Market Board RMT Sellers

[Eirlyss]

We Players of Twintania want to sell those Items too, since we Play on that Server, we want to earn Gil. If that Player wants to give away then why he/she is not giving away his/her Millions? It makes no sense in taking over our Market and held us forever hostage just to push one ego. He can sell all he wants on his Home Server but he/she diktates the prices on all Light Servers since years and that is wrong. No one does this for no reason for years. So what is the Point in that? Why block the whole Market for all others, why hindering all other Players to earn Gil on so many Glamour Items? Other Players can't choose their prices for all those Items, cause that 1 Player Stocks so many Items at once that there is never a chance to sell your Items. Not even for a single Gil more as his/her prices.

And meanwhile, that Player dropped again all Prices, second time today. Just like I wrote it earlier.

It may sound far-fetched, but there truly are players who play FFXIV only for market boarding. Rare to no dungeon runs, etc. Those sorts get bored and have many billions in reserve.

Purely speaking economics, it is also a real strategy to reduce profits of competitors. Costco has been doing it for years -https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2...ming-inflation. They sell their whole chickens at a loss, and in fact have many products that generate losses, just to help monopolize purchases from their customers. It's a little less effective for online purchases without the dynamic of physically bringing customers to their store, but it still helps damage their competitors. Little losses, relative to the billions market boarders have, aren't very noticeable.

[Yodada]

We Players of Twintania want to sell those Items too, since we Play on that Server, we want to earn Gil. If that Player wants to give away then why he/she is not giving away his/her Millions? It makes no sense in taking over our Market and held us forever hostage just to push one ego. He can sell all he wants on his Home Server but he/she diktates the prices on all Light Servers since years and that is wrong. No one does this for no reason for years. So what is the Point in that? Why block the whole Market for all others, why hindering all other Players to earn Gil on so many Glamour Items? Other Players can't choose their prices for all those Items, cause that 1 Player Stocks so many Items at once that there is never a chance to sell your Items. Not even for a single Gil more as his/her prices.

And meanwhile, that Player dropped again all Prices, second time today. Just like I wrote it earlier.

It shows you are clueless about economics. Its a common strategy to sell with losses to push others out of the water and later raising the revenue to much higher standards to compensate for past losses. If you and your Twintania Server wants to get Gil you either have to compete or leaving him the future market if you dont want to.

[Prrringles]

I think what people also fail to understand is that no normal person is going to update prices for 700+ items per server manually. Having looked at their free company (which looks like the typical RMT free company) my guess is that the mule characters are run by a bot. No proof, just my educated guess. I also think that more people use bots than everyone here might think. For example I know multiple people who "allegedly" use bots for their retainers and they are not even big market board players. Then there was the PVP fiasco with half the poeple playing using third-party tools. I mean, do the math.

Most of you people bashing OP didn't even take the time to investigate the claims. If you did, you would know that OP has a point and might be onto something. The player OP is talking about looks fishy AF. You people are nitpicking about motive but who cares what the motive is. If it's not RMT than it's probably botting. Both are against the ToS.

[Jojoya]

I like to give some Items here and there to Sprouts too or to some poor Players. But 700+ expensive Glamour Items on a Server you do not even Play on. And some Items even in so large Amounts like 59 Whisperfine Woolen Boots? 5-10 or 20 Items but 700? That Player bought even my Items to resell them on another Server and not just 1 or 3 Items, no a whole damn Stock.

Did they list them for more than they paid you or for less?

We Players of Twintania want to sell those Items too

If that other player bought your items, then you sold them. That doesn't sound like a problem.

Again, we're missing information here.

A lot of players do things for strange reasons. Some are altruists. Others want to see how long they can hold a monopoly on a part of the market. Yet others do it just to annoy other players. When you're dealing with a couple of hundred thousand players, there's bound to be few oddballs in the bunch not behaving according to "normal" reasoning.

If you come up with information that would indicate this player is selling at a profit instead of at a loss like you claim, then we'd be more inclined to believe that it's RMT. Otherwise, you've just met one of the oddballs.

I think what people also fail to understand is that no normal person is going to update prices for 700+ items per server manually. Having looked at their free company (which looks like the typical RMT free company) my guess is that the mule characters are run by a bot. No proof, just my educated guess. I also think that more people use bots than everyone here might think. For example I know multiple people who "allegedly" use bots for their retainers and they are not even big market board players. Then there was the PVP fiasco with half the poeple playing using third-party tools. I mean, do the math.

Most of you people bashing OP didn't even take the time to investigate the claims. If you did, you would know that OP has a point and might be onto something. The player OP is talking about looks fishy AF. You people are nitpicking about motive but who cares what the motive is. If it's not RMT than it's probably botting. Both are against the ToS.

700 items wouldn't take that long to update manually for someone who uses the marketboard as their endgame.

I know you tend to keep a careful eye on the suspected bots for EU. Are you seeing this individual doing the rapid, constant undercutting typical of those using bots?

