square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

[Moaku Hyena]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

that can very well work but dont dmmy account buy ban. instead many dummy accounts. many buying. and then a nice long list. and own fowl swoop. also monitoring of em i bet the accunts taht send the gil have 0 gil on em and just receive then send as a way to prevent the this person sent gil and thus they are the gil seller /delete

What he is saying is gather up the people who buy Gil from the apparent Gilsellers through some way of tracking. Get them all on a nice list and then delete their characters. Also, I think he is saying intercepting the Gil before it is given to the Gilbuyer is an idea.

Interesting points, but not without its flaws. For one, if Gilsellers delete characters constantly and even kill accounts, then that means that they're very difficult to track with a list if they move around on accounts like that. You may end up getting an innocent player on that list with this method.

Second point is an interesting idea. If SE can intercept large quantities of Gil from KNOWN Gilsellers... then they can stop transactions of Gil. However, finding the known Gilsellers would require some explicit monitoring and unbiased judgement before confirming that player X is a Gilseller.

[aegina]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

deleting the gilbuyer accounts is a bad idea, and the various mmo companies know it, too. all online games have a problem with rmt to a point, and they all follow a more or less similar tactic of leaving the buyer-the customer- alone, and trying to stop the company itself from farming/selling. our only gripe with se is that they don't *seem* to do enough to stop the farmers.

and if you deleted the accounts of everyone who ever buys their gil, ffxi would go out of business. just too many people do it.

[Moaku Hyena]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

deleting the gilbuyer accounts is a bad idea, and the various mmo companies know it, too. all online games have a problem with rmt to a point, and they all follow a more or less similar tactic of leaving the buyer-the customer- alone, and trying to stop the company itself from farming/selling. our only gripe with se is that they don't *seem* to do enough to stop the farmers.

and if you deleted the accounts of everyone who ever buys their gil, ffxi would go out of business. just too many people do it.

Yeah, that's the sad part. Too many people buy gil, and that encourages inflation. The IGE XMas is the perfect example of what Gilbuyers can do to inflate the economy.

I remember a similiar story that happened in Everquest, actually. However, no Xmas sale was the cause. One hacker created dupebags and was passing around free platinum to everyone. Yes, he literally created Platinum with a keystroke. In under 14 hours the auction house's prices rose somewhere between 14% to 314%.

SOE caught it and killed the account that made the Platinum. They reversed the damage, to what extent I do not know.


Now let's relate that to the XMas sale that IGE had. In under a day, the economy inflated by 300-3000%. Holy crap. Why? The Gilbuyers pulled in more Gil into the economy, but unlike EQ, it was not free. A risky and evil tactic? Yep.

[Balfree]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

Actually i'm surprised IGE hasnt done this more often.. i mean they could make their gil cheaper and cheaper in order to sell more and more until the game economy is so fucked up that they can just rise the gil price again and people will be forced to buy it since it will have gotten to the point where it is no longer worth farming or crafting whatsoever. You know what, i wish this would happen, so that people could learn the hard way that buying gil means you win now, but lose later. Unless you buy every single item in the game now before they decide to pull that prank.

[Aeni]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

that can very well work but dont dmmy account buy ban. instead many dummy accounts. many buying. and then a nice long list. and own fowl swoop. also monitoring of em i bet the accunts taht send the gil have 0 gil on em and just receive then send as a way to prevent the this person sent gil and thus they are the gil seller /delete

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52640

Why I think that's a horrible idea. You won't be able to backtrack the cocaine trail just from a delivery boy IRL, so why do you think you can backtrack to the gil sellers with this method? Need to go research tried and true methods of law enforcement officers. Stings don't even work anymore unless you can somehow lure the upper levels of the whole operation, which in this game, can never happen due to the system put in place, both by the gil selling companies and by SE.

