Bot purchasing of key ingredients like Sand & Sunstone is ridiculous

[ChoGath]

I don't know if anyone is paying attention to bazaar purchasing these days. I've been farming and selling my loot at the bazaar in the hope of financing my crafting needs. I regularly watch the buy offerings and then click to buy JUST ONE of the 20-50-200 unit offerings that occasionally spring up. I consistently receive "sold" notices in the milliseconds of time it takes me to hit the OK to JUST BUY ONE. They are all gone in a blink of the eye, a blink that a "buy bot" takes to mechanically buy all of these ingredients.

In the old days, when there were more players, the volume of material sold would allow folks to at least get some of the material available. Nowadays, it seems the "buy bot"s are many, while us poor real people in the bazaar are few.

This really needs to be fixed.

[Lady Cat]

I don't know if anyone is paying attention to bazaar purchasing these days. I've been farming and selling my loot at the bazaar in the hope of financing my crafting needs. I regularly watch the buy offerings and then click to buy JUST ONE of the 20-50-200 unit offerings that occasionally spring up. I consistently receive "sold" notices in the milliseconds of time it takes me to hit the OK to JUST BUY ONE. They are all gone in a blink of the eye, a blink that a "buy bot" takes to mechanically buy all of these ingredients.

In the old days, when there were more players, the volume of material sold would allow folks to at least get some of the material available. Nowadays, it seems the "buy bot"s are many, while us poor real people in the bazaar are few.

This really needs to be fixed.

I agree the wizards using third party programing should be banned for life . Lady cat says meow

[elplatano21]

I never noticed it, then again I am not buying those reagents, but I sold 200 pears and sandstone and they were gone pretty fast.

KI should implement a feature that prevent those apps from working, like if you refresh 15+ times you have to type something, this will fix a lot of the issues.

[Kingurz]

Old reagents like Mist Wood or Cat Tails use to be consistently in stock and at high numbers. Reagents like that are now sold out and very fast too (like the old Diamond, Stone Block or Golden Pearl days). Additionally, there are less total pages of reagent tabs now than previously. One user recently uploaded a photo to the devs on Twitter that showed the reagent tab with only 8 total reagents for sell in the Bazaar. Something is definitely going on.

[JaredSpellFrost]

Hmm, I always thought that Players were just faster than me... But Bots would explain this! I hope that KingsIsle can probe into this and flush out any Bots, if there are any.

[goldendragon18]

I don't know if anyone is paying attention to bazaar purchasing these days. I've been farming and selling my loot at the bazaar in the hope of financing my crafting needs. I regularly watch the buy offerings and then click to buy JUST ONE of the 20-50-200 unit offerings that occasionally spring up. I consistently receive "sold" notices in the milliseconds of time it takes me to hit the OK to JUST BUY ONE. They are all gone in a blink of the eye, a blink that a "buy bot" takes to mechanically buy all of these ingredients.

In the old days, when there were more players, the volume of material sold would allow folks to at least get some of the material available. Nowadays, it seems the "buy bot"s are many, while us poor real people in the bazaar are few.

This really needs to be fixed.

I run into this issue everytime I try to buy any reagent. I know I am not that slow but it is very frustrating to not be able to get even 1 item. After a few hours, I finally just give up and stop trying.

I was always under the impression that "Bots" for any reason was bannable in the game.

I agree this needs to be fixed.

SIDENOTE: I wonder if this has anything to do with some of the posts I have seen about trades being done on other sites???

I never noticed it, then again I am not buying those reagents, but I sold 200 pears and sandstone and they were gone pretty fast.

KI should implement a feature that prevent those apps from working, like if you refresh 15+ times you have to type something, this will fix a lot of the issues.

Those using a "Buy Bot" probably are refreshing that many times but, then again they might. I know when I am trying to find certain reagents, I will refresh a lot more than that.

Old reagents like Mist Wood or Cat Tails use to be consistently in stock and at high numbers. Reagents like that are now sold out and very fast too (like the old Diamond, Stone Block or Golden Pearl days). Additionally, there are less total pages of reagent tabs now than previously. One user recently uploaded a photo to the devs on Twitter that showed the reagent tab with only 8 total reagents for sell in the Bazaar. Something is definitely going on.

You are right. There used to be at least 5-7 pages consistantly. Now, it might be 3-4 at most.

During the last Double Garden benefit, it got down to 0 items for a few minutes but if any reagent did pop up, it was immediately gone.


