to pay so much more than you? You want to save as much gold as you can for yourself, but you don’t want to acknowledge that other people may want to save as much as they can for themselves too.

They hope that they can outbid you by adding 1c and they have the tenacity to stay at the TP and up their bid accordingly. If that annoys you, you can always put in more gold and buy the item right off or have a much higher buy offer to discourage competitors. If you are stingy, then you have to go through this annoying and time wasting process just like everyone else.

So make a choice, add more gold or spend more time in a bidding war. You can also choose to use the same software tools as them too since the tools have been free and publicly available, if you are willing to spend time to learn how to use them, just like what some other people did.

Furthermore, 5% increment is still too low for cheaper items, so it doesn’t solve anything for you. There is nothing wrong with the current simple system, you have choices and you just need to make up your mind.

Qaelyn.7612:

Exactly. There’s no incentive to actually offer to pay more or to offer to sell for less, unless you’re willing to take the current high bid or low offer. So everyone wastes time nickel-and-diming, and those who have the most time (or scripts) to manipulate the market do the best while people actually just looking for a good deal on gear lose out.

That is the case in the real world, those who have the time to go to auctions and sit throughout the auction, get a better chance of winning said auctions, against those who make 1 bid and then leave while the bidding is still going on.

If that still bothers you, you can always buy it instantly by paying the minimum sale price. You can also give an offer that is just 1c less than the min sale price so nobody would be able to outbid you in the offer queue.

The only reason why those options would not appeal to you is, you are also cheap, you want to pay the minimum amount that you need to, to win the auction. And guess what? That is also why people paid 1c increment in the first place.

It is not that we don’t understand what you are trying to say, we simply disagree with your views and you don’t seem to understand our counter arguments as you are not even attempting to address them. And as far as the software tools are concerned, they are freely available out on the Internet, you don’t even need to be smart enough to write one yourself. You have only yourself to blame if you decide to deprive yourself and disadvantaged yourself with respect to others.

Qaelyn.7612:

The point is that the people with the copper increments aren’t really bidding more. They’re just butting in line. Why people can’t grasp this concept is beyond me, though I’d imagine a lot of the people objecting are in fact the ones that do little but stand around the TP all day…

First of all, there is absolutely nothing wrong with people standing around the TP all day. It does not violate the rules of the game and besides, why should any of us dictate how others should spend their time in the game? Just because I don’t like Fractals means that I should stop other people from playing it too? Of course not. Most Chinese people like to eat rice, but you hate rice, therefore all Chinese people have to stop eating rice from now on, for your sake? A tad arrogant don’t you think, Mr dictator?

I just don’t understand why some people always feel the need to “force” the rest of the people to play the game exactly like they do. We are not your clones and we don’t intend to be one. Different people like doing different things, so learn to respect their individualism even if you don’t appreciate what they like.

Second, if you set the increment to a fixed percentage of the min selling price, depending on the spread between the min selling price and max offer price, the more expensive items may stop being worth flipping due to the TP taxes.

Third, even if you set the increment to a fixed percentage of the min selling price, you can still be outbid by someone who stands around the TP all day! For lower priced items, the increment can be so small that we go back a full circle to your argument that the increment is too insignificant.

https://api.guildwars2.com/v1/map_floor.json?continent_id=1&floor=1

now returns

{"error":10,"product":71,"module":2,"line":172,"text":null}

Not good for who? The buyers or the sellers? Always look at both sides of the coin.

Behellagh.1468:

But if you are just buying one of something then it doesn’t matter, other than you want it cheaper that what it’s currently goes for.

Precisely. If you are playing the market yourself, don’t blame other people for playing the same market. There is suppose to be competition in the marketplace, it is by design.

If you are a serious buyer, you would pay a lot more gold or buy it instantly because you seriously need that item. Otherwise, people who intend to play the TP by flipping, would not want to jeopardize the market for this item by raising the offer price by a large amount because it may not be worth flipping anymore for everyone else. The 1c increment is a strategy to get the item and preserve its value for flipping at the same time.

Having said that, nobody can stop you if you just put in the max buy offer that you are willing to pay for the item at one go either. But then you may be paying more than you could have been, so it is left to your brains to decide on a course of action. This is what makes things interesting because it calls for experience and market strategies.

