Community Forum

@SDS_JoeK_PSN said:

I've been told these restrictions were due to a setting in the backend that has now been adjusted.

@manu__sds_mlbts
Legitimate human players are already at a pretty severe disadvantage in the marketplace, and these account freezes are just kneecapping us further. If the intention is to fix this, can we get it done ASAP? With new collections coming this weekend, this is when marketplace activity is at its peak. Between the app being unusable for most of the weekend and these ongoing interruptions, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for legitimate human players to unload cards they’ve invested in all season specifically with this collection window in mind. Thanks

Something definitely seems to have changed over the last few weeks with how infielders are throwing the ball. I played an Event game last night where I should have had three easy outs that never happened.
One was a ground ball to the first baseman with the pitcher covering. Instead of a normal toss, the first baseman made this ridiculously slow, high underhand lob and the runner was safe. Two others were grounders where my second baseman was practically on top of first base, but made these incredibly slow, almost no-motion throws that let the runners beat it out.
It’s almost like the game is occasionally using the animations you see after a play is over, when players are no longer user controlled and casually toss the ball back to the pitcher. Except these are happening in the middle of live plays. Something is definitely off.

I seriously doubt it’s related to the WBC exploit from earlier in the year. There was a Reddit post (I think) over the weekend pointing out that the leaderboards have basically become a list of obvious cheaters, with stats like 140 HRs in 150 at-bats and .750 batting averages. Meanwhile, stub transferring has been happening around the clock.
My guess is the app being practically unusable all weekend drove more people than usual to the forums, where they were greeted by two things: zero acknowledgement of the marketplace/app problems and leaderboards full of blatantly obvious cheating. Not exactly a great look for SDS. Not a new look but since it’s being pointed out again, a ban wave is hardly surprising.

@SDS_JoeK_PSN the app has been unusable for the entire weekend with the exception of a few hours during the day Saturday.

@ArcPrime126_XBL @SDS_JoeK_PSN
The last couple of times I’ve tried using the app, I couldn’t get anything to load in a reasonable amount of time before getting distracted off my phone. I suspect the slowdown is related to bot activity, although obviously not intentionally.
In the past, when the app has been this slow, the marketplace on console has also been sluggish. Today, the console marketplace seems pretty normal. My guess is there are a lot of players actively using the marketplace this weekend, and the bots are adding an enormous amount of unnecessary traffic on top of that.
The way I see it, every time a legitimate player bids, buys, or sells something, I suspect bots are refreshing listings, placing undercutting bids, deleting bids, and repeating the process. Essentially, every human transaction triggers even more bot activity. They’re not just competing with legitimate players anymore; they’re multiplying the traffic everyone has to deal with. At some point, all that unnecessary activity has to take a toll.

@SDS_JoeK_PSN yes. Still getting restricted notice.

@Manu__SDS_MLBTS The bots are absolutely brutal right now. Can’t hold the top buy or sell order for more than a few moments without getting undercut by 1 stub. The Chase Pack sale has basically turned the marketplace into Black Friday, except the bots are the only ones getting the deals.
Anything that has managed to retain value is practically unsellable by humans. The market looks like a full-blown panic sell, and I’m sure plenty of legitimate players are watching whatever they’ve managed to build up through flipping disappear. Nothing like a market crash where the bots get to capitalize on everyone’s desperation.

@PapaRick68_MLBTS said:

@Dolenz_PSN Mr. Dolenz, any reason why he has different card art? Is it also Santana who’s like that?

Not sure. Maybe last year when it was the exact same card art someone asked? I specifically remember using spooky Craig kimball and Stan Musial. I didnt start playing until World Series week last year tho.

I think Vault Packs were made to seem a lot more special than they actually are. Earlier in the season they were mostly limited to flash sales, high-level Mini Seasons rewards, and a few Conquest maps. Now that they’ve been showing up everywhere over the last couple of weeks, I’m starting to wonder why they were treated like rare commodities in the first place. The rewards certainly aren’t making a case for their value.
The stub rewards throughout programs and missions are almost comical. 500 stubs doesn’t even buy a Show Pack, and even 5,000 isn’t exactly life-changing.
Then there’s the shop. With no flash sales in weeks, apparently the 40-50% stub sale has become a permanent fixture. Normally 24K stubs costs $20. Even at $10, that’s an outrageous price for what you actually get.
And with bots dominating the marketplace, stubs are becoming even less valuable. Anyone sitting on a pile of stubs is essentially walking into a marketplace where bots have every advantage and are ready to capitalize on every opportunity. Hard to get excited about buying stubs when the marketplace itself is working against legitimate players.

