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#252 Nov 17 2006 at 4:18 AM Rating: Decent
PPPPPAAAAAGGGGGEEEEE CCCCCLLLLLAAAAAIIIIIMMMMM!!!!!11111

Gil farmers don't work for gil selling companies. They work for a middleman. I've had many conversations with gil farmers in-game. They work in the sweatshops you hear about for their "boss" who sells the gil for pretty cheap to the gil selling companies. The gil selling companies then resell gil to the consumers for higher to make their profit.


99% of the gil being sold from top gil selling companies is farmed by gil farmers operating out of China. Don't start thinking most of it comes from Japan or North America just because you see a graph showing the majority of companies operate in those areas. Their is a middleman.


Gil farmers operate seperate from gil sellers. They don't work in the same building. Get it right.

Edited, Nov 17th 2006 at 5:01am PST by Poupou
#253 Nov 17 2006 at 5:39 AM Rating: Default
Ok so anyone seen the almighty "Task Force" , "The gillbuster" yet?

Come on were the action i can't stand being jerked around...i pay monthly for a fare game and my claims still getting ripped by bots....are they even reading this stuff...well it wont make a difference but if something is not done soon this will be 18 bucks they wont keep getting monthly...i already had one friend drop for the same reason and my girl is talking of canceling too....now we have been playing for 3 year and we are hard core gamers...so do we deserve this shabby a$$ treatment from SE....

i think restricting gill trading is a great idea..they will still probably use the AH for gill transactions but it will be a hell of allot easier to track them...

yes I'm angry and very very tiered........@(>-<)@
#254 Nov 17 2006 at 8:54 AM Rating: Good
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It takes time to get work done...... People need to stop thinking everything can be done in like overnight, especially if SE is going to investigate the RMT websites themselves.
____________________________
Amanada (Cerberus-Retired) (aka MaiNoKen/Steven)
-- Thank you for the fun times in Vana'diel

Art for the sake of art itself is an idle sentence.
Art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is
beautiful and good — that is the creed I seek.
- George Sand

A designer knows he has achieved perfection,
not when there is nothing left to add,
but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
#255 Nov 17 2006 at 9:31 AM Rating: Decent
they didn't just start now saying they were going to do something...
they been saying it for a long long long time...
i first heard them say they were going to do something like 2 years ago...ok so here you have a problem that's been around for ever...what you think GMs just stated getting these calls, no..the have been getting them the fact is they either cant or dont care cuz when i report i never get anything resolved and i see the same guy still running around on auto pilot...

patient, ha I've been patient..
#256 Nov 17 2006 at 1:43 PM Rating: Decent
Has anyone seen this? I was surfing the Internet as I was bored at work and came across a very educational transcript of a newscast from August, 2006.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2006/1720891.htm#

It does bring the question into mind... where exactly *is* the line between the real world and the virtual world?

It blows my mind... especially about the virtual world called "Second Life"

In that world... real money trade isn't a problem. In fact, it's an intentional *feature*

o.o

#257 Nov 17 2006 at 4:45 PM Rating: Default
warning hummongously long post xDD


Well, you can see that this is my first post so, hold the flames for my second okay? ^_^ btw i didnt read *all* the posts, so im sorry if im repeating things that other ppl said. anyway here i go.

SE said they are going to read this thread? sweet, well see if they really did after this christmas (yes, we will ^-^)
RMT is a simple problem, that will not go away, simply because money talks louder >< Right now the main problem is christmas, and SE knows that since they introduced this STF right on its door. So im guesing they are looking for ways to minimize the damage... Heres two simple ways:

increase the gil u can get with QUESTS, namely the repeatable ones on main cities,
(trade 4 flint rocks for 2k and ALOT of ppl would be doin that,simply because GSs cant mess that up)

and

STOP those absurd prices fluctuations! if some item is up for action for 100k, do not allow anyone to lower the price under 80k or something, and not higher then 120k (20% of margain of gain or loss) that way for Gilsellers to mess up prices theyll have to buy/sell several times the same item, before the whole system allowed such a thing, slowlying down the whole process. (if no one understood its quite simple, the AH would only allow the prices to keep coming down/up,if everyone kept selling stuf at the lowest (or at the highest of course) price possible, thing that from what ive seen only GSs do
(unless someone needs the gil fast, but that does not happen that often, to the point of messing the whole friggin economy on 32 servers -_-)