Minimum increment of 1c helps to put your offer in front but not destroy the market at the same time. It is a valid strategy. If someone puts too large an increment, then the market for that item may be destroyed and not be worth it anymore. I don’t like going around destroying market opportunities for everyone else just to brag how rich I am.

If you have the gold, and you really need the item, no one can stop you from putting in a lot more gold and destroying all the competitions. People would probably back off if you put a large enough amount of gold or you can simply buy it instantly. You always have that option.

Ursan.7846:

morrolan.9608:

Another comment John refers to gaining inside info by ‘nefarious’ means when surely the biggest issue is the testers who are hardly gaining the info by ‘nefarious’ means.

It’s also possible that data miners can potentially obtain information from the client before the general public knows about it. For a while after every patch, some bits of information from future patches were included.

I wonder what he means by “nefarious” means. If someone looks up the charts in gw2spidy and gauge the prices, would that be considered “nefarious” means? I certainly hope not. But it is gaining knowledge that the general public may not know about if they don’t spend the time and effort analyzing market data.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

You guys make it seem like you need to play 1000’s upon 1000’s of fractals to make an ascended back piece… I mean come on… you need 1 vial. With account bound MF, you can probably farm one within a few hour on level 1 if you wanted to.

I mean I agree there should be other methods, but you make it sound like there is some giant barrier preventing you from doing fractals… which is just not true.

Finding a vial is not guaranteed and we certainly don’t need more RNG in this game. If someone has spent sufficient time looking for it, then he should be able to get it despite his bad luck with the drops, right now it is still random.

Limiting a max stat gear to a particular area is a bad idea because if you hate just this area, too bad, you don’t get progression any longer, you are forgotten.

dietzero.3514:

Zaxares.5419:

I do agree that all Ascended items should have multiple ways to be obtained actually. The following routes should be a bare minimum:

1. Crafting. I imagine this will occur once r500 armor crafting and Jeweler is released, so I’m not too concerned about it.

2. Laurels. As a reward from dailies/monthlies, Laurels provides a way for all players to acquire Ascended gear, no matter how they choose to play.

3. Badges of Honor. This is to provide WvW-only players a means of obtaining Ascended gear without needing to delve deeply into PvE.

Problem is that people have stacks of 2 and 3.

I have lots of laurels, badges, and 500 crafting level and yet I can’t buy an ascended back item without playing Fractals, and I can’t craft them. What is up with that? I completed dungeons, completed my world explorations, did jumping puzzles, did WvW, acquired lots of currencies, been playing since beta, committed lots and lots of time into the game, bought gems, but so what, as long as I don’t do Fractals, I can never ever get an ascended back piece. Does it even matter if I play this game another 5 years and earn even more achievements elsewhere, without playing Fractals, I would still not be able to get an ascended back piece.

So only Fractals people deserve the prestige of having an ascended back item, while you can have the greatest achievements outside of Fractals and they still don’t matter? It is not just spending time in the game, but spending time in that area (i.e. Fractals) that they want you to play that matters.

spiritus.7983:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Since I hate Fractals, I can never ever get an ascended back piece regardless of how much of the other aspects of the game I have achieved.

I’m in the same both with you, I’m boicoting fractals since october 2012 when all that horizontal progression what they talking about was a big fat lie all that time.

Same here.

Keiel.7489:

I am pretty disappointed in the delay of certain items to be available elsewhere. But they said Ascended back items will be available by other means soon(or eventually as I read it). .

I don’t see that happening anytime soon. If they really wanted ascended gear to be available elsewhere, then the easiest thing they could have done is to make them purchasable through other currencies, if not gold. Sure, they released ascended amulets, rings, and accessories to the laurel merchants but they decided to hold back the back piece. They are retaining it as a “cattle prod” to get more people into Fractals.

Which begs the question – If they want people to play Fractals, why not just make Fractals more fun? Holding back max-stat gear just to nudge people to play Fractals is just a sad way of claiming success for a particular area through ulterior means rather than putting in actual effort to making it fun.

Ursan.7846:

Quit the game, because you are not able to play the game without ascended weapons.

