Community Forum

@SpawnOfDitka_XBL said:

Look at john Donaldson for example. Someone entered 24,500 on the sell buy side when the card was 25,000. Immediately bots bid 24,499 and 24,498. I watched it happen in real time. What are you doing? You dont need to go 500 stubs below the next highest price.

Since you can’t leave a bid without a bot outbidding you, sometimes the best you can do is drive the price up or down to buy or sell yourself. In the Donaldson example you gave, since a bot would outbid anything I put, instead of selling for 24,500, if I can make a bot bid 24,501 on the buy side I could sell now to that bot… it’s totally stupid. I’m so confused over why nothing gets done about these bots. There is real currency attached to their marketplace and stubs currency. They sell people stubs and the environment to use the stubs is unprotected, manipulated and overrun with bad actors…

First off, it’s F’d that pretty much every move you make in the marketplace triggers a bot to outbid you and that absolutely nothing is being done about it. Since you can’t do much without bots right now, those strange bids can be a number of things, but mainly people trying to see what kind of settings the bot has. Will it chase the buy price? Sell price? Since you are not able to place a bid and leave it, as intended, you have to get creative. If I’m trying to sell stuff but a bot keeps undercutting me - Maybe that bot or even some other bot is trying to buy everything. So I’ll check if it will outbid me if I make a stupid a price increase. And if it does, will it do it again if I make another stupid increase? What if I can erase the margin and have the bot outbid me all the way upto the current high bid - then I’ll sell now to the bot. Then I’ll do it again.
My point is tho, people are going to do what they can to try and get around the bots but they are ruining everything. So you can’t really blame other players. You can blame the people using the bots and sds for not doing anything about it. They were successfully blocking most bot traffic for a couple days but then they stopped all efforts. Probably some manager executive pos saw enough complaints on social media about the bots he directed someone to get rid of them and then probably got a call from some bigger pos exec manager type above him looking at their real margins about how some of those bots are theirs to control and regulate things and they can’t be blocked so they just went back to ignoring the players asking for help with the bots.

Like… really crazy…

@Manu__SDS_MLBTS said:

NEW FILTER IS ON!

Can you just put this back on? Since there haven’t been any replies in over a week, I can only assume that a (another) poor decision was made not to consider the bots and marketplace integrity a problem that needed fixing. Was the help desk person getting too many tickets from people asking why the app says their account is restricted? If so, you could push an app update changing the verbiage from your account is restricted to brief timeout so people don’t send support tickets over it. I don’t know… this is just crazy that I’m trying to lobby this company to protect its own in-game currency and player base from predatory bots run by bad actors that are stealing from everybody. Or are they just making sooooo much money over there they don’t care about some of it being stolen or if the in-game economy is fair for the players?

223 bids for sale at 85,991. 15k stubs below the next lowest bid. I don’t even know what to call whatever is going on right now but it’s 1000% manipulation of some sort. People on reddit are convinced sds is behind this, but whatever this is would require work to be done and that’s just not something they seem to want their employees to do…? The incompetence needed to let whatever this is play out in the open is stunning. Please let me know if there is another option here but it seems like sds is manipulating the market. Or sds is to incompetent to see and stop market manipulation.?
Also, If anyone can explain why they have chosen to not actively prevent bots from dominating the marketplace, I’d like to know. They have demonstrated they can do it. But they choose not to.

What a bad “sale”!! lol. Most of the market is going up during it?! Even if you wanted to get a card in the market today, too bad. The bots are sucking everything up. Combined with lots of cards spiking to 6 figures for a minute or two with 100x sales it’s a real sheit-show today. lol. It really sucks. Totally sucks that I’m not disappointed either because it’s on par with everything else this game has going on.

TL;DR
That was great how they were trying to fix the bot problem. It’s not great how all the progress that was made seems to be undone and there’s been no reply for a week on the marketplace/bot threads. This should be a problem sds wants to fix. Real people put real money into an in game currency that is manipulated by bots and bad actors.

Anyone else remember a couple weeks ago when they approved work to be done to get rid of the bots that shouldn’t be there in the first place? There was clear communication that it was a legit problem and that they working on it. The marketplace was in great shape for a few days. Adding restrictions to the app seemingly got rid of the majority of bots. It wasn’t ideal, but hey, imo it was a small price to pay since I could use the marketplace without feeling like it was pointless. But then a week ago, all the progress was undone(?) and things went back to how they were before they tried to do anything about it… what happened? And why? It feels like some manager somewhere approved resources to be spent on this problem for x amount of time and that time is now up. As we all see in all the threads about this, people get so fed up about it that they come to the forums, they think they are crazy for thinking there are bots and ask if anyone can explain what’s going on. That shortly turns to seeing how obvious it is that there’s a bot problem. Then that either turns to people saying sds obviously controls the bots or people unable to understand why bots have been allowed to dominate the market while players are left to spend real and in game currency in a manipulated marketplace with zero oversight.
Anybody that is looking into bot activity should be able to identify bots pretty easily. Like dude said above, whatever amount you put getting instantly undercut - over and over and over - clearly not human behavior. I don’t understand why this is not more of a priority to sds and why the effort to rid the marketplace of bots seems dead. Theres been no response on any bot threads for a week. Thats great if they want to fix the problem on a level where bots can’t even participate in the market (which should be doable), but in the meantime, there should at least be some employee with eyes on the marketplace 24/7. Like a sheriff, or even an intern, with tools available to interact with the market, look at accounts that are obviously bots, block them. It seems so easy. Real people put real money into a system with no oversight that is flooded and controlled by bad actors. I get it. They don’t care (enough to fix their product). The part I don’t get is why they wouldn’t want to protect the integrity of their game or make players/customers feel like they care how their experience with the game is?

