RMT countermeasures

[aurik]

Uh, I as a crafter with now 5 guilds under my belt like to send massive amounts of gil between characters immediately. Fortunately I have my characters spread between 2 accounts so it's not as bad. But still, fucking annoying when i am off doing something on my main acct and I want to transfer 5 mil from my bone mule to my wood mule.

Based on the fact that just last night a crafter friend had me courrier 20 mil between characters for her, I don't think that I'm alone in this frustration.

A one-time transfer of 20M is small-time compared to the amount of gil that was being shat out left, right and sideways 8 months ago. When your business requires you to be sending 10-15M gil per box per trip to the delivery boy and you get choked off to 1M and one box, it fucks your world up. No crafter, idc how many Aristocrat's your mules can shit out, would be continuously transferring a comparable volume of gil.

Edit: code
Edit: phrasing

I used to transfer 5-10m daily between characters. For bookkeeping purposes, I generally sell my high priced goods on particular sales-only characters and purchase high priced goods on other particular characters. A single SH sale on Asura would mean I have to mule cash via dbox *7* times to accomplish this. It's annoying to the point where now I keep huge buffers on several characters, do my bookkeeping in excel, and transfer money via dualboxing several times a week.

I'm sorry that you're so poor that you can't fathom the amount of money I handle on a daily basis.

And don't get me started on how difficult it is to handle KSNM / ENM splits now. I generally sell everything that my groups get for sell-split because I actually have enough mules that I can send out all the cash simultaneously on my mule army. Still sucks.

[Melchiah]

I'm sorry that you're so poor that you can't fathom the amount of money I handle on a daily basis.

First off, its a fact that a one-time transfer of 20M gil is small time compared to the volume of gil that RMTs move around. Second, I was merely stating this fact, not taking a jab at your financial status, so stop flapping your cocksucker prease. I'm sorry that your ego is so fragile that you would take that comment as a slight to your gilmaking epeen, and that you would then feel threatened enough to call my financial status into question. Poor? By your standards, probably. I make the gil I need to get the gear I want. It stops there. I don't need to be holding millions of gil to have a happy gaming experience. I need to be kicking asses.

I don't give two shits how much money you handle on a daily basis, it doesn't compare to the amount that RMTs handle. 5-10M gil a day you said? I'm sorry you are so poor you cannot fathom the amount of money RMTs move around on an hourly basis. I'd be willing to bet my firstborn son it's slightly more than your 5-10M per day. --Mel out

[Priran]

i find it funny, look at the DATE on both posts... S/E said oh! we better say something too! we might lose (more) customers to WoW. The whole banning of RMT accounts is BS. 250Billion my ass. The only people they ban are end game players who use flee tool. Prices wont drop because this news is nothing more then PR hype from S/E.

what conclusive evidence

gb2/wow/

[aurik]

verbal diarrhea

You're the one claiming that the 1m limit wasn't a hindrance to legitimate players, I'm just telling you how it's like when you deal with a lot of money.

Furthermore, Nynja's right, they've been transferring gil in-person since before the dbox nerf ever happened; it barely even slowed them down, even though I know they deal with volumes which are orders of magnitude greater than mine. Meanwhile to me it's fucking annoying, and would be far more annoying with a 500k cap because yea, I do pretty much max out the dbox at 1m every time I log off a character and onto another -- that way I only need to do dual-boxing trips after a few expensive things sell instead of every day.

Let's be honest here, who, other than an RMT, needs to transfer mass amounts of gil immediately? Me. Even if you have a mule that crafts for you or sells spare loot you get at times that you would need to get cash from from time to time, it really is only a minor inconvenience to have to mule over and send the gil. Until you have to mule over and send the gil 7 or more times per sale, then it's a 30 minute hassle.

[Melchiah]

verbal diarrhea... wow that's really cute. D'you get all the girls with that one? Can I use it?

Let us examine what I said in a bit more detail: Mass amounts of gil is a bit vague, and is relative. I'll cop to that little phrasing fuckup, my bad. Let's just use a comparison instead: The amount of RMTed gil moved vs the amount of gil you may or may not make crafting. In this case, mass refers to the considerably larger number, an amount of gil few, if not no legit player should ever possibly need to transfer. While you might need to transer considerably large amounts among your mules and whatnot, RMTed gil would be a massive amount. The inconvenience you suffer, while I can see the annoyance to a big businessman, is an attempt at long-term RMT control, and I think it is a step in the right direction. I handle both large and small transactions on my main, and on two mules. I deal with the transfer restrictions with a smile, because I know that it causes issues with the RMT trade. How much slower do they operate now, if they have to buy an airship pass, and go find every buyer individually to distribute the currency? It's much slower than it would be if they could just dump 10M in 8 out boxes and let it ride.

edit: spelling

[aurik]

verbal diarrhea... wow that's really cute. D'you get all the girls with that one? Can I use it?

