Accounts Banned (Dec 19)

[AoshiZ]

Removing RMTs and their gil from the economy doesn't create a depression, it just maintains normal prices and prevents the insane inflation of an RMT-driven economy.

I'm not an economic's professional, but I think the fact that RMT are farming and competing with us on available resourses (such as synth materials, NM's, food materials), closes the avenues for us to make gil. Then when the gil that was generated by the extra RMT competition is just deleted by SE (overall i think this is the lesser of two evils) it causes the world to have less currency than was intended.

Whether or not that's true, it's still better to remove them all together and suffer a short term depression than allow some to remain. Keep in mind it's an entirely parasitic, not symbiotic, relationship.

I completely agree with you here. RMT is definitely not wanted and I can't think of a better approach for SE to attempt to fix this problem.

One thing i did want to mention/point out that has not been discussed (on the effects of RMT and the balance of the economy) is that RMT has historically approached generating gil in means outside of what was intended. Such as exploits and botting. These factors seem to unbalance the economy and cause inflation with a flow of gil that is faster than the normal intended flow of gil by SE.

[fantasticdan]

Removing RMTs and their gil from the economy doesn't create a depression, it just maintains normal prices and prevents the insane inflation of an RMT-driven economy.

I'm not an economic's professional, but I think the fact that RMT are farming and competing with us on available resourses (such as synth materials, NM's, food materials), closes the avenues for us to make gil. Then when the gil that was generated by the extra RMT competition is just deleted by SE (overall i think this is the lesser of two evils) it causes the world to have less currency than was intended.

Whether or not that's true, it's still better to remove them all together and suffer a short term depression than allow some to remain. Keep in mind it's an entirely parasitic, not symbiotic, relationship.

RMTs putting cheap sushi/food/tools/etc on AH is a symbiotic relationship isn't it? Well to those that don't craft those items anyway...

[Khamsin]

Removing RMTs and their gil from the economy doesn't create a depression, it just maintains normal prices and prevents the insane inflation of an RMT-driven economy.

I'm not an economic's professional, but I think the fact that RMT are farming and competing with us on available resourses (such as synth materials, NM's, food materials), closes the avenues for us to make gil. Then when the gil that was generated by the extra RMT competition is just deleted by SE (overall i think this is the lesser of two evils) it causes the world to have less currency than was intended.

Whether or not that's true, it's still better to remove them all together and suffer a short term depression than allow some to remain. Keep in mind it's an entirely parasitic, not symbiotic, relationship.

RMTs putting cheap sushi/food/tools/etc on AH is a symbiotic relationship isn't it? Well to those that don't craft those items anyway...

Not with respect to the game/economy as a whole. Some players will benefit, particularly those who purchase gil, and many won't. But they hurt the game over time, not help it.

[Antz]

Piece of shit Square-Enix, apparently a Linkshell member of mine was temp-banned when they called out someone else's TP (they were using TParty) and a party member GM called them. Meanwhile the botting german Trash from Remora are still there in Aery (Midgardsormr).

Wouldn't surprise me if SE banned the damn stolen accounts LS, though, also wouldn't surprise me if they didn't, yay, let's ban normal players' who worked hard for their characters, while not affecting the people who actually stole the damn accounts.

Lol, i dont know but i already feel the need to tell you that you can gladly come to Diabolos and kiss my german ass you asshole
As if there is no botting american "trash" on your server. And im sure your LS member didn't get temp banned for calling out TP.

Or can't u read? lol

[Kaludneisucks]

An Interesting <to me> Idea for balancing Economy,
leme see if i can spit this out right. The main ways i can think of that Gil are introduced to the game are Quests, BC's, lolMug, Coffer/chest, and Mobs tat drop gil. Not all mobs drop gil. The amount of gil that they drop is a set variable amount that is , for the most part, negligable, thus making straight gil farming impractical for all intents and purposes. Most, when farming, farm for valuable crafting items or raredrop Gearz which will net the seller some dec gil perhaps, but brings no NEW money into the game, and further gil is lost on the AH.


Perhaps it would be feasible to take a cross section scan of various AH "Staples" such as crafting materials and medicines more commonly used/bought/sold every Conquest update and using a formula selected for its appropriateness in this instance to adjust the amount of gil dropped by gildrop mobs intosomething more relevant to the games actual needs. I'm no mathematician, but i think the idea has merit, then again i'm biased, its is after all, my idea.

