How to handle/investigate RMT in FC?

[BiBi___]

Just kick him and blacklist him and leave it at that. No need to ruin everything.

Thanks, that is likely the route we will take. Just go with gut feeling of several long-time FC members, no need for hard evidence, we aren't the police / SE.

[Drivont]

What if someone bought Gil, and donated to the FC fund. FC buys house, SE finds out about Gil buyer, would our FC house be demolished?

Yes, if you read the footnote on housing 2.1? 2.2 I think? I can't remember when housing came out. They said plain as day, if anyone was investigated and had given money to an FC who had purchased the house, the house would become forfeit, and nothing reimbursed.

[Laerad3993]

What if someone bought Gil, and donated to the FC fund. FC buys house, SE finds out about Gil buyer, would our FC house be demolished?

It would likely disappear. You originally posted that this guy was buying gear and that you personally melded it. Someone in your FC buying gil and it being used to purchase plots would definitely raise a red flag, and you'd likely lose it all. But they are two different things. Unless I'm missing something here, you aren't liable for what someone outside your FC does. I'm sure a lot of things on the MB have found their way there via RMT. It's not fair, nor right to punish a player that had 0 knowledge of what was going on.

Edit: my bad, it must have slipped my sight. I totally missed the FC in title. I just woke up awhile ago, so my apologies.

[Chihaya]

Won't be able to get him banned or anything unless they are being stupid and admit it themselves in chat.

SE has a poor history of tracing RMT gil - random temp ban people that just had alot of gil and returning the account with 1/10 of what they had in terms of gil. While the true RMT buyers already spent all their gil.

[BiBi___]

You also can't have this attitude since a majority of people who buy these runs are getting them through bought gil. If you have a problem with RMT, then most of the people who you'll be working for in terms of those clear buyers will be people who bought the gil. Also, your FC will get more of a reputation for selling clears than it ever will working with people who bought gil.

This is very true, and I have seen it happen.

SE has a poor history of tracing RMT gil - random temp ban people that just had alot of gil and returning the account with 1/10 of what they had in terms of gil. While the true RMT buyers already spent all their gil.

Wow that is terrible....

Yes, if you read the footnote on housing 2.1? 2.2 I think? I can't remember when housing came out. They said plain as day, if anyone was investigated and had given money to an FC who had purchased the house, the house would become forfeit, and nothing reimbursed.

Yikes this is very scary.... I'll go look up the patch notes now. In the mean time, if anyone has a link to it please post it

[SCUBA_Instr]

Hi,
Last month we discovered one of our FC members was running
as a gathering-bot, in the tunnel near quarry. Character was
active, no reply to anything in the chat box, was doing the
movement between waypoints, the "bot jump,"
and running for nearly 24 hours at a time with no interruptions.
It didn't take long to discharge him from the FC.

He was running his main (or only) character as a part-time,
or "recreational," or "casual" bot or whatever the terminology
is supposed to be.

I can name a few FC's that are dedicated to casual botting
and having a mixture of real players and bots.

Then there are the professional RMT [closed] FCs consisting of
a level-1 GLD and 7 level-50 identical Thaumaturges or BLMs.

I feel that having a RMT buyer or bot owner in
a FC will jeapordize the FC if SE were to audit the gil trail.

[314159265358979323846264338327]

We don't want our FC to associate with any RMT / botters/ cheats/ hacks.
- bad FC rep

Instead you'll be known as the witch hunt FC with the "guilty until proven innocent" approach who condemn members on a hunch.

[SCUBA_Instr]

.....witch hunt....

Thanks for bringing this up.
In our case, we were extremely careful not to engage
in any witch-hunting. We discovered our member, as a bot,
while enroute to do some spirit bonding. We know that there are
no in-game functions to allow an FC to do any audits.

Thanks.

[Alberel]

I've never bought gil myself, never seen the need for it, but I also don't really get why people make such a big deal about other people who did choose to buy it. I've known several cases of people I know buying gil to fund purchases ingame and just shrugged my shoulders at it. It doesn't affect me, so why should I care. And anybody who thinks it does affect them is just mistaking jealousy for something that actually matters.

the "bad rep" is all in people's heads.


Would have thought by now that people would stop caring about something that has existed since MMOs were invented. Not like any amount of complaining over it is ever going to make RMT cease to exist.

Have you ever complained about bots? Have you ever complained about gil seller spam? Do you care about having your account hacked so RMT can strip it of all gil?

If you know people that buy gil then they are directly supporting bots, spam and account stealing. If you 'don't care' about friends buying gil then you also 'don't care' about everything that buying gil facilitates. There is a reason why it is against the TOS; it is cheating and it makes for a lot of hassle for everyone else to have to put up with the crap RMT pulls to try and make gil.

Oh and that 'bad rep' associated with buying currency is very very real. Almost everyone I play with would blacklist and report anyone they knew to have bought gil. The buyers are the entire problem in the RMT market. Shrugging your shoulders and letting them get on with it only serves to make the sellers more prolific in their attempts to spam everyone else to death and flood the servers with bots.

By willfully ignoring the issue or dismissing it you are part of the problem.

[Fornix]

Thanks for bringing this up.
In our case, we were extremely careful not to engage
in any witch-hunting. We discovered our member, as a bot,
while enroute to do some spirit bonding.

In your case however you identified the player as a bot. It's a vastly different scenario from the original topic at hand, the suspicion of someone engaging in RMT to obtain gil.

Personally as an FC master I do not consider it my responsibility to police my own FC members, interrogate them if suspicions of illicit RMT activities arise or remove them out of my FC if in question. I am after all not an SE employee. The responsibility of curbing RMT activity as a player to me in this case reaches no further than anybody else here, don't engage in it yourself. As for what others do, that's SE's problem to battle in my opinion.