So, okay they might not be enough to stop GSs, but it would slow them down quite a bit, and about 3rd party programs? a random file check on key locations never hurt anyone, all other MMOs have it, so all those complaining about spyware and addware, shut up ó.Ó windower? should be native to ffxi since its been out(cmon even POL has it -_-) "ps2 and xbox players dont have windower so why should pc players have" ? lol? grab the ps2/xbox360 and set it up near the pc, since most of you guys do it anyway. and besides, ps2 nor 360 have no native internet exploring cababilities, so thats not even an excuse. besides if SE made the windower an intern app, that would be an excellent way to detect those 3rd party programs.

We have to start from somewhere, and the small and easy things,should be the first ones. its not by deleting accounts that SE will end this (SE said they deleted what? 3400 acounts? 3400 dividing for 32 servers is around 100~accounts per server...is that a joke? -_-")

So im pretty much done, and my head hurts since my choco keeps asking me for food <.< anyway, if it comes to the worst, SE, just give the players PK (player killing) capabilities, WE will take the responsability of killing them xDD
#258 Nov 17 2006 at 5:19 PM Rating: Excellent
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1,970 posts
I think it's about time I say something I hope will be regarded as constructive and helpful (in w/e odd way it may end up being).

The vast majority of posts to this thread thus far have been civil and controlled. Good information and suggestions have been put forth. A flame war HASN'T broken out yet. This is good. I like the fact that when it comes down to the really important things people sober up and speak clearly on these special SE threads.

Every thread like this, which is always skeptically connected to SE, have ended up in true (and often drastic) action in regards to the issue the thread is about. Logically this tells me that these particular threads, stickied by Alla and said to be read by SE representatives, are in fact read by SE representatives who then take this stuff back and do something about the issue.

The state of every server's economy is the way it is because of RMT and honest players who feel forced to compete against them to survive. Yes, our competition to make gil has also created what we have now in terms of server economies. Of course it wasn't done maliciously, anything with malice on a large scale is the fault of the RMT. It needs to be stated clearly over and over again that RMT, on every server, are able to coordinate their efforts towards monopolization in a way no organization of honest players could ever do. Sure the farmers earn the gil that then gets moved by their boss to IGE and other companies but that doesn't mean every single gilfarmer is independent. They have a common goal, it'd be silly of them to NOT work together.

There is RMT in every gilmaking action this game has. And I am certain that even though they may work for different companies, all the gilfarmers/sellers know who does what and they use that vast interconnection of knowledge to corner markets and crafts. And they'll corner those markets and crafts through undercutting because they can afford it more than we can because they can get all the materials they could ever need cheaper than you or I or anyone who actually plays can get.

The legitimate player, from the moment he/she starts the game, is at a disadvantage due to RMT. If SE truly wants to get rid of them, they need to get rid of them all. Not just the cheating ones who use claimbots in Sky. They need to clear every mine of the mining bots. They need to clear every forest of the logging bots. Every shoreline of the fishing bots. Every server of every character that's been online 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year without ever stopping, without ever logging off (and staying off, because I'm sure when they D/C they log right back in). We know how to spot them. We've been doing it for years. It's really not that difficult to recognize an RMT character. I'm sure if SE made a mistake and banned someone who wasn't actually RMT then that person would make some sort of effort to get back to the game. Might an RMT call SE? I doubt it. They might argue online with the GM but odds are the legimitate player is going to call SE the moment they have the opportunity if they get wrongly banned in the upcoming Witch-hunt.

