Tackling RMT: What creates buyers in the first place?

[Reinha]

Wrong Jojoya. It's not 40% on the developers, it's 100% on the developers.

Players set prices based on supply and demand. A watermelon minion, a house roof, a flower accessory and a glamour from Heavensward will sell for about 2k Gil. Why is that? Because they drop from retainer ventures, lootboxes and so on. They are so easy to obtain players will discard them to make more room for items. Thousands of ventures are done every day.

A mount from Unreal goes for 5 million. Why is that? Because it takes 10 weeks for a player to get one. If you could get 1 per week, they would be going for under a million. Why does an extreme weapon glamour cost 1 million? Because the fight doesn't drop the material for every party member every clear. Inflated prices are caused by artificial scarcity and nothing else. Players don't set high prices when there is an abundance of items.

[Tiramu]

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

You're the second person to do this and I dont believe its an honest point because my post said nothing of the sort and its just silly.

I'll repeat...

Ban the bots, ban the sellers, ban the buyers. And, trace their network to do so.

Suggesting that this would lead to some crafter who listed their item on the MB getting banned if a gil buyer purchased it is just daft.

[UkcsAlias]

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

In most cases, even with aggressive RMT policies these cases are often easily identified as being legit or not. Especialy since RMT rarely happens on just a single event. These aggresive policies do not ban everyone involved if a detection match is very likely to also happen out of randomness. They they will just put those players under investigation to see if there is more in which they are involved.

Note that the mount in this case must be 10m worth anyway. That involves quite a lot of effort to begin with, and obviously, RMT there wont help. This mount will eventualy sell. You can be sure of that.

Even if the player then used a diffirent account for the RMT, and buys the mount, its still not granting that player any benefits, except from an earlier sale. RMT wise that would be a horrible waste of money. And so this doesnt even need punishing, as the punishment is wasting irl money without gaining anything.

However, it can be possible that the mount was obtained using a bot. And since its now being watched due to having a match in the algorithm, it can actualy be detected on that part. A botter usualy isnt suddenly going to stop after 1 thing, if it was succesful. Success will give them the impression its too easy, and make them continue anyway. And those who stop are on that knowing the risks and generaly not willing to lose their investment, these will have a very limited influence.

Data can tell a lot, and it can catch the obvious cases easily. And most RMT events are obvious enough for this.

[Tiramu]

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.

Undercutting bots are a problem for most every crafter on the MB. RMT also inflates MB prices on ticket items.

Just look at FFXI, the RMT bots seized the economy and pumped a lot of items to insane prices.

[Deveryn]

Wrong Jojoya. It's not 40% on the developers, it's 100% on the developers.

Players set prices based on supply and demand. A watermelon minion, a house roof, a flower accessory and a glamour from Heavensward will sell for about 2k Gil. Why is that? Because they drop from retainer ventures, lootboxes and so on. They are so easy to obtain players will discard them to make more room for items. Thousands of ventures are done every day.

A mount from Unreal goes for 5 million. Why is that? Because it takes 10 weeks for a player to get one. If you could get 1 per week, they would be going for under a million. Why does an extreme weapon glamour cost 1 million? Because the fight doesn't drop the material for every party member every clear. Inflated prices are caused by artificial scarcity and nothing else. Players don't set high prices when there is an abundance of items.

OK, so they should make all those items no-trade, killing off incentive to do content again?

There's no artificial scarcity when (almost) everyone is capable of running the content. They make the choice not to. There are items from Island Sanctuary that people have bought out of pure laziness. Island Sanctuary...

[RitsukoSonoda]

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.

Inflation is actually one of the causes of ppl becoming RMT- Buyers. The larger the number the larger the temptation of just taking a shortcut. Smaller price tags will feel more easily obtainable resulting in people actually playing the game to get it.

[Nutshell]

OK, so they should make all those items no-trade, killing off incentive to do content again?

I'd argue that having all meaningful rewards available by gil kills incentive to do content more than not. Why do the content for the reward if you can just do something else that'll makes you the gil you need in less time? That or just buy gil from a RMT.

Sure there will be some people that run the content just to make gil off selling rewards but every person they sell to is one less person that could have been there running the content themselves. I think it'd be a lot healthier for this game for new people to see a reward they like, find out what content they need to do to get said reward, and then run it with friends or make a PF.

I know I would have ran Criterion a lot more than I have now if the mount wasn't on the marketboard. It went from a reward that shows I've completed/like certain content to a reward that shows I have gil. Which those ugly gil mounts do fine if that's what I want to show people by my mount selection.

[GTK0HLK]

will try to keep short[since SE says I talk too much, even though it's nice to converse over the topics. odd how a different forum has that, but for likes/reactions on posts]

.Emotional Reactions and Responses are never the best options when dealing with in-game markets or RL Markets.

.RL Selling practices work in-game, whilst Game practices need a specific moment or situation. <Bulk Small, Single Big in costs>

.Fast Cash Sells fast, but doesn't get you anything in the long run, and goes fast.
Slow Cash has the chance of teaching and Growing exponentially.
<if buyers knew this/understood this well. a nice chunk of RMT may of not happen. but as usual. you all shown the different levels / Reasons for RMT to exist>
Money should never be injected into the game. <even legal injection like a token>

.Players feel they're missing out, when that isn't really the case.<like I said before, RL takes precedence. in XIVs case it'll always be there.> For some though it's hard to break that chain if it's in search of status.
whilst things that actually are limited they can't buy.<like seasonal, titles, etc.>

all that said, hope the Expanded "Team" Actually can do things.

we all want them to Crack down on it.
and they'll do it by targeting whoever they need to. but will only keep an eye on those who can't see the other, on the marketboard.

[Stormpeaks]

RMT exists because making gil in this game is an absolute bore, the only decent way to make gil is via submarines which is why a lot of people end up with multiple houses to make gil out of them.

[Marxam]

its human nature ultimately. If there is an "easier and quicker" way, most people will do it. The value of hard work is significantly diminished when there is an artificial perception of competition and a lack of personal time, even in a pve focused game. Things like glamour are examples of this. Ultimate weapons are highly desired and ppl will buy clears just for a glowing weapon, despite there already being other glowing weapons in-game already via relics, crafted, etc. Ultimate weapons are only bis for the odd patch they are released in and are relegated to glamour in the next even patch.

The only real way to combat RMT is to increase the penalty and allowing easier ways to report said RMT in addition to it being in bold font on a separate page when starting a FFXIV account that the player must read and accept the terms. Filling out a full page vs right click and report puts the burden on the players. It's always going to be an uphill battle but they just need to toughen up the penalty to just straight ban who actively RMT (i.e. bots, PF ads, MB manipulation, etc.) and place restrictions on ppl who participate in RMT (i.e. buying clears). These ppl don't care for the game in the first place so losing them is only a benefit to the health of the game.

Though I would like to see them take a more capitalistic approach just out of morbid curiosity. For example, instead of straight banning, just double their sub (including retainers) continuously for each instance of ToS break, with no upper limit and it's charged instantly and automatically renewed as that new amount for the duration of the account being active. Just to see if they will stop of their on volition once there is a monetary penalty. I think in most cases where accounts are held by legit players, they will stop at a certain point or maybe not idk, especially if their sub goes above $100 USD. SE benefits from farming these whales and players will learn to respect ToS and you didn't have to ban anyone. Seems like a win-win situation but its purely hypothetical and only works on legitimate accounts. Most RMT uses stolen accounts/credit cards so those will just have to be the normal straight ban.