square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

[aegina]

Squaresoft seems to want us to think they are letting gilsellers get out of hand because they can’t do anything about it. But that’s wrong. There are many things they can do, and I don’t mean “Ban the gilfarmer accounts.”


For example, suppose they made it where you could not have more than 1 million gil in your inbox at a time, unless it was from the ah. the rest is returned to sender. This would make it a tiny bit harder for the companies to send gil to customers in massive quantities. They would be forced to meet you in game, to trade it.

so then you say that you cannot have more than, say 1 million gil on your person at a time. The rest is held in a “bank” by the ah or someplace. You can buy off the ah like normal, you just can’t trade more than you have on your person at a time. After trading that 1 million, you must go to the bank npc and ask him to send some gil to your inbox, and there is a slight delay in the transaction.This will make buying more than one or two million gil or so a bit frustrating for the gilbuyer, so he buys less, while not interfering too badly with the economy (how often do you need more than 1 million gil on you at a time? Not counting ah purchases of course).

There are more things you could do along these lines, but i think you get the idea. My point is, se makes a big show like there’s nothing they can do, when in fact, they are simply doing nothing because they choose not to.

[Omniblast]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

You would need to set up larger purchases available for those people that vend in Rolanberry Fields. Items go up there in price up to 50 M that I have seen over there. Idea isn't bad, but lots of things to work out.

See my previous posts on other ways to deal with the economy.

Com'n now let's just think of ways we can fix this without killing each other. I just thought of another great way.

Instant Bazaar tax: This doesn't tax the person paying, but the person selling. It's 1% * the number of hours logged into ffxi. Maximum penalty of 90% of gil will be deducted.
Wanna sell Kraken Club for 99M? that's gonna be 90 M tax buddy. You get to keep 9M.
All trading during this period will be maxed at 1 mil per trade. All Gil delivery during this period will be limited to 1 mil per delivery.

Guild items from 1-60 per craft, no limit: Allows you to buy any item for crafting with no limits on how many is sold from the guild at a reasonable price. I.E. 10k for Darksteel Ore. 10k for Gold Ore etc etc.

AF2 NPC: NPC selling AF2 pieces at 10 mil each. Job must be 75 to purchase for that particular job.
Dynamis coins: 5 Million gil each per 100 coin

Optical Hat NPC: 5 Million

1 Earth day Auction house: You want to sell your item? you better lower the price or pay AH fees continuously to keep on listing that item.

Teleport NPC to any Telepoint = 5 K per teleport

The whole purpose of these items is to REMOVE GIL FROM THE ECONOMY.

Technically SE CAN step in, they just choose not to.

[aegina]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

i had some ideas that would work out bazaars, but they were a bit long to post here. you would buy from bazaars from the bank in the above example.

my point was that se CAN try to take steps to slow rmt trade, they simply don't want to. and even slowing it would be better than doing nothing at all

[Macht]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

Trying to interupt money trade like you are suggesting at a glance looks productive but instead all you are doing is forcing the rmt to refine itself. Now instead of selling gil the gilfarmers get more invasive into the system and start to strangle more of the equipment released. Now the rmt becomes a purchase of virtual items (which is a side part of these gil seller sites).

You can't mess with the nature of money and have it work successfully. The main reason is that even though you hurt the gilbuyers that way you also harm the legit players. You end up cutting of your nose to spite your face, the best system really is to attack the gil sellers and the gil buyers only.

The potential to do so is there if they design databases right and better logged the in-game actions that occured. Just that alone would reduce it. I mean it isn't that hard to have the system write to a log whenever a player trades or sends through delivery box 1mil or more gil (or whatever large quantities and/or frequency of gill recieved).

If I can track my companies customers by people who purchase a certain amount of times of a specific item from us or makes single (or total) purchases higher then a certain amount I'm positive SE could develop the game to do similar (If they haven't already or are in process of doing so). That way players that are gil sellers and the potential accounts involved with the actions should stick out easy from other players.

[little ninja]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

S.E is working together with other known gil seller operations ige, mogs, ect. lets face it S.E is a buisness like everyone says. an what do buisness's try to do. they try to corner the market on everything that deals with their product. S.E is no different then any motion picture company. game company ect.

[Omniblast]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

S.E. can always turn around and start selling Characters & Gil to people in the server for real money i.e. Sony. That's exactly what Sony did for Everquest. I remember there was another game (Dark Ages of Camelot?) that allowed you to buy the first 20 levels of a character or something like that.

