Please, Don't Buy Gil!

[SamSmoot]

And, when you go to the seller's site, you probably will end up with a free keyloger as well, and later find your account cleared out of all gil and gear.

[galbsadi]

There is one way, and ONLY one way to really kill the market of people buying gil....sell it yourself in some form or another.

I played WoW for years, and saw this problem forever...until Blizzard started with the WoW Tokens that allowed players to sell gold to eachother through Blizzard...have barely seen any RMT spam in WoW since.

I played SWTOR for some time...and saw this practice die when the Cartel Market released items (bought from Bioware) players could sell to eachother for gold.

I played TERA for some time....and never saw RMT...but did see people selling items to eachother for gold that they could buy with EMP (real money items bought from En Masse).

I played Neverwinter for a bit...and never saw RMT...but did see people trading cash shop items for game currency.

Banning the players doesn't work, because at best you get players who lose a ton of progress and are less interested in the game at all (meaning SE gets less sub money, so they obviously lose, and as a side effect the rest of us get fewer nice things)...and at worst you get players outright quitting the game (less sub money, less nice things for the rest of us) or using gil buying to target competitors in something or other (get them banned, now you have a better shot at world first or cornering your section of the market, etc.)

Banning the bots helps...but it's far from a perfect solution. Bots run rampant in FFXIV, and while I do appreciate the special task force taking them out...based on timing I would bet that's why we get DDOS attacks.

So, if you really want to see RMT problems end, the ideal solution, quite simply, isn't to beg people not to buy it (they're probably not even on these forums)...and really isn't even to attack the bots (who will just come back anyhow, and may DDOS us in the meantime)...but to remove the market for it. Let players sell gil to eachother via a SE token, or let items on the Mog Station sell to other players for gil, and..mark my words...outside RMT will die a horrible, painful death.

[Wanzzo]

...

So, if you really want to see RMT problems end, the ideal solution, quite simply, isn't to beg people not to buy it (they're probably not even on these forums)...and really isn't even to attack the bots (who will just come back anyhow, and may DDOS us in the meantime)...but to remove the market for it. Let players sell gil to eachother via a SE token, or let items on the Mog Station sell to other players for gil, and..mark my words...outside RMT will die a horrible, painful death.

Well, 2 things:
1- I didn't started that thread to impact gil buyers directly. My intention is to make you guys think more about the problem (minimal) and discuss it within yours FCs (ideal). Some future starts slow...

2- I don't think this will solve the problem. I've played a game named "Dofus" that allowed players to buy a token-like currency from the official site which is possible to buy itens, inside game money and even subscription time. But the bots stills there! At least, for that game, didn't solved and improved the profits of the bots owners, 'cause the token can be bought inside the game using game money as well.

If people never buy any gil by illegal means, we would see a fast decreasing number of bots.

in my opinion, we have to attack the way they profit: decreasing the number of gil buyers. To do that, we need to talk more about it. We need to make discussions about it more often inside FC chats, linkshells and reporting assumed gil buyers (believe me, they will tell you what they do).

It's kinda like a tiny ant work, but we have to do our part and not be waiting forever for SE to solve the problem from the wake of the next sunrise. It's a difficult and complex issue that all of us can do something to help. Even if it doesn't revolution the 0,1% of a chocobo feather, even then, I want to try to do something rather than do nothing!

[galbsadi]

Well, 2 things:
1- I didn't started that thread to impact gil buyers directly. My intention is to make you guys think more about the problem (minimal) and discuss it within yours FCs (ideal). Some future starts slow...

2- I don't think this will solve the problem. I've played a game named "Dofus" that allowed players to buy a token-like currency from the official site which is possible to buy itens, inside game money and even subscription time. But the bots stills there! At least, for that game, didn't solved and improved the profits of the bots owners, 'cause the token can be bought inside the game using game money as well.

If people never buy any gil by illegal means, we would see a fast decreasing number of bots.

in my opinion, we have to attack the way they profit: decreasing the number of gil buyers. To do that, we need to talk more about it. We need to make discussions about it more often inside FC chats, linkshells and reporting assumed gil buyers (believe me, they will tell you what they do).

It's kinda like a tiny ant work, but we have to do our part and not be waiting forever for SE to solve the problem from the wake of the next sunrise. It's a difficult and complex issue that all of us can do something to help. Even if it doesn't revolution the 0,1% of a chocobo feather, even then, I want to try to do something rather than do nothing!

The problem with that is talking to people about it probably won't get them to change. For example, the leader of a FC I used to be in not only openly (on Discord, not in game) bought gil and engaged in RMT, he also ran a second account that he specifically used to bot to get things he wanted. He likely still does so to this day, despite several of us having issues with the idea, in some cases due to issues such as hacking and bots, and in others because of the idea of somebody using RL items to get in-game items period. (I personally fall in the former camp, and have zero issues with a sanctioned and safe exchange, partially because I've literally seen it work quite well in multiple other MMOs.)

Also, note that even an 'official' solution doesn't fully prevent outside sources...but it does severely limit such. For example, if I was playing WoW and wanted to buy gold, I would absolutely do so via the official token that (a) isn't risking an account and (b) probably actually costs less. (I cannot confirm if it costs less for sure, as I haven't touched WoW in months [always enjoyed this game more in recent years], but last time I looked it up out of curiosity it was +/- 10% of the 'official' channel if one did it another way.) Would I love to see all the bots vanish? Absolutely. Would I settle for 95% of them vanishing, as happened with WoW? Also yes.

