Automated Trading // possible? // legal?!

[Neural.1824]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:It's almost certainly an intermittent bug in which you see only a few listings, but there are more that aren't showing. So each time you buy some, the listing updates with those that were hidden. Eventually, it will resolve itself.

I'm not sure that it's an issue of hidden listings. When I run into this issue and I need more of that item, I make my 2nd purchase and always buy an additional item that is at the next sell price up. Since I started with this practice, I've never had the bug repeat more than that one time.

I've also wondered if all those individual sales are generating gold and/or items in game that have no source.

[Bollocks.4078]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"kitten.4078" said:If this is so well documented then why hasn't it been fixed?

Because it's either not a high priority or it's a lot harder to fix than it sounds.

Why does it only affect some items?

I'm pretty sure it

can

affect any item, but it's only apparent when it's something that trades in bulk.

I know I've seen items, like lots of T1 mats, that show hundreds of thousands listed at the lowest sell price.

I'm not sure how that relates to the described example.

It may be a bug but it's not making much logical sense as observed.

A bug makes more sense than there are that many people using automated listing tools that want to be caught — there's very little advantage to selling 5-100 items at a time for something that trades in bulk.

Seems this should be a reasonably high priority to get fixed as it could affect people buying and selling on the TP in a big way.How? If makes buying less convenient, because you have to put in more trades at the given price. It doesn't meaningfully affect selling. And there's a work-around: instead of instant buying, you can put in offers for 1 copper less than the lowest sale offer. Those will take a tiny fraction of additional elapsed time to fulfill, but you can put in an arbitrary amount of orders.

The T1 mats example relates as it's presumably examples of the correct number being shown for an item that trade in bulk. This is just based on my observation over time.

I'm not saying that it is or is not a bug. I'm just trying to understand the issue better. If it really is a bug it's causing buyers to pay more than they should for some of the items they are buying. Other people are getting their items sold out for turn. Honestly, I'd be quite embarrassed if it were my code behind a bug like this. I can't imagine for the life of me how it could be that massively difficult to show the actual number. Someone must have really screwed something up royally if that's the case.

I can buy that it's a bug but the idea that it's so complicated to fix or that it's not a priority with the affect it's having on people buying and selling just doesn't make any sense to me.

[TheGrimm.5624]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

It's a well-documented bug. The TP simply isn't able to correctly display that there's e.g. 5 stacks of units available at price X; it only shows 5. Each time someone buys 5, it unlocks another five units, because it's bugged and can't display more — that's why the pattern repeats 5 or sometimes 10 times or more in a row.

Please ensure you have all the available facts before accusing someone of being involved in cheating the game (or covering up someone else's cheating).

Reporting on known bugs is fine, going to the extreme to say that this wasn't a bot based on the evidence provided when that is how the bots works is where it draws a line. Denial of a thing doesn't make it go away nor does it assist the devs in pin-pointing issues to research and adjust. Why does it take so long to track down game hacks, because sometimes people will just find the easiest answer and move on. Where is the best place a hacker would deploy a hack, in a area with known issues since it would be easy to explain away. Just asking not to stop at answer one because that doesn't always mean there aren't others.

I apologize for my word choices yesterday, but your word choices hit the wrong cord to me. I develop software and I have seen this happen too many times where users will jump on the first answer and it wasn't the issue they thought it was at all or there was more than one which just slowed the corrective actions that were needed. Good gaming!