Idea on stopping RMT

[Trublade]

So everyone knows this is not an easy fix and it may take some sacrifice right? Lol
My idea or some iteration of it would include making Gil an untraceable item, usable only at vendors and the auction house. No more bazars..
I know that is a kick in the junk but I’m not sure I see any other way.
At the very least this would severely limit RMT capabilities.

Ok, now begin your expected bashing lol…

[Stompa]

Gilsellers exist because people buy Gil. Powerlevelling and Paid Progression / Merc-ing exists because people pay others to do the work for them.

This is a cultural problem, root and branch. If nobody paid for Gil / Services, RMT would disappear from the game.

What FFXI has now is two Parallel Societies. Some of us have refused to take part in the RMT and the botting. We live alongside the corruption and the filth, but we refuse to join it.

We know who are Our Guys, the people who don't use 3rd-party-softs, the people who don't buy Gil, etc. and we play exclusively with Our Guys. We have broken away from the corrupt clown circus society, and we inhabit our separate and parallel society. It is very nice.

[Trublade]

Gilsellers exist because people buy Gil. Powerlevelling and Paid Progression / Merc-ing exists because people pay others to do the work for them.

This is a cultural problem, root and branch. If nobody paid for Gil / Services, RMT would disappear from the game.

What FFXI has now is two Parallel Societies. Some of us have refused to take part in the RMT and the botting. We live alongside the corruption and the filth, but we refuse to join it.

We know who are Our Guys, the people who don't use 3rd-party-softs, the people who don't buy Gil, etc. and we play exclusively with Our Guys. We have broken away from the corrupt clown circus society, and we inhabit our separate and parallel society. It is very nice.

Believe me, I can relate to your sentiment.
Nothing will change unless the hand is forced though.

[Yvone]

Square (and you) need rmt/bots to exist. It's a symbiotic relationship. Neither can exist without the other.

"Then why _____" (I just want them to admit it)

[Pixela]

Every game has RMT, it's a billion dollar industry.

[Sfchakan]

This is more than just a cultural problem at this point. SE is willfully asleep at the wheel when it comes to enforcement, even when the players do all of the necessary detective work for them.

[Pixela]

The problem is, if you crack down too hard the RMT will just DDOS the servers, hack into fansites to inject trojans, steal accounts and do whatever they need to do to get their money.

Some seem to have no understanding how powerful this industry is and how they retaliate when you crack down too hard on them.

The only way to stop RMT is to remove all gil (or make it worthless) and make everything easy.

They ban them as much as they are able to, and they stop them congesting the game. Not sure what you all expect other than that. They can't even stop RMT on wow and ff14.

[Zehira]

Very true. That's how I lost my account after the 2009 Salvage mass bans. The RMT hacked into an (outdated code) official website. Wasn't easy to try to get my account back with the help from the Support Center. I searched to see if anyone has that similar problem and the community wasn't friendly enough. All they can say, "you lost your account your own fault."

About a year later I decided to start all over with my new account (current) on Odin because Pandemonium has already been merged into Asura. I didn't feel comfortable to try Asura back that time. Moved to Bahamut because my old friends transferred away from Asura.

Now things have been changed after FFXIV released, I am okay with the way Asura is.

[Alhanelem]

Believe me, I can relate to your sentiment.
Nothing will change unless the hand is forced though.

There's no point in trying to change it. Unless SE takes a hard line stance and goes around swinging the banhammer every which way, which in all truthfulness would not be in its best interest for finrancial reasons, there is nothing we can do about the problem. The best course of action is for us to simply play with the kind of people we want to play with and let the people who want to do things differently do their thing.

Even if SE did try to clamp down on it, you still can't really stop it entirely. it's a never-ending battle. And they'd need more staff to do that, which basically would mean hiring more people to terminate income sources for the company. In other words, it's very expensive.

[Stompa]

This is more than just a cultural problem at this point. SE is willfully asleep at the wheel when it comes to enforcement, even when the players do all of the necessary detective work for them.

It isn't SE's job to teach young people that Cheating Is A Dishonourable Way To Live Your Life. That is the job of parents and teachers.

If there are just a few Cheaters in the game, you can be sure that SE would target them. But when the number of Cheaters reaches a certain high percentage, it is time to accept that this is a mainstream cultural problem, and you can't police it.

SE created FFXI as a Role-Playing Game [RPG.] If you play FFXI as a true RPG, then Cheating is literally impossible.

Your RPG character doesn't get RMT Gil from online websites, because your RPG character exists in a medieval world of swords and sorcery, where there are no websites. Your RPG character has to make friends, work hard, and have adventures, within Vana'diel, in order to progress.

It is not SE's fault that many young people nowadays, are playing RPGs with no intention of Role-Playing their in-game character, without any patience, sense of right-or-wrong, or any Honour.

SE created a beautiful RPG, and they hoped that people would play the game honourably without cheating, which the vast majority of people did in the first six or so years. The game was largely self-policing. Most people didn't think it was OK to cheat.

I don't blame SE for the shameless cultural decline. I blame the people who think it is OK to cheat. I blame the people who don't understand what the term "Role-Playing Game" means.