shard yeilding

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Originally Posted by Hvinire

However, we do understand that many of you are concerned and upset that reports of botting and other activity is not addressed immediately. Please understand that ridding the game of RMT is not something that can take place overnight, but we are working extremely hard to ensure that everyone can play comfortably and without concern for RMT. We will also continue to post news announcements about how RMT and cheaters are being handled, so please be sure to check periodically.

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Thanks for the update. I wonder though whether players might be more satisfied if you could at least confirm that you (the dev team) will do something proactive to better secure the game servers as dabatase and client communication so that the botting menace is controlled. Your reply above does seem to suggest that in fact you're not going to prevent the bots, but it's those very bots that people see and report all the time. It's also those bots that are becoming more and more intrusive to the game experience. So, without going into any detail, can you at least confirm that your team will be seeking to limit or remove the operation of teleportation, warp or underground bots in the game?

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Originally Posted by Hvinire

Hello everyone,

Here's a slightly more in-depth follow-up regarding the shards and RMT activity.

We are not planning to address the RMT activity related to shards by making adjustments to game balance, instead we will be individually tracking RMT activity and handling them. Basically, removing profit gain from shards would not decrease the amount of RMT, they would move to some other item and some other way to generate gil.

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Would have been nice if this was the attitude taken with fishing instead of "Nope, might be botted, gut the entire thing!"

Actually...this is something that could be "done overnight", if SE cared enough to have IG Game Masters who can just take a look at a RMT teleporting around and banning him instantly.

But hey let's make players investigate those characters and send reports with evidence and everything and then start an investigation that takes 3 weeks to "make sure" this person is a RMT...

On a sidenote, I don't really care about RMTs, since they pretty much not affect me in the slightest...but I'm getting sick of "solutions" by SE, that are the most complicated way of handling things possible...

This basically sums up SE, players, and RMT: SE doesn't care about stopping RMT as much as most players. However, the small portion of players that use RMT fuel it.

I get that shards are a sensitive issue, because of RMT. However, I'm genuinely curious, how many RMT are level 50 on a gathering job? I'll reiterate, since I know if I don't, someone is going to accuse me of being misinformed or possibly even sarcastic: do we know how many RMT make it to cap on Miner/Botanist? Does anyone have any related sightings?

I'd like to say that a level 50 trait that helps with shard attainment would be neat, but you have to remember, it's not just RMT that do this, but non-RMT bots as well. There are a bunch of reasons why shards are a smart implementation, as a whole, that a lot of people don't really consider. This ranges from getting people into crafting, to giving newer players a stable source of income, to getting people to play gathering jobs, to bottlenecking high-end crafting (this is actually a good thing, yes), the list goes on.

Banhammering every RMT char/bot instantly is a waste of time/resources because they'll just drum up another char and keep going...people just don't seem to understand this. Also, if you leave that bot alone for a while you can trace him to the seller's other chars/accounts through the gil movement and also trap the gil BUYERS and ban them all in one fell swoop. They did a nice article on this for FFXI after the Task Force was formed.

I would like to remind everyone that the central idea of this thread is to get SE to do something about the shard obtaining process for legit crafters.

While there is a problem with RMTs/bots and shards, I would like to possibly bring the thread just a little bit back into focus since the topic has basically been hijacked.

Anyroad, I've adjusted the possible options in my question for Yoshida-san, at the upcoming live letter. Which can be found HERE!
If you would like to see this issue acknowledged, please 'like' my question!
If you would like to make any further suggestions, please comment here.
Thank you all!

The thing is, it's all linked, so it's not that simple. I would love to accrue shards more quickly and/or more often, I'm planning on taking every craft to 50 when my semester ends, but what affects legit crafters would also affect RMTs and bots, depending on the road that's taken and the levels involved. It's not a hijack, but a legitimate point: shards are a very central element in the game and it's easy to see why it's such a delicate issue.

Bottom line: I want an easier time getting shards, trust me. It's just, if it's easier for us with high level gathering jobs, is it easier for everyone? What will the end effect be?

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Originally Posted by HaplessHermit

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This is the reason that various options are being considered and thought about, or do we punish an entire group of legit players because of bots and RMTs that won't be going away? If RMTs aren't working in shards, they will just be working in something else. I've seen them covering the DoLs and farming mobs quite nicely. All those crafting mats that they are skillfully farming and selling are just as much of a central point in the game as shards are.

The only real issue is that it's a pretty simple way for new-start players to earn some cash with a fresh DoL class. However, it's not like there aren't other ways to make money. If anything, increasing the yield in some way will lead to less money for RMTs on that front; but with the way they work on everything else, it isn't going to change anything. I know this, you know this, and anyone with MMO experience knows this.

Shards are not the issue when it comes to RMTs. If that's the case, any item that can be farmed and sold at a profit would be an issue. If anything is the issue when it comes to RMTs, it's the players themselves that keep them in business by paying real money for their services.

The biggest problem I have with this "If RMTs aren't working in shards, they will just be working in something else." logic is that shards don't work like any other material. They are not only high demand for a crafter's entire recipe book but more importantly they have no significant cap throttling the rate botters can crank them out.

If a botter goes after any other material, eventually their inventory will run out of room. But more importantly they would only be able to sell 3960 of any other mat at a single time (2 retainers with 20 slots * 99 stack = 3960). I saw a guy over last weekend who placed 15 3000 stacks of shards on the market board: 45,000 shards with 25 other retainer spaces still open to them. He moved them all by Monday and put up an even larger set, roughly 126,000 shards marketed in 4 days by one character. I reported him when I first saw, reported personally to a dev while I was informing them about an AK afker. Reported him again Wensday. He's still there, selling his pages of 3000 stacks.

Let's see someone pull off such a cash cow scheme with iron ore or diremite webs. YOU CAN'T, because its impossible to sell several hundred thousand units of any other mat over one week with just one player's retainer and few bots feeding him.