Tackling RMT: What creates buyers in the first place?

[Shibi]

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.
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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.

Your words were:

As soon as they find someone involved with RMT, trace it forward and back, and ban every account involved.

One of the prime ways that goldsellers work is via the MB, it's used to launder and move money between disposable alts and gilholders who are protected. Gil moves from the holders, through the MB with some fuzzing, in that some gil is given to innocent people, while the rest is given to the mule - the aim is to muddy the water as much as possible.

It's going to be incredibly difficult, and prone to mistakes to "trace it forward" - just how does the STF know who is genuine and who is innocent during the transfers, and where does the STF stop? Do they go one step too far and ban you for the 10,000,000g mount the holder also bought during his 500,000,000 transfer to muddy it? What protections are there to stop this?

[Tiramu]

Your words were:



One of the prime ways that goldsellers work is via the MB, it's used to launder and move money between disposable alts and gilholders who are protected. Gil moves from the holders, through the MB with some fuzzing, in that some gil is given to innocent people, while the rest is given to the mule - the aim is to muddy the water as much as possible.

It's going to be incredibly difficult, and prone to mistakes to "trace it forward" - just how does the STF know who is genuine and who is innocent during the transfers, and where does the STF stop? Do they go one step too far and ban you for the 10,000,000g mount the holder also bought during his 500,000,000 transfer to muddy it? What protections are there to stop this?

This shouldn't be too hard to figure out if you are tracing the network between bots, sellers and buyers. There will be patterns and consistent behaviour. Whats more likely is that disposable mules could be missed because the traffic of gil isnt clear. However, most gil holders and mules will exist for one purpose and one purpose only, moving gil around. The majority of legitimate players do not spend their entire in-game activity moving gil around.

[rainichan]

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?

You don't run the risk of losing your account, either by having it stolen by the people controlling your character that you've paid to do content for you, or by SE finding out that you paid for RMT services and you have your account terminated. Giving SE your $25 is actually cheaper than paying someone to boost your character for you, or even the same price as a story/job skip straight from the MogStation. I can also say that poking around a couple google results made me real glad I have uBlock on lmao. Felt scuzzy just clicking the links for research.

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.

FFXI always had insane prices and gil was hard to come by. RMT made it worse.

[Jojoya]

It's going to be incredibly difficult, and prone to mistakes to "trace it forward" - just how does the STF know who is genuine and who is innocent during the transfers, and where does the STF stop? Do they go one step too far and ban you for the 10,000,000g mount the holder also bought during his 500,000,000 transfer to muddy it? What protections are there to stop this?

You look for the suspicious transaction when tracing it forward.

Someone selling an item at the going market rate is not someone trying to buy from RMT. There's no need to buy from RMT when a normal player will pay that same price. RMT buying that item (especially if it's a piece of gear) is likely because they need that item for a RMT character.

Someone selling an item at far above the going market rate is going to be buying from RMT when an RMT confirmed account is involved. RMT is not going to give up 5 million gil to buy a pair of Cotton Dress Gloves from some random player who had just coincidentally thought that 5 million gil is a fair listing price when that 5 million gil is worth real money to RMT.

At the same time, that 5 million gil pair of Cotton Dress Gloves might be getting listed by a player that has a friend loaning them 5 million gil to buy and furnish a house, or the player could be transferring gil between their own characters. There are plenty of suspicious transactions that will turn out to be pretty ordinary because the limits that SE places on players forces us into those games to move gil between our own characters or to help out friends.

That's why the gil must be traced forward from RMT. It eliminates wasting manpower to trace the suspicious but ordinary transactions and focuses it on the transactions where RMT is known to be involved.

[Shibi]

You look for the suspicious transaction when tracing it forward.

I don't think it can be an absolute zero tolerance, as I took Tira's words to mean. It would have to be done with great care, and a lot of protections in place to stop innocents being caught up in it.

[Tiramu]

I don't think it can be an absolute zero tolerance, as I took Tira's words to mean. It would have to be done with great care, and a lot of protections in place to stop innocents being caught up in it.

While I think a zero tolerance stance needs to be taken and it might have came across as aggressive, I don't think they should ban every player that comes into contact with an RMT account. I mean the ones who are clearly bots, sellers, buyers or mules. If it isnt clear then no, they shouldnt be banned.

