The Market CURRENCY MANIPULATION by BOTS and Currency Sellers is INSANE

https://imgur.com/a/7EY1Ofs

I want to address an extremely concerning issue that is currently plaguing the trade economy: blatant currency manipulation using massive sell walls to artificially inflate Divine prices. This practice mirrors illegal market manipulation tactics seen in crypto and the stock market.

Here’s what’s happening:
Certain players, bots, and currency sellers are placing massive sell walls at rates like 1:48.33 Divine:Chaos. For example, I’ve observed a massive sell wall sitting at 196,373 stock—an absurd amount no regular player would hold. This manipulates the trade market because players trying to exchange chaos for divines assume this price is the new norm.

As more players start trading at the inflated price, these manipulators gradually move the sell wall higher, forcing others to continue buying at increasingly inflated rates. It’s a vicious cycle:

The sell wall creates an artificial "floor price" for Divines.
Regular players feel forced to comply and trade at these inflated rates.
The manipulators then move the wall up, pushing prices even higher.

This is not natural supply and demand—it’s market manipulation, plain and simple. In real markets like stocks, this behavior would be illegal.

The result? Fair players who rely on a functioning economy get hurt, while bots and manipulators profit endlessly.

GGG, this needs to be addressed. Whether through stricter bot detection, limits on massive trades, or improvements to the trade system, action needs to be taken to stop this predatory manipulation.


Solutions Pending

I've been thinking about it for a while. A good solution would be two pronged.

1) All items traded between players would lose their inherent gold value. So that players would have to farm for their own trade gold tax. This would not affect 99% of the player base. As everyone is already farming for their own gold.

--This prevents bots and currency traders from outsourcing their supply of gold from TFT.


2) Set Limits on orders for High Value Currencys. Such as Divines, which should only be allowed to be sold in a stack of 10 maximum per player at a time. This puts price limitations, to prevent BUY and SELL walls which are the common tactic used in market manipulation. Average players will still be able to buy and sell Divines but at a time difference of a single map.

--This forces bots to have multiple active accounts to engineer manipulation tactic, which makes it more difficult to coordinate these kinds of schemes.

Limiting one of the buy or sell currencies to its maximum stack size would fix this... but only one of the currencies in the order could be capped.

You couldn't do that with BOTH currencies involved in an order, as some things are simply worth more than a stack of what you may be asking for. (for example a whittling omen the other day was 170 exalts)

If it's not botted activity and players are manually manipulating markets it's not going to be punishable IMO. If it's a free, non-regulated market then manipulation is just part of the game.

I think they definitely need to hire a moderation team to investigate how tf someone got 196,373 chaos orbs in such a short time. Major red flag.

" If it's a free, non-regulated market then manipulation is just part of the game."

That's not a good thing. This is a game meant to be enjoyed by the players, not for some third party to make money. It's obvious that this is being done by bad actors for profit.

Innocence does not forgive the Bots or those whom they serve.

I'd really love to talk to the team responsible for countermeasures.

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apexmateria1#2307 wrote:

If it's not botted activity and players are manually manipulating markets it's not going to be punishable IMO. If it's a free, non-regulated market then manipulation is just part of the game.

I think they definitely need to hire a moderation team to investigate how tf someone got 196,373 chaos orbs in such a short time. Major red flag.

The 196,373 chaos orbs is the real root of the problem. People will always try to manipulate the market but the scale is usually much more limited as they have to actually legitimately get the currency to do so.

Looks like someone either found a dupe or a way to glitch out market orders.

I already posted a solution to this problem. Force exact trade values into the game that can't be bypassed in a trade window - like how buying currency from NPCs has exact values eg 4x aug = 1x alt. They just need to extend to to more currencies and enforce it in the trade window.

Some of you might say that it wont work blah blah cry excuses left and right about market freedom, but the thing is, it might actually help create an item swapping trade culture which can be fueled by easy creation of gear because people will have more of their own currency to use and experiment with i.e. the whole fkn point of the game. GGG wants PoE2 to be different, this is a step in that direction.

They need to stop people monopolizing trade, firstly because as other posts have pointed out, its getting worse to use the trade site now because maps take far longer to complete, leading to longer wait times for buyers, portals and other bugs causing people to lose maps in unintended ways etc, and secondly because the top echelon of players consistently stranglehold the market.

God forbid they add an auction house in, as I said in another post, if the monopolists can simply overpay and outbid others for every mirror tier item, it makes it far easier to conquer the market because it requires zero effort for crafting on their part, they just need to outbid everyone and setup mirror shops, effectively saving tons and tons of currency wasted on sometimes a single bloody item.

I learned to program because I wanted to understand what was going on with the POE1 market and ended up just making software that helps me combat it. I don't know how people use the default system without tools. It's a nightmare.

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MrSatanGuy#4359 wrote:

I already posted a solution to this problem. Force exact trade values into the game that can't be bypassed in a trade window - like how buying currency from NPCs has exact values eg 4x aug = 1x alt. They just need to extend to to more currencies and enforce it in the trade window.

That won't work for trading with other players. We'll be back to the trade site exchanging currency manually, which was EVEN WORSE experience!

"

MagikYams#2273 wrote:

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MrSatanGuy#4359 wrote:

I already posted a solution to this problem. Force exact trade values into the game that can't be bypassed in a trade window - like how buying currency from NPCs has exact values eg 4x aug = 1x alt. They just need to extend to to more currencies and enforce it in the trade window.

That won't work for trading with other players. We'll be back to the trade site exchanging currency manually, which was EVEN WORSE experience!

What do you mean it won't work? They can force exact values into the currency exchange easily, as well as the trade window.