TGS Developers RMT Discussion

[Aelfinn]

SE/GMs should just pull their heads out of their asses and realize that the 6 people /following eachother all /anon with names like Sjottutu Blusteringrobin Baubecant Chexu Xiaoyaya are gil sellers. You can even prove they are chinese by doing /t <Gil seller name here> CAO NI MA. And if you get a chinese response back, GIVE THEM BAN

an example of gil sellers is this
-insert stupidly large picture here -

#1 you cannot ban someone for being chinese.
#2 banning for having a full pt on /follow isn't gonna happen
#3 using idiotic names like we see the gilsellers have isnt gonna be cause for banning.

If you havent realized by now that all of these "surefire" ways to tell who is and who isnt a gilseller are just bunk....

You and I know who is a gilseller because we are on the same server day in and day out seeing the same people over and over and over. So it is easy for us to see the behaviour that indicates who is and who isnt.

GMs who are taking calls that vary from "HALP, How do i get out of my mog house!!?!?" to "OMG There are chinese here!! PLEZ BANZ!" will not be able to automatically tell who is and who isnt an RMT.

[Kyreth]

If i was SE not only would I Ban the gilsellers but i would just gimp being able to make gil from sky all together kinda like this.

* Move all the money drops to an ISNM drops kinda like what they did to the dragon talon creating a flood of these items knocking the prices down to nothing.

Crafters collectively kill selves as profit margins on crafting drop even further. No, and see below.

* Make stones rare/ex and make ulli poppable from an item that drops off golems beyond a certain level that is also rare/ex. There would be many Golems it could drop from on 5minute repop or 16mins but have a water like drop rate.

May as well make all the god pop items the same, at that point. It'd be like trying to frickin' get a carbuncle ruby x1000.

* Add newer mobs that are harder and newer equipment for crafters that are on par with cursed items so it doesn't fuck them over along with a bunch of new synths to balance out the flood using newer items.

RMT's then begin to camp those monsters instead, unless you push their levels through the roof. Upping the power level does nothing to stop RMT's- after all, they're up to the point of beating decent HNM's like Tiamat at this point.

Gilsellers only farm sky 24/7 because its very profitable if you take that away they wouldn't bother with it.

Sure. They would then find something else to leech off of. Like most vultures and parasites. Bitching at RMT's would then resume on their new favorites.

* Make serket, simrugh, KA etc hard as fuck and fuck this rage bullshit, knock them up by 30 levels and make them fucking hard as hell.

It's nice having NM's that have nice drops but DON'T take a friggin' linkshell to kill, yet can generally own a single character or exp group. for the area in question.

Ramping them through the roof just draws a bigger, broader line in the difference between NM and HNM- and the RMT's will then hump the smaller pool of farmable spawns like a nymphomaniac Tarutaru.

Having a devoted group of enforcement staff should help here. It'll mean they can camp a spawn window, watch for behaviour, and curb-stomp offenders. Make it a regular deal, and RMT activity (and 3PP crap in general) will go downhill.

[Lordender]

I totally disagree if you couldn't make money from sky there would be no reason for them to farm it, plus they could make other crafting materials come out of harder hnm's on vrtra level that gilsellers could never kill but they would have to add newer items worthwhile to drop from them as well. HNM's like roc, serket etc should of never been easy in the first place.

[*Shinzon*]

The most profitable items in sky are claws and behemoth hides. Claws are always an undercut battle and hides only sell for 3mil. Considering they could farm more in the time doing something else, its not profitable. But when you have 250-375 RMT characters farming Sky, sea, and then you're random ground NMs, that money begins to pile up. They could leave sky and make the same amount of money. But they don't because they're trying to monopolize a market that can't really be monopolized.

[Norelco]

#1 you cannot ban someone for being chinese.

I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever in banning every Chinese IP address, the same way they have no qualms in beating to death every dog (50,000) in a COUNTY because 3 people got infected with rabies. GG China.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14139027/

[Lordender]

Another thing to throw out there is that there are high level crafters atleast on my server who are filthy rich that don't have any kind of sky linkshell. These people buy pop items from whoever(probably gilsellers) and get some friends to kill the god for them for a drop which doesn't help any.

[Lithiani]

#1 you cannot ban someone for being chinese.

I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever in banning every Chinese IP address, the same way they have no qualms in beating to death every dog (50,000) in a COUNTY because 3 people got infected with rabies. GG China.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14139027/

And obviously we should ban every single american from the game because some of them buy gil, amirite?