But please SE, in closing I beg you, give us an official Windowed Mode that does not allow any plug-ins and if you're feeling ambitious code the game so that any other form of Windower does not work, only the official windowed mode patched into the game in an update. And there you have it, no more bots (presumably). It'd be a good start and if it can block the vast majority of the current botting programs plaguing the game I bet it'd make many people happy. Even if SE didn't remove RMT entirely it'd even the playing field a little on claiming every profitable NM that pops.
#259 Nov 18 2006 at 2:07 AM Rating: Good
It's not hard to find a ton of information on player perspectives regarding RMT activities and rival HNM shells botting for claims, and regardless of which side of the debate you're on about whether or not SE has been producing solutions to these problems, the player base seems to be about out of patience.

It may be worthwhile from a 'moral' standpoint if this special taskforce were to release an update every other week highlighting whether or not they expect to see resolution to some of the key complaints, with RMT monopolization of Ulli and botting at the three kings.

There's a lot of negativity around those issues (amongst others), and regular updates would likely produce a fair share of pissing and moaning, but at least it would be something. My LS has 3 Kirin sets left and between the NINs fed up with feeling they'll never see a pair of Haidate in their inventory and the bulk of the shell feeling like any Osode we see from our next 3 runs will be our last shot at getting any for months, there seems to be a lot of frustration where there needn't be.
#260 Nov 18 2006 at 2:15 AM Rating: Decent
RomanTrooper wrote:
they didn't just start now saying they were going to do something...
they been saying it for a long long long time...
i first heard them say they were going to do something like 2 years ago...ok so here you have a problem that's been around for ever...what you think GMs just stated getting these calls, no..the have been getting them the fact is they either cant or dont care cuz when i report i never get anything resolved and i see the same guy still running around on auto pilot...

patient, ha I've been patient..


Sorry, yours is the post I came across, so you get to be the scapegoat.

Why don't you mention anything about the thousands of accounts that have been banned already? Is that 'doing nothing' in your eyes?
#261 Nov 18 2006 at 11:49 AM Rating: Good
AureliusSir wrote:
RomanTrooper wrote:
they didn't just start now saying they were going to do something...
they been saying it for a long long long time...
i first heard them say they were going to do something like 2 years ago...ok so here you have a problem that's been around for ever...what you think GMs just stated getting these calls, no..the have been getting them the fact is they either cant or dont care cuz when i report i never get anything resolved and i see the same guy still running around on auto pilot...

patient, ha I've been patient..


Sorry, yours is the post I came across, so you get to be the scapegoat.

Why don't you mention anything about the thousands of accounts that have been banned already? Is that 'doing nothing' in your eyes?


For example: The same guy has been botting Gigant Squid and Black Sole on Bismarck for YEARS. One of his main chars is "Bissss" I have reported this character say... 5 times over a period of at least 1.5 years and he is still botting.

NOTHING short of banning the players we ALL KNOW are RMT is going to help. Period.
#262 Nov 19 2006 at 10:29 PM Rating: Good
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1,057 posts
severanPRE wrote:

increase the gil u can get with QUESTS, namely the repeatable ones on main cities,
(trade 4 flint rocks for 2k and ALOT of ppl would be doin that,simply because GSs cant mess that up)

and

STOP those absurd prices fluctuations!

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Price fluctuations are caused by gil entering or leaving the economy at a rapid rate.

If you make quests give a lot of gil, rmt will spam them, which will in turn cause massive inflation.


Really, only two things need to happen. One is for s-e to ban all botters (botting players or cgf is no real difference as far as I'm concerned) and gil banks regularly. As long as the bannings are consistantly timed, the economy will balance out.

The other is to have a portion of the STF go around downloading and reverse-engineering ffxi bots so as to better learn how to identify and catch botters. Less botters will help to alliviate the hnm situation (or at least make it somewhat more fair).

#263 Nov 20 2006 at 4:26 AM Rating: Decent
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600 posts
Special Task Force doing NOTHING to restore Sozu Rogberry camp to the regular players of Titan server; 15+ RMTs in the room still at all times, unless Serket, Sim, Roc, KA and LoO are due, then they clear out to camp the daily pop h/NMs.