@Manu__SDS_MLBTS …… kind of feels like we been abandoned here… the bots have been crushing it. CRUSHING IT. Is the push to make it seem like player’s feedback matters over already?

@Manu__SDS_MLBTS please provide some relief from marketplace bots. In the past hour I’ve seen 2 different cards suddenly being bought and sold 60x a minute for 699k stubs. I see another card mentioned on reddit doing the same thing this morning. Please jump in here.

246pm pst adam Dunn saint Patrick card (still) and Eugenio Suarez wbc card (all weekend). These 2 cards have had bots active all weekend. It’s debatable if the bots are responsible for the big margins these Cards have had all weekend but either way it’s nearly impossible to buy or sell. I think we’ve established the type of behavior bots display and how they ruin the integrity of the marketplace and by extension, the game. Please investigate how the bots that are active on these cards have been skirting filters and whatever other blocks that have been put in place. Like I said previously, there has been a dramatic decrease in unwanted/automated marketplace traffic, the automated behavior that is still happening has become very easy to see. Thanks again for all the work you’re doing.

Adam Dunn st Patrick day card 4:50 pm pst. The repetitive patterns the bots use when undercutting should be able to be filtered for and stamped out. For instance, the bot working this card right now instantly undercuts by 1 stub then adds a 2nd bid at the same amount. Example, I try to sell at 764 stubs, the bot bids 763 within seconds then a Few seconds later makes a 2nd sell bid at 763. Now that a large amount of undesirable traffic is gone from the marketplace, the bots that remain stick out like a sore thumb. Please look for these bot patterns and block them.
Thanks

Am I missing something? What’s the reason this is being brought up again like it has anything to do with anything that’s happening lately? Seems like a good sign that old problems are being harped on instead of new ones? I’ve actually been pretty pleased with the game for the past week.

@Manu__SDS_MLBTS just poking my head into to say that from my pov, the game has been running very well the last several days and I’ve enjoyed playing. However, some marketplace items in the last couple days have very aggressive bots running them and causing a lot of damage in the marketplace. Without getting into details, they will buy up all available inventory, make new listings at top price, undercut anyone trying to get in while jacking up buy prices. People see card prices moving, try to get in and end up buying things at over inflated prices and they think it’s fine because they see the margins but are not aware that their bids will be undercut by bots. So many people (I assume) are getting ripped off and left holding items they can’t sell off unless they take huge loss on them.
Whether that makes sense or not, imo, going back to temp restrictions after a couple vids are made or deleted would help slow these bots down. I know many people complained about the restrictions, but people are gonna complain all the time no matter what is or isn’t getting done. I think the restrictions worked very well and if that’s what it takes to get rid of the bots, I’m all for it. Please add restrictions back or deploy some new measure to combat bots. Thanks

Oliver230230230_PSN said:

Ceddaane Rafaela wbc card 11:10am. Some of the wbc cards have had bots working them all weekend. also, Please look into the behavior behind instantly undercutting buy and sell bids on Dave Parker cityscape card from over the weekend. I had a couple interactions over the weekend with Dave Parker card and it feels like bots have dominated buying and selling for days.

Since I wrote this 20 minutes ago, the lowest sell price is half of what it was before and there are 48 bids to sell at 10,523.

@TripleH-4481_PSN I’ve noticed this on several items over the weekend and it’s def not human behavior, yet selfish at the same time. If you buy their item to open the margins back up it will soon post again way under the margin. 1 or 2 bids way under the current lowest price. Perhaps to discourage people from trying to flip that card and the margins don’t matter as much because they can re-list around the clock.

Ceddaane Rafaela wbc card 11:10am. Some of the wbc cards have had bots working them all weekend. also, Please look into the behavior behind instantly undercutting buy and sell bids on Dave Parker cityscape card from over the weekend. I had a couple interactions over the weekend with Dave Parker card and it feels like bots have dominated buying and selling for days.

I’ll 2nd the credit where credit is due. Keep it up!

I just finished some moments from national league program and they dont show up as completed and gave no award program points. What do you even call grinding when you’re playing isn’t moving you closer to a goal. Or anywhere. Please don’t make it harder for me to convince myself I’m not wasting time here.

The restrictions at least level the playing field. It’s been great to see an offensive against the bots. I think restrictions must be kept in place until another method is found to prevent them. The aggressive campaign against them has been effective and should continue.