Just Imagine, paying $500.00 to start out at level 60 with AF1 completed, Missions up to 6 are completed, 0 gil, Mog house expansion 2 done, Gobbie Bag 2 done, level 6 fame in all cities. All Avatars without Fenrir (pay $100.00 more for Fenrir). All Subjobs unlocked & level 30, Main Job level 60. No shield, neck, earrings, amunition, ranged, rings, back, waist items and obviously Genkai 1-3 done.

Question is... Would you want to start like that? I've got the money now, if I started FFXI I probably would want to start like that. (lol then you'll get the level 60 n00b party in The Boyada Tree or Bibiki Bay)

[little ninja]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

from what i gather thats why people got turned off from sony an everquest. im not sure how many remember those days. thus why i posted it in general. but that is why this issomething S.E fears. so inturn they go thru routes of the gil selling companies. an at the end of the month these gil selling companies cut S.E a portion of the earnings. thats why gil sellers never been banned, S.E is protecting its other interests.

[Olin Uzzo]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

S.E is working together with other known gil seller operations ige, mogs, ect. lets face it S.E is a buisness like everyone says. an what do buisness's try to do. they try to corner the market on everything that deals with their product. S.E is no different then any motion picture company. game company ect.

You are probably expecting a bunch of people to call you crazy or paranoid, but I actually kind of agree. I have no way of knowing any of this for sure, but from what I know it seems entirely possible and would explain how virtual currency farmers get away with so much.

I will try to keep this short. Have any of you been to MMORPG.com? A lot of people have a problem with the site, because they advertise IGE, have banners for them everywhere. Lineage 2 (bah, mentioned this twice today, I have played other games!) has either the biggest currency selling problem or it has sparked the most controversy over it, because not only is it really hard to get anything in that game, but (somewhat like FFXI) they have problems with the actual farmers interfering with gameplay; except on lineage 2 it's not just named mobs it's whole dungeons sometimes (because under the right conditions you can make a lot of money just killing mobs and pickin gup what adena they drop).

So anyway, lineage 2 has a huge problem with farmers that they always say they are against and working against (and it breaks the EULA of course) in response to the many many outcries from the players. In the MMORPG.com forums, in the specific Lineage 2 forums, people often post links to private (illegal) servers. When they do, the mods always lock it and always post something to this degree..."I have spoken directly to the developers of Lineage 2, and private servers are definately illegal." and they also always say "Thanks for the tip, now I"m going to send this to the Lineage 2 developers so they can get it shut down".

In fact, in the second kind of responses they often use the developers' first names only! They are on a first name basis with the developers! My point here if it hasn't hit you is, if these guys are so close, why wouldn't Lineage 2 ever tell mmorpg.com to stop advertising for IGE, or why wouldn't Lineage 2 stop advertising on mmorpg.com or at least quit being such good buddies with them. I guess it's possible the mod is only bluffing, but considering all the other times they have worked directly with Lineage 2 and other game companies and developers for promotional things, special announcements about games that mmorpg.com gets first, etc...
Which of course begs the question why don't any of those companies say anything to them or complain.

Not to mention, when someone posted in the Lineage 2 forums of mmorpg.com attempting to trade accounts (usually trade, sometimes sell) their posts were instantly locked, and the mods over there to talk about breaking the games EULA's when they advertise IGE that helps people sell and trade accounts!!

Two other points, but obviously not as good as the earlier ones, are the fact that when people blame farmers for ruining special events by picking up the event items and just discarding them because they of no use to them, the Lineage 2 people say "well we have the logs and this isn't what happened" which makes me think well if they know farmers didn't get them then wouldn't they have to know who the farmers are?

but of course the way I worded their response leaves open the possibility that they saw that no one picked up the event items, but they never said anything like that and I just remember the specific wording and response making me think they did know who the farmers were. And yes, I realize, even if they common sense knew who the farmers were it would not necessarily be enough to warrant them doing something to the farmer.

Anyone who played Lineage 2 (at least at that time, dunno exactly what it's like now) at least felt very strongly that normal players could be punished and banned all the time for things that farmers could get away with. The same farmers would be online for 24 hours a day botting and using hacks and exploits (especially when other players tried to take matters into their own hands and fight them) and remain untouched for months and months, no matter how many times they were reported, while many players were banned for things they didn't even do like botting etc. (of course no one knows for sure if they really didn't do it).

I know these last two points are very iffy but the first two you can see for yourself.

