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@manu__sds_mlbts The Companion App still shows my account as restricted, and at this point it’s getting pretty hard not to be frustrated.

First, credit where it’s due: the app itself is working great. This isn’t an app problem. This is an SDS problem. Something on the backend is restricting accounts without notice, explanation, or apparently any response to support tickets. Mine has been sitting for two days now.

I know one of the devs occasionally pops into these forums asking for information on issues, and that’s appreciated. Even if SDS as a company has been completely silent on these restrictions, it’s clear at least somebody is listening.

What makes this especially maddening is that while legitimate marketplace users are getting restricted, the activity everyone associates with bots appears to be happening in plain sight. Sponsorships suddenly selling 60 times a minute instead of 3 times an hour. Cards going from a handful of sales a day to dozens a minute. Orders changing so fast that listings barely appear before they’re undercut again.

Try to jump into one of those markets and it’s like you’re playing whack-a-mole against someone with a machine gun.

If the goal was stopping bots, banning active marketplace users doesn’t seem like it’s accomplishing that. The bots are apparently still drinking everyone’s milkshake.

At this rate, maybe SDS will start banning people for hitting too many home runs. “Congratulations, your account has been restricted for excessive engagement.”

Nobody expects an apology. Nobody expects SDS to suddenly acknowledge years of bot complaints. But it would be nice to see one of three things happen:

1. Reverse these restrictions if they’re catching legitimate players.
2. Respond to support tickets.
3. Clearly explain what marketplace or app behavior can trigger a restriction.

The only guidance I’ve ever seen is don’t use automated tools or third-party apps, which I’ve never done.

It’s wildly unfair to restrict people for trying to play the game, especially while the activity these restrictions are supposedly targeting appears to be continuing uninterrupted.

I also feel bad for the sds employees that I’ve seen pop their head up to communicate issues or respond to problems. I can’t imagine how embarrassing and downright humiliating it must be to work on a game that has so many unbelievable problems. New problems coming up daily! I agree, it’s upsetting when I hear my 11yo and his friends talking about all the problems this game has and saying it’s made by idiots and how they didn’t even know that something can be sold to consumers in such a broken state and remain broken all the time. I’ve tried to explain to them it’s not the people actually working on the game, it’s the people that they work for that decide what/when things get fixed and for reasons unknown, they just don’t want to fix the game. It is totally sad how great this game was and still could be and the way it’s letting so many loyal fans down. I agree. The way they dropped this pos on the community and ignore all the fans begging for them to fix things is a disgrace.

The market is usable right now. Lots of cards that have been controlled by bots are winnable at the moment. You can see the effect that bots have had on them. Night and day. Prices have been more or less locked on what the bots parameters are. IF and when the market is functioning this way, imo there is no need to feel like you need to buy and sell things in bulk. Real talk though, the thought to grab what you can while bots are disabled/slow is there.

The reality has been, the market is basically controlled by bots. If you want to flip cards, you’re going to be competing with bots. But if you try to compete with the bots, you will get restricted on the app. Lose/lose situation.

Lots of players, including myself have been caught up in account restrictions, which sucks. But if the bots can be sidelined more often like they are right now, I’d think players wouldn’t interact with the market in ways that resemble bots…

@Manu__SDS_MLBTS theres been some sort of restriction put on users making a lot of market transactions on the app. The message literally says “account is restricted”. Please fix this asap. If there are going to be limits to buy/sell orders volume wise or time wise you guys should make that clear so users playing by the rules don’t get punished. Without any kind of notice, the most active marketplace users are getting shadow banned on the app and that sucks. If you guys could act quickly on this it would be appreciated. At this point, many of your most engaged players are banned from using the app. Plz fix.

The problem with any new content being added is that it’s being added to the same broken game. Ok, so the game works, most of the time. But it is super F’d. The fact that all these broken things remain while new things get added speaks volumes. Not to mention there’s a 50/50 chance anything added will just add to the list of broken problems that will never be fixed. Arguing over programs needing online play or not just seems so besides the point when the core game needs so much fixing.

There’s definitely some bots back. They don’t react as quickly and are clearly slowed down to avoid restriction pauses. Same behavior with outbidding/undercutting then deleting their bids if you delete yours. I have only noticed them on a few items today. I have not noticed any items that had 100s of buy/sells a minute since Saturday. Clearly a result of limiting bids over time - bravo. Even the greediest of flippers should be able to still accomplish their goals with the limits now in place - as long as there is no competing with bots. This weekend definetly showed there is enough of everything on the marketplace to go around when the bots aren’t sucking everything up. The restriction timeout was a big blow to the bots but you gotta tighten the noose and keep up the fight! Perhaps the next step would be some kind of throttle for the amount of bids for specific items over time. Whatever the next step is, I’m going to get back to playing the game and leave that stuff to you. You can do it!

@Manu__SDS_MLBTS not sure if it’s more annoying for you or me to keep tagging you on posts asking for my account to be reviewed and unbanned from the app marketplace. My support ticket has gone unanswered 5 days.

@NOWLTZKI_MLBTS How about giving all the people who have been out for the last 12 hours 100k free stubs!

made me lol FR

It doesn’t feel good to realize you’ve spent so much time on a game that’s made by a company that takes its players for granted. They will keep doing what they do, which is nothing. They aren’t going to say anything and they aren’t going to do anything. If they do, surely it will be the wrong thing to do that won’t benefit anyone. At this point, they are just running a business, not making a game. They don’t care if people are happy playing the game or not. The greed and betrayal they show to their loyal players is astonishing. Trumpian.