It is not that people cannot play this game without ascended weapons. But saying that only Fractal people deserves max stat gear is saying that the best WvW people, best map completion people, the best other dungeon people, etc all suck and do not hold a candle to Fractal people. Afterall, like what they said, it is a prestige, and it seems only Fractal people deserve that prestige of wearing max stat gear.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Interview with ArenaNet Economist John Smith and Lead Designer Izzy Cartwright

How are the economics of account/soul/unbound gear items taken into consideration when creating an item?

Izzy: Really, it comes down to the goal of the item. If the goal of the item is to be a great reward, like a rare drop from a dungeon, then you want it to be tradable. If the goal of the item is to be very prestigious, then you want it to be account-bound or soul-bound on acquire. As we create the item we look at the goals of that item and what is it trying to solve, and that normally tells us pretty quick how the item will be bound.

That philosophy totally runs counter against their initial promise by Colin. What happened to “It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/"

For example vial of condensed mists essence, gee I wonder if I can get an ascended back piece without going to Fractals. Answer: No you can’t! Well except for the sclerite karka shell which has the unpopular apothecary stats and also requires the exotic sclerite karka shell that are not available now.

Since I hate Fractals, I can never ever get an ascended back piece regardless of how much of the other aspects of the game I have achieved. Setting up ascended items to be account-bound is just a “cattle prod” to nudge players to play the areas that they want you to play, instead of the areas that you really want to play.

Buttercup.5871:

Programmers in this thread confirm they’ve tested putting a bot on the TP sucessfully.

You not answered my question. Did they really confess to running a bot on this thread? Have you reported them yet?

Who specifically stated that they ran a bot on the TP (include quotes please)? Or did you make that up?

Buttercup.5871:

Error. Cannot compute.

Like I said, you took it out of context. There are many different types of bots, for example farming bots which can be implemented with UI Automation and there are TP bots, etc. You can’t just take one context and simply apply it to another without considering the differences.

Yes I suggest we stop this thread after all, ridding the game of bots falls under ArenaNet’s jurisdiction. There is nothing we can do as players, besides reporting them, even when we see a definite bot in the game. ArenaNet has done a good job keeping them under control and I am sure that they are still working hard to maintain that right now. Regardless of any personal bias against me, I still maintain that the bot situation is well under control in this game, at this point in time. There is no need to help spread false rumors that this game is full of bots which would only serve to undermine confidence in this game and any good work that ArenaNet has done to keep it relatively bot-free.

Buttercup.5871:

You’re completely derailing the issue. Programmers in this thread confirm they’ve tested putting a bot on the TP sucessfully. If you had read this thread, you would have seen that I and others have personally witnessed a bot, live, removing its buy offer and placing an identical new one virtually at the same time – in other words: at a speed no human could possibly do this in-game. I invite you to do that within 1/4 of a second. You can’t. No one can. And it wasn’t just done once: this impossible trick was performed repeatedly and consistently, before my and everyone’s eyes, whenever you would place a buy order on said item.

So you are saying that some people admitted they wrote a TP bot on this thread? Then what are we waiting for? You should go ahead and submit their user id to ArenaNet now!

By the way, you have taken my quotes completely out of context. Like I have said, TP bots though possible, are rare. We should just report them and let ArenaNet handle the situation. I don’t see the purpose of you making a fuss out of this, other than spreading paranoia among more gullible players here that all the traders on the TP are likely bots. Bots would always exist in some numbers but the situation is well under control. This game is currently not infested by bots, we don’t need anyone spreading false rumors publicly to hurt the game for personal agenda or ties with another competitor game studio.

Risingashes.8694:

Now the speculators for Ascended armor are just going crazy.

Silk aint gonna be used fools. Stop bubblin’.

<sarcasm>Spool of Silk Weaving Thread..hmmm….I wonder if that would require silk.</sarcasm>

And by the way, here may be a source of why silk is rising:

http://www.guildwars2tradingpost.com/2013/11/buy-silk-scraps-immediately.html#.Uo3F0MR018E

Aberrant.6749:

We also should acknowledge them where/when they are being used and not deny it just because it suits an agenda.

I do hope they are able to put more things in place to prevent the TP bots better such as the one I sent them

To be fair, I am still not entirely convinced that has to be a bot and not a human. Everything that I have read so far from our perspective shows that it is still possible for it to be a human and human traders are still the majority on the TP, so probability is on my side.

But reporting to ArenaNet is probably the right call, and they would have better tools in place to show if that is a bot or not.

