Tackling RMT: What creates buyers in the first place?

[LianaThorne]

TBH... The largest factor in creating gil buyers is a lack of consequences.

The buyers generally are the ppl that want all the stuff in the system but do not want to work the system to get it. This goes also into those ppl paying RMT for clears on high end or endgame content as well.

The game economy in FFXIV has a serious inflation issue which is partially caused by RMT but IMO primarily caused by the game's design on it's own over time. Quests and activities will still generate exponentially more gil than the game's gil-sinks can remove in the same amount of time. The marketboard for the most part just moves it around as only the tax amount is actually taken out of circulation. Someone in SE needs to brainstorm ideas of optional side activites or NPC purchase consumables that would entice players into spending gil on them regularly.

However part of me wonders what ppl actually buy gil from RMT for in this game aside from wanting a large or medium housing plot as doing MSQ on a new character will generate enough gil to make a small obtainable unless spent foolishly or buying those golden mounts from NPC vendors. Are ppl actually just dumping it into stuff on the marketboard?

I personally use mine for a mix of housing related stuff and stocking up on stuff for patch prep. It's kind of stupid how much stuff sells for during Week 1 that if you plan properly you can make back double or triple what you spent.

[Iscah]

The game economy in FFXIV has a serious inflation issue which is partially caused by RMT but IMO primarily caused by the game's design on it's own over time. Quests and activities will still generate exponentially more gil than the game's gil-sinks can remove in the same amount of time. The marketboard for the most part just moves it around as only the tax amount is actually taken out of circulation. Someone in SE needs to brainstorm ideas of optional side activites or NPC purchase consumables that would entice players into spending gil on them regularly.

I don't think fixing this would be a solution to RMT, because requiring players to spend more gil more often could make them want to acquire more.

However, even ignoring that issue, the imbalance of earning gil and spending it seems off. You gear up by either (A) purchasing gear with tomes, which takes no gil out of the system and in fact generates gil by way of roulette rewards, or (B) using crafted gear, which requires materials bought with tomes, which generates gil, and at best you're removing the market tax amount from play while the rest of the money just shuffles around the economy.

We have so many different niche currencies that gil has little purpose.

[Shibi]

The only solution is to permamently ban anyone involved with RMT. As soon as they find someone involved with RMT, trace it forward and back, and ban every account involved.

What happens when that 10 million gil mount you listed on the MB sells to someone who bought the gil, and you are banned?

[LianaThorne]

What happens when that 10 million gil mount you listed on the MB sells to someone who bought the gil, and you are banned?

Yeah this isn't a road I'd like to see walked down. PSO2:NGS already bans people if someone who's RMTd at all buys something of theirs off the player shop. It's really not a cool way of doing it because it punishes innocent people for the choice of the buyer and frankly makes me incredibly paranoid to even list items because I've sunk too much money irl into my account to lose it like that. We can find a better solution.

[Nav_Fae]

Most people that buy gil buy do so to purchase houses off other players. The cost of housing prices being like 600mil+ for large houses thanks to a certain housing discord/reddit that doesn't monitor its prices or community. Prices so high, people feel obligated to buy gil to get a house at all. Emote, hair, barding, mount prices on the MB being so high is another reason. In order to collect everything, a sizable amount of money for cosmetic items need to be spent. That could be fixed by making those easier to obtain.

[dspguy]

The base desire for people to RMT is Laziness.

Has nothing to do with the economy of the game, its a person being too lazy to earn it that they would rather just pay.

I think that is the concise way to say it. Some RMT buyers make the calculation that it will take, for example, 20 hours to gather/grind/relist items on the MB in order to make some sort of in-game purchase but only 1 hour of real-life work to exchange for gil through RMT. They'd rather do that than spend the time in game. Time is money.

[Bukachu]

Speaking about economy without understanding basics of economy isnt a good way to go about it.

[Nav_Fae]

The notion is that you can make more gil buying it for a single day of real work overtime than the ingame hours spent doing it yourself.

[ElysiumDragon]

Gil selling with RMT and RMT for items are two separate issues with two separate solutions.

RMT for items is tackled by SE actually acknowledging demand, and catering to it. I'd pay $40 (if not more) for any of the statue emotes, or $15 for the various minions that are all but impossible to get any more (I really want a Heliodor Carbuncle minion for my character's aesthetic, but it's tied to a discontinued stuffed toy). Literally just put items people want but can't easily get for reasons out of their control in the cash shop, sit back, and rake in the money.

[LogicHatesMe]

The problem is, virtual words that are based upon our own (including capitalism and an economy) will suffer the same fate, it's like a microcosm of your own world. As soon as anything is assigned a value there will be people willing to pay for it, and people willing to work for it, and by extension, people willing to pay the workers for it.

If you're looking at this subject and you're dumfounded and appalled, well, guess what? That's the world we live in too, and people just accept it.

Let me spin it another way: How does RMT in this game effect your experience? (Apart from general chat posts advertising gil lol)

Another angle to view it from is: How is paying a farmer gil to level your character to 80 with real money any different from paying SE Store money to skip to level 80?

Here's the thing, Gil cannot be fabricated (as far as I know, unless devs are in on it) therefore everyone buying Gil for real money are not getting 'extra' gil that's created just for them, the gil is made by farmers who are doing legit content (probably botting, but we can't assume in 100% of cases) and doing MB trades. The gil being sold/bought is in circulation already.

If you hit the gil cap of 999,999,999 and realized you could sell 10mil for 10 bucks, and you could do that 100 times, is that tempting for you? make 1000 real world bucks in no time. Might sound like it's not that much but for some countries (poor ones) this is a perfectly viable way to pay their rent and bills, by getting a bunch of people together and farming the game to sell the resources.

I knew a guy on another MMO that lived like this, he was from Indonesia, had a wife and child to support, and could earn more money farming his MMO 6 hours a day and selling the currency than he could working.

None of this is me saying I approve or disprove of it, just pointing out that the subject is far more complex than it first appears, and since RMT has 0 effect on how I enjoy the game, I don't worry about it.