As you stated, the best way to stop gil sellers is: reduce the number of gil buyers. I just don't believe talking about it will have the impact you're looking for, but an official channel probably will. I mean, put yourself in the shoes of a gil buyer for a moment. If you can buy x gil for $y and risk your account, or x gil for $1.1y and know that it's perfectly safe, would you pay the extra 10%? I know I probably would (if I couldn't basically print gil as an omnicrafter and omnigatherer, myself). If the majority if people would...there's no longer a market for the non-official channels. If you couple that with something that can't be taken out of the SE atmosphere (i.e. a token of some sort, rather than cash), there's no profit incentive (or at least severely reduced profit incentive) for current gil sellers (as they do this to get RL cash, not to get a new mount or minion).

I understand wanting to do something, but I'd rather fix 95% of the problem with one step instead of putting in 100x the effort and maybe fixing 0.095% of the problem.

[DonovanLifeweaver]

a little add like i mentioned many times again... ban the credit card.

[galbsadi]

a little add like i mentioned many times again... ban the credit card.

While that may help slightly, it's at best a minor boost as well. For example, I currently have 7 physical credit cards in my wallet, if one of them stopped working somewhere for some reason I could get it replaced inside 48 hours, and that's before even considering digital credit cards (of which 4 of my cards offer) or options other than credit cards (such as 60 day timecards currently offering a free fantasia on the SE store, or buying timecards on Amazon, etc.).

[Wanzzo]

...

Also, note that even an 'official' solution doesn't fully prevent outside sources...but it does severely limit such. For example, if I was playing WoW and wanted to buy gold, I would absolutely do so via the official token that (a) isn't risking an account and (b) probably actually costs less. (I cannot confirm if it costs less for sure, as I haven't touched WoW in months [always enjoyed this game more in recent years], but last time I looked it up out of curiosity it was +/- 10% of the 'official' channel if one did it another way.) Would I love to see all the bots vanish? Absolutely. Would I settle for 95% of them vanishing, as happened with WoW? Also yes.

As you stated, the best way to stop gil sellers is: reduce the number of gil buyers. I just don't believe talking about it will have the impact you're looking for, but an official channel probably will. I mean, put yourself in the shoes of a gil buyer for a moment. If you can buy x gil for $y and risk your account, or x gil for $1.1y and know that it's perfectly safe, would you pay the extra 10%? I know I probably would (if I couldn't basically print gil as an omnicrafter and omnigatherer, myself). If the majority if people would...there's no longer a market for the non-official channels. If you couple that with something that can't be taken out of the SE atmosphere (i.e. a token of some sort, rather than cash), there's no profit incentive (or at least severely reduced profit incentive) for current gil sellers (as they do this to get RL cash, not to get a new mount or minion).

I understand wanting to do something, but I'd rather fix 95% of the problem with one step instead of putting in 100x the effort and maybe fixing 0.095% of the problem.

Well, that's make a lot of sense for sure!
I just hope that this kind of solution works in this game as well. But, sadly, this not work in all MMOs out there...

Anyway, until they do something like that, we could talk about it :P

[Takamorisan]

People buying gil means there is a issue with the in-game economy. Either be lack of gold sink ( the issue with every MMO, currency can be generated ad infinitum) so you need each patch cycle offer a really expensive carrot so gold levels in the server drop and items dont suffer with inflation (sadly what could be used as gold sink, they are dropped in the RL item shop).
Other thing that help agravate the inflation, the fact that you can buy from other servers linked in your data center. So legacy server players that have more gil compared to the other servers, shoved a lot of gil to smallers servers making inflation everywhere.
So you have the usual suspects the lazy person that dont want to be assed to do gold summed with the person that lack the time to play the game, they end up going for the easy way thats it buying gold.

[TwistedTea]

So legacy server players that have more gil compared to the other servers, shoved a lot of gil to smallers servers making inflation everywhere.

I'm actually curious about this. I was tracking item prices on sites like Mogboard and FFXIVMB for months prior to World Visit:

Sure there are legacy players with lots of gil/gil capped etc. But those of us who are not legacy players playing on legacy players have to deal with vicious undercutting and make less gil per item.

The counter argument is that, we can have more sales since there's a higher population.

But on the previously smaller servers,prices were higher and crafters especially, seemed to make bigger profit margins.

Secondly, the presence of bots on the smaller servers is higher;so more inflation.

Anecdotally, looking at the sales history of items over the weeks, after World Visit, prices on Balmung rose because wealthy crafters from the other servers were buying out our 'cheap' stuff.

Before World Visit, a million gil on Balmung would buy you a lot more than say a million gil on Couerl/Zalera etc.

If anything, it seems like those on populated servers became 'poorer' because our purchasing power has declined

[Canadane]

I can understand why someone may turn to buying gil. Though I'll never ever advocate it.
The thing is, most of these people probably just don't realize how easy gil is.

Timeworn map parties literally just print gil.
Crafting and gathering is straight up gil for your time spent.
Running a single dungeon is enough gil for most day to day expenses.