NOTE:
Sadly, this isn't the only thing Bots are being used for. From what I understand there is one that works in KI Free Games for answering quizzes.

[Dylan Windwalker]

I bazaar farm all the time for Reagents. I barely get anything and maybe if I'm lucky, I'll get a portion of what I had intended to purchase. I almost never get stone blocks and ore (especially because ore takes a couple of pages of clicking, in which a bot could easily swipe up everything before I even get there), those are by far the most difficult reagents to get. Sandstone is maybe only a little more difficult but not by much. Since the starting letters start with "S", it's far quicker for people with super fast computers to simply click the alphabetical order twice and take them all in record seconds, either that or a third party program is legitimately reading for certain lines of code that reads for particular words like "stone block" or "ore". Farming for reagents gives me a headache especially in the circumstance somebody for some reason sells 20+ of the reagent I want, and then I never get a chance to get it.

But Kingsisle is never going to make getting reagents like stone blocks or ore any easier since they introduced the crowns-only reagent bundles in the crowns shop. I don't know how often people purchase those but for how quickly the same reagents are bought from the bazaar, I highly doubt that the reagent bundles are actually profitable for the company (definitely not in comparison to how money is scooped up from packs). So at this point they're waging an insignificant profit as more valuable than the suffering of those who are bazaar farming for reagents.

I think the simplest solution is for Kingsisle to just take their losses, remove the reagent bundles from the crown shop, and create a reagent vendor for the simple reagents like cat tail, mist wood, ore, stone blocks, and sandstone. But like a lot of things that are just, business rules above all.

- - - Updated - - -

Old reagents like Mist Wood or Cat Tails use to be consistently in stock and at high numbers. Reagents like that are now sold out and very fast too (like the old Diamond, Stone Block or Golden Pearl days). Additionally, there are less total pages of reagent tabs now than previously. One user recently uploaded a photo to the devs on Twitter that showed the reagent tab with only 8 total reagents for sell in the Bazaar. Something is definitely going on.

I've been farming for Cat tail recently and I'm surprised at how quickly that extremely basic reagent is taken so quickly. I've almost never used a cat tail in my entire life of crafting and I honestly don't know what is so important that players must craft using Cat tail... unless every player that is buying cat tail is trying to craft the GH house, which takes many water lilies to craft. Maybe there's an important crafting recipe revolving water lillies but even that is pretty obscure of a reagent to be used. Before I started crafting the GH house, I had many many cat tails from just simply fight drops (I never previously farmed for cat tails) and many water tails.

Now I could hardly get more than 10 cat tails when it displays 30+, or any cat tails during those situations.

[Willowdreamer]

I don't really know anything about bots, but I think certain shifts in the game have contributed to these shortages in the Bazaar. Teleporters that allow skipping the areas that we all used to have to run through makes it so players skip collecting reagents in their travels, and if they aren't picked up, reagents aren't being sold in the Bazaar either.

Max level players are almost constantly hitting the gold cap, and the easiest thing to buy at the Bazaar are reagents, since we can hold so many of each. Adding the Crafting element to the Spiral Showcase encourages players to stockpile reagents they'll need for their favorite recipes. Stockpiling in general has increased, due to the difficulty level of the newer crafting recipes everyone wants to be prepared for. Blaming bots seems easy, recognizing that the economy of the game is shifting isn't as easy to pin down, but I think it's a factor.

If anyone needs reagents here on Central, all they have to do is let the rest of us know and someone always helps out. I have both sandstone and sunstones if they are needed.

[Kevin1234598765]

I’m a reagent hoarder, I’m not gonna lie, and I generally pick up a ton of reagents from the bazaar. It helps that I have a decently nice laptop that doesn’t lag at the bazaar. Having a fast laptop and a fast internet connect is pretty key in bazaar farming. If I had to venture a guess, this is the reason why reagents always seem to go fast- some players just have better systems/hardware to work with.

[Fredwardo]

I've seen people use scripts to auto-buy and search for bazaar items so bots are most definitely a thing. However I do agree with @Willowdreamer that there has been a shift in culture. There are less players overall and more specifically there are less casual players who would just sell regents. I would argue that most of the people who play daily definitely craft since its an integral part of the game.

Add up people hitting the gold cap and the best way to get rid of gold is to stock buy reagents since they are easily liquidated back to gold if need arises.

I'm pretty lucky myself and I always buyout stuff from the bazaar when I hit gold cap. Just yesterday I got lucky and bought 30 diamonds in one swoop. My hardware is also really good as well.