Soon as the 18-24 and 21-24 hr NMs are dead the RMTs flow back to Uggalipeh. Do us real players A) GM call. B) MPK. or C) Start downloading and using claim bots to compete for NMs?

I've tried A) "GM Call," time and again, dating back to October '04, as far as RMT goes, to NO AVAIL.

SE, stop jerking us around please, it's getting really old seeing your lip service, with NO ACTION to back it up. Ban the RMT earners already, like, this month, hell, bump it up to today if you have something up your sleeve, any semblance of control over your own game would be nice. Sheesh. Everyone is sick of waiting for you to pull it together at this point.
#265 Nov 20 2006 at 10:15 AM Rating: Good
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564 posts
Oooohhhh, another one who thinks the STF should do their thing all over the world overnight. The say they can't, and take things one step at a time. And they ask for our patience....please, be a little more patient.
#266 Nov 20 2006 at 10:43 AM Rating: Excellent
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1,047 posts
I'd like to see something done about the HUGE number of fishermen who appear to be botting. I was in Windurst Waters the other day, and I couldn't believe how many fishermen were there. What was even weirder is that, even with all those fishermen, there was not one single fish being caught. That's just odd.



http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5463999961450772042&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-211410584433706186

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4550881953807264584&hl=en



I'm sure that they have monopolized other crafts, as well.

Edited, Nov 20th 2006 at 10:47am PST by senorcoconut
#267 Nov 20 2006 at 10:48 AM Rating: Default
Well all i know if I've been waiting for a response from SE backing up there clams of banning RMT...that's patient...
waiting for a GM to respond to my tell about a Gillseller... that's patients..

it's been years already and my patients is up...

some one said what about the thousands of banned accounts already....to that i say what about the certain LS in my server that consist of over 20 members all Gillfarmers gillsellers what ever...they have not been banned along with others I've seen for years now....

so were are the thousands banned because i think they skipped my world....well doesn't matter much any more to me...with the release of Monster Hunter frontier coming soon i say FFXI and SE could take there promise of a RMT-free world and shove it up Behemoths a$$..well that's if they find a special task force to pull there heads out of there own a$$ first...lol
#268 Nov 20 2006 at 5:25 PM Rating: Excellent
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450 posts
When there's a round of account suspensions, the RMT are up and running within a day, because they are constantly levelling new characters and making new mule characters to compensate for their losses. In addition, the RMT are using double buffer mules - sending gil from a farming character to an intermediary mule character to a bank character, who distributes the gil to people who buy it off of the various RMT sites; Often the intermediary mule is left undetected by the efforts to suspend RMT accounts, allowing the RMT sites to continue operations almost uninterrupted while a reserve group of farming accounts is activated. In lamens, it will only take a day for the RMT to recover from the account suspensions. And to top it all off, the RMT sites will buy new playonline accounts and begin levelling another set of reserve characters in anticipation of the next round of account suspensions.

However, there is a way to stop this cycle - Square-Enix made a recent update to their Playonline Terms of Service that allows them to suspend any new accounts that have been created by people who have had their accounts previously suspended. Playonline must act on this, suspending all of the accounts for individual account holders, regardless of whether or not the Terms of Services was violated by a character on those accounts. This would remove the gilfarming characters, the intermediate characters, the bank characters and all of the reserve gilfarming characters at the same time. It would take much more time for RMT to recover.

In addition, by coordinating with Playonline Billing, the Task Force can provide a list of suspended accounts to billing, mark the individual's credit card information to be auto-denied instead of auto-accepted, and stop the people who are purchasing the new Playonline accounts to replace suspended accounts.

Now, some people may think that this would do nothing; RMT sites would just use a different credit card, or the various online virtual debit card services to but the new accounts with - Not so. Every credit card, debit card, even virtual debit cards require the cardholder to provide legitimate information about their name, billing address, etc. for fraud protection purposes and for tracking credit history. When providing information to Playonline for billing purposes, this must match the information that the credit card company has - any attempt to spoof the address to Playonline billing would be caught by the credit card company and deny payment, and any attempt to spoof address information to the credit card companies would constitute credit fraud; this holds true in pretty much any country and from any bank that would issue a credit card.