[Yossar]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52640

Why I think that's a horrible idea. You won't be able to backtrack the cocaine trail just from a delivery boy IRL, so why do you think you can backtrack to the gil sellers with this method? Need to go research tried and true methods of law enforcement officers. Stings don't even work anymore unless you can somehow lure the upper levels of the whole operation, which in this game, can never happen due to the system put in place, both by the gil selling companies and by SE.

Very true, plus S-E would have to invest its own money in those stings. When law enforcement agencies do stings, they don't expect the criminals to keep the money afterwards, IGE would, and they would take that $15 or whatever and just make a new account to replace the one that was deleated. Since IGE buys their gil in bulk from overseas and sells it to NA people, they don't have to worry about losing a lvl 60 character that is constantly camping NMs. They mearly use their chars for holding and transfering gil and what not.

[Aeni]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

They mearly use their chars for holding and transfering gil and what not.

They can also buy accounts with high level characters. $500 for a 75 BLM is peanuts to a company that might be taking in $5,000 an hour in sales. SE can nix an alliance of level 75 farmers only to see 18 brand new faces within a day or two.

[Rodin]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

For those of you who don't think gilbuying is that big of a problem, this was from the ragnarok server's IGE link. Thanks to Sussurus for the picture.



Right now, prices are falling on our server. People in my LS didn't believe that it was IGE causing the problem. They thought it was "greedy ass crafters" that were causing all the inflation. None of them took a simple high school economic's course apparently. One cause of inlfation is money being put into circulation faster than it can be taken out. If you have these IGE mules storing 200+ million gil on each one, waiting for it to be bought, then it's not in circulation. But, when the gil becomes sold, and is introduced onto a server, at that rate, there's hundreds of millions of more available gil. And people are going to buy some "nice stuff". The prices of some of the best endgame gear SKYROCKETED on Ragnarok. Because since these people have the gil, they want to buy, and with more people wanting to buy, there's mroe demand on the product. Which in turn, causes a rise in the prices. Which is much like IRL inflation. But right now, our economy is deflating. Now that all these gilbuyers have the items they want, crafters are using the gil to level subs, and make more gear. Which that in turn, takes money out of the economy faster than Chocobos, Dynamis, and Airship rides combined.

[Yossar]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

For those of you who don't think gilbuying is that big of a problem, this was from the ragnarok server's IGE link. Thanks to Sussurus for the picture.

Right now, prices are falling on our server. People in my LS didn't believe that it was IGE causing the problem. They thought it was "greedy ass crafters" that were causing all the inflation. None of them took a simple high school economic's course apparently. One cause of inlfation is money being put into circulation faster than it can be taken out. If you have these IGE mules storing 200+ million gil on each one, waiting for it to be bought, then it's not in circulation. But, when the gil becomes sold, and is introduced onto a server, at that rate, there's hundreds of millions of more available gil. And people are going to buy some "nice stuff". The prices of some of the best endgame gear SKYROCKETED on Ragnarok. Because since these people have the gil, they want to buy, and with more people wanting to buy, there's mroe demand on the product. Which in turn, causes a rise in the prices. Which is much like IRL inflation. But right now, our economy is deflating. Now that all these gilbuyers have the items they want, crafters are using the gil to level subs, and make more gear. Which that in turn, takes money out of the economy faster than Chocobos, Dynamis, and Airship rides combined.

Glad to see someone else has taken Econ courses before, too. ^^ I've found it very annoying lately when people try to analyze this ingame economy without taking things like this into account.

[Kailea]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

Simple.....GM or SE employee creates a charater

1) Buy small amount of gil
2) recive gill and make a note of charater name
3) delete account related to charater and ban CC of said account

result.......IGE looses an account and can not reuse that CC to get another account, FFXI has to be bought again and a new CC would have to be obtaioned to get another account, and some gil and money wil be lost....do this enuff and they will start haveing problems.

[Yossar]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

Simple.....GM or SE employee creates a charater

1) Buy small amount of gil
2) recive gill and make a note of charater name
3) delete account related to charater and ban CC of said account

result.......IGE looses an account and can not reuse that CC to get another account, FFXI has to be bought again and a new CC would have to be obtaioned to get another account, and some gil and money wil be lost....do this enuff and they will start haveing problems.