@Manu__SDS_MLBTS It’s encouraging to see continued efforts to combat the bots dominating the marketplace, and I do appreciate the work being done to address the problem.
I haven’t been paying particularly close attention over the last few days, but after spending some time on the app tonight, the 1-stub-outbidding bots are very noticeable at the moment. Probably not coincidentally, the Spooky Program Vault Pack has driven prices on a lot of cards way down. If I were controlling bots, this is exactly the kind of market I’d be looking to take advantage of too.
I suppose bots and legitimate players have the same basic objective in the marketplace: buy low and sell high. The difference is that when prices are dropping, the bots’ advantage becomes painfully obvious. Players have to constantly adjust bids just to stay competitive. Even if you’re willing to play that game, you’re limited to managing one card at a time while bots can seemingly cover the entire marketplace simultaneously. That’s not exactly a level playing field.
On a separate but related note, the account restriction notices are becoming a problem of their own. Today, I’m getting restricted extremely quickly, with no indication of how long the restriction is supposed to last. Closing and reopening the app seems to temporarily lift it, only to have it happen again shortly afterward. With the sheer number of cards in the marketplace at this point, I can’t even scroll down to lower OVR cards on my watchlist before getting restricted again. At this rate, the restrictions are driving me to the forums rather than actually using the marketplace.
Putting today’s experience aside, I do think bot activity has been noticeably reduced over the past couple of weeks. And imo the few days when reCAPTCHA v3 was implemented were probably the best the marketplace has looked all year in terms of bot activity. That seems worth remembering when considering what measures are actually making a difference.
I appreciate the continued efforts, but the marketplace is still a long way from being where it should be. Hopefully, the progress we’ve seen recently is a sign that we’re moving in the right direction rather than just getting another temporary reprieve.

@Manu__SDS_MLBTS please move to the next tightening phase or however you want to put it. We need a little breathing room from market bots. Thanks.

The market would definitely benefit from a tightening of the filters.

This is my first year playing this game so I don’t have years of experience like a lot of players - my take is that live series cards are only worth something when players need them to finish live series collection and I think 99% of players trying to do that have finished it long ago. The scouting report vault pack and new conquest with vault pack the last 2 days took the prices down even lower. Only a small handful of cards that have been around for most of the season have retained any value (a few wbc cards, inning boss cards, headliners cards), but if you look at them closely, you’ll see that most only have 1-2 sales some days. (Unless bots are working them ofc)

@TripleH-4481_PSN @TripleH-4481_PSN I haven’t finished ghost conquest map yet but have some unopened vault packs. Last one I opened was 10/11 and was Glasgow or Yamamoto…

5 million cap is for stubs. Not value of your inventory. You can check that with the showzone app. To make this example easy - say you have 10 babe Ruth cards that are a million each. If you sold 6 of them - you’d only have 5 million stubs. If you sold 7 of them - you’d only have 5 million stubs. You can spend your stubs (or put in bids for cards) to make room to sell more things but you can only have 5 million stubs liquid at any given time.

@drbear100_psn it’s def not greedy or stub rich investors. Players can’t have more then 5million Stubs at a time. If you have 5mil you can still sell things but you won’t get stubs for it. I seen the stub transferring happen enough in real time to have no doubt it’s automated and coordinated using 2 or more accounts. When you look at completed transactions of the card in question you see multiple transactions a minute with the highest and lowest prices - it’s not like someone is hoarding the supply of a card and charging a premium. You can’t tell if an entry in the completed sales list is a buy or sale and it would seem obvious, except when they are transfer stubs they create a large margin to have the account they want to move funds to buy the cards for the lowest price then sell then back at the highest. So if the margins are 150k and 20k. And keep in mind this happens so fast you don’t even see most of it on the bid sheet - the stub seller accounts list a card for 20,001 buy now and the new account buys it. Then the new account list it for 149,999 and it is bought back by the stub seller - instantly. Each time that happens, 129,999 stubs get transferred from stub seller to new account. Even when a normal or greedy player sees what’s going on, all they can do is buy up as many of the cards they can, see what the highest prices are when transferring is going on and list their cards for somewhere under that so the bots will buy it up the next time stubs are transferred through that card.

@Manu__SDS_MLBTS tbh, the market is feeling a little boring and predictable. The last app update may have taken out some bots, It’s hard to tell. Lately it seems like there is a fraction of marketplace activity compared to earlier in the season. Most of the value that cards have right now is relative to how that card is used for stub transfers. I mean, it’s like there is tons of supply but the only demand is what bots need (or need out of their way) for stub transferring. Many cards have price points being set by bots. For example, Jared girdlinger draft card. Mid round card been 15-24k since coming out. But now listings are 55k then 98k then over 100k. There’s 4 buy now listings around 44k. If those get bought up and the price moves to 55k, 4 more listings will get made at the 40k price to keep the price point there. Except for when stub transferring is happening, the price goes 6 figures. I guess I’m trying to say the market doesn’t feel like you’re competing against other players. Instead it’s a market that has bot activity going on and you can interact with some of - but it’s not fun.

@rubicante23_PSN totally.

On a different note, not sure why there was no new chase card today…

@Manu__SDS_MLBTS @sds_joek_psn
Did the phase III thing ever go into effect? Stub transferring is happen on lots of cards the past few days. Lots of cards. My guess is stub transferring has been spread out to many different cards for shorter bursts of time to avoid detection and/or showing up on sites like showzone that track market activity. After the bots do its transferring business they populate the bid sheet with 10-15 listings to avoid tipping people off to the cards they are using over and over and over for this. Can’t cover up the completed history tho. Anyways, I’m pretty tired of talking about the bots. It’d be awesome if you guys could tighten up filters before this weeks flash sale.

Hmm. This made me curious since I don’t open packs too often. I just opened 40 ballin packs and zero diamond cards… I was expecting to pull at least 1 but I just got reminded why I don’t bother opening packs.