Actions Taken Against RMT & Other Illicit Activities 2/12/2015

[Darra]

That is the most absurd illogical way of thinking. Yes there is dirty money trading hands on the market board. But a person selling goods on the board, unknowingly receiving dirty money from a person who bought gil doesn't make them a gil buyer as well.

If SE goes after the buyers who directly receive gil from a seller through mail, trade, or marketboard manipulation (buying an item at an unreasonably high cost i.e a single iron ore for 10,000,000) and issues them a permanent ban on the first strike it would create such a disruption to the gil sellers demand that they would have to eventually close shop.

If SE issued a permanent ban to those 102 players who bought the gil. That news would travel through out the FFXIV community and make a legit player think twice about partaking in RMT.

I've read all of your posts here, and think it's worth pointing out that you sir/madam, do not understand human nature nor do you understand the real world. What you are suggesting is akin to the death penalty in the USA for example. The argument goes, that killing the worst criminals will make others think twice before following in their footsteps. Has this worked? Absolutely not. People still murder, rape, go on killing sprees and become serial killers. The punishment for the crimes, no matter how severe it is, will not act as a deterrent. To highlight my point further: Taking stationery from work, that does not belong to you, is theft, a punishable offence (job loss or even prison time), yet it's done on such a grand scale every day, why? The same as with the aforementioned other more serious crimes; the odds of being caught are why people keep doing it. If you had a 99% chance of being caught breaking any rule, even if the punishment was to have someone pee in your cornflakes (which you'd only find out after putting a spoonful in your mouth), you'd be less inclined to do it. There will always be exceptions to this rule of course, but the point still stands: Punishments themselves are oft times not much of a deterrent.


Now for your original point, about how gil buyers are the scum of the earth and how buying gil ruins the game... prey tell, how exactly it ruins the game? I'm yet to see any evidence of how the game is negatively affected by someone's decision to buy gil. Item prices are reflective of how much gil is in the economy, and what the supply for those items is. It's an accepted fact that shards are mostly supplied by bots, remove the bot owner's ability to sell gil, and they'll stop supplying materials, which puts demand up and supply down, creating hyper-inflation. As you can see, your suggestion will actually have negative consequences, and don't even get me started on how much resources you expect SE to waste investigating who got what gil from where and what items to give back to what players. I for one, would have no use for 2-3 dozen 4star items that I've made for people that used RMT gil to buy from me, and I sure as hell can not sell them all on the MB with the 30 other crafters receiving a dozen+ items.

If you really want to solve the RMT problem, ask SE to sell the gil themselves, this way they can undercut the gil sellers, pushing them out of business, all the while creating an additional income that could be put back into development of more game content, or ask them to come up with better ways of adding content that's crafted but wont fuel the market to the point people feel the need to buy gil in the first place.

[Aerowaffle]

Well....here's a thought I had. Some people might be playing this for the first time, and its their first MMO. It was mine. There isn't anything saying when you start playing that the RMT are bad. Terms of Service? I bet the majority doesn't bother to actually read them. I sure didn't. But you want to know what happens when I create a character on this game? RMT asks me if I want to buy gil as part of their holiday special....during the intro cutscene, before I am even put into the world where anyone can even chat with me yet. What they need to do is put something at the beginning like a help message alerting new players what could happen to them should they purchase gil from an RMT. I know you might think it seems obvious that its no good with some of their cryptic messages, but some people might not be aware starting out that they could face action against their account for it.

Very true, sometimes we need to make sure we don't mistake "common knowledge for MMOs" with "common knowledge".

[Aerowaffle]

Now for your original point, about how gil buyers are the scum of the earth and how buying gil ruins the game... prey tell, how exactly it ruins the game? I'm yet to see any evidence of how the game is negatively affected by someone's decision to buy gil. Item prices are reflective of how much gil is in the economy, and what the supply for those items is. It's an accepted fact that shards are mostly supplied by bots, remove the bot owner's ability to sell gil, and they'll stop supplying materials, which puts demand up and supply down, creating hyper-inflation.