Aberrant.6749:

Dark I don’t see farming bots as often, but it’s not like they’ve all been wiped out. TP bots would require other protection/detection from those other types (and could potentially make them far more gold).

Note that I have never said bots don’t exist anymore, it just seems to me that there are fewer of them compared to a year ago because ArenaNet did a good job detecting and banning them from the game.

We all know that there would still be some bots around but it is nothing like a year ago then. And I have faith that ArenaNet would continue to work on the bot problem, which would always be around, and they have been doing a great job so far. We can help by reporting any suspicious activity like this one, and have faith that ArenaNet is on top of this. The last thing we need is a bot paranoia about GW2 and false rumors going around.

Aberrant.6749:

This month there was a bot running around killing coyotes in WvW on my server for weeks despite people constantly reporting.

Botters/programmers are always trying to figure out new ways to get around the protections put it place.

Some don’t even care if they get banned. They’ve made enough from the TP botting to still make it worth while to just do it again on another account.

These are hardly new things for MMOs…

DarkSpirit.7046:

Yeah I agree that this game is filled with people who are overly paranoid about bots, so much so that they are influencing the API development to a very bad end result, which to a developer like me who supports their api, is very disheartening.

It sucks that some people ruin things for others, I agree.

I’m not paranoid, I’ve just seen it myself.

P.S. I still think that even having something notify you when you’re outbid gives one player an unfair advantage over another and thus shouldn’t be allowed.

The last time I have seen bots in GW2 was about a year ago. Remember those bow-wielding bot trains that teleported to grab their loot? I have not noticed any bot in the game since then because ArenaNet did a mass banning on those. So I trust that they would be able to do a good enough job preventing bots, based on their proven track record, and so should you. Having said that, do report them to ArenaNet if you noticed them.

But unless you have been playing a different game from me, there doesn’t seem to be that many bots running around nowadays.

As far as knowing when you have been outbid, I believe it is a missing game feature and that they should have a way of notifying that to the relevant players. The most common auctions nowadays in the real world, the highest bidder is usually publicly displayed, giving everyone the opportunity to up their bids if they so desire. One of the reasons that ArenaNet is releasing official APIs to their game is so that third party devs would be able to provide useful features that ArenaNet devs may not have the time or resources to work on. In the perfect world, gw2spidy charts and data would be implemented into the game along with TP bid notifications and all the other cool features that we have ever asked for.

Since TP bid notifier apps are free, then it is only up to the user if he wants to use it or not. So yes, they do grant an advantage, but so does analyzing gw2spidy data. Since accessing gw2spidy data is free, then everyone can use that advantage if he so pleases. Similarly for the TP bid notifier apps which are also free and open source.

The Red Squirrel.7039:

DarkSpirit has apparently been stumping for an open API for the TP for months. He knows there are bots, and contends that they are not harmful to any trader that has a good strategy. Moreover, botting seems to be the biggest argument against having an official full-featured TP API, so he has to squelch the discussion where he sees it. At least now we can understand why he is being so intentionally obtuse about this.

Yeah I agree that this game is filled with people who are overly paranoid about bots, so much so that they are influencing the API development to a very bad end result, which to a developer like me who supports their api, is very disheartening. It seems many people want their api to be totally too useless to develop useful apps for the rest of the community.

Aberrant.6749:

If you’re a human you’re not going to spend your time doing that on low end 1-2s greens. There are far better sections of the market to do that in. Also (once again) I’ve seen one version of the thing.

But I guess aliens.

No, I must admit, I don’t camp on greens yet. I usually camp on cheap exotics though. Can’t speak for other traders.

But I trust that if it is a bot ArenaNet would know how to deal with it since they have done such a good job last time. This is why we hardly see any bots nowadays.

Aberrant.6749:

So you find that a person constantly refreshing hundreds of low end items for hours and hours on end and quickly finding a single outbid item in that large set is a more probable explanation Vs. a bot doing it?

Even if I hadn’t seen the bot for myself I would be very doubtful of that.

You haven’t seen me play the TP yet. I sit there for hours just checking prices.

Aberrant.6749:

But you can deny it all day long if you like. It’s not hard for the rest of us to tell when a bot is involved and how widespread the problem is.