Some cards have bots around the clock. Since this last update it seems like they take a break after beating/undercutting you twice. The brief pause has allowed me to win a couple bids on active cards, but equipment and slower moving cards are still impossible to hold a position on unless you refresh listings 24/7. This is probably a result of “marketing throttling” the App Store lists as the main change for the newest app version. Not sure if that’s saying the quiet part out loud but it doesn’t sound like an upgrade. Kinda sounds like a downgrade.

@Manu__SDS_MLBTS I got the 6.4.6 update about 14 hours ago and it was working really well! Buy/sell orders, navigating through marketplace listings and marketplace history was seamless. Best experience I’ve had in the few months of using the app - by far! 14 hours later, not so much. Everything is massively slowed down and fetching data lags for everything. Still an improvement from the previous version but that’s not saying much. I hope to see a new update or announcement soon on a fix. Thanks

The market sure was weird yesterday. Usually everything dips from people trying to free up stubs to buy packs with but non-live series cards didn’t budge much yesterday. Most of the higher live series dropped in half due to the 88+packs and 85-87 diamonds shot up. Snell shooting up ftom 5 to 30k was unexpected and Bellenger doubled. I had some dupes of snell and was stoked to see them move so quickly at 30k. I’m no market expert but the way spotlight cards are down across the board and rare wbc cards have skyrocketed, I’d say the market was and still is in a weird place before and after the flash sale.

So…I think the last several hours on the market place have been great. Easily the best it’s been all year. The limited amount of transactions on the app is kinda weird but I’d rather be making a couple of orders successfully instead of dozens in hopes of beating bots. I’d much rather be playing the baseball part of the game instead of the market to get stubs for cards and today is the first time I can realistically see how making a few strategic orders here and there can allow for that. I think all the bots have made a lot of people here borderline insane and thet any haters of these new limitations/restrictions will come around. I’m happy to say for the first time this year that I’m not pissed with sds. Today… thanks and good job!

@Manu__SDS_MLBTS thanks for the reply! I figured as much because every time you pop up, things get fixed. So, I’m hearing I just need to wait longer. I filled out a pretty detailed support ticket. Well, thanks the stuff you do do.

I hate playing online and only do when there’s no other way to get a reward I want. Pretty much every ranked game I’ve ever played is like moonshot event - against me. I do enjoy online when I’m matched with someone that doesn’t crush me, but that’s rare. Literally dozens of reasons I prefer offline. I enjoy playing offline and it would be awesome if at least one of the settings included cpu that throws hittable pitches more often. I can appreciate the way the game is, but sometimes, when I play video games, I just want to push the buttons and hit things. Not exercise patience.

@VOReason1976_XBL bro, I get it. You’re irritated. I’m sure I’ve replied to you more than once about having the same experience a few weeks ago. I filed a ticket that did not get responded to for a week. When it was replied to, the restriction was already gone. I did not gain any insight on why it happened to me and it was a very upsetting experience. I’m so Sorry you’re going through it atm. But Like I tell my kids, you’re just going to have to have some patients now and that’s all you can do - and there’s nothing I can do either. You’re jumping into every thread trying to make it about your problem. It totally sucks this happened to you. Sucks it happened to me. Sucks when it happens to anybody that doesn’t deserve it. But dude, don’t hijack and derail every thread on the forum, especially ones where there’s actually some interaction with someone who might be able to help with problems that affect more than just you. I don’t mean to be rude, but come on now. I’ve seen tons of folks reply to you that you’re just going to need to be patient and use the console for the marketplace in the meantime. That’s it. Period. The end. I hope it gets resolved for you quickly!

Update: 2 minutes later, the app is working. Hopefully it continues. Something definetly going on with that notice tho…

I’m using the console and there’s definitely a bot on chris sale all star card that is not being stopped by any restrictions. Putting in lowest sell bid results in near instant undercut by 1. Doesn’t matter what the new bid is or if it’s stupid low. Undercut by 1. However things were set up the last day they were going well imo. I wouldn’t change anything back except not giving restrictions to pack openings and the selling of the pack contents. I noticed some new fans in the comments the last day or so but not too many voices from the past. For me, when then game is working well and I’m not running into problems, I don’t take the time to go on the forums... I think things are headed in the right direction.

I got a notice earlier to update the app version I was using is unsupported. I updated. It worked fine for a little bit and now I’m getting the same pop up that the version is unsupported and I do not see another update in the App Store. To be clear, the app is unusable atm. I’m using 7.5.4 on iOS. 6/5 @ 6pm PT.

I have used ps5 in the last couple hours and the marketplace has been smooth sailing from there. I did the use app on iOS for a couple minutes and ran into being restricted pretty quickly. Recently when triggering the restriction error with a cooldown period, I was still able to see the buy/sell page of all items. I never saw a timer or notification of a time limit, just a red pop up saying your account is restricted. I just got that error now, but I was not able to view the buy/sell page of items. It seemed similar to the time I was restricted for a week where I couldn’t view details of items, like trends or completed transactions. After a few minutes I tried again and it worked. From being around the forum for a little, I got the sense that the time I was restricted that I obviously triggered some kind of automated restriction that existed on a level beyond the app. If that makes sense. Like, it seemed like my account was restricted and not being able to use the app was part of that. I think here you’re saying there are restrictions within the app that limit accounts’ interactions with the app. But when people have been restricted for a couple days or longer, I think there is some kind of restriction put in place that is not triggered by the app… does that make sense?

Anyways, for now. On console the marketplace itself seems wonderful. On iOS, I did run into a restriction quickly. I’m sure I’ll run into plenty more. Which is not ideal, but if there’s no bots to compete with, I can get used to the idea of putting in a bid and leaving it.