[Aodh]

And obviously we should ban every single american from the game because some of them buy gil, amirite?

You're not generalizing enough! ALL americans buy gil!

[Khamsin]

SE/GMs should just pull their heads out of their asses and realize that the 6 people /following eachother all /anon with names like Sjottutu Blusteringrobin Baubecant Chexu Xiaoyaya are gil sellers. You can even prove they are chinese by doing /t <Gil seller name here> CAO NI MA. And if you get a chinese response back, GIVE THEM BAN

an example of gil sellers is this
-insert stupidly large picture here -

#1 you cannot ban someone for being chinese.
#2 banning for having a full pt on /follow isn't gonna happen
#3 using idiotic names like we see the gilsellers have isnt gonna be cause for banning.

If you havent realized by now that all of these "surefire" ways to tell who is and who isnt a gilseller are just bunk....

I wouldn't say it means they're bunk, I'd say it means its possible a non-gilseller could fit those characteristics. However, it's still pretty obvious when you see groups of gilsellers, no matter the technicality that someone could decide they want to cause trouble and purposely fit themselves to those characteristics to confuse people.

[Aelfinn]

what I'm saying is that SE cannot create some formula for the GM's to follow to decide who is and who isnt an RMT... without a foolproof formula they won't ban people on being suspect RMT, for just looking like RMT...

I do wish they could... but they will not. It pains me soooo much everytime im running thru boyahda and pass by the same RMT bst grp in lvl 20armor fighting Elder Goobbers upstairs...so sad.

[Khamsin]

what I'm saying is that SE cannot create some formula for the GM's to follow to decide who is and who isnt an RMT... without a foolproof formula they won't ban people on being suspect RMT, for just looking like RMT...

I do wish they could... but they will not. It pains me soooo much everytime im running thru boyahda and pass by the same RMT bst grp in lvl 20armor fighting Elder Goobbers upstairs...so sad.

Well, one solution is, if they can't develop a catch-all formula that is always right, they could always do it by discretion. If players can tell who the gilsellers are through their less formulaic and more discretionary means, a GM could use those same methods and eliminate gilsellers that way.

Afterall, they don't need hard proof of anything to ban anyone. They can ban on a whim without explaining themselves. It's not as if someone who is banned from an online game can sue for being banned without reason.

[chesh]

It doesn't stop at the gilbuyers, it stops at the gilsellers. No one selling gil, no one can buy no matter how great the demand.

Basic economics, if there is demand, a supply will pop up.

Some people suggest throwing the baby out with the bathwater and banning gilbuyers instead (not you Tekki, but I've seen some suggest it). But all that gets you is game with no players, because anyone can buy gil, and I guarantee you that there's a lot more buyers than sellers.

Anyone can buy gil, but if the banstick is hard, fast, and reasonably accurate, people won't.

I've made this comparison before, but consider again how drug busts tend to work. Do they go after the addicts or the dealers and cartels? Why? Answer that, and people will begin to understand why you can't just bust the gilbuyers, and instead, must pursue the gilsellers as the real source of the problem. The true root of all evil, so to speak.

And... how's the "War on Drugs" going again?

o wait we lost


later

It's easy to say "eliminate the sellers", but its equally easy to say "eliminate the buyers". However, which is truly easier to get rid of? Think critically on that... is it easier to eliminate a lesser number of players that SE can track by looking at a large pattern of gil trading, and huge banks, etc. or is it easier to eliminate a much larger number of players that don't buy gil every day, only once in a while, and don't follow much of any pattern at all?

Even if gilbuyers were reduced to the people who don't do it habitually, say, once every couple months, that would be a huge improvement. Demand for gil would be low, so we'd lose lots of sellers.

Granted, neither are "easy", but I'm betting that you'll have a much tougher time eliminating all the buyers than you would the sellers. Not to mention, if you did eliminate all the buyers, what would you be left with? Not many people, with the exception of zooeyigjafjw and friends. Eliminate the sellers, and who are you left with? All the dedicated subscribers.

It's not easy because it's not possible -- if you want to play a game without RMT, go play Monopoly, because it just ain't happening in an MMO. The easiest thing to do is exactly what SE is doing: making token bans to keep the average player who doesn't pay attention satisfied, while ignoring the real problem until the entire endgame quits, whenever that may be.

