Of course, I agree. Bots dropping the prices of things that you want to sell sucks.
However, the guy I was responding to was making the point that: “Bots make crafting not profitable”, when he meant to say, “Bots over-inflate the supply of mats, dropping the value of the things that I want to craft, because players see this, and in-turn, oversupply the crafted product.”
What he isn’t realizing here is that he is looking for easy market opportunities to buy low cost mats, and use them to craft, which EVERYONE else and their mother is doing.
E.G., X+Y=Z product. Bots flood market with X material. Supply and demand, X prices drop. Many players see this and buy X off the market at a low cost. Many players try to craft Z and sell at a normal price. Market is flooded with Z. Naturally excess supply = low demand, so Z prices drop.
It’s not the bots dropping the prices of the crafted products. It’s the players responding to the oversupply of X or Y that in turn drops Z’s price below profitability,
What he doesn’t realize is, the price of Z is slower to change, because it is a product, not a raw material. X & Y prices will normalize faster than Z, causing X+Y=Z to not be profitable until the supply of Z is bought out and supply drops. With slow products, this could take a long time.
A smart, and diligent goblin would watch for these supply drops and buy them at low prices. A smarter and more diligent goblin would source the X+Y materials for the all time low cost of nothing and farm materials themselves.
This happens with every single MMO, after every single new economy. Whether this is a new MMO or an expansion drop, prices will be high for mats in the beginning, and crafted products will be extremely lucrative. The market will see this, a few people will make extreme profits, and then the cost of mats will drop, or supply will increase over time making Z product “easier” to access, causing its price to drop, often normalizing to not be profitable if you are just looking at the AH to buy mats and turn around an easy profit.
TL;DR:
My point is, staring at the Auction House looking for low cost mats, to turn into a product to sell isn’t crafting. That’s called AH sniping. True crafting is when you source the damn materials yourself.