[Tulun]

They really just need to make money making easier (and less time consuming) overall. and these ways need to be available to all; not by camping an NM, or BCNM / KSNM (as those can take hours just to farm the seals alone).

Create a couple of daily quests that generate decent income and only take 15-20 mins each. Bam, people have a bit of spending money (as a minimum, perhaps some fame requirement to make it less easy for RMT to do).

Make mobs drop more gil! they could *easily* double the amount of gil dropped by mobs.

NPC cost to sell stuff is ludicrous. Increase it!

Make mobs drop junk items specifically to NPC for gil. Makes farming more attractive at any level, as well as more rewarding (farming for the reward is currently retarded).

At the very least, this will make Dynamis, meds, and Limbus costs not feel expensive...

[nsx]

They really just need to make money making easier (and less time consuming) overall. and these ways need to be available to all; not by camping an NM, or BCNM / KSNM (as those can take hours just to farm the seals alone).

Create a couple of daily quests that generate decent income and only take 15-20 mins each. Bam, people have a bit of spending money (as a minimum, perhaps some fame requirement to make it less easy for RMT to do).

Make mobs drop more gil! they could *easily* double the amount of gil dropped by mobs.

NPC cost to sell stuff is ludicrous. Increase it!

Make mobs drop junk items specifically to NPC for gil. Makes farming more attractive at any level, as well as more rewarding (farming for the reward is currently retarded).

At the very least, this will make Dynamis, meds, and Limbus costs not feel expensive...

You do realize, when gil becomes so easy to get it loses all value and MASSIVE inflation occurs.

Thanks for playing though.

[Kerberoz]

Removing RMTs and their gil from the economy doesn't create a depression, it just maintains normal prices and prevents the insane inflation of an RMT-driven economy.

I'm not an economic's professional, but I think the fact that RMT are farming and competing with us on available resourses (such as synth materials, NM's, food materials), closes the avenues for us to make gil. Then when the gil that was generated by the extra RMT competition is just deleted by SE (overall i think this is the lesser of two evils) it causes the world to have less currency than was intended.

Whether or not that's true, it's still better to remove them all together and suffer a short term depression than allow some to remain. Keep in mind it's an entirely parasitic, not symbiotic, relationship.

RMTs putting cheap sushi/food/tools/etc on AH is a symbiotic relationship isn't it? Well to those that don't craft those items anyway...

Not with respect to the game/economy as a whole. Some players will benefit, particularly those who purchase gil, and many won't. But they hurt the game over time, not help it.

Anyone who crafts or sells drops benefits from an inflated economy. Gilbuyers spend lots of gil. Some of it goes back to RMT. Some of it goes to legit players (mostly crafters) which flows through the economy and helps everyone. Sure, RMT is bad for some aspects of the game. The economy is not one of those aspects. It's easy as hell to make legitimate gil in an inflated economy.

I'd rather go back to 2005's economy and deal with more gilsellers around. I'm sure I'm not alone. Remember when RMT just fishbotted and killed jeuno HNMs?

That begs the question of which is worse for the game: deflation or the anti-mpk patch?

[Max™]

MPK nerf was a horrible thing, yeah Bsts would occasionally kill people, yeah jerks would kill lowbies, but Bsts and other players would also self-police RMT's and beat them down.

That nerf+the Rabao fishbotting is what I believe led to the dramatic RMT explosion we saw.

[Amele]

An Interesting <to me> Idea for balancing Economy,
leme see if i can spit this out right. The main ways i can think of that Gil are introduced to the game are Quests, BC's, lolMug, Coffer/chest, and Mobs tat drop gil. Not all mobs drop gil. The amount of gil that they drop is a set variable amount that is , for the most part, negligable, thus making straight gil farming impractical for all intents and purposes. Most, when farming, farm for valuable crafting items or raredrop Gearz which will net the seller some dec gil perhaps, but brings no NEW money into the game, and further gil is lost on the AH.


Perhaps it would be feasible to take a cross section scan of various AH "Staples" such as crafting materials and medicines more commonly used/bought/sold every Conquest update and using a formula selected for its appropriateness in this instance to adjust the amount of gil dropped by gildrop mobs intosomething more relevant to the games actual needs. I'm no mathematician, but i think the idea has merit, then again i'm biased, its is after all, my idea.