I am just saying I am not going to believe the fantastic when a more common reason can still be used to explain it. Why do all dancing lights in the sky have to be an alien spacecraft when they can be a lighted balloon from a hoaxer?

Only when you have proven that it can’t be a hoax, or a plane, etc. and exhausted your common explanations then you can go examine the more esoteric ones. Even though accepting the more esoteric explanations feel more exciting.

I have not seen a bot in GW2 for a very long time and ArenaNet did a good job on that front. And users tend to explain all their losses by blaming their competitors for cheating. I know I always wonder whenever someone down me in WvW, if they are cheating. They can’t be better than me, it must be that they have no lag and they are cheating. I always feel good to think this way. It helps my ego.

Buttercup.5871:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Buttercup.5871:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Buttercup.5871:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Buttercup.5871:

Wow that was fast! Hahaha, exactly like you said, I counted the seconds as well.
Well, I’m saying haha but on the inside I cry a little.

Thank you, with enough preparation and training, anyone can be fast too.

Dark, you must be joking right? You’re really grasping at anything to defend your automated moneymaking now. Look, when you do what he says, you’ll see that – around the 16 second mark – the order for 9 of these will be removed and placed 1 copper above you almost instantaniously. That’s not possible Dark, no matter how hard you try to justify it. It’s a bot. You know it’s a bot. I know it’s a bot. What are we even discussing here?

So are you saying that there are 9 orders from 9 bots waiting to buy the same item? I find that highly unlikely.

Dark, come on. What he’s saying is simple, but I’ll try to explain it more explicitly since you’re unwilling to test it yourself.

The bot places an order for 9 axes. ONE order. You out-buy-order him by 1 copper.
16 seconds pass.
BOOM. His buy order for 9 axes disappears and reappears 1 copper above you at the same time.

If it is such an OP bot, shouldn’t it be responding much faster than 16 seconds? 16s feels more like a slow human response to me.

Dark, you’re grasping at straws now. Stop defending the undefendable. Stop defending bots. They are there. You know it. Stop trying to protect your little moneymaking program at all cost. Noone can instantly remove a buy order and place one at the same time. The interface is too clunky for that, it cannot be done. Yet this bot will do it, live, every time, around 16 seconds after you have placed the highest buy order on that axe.

I’m off to bed now, I’ll read the rest in the morning.

again, for those new in this thread, it’s been tested by programmers in this thread that botting can be done. If you want to witness the results of botting yourself, live, start by following red squirrel’s instructions.

You are using the same clunky interface to verify your results and you have not explained to me why the “bot” has to wait for 16s to place a new order when, as you claimed, it can cancel and resubmit the order immediately (i.e. without waiting).

Just because it is possible to build a TP bot doesn’t mean that we are seeing an instance of such a case. You would need to submit more evidence to prove that it is a bot because, if they do exist, they are so rare as opposed to farming bots, which are already rare themselves. That is probably a human camping on the refresh button and 16s is more than sufficient time for me to do that. To say that is a bot, you have to first prove that it can’t be done by a human.

The Red Squirrel.7039:

I really don’t know why DarkSpirit and some of the other forum warriors vigorously try to discredit any report of TP botting. Clark Skinner pretty much has confirmation from ANET that there are TP bots in the form of his ticket response and their action to resolve it (for that bot he reported).

BTW, I still suspect that the bot who is active in the low-priced fine and masterwork is probably a set of accounts because of the sheer volume involved. Possibly gold-sellers. You ban the botters and they keep coming back using their horde of stolen accounts.

I don’t know why you guys claim that a response that takes 16s has to be from a bot and not a human. 16s is actually a long time for a program.

I suggest you take a stop watch and count for 16s to see how long it really is and honestly say that it is too fast for a human.

Buttercup.5871:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Buttercup.5871:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Buttercup.5871:

Wow that was fast! Hahaha, exactly like you said, I counted the seconds as well.
Well, I’m saying haha but on the inside I cry a little.

Thank you, with enough preparation and training, anyone can be fast too.

Dark, you must be joking right? You’re really grasping at anything to defend your automated moneymaking now. Look, when you do what he says, you’ll see that – around the 16 second mark – the order for 9 of these will be removed and placed 1 copper above you almost instantaniously. That’s not possible Dark, no matter how hard you try to justify it. It’s a bot. You know it’s a bot. I know it’s a bot. What are we even discussing here?