After reading some of the previous posts I wanted to add something about the game sanctioned currency, item, etc selling. I know the poster that mentioned that didn't bring it up to contest anyone, but anyway, I am pretty sure that MMO companies would make a lot more money by sharing with the illegitimate farmers.

I want to equate it with something like drugs or something, that when illegal costs ten times as much as it would if it were legal (I need a better analogy or explanation but I think you'd agree), or simply the fact that if the MMO company wanted to actually spawn items and coin to sell, they know people would never pay as much for the items and things, knowing that all the company had to do was spawn them just like that.

[Rufeo]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

Also, the Official FFXI Website has links to GilSellers on thier very own site. Why if they were trying to stop this would they give the links to people?

[bikkebakke]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

Where are these links? I've never seen them.

[Olin Uzzo]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

I'm not sure what Rufeo is talking about. I didn't see anything on the official site. I thought maybe he meant they link to community sites that have links to gil sellers. There are at least a few mmos I know of that do that.

The most I found was one of the links in community for a linkshell had ads by google for gil sellers, like 4.

It's possible I didn't look at absolutely everything and I might not be seeing all ads for various reasons (browsers, antispy etc.)

[Anaki]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

Also, the Official FFXI Website has links to GilSellers on thier very own site. Why if they were trying to stop this would they give the links to people?

you keep saying this but there ARE NO LINKS so like shut up <.< or give us a screeny.

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/sho...2&page=1&pp=20 <.< is where he said it last :x and never replied to where the links are (made up)

[aegina]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

I mean it isn't that hard to have the system write to a log whenever a player trades or sends through delivery box 1mil or more gil (or whatever large quantities and/or frequency of gill recieved).

If I can track my companies customers by people who purchase a certain amount of times of a specific item from us or makes single (or total) purchases higher then a certain amount I'm positive SE could develop the game to do similar (If they haven't already or are in process of doing so). That way players that are gil sellers and the potential accounts involved with the actions should stick out easy from other players.

ok, so your idea was better than mine.

but you have proven my point, that se could do a lot more than they are doing now, if they wanted to.

obviously they don't want to, for one reason or another. but you've all made some very good points.

[Plenum]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

A good way to get rid of that problem is making money that exists in the game to go out of the system.

If someone has 1,000,000 gil they buy item's they need from NPC there for getting rid of gil from the system.

But what is there besides hourglass that people spend more than 1,000,000 gil on (maybe excpet that subligar from taz safehold 7 mil) There has to be more.

Such as, buying merit point like things, Say you can buy Attk ++ or HP++ for 20-30 million gil etc.

That way its harder for gilsellers to work. Because the way they make money is they sell gil and then sell items for a high price therefore the gil comes back. The gil needs to get out of the system so gilsellers dont make money(real money).

By getting gil out of the system the gilsellers cant sell items for a high price casue no can afford it and the gil they buy from gilsellers will slowly delpete getting them out of business or forcing them to sell items cheaper or no profits.

[Manatra]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

Trying to get rid of gilsellers is a near herculean task that realistically, cannot be accomplished. Blizzard for example has been quite public about its campaign against gold sellers, yet there are constantly new farmers popping up. Unfortunately, while most of the ideas here are good, they are pretty much all bandaid solutions to the problem of gilsellers :\

The thing with FFXI is that it was designed at a time when account selling, gil selling, etc. weren't exactly common, and not really seen as problems. Thus, SE never really put any safeguards into the core mechanics of the way the game and the way items work in FFXI to keep the economy in check should such a situation arise. Though they've been trying to limit the effect of gil sellers inflating the economy, they only way SE would be able to actually stop the problem is to revamp the core mechanics of how items are obtainted and the way the Auction House works. Unfortunately such changes would potentially have the effect of unravelling the whole game itself and probably make SE lose a lot more money than what the gil sellers are currently making them lose.

Thus for the consumer it's a lose/lose situation, and the only way I can see SE getting themselves out of this corner is basically nullifyying the relevance of most items across the level ranges. Which is why I think over the coming months (and especially with the expansion) we will see a massive influx of /EX gear through out the level ranges that will be gotten through quests, missions, and BCNM/ENMs that will be equivelant/better than the current gear available. Essentially I believe SE will be providing a ton of gear that is /EX that will be available to those that quest for it that is comparable/better to much of the equipment currently available now. It's time for some good ol' mudflation.

But in the immediate future, there is not much SE can do... the game simply wasn't designed with gilsellers factored into the equation, and I don't think at the time they could have foreseen that gilsellers would have been a problem.