It would be relatively simple for SE to police how much gil is created and how much gil is destroyed over a given time period (at the very least, they should have the necessary data to do a server wide census of active player's gil totals, even if they have to run the query by hand) you wouldn't need to do all those complex formulas:

think of it like this, you've got a faucet, a big water tank, and a tap at the bottom. you can turn two valves: one is on the faucet (how much water you let get into the tank) the other is on the tap (how much water you let flow out of the tank) you don't have to measure how turbulent the water inside is (which is effectively what taking an index of the value or sale rate of common AH staples would be) you just have to measure how fast water is entering or leaving the tank.

want the tank's total volume to remain stable? match the inflow and the exflow. want it to increase? make inflow more than exflow (this was -all- of 2002 and 2003 and part of 2004 by design; and the rest of 2004 and most of 2005 as unintended consequence of the ease of fishbotting and other exploitations.) want the volume to decrease? make exflow more than inflow (the state of the economy today).

but SE was never really concerned about the relative sink/source rates, just what player perception was. Which is why we didn't get Dynamis cost reduced: the majority voice SE heard wanted it cheaper so it was easier to make profit! doing it - SE never intended for it to be profitable - the reason I've advocated it for so long is because it is pretty much the single biggest gil sink on any given server (there's more than 15 dls just in NA/EU pop on hades last time I tried to count it, so the figure I gave for how much limbus and dynamis sinks is probably too small by half here.)

Kerberoz has it right too; we're all used to thinking of ourselves as consumers (because we purchase lots of stuff) but what most players really are, are producers or manufacturers - they sell significantly more than they buy. the only players who really qualify as consumers on FFXI are the gilbuyers (isn't this counterintuitive? deflation helps them. inflation hurts them.*) and the producers or manufacturers who cashed in during the height of inflation and rode the wave down.

there's obviously more to this virtual economy than all that (neither he nor I has mentioned minters yet, and I only briefly touched on reservists.) but the gist of it is: "you are not the consumer you think you are: if you sell -anything- on the AH on a regular basis, then you want moderate inflation, not deflation."

[Kyreth]

They really just need to make money making easier (and less time consuming) overall. and these ways need to be available to all; not by camping an NM, or BCNM / KSNM (as those can take hours just to farm the seals alone).

Create a couple of daily quests that generate decent income and only take 15-20 mins each. Bam, people have a bit of spending money (as a minimum, perhaps some fame requirement to make it less easy for RMT to do).

Whatever you do, RMT will do a 100 times, 500 times, 1000 times more often, amplifying the resulting gil added to the system many times over and resulting in inflation. You will then be sitting here whining about how much stuff costs as your new money flow simply doesn't keep up with Gibberish and Garbagename's efforts to run up the Auction House prices and sell you Gil "cheap" on IGE., where it'll be used to ream you even more thoroughly than before.

S-E is playing it smart.

[Max™]

Dunno about playing it smart, they're playing it safe, RMT= Bad, so Banning RMT= Good, nevermind the huge deflation making many lose millions upon millions as their gear devalues, there are less RMT's around, so it must be having a positive effect, right?

Only way I can think of to prevent RMT's from abusing a system would be some sort of weekly welfare check type system, you have to be over a certain level, complete a certain pre-requisite quest or whatnot, and then at Conquest tally you get some amount of gil in your Dbox, not enough to horribly break things, but enough to get you by, and help turn the tide on the deflation somewhat.

Bannings could stay, Dynamis/Limbus can keep deflating things, RMT can't just make mules and cash in on this, say theres 15 Dyna shells on a Server, two runs a week each, thats 30 Million gone. Say there is a Limbus shell with 10 people per run for each Dyna shell there is, 9 Million gone. Toss in Einherjar, buying from NPC's, Airships, Chocobos, AH Tax, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that an average server is hemorrhaging 50 Million Gil or more per week.

Toss in RMT bannings, people quitting with gil, and the like, and compare that to the amount of gil that is produced per week, NPCing things, Quest rewards, Gil drops, Mission completion.

Make the weekly payout appropriately difficult to acquire, certain level, quest involving access to multiple endgame areas, and you can keep RMT's from abusing it much.

If say, 1000 People on a server were to get 50k a week, that would counter most of the Dynamis/Limbus/Tax deflation.

[Kyreth]

I'll respond to that by saying getting a million Gil isn't as tough as people make it out to be.

Can you make 100K in a day, solo? If so, your LS should have no problem meeting Dynamis costs.

Dynamis is meant to be an endgame gilsink. It's working quite well that way. People should be lean and a bit hungry- if they're fat with money, inflation kills the system.