So are you saying that there are 9 orders from 9 bots waiting to buy the same item? I find that highly unlikely.

Dark, come on. What he’s saying is simple, but I’ll try to explain it more explicitly since you’re unwilling to test it yourself.

The bot places an order for 9 axes. ONE order. You out-buy-order him by 1 copper.
16 seconds pass.
BOOM. His buy order for 9 axes disappears and reappears 1 copper above you at the same time.

If it is such an OP bot, shouldn’t it be responding much faster than 16 seconds? 16s feels more like a slow human response to me.

Buttercup.5871:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Buttercup.5871:

Wow that was fast! Hahaha, exactly like you said, I counted the seconds as well.
Well, I’m saying haha but on the inside I cry a little.

Thank you, with enough preparation and training, anyone can be fast too.

Dark, you must be joking right? You’re really grasping at anything to defend your automated moneymaking now. Look, when you do what he says, you’ll see that – around the 16 second mark – the order for 9 of these will be removed and placed 1 copper above you almost instantaniously. That’s not possible Dark, no matter how hard you try to justify it. It’s a bot. You know it’s a bot. I know it’s a bot. What are we even discussing here?

So are you saying that there are 9 orders from 9 bots waiting to buy the same item? I find that highly unlikely. Also 16 seconds to cancel and then place a buy order is well within the human response time.

Buttercup.5871:

Wow that was fast! Hahaha, exactly like you said, I counted the seconds as well.
Well, I’m saying haha but on the inside I cry a little.

Thank you, with enough preparation and training, anyone can be fast too.

The Red Squirrel.7039:

Careful observation prove there are bots, because the in-game TP interface is too cumbersome to be that agile. BTW, this is the fastest response time I’ve seen on a bot so far.

That is because most people don’t know how to do this right. Let me teach you a simple trick and it works well for people like me with dual monitors or more. And you don’t need a bot.

Open this URL on your browser on the other monitor.

https://account.guildwars2.com/login?redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Ftradingpost-live.ncplatform.net%2Fauthenticate%3Fsource%3D%252F&game_code=gw2

Go look for the item that you are interested in and check its buy orders. Hit the refresh button every so often. You have your GW2 launched with TP opened by talking to a TP npc and ready to cancel and buy on the other monitor. There, easy enough?

aeneq.1760:

@DarkSpirit

Heck even to start a bot is a manual activity, I don’t think picking up your gold every 12h would make the classification of the program change. I think you are referring to some mythical bot that automatically plays the market for you, if thats what you mean then yes those would be very rare if they exist.

Being outbid and placing a new bid isnt a big drain on the gold available, even in the 70+ rare weapon market you would be ok with ~2k gold for a 12h period and it doesnt get more active than that.

How do you know that just checking every 12 hours would suffice? What happens if the bot is under attack by a human trader who outbids it by 1 copper every time at the first hour after launch? How can you be certain that your bot would have enough gold to withstand the outbidding war for the next 11 hours, if it doesn’t have the capability to take back its gold from the NPC?

First of all how many people actually have a disposable gold of 2k? Of those small number of people, how many would actually spend the time and effort to develop an automated TP bot? If they have that much gold, time, and expertise, don’t you think it would have been more profitable to develop a champ farming bot instead? Furthermore, if you have 2k gold, would you bother writing a TP bot just to outbid a rare item that is worth only about 50s? Is that even worth the risk on your 2k gold account since every time you run your bot, you take a risk?

Now you know why it is unlikely that everyone who has been outbid on the TP comes here to vent about bots, are really outbid by a TP bot. When I have been easily outbidding people just by camping on the refresh button. Some people in this forum has too much paranoia about bots and gives the impression that the TP is just overflowing with bots all round us. I don’t think we need to encourage any more paranoia about the TP.

I would consider this to be a flaw in gw2spidy design. The official API that gw2spidy is using has already been updated with the latest patch items long ago.

It should have something that checks against it regularly and updates its database.

Note: Not dissing GW2Spidy, just saying it can be improved upon. I love the website and I have many scripts that use its api.

aeneq.1760:

@DarkSpirit, if the account used by the bot has enough gold then it has no need to pickup the gold and that task can be relegated to a manual interaction. Ofc. that requires the account to hold a few thousand gold to operate at its best but thats not unlikely.

