Legit Players Banned/Punished due to RMT *FOR DUMMIES: A GUIDE*

[DokutoruGwydion]

I'm all for people getting caught and I'm sure some real cheaters did but the blanket /100 division is just plain weird, especially with people who spent the money seemingly unaffected still having w/e they bought. I'm not calling for a reversal or saying everyone was innocent, I just find the circumstances of the punishment uneven.

[Aenarion]

You are the one treating a virtual economy from an mmo like a real world economy. In the real world there are rules and regulations to govern everything in an economy and whole organizations to police it. There is nothing like that in this game.

Regardless of whether it’s virtual or real life, the basic economic principles apply, but then you’d already know that if you are remotely educated on the subject. Eve Online, a MMO, has one of the largest and robust virtual economy in the world, where CCP actually hired real economists to study it, I’m pretty sure they know a lot more than you do.

There could be a thousand of one item from different people on the AH at 20k gil and one person comes along and sets their price at 200k. Then he could get his buddy to buy it for that much. As soon as someone sees that everyone starts putting that thing up for 200k just because ONE sold for that much. The other thousand are still there. There was no supply and demand just someone trying to manipulate the market in a game. I have seen it a thousand times.

Market manipulation IS part of both RL and virtual economies, whether it’s manipulating the perceived value/scarcity of a product or by manipulating the supply of said product. Market manipulation does not somehow avoid the supply/demand curve, it aims to modify it, and in your example it is attempting to do so through altering perceived value by taking advantage of poor market visibility.



What you don’t realize in that case is, just because it is put up for sale for 200k, doesn’t mean there is demand to drive the sale of said item at that price level. If it was a weapon, does it perform well enough to warrant the 200k price? If it’s a crafting ingredient, is it rare enough, or is the resulting product from said ingredient valuable enough, to warrant the 200k price?

If yes, then the original 20k price was simply too low to begin with, and the move to 200k was a market correction. If not, then why in the world would you or anyone purchase said item? If I offered you a bicycle that’s worth $50 for $5,000, would you buy it simply because I offered it?

[Overon]

Heres the issue
There is no Honesty thus we will never know who is innocent or not.
We have to leave it to a Company to make its own judgment , and it would be a poor business model to suspend or ban innocent players , not a very good way to make Profits .....
Square Enix is a For Profit Corporation ........

So while a vast small Minority is getting this attention and a Majority of us remain unaffected , I will leave it in the hands of the Business that owns all rights to this game and therefor of inside or out .

They have logs to check , research , and track to find those who were one way or another apart of RMT ........buying or selling.
They did this in FF11
They find RMT in game , Ban them , take their character and look in a Database , if your name rings up as someone who had traded with a RMT .........you get punished.
How can they tell innocent or not ?
Well RMT seem to sell in Flat Numbers

[Sadebreth]

Regardless of whether it’s virtual or real life, the basic economic principles apply, but then you’d already know that if you are remotely educated on the subject. Eve Online, a MMO, has one of the largest and robust virtual economy in the world, where CCP actually hired real economists to study it, I’m pretty sure they know a lot more than you do.



Market manipulation IS part of both RL and virtual economies, whether it’s manipulating the perceived value/scarcity of a product or by manipulating the supply of said product. Market manipulation does not somehow avoid the supply/demand curve, it aims to modify it, and in your example it is attempting to do so through altering perceived value by taking advantage of poor market visibility.

This games economy cannot even be remotely compared to eve. It is better compared to WoW.

So were you one of them that came in and analyzed it? By your own logic you can say the same about yourself.

[funkin]

Truth is, you need to either relax or quit this game. You are not getting your gils back in any mean. S/E clearly stated that gil invovled in RMT transaction are counterfiet. In real life, good luck to you if you try to claim counterfiet loss from a bank or government. Many business just put it to loss.

If gils are that easy to make as you claim they are. The time you spend on here complaining already let you to recover the loss.

I'm not going to try to make more money in-game when it's unresolved how to avoid having it removed again. I'd be asking for more trouble by doing that, now wouldn't I? Which is pretty much entirely why I bother posting: to discuss what happened with other players and to see if anyone receives an official response. It's not just the previous loss that matters, it's the precedent that's been set and what it means to play the game with that knowledge. It's not the same anymore, because it's unclear how to safely acquire enough gil for a future mansion. And until that's resolved, I won't play. Indefinitely, if that's the case.

