Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

[Vadrace]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

Certain consumables are NPC bought, potions and elixirs are player made and sold on the AH. But, its much easier to be able to make an alt that has alchemy or whatever to make your own. And the AH sells a lot of gear too. THere's a huge racket in lower bracket twink items, and level capped epics to get alts off the ground quicker. But one thing about that is, that gear is GONE once its equiped, so you dont get a market that basically becomes flooded because those items never get bound to the character (except for the new augs for the higher level crafted stuff). The AH is a great way to make money in WoW. There is tons goin on there, you just have to find a good item or part of the market thats maintainable and that you can keep at a level you can keep it at without losing too much money. Its pretty fun to do. Its hard to do that when you're limited to 7 items at a time.

[Durahansolo]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

Its hard to do that when you're limited to 7 items at a time.

Durahan + 2 Jeuno Mules = 21 items

I think the reason we're limited to 7 items is because there would definently be 1000 of certain items on the AH and eventually "Supply >>>>>>> Demand" and price drop. It is rare when I have 21 items on the AH, but if I do echo drops, I might HQ enough to have maybe 30 stacks. Those would all be sold by the time I get home from work. Back when I started there would be 100+ crystals on the AH pretty much all of the time in the starter cities, and then eventually they started to drop down to mere hundreds of gil from thousands. I only started 3 years ago so I don't remember when certain crystals were a arm and a leg to buy, but i remember for sure that light crystals were 9k. When i started crafting Holy Waters in alchemy...I shuddered when I thought of the price of light crystals, but by that time they were 2k/stack.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

Yeah I don't see a lot of things being AHed though, even with my Tailoring I'll sometimes throw some things on the AH and I'm guessing they are purchased by enchanters for DE purposes, not really for gearing. The AH isn't constantly relied upon in WoW as a source of income the way it is in FF, though. I still make most of my gold from dailies and NPCing things.

I'm talking about in FFXI though, you don't buy any consumables really from the NPCs, maybe some antidotes but really, potions and elixirs are useless in FFXI because of the small amount of HP/MP they restore for the cost, and things like shihei, mithkabobs, and silent oils aren't sold by NPCs anyway (well maybe shihei? In Norg maybe? But who runs all the way to Norg to buy that shit?), so you have to rely on the playerbase for things that you will need in order to level. And often the amount of money spent in one day is not equal to the amount of money you make back in a day, on average, without making an extraneous effort to go out and make gil.

That's the difference. In WoW, I don't go out of my way to make gold. It just comes in as I'm doing other things. There's no farming. I can craft but it's not a primary source of income for me, just a way for me to make some gear for myself and some small profits from making bags. In FFXI, I have to stop doing some things and make the effort to gather things that will eventually be converted into gil by some means, usually the AH.

Neither way is bad. But there's no comparing really, since the systems are so vastly different. It is why a lot of people probably think making gil in FFXI is so hard, because you don't just get it while in the course of an xp party or while raising your Windy fame. You have to go out of your way to get it. I wouldn't say that it makes WoW too easy, just means that if you want to save/make more gold, you just do more dailies per day instead of going on raids. I guess that's kind of a way of "farming" in WoW, but it's not nearly the same methodology as in FFXI.

Still, the fact that the economy is based largely on what players set as prices for items means that gil made in a typical Vana'diel day will not really equal what you may have to spend. Would putting some common consumables such as silent oils, prism powders, some popular foods, and ninja tools on various NPCs throughout the world help? It would indeed alleviate some of the stress on players who do not wish to farm, but then it kills the people who made their money off making these things. No winning, there. If it had been the way I just suggested from the start, then I could say it would be viable, as the people who would have relied on consumables selling as income would have found something else.

It really is pretty difficult to balance a game economy. I don't think the RMT would ever go away. I will say that I still believe that the RMT tells need to be stopped somehow, if only because they are a huge fucking annoyance to players who are not interested in their sales. Players don't send hundreds of other players tells advertising our services, "Hello! 100+3 Leathercrafting, your materials, 5k! Mention code LTH74 for a special discount!" - they'd get blisted by everyone they sent that to. Shout works for shit like that. Tell is considered invasive, it's like telemarketing. It has to be stopped somehow, even if they can't get rid of RMT. They won't, btw, ever. But if someone wants to buy gil, the tell isn't helping really, it's just as easy to go to Google, type "FFXI gil buy" and three zillion sites pop up. The tells need to fucking stop.

[Durahansolo]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

"Hello! 100+3 Leathercrafting, your materials, 5k! Mention code LTH74 for a special discount!" - they'd get blisted by everyone they sent that to.