Automatically denying the credit card payments from people who have previously had their accounts suspended forces these people to deal with the credit unions' security and fraud protection practices, which prevent these people from spoofing any part of their identity or address when registering for a new credit card, or registering a credit card with Playonline Billing. This stops a single accountholder from making many new Playonline accounts after they have had their accounts suspended.
Done correctly and thoroughly, RMT literally disappears overnight.
#269 Nov 20 2006 at 10:26 PM Rating: Good
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1,197 posts
I think this is a novel idea.

I do think SE could help themselves out by undoing at least of the changes made in a past update - the delivery box gil-sending limitation. I honestly don't think it had as major of an impact on players as people would like to claim. If anything, I think it just made it more of a pain in the *** to do simple gil-sends, as I don't really see there being reason for a vast number of > 1 mil sends between legitimate players. Occasional large gil sends to LS banks, etc, and even between high level crafters and their mules would/should never reach the frequency you would expect from gilbuying/selling. Besides that, nothing stops one intermediary bank or mule from recieving lots of 999,999 sends, which is really where the problem arises - the gil pooling - nor does it stop a gilseller from being able to (for example) send you 1 m from each of 8 different accounts. Regardless, the money should be absurdly easy to trace.

Going after websites is good, although it won't get those people who are hiding in the nooks and crannies. This actually quite surprises me, as no MMORPG company to date has been able to shut down a single one of those websites - I've seen more action come out of the Diku team than any large for-profit coorporation. (Diku is a text-based online RPG called a MUD - it's released under GNU, and license terms prohibit profiting from the code...)



And, I would like to agree with all of the previous posters who listed public shaming. In a community based game, there is no greater punishment (imo, at least from a psychological standpoint). On the left-hand side of your name, you've got a little icon that indicates if you're a newbie, a visitor, a GM of some sort, have a bazaar up, are LFG, in a linkshell.... so how about on the right-hand side, we introduce some new icons? A little gil icon to show that you've been caught and punished by SE for buying gil... a little pitchfork/rake/hoe/shovel/whatever icon to show that you've been caught and punished for selling gil (the icons cause... y'know - farming)... and little running man icon to show that you've been caught using warp/speed hack/whatever movement based tools... then we can even go into a little fish for fishing bots... a pickaxe for mining bots... a hatchet for logging bots, sickle for harvesting bots (do people really bot this other stuff? It doesn't seem very profitable... but I spose it should be included)... an angry black bomb for claim botting/etc/any misc thing I didn't think of...

Do you really think any of those people would even make it to strike 3 in a three-strikes-you're-banned system for "minor" offenses? (I'm assuming here that there's some sort of hierarchy of FFXI "sins", because you're talking about frequent gil buyers, but never mention one-timers, I've seen caught hackers get several 3 day suspensions without being banned, and I've seen people banned on first offense...)



And I know that policy dictates that GMs are supposed to be invis all the time. Hell, anyone who's tried to beg a GM screenshot off of one at the end of a call has been told this. Why? 24/7 GM presense at known trouble spots will do more good than an 'always invis' policy. It doesn't even matter if they're dummy GM's that aren't being watched constantly - I'm 110% positive that SE can alter their GM client to alert an employee of a pending NM spawn, etc, so that they *can* be there to watch. And, as the visible RMT gathering in places like Ulli camp tend to drive out the legitimate players, so too will the visible GMs drive out the RMTs.