If it requires manually intervention to work then it is really not a bot is it?

As for cancellations of buy orders, the bot still need to take the gold back from the NPCs because it can’t predict how often it would be outbid by others itself. If it doesn’t pick up that gold, then the more times it is outbid by other players, the more times it would have to cancel and the more gold it would lose. Maybe you can say that the botter has so much gold that it doesn’t need to care, then your bot would need to have all these assumptions in place whenever it bids for an item and would not be a generic TP bot anymore.

Fully automated TP bots, if they even work well enough, would be rare with lots of work needed and with a lower payoff than a typical farming bot.

This is why in most cases, when people vent here that they have lost their bids to “bots”, they can’t say with any certainty that it is definitely a bot and not a human camping on the refresh button. When most of the time, the common explanation that they lost the bid to another human trader, who has more patience than them, would suffice to explain it.

All I am trying to say is to look for the most down-to-earth, most common, possible explanations before making a fuss whenever you see lights in the sky and claiming it is an alien spacecraft.

I know that I always get anything I wanted from my buy orders as long as I am patient and have the gold. This is because if I really want to buy something, I would talk to the TP npc and hold that connection while clicking on the refresh button on the buy orders, regardless of whether the item is popular or not.

Personally, I don’t think TP bots are popular and they are not easy to make work well. Cancelling a buy order would work well if the bot has a way of getting the gold back from the npc. This implies some kind of UI automation also which is not a straight-forward task. Then there is a problem of doing inventory management, if they have enough space or not. They can earn more gold by writing bots for champion farming than for outbidding items on the TP.

Buttercup.5871:

People in this thread confirmed – and tested – that you can use a bot to trade for you on the TP, from in- and outside the game, and it’s not even that complicated to do so.

Clicking on the refresh button every few seconds is not a violation to the rules of the game though so how can you tell, with certainty, that it definitely is a bot versus someone like me, who likes to click on the refresh every few seconds.

I know that whenever I lose, I would like to think that I lost simply because my opponents cheated and I’ll come here to vent that I lost to a bot because doing so makes me feel better. It is a very natural human response to repair one’s ego.

Tawn.9871:

I’m pretty sure I’m trying to beat a market bot at placing buy orders. Every time I put a higher buy order (on a certain range of items), it gets beaten by a buy order of 20. I try at different times of the day and it gets beaten within a couple of minutes.

Considering I refresh about ~70 buy orders across a range of levels (same item type) at a time and they all get beaten within minutes.. seems very likely to be a bot running these buy orders.

I’ve reported this through the bug report function.. (since I’ve no idea who it is)..

Anyone else seen this going on? Any other ways I could resolve it?

I know I have been pressing the Refresh button every few seconds on the TP lately. Was that you? I thought you were a bot.

I don’t think ascended gear would be trade-able anytime soon and here is the reason why they are account-bound.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-do-people-stop-playing-GW2/page/10#post3205019

If you want another set of ascended gear, you have to play MORE of the areas that they want you to play. There is no way out of this as you can’t play some other areas that you prefer, collect gold and buy them from the TP as they are not trade-able. You have to play whatever they want you to play.

For example vial of condensed mists essence, gee I wonder if I can get an ascended back piece without going to Fractals. Answer: No you can’t! Well except for the sclerite karka shell which has the unpopular apothecary stats and also requires the exotic sclerite karka shell that are not available now.

As for the other ascended materials, many of them are also account bound, which implies they can’t be sold on the TP.

Healix.5819:

“We’ll expand all crafting professions to allow them to reach a new milestone: 500 points!”
- Looking ahead 2013

Cooking and jewel crafting will probably come a few months after armor. They want to keep the feeling of vertical progression, but with a low curve, by stretching everything out over the course of a year, rather than all at once.

Ah…good call. Thanks.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Jeweler for sure. There is already a T7 mats that points to that.
Xunlai Electrum Ingot.
If you look up Xunlai Electrum Ingot on TP, it says it is made from silver, gold, platinum, mithril.
Those are Jeweler mats.
The existence of this T7 mat implies 500 Jeweler.

Thanks. So do you think this will happen on the same patch as the ascended armor update, which would happen before the end of this year?