Stolen for Sig

Edit>> I guess you can also add campaign to the list of ways to get gil if you are really lucky. I earned almost 100k in drops last night. I got a O.Bronzepiece and a Swamp Ore.

[Elwynn]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

What do you do for it? I've always felt that I had to go in with the "primo" setup to do any, mostly because anytime I asked to do it, people always asked if I had such and such to do it before they would commit to coming. So, I've done few BCNMs because I dont have the jobs that the primo groups want.

Royal Jelly (BCNM)/Strategies - FFXIclopedia

[Aksannyi]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

Also, I forgot to add this before, but in WoW, there is no "stop what you're doing and navigate the GM menu, and then type an actual sentence about someone harassing you with tells" method of reporting. You right-click their name, down comes a dropdown menu, and you select "Report." A small box pops up and asks "Report Heweodfioerfdfa for spamming?" [Yes] [No], you click on yes, and your day is hardly interrupted. SE needs at the very least, a "Report" button in the menu, and when it comes up, you just type in the name of the person you want to report. Then it sends it to the GMs, like a POL message, and you can be on your happy way. No response needed, banhammer incoming.

Also, this was posted on BG in a similar RMT discussion thread:

They have alot of different routes. they'll spam /shout or /say in the main cities for hours on end mostly.

Although, they DO sometimes have good ideas. Like the most recent one:

Wasn't originally spoilered on BG but it's kinda big so meh

I gotta give them creativity credit for that one. Pretty funny to see too. They mr. argus like 100 accounts into the sky, form the letters, and let them all drop and die into formation. Stays around for a while too, because the GMs have to ban those one by one. Be lucky ffxi is limited to /t spam so far.

Have to hand it to them for creativity, at least. I guess we can be glad in another way that we can't fall from high places in FFXI. (And also that stupid mountain in Parradamo Tor would cease to exist ... hmmm ... maybe we should be able to fall!)

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

That's the difference. In WoW, I don't go out of my way to make gold. It just comes in as I'm doing other things. There's no farming. I can craft but it's not a primary source of income for me, just a way for me to make some gear for myself and some small profits from making bags. In FFXI, I have to stop doing some things and make the effort to gather things that will eventually be converted into gil by some means, usually the AH.

It really depends on how much gil one is using. AH is inescapable, but not everyone needs to spend extraordinary effort to keep afloat in gil.

I've a reasonably equipped RDM and PLD and those are my main jobs, so most of day-to-day spending is on consumables rather than gears. That said, I did get bunch of magic damage reduction gear, two NQ cursed items (A.Abj) for my BRD, bunch of mid level gear for my SAM, and material to upgrade from 70->75 gobbie bag in the past two and half months, too.

Yet, the amount of gil I have went up from about 1.1 mil to 1.5 mil in the same period, with only two BCNM in the category of major "out to get gil" activity.

I haven't farmed for gil in last two and half months; the gear purchases and my supply of Shihei, sushi, Marinara Pizza, Pescatora, Silent Oil, Prism Powder, (lot's of) RR items, etc. is mostly sustained by random drops and gardening (which I often left fallow a few days between cycles. lol... All flower pots are empty at the moment).

* * *

Even leaving out gardening, most activities I do seem to have at least a little bit of positive gil-flow.

Each Ro'Maeve Water we get seems to come with a stack and half of Magic Pot Shard and many more stacks of Light Crystal for me. Every Genbu fight ends in a seal, which is 3-4k after splitting (yes, I sell those and split. XD ), plus a Venomous Claw occasionally. Our rules for ZNM is that we sell stuff people can't use and split the gil. The weekly Salvage is often 16-40k profit from selling my share of Alexandrites.

Even the occasional soloing on SAM and SCH while waiting for party invite is also good for drops and B/K seals, just like the skilling up polearm on PLD I did last week. Assault runs to help friend get Captain is filling my mule with bunch of Hi-Potion/Ether tanks and Hi-Potion +2/3--slowly liquidating those for space, so more income.

The latest income: Catching up on some Altana quests I've been neglecting, I made 100k+ gil last night from gil and item rewards. (Did only three quests... More next week...)

There are exceptions, of course; the major ones are meriting and exp'ing in party, Limbus (since I don't sell ABCs), and Dynamis (doing mostly Dreamworld zones). Otherwise, even the Campaign Battle is now a gil making activity on the side.