And lastly, because it's required to tack on a truly bad idea: Tattletale darts (because I like the concept of darts >.>) and naughty points.
Each month, you get 3 darts per account (not per character). When you see someone doing some suspicious behaviour, you toss a dart at them! /tattle <naughtyperson>! You get a message like "You have tattled on <naughtyperson>. You have 2 darts remaining for the month." Every time a player gets hit with a tattletale dart, they gain one naughty point. Restrict it so you can't tattle on the same person more than once in a month. Then, at the end of the month, you tally all the naughty points players have acquired, and keep an eye on the ones amassing an above-average number of naughty points :P

Hell you could even just flesh out the /tattle command with some nonsense like /tattle <naughtyperson> <reason> - /tattle <naughtyperson> fishbot would let whoever's amassing the data know that you think that person's a fish bot - and how many times they've been tattled on for that - if enough people think they're a fish bot, maybe it's worth looking into? SE does have complete access, after all, with the logs and such to be able to cross reference red and yellow flagging activities (yellow would be like being on 24/7 and not moving - you could be legit & in Rolanberry, red would be like warping from a zone entrance to exit and attemping to zone out 5 seconds after arrival, when the game should know it takes at least X:XX long to navigate the zone through the quickest means possible legitimately - yellow could be iffy dependant on circumstance, red is like a big, glaring "I'm cheating!" sign)



And to cap off the bad ideas. {Yes, please.} become the Special Task Force Unit. And make sure when a STFU GM nails someone, that they have a clever catch phrase like "Your account has been investigated and reviewed and we are now acting in compliance with STFU policy. *Permaban!*" Although, honestly, it's probably only amusing to us English speaking folks... T_T


Edit: Holy messed up italics. My bad.

Edit: And in response to everyone slamming ideas for SE to control their own "RMT" trading, I give you... http://stationexchange.station.sony.com/

Edited, Today 11:40pm by Arketa
#270 Nov 21 2006 at 9:10 AM Rating: Good
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Quote:

Now, some people may think that this would do nothing; RMT sites would just use a different credit card, or the various online virtual debit card services to but the new accounts with - Not so. Every credit card, debit card, even virtual debit cards require the cardholder to provide legitimate information about their name, billing address, etc. for fraud protection purposes and for tracking credit history. When providing information to Playonline for billing purposes, this must match the information that the credit card company has - any attempt to spoof the address to Playonline billing would be caught by the credit card company and deny payment, and any attempt to spoof address information to the credit card companies would constitute credit fraud; this holds true in pretty much any country and from any bank that would issue a credit card.


One thing that may make this fail is if the creditor is from a country where financial system is still under development or is corrupted/poorly managed.

Most RMT groups are believe to be in China, which may have a real Chinese owner or non-Chinese like American or Japanese owner, Rangork fan sites also alleged RMT gangs could also owned by Japanese and Hong Kong mafias.

So the Chinese or some Third World country bank or creditor may not have ability to actually to protect the seller or give the seller enough information to easily track questionable or even illegal activity.

Even if the creditor can provide information about card owner to the seller, it is another degree of difficulty to interpret that information. Names can be confusing, and addresses are written in different ways in different country. It is even possible those RMT accounts are even paid by their foreign owners using a "non-Chinese" address.
____________________________
Amanada (Cerberus-Retired) (aka MaiNoKen/Steven)
-- Thank you for the fun times in Vana'diel

Art for the sake of art itself is an idle sentence.
Art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is
beautiful and good — that is the creed I seek.
- George Sand

A designer knows he has achieved perfection,
not when there is nothing left to add,
but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
#271 Nov 21 2006 at 12:15 PM Rating: Excellent
While contemplating the situation fishers are now facing that crafters have been facing for some time -- the deliberate crashing of prices on any previously profitable activity -- a thought occurred to me:

Anyone think that this deliberate and systematic price crash by the gilsellers is intended to get us all so frustrated by Christmas that we will consider buying gil the only alternative? That they're not just driving us out of their market, but trying to drive us to RMT?

