Quote Originally Posted by Wanzzo View Post
Well, 2 things:
1- I didn't started that thread to impact gil buyers directly. My intention is to make you guys think more about the problem (minimal) and discuss it within yours FCs (ideal). Some future starts slow...

2- I don't think this will solve the problem. I've played a game named "Dofus" that allowed players to buy a token-like currency from the official site which is possible to buy itens, inside game money and even subscription time. But the bots stills there! At least, for that game, didn't solved and improved the profits of the bots owners, 'cause the token can be bought inside the game using game money as well.

If people never buy any gil by illegal means, we would see a fast decreasing number of bots.

in my opinion, we have to attack the way they profit: decreasing the number of gil buyers. To do that, we need to talk more about it. We need to make discussions about it more often inside FC chats, linkshells and reporting assumed gil buyers (believe me, they will tell you what they do).

It's kinda like a tiny ant work, but we have to do our part and not be waiting forever for SE to solve the problem from the wake of the next sunrise. It's a difficult and complex issue that all of us can do something to help. Even if it doesn't revolution the 0,1% of a chocobo feather, even then, I want to try to do something rather than do nothing!
The problem with that is talking to people about it probably won't get them to change. For example, the leader of a FC I used to be in not only openly (on Discord, not in game) bought gil and engaged in RMT, he also ran a second account that he specifically used to bot to get things he wanted. He likely still does so to this day, despite several of us having issues with the idea, in some cases due to issues such as hacking and bots, and in others because of the idea of somebody using RL items to get in-game items period. (I personally fall in the former camp, and have zero issues with a sanctioned and safe exchange, partially because I've literally seen it work quite well in multiple other MMOs.)

Also, note that even an 'official' solution doesn't fully prevent outside sources...but it does severely limit such. For example, if I was playing WoW and wanted to buy gold, I would absolutely do so via the official token that (a) isn't risking an account and (b) probably actually costs less. (I cannot confirm if it costs less for sure, as I haven't touched WoW in months [always enjoyed this game more in recent years], but last time I looked it up out of curiosity it was +/- 10% of the 'official' channel if one did it another way.) Would I love to see all the bots vanish? Absolutely. Would I settle for 95% of them vanishing, as happened with WoW? Also yes.

As you stated, the best way to stop gil sellers is: reduce the number of gil buyers. I just don't believe talking about it will have the impact you're looking for, but an official channel probably will. I mean, put yourself in the shoes of a gil buyer for a moment. If you can buy x gil for $y and risk your account, or x gil for $1.1y and know that it's perfectly safe, would you pay the extra 10%? I know I probably would (if I couldn't basically print gil as an omnicrafter and omnigatherer, myself). If the majority if people would...there's no longer a market for the non-official channels. If you couple that with something that can't be taken out of the SE atmosphere (i.e. a token of some sort, rather than cash), there's no profit incentive (or at least severely reduced profit incentive) for current gil sellers (as they do this to get RL cash, not to get a new mount or minion).

I understand wanting to do something, but I'd rather fix 95% of the problem with one step instead of putting in 100x the effort and maybe fixing 0.095% of the problem.