[chesh]

plus they could make other crafting materials come out of harder hnm's on vrtra level that gilsellers could never kill

Remember when they first got to sky? "Oh, they're trying sky, how cute... waitaminnite where are our pop items???"
Dynamis? "Hey, let's watch the RMT corpsepile... 70k currency fuck you!"
Tiamat? "OMGWTFRMTKILLEDTIAMAT"

[Isiolia]

Thing is, SE shouldn't treat the RMT problem as such a closed box problem. They OWN the box, and they can change it.

Why are RMT a problem? Putting aside the philosophical argument of people not having to work as hard for something as others (which is ridiculous in FFXI, given the randomness of drops)...

RMT are a problem when they get in our way. No different than an dominating HNM LS that takes the majority of pops, no different than a crafter who has gil to burn, no different than a level 75 farming in a newb zone.


The problems we have with RMT are 99% of the time things that fall back to flaws in the design of the game. RMT in sky are a problem why? Because there aren't enough pop items to go around. Because that's the only place to go for gear that has no alternative (Haidate for instance). Because we get blocked from doing what we want to do when they're there.

If they went someplace like say, Riverne, and farmed Hippos on an island nobody visited. Would anyone care at all?
Or for things like Assault...do we care if RMT do Assault? Probably not, since they don't get in our way.


Fact is the game has crowding and content problems anyway. RMT are just one aspect of that. Other LSes and players introduce the same problems RMT do, usually only tempered by the fact that they have to go to bed or work/school *sometime* (less for some than others).

Trying to single RMT out IMO is a waste of time if the larger issues aren't being addressed as well. SE just needs to go back, admit they screwed stuff up in their design, and fix it.

[Fhqwghads]

Be all, end all solution for RMT:

Play single-player games.

http://timheuer.com/images/xpsol.jpg

[Kiro]

My sister loves that game for some weird ass reason.

[Matricide]

when i was a noob i was all impressed by changing the picture on the deck of cards.

good old windows 3.1

[exceed]

SE/GMs should just pull their heads out of their asses and realize that the 6 people /following eachother all /anon with names like Sjottutu Blusteringrobin Baubecant Chexu Xiaoyaya are gil sellers. You can even prove they are chinese by doing /t <Gil seller name here> CAO NI MA. And if you get a chinese response back, GIVE THEM BAN

an example of gil sellers is this
-insert stupidly large picture here -

#1 you cannot ban someone for being chinese.
#2 banning for having a full pt on /follow isn't gonna happen
#3 using idiotic names like we see the gilsellers have isnt gonna be cause for banning.

If you havent realized by now that all of these "surefire" ways to tell who is and who isnt a gilseller are just bunk....

You and I know who is a gilseller because we are on the same server day in and day out seeing the same people over and over and over. So it is easy for us to see the behaviour that indicates who is and who isnt.

GMs who are taking calls that vary from "HALP, How do i get out of my mog house!!?!?" to "OMG There are chinese here!! PLEZ BANZ!" will not be able to automatically tell who is and who isnt an RMT.

but really how many legit players make wierd ass named anon linkshell-less characters. that always navigate through zones with a /follow train. it's obvious which ones are RMTs. you saw my large res SS, they are chinese gil sellers 100%

[Luke]

The most profitable items in sky are claws and behemoth hides. Claws are always an undercut battle and hides only sell for 3mil. Considering they could farm more in the time doing something else, its not profitable. But when you have 250-375 RMT characters farming Sky, sea, and then you're random ground NMs, that money begins to pile up. They could leave sky and make the same amount of money. But they don't because they're trying to monopolize a market that can't really be monopolized.

Did you forget that RMT sell Haidates and Abjurations?

SE lowered the amount of exp needed to reach 75, so you have a huge influx of people hitting end-game, add to that others who level additional jobs that need Haidate. But Ulli is still hard as fuck to get, if not harder thanks to the latest patch. RMT excel at monopolizing Ulli because it's such a bitch to camp, camping it once for 7hrs without a pop is enough for me to never go there again. There's a difference between an NM being a tough camp and being just flat-out rediculous. Autumnstone is already worth a couple mil more than Shining Cloth, and imo will soon equal the value of osode or outvalue it if nothing is done.

In conclusion, Ulli is easily monopolizable/profitable by RMT due to its low pop rate, and such high demand for Haidates/W.legs. It needs to be changed, and in a way that doesn't help the RMT's.

[Koyangi]

Be all, end all solution for RMT:

Play single-player games.

http://timheuer.com/images/xpsol.jpg

lol