Let us examine what I said in a bit more detail: Mass amounts of gil is a bit vague, and is relative. I'll cop to that little phrasing fuckup, my bad. Let's just use a comparison instead: The amount of RMTed gil moved vs the amount of gil you may or may not make crafting. In this case, mass refers to the considerably larger number, an amount of gil few, if not no legit player should ever possibly need to transfer. While you might need to transer considerably large amounts among your mules and whatnot, RMTed gil would be a massive amount. The inconvenience you suffer, while I can see the annoyance to a big businessman, is an attempt a long-term RMT control, and I think it is a step in the right direction. I handle both large and small transactions on my main, and on two mules. I deal with the transfer restrictions with a smile, because I know that it causes issues with the RMT trade. How much slower do they operate now, if they have to buy an airship pass, and go find every buyer individually to distribute the currency? It's much slower than it would be if they could just dump 10M in 8 out boxes and let it ride.

No actually IGE mules do the same thing they always did. "Meet me at the moghouse in Lower Jeuno / Bastok Markets / Windurst Woods / Port San d'Oria". I've watched them both transfer in and transfer out gil that way. Delivery box nerfs don't hurt them when they don't use the delivery box, hello?

You seem to think that no legit player should ever need to transfer more than 1m -- no, make that 500k! Well you're dead wrong. Some examples:

- Just this week I was going to lend a friend 3m to buy something, and had to send it via 3 mules simultaneously because he was out in Thickets and I just got a party. Annoying. Pre-nerf I would have just zipped him 5m and told him to pay me back later.
- In the past I used to buy vir/fem subligars for a clothcraft friend who wasn't on chapter 4 of CoP; he would send me 24-40m at a time and I'd buy the subligars and send them back. Now, he can't do it unless we're both online and have the ability to meet up.
- Recently a friend had me buy him something from Rolanberry and guess what that money between us is still owing because he can't just send me 9 mil, and at the moment he only logs on every few days to craft.
- I recently enm with friends and now I have a bunch of splits to send out. I have to occupy the money slot on several different mules in order to send out the cash in a timely manner. Luckily the split is less than 1m each or else I'd have to send the cash in multiple sessions.

[Melchiah]

And I think you are disregarding what will happen if the delivery box nerf was undone. SE wouldn't have "nerfed" it were it not being abused Hello!

True, they use person to person transfers, but do you honestly think for a moment they wouldn't abuse the shit out of the delivery system? The potential to increase their volume back to pre-nerf quantities makes me cringe.

I'm well aware that you must need to transer large amounts of gil. But I'm also unsympathetic to your plight. You should be satisfied with the fact that you capable of making that kind of gil in the first place. I know I sure can't.

[Nagamaki]

Praising the delivery box sending limit as some sort of breakthrough for disrupting RMT operations is a display of amazing ignorance.

RMT operations use character farms with a multitude of systems setup together, often with 1 person running multiple characters. In such a setup, the gil sending limit doesn't matter at all. You can't send Tu'lia triggers around though delivery at all, does that stop the permanently fully stocked trigger selling gilseller mules in Rolanberry? Its pretty obvious the gilsellers are aware of the trade function, and use it all the time.

IGE and presumably other gilselling websites use direct trade with the buyers in towns because its not any more complicated than sending through delivery and avoids possible issues of gilbuyers taking the gil out then saying they didn't receive it.

So this awesome countermeasure by SE doesn't prevent gilsellers getting gil around between characters because they trade things around while multiboxing anyway, and it doesn't prevent distribution to buyers because they didn't distribute through it in the first place. What the fuck does it solve exactly?

For most players, the limit isn't a huge hindrance, its more of a mild annoyance. For RMT operations, its not even that.

[Melchiah]

The inconvenience you suffer, while I can see the annoyance to a big businessman, is an attempt at long-term RMT control, and I think it is a step in the right direction.