And I never want to see 2005 again. The only reason RMT wasn't rampant at that point is they were still learning how to make the inflationary machine run. Once they did, it was market manipulation, monopolization, and mass inflation misery. No thanks- RMT will exploit any opening to it's utmost because it's money, and they're in the business of ruining the game for profits. As it's been mentioned- they're parasites, a cancer on the game.

[Max™]

Dynamis works fine, but all the other gil sinks, on top of the bannings are killing the total amount of gil in game.

[Khamsin]

I'll respond to that by saying getting a million Gil isn't as tough as people make it out to be.

Can you make 100K in a day, solo? If so, your LS should have no problem meeting Dynamis costs.

Dynamis is meant to be an endgame gilsink. It's working quite well that way. People should be lean and a bit hungry- if they're fat with money, inflation kills the system.

And I never want to see 2005 again. The only reason RMT wasn't rampant at that point is they were still learning how to make the inflationary machine run. Once they did, it was market manipulation, monopolization, and mass inflation misery. No thanks- RMT will exploit any opening to it's utmost because it's money, and they're in the business of ruining the game for profits. As it's been mentioned- they're parasites, a cancer on the game.

Besides, LS Dynamis can be covered by the LS bank via HNM drops and currency (or just HNM drops if the LS is funding an LS relic), anyway. I've also heard of cases where people split the cost among the attendants, and even ones where somebody sponsors the run in exchange for currency. 1 million gil isn't much given the fact that its a large group of 1-4 alliances that go.

[Max™]

1 Million gil for the person isn't so bad.

1 Million gil vanishing from the server twice a week, for every Dynamis shell on that server, is bad given how little gil comes back into the server.

[Khamsin]

1 Million gil for the person isn't so bad.

1 Million gil vanishing from the server twice a week, for every Dynamis shell on that server, is bad given how little gil comes back into the server.

Keep in mind this is exactly how SE had to have intended it when they came up with the pricing scheme in the first place. They would have set prices based on a non-inflated RMT-less economy, and didn't set prices with the anticipation that RMT would come in and cause unwelcome massive inflation.

[Melchiah]

One of our LS bank mule accounts was banned in this cycle. SE told our officer who had the account they wouldn't discuss details with him because he couldn't provide the original registration codes, which is in direct opposition to what they've told everyone else lately.

So apparently, if they say your LS bank mule is an RMT because it trades 2M gil a week for your dynamis runs you have to have original reg codes, but if you get hacked you have to have current CC number. I have to say this makes dick for sense to me.

Edit: Relevant info: The bank mule was kept on an account one of our officers inherited from a friend who quit. SE won't tell us dick nor shit about why it was banned. That account and the officer's main are paid for on the same CC. Officer got nailed for fleehacking on his main once two years ago and hasn't fucked with that stuff since. Officer's main account perfectly functional, they just banned our bank mule account.

Edit: I tell you this because I'd hate to see any of you guys who are involved in End Game LS leadership have the same thing happen to you, so if you keep LS bank mules on a separate account, beware since they seem to have adjusted their criteria for RMT banning. Keep your bank mules on your main accounts, or at least make sure you can provide the original reg codes for accounts you inherit from others.

[Toksyuryel]

I would have to say that NPC prices are typical of pretty much every FF game. The problem, as I see it, is that when SE removed the "exploits", what they really removed was the methods that legit players had to generate the gil needed for those expenditures simply because RMT could spam it 100 times an hour 24/7, and they never implemented anything to replace it. Put simply, they are not simply getting rid of "exploits" but rather reducing the means available to create gil without adding a suitable replacement. This kind of short-sighted action is what will ultimately lead to a full-blown economic crash if they don't change their tune and start balancing this.

P.S.: This isn't to say that I don't believe there are exploits at all- a good example of an exploit would be a high level quest with a good gil item that can be done at level 1 if you have high level help; put a level requirement on that and you get rid of the exploit without taking the gil source away.

[Catrina]

Don't forget that there are still plenty of RMT, and regular players, injecting plenty of gil into the system through NPCing.


Examples: tThere's the bird blood price,and they also farm dhalmels to exhaustion in Buburimu. Those are fast kills for alv40-50, have very nice drop rates of items that NPC for 200 ish gil apiece and they drop often. And plenty others like that. And if prices continue to deflate, they'll be right back to killing gigas non stop. And the list goes on to repeatable quests like quadav helms,etcetcetc

There's still plenty of money coming in and there always will be.