[Tiramu]

You don't run the risk of losing your account, either by having it stolen by the people controlling your character that you've paid to do content for you, or by SE finding out that you paid for RMT services and you have your account terminated. Giving SE your $25 is actually cheaper than paying someone to boost your character for you, or even the same price as a story/job skip straight from the MogStation. I can also say that poking around a couple google results made me real glad I have uBlock on lmao. Felt scuzzy just clicking the links for research.



FFXI always had insane prices and gil was hard to come by. RMT made it worse.

Yes, gil was hard to come by and prices were always high, but the RMT accounts monopolised certain items, deliberately hyperinflating them and intentionally squeezed crafters out of certain markets. Granted, due to how that game worked it was easier to do than in XIV, its still causing issues.

[Shibi]

I don't think they should ban every player that comes into contact with an RMT account. I mean the ones who are clearly bots, sellers, buyers or mules. If it isnt clear then no, they shouldnt be banned.

We can absolutely agree on that!

[Jojoya]

I don't think it can be an absolute zero tolerance, as I took Tira's words to mean. It would have to be done with great care, and a lot of protections in place to stop innocents being caught up in it.

Exactly, and that's probably the roadblock.

Is SE willing to add extra manpower that such tracking would require, or are they more willing to take the financial losses that occurs from payment chargeback fees plus the additional work that has to be devoted to restoring compromsed accounts to the correct owner and doing the character rollbacks?

If financial losses from fraudulent activity are increasing over the cost of hiring a body to reduce those losses, I'd be hiring that body as an employer.

While I think a zero tolerance stance needs to be taken and it might have came across as aggressive, I don't think they should ban every player that comes into contact with an RMT account. I mean the ones who are clearly bots, sellers, buyers or mules. If it isnt clear then no, they shouldnt be banned.

MMO history shows that zero tolerance policies don't work well (at least on the buyer side). Players who are permabanned on first offense just buy another account and do the same thing all over again.

The best effect is using temporary but lengthy bans on the first offense. Players have that time to think about what they've lost access to but they also know they can get it back eventually. The majority will not engage in RMT a second time because they don't want to lose access a second time..

Of course if they do engage in RMT a second time, then you might as well ban them. They aren't willing to learn the lesson.

And of course players wouldn't be banned for normal activity involving an account that just happens to be RMT. That's outside of their control.

[Katt_Felista]

Large amount of gils are really easy to make in FFXIV once you take a little bit of time to learn about crafting jobs and how EASY it is nowadays, to lvl a crafter from 1 to 90 with around 60 levequests under 5/ 6 hours of play. Each crafting and gathering levequests gives you sometimes half to 1/4 of a level depending if u can gather / craft a HQ item.

Roulettes gives approximatively 180k to 200K gil every resets if you do most of them, and they can be quickly done too...

The problem of RMT is the intentional grief systems put in place, i predicted that this lottery system would not hinder, but help the many fc's RMT owner to own even more and more of these wards, people laughed at it, how could i predict dozens and dozens of alt of the same fc's / guild and alts would fill the lottery tickets for 1 house leaving you not with the25 to 30% chance of getting it if you clicked around 4 other people trying to compete with you during the day or night with the previous system, but now that they can just divide their huge pockets into dozens of alts, you are more like in a 2% chance in front of 99+ others alts. (And it did happen first 2 weeks on the best spots of mist / goblet and gridania housing) Adding to that the many years of impunity from hackers to use negative ping with addons / third party launchers in the game, and most high level raiding guilds using KactuarB0t and automated calls (and overlay visuals ontop of the screen to show what's going on.)

The hacking scenes and methods used on the game, because SE's unwillingness to implement an anti hacking software, are plenty and abundant, without any punishment for it whatsoever, with people ready to pay up for these tools and laugh at legit / normal players they steamroll. Here's a video with someone that has infiltrated a bunch of discords and reddit where these type of individuals gather and find themselves excuses for doing it (the common excuse is they are good you are bad because they can use cheats) :

https://youtu.be/sXlzYhvlOdQ

I'm not going to talk about the awfull loot system in savage, that if you are unlucky, you can still play 8 to 9 weeks and more and still haven't bis'd a single job if you are unlucky and pretty much also incentivize Run sales offering the "whole loot package" with it, for how seriously bad rng is on pfinder, and i found out that even in statics, you can have several weeks where you just see 2x rings or 2x necklaces, and barely ever an earing, or a combo of the other two, missing one piece, same can go with RNG for other bosses, allways missing a glove here and a helmet there. It can happen to you a number of weeks enough that the party members need to save up a shit ton of tomes not only for the part that doesn't drop but also for the 3 to 4 augments necessary for their memoquartz bis.