Breakthrough? Hardly. But one has to start somewhere. And I think this is a good idea. The real issue is this: RMTs are going to do their scumbag business as long as it is profitable. SE will have to find a way to make it not profitable to solve the situation. The next step I'm sure will be a nerf of p2p transactions in the same vein as the delivery box changes. Yes, it will suck. But RMTs are a bigger inconvenience to the user base as a whole than to a handful of crafters that deal in expensive merchandise. If you have big gil... you are the minority I'm sad to say. In this regard, the virtual economy resembles a real one.

Edit: I do have this question: How can RMTs maintain the volume of distribution they do when they trade gil on a p2p basis? The number of employees it would take to keep up a large volume doesn't seem cost effective to me. I know the lion's share of RMT farms are located in China, but what about the middlemen, the distribution centers like IGE? Aren't they located somewhere with a much higher standard of living than China? Wouldn't they have a huge overhead to maintain a large volume of gil distrubution?

[aurik]

The inconvenience you suffer, while I can see the annoyance to a big businessman, is an attempt at long-term RMT control, and I think it is a step in the right direction.

Breakthrough? Hardly. But one has to start somewhere. And I think this is a good idea. The real issue is this: RMTs are going to do their scumbag business as long as it is profitable. SE will have to find a way to make it not profitable to solve the situation. The next step I'm sure will be a nerf of p2p transactions in the same vein as the delivery box changes. Yes, it will suck. But RMTs are a bigger inconvenience to the user base as a whole than to a handful of crafters that deal in expensive merchandise. If you have big gil... you are the minority I'm sad to say. In this regard, the virtual economy resembles a real one.

Simple solution: ban the gil banks frequently. They have to *buy* that gil, so it represents a large loss for the business when it gets deleted. Also, new copies of the game must be purchased -- also costly. Drive up the cost of being IGE and they need to charge more and/or pay less for gil. By simple Smith economics that will reduce the volume of gil selling and buying.

[Melchiah]

Simple solution: ban the gil banks frequently. They have to *buy* that gil, so it represents a large loss for the business when it gets deleted. Also, new copies of the game must be purchased -- also costly. Drive up the cost of being IGE and they need to charge more and/or pay less for gil. By simple Smith economics that will reduce the volume of gil selling and buying.

I am totally down with this. It can't be too hard to distinguish the "bank" or storage accounts from legit players. Mules that do nothing but move mass quantities of gil around should be suspicious just in that regard. Even someone like Aurik who has mules that move gil has a main char that has job levels, missions, quests done.

[Kero]

The next step I'm sure will be a nerf of p2p transactions in the same vein as the delivery box changes.

Excuse me, maybe I'm not understanding, are you suggesting that trading will be nerfed? As in the actual physical delivery of items and money from one person to another? That would be the most asinine suggestion to curb RMT I've heard yet, the shouts in lower jeuno are light years ahead (BAN TEH CHINEES PEOPEL LAWL). It would be exponentially more obnoxious than delivery box limitations, especially in combination with them, and more to the point would do just about nothing to curb RMT as I understand the suggestion. Do you want trades to be limited to 500,000g per? They have all day to spam trade, taking 5min for transaction instead of one will not appreciably hurt RMT efforts when the characters are 2-boxed anyway. Or maybe characters can only be traded 500,00g in a period of time from another character? Multiple mules, now anyone who *isn't* a double boxed RMT account is screwed, whereas they're just fine. Or can one character only receive 500,000g in a period of time? Well, that's just kind of stupid .

Trying to hamper the flow of gil hurts everyone equally, at best, and at worst seems to hurt people with only one account/character (probably not RMT) the most. SE needs to listen to the suggestions for limiting the acquisition of gil by RMT instead, five hundred million of which could easily be found on this board alone, or crack down on characters that are known to buy or sell gil, reducing either the popularity or ease of RMT.

Also:

I'm also unsympathetic to your plight. You should be satisfied with the fact that you capable of making that kind of gil in the first place. I know I sure can't.

Wow, so because you can't make more than a million gil it doesn't matter that a change that in no way hinders RMT is hurting many, many players, specifically those who have the most characters/accounts and therefore are more valuable to SE? I'm not even close to rich myself, but that doesn't change the fact that this particular attempt to hurt RMT by SE was at best a placebo. There's a place for people who condone idiocy out of jealousy and can't make more than a million gil (without the aid of IGE) ya know I'll link you, ffxi.allakhazam.com.

Ninja edit: My URL tags fail, sure hope you can find it ok anyway (*'-').

