Reality of RMT

[Pikken]

I wonder how good the market actually is in FFXIV. I don't get what people need to spend gil on? I have never spent any time actively trying to earn gil and I have never been out of gil. If you have one level 50 char that you play regularly, that is reach your myth cap each week, I don't see how you can do a net loss of gil. Honestly, what do people spent gil on?

[Pr0c3ss0r]

Anyone read REAMDE by Neal Stephenson? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reamde

The core game that the book describes is written to embrace the RMT'ers as a mechanism for spreading wealth from rich western countries to the poorer nations, and the game as described had mechanisms to support such.

Reading that story, it does explore an interesting angle on the whole RMT thing. Rather than trying to ban, rather, embrace it as a legitimate practise that is regulated in its own way (ie. no chat log spamming, and really there's no need to, if it's legal).

Well Blizzard tryed hard with they RMAH, it was the smartest idea ever, but they game was so failure =/ Again, as i am the only one watching porn, i was the only one trying to sell item on RMAH, while everyone else was complaining about it.

Sad because Blizzard killing the RMAH in 2014, tbh they should kill D3 instead and would fix the real issue.

[Pr0c3ss0r]

I wonder how good the market actually is in FFXIV. I don't get what people need to spend gil on? I have never spent any time actively trying to earn gil and I have never been out of gil. If you have one level 50 char that you play regularly, that is reach your myth cap each week, I don't see how you can do a net loss of gil. Honestly, what do people spent gil on?

They spend on 2 STAR gear that is close to Allagan/myth gear stats, sometime better(Rare), so in other word, they save time. (is always the same scheme, like SE and other company do it on purpose.)

[Selkie]

My point is I agree with you the buyers are the problem, and Tera is an example of a company that figured out a way to create a system that used that to their advantage rather than fight endlessly against it.

I find RMT in any game to be appalling and TERA's method of "legalizing" it resulted in people obtaining end game gear once they hit level cap without having the skill or capacity to have obtained it themselves. What the company was trying to accomplish was not ridding the game of RMT but making sure that they were the ones capitalizing on it. It still destroys the value of any in game accomplishment to allow players to get ahead with real world wealth.

[Ri_ri]

Is the same problem with everything. No prostitution would happen if there no one to buy, maybe we should kill all man and make this world 100% girl.

But, lesbians...

Anyway, considering the JP servers doesn't have much RMT ads (I don't play on them, personally; just repeating what I've read here), I think what he says is true. If there's no demand, there'll be no supply.
I blame our individualistic culture.

[DarkRain]

How to kill the RMT . Step one you make the /shout function available only when you hit level 20 . You make the /yell at level 15 this will force the RMT to level a job each and every time an account gets ban . 2. On /tells when someone reports RMT /tells if more then 25 people report the /tell the account gets flagged for review then ban it .3 . Bots witch 90% are RMT 10% are lazy players . How you deal with Bots same way if a player thinks someone is a bot they report them . If the "Bot" gets 25 reports again there account gets flagged , reviewed then ban . When an account gets ban SE needs to track the account to the Credit Card and block that card . Then they need to look at all the sub accounts and ban all of it . Keep doing this every day its not hard . Also need to have people stop feeding the beast . DO NOT BUY GIL!!! simple

[storm]

I find RMT in any game to be appalling and TERA's method of "legalizing" it resulted in people obtaining end game gear once they hit level cap without having the skill or capacity to have obtained it themselves. What the company was trying to accomplish was not ridding the game of RMT but making sure that they were the ones capitalizing on it. It still destroys the value of any in game accomplishment to allow players to get ahead with real world wealth.

I don't disagree. That was a problem. And generally is in games that legitimize RMT. My point wasn't about how awesome the system was but rather it was an example of the OP's point. Tera made rmting possible from their own cash shop and as such I never had to deal with aggressive shouts, annoying whispers, or account hackers and code exploiters.

It's not an endorsement of the method, it's an observation of the problem.

[Pr0c3ss0r]

It still destroys the value of any in game accomplishment to allow players to get ahead with real world wealth.

It do, but nothing can prevent it. It is a real problem when the company itself start to sell the "short cut", that is mega shame/greedy, unless the game is totally free and they handle all fee with it.

RMAH like blizzard did was the way around it, but they handled it poorly, the game concept was bad, the GOLD dupe with slow reaction was real real bad, the item dupe was bad, the replayability of D3 was POOR as hell, the tracking of who buy/sell was hidden information (unable to tell if is BLIZZARD selling lulz) And Even worse, Blizzard answered: We don't plan to sell item. (They never said they wont ever sell item...) the 15% Fee + 2$ fee was just too much.

DO NOT BUY GIL!!! simple

OR DO NOT PLAY THE GAME, that also simple. (for who have good job with money and not as much time that you have.)