There was no need to investigate the OP's claim when the claim was that the seller is operating at a loss. RMT can't operate at a gil loss when their goal is to earn a gil profit that they can sell for real money. It's possible for things to be out of the ordinary and yet still not being doing anything wrong.

Whether this individual is using a bot or other third party program to list and adjust prices is a separate issue. If you've gathered enough information to be confident that they are using a third party tool of some sort, then report them for doing that. Maybe that's why nothing has happened despite the OP's repeated reports - they're reporting the player for RMT when there's no evidence of that and the real problem is third party tool use.

It's not a matter of motive. It's a matter of evidence. For now, all we're hearing is that someone is trying to monopolize map glamours on the EU data centers by selling under the cost of the materials they are purchasing. That's not against ToS.

[Aneshda]

That Player don't do any treasure maps, he / she buys all materials on all Chaos & Light servers and pays for Calf Leather 400.000-475.000 Gil and for Frontier Cloth 60.000-78.000 Gil and he / she buys whole servers empty. So he / she can stock all his / her retainers with countless items.
It is not just 1 single server that he / she took over, it is 16 Servers. It goes on for years, many players know this, and that player got reported countless times and is still here. Don't tell me that 1 player hops between 16 servers to change prices on only God knows how many items every day, 2–5 times. Like I said, there are over 700 items on Twintania and many thousand items on the other servers. That player should have already reached the maximum Gil 40–100 times or even more. So what is he / she doing with all those billions of Gil? Don't you think that SE would control a single player with so many Gil? That Player wears since years the same Crafter Gear, he / she is only a Level 70 Bard + Crafting Jobs. Even if he / she uses this game as a selling simulator, which makes no point at all. If I did that and reached max Gil a few times, then there would be no more interest in doing so in this game. I would just move to another Game and try there my luck.

[Jojoya]

That Player don't do any treasure maps, he / she buys all materials on all Chaos & Light servers and pays for Calf Leather 400.000-475.000 Gil and for Frontier Cloth 60.000-78.000 Gil and he / she buys whole servers empty. So he / she can stock all his / her retainers with countless items.
It is not just 1 single server that he / she took over, it is 16 Servers. It goes on for years, many players know this, and that player got reported countless times and is still here. Don't tell me that 1 player hops between 16 servers to change prices on only God knows how many items every day, 2–5 times. Like I said, there are over 700 items on Twintania and many thousand items on the other servers. That player should have already reached the maximum Gil 40–100 times or even more. So what is he / she doing with all those billions of Gil? Don't you think that SE would control a single player with so many Gil? That Player wears since years the same Crafter Gear, he / she is only a Level 70 Bard + Crafting Jobs. Even if he / she uses this game as a selling simulator, which makes no point at all. If I did that and reached max Gil a few times, then there would be no more interest in doing so in this game. I would just move to another Game and try there my luck.

Please get your story straight on what is actually happening so the rest of us can understand.

Are they selling the glamour items higher than the cost of the materials they buy or for lower than the cost of the materials they buy?

If they're selling lower, then you already know what is happening to all that gil they get from their sales. It's going back into buying more materials. They don't have billions upon billions of gil to use for RMT because what they earn is slowly disappearing as they buy more materials at a cost above what they sell the crafted items for.

Just because you wouldn't play in a certain way doesn't mean others don't. I frequently hop around data centers looking for low prices on materials for crafting or items to resell for profit. A couple of times a year I'll use most of those profits to buy items or materials to craft items that I'll give away to friends or random players because I just don't have any use for that much gil. Your accusations would make more sense (though would still be wrong) if you were leveling them against me since I am selling for profit instead of leveling them at someone you say is selling at a loss.

The player may be doing something against ToS or may not but what you keep telling us does not indicate they are doing something wrong.

SE does not ignore RMT and botting like some players think but they don't act rapidly either. They work to make certain they have proper evidence before taking action.

If that one player is still active after hundreds of reports over years, it means that SE is not finding any evidence of what you're accusing them of doing or of anything else that break the ToS. "Suspicious activity" may be sufficient for SE to investigate but they have to find evidence that it is "illicit activity" before they will ban an account.

Creating a monopoly might be suspicious but it's not against the ToS and from what information you've shared, that's all they've done.

[Aneshda]

Please get your story straight on what is actually happening so the rest of us can understand.

Are they selling the glamour items higher than the cost of the materials they buy or for lower than the cost of the materials they buy?

I'm starting to wonder if you can even read? My first post is more than clear. If you had read it then you wouldn't always have to ask the same questions.
Why is it that people post in a thread they haven't read? Is it to drive up the post number? What is it? Enlighten us with your wisdom.
Oh while we're at it... You seem to be perfectly fine with what this player is doing, the way you defend everything, what if it was your server + all the other servers in your data center?
Players with millions of Gil don't think for a second that players who aren't full of Gil also want to somehow earn Gil through sales, but they don't even get the chance because there are players who take the whole market and don't want to share.
Then you are always told to sell something else or accept that one player claims the entire market for glamor items for themselves.
But that also means that the market is no longer free if players can only sell cheap dirt because the good items are claimed by a few.
Maybe there needs to be a gil limit so that RMT sellers finally disappear. Gil limits could be linked to the account age + the jobs a character has leveled + achievements + actual days played.
All together would be a good start to getting rid of RMT sellers.

