Petition for a Realistic Solution to RMT's

[Sapphic]

My solution:

Target the buyers and come down on those like the hand of god. Put the fear of the ban hammer into the buyers to destroy the sellers market. If the sellers arent able to sell their gil then it wont be profitable and they will move somewhere else.

What many don't realise is that the Gil/gold farmers arent an army of sweat shop farmers on computers, they are normal players who are able to make large amounts of gil, either through bots, selling clears or high level crafting and then sell the gil to websites to make an extra bit of RL money.

Clear sellers which do that can end up in a roundabout, take Gil from buyers, sell that gil to the gil seller websites, that is bought by someone who then gives that gil back for a clear ^_^

Disclaimer: Not saying all content sellers do that, but don't be surprised if some do, especially the ones that are more aggresive in advertising their services.

[DefendPopPunk]

My solution:

Target the buyers and come down on those like the hand of god. Put the fear of the ban hammer into the buyers to destroy the sellers market. If the sellers arent able to sell their gil then it wont be profitable and they will move somewhere else.

I kind of agree here. I saw someone giving advice about making gil to a newbie earlier. It went something along the lines of "get high level enough to unlock a gathering class to sell materials, level leatherworker to craft from the drops you've gotten, or you can buy gil from one of the many sites that advertise in-game." Obviously, I don't know if they were joking or serious or whatever. And I'm not saying everyone or even very many people think this way, but for those that do, they need to be shown that buying gil isn't tolerated.

But come on, that's not going to happen. Those are paying customers. Still, whatever is being done isn't deterring these sellers from their aggressive marketing strategies nor is it preventing people from buying the gil so something more needs to be done.

[LandricFrey]

My solution:

Target the buyers and come down on those like the hand of god. Put the fear of the ban hammer into the buyers to destroy the sellers market. If the sellers arent able to sell their gil then it wont be profitable and they will move somewhere else.

I agree, though I believe they already are banning buyers when they actually catch them. You'd think there would be some alert that would go off when several million gil exchanges hands.

[Nanaho]

I agree, though I believe they already are banning buyers when they actually catch them. You'd think there would be some alert that would go off when several million gil exchanges hands.

They would be constantly being alerted then because people sell runs etc. for multiple millions of gil.

[sarehptar]

Like cigarette companies? They are still a plague, they whine about losses but any obituary about their industry would be incredibly optimistic to say the least (or in your own words, "short sighted").

Mm yes, because cigarette advertisements are completely illegal and no one is allowed to sell their products in stores at all. Please don't bring up something that doesn't fully match my example and act like it perfectly matches. Furthermore, just for giggles, google cigarette smoking rates in America over the last few decades. Oh wait. That would actually prove my point, not yours.

Let's use the worse example you could possibly conjure, the war on drugs is a misguided failure. You can't artificially strangle supply from any end other than demand in a market economy.

The "worst example" I could possibly conjure is an example someone else began earlier in this thread. I was simply refuting that. Not my problem you don't read. In fact, if you'd bother to read my whole post, including the part you'd actually quoted, you'd note that I mentioned that doing the thing I suggested is "infeasible" in real life. I completely agreed that the "war on drugs" was a failure. But a game is not real life, and the people who manage these games have the ability to control their made-up world in a way that real people, police, etc. cannot control reality. You can't stop drug dealers in reality. But you can stop a huge majority of RM tells in a game.

This is naive to the extreme, people who want to buy will find out where to buy. I don't recommend revisiting your war on drugs analogy for this point because it is an even worst example than the last time it was tried. The advertisements are an exercise in competition; to make the choice for the buyer. The answer is not how we can roadblock them from getting what they desire because that is an arms race you can't win, but why they desire it, and if these reasons can change.

And I said this, didn't I? That people who are really dedicated to buying gil will always buy gil. But your response doesn't make sense here--first all, competition in markets drives down price. Lower prices incentivize people to buy and to buy more. Lower competition by lowering the companies' ability to advertise against each other and you will raise prices, which will ultimately lower sales. This is basic stuff. Furthermore, I never said anything about not also attacking the supply and finding ways to stop buying in the first place. I readily agree that those things are equally important to stopping RMT. Just because something is not the topic of my post doesn't mean I completely disagree with doing it, sheesh.