* * *

Did everyone catch how SE is requiring Verified by Visa and Secure Code (Master Card) for new CC's? This looks like a direct assault on RMTs using stolen credit cards. Not sure if it would do anything for the trial accounts used by RMT ad bots, though...

Has anyone actually tried a trial account? I really have very little idea what is involved.

[Jguy]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

I'm sorry if this has been mentioned before...but why not just spam filter the URL's or anything else that the bots or RMT's may say. Lots of different MMORPG's spamfilter different links, words, and even names of other RPG's (which is just lame). IRC servers can do it, AIM does it, why not the POL client/FF XI itself? It could be hard coded into the client, AND if one's programming skills are up-to par, you could even send a GM Call should someone attempt to type anything with the RMT spamfilter word(s) in it, with the exact text of what was said. This would be a whole lot easier on GM's and a whole lot less annoying for regular players to be killing something and see:

Jguy starts casting Fire.
laksjvasfgl>> Buy FF XI gil from #1 source blah blah blah
Jguy casts Fire.

etc etc.

discuss.

[Takelli]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

That filter option has been discussed many times. But it will bother legit players as well. RMTs will even find a way around it.

Say... You are trying to direct some one to your myspace. www.myspace.com/blahblahblahXYZblahblahbalh wont work, as it will be blocked out of the filter. So... You gotta do www//myspace//com, and some shit like that. And then if SE tries to change it even more to prevent any form of .com, or www. or www. name here .com, then it will get out of hand, and legit players will get pissed, because they cant direct people to their website, or their LS site, or forum or some such.

[Aksannyi]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

rmtsite.com ===> r m t s i t e . c o m

Took me 10 seconds to break the filter.

Made the name fake instead of a real one, wouldn't want to send anyone over there.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

Thank you! ^^

[odjnlinus]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

I'd say if they really wanted to stop the whole taking advatage of the FFXI economy, the first step would be to change the Auction House and how it works.

Instead of players putting an item on Auction House and then setting a price, the game should be made to where the game automatically sets up a retail value price of that particular item adding in terms of the availablity and how hard it is to find that weapon and put them at a set price. That way players are not taking advantage of an item that is normally out of stock, so when they put the only item up there, it's always at a ridiculous price. Example the other day I went to purchase some H2H weapons for my Monk that was normally priced at 10k but then when I actually bought the item it cost me 45k...

I mean why would anyone in their right mind set the price that frickin high. That's just being stingy and abnoxious.

It also works both ways for that player looking to buy some cheap pieces of armor and they are on a budget, they can know that they will have enough money to buy *said* item and not lose an arm and a leg along with their entire savings of gil.

I don't know it's an idea I came up with after that H2H weapons thing and personally I feel it would work out perfectly, sure that real greedy player will complain but pfft who gives a crap about them. if they want to be that stinkin rich go buy gil or something.

[Taskmage]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

Step 1: Don't reward people that put an item on the AH for 4x the going rate by actually paying their asking price. <_<;

[Neverslip]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

... just saying...

I don't see lil Ant-trains of RMT's anymore in Port Sandy or Basty Mines... was getting pretty crazy there for a lil while.

[Ziero]

Re: Hypothetical RMT countermeasure

They changed the returns from gardening lowering what you can harvest on accounts less then 3 months old, so the Gardening bots lost a lot of income to the point where it's not worth using that method anymore.

That filter option has been discussed many times. But it will bother legit players as well. RMTs will even find a way around it.

Say... You are trying to direct some one to your myspace. www.myspace.com/blahblahblahXYZblahblahbalh wont work, as it will be blocked out of the filter. So... You gotta do www//myspace//com, and some shit like that. And then if SE tries to change it even more to prevent any form of .com, or www. or www. name here .com, then it will get out of hand, and legit players will get pissed, because they cant direct people to their website, or their LS site, or forum or some such.

Simplest fix to RMT spam is a /tell limit for free trial accounts. Make it so you can only /tell people who /tell you first. Otherwise all you'd have to communicate is /s, /p or /ls. Instantly stops RMT bots from /t spam while only being a minor annoyance to new players.

Simple solutions are always the best.

And to be honest, I kinda like how FFXI makes me "work" for my money. It's almost RPish in the way you're forced to "get a job" besides stuff you use for combat. Either through being a tradesman (crafting), a hunter (XYZNMs) or a simple gatherer (farming). You can even be a soldier and a merc (CP, IS, AN) to fund your other efforts. Hell, even conmen (jackasses) can make a quick buck in this game if they're any good. It means you have to have skill that isn't measurable by game statistics to do well in this "world". Smart players will find a way, everyone else will just sit and complain.