Eorzea census: window into RMT botting practices

[Gardes]

'Catching' RMT only in batches is part of the problem imho. How often do they do it? Every one month? Never really counted the interavals but it's enough time for the RMTs to amass gil, get those gil sold, and have those gil buyers spend money on legit items on the market. SE can remove the rmt and punish the gil buyers periodically but they can't remove tainted money once it goes past that. Remember the first few months after launch? Apparently legit crafters getting their gil taken away because their items were bought by gil buyers and the outrage in the forums and all that? Remember that guy who even wrote a non digital letter and really mailed it to Japan? Where's that now? The fact that it's not happening probably means that offenders get removed but already laundered money does not.

Like really, if I were the boss of these RMTs and realized that a company is only rounding up my goons one day of every month and they can run amok the rest of the month, my next thought would be, would I still make profit if I have to rebuy accounts for my soldiers every month? Looks like the answer is yes.

[mp-please]

Also OP if you missed it, that amount of jade popped up during this year as last year jade was nowhere to be seen on the most popular items
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ea-Census-2014

[Gunspec]

'Catching' RMT only in batches is part of the problem imho.

Well, to be fair, RMT will exist in any game that is popular, regardless of how well the developers police it. It's one of those things that will keep bouncing back, no matter how they attack it.

BUT you're right about FFXIV being too easy for RMT companies to profit from. If SE was quick to target each problem as it appears, then the RMT would be forced to resort to less overt tactics, or they would be losing more accounts than they could afford. And less overt RMT would make a better environment for all of us players.

This census data is an indication of something sketchy, and rather than put it on a powerpoint presentation celebrating the game, maybe they should have taken a good look at WHO gathered millions of jade, dealt with them accordingly, and not shared this likely exploit with the world.

Also OP if you missed it, that amount of jade popped up during this year as last year jade was nowhere to be seen on the most popular items
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ea-Census-2014

Lol, now I'm wondering how the devil 6 billion maple logs were farmed up in only one year. I thought maple logs made SOME sense, what with it being the easiest low level carpentry thing botanists can grab. But that is 190 maple logs a second for one year. Given that one gathering strike takes about 2 seconds, and the distance between trees would add at least another 2 seconds per log, this would require no less than 760 people farming maple logs non-stop for a solid year with no breaks.

[Gardes]

Can always look up how many RMT accounts got banned over the past 2 years and tally it up, roughly estimate how much money these RMTs already spent on buying accounts over and over. Probably don't have to count the sub fee since they already get 1 free month but I'm sure most of them lived longer than 1 month of free sub or have never gotten the ban hammer ever.

Then uh, how much USD buys 26 billion gil (from just jades)? There's obviously more gil source for rmt but I'm starting to think that the rmt accounts might actually rival or surpass the actual accounts, currently playing or otherwise.

[Cynthis]

I'm not saying this explains the number at all but it got me thinking. If I want to do the achievemnt for MIN/BOT of gathering 10.000HQ I want to do that where I have the highest & chance of getting HQ. I think the highest without any buffs is 15% which would mean I need to collect about 70.000, for example maple logs. The added benefit of this is that I could then use those to get the achievment for crafting 10.000 HQ carpenter recipies.

Obviously there are other concerns such as making gil while doing it but in terms of pure speed I would probably do items like these which could explain a fraction of it at least.