There are thousands of accounts banned every week what on earth makes people think that the problem is that they're not playing whack a mole fast enough? How do they reconcile the fact that an automated reporting system as suggested is a reactive system which means absolutely nothing is done to stop tells from happening in the first place? If this much banning does not stem the tide it is obvious that a ban is not an effective countermeasure, because that is a cost of business and it clearly isn't steep enough to crush the margin. If you are to be serious about addressing RMT you have to address the factors in both ends of the transaction; why are players motivated to buy gil, why is it profitable for those who want to sell gil. It requires changing the design of the game fundamentally to reduce the avenues of making money and reduce the need to buy gil, and if this cannot be reconciled with other considerations of game design then it is not a solvable problem.

Because thousands of accounts is not even scratching the surface on the hundreds of thousands of accounts that are being created? You're basically saying "If putting one brick up doesn't stop the wind from getting in, we shouldn't bother to put anymore bricks up." Certainly more things on the other end should be done to stop RMT. But the ability to instantly stop the advertisers would not hurt the situation at all, and you are basically suggesting that because RMT is an "unsolveable problem" until people no longer buy gil, that no one else's additional suggestions would be helpful at all. I agree with the OP, if you have no concrete suggestions yourself and aren't here to sign the petition, what are you here for?

[LandricFrey]

They would be constantly being alerted then because people sell runs etc. for multiple millions of gil.

Wow I never realized so many people were so desperate to clear content that would be obsolete in three months. Really goes to show how much of this is a problem created by players; I mean so many people must be buying from RMT sites, and then you have players advertising clears for obscene amounts of gil, further tempting people to buy gil. Still I know it is possible to reduce the amount of spam and RMT's. Plenty of other MMO's have reduced them to a small presence, why can't FF14?

[Rhas]

We are serious about severely reducing the amount RMT's in our beloved game! Show SE with a /sign, "Like!", a supportive post below, or all of the above!

There is a single reason why SE will never do something permanently about RMT. Money.

Every time you are sent a tell, that means that RMT either paid for the game or hacked someones account. Since many (but not all) RMT companies aren't interested in that, that means they are paying SE money. When SE bans them for messaging, they go out and buy the game again (using money they made from people buying the currency)

This is also a consistent stream of income for SE and they are not going to permanently remove income by making it totally impossible for RMT to operate. They are a business after all and everyone has the means of blocking people by using the /busy to block tells.

They are doing the minimum of showing they are banning players for RMT but still allowing those people to repurchase the game again which also helps pay for your new content/expansions. To SE it is like a "win/win" situation. Banning an appropriate number of accounts for RMT while still allowing situations for RMT to not totally give up and find a free to play game to spam instead of paying SE money.

[LandricFrey]

Somehow I highly doubt RMT's are buying many copies. Its more likely they are hacking accounts and/or using Key generators.

[Hexy]

The only way RMT is going to fully stop is when players STOP BUYING GIL. And we all know the likelihood of that happening.

This is true. However, SE needs to go after the websites that sell the gil and shut them down. They not only violate the game's ToA, but it's a phishing scam to steal accounts.

I want to see a better system to handle the flood of /tells from them (I get at least one every ten minutes here on Gilgamesh). A blacklist was a good idea in theory, but we really don't need to keep an ingame list of those we don't ever want to hear from again. And it fills up very quickly, only to have me go back and purge the deleted ones every week so I can /blacklist another round of new gil spammers.

I think instead of a blacklist, have /ignore and /report gil spammer buttons. No list to keep ingame, just 2 simple buttons. Report gil spammer for the actual spammers that sends a report to SE, and an Ignore for those players that are just jerks.

[SarcasmMisser]

Mm yes, because cigarette advertisements are completely illegal and no one is allowed to sell their products in stores at all. Please don't bring up something that doesn't fully match my example and act like it perfectly matches.

I know it's hard for Americans but think outside of America for once, maybe even assume that someone isn't talking about your country by default. There are places where cigarette advertising is totally illegal and it doesn't stop people.

I agree with the OP, if you have no concrete suggestions yourself and aren't here to sign the petition, what are you here for?

Because it's not up to you or the OP to limit the scope of the topic, if I believe the premise is flawed I'm going to say so and there is nothing you can do about it. If you are serious about the issue you wouldn't limit the topic to only ideas you are comfortable with.