So Devs...Are we going to rule with an iron fist this time around?

[Altena]

This is more of a ToS issue, but what if we were to "influence" them to admit it? As an example:

/tell asdhajksdgasgdasd > "where would I be able to buy gil?"
>> asdhajksdgasgdasd : www.entergilsitehere.com

Would this be classed as "evidence" for the taskforce, yet not incriminate the person asking the question?

[IndigoDarkwolf]

The TOS would probably be interpreted as forbidding you from asking the question in the first place. Even if it weren't, that tactic would be called "entrapment". If I were in charge the reps investigating claims, I wouldn't count it as evidence against either player, though I would probably go ahead and queue both of them for an investigation anyways if I saw a report with that kind of behavior in it.

I am not an RMT investigator or community rep, though. I am a game developer, but I've never worked on an MMO.

[Altena]

The TOS would probably be interpreted as forbidding you from asking the question in the first place. Even if it weren't, that tactic would be called "entrapment". If I were in charge the reps investigating claims, I wouldn't count it as evidence against either player, though I would probably go ahead and queue both of them for an investigation anyways if I saw a report with that kind of behavior in it.

I am not an RMT investigator or community rep, though. I am a game developer, but I've never worked on an MMO.

I will take that as fairly educated input though.

The biggest problem with reporting people that are obviously botting or RMT is the response was always along the lines of insufficient evidence and what not, even though the human eye can physically see that it is not normal human behaviour.

[Raubahn]

yea well expect a huge downfall in the fishing market if SE didnt work out Fishing good as in you fish a Monster

[Duelle]

I understand what you're trying to say about how an MMO's design can contribute to or discourage RMTs. It's hardly fair to criticize FFXI for having support reps on hand to identify RMTs, though, since WoW most definitely has the same kind of people. So does EVE Online, Lineage II, and basically any MMO where the developers actually care at all.

Indeed, but the most RMT ever interacted with you in WoW was when they would sent you tells with the url to their website or if they started spamming adds in trade chat. And as I said, everyone would just report them for spam and move on.

I used to get PK'd by gangs of RMT in the days of Lineage II, because the moment you weren't convenient to have around they would log on in droves and greatly outnumber you (fighting off Wolves1-12, Lions1-12 and so on). FFXI had instances of MPKing from RMT (much like players MPKd RMT as well). I already mentioned NM camps and crafting supplies.

As I said earlier, XI's developers (this was back under Tanaka) refused to see that their "difficulty" (read: tediousness and timesinks gallore) made it easier for RMT to thrive between time available, manpower, and the community's pressure on the average player that didn't want to spend ten hours farming beehive chips to buy the overpriced gear he was expected to have for exp parties. Rather than say "well, our system is fucked up and is encouraging and letting RMT thrive. Maybe we should change some stuff so that RMT becomes trivial and looses their stranglehold on the game", they said "let's pay someone just to monitor game transactions and change nothing!". Even now I get annoyed at thinking about it because they glossed over the problem entirely. And as I said, I'm not a fan of witch hunts.

[Sakasa]

Some pretty good points but I like to point out a few things. I am not sure how effective the task force was nor in retrospect do i care for a report. But we were blind to what they did do. They might have been burning the candle at both ends or might have busted out the ye ol' cot hidden from security camera. But it all comes down to ability and man power.

How much power you give an admin, the checks and balances of these powers, legal stipulations, social interactions, etc. So say you got all these done right for a blanket statement. So the check for balance is for rep to push up to the manager. So eventually the manager gets swamped and now need more clarification if that is a goose chase so he can fix things that are immediate, fixable, and not a judgement call while dealing with other duties. Problems like this arise in any management system where your service will always out number the number of staff available, trained, and willing to do customer service.

Now there are methods that can cut of RMTs at the knees. For instance no direct trading of gil period or a delay in auction house transactions where the gil is held for a bit for review if the price is absorbent. This are all quite unfair and not very user friendly. Just like airport security the easier they are on everyone the more detailed, evasive, and flawed the system has to be to hopefully catch a problem.

And then on the design portion, removing the actual need for the base currency for the bigger items with use of non trade-able currency makes it useless pass a certain point which would make economies flip, hard with inflation for everything. Which is almost like walking the less frugal to RMTs to some extent.

I think the best that we can hope for is the devs to build in a simple but expansive monitoring system into the environment so admins can gather proof for or against easily and quickly. The iron fist isn't needed if they can catch them 90% of the time because they will screw up again if they did it once and give themselves a perm ban.

[Destain]

Yeah... In 2.0 when I report let's say... "Blablora Mouse" for botting for the 18 millionth time maybe they will actual investigate.

[valetarkus]

Yeah they were always at Cedarwood running Leves

Freakin cedarwood, man! That place was overrun!

[valetarkus]

And as I said, I'm not a fan of witch hunts.

Dude i love burning witches. it's my favorite past time.

[xXHalloweenTrixXx]

Indeed, but the most RMT ever interacted with you in WoW was when they would sent you tells with the url to their website or if they started spamming adds in trade chat. And as I said, everyone would just report them for spam and move on.

I used to get PK'd by gangs of RMT in the days of Lineage II, because the moment you weren't convenient to have around they would log on in droves and greatly outnumber you (fighting off Wolves1-12, Lions1-12 and so on). FFXI had instances of MPKing from RMT (much like players MPKd RMT as well). I already mentioned NM camps and crafting supplies.

As I said earlier, XI's developers (this was back under Tanaka) refused to see that their "difficulty" (read: tediousness and timesinks gallore) made it easier for RMT to thrive between time available, manpower, and the community's pressure on the average player that didn't want to spend ten hours farming beehive chips to buy the overpriced gear he was expected to have for exp parties. Rather than say "well, our system is fucked up and is encouraging and letting RMT thrive. Maybe we should change some stuff so that RMT becomes trivial and looses their stranglehold on the game", they said "let's pay someone just to monitor game transactions and change nothing!". Even now I get annoyed at thinking about it because they glossed over the problem entirely. And as I said, I'm not a fan of witch hunts.

And you know what... I prefer them providing something than -nothing- at all.

They provided a team to specifically deal with RMTs, sure it may not be the exact fix to your problem but it was something to help thwart the plague of bots.

People tend to not be grateful for the little things. I guess you preferred nothing.