The Special Task Force report (06/15/2007)

[Sagacious Sundi]

A time paradox.

[Hanyoko]

How do ya factor people who are willing to buy characters into this model though? Punishing the gil buyers will definitely help, but there's still a population of people who are willing to spend money to cut corners and get fully leveled characters, who'll be willing to buy gil.

I think SE is taking this into consideration as now a large majority of the 'good items' are RARE/EX. Therefore gil will only get you so far with totally making your character as awesome as it can be. After awhile you will physically have to do the action..... or pay someone to do the action for you.

Personally I would rather see the bottlenecks that promote the cheating in the first place be removed or adjusted.

[Angelsin]

Anyone else want them to break FFXIapp? >.> I get sick of seeing the same 2 ppl claim for other LS's with the same spell (=)

i certainly do. the best part if they did is that all the users are stored in their database. we'll be seeing a lot of banned/suspended players if SE took legal actions against the creator of that program.

Oh god how I would love that. It is against the ToS and they are charging players for the use of that program (if I remember correctly). If RMT companies can be sued they should too.

[Priran]

What came first, the RMT or the Gil-Buyer? >.>

someone gets the idea to sell gil->people buy it----->people begin playing games with the aim of selling in-game items->RMT are in new MMOs from day 1

[wyred]

Just ban all the anon tarutaru BLMs with no linkpearls and names generated by smashing their heads on their keyboards.

[terraflarex]

Agree!

[aurik]

No word about RMT crafters

Are the RMT crafters all botted or scripted? I havn't been around to watch their patterns.

They use automation tools to do some things, and others they do by putting a human in front of 10 toons simultaneously. That's why you'll see the zombie bumble around until it gets in the right place for its scripts to work, then it will work at maximum efficiency until it runs out of inventory or materials.

Back in the day, there used to be an RMT group that botted spider webs off the AH. They would buy every spider web for a fixed amount when they popped on the AH. However, you can't buy anything off the AH when you have a pending trade request. Therefore, I'd watch them log in their bot, and it would start spam-buying webs. Then I'd request to trade it, and the zombie would stop working for a good 30 minutes (allowing me to snag the cheap webs in the meantime) before they realized what I'd done They never figured out you can use blockaid to disregard trade requests.

[Khamsin]

What came first, the RMT or the Gil-Buyer? >.>

The RMT, of course. You can't buy gil unless someone is selling it.

[Tordall]

I remember listening to an interview with one of the earlier MMORPGs (ultima online I think, one of those Bard's Tale looking ones) on NPR.

There RMT transactions basically started when the first wave of 'hard core' players quit. One day someone anounced they were quitting and before they could ask who wanted their stuff, somone offered them 50$ for something.

Thus, RMT was born.

[theo]

All of this would be much more reassuring if it wasn't for the fact that the same people seem to get away with botting in sky or aery every month. I'm not saying that the STF hasn't made any progress, but its upsetting to see these characters evade the monthly-banning time after time.

[yuriku]

I want to play the game this report was made for.

[BRP]

Awesome.

In order to keep these under control, catching *Hunters who gather Gil is definitely a priority on our task list.

Awesome.

[Lordender]

STF still has lots of work to do, they need to really turn up the heat and focus on sky mobs, rmt have a strong presence in sky on most servers still. NM's like KA, Simrugh(gilsellers camp everyday on my server to cockblock trotter's), bigbomb is still a horrible cluster fuck with 6-12+ rmt there 24/7. I was seriously disappointed last update they didn't take cloths off KA and make other misc adjustments on the epic scale they did in the march update. I think they need to continue to shake it up. In the March update SE confused the shit out of rmt on my server about what to farm for atleast 2 weeks, their activity went down until they got new targets to settle in with.

[Appie]

What came first, the RMT or the Gil-Buyer? >.>

The RMT, of course. You can't buy gil unless someone is selling it.

The buyer, RMT can't sell something if nobody is asking for it.

Same reason you don't see a market for peanutbutter with piss, nobody asks for it.
(or did I just think of a product that could make me rich? ;D)

[BRP]

What came first, the RMT or the Gil-Buyer? >.>

The RMT, of course. You can't buy gil unless someone is selling it.

The buyer, RMT can't sell something if nobody is asking for it.

RMT came first. Just like someone setting up a store and people going into that store for the first time and buying something. Someone said "Hey, we are selling gil now, buy it" and people bought it. This isn't Chicken and Eggs.

[Khamsin]

What came first, the RMT or the Gil-Buyer? >.>

The RMT, of course. You can't buy gil unless someone is selling it.

The buyer, RMT can't sell something if nobody is asking for it.

Same reason you don't see a market for peanutbutter with piss, nobody asks for it.
(or did I just think of a product that could make me rich? ;D)

I can put a jar of peanut butter with piss on eBay, even if no one ever buys it.

Somebody can't buy a jar of peanut butter with piss if nobody ever sells it.

[Octavious]

IMO, buyer has to exist before said market is created. If there is demand, people will make the market :D discuss

[Amele]

without a prospective buyer doing market research (either by asking potential customers or providing a product to purchase) there is no way to determine if there is a latent market.

the seller must take the first action, therefore the seller came first.

[Septimus]

I want to play the game this report was made for.

While not perfect, Square and the STF have made a lot of changes to the game since last year. All of the NMs that are now poppable, the crack-down on fishing, the constant nukes on RMT warehouses, and the amount of deflation. A lot of items are close to where they were before the RMT rampage, some items have dropped to a tenth of their prices during the RMT rampage of Christmas 05.

People can say that they should have done it sooner, but at least they are doing something.

[Septimus]

What an utterly ridiculous argument about buyers and sellers. You need both, and in this case, both are equally responsible for ruining the game.