[Eirlyss]

...You seem to be perfectly fine with what this player is doing, the way you defend everything, what if it was your server + all the other servers in your data center?
Players with millions of Gil don't think for a second that players who aren't full of Gil also want to somehow earn Gil through sales, but they don't even get the chance because there are players who take the whole market and don't want to share.
Then you are always told to sell something else or accept that one player claims the entire market for glamor items for themselves.

"Perfectly fine" and RMT are not the only two options, which seems to be what you are suggesting. Most of the posters are saying there is no RMT evidence because there is truly no RMT evidence. It has nothing to do with whether that player is being nice/fine/good or a similar adjective. That sort of thinking is the ad hominem logical fallacy, where an argument becomes about someone's character rather than facts.

But that also means that the market is no longer free if players can only sell cheap dirt because the good items are claimed by a few.

This is exactly how free markets work. They are competitive, and someone ends up winning.

[Jojoya]

I'm starting to wonder if you can even read? My first post is more than clear. If you had read it then you wouldn't always have to ask the same questions.
Why is it that people post in a thread they haven't read? Is it to drive up the post number? What is it? Enlighten us with your wisdom.

I can read.

Can you think logically? RMT requires selling items for more than you spend to make the item so there is a profit that can be sold for real money. It's not going to occur when someone is selling for less than the cost to produce the item and they're continue to buy more materials. There is no profit to use.

Oh while we're at it... You seem to be perfectly fine with what this player is doing, the way you defend everything, what if it was your server + all the other servers in your data center?

I would do the same thing I've always done when others start selling under my preferred selling price. I find something else to sell. I've had to do that several times over the years, mostly due to changes in Quick Exploration loot tables flooding the marketboard with items I had been previously selling for profit so the prices crash below the cost of materials to make them.

Players with millions of Gil don't think for a second that players who aren't full of Gil also want to somehow earn Gil through sales, but they don't even get the chance because there are players who take the whole market and don't want to share.

Except you can still earn gil via the marketboard - sell something else.

I didn't get rich by trying to compete against others who were selling high value items. I got rich by 1) selling things that others were ignoring that still had demand and yielded a profit even if relatively small, and 2) anticipating changes in market demand that would drive prices of certain items higher, stockpiling those items at the low prices then reselling them at the new market rate once prices jumped up. The latter can be risky and a few times I guessed wrong. Most of the time, I guessed right and made millions from the foresight.

If you're having a hard time making gil, it's because your thinking is too rigid when it comes to the methods to accomplish it. The "good items" are generally the worst ones to target if you want to get rich because everyone else want to be selling them so profit margins are slim.

If you're set on only selling the "good items", there's one more option for you - band together with other sellers to combine your resources and break that player's monopoly. It's hard to maintain a monopoly in an online game where materials have no effective limit on the rate they can enter the economy and there's a dedicated group working against you.

But be cautious - you don't know how deep that player's pockets really are. You and those joining you need to be willing to commit for the long term. You also need to smart about how you break it (ie you're going to have to use their tactics against them with a big stockpile to back up how fast your group can relist the items).

But that also means that the market is no longer free if players can only sell cheap dirt because the good items are claimed by a few.

Free market - The free market is an economic system based on supply and demand with little or no government control. It is a summary description of all voluntary exchanges that take place in a given economic environment.

SE is the "government" in this case. Are they stopping you from selling? No, they aren't. Are they telling you what prices you can sell for? No, they aren't. All listings on the marketboard are voluntary.

I agree getting rid of RMT would be a good thing but unfortunately, RMT is going to exist as long as there are players willing to buy.

This player you are talking about does not appear to be engaging in RMT and continuing to report them for RMT is not going to accomplish anything.

Are they using bots to post their market listings and buy up the materials they need? Possibly. Gather evidence to prove it (Prringles can tell you what to look for and how to do it) and report them for botting instead of RMT. That might accomplish something.

[Aneshda]

Free market - The free market is an economic system based on supply and demand with little or no government control. It is a summary description of all voluntary exchanges that take place in a given economic environment.

SE is the "government" in this case. Are they stopping you from selling? No, they aren't. Are they telling you what prices you can sell for? No, they aren't. All listings on the marketboard are voluntary.

Then show me how you sell an item at a desired price you set when another player has flooded the market with 59-70 of those items at an extremely low price. Do you really think that any player will pay even 1 gil more than the price that 1 player made? Certainly not. So is this your idea of a free market? Sure, I can now choose another item that I want to sell... but what is that? THIS ONE PLAYER has done the same thing with countless other items. But hey, the market is free ... we can wait a few more years until this 1 player runs out of resources ...