[Asriah]

Is the same problem with everything. No prostitution would happen if there no one to buy, maybe we should kill all man and make this world 100% girl.

Same problem go for DRUG, of course you can blame who is buying it, and totally ignore the reason they buying it.

All this BS analogy is getting very old, but guess what, i am happy i am the only one that jerk myself while watching porn, i feel so special that company invest trillion $$$ on SEX online ONLY FOR ME!!! I mean serisouly there anyone else that do it? Trust me, everyone would tell you that i am the only one!!! Dare anyone to say otherwise.

I hope you can read between those line and understand my point.

PS: Ksenia +1 for your post, glad to see someone that understand the real issue.

I feel like you were trying to disagree with me somewhere but then you got confused.

Also give the Lesbians some credit of existence would ya.

OR DO NOT PLAY THE GAME, that also simple. (for who have good job with money and not as much time that you have.)

Ok going off of what I said at the start, "NO TIEM TO FERM GIL CUZ BUSY" Is a lousy excuse, and especially does NOT work in a PvE centric game like FFXIV. You don't have time to farm gil in this game? Where is the rush? Maybe if there was a strong focus on PvP you could try to argue with me.

[Bladeglory]

Let me tell you about Homestuck RuneScape.

Back before 2008, there was a massive bot and RMT problem. Every area in Free to Play worlds were absolutely infested with gathering and spamming bots. I used to spend some of my free time helping to wipe them out using community power and the Player Moderator ability to mute.

Late 2008 rolls around, and they announce big news. The removal of the entire Trade System. Well, that's an exaggeration, but there was enough bitching about it to make you think that was the case. What was actually removed was "unbalanced trades". Any trade that was skewed by up to 3k gp, in either direction, based on the Grand Exchange's prices, could not be completed. 3,000 gp was not a lot. It also had a time limit of 15(?) minutes, so wealth could still be transferred, but very slowly. They also removed the Wilderness, the PvP area in the north where you could kill people within your level range for their stuff.

This crippled RMT. I'm talking knee-to-balls crippled. They were rolling on the floor, whimpering softly with tears streaming down their face. Suddenly it was impossible to sell any decent amount of currency in any reasonable amount of time.

Now, this went over really badly for two reasons. Both were solved eventually, however.

PvP: It couldn't stay in, because then RMT would just trade via secluded spots in the wilderness. Dangerous for both RMT and buyers. Mini-games and a new drop system for the wilderness replaced the old PvP.

Helping your friends: Removing unbalanced trades kept people from helping out their friends. And I mean legit friends that you're only helping because you like them. This is where things get really creative... Several new systems were implemented to restore function that the trade system had lost.

1) Increasing the trade limit based on the length of time you had that friend added to your Friends List. After several months of "knowing" them, you could make trades that were substantially larger. I can't remember the exact figures, but I'm thinking 3 or 4 times as much. Obviously, RMT accounts can't sit there for 3 months before delivering.

2) Increasing the trade limit based on the amount of Quest Points the account had. This went up as more Quest Points became available, but this essentially worked out to be a sizeable barrier to RMT. Only accounts with a large playtime could benefit from this increased limit (which stacked multiplicatively with the friends list increase) and it was simply not feasible for RMT to sink that much time into an account that could be banned at any time, even before its first delivery. Between these two increases, you could trade 90k every 15 minutes. This was a pretty decent amount to give away to long-lasting, experienced friends.

3) The Assist System. People would often give their friends raw materials (gems, ore and ingredients) and have stuff made for them. This system made that possible again, and actually improved it by making it safer. You, with all your high level skills, would essentially give your soul to your nooby little friend. You would be unable to do anything but end it whilst this was going on. Your friend would do whatever they wanted with your skill levels. You would receive the EXP for what they did, and they got to make their item with their own stuff. This is pretty close to the "Request Meld" system we already have, actually. It's a much safer way to do things and has essentially the same functionality.

Now, everything wasn't perfect. There were always some enterprising individuals willing to do anything in order to get around this. But this solution was effective in making their lives hell. Especially for those first few months when they had no idea what to do. Ah, it was so quiet...

Anyway, eventually this system was repealed. Why? I still blame the new owners of the game and money-grubbing tendencies. RMT reappeared in full force when they removed Restricted Trade. (they barely even tried to find another solution)

TL;DR: RuneScape had a unique solution to RMT. At least as far as I know. It pissed off a lot of players, but eventually PvP and Trade were almost as good as they were before, if not better than before.

I'm not saying FFXIV should go that route. For one, it would involve placing more restrictions on the Market Boards, if not making it anonymous. I just felt like this thread would be an interesting place to dump the story, as it reminded me of what I experienced.