Makes some kind of sense to me. Having killed crafting, they're now killing fishing. I wonder what's the next way to make gil that will be killed.
#272 Nov 21 2006 at 12:36 PM Rating: Good
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1,057 posts
Everyone who suggests that banning credit cards will help the problem is ignoring one major thing:
http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/prepaid/visa_gift_card.html?it=l2|%2Fpersonal%2Fcards%2Fprepaid%2Fgift_card_faq%2Ehtml|Visa%20Gift%20Card

These do indeed work with ffxi.
#273 Nov 21 2006 at 12:44 PM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
Anyone think that this deliberate and systematic price crash by the gilsellers is intended to get us all so frustrated by Christmas that we will consider buying gil the only alternative? That they're not just driving us out of their market, but trying to drive us to RMT?


I am not 100% convienced GS or fish botters would intentionally crash price to drive out competition. A lot of price crashed is still driven by game market supply-and-demand. Instead of trying to say they are driving out competition, I think it is more precise to say they create an unreasonable source of supply. I would rather compete with real players than with bot crafters and fishermen.

____________________________
Amanada (Cerberus-Retired) (aka MaiNoKen/Steven)
-- Thank you for the fun times in Vana'diel

Art for the sake of art itself is an idle sentence.
Art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is
beautiful and good — that is the creed I seek.
- George Sand

A designer knows he has achieved perfection,
not when there is nothing left to add,
but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
#274 Nov 21 2006 at 1:21 PM Rating: Good
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450 posts
scchan - Even in nations where the credit card market is developing, like China for example, the cards issued by banks are overseen by an international credit union due to a lack of a national credit union in their own country. Because of this, Chinese credit cards will work for registering an account, but they still require valid information given to have a card issued, which will be checked by the bank and tracked by the credit union to make sure no fraudulent transactions are made with the card; because this information MUST be provided to Playonline for proper billing, Playonline billing department can flag it to automatically deny the payment/service if the card was used for registering accounts that violated the Playonline terms of service.

Gere - "Gift" debit cards are essentially virtual debit cards; they still require valid information given to the bank/credit union in order for the card to be issued, which will have to match the billing information you give to Playonline:

Visa Gift Card FAQ
Quote:
Can I use my Visa Gift card for online or phone purchases?
Yes. You will need to be sure that your name, address, and phone number on file with the provider that issued the card is exactly the same as the information you give to the merchant you wish to make a purchase from. If the information is different, the purchase could be declined.
#275 Nov 21 2006 at 1:52 PM Rating: Good
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I am still skeptical that a international credit union (like Visa) will have the resources to investigate and check every account application. So the credit check and billing info checking responsibility will still reside in the "regional" bank, where fraud/false address and credit reports can be used.

I still think the best way to go after botters and RMT is to use information outside of the game. May be SE would buy gil and bots themselves to trace the movement of the gil and distribution of tools? It sounds distasteful to do that, but really the best way to beat them is to get inside them.
____________________________
Amanada (Cerberus-Retired) (aka MaiNoKen/Steven)
-- Thank you for the fun times in Vana'diel

Art for the sake of art itself is an idle sentence.
Art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is
beautiful and good — that is the creed I seek.
- George Sand

A designer knows he has achieved perfection,
not when there is nothing left to add,
but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
#276 Nov 21 2006 at 2:32 PM Rating: Excellent
scchan wrote:
I am not 100% convienced GS or fish botters would intentionally crash price to drive out competition. A lot of price crashed is still driven by game market supply-and-demand. Instead of trying to say they are driving out competition, I think it is more precise to say they create an unreasonable source of supply.

I've seen it happen. Overnight, a 6000 gil very stable price has been dropped to 3000 by gilsellers who were happily selling at 6000 for a long time before. The difference? I made the mistake of an extended crafting session in front of them late one night; they -- and they alone -- crashed the price to half less than 12 hours later.

That's just my anecdote, sure, but among crafters it's a well recognized gilseller technique that's well supported across a number of crafts.

Already with the surge in fishing bots, the hardcore real player fishers are starting to mutter about quitting the game. Moat carps have been a stable, reliable item. There has been no need to undercut because all the supply will sell for certain in a fairly short time. Now suddenly the price has crashed -- and it's not the non-RMT fishers who are doing it, because they have zero incentive to do so.

Edit for clarity.

Edited, Nov 21st 2006 5:38pm by Laverda
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