In terms of my level of relaxation, I appreciate the concern! But if anything, I can use the pump -- it's about time to work out. RAHHH! Although to be honest, forum dialogue doesn't really get me going like some of you seem to think it does. If it did, I probably would avoid participating on the forums, because discussing this stuff with other members of the community, while at times can be enlightening, is really not useful (at least in this situation). No one here can do anything about this issue.

[Nanga]

Other side of the coin is, I don't believe half of the ppl telling their story as this is the internet. Cheaters love to play the cry innocence game and unfortunately SE doesn't share their investigations to the public and never will.

This.
I've been crafting for a long time, and selling things on the market for just as long. I didn't get suspended, banned, or gil confiscated. Knowing my situation just makes it hard for me to believe all these people complaining about it on the forums aren't guilty.

[Overon]

This.
I've been crafting for a long time, and selling things on the market for just as long. I didn't get suspended, banned, or gil confiscated. Knowing my situation just makes it hard for me to believe all these people complaining about it on the forums aren't guilty.

I have friends who now have over a couple million in this game made from launch of 2.0 to now , they are still playing and crafting .
Its hard to not pass judgment when a small minority gets punished and the rest are still playing the game ....

If SE does anything there will always be those who will cry innocent.

[Lux_Rayna]

I'm not going to try to make more money in-game when it's unresolved how to avoid having it removed again.

It only gets removed if the majority of ingame gil is from RMT. Think about it like this: it should mathematically be improbable for you to make X amount of gil in Y amount of time, because there is Z amount of gil being produced from leves/quests in the economy. If Z, X, and Y are significantly higher than projected, then an overwhelming % of the gil you buy/sell/trade with is RMT driven. This means it has to get nuked to the level where you *should* be at.

Thing is they didnt even nuke all of it. They just nuked it down to a manageable level.

[Divinemight]

I'm not going to try to make more money in-game when it's unresolved how to avoid having it removed again. I'd be asking for more trouble by doing that, now wouldn't I? Which is pretty much entirely why I bother posting: to discuss what happened with other players and to see if anyone receives an official response. It's not just the previous loss that matters, it's the precedent that's been set and what it means to play the game with that knowledge. It's not the same anymore, because it's unclear how to safely acquire enough gil for a future mansion. And until that's resolved, I won't play. Indefinitely, if that's the case.

It is simple enough, stay away from items that selling for couple of millions...... This game simply does not have that gigantic gil fountain to begin with.

[funkin]

It only gets removed if the majority of ingame gil is from RMT. Think about it like this: it should mathematically be improbable for you to make X amount of gil in Y amount of time, because there is Z amount of gil being produced from leves/quests in the economy. If Z, X, and Y are significantly higher than projected, then an overwhelming % of the gil you buy/sell/trade with is RMT driven. This means it has to get nuked to the level where you *should* be at.

Thing is they didnt even nuke all of it. They just nuked it down to a manageable level.

This "math" isn't right. which is why you assume making this gil isn't possible without RMT. Look at just ONE scenario where it's easy to make millions:

Thousands of people per server. Lots of level 50s. People mismanaging money so badly that they post about problems with gil fountains on the forums. You don't think 200 people can spend 25k gil each? That's 5 million gil. Imagine you reached level 50 Gatherer before most people, and all these people hitting level 50 in combat classes want better gear, and they are sitting on 200-300k gil. Every big FC has a few 50 crafters. Every town has crafters offering their services. The combat players talk to them, ask them what mats they need to craft something, and then buy those mats on the market.

That's just one way for me, as a Botanist, to have made gil. This doesn't include selling to crafters who then make stuff to sell on the market, and use their profits so they can buy more materials and repeat the process. This doesn't include selling Grade 3 Carbonized Matter, which EVERYONE needs for materia melding. I've literally sold thousands of carbonized matters, and they sell for anywhere between 100-1000gil each depending on the market, usually around 200gil lately.

There are so many ways to make money if you think about it, and none of them *have* to involve RMT. You don't need to buy gil to spend 5k on carbonized matter. You don't need to buy gil to spend 10k on HQ logs or crawler cocoons.

Edit: My point isn't that RMT isn't an issue, my point is that for me to assume my sales were going to gil-buyers doesn't make sense.

It is simple enough, stay away from items that selling for couple of millions...... This game simply does not have that gigantic gil fountain to begin with.

Not true. I haven't made one sale for over 100k. I don't think I even went over 70k for a single sale actually.