A Realm Reborn Column: Crafting and the Economy @MMORPG.com

[HamHam]

When I was writing this part:

This concept could be implemented in game. Where transfer of large amount of gil between players is limited per day, but there's no limit between your accounts. The account would be linked, so the limit of transfers is carry across accounts, so there's no situation where a player would have a way to have multiple opportunities to have gil transfer multiple times as in comparison with a player with just one account.

It was more along the line for RMT, since they are more likely to have multiple accounts and transfer gil to the gil buyer through those accounts. If the account with multiple transfer is limited, then gil sellers would only be able to transfer a limited amount per day. As a result it would make gil very expensive to sell and hence the effect it has on people buying gil. Now, it might not stop the selling of gil, but it will make it very expensive to sell for real money. Which would implement a barrier to sell gil very cheap.

This of course is only to slow down the selling of gil and at least it could keep the game's economy from inflating.

[Preypacer]

I think in FFXI's lifecycle there was a period where they were completely unprepared for it. I imagine the best wY to combat RMT is to have tracking tools implemented into the game itself so that data can be compiled on suspicious activity easier.

Agreed. It's one thing in 1st and 2nd gen MMOs when the idea of RMT and 3rd party transactions was still "new". But in later generations, it amazed me to see developers saying "Oh, we need to develop the tools to track that".

Like... "You mean you didn't prepare for it, knowing the prevalence of RMT in the genre? Really?"

[indira]

I think in FFXI's lifecycle there was a period where they were completely unprepared for it. I imagine the best wY to combat RMT is to have tracking tools implemented into the game itself so that data can be compiled on suspicious activity easier.

tracking the bots is pertty much the only thing you can do, or other programs 3rd party programs . you can snitch on your friends too.

other stuff such as trading gil or items is impossible for a computer program it has no judgement it would cause more pain to legit player who have more then one account and trade stuff between the two. checking countrys IP's can hurt you also if you travel around the world like my self.

i do not trust tracking tools, they may just screw you over trade a buddy alot of gil then boom banned.

[Ferth]

tracking the bots is pertty much the only thing you can do, or other programs 3rd party programs . you can snitch on your friends too.

other stuff such as trading gil or items is impossible for a computer program it has no judgement it would cause more pain to legit player who have more then one account and trade stuff between the two. checking countrys IP's can hurt you also if you travel around the world like my self.

i do not trust tracking tools, they may just screw you over trade a buddy alot of gil then boom banned.

It really depends on what info you look at and how you process it. You have multiple accounts, but a trend showing that you only trade small sums between yourself over and over again shouldn't send up a red flag, nor should the occasional loan to a friend. Unless by multiple accounts you mean you have like 10 of them... you might be flagged for interest but further study should show that you probably aren't RMT.

Because in a game like this data is stored on practically everything. It's about knowing what data to look at and how to look at it. Don't get me wrong, it takes a long time to compile accurate data, which is why in FFXI when they realized that RMT was actually a huge problem they really couldn't do much about it for months after they started implementing counter-measures.

Computer programs may not have judgement, but they are pretty good at processing data, and if there is anything that shows up as anomalous a real person could step in and start investigating. The notion that it can't be done is absurd.

[katsujin]

To address the amount of gil in circulation you would have to control the amount of gil obtained from quests and and selling items to NPC's. These are essentially the two main ways that gil make their way into circulation. For simplicity sake, take for example if the circulating gil in the economy is 1,000,000. If RMT sells a rare item to a player for 10,000gil and then proceeds to sell the 10,000gil to a gil buying player, the total amount of gil circulating is still 1,000,000 gil. This doesn't cause inflation, in fact the RMT could do that hundreds of times without causing signficant results because the total amount of gil circulating doesn't change. However, if RMT were to sell items to NPC or obtain gil through quests, then they would be able to flood the market with the amount that they obtained and increase the amount of gil in circulation there by causing inflation. Another side of the coin is that if the majority of players make their money through quests and NPC then that would also cause the same inflation with no RMT involved at all. The initial gil circulation has to come from somewhere, so NPC gil and quested gil are necessary to introduce gil and start the cycle, but controlling their output is essentially the only way to address the amount of gil circulating in the economy.

Simply put, if the rate of gil produced (by questing and selling to npc) is greater than the amount of items created by crafting and or acquired from questing, the economy will see inflation. It is the overall quantity of gil in circulation versus the overall number of goods in circulation that govern inflation.