If RMT no longer had bots gathering stuff for high level crafters, it would lower the supply for those items. Were price to skyrocket for some sort of gathered thing due to a lack of supply compared to the demand, you know what would happen? It would encourage more people to go and gather that thing since it's doing well in the market.

The fact that some people have accepted that shards are being supplied by bots is a problem in itself. There is a portion of the market that would normally be filled by humans in an effort to earn gil, that's being completely inhabited by bots.

[Darra]

If RMT no longer had bots gathering stuff for high level crafters, it would lower the supply for those items. Were price to skyrocket for some sort of gathered thing due to a lack of supply compared to the demand, you know what would happen? It would encourage more people to go and gather that thing since it's doing well in the market.

The fact that some people have accepted that shards are being supplied by bots is a problem in itself. There is a portion of the market that would normally be filled by humans in an effort to earn gil, that's being completely inhabited by bots.

Ah the old argument used by governments who think austerity measures are the best fix of an economy: "we the public sector will cut jobs, then the private sector will create jobs in their place". Let's say you managed to wipe out all of the bots themselves, so no shards were being sold by them, yes prices would sky rocket, yes some people would see $$ and go mine, but most people do not have the patience or the determination to spend the vast amounts of time required to take over that job. Will you go mine 3000 earth shards per day? I thought not. The demand will still be too high so unless 10 people took over for every bot, you're going to end up with high inflation. Expensive shards = expensive items = newer players with sad faces, it also = sad faces on players bad at managing money (unless SE increases gil gain again). Don't get me wrong, I do not support RMT but at the end of the day, the game at this stage is reliant on RMT services. SE can fix this, either buy reducing the material requirements, upping the number of items obtainable or simply by limited the RNG. RNG with materia is a primary driver of the economy (look at all the SB people do, each ilvl 45-49 item requires 10-12 shards each), all for a 15% chance of grade IV materia, with a 1/8 chance it'll be the kind they want. Hence my initial comment about asking SE to fix the way items are obtained to begin with.

[Aerowaffle]

Ah the old argument used by governments who think austerity measures are the best fix of an economy: "we the public sector will cut jobs, then the private sector will create jobs in their place". Let's say you managed to wipe out all of the bots themselves, so no shards were being sold by them, yes prices would sky rocket, yes some people would see $$ and go mine, but most people do not have the patience or the determination to spend the vast amounts of time required to take over that job. Will you go mine 3000 earth shards per day? I thought not. The demand will still be too high so unless 10 people took over for every bot, you're going to end up with high inflation. Expensive shards = expensive items = newer players with sad faces, it also = sad faces on players bad at managing money (unless SE increases gil gain again). Don't get me wrong, I do not support RMT but at the end of the day, the game at this stage is reliant on RMT services. SE can fix this, either buy reducing the material requirements, upping the number of items obtainable or simply by limited the RNG. RNG with materia is a primary driver of the economy (look at all the SB people do, each ilvl 45-49 item requires 10-12 shards each), all for a 15% chance of grade IV materia, with a 1/8 chance it'll be the kind they want. Hence my initial comment about asking SE to fix the way items are obtained to begin with.

Ah the old argument of "Well the market is used to RMT, so we can't get rid of it".

It all comes down to how many people will pick up the slack, which neither of us can realistically predict.

Frankly, I would rather the materials cost a bit more for these high-level crafts. From what I hear, high-level crafters have so much money, that they've run out of things to buy after bathing in gil twice a day.

And yes, SE probably should help out the high level materia RNG if they indeed go extremely heavy handed on bot farmers. But SE probably hasn't made any changes to the RNG because bots are farming these things. SE is artificially keeping the demand high because the supply is so high.

And as a relatively new player myself, I have yet to use the mb to advance myself on my battle classes. If new players can't buy great gear with their gil because prices are high, that gives them two options. Earn higher level gear normally, or start actively attempting to make more gil to afford things.