S-E will never do this and I don't blame them. First off, they have to actually buy the gil, and they won't be refunded, so there is $20 buck down the drain. Second, IGE isn't stupid, their gil is spread across many differant characters. Deleteing one character while giving them $20 to start a new one isn't going to affect them. IGE is company as well, they'll have no problem getting a new CC or whatever. For all we know they use the ever changing VISA Gift Cards. So, if S-E did try to "sting" IGE, all they would be doing is putting more money into their pockets.

[Canuklehead]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

S-E will never do this and I don't blame them. First off, they have to actually buy the gil, and they won't be refunded, so there is $20 buck down the drain. Second, IGE isn't stupid, their gil is spread across many differant characters. Deleteing one character while giving them $20 to start a new one isn't going to affect them. IGE is company as well, they'll have no problem getting a new CC or whatever. For all we know they use the ever changing VISA Gift Cards. So, if S-E did try to "sting" IGE, all they would be doing is putting more money into their pockets.

I was just thinking of something after reading this, and wanted to see what you thought...

First off, $20 to a company like SE is pennies. Infact, they could invest upwards of $1000 and still be well off with the amount of subscribers.

Secondly, can SE ban the account associated with the characters? Like, invalidate the registration code that the PlayOnline account used to register with? Why ban the character when you can just ban the whole account. Then the sellers would have to buy a new copy of the game for the registration code to play... ultimately putting that $20 back in SE coffers.

Just a thought.

[Yossar]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

I was just thinking of something after reading this, and wanted to see what you thought...

First off, $20 to a company like SE is pennies. Infact, they could invest upwards of $1000 and still be well off with the amount of subscribers.

Secondly, can SE ban the account associated with the characters? Like, invalidate the registration code that the PlayOnline account used to register with? Why ban the character when you can just ban the whole account. Then the sellers would have to buy a new copy of the game for the registration code to play... ultimately putting that $20 back in SE coffers.

Just a thought.

They would not only have to throw down money for it, but they would have to pay people to organize and do it. In the corporate world, that means quite a few people. Then you'll have to factor in the resources and time, and ultimatley you're barely going to scratch IGE. Even if, as you say, they were to think of it like that, what point would there be if S-E broke even by forcing IGE to buy a new copy of the the game? There still going to have many accounts, and you're not really slowing them up that much. To S-E, it's just not worth the effort.

S-E needs to continue to concentrate on the source of the problem. IGE does not have chars that farm and camp NMs and what not. They buy their gil in bulk from overseas. The only way to really stop the gil selling is to get rid of those camping accounts. It's makes much more sense to ban a party of lvl 60+s that constantly camp an NM, than to ban the lvl 1 char that sends you some gil. Lvl 1 chars can easily be replaced, lvl 60+ at least requires a little (granted, not that much) effort. Much more than creating a lvl 1.

Maybe S-E could do a little bit more to combat this, but the fact of the matter is, time and time again, gil sellers find a way to adapt. They always figure out a way. There is so much money to be made in that business, with little overhead cost, that there are plenty of people willing to do it. As long as there are idiots out there that are willing to throw down twenty or forty dollars on video game money, there will always be someone out there willing to sell it to them.

[aegina]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

so what you're saying is, a lot of that extra gil that had been added in through fish-botting craze has been held out of the economy, stored on the gilsellers' mules. the christmas buying frenzy simply put it back into circulation.

again, the big problem wasn't the gilselling, it was the fishbotting a few months ago...

[Yossar]

Re: square enix and their infamous gilseller problem

so what you're saying is, a lot of that extra gil that had been added in through fish-botting craze has been held out of the economy, stored on the gilsellers' mules. the christmas buying frenzy simply put it back into circulation.

again, the big problem wasn't the gilselling, it was the fishbotting a few months ago...

Yes, specifically the Rusty Caps thing that S-E took forever to fix.