Do you think we would ever be able to get our Jeweler and Cook crafters to 500? Would we ever be able to craft Ascended Jewelries? Anyone heard any news?

epborden.7492:

Hey DarkSpirit, I see you already started a thread about this topic here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/API-Suggestion-Trading-Post-API

Yes it is. You can add on your suggestion to that thread if you wish to.

I agree with Healix. But I don’t think that ArenaNet would take action even against those who obtain the game session key by scanning the game client process memory, just to build a legit app. We have asked them several times but they didn’t want to give a definite answer. If they are really against it, they could have easily put a stop to it. Besides, obtaining the game session key is only a stopgap measure that would be deprecated when ArenaNet is ready with their OAuth2 implementation.

GOSU.9574:

This isn’t the thread I thought this topic would be discussing

I am not sure how they could allow you to sell from outside the game interface since that would entail inventory and bank access on some level. However I can’t see why Money isn’t an easily trackable item on your account and the potential to buy off the in-game market be done with an out of game app.

I don’t know either, but I’ll leave that to ArenaNet’s imagination if selling can be supported or not.

Buying and Canceling of orders can be done today but you need the game session key and obtaining this session key can be a little dubious. However, ArenaNet has plans to incorporate OAuth2 authentication for their APIs so when that is done, hopefully we would see them release the Trading Post API with at least buying/cancellation of orders being supported.

That is interesting and I suggest that you post this in their API development forum:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api

ArenaNet is suppose to be releasing a Trading Post API and people were wondering if having the ability to buy/sell/cancel their orders should be allowed. Personally, I think they should be allowed because this would be a cool thing to be supported by mobile apps others think that cool features like this should be held back because of their fear of bots, which I disagree.

We shouldn’t let the fear of bots dictate the direction of the game. ArenaNet already has security measures in place to deal with any bot problems and I have not seen any bot in the game for a very very long time. This shows that they have been relatively successful. So as long as it would enable cool features that users want, we should have it.

VOLKON.1290:

DarkSpirit.7046:

I would like to add that one problem with having too many account-bound crafting material is that some of these crafting materials are tied to specific places in the game. So if you don’t like to play that specific place then that’s too bad, you can never get your maxed out ascended back items or something. This runs totally against what ArenaNet promised. What happened to “It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/

It seems like we are “forced” to play certain content in order to reach the most powerful reward instead.

Four words.

You’re doing it wrong.

If there’s a zone you like, stick to that zone and gather the mats there. Ascended gear requires a wide swath of materials, so the ones you’re gathering are likely in demand. Sell the excess on the TP and buy the ones you need but aren’t farming. Pretty simple really. You’re not forced to go anywhere you don’t want to go for materials.

If you have read my post, you would know that I am talking about account-bound materials. Materials that can’t be traded on the TP.

For example vial of condensed mists essence, gee I wonder if I can get an ascended back piece without going to Fractals. Answer: No you can’t! Well except for the sclerite karka shell which has the unpopular apothecary stats and also requires the exotic sclerite karka shell that are not available now.

As for the other ascended materials, many of them are also account bound, which implies they can’t be sold on the TP.

Zalman.8719:

Then comes ascended. Not only kills a part of the lore, but I’m always wondering “What’s the point of this” ? What was the problem with exotics? Why they have to be replaced? Found no logical reasons for that. I’ve had high expectations after GW1, I admit. But this…I never was this patient with any game yet. Will be around to see the changes though. But I find myself playing less and less and less…

Due to the nature of ascended equipment and their crafting materials to be account bound, I can only think of one reason why they introduced them. They use it as a “cattle prod” to nudge us to play the content that they want us to play! If you don’t play Fractals, too bad you can’t have an ascended back item then.

Do you think that it was random chance that ascended rings are cheapest to be acquired through Fractals too, ascended accessories are cheapest to be acquired through guild commendations, and ascended amulets can only be acquired through WvW or laurel vendors? No this is by careful design. They sprinkled these account-bound crafting materials in the places that they want you to play before you can get maxed-out equipment.

It doesn’t matter how long you have played this game. It doesn’t matter how much gold you have collected because you have played many hours. All that matters is that, you have to play the content that they want you to play otherwise you would not get your maxed-out gear. Either that or play the RNG toilet to get your precursor.