[Melchiah]

Oi there, I didn't suggest nerfing trading, I said I was sure that would be SE's next step man, come on. And the outbox nerf doesn't *hurt* anyone, it is a minor inconvenience, so that point is just trash.

Nerfing trading would be just as much a pain in the ass as the outbex. I never said I wasn't inconvenienced by this, there are times when I have to nab 2-3M from my mule, and it does get aggravating to me. But I understand the reasoning behind this, so I just suck it up and deal with it with a smile. As for trading, yes, RMTs have all day to spam trade. But the restriction of the Dbox is designed to hamper the volume they can distribute at one time. Its like a bottleneck, the slower they are at moving that gil, the less money they make every day. Its a method of reducing the profitibility by hampering distribution. Unfortunately, it fucks everyone else's ease of transfer up too. If SE nerfed trading like the Dbox, it would really choke the flow of the RMTed gil. Not eliminate it like banning bank accounts, but make it less profitable. If SE can hamper the gil market enough to where the overhead of the trading firm is greater than the gross profit they pull in, IGE goes tits up. And it is hard to do this without pissing off the rest of their user base, short of banning bank accounts, we all like to see that. As for a suggestion, I have this one:

Remove the 1M cap on gil transfers. Keep the one box for gil rule. Restrict gil trades and Dbox deliveries to once per day per character. This will allow someone like Aurik to send whatever amount of gil he needs from each mule to where it needs to go, but only once a day. How does that sound?

Ninjar edit: What is with the bagging on how much gil I do or don't have? Where did I say I couldn't make more than 1M gil? I'm wearing somewhere in the neighborhood of 20M right now! I can't make 5-10M per day ffs, and I don't mind admitting it. What I meant with that remark was that if Aurik has the capability of making 5-10M gil per day, a little inconvenience that costs him a bit more time isn't all that bad in the big picture. But I also think my suggestion is better than anything SE has come up with as of yet.

[Halon50]

IBTL!

[Rockstaru]

How about they just give the game a true PVP and let the players sort things out (i.e. murder the fuckers)?

[Ant]

No actually IGE mules do the same thing they always did. "Meet me at the moghouse in Lower Jeuno / Bastok Markets / Windurst Woods / Port San d'Oria".

lol?

1m limit is totally useless at stoping, slowing, or in any way messing with RMT...

[Moochi]

im calling this one. watch the econ stay flat. this is a bogus PR attempt from S/E. if im wrong every price will drop over the next 30 days. imo. not going to happen.

Prices started dropping 2 weeks ago on Bismarck. V claws gone from 6mil down to 4.5m now. It's fucking hard to sell shit too. I've had have to relist so many things I've been trying to sell.

[Maguspk]

How about they just give the game a true PVP and let the players sort things out (i.e. murder the fuckers)?

I like this idea.

Also nobody has put down my idea yet, and I don't see what would be so hard for SE to do about pulling this off:

Order gil...
Get gil.

Wait 5 days.
During 5 days monitor the account that traded you that gil, including who's sent it gil, who it's been trading with, etc.

Monitor those accounts.
Continue this monitor tree and slowly begin to ban the "Gil Banks" you will undoubtedly come across. Problem solved. And to boot, it should be relatively free, compared to having to pay developers to fuck with delivery box systems and shit.

[½pint]

websites like IGE preferred trading their gil in person because they didnt want customers going "I DIDNT GET MY GIL LOL REFUND PLEASE" even if they did get it. So nerfing the delivery box didnt hurt gilseller sites.

When I quit Remora and moved to Bismarck, I sold all my stuff on Remora and server-to-server'ed the gil to Bismarck. I gave them something like 30 mil and they only offered me 15m or something on Bismarck. I was like w/e, and said that I didn't receive it twice, so they made the delivery 3, so I actually got 45m overall They even provided a screenshot the second time of the gil in their outbox, but I persisted and they told me to e-mail their boss, so I did, and got more gil.

[½pint]

Oi there, I didn't suggest nerfing trading, I said I was sure that would be SE's next step man, come on. And the outbox nerf doesn't *hurt* anyone, it is a minor inconvenience, so that point is just trash.

That point isn't trash, why the hell should we have to suffer because of gilsellers? It takes about 2 minutes to send 1mil between two characters on the same account; it took me almost an hour to do the 25 mil. In the end I said fuck it and got a second account so I could directly trade.