Special Task ForceFollow

I think I know a bit about how gil sellers work overall. I hope it will help some players understand the situation of combating gil-sellers and hopefully help SE get rit of them.

Ok, gil sellers come in 2 forms:

The 1st one being an intermediate dealer (like ebay) who will buy gil/equipments of other players who are perfectly legit but just want to earn some extra cash OR those who are quiting (and sell their accounts). Their primary dealing was with accounts and gil. So, at most they will have a few mules to store the 'bought' gil and to send them to buyers. Their business was flickering at best since the 'supply' of accounts and gil from servers are uneven; more than often they have to adjust their price rapidly. They don't have any bots or playing accounts so they were somewhat tolerable until the 2nd type of gil sellers came. Or rather you can say that the 1st form get beaten and evolved into the 2nd form.

The 2nd type is more like a farm. One person (or a group) buy a place with several computers - kinda like an Internet cafe. Then he employs people who are paid-to-play. They are pretty much from a low income area and the idea of pay-to-play is appealing. They play in shifts, just like people going to work in a factory. Playing is their job (making gil or powerleveling). Well, this form generates those code names and jerks and bot-alike players. I'm not sure if these guys actually use bots or not but I'm quite certain they are the type that appears 24/7 on all servers. The gil the 'farmers' earned will be send to a certain storage gil-mule.

A long time ago, their methods were inefficient and very rough. Overtime, people with a certain knowledge of the game and english started to join (because it's a growing business). The farmers upgraded from endless farmings to crafting, BCNM, parties, NM, HNM even areas like dynamis/limbus/sky..etc are slowly acquired. Pretty much anything party/LS/HNMLS do are copied. They are growing more and more sophisticated and become extremely efficient in getting gil. Perhaps even more than an average LS/HNMLS since they have lots of man-power at their disposal and no LS-drama and excellent communications since they are just a arm away from each other. With the addition of rare/ex gears to prevents trading, they equip themselves with just those rare/ex they found along when they do missions/bcnm/hnm... etc to improve their efficiency.


Methods that have been used to eliminate RMT, each of these method have it pros and cons:

Banning/Block IPs: This was used a long time ago to effectively filter out the unwanted zones. This is extremely good when the company only sell the game to a certain area with a specific game ID. If you get a game ID of US coming from an IP in Asia then it can smell trouble (like WOW). An effective KILL 'EM ALL method. Of course this only works when "imported" games are not supported/allowed or are very localized (WoW, Ragnarok Online). Slowly it get countered by the use of proxy servers. Many gil sellers bought their own proxy server to counter banning ips.


Limiting game features: This is what SE did for the delivery box, claiming, fishing...etc. In a way it effectively reduced the means and methods for botting, cheating and explotations. The delivery box slows down the 'trades' of gil sellers, forcing them to use the San D'Oria area (I think they use Jeuno to trade too) to trade. This means it's easier to observe the trade and ban them both. Claiming and fishing are anti-bot functions so there's nothing to be said much.

The major drawback of this method is reduced-functions of the game. Let's face it, if you limit certain functions of the game then you're taking out some of the fun of it. HNMLS leaders will now have big trouble distributing gil/gear. Before they can simply send the 'paychecks', now they have to meet each LS member personally to trade (not a fun thing to do if you have like 40+ people). Fishermen can no longer fish for extended period of time even if they want to.

Banning accounts: This is the most common methods and have proven to be the most effective method in getting the 'right' target. Primarily it was used to get rit of bots, bad players and evil demons. The gil sellers suffer a lot from this method since once an account is banned they not only lose the resource in that account but also the money spent. Legit players getting banned often wrote letters and complain until they have their account returned. Gil sellers didn't do it until they realized it is possible to do so.

This method has the greatest drawback is that the company needs to separate the normal players from the bots, bad and demons. More than often you will get some players doing crazy stuff and you can't just simply ban them. A particular fisherman happens to enjoy fishing a bit too much shouldn't be banned but he can be mistaken for a bot. A poor drg who's determined to get his lovely SH and went out farming at ONE spot for months can be mistaken for a gil seller. Obviously when you see a drg farming exclusively in the tower you're bound to believe that he's a gil seller but if you ask around you will find some people actually farmed there for a very very long time to earn gil. A particular player having a mule which is used to craft and sell shihei exclusively can also be mistaken for a crafting bot. Well, once you realized there are people making 500 stacks of insect balls to fund their main job then you will know not all crafters are bots (yeah, I crafted 1000 stacks of insect balls when I was low level to fund my ranger/woodworking).

Massive account banning: This method was uncommon until recently. This is because gil sellers were very very isolated. They did most of their gil-earning alone (farming, crafting.. etc). Until the emergent of the 2nd form of gil sellers, they started to work together. Obviously, since most MMO are aimed towards working together on BIG-BAD-BOSSES and earn big money/gear; They often make party/alliance work rewards to be much better than solo work. The 2nd type of gil sellers are doing just that. They are working together, taking advantage of the features/rewards for 'working together' to become more and more efficient at their trades. Of course, when you have a bunch of rats running around together you will want to throw a Firaga III. Game companies did just that. KABOOM! One massive attack to kill them all since they are all together anyway. There is no miss-firing here since normal players will play 'normally' in LSes that act 'normally'. Sometimes you get a stray shot of some people getting too close to gil sellers. Gil buyers and people who pay to have the gil sellers get them a certain item (notice the Black Belt items are now possible to be bought with real money). Well, they are baddies anyway so they deserve to suffer.

This is the best way to drive them out of business. If you ban multiple accounts then the gil sellers will not have enough money to recoup their losses. More than often they will suffer a large debt. Even if the ban is temporary, the lost of time if waiting for the return of the banned accounts is enough to force them to go out of business. Once they are out of business, returning accts to them wouldn't do them any good since they are out-of-business anyway (maybe for reselling to another gil seller?). Normal players do not suffer much more such activity since they will be more persistent and are willing to wait for their acct to be returned.

The greatest drawback of this method is like police work. Unless it's extremely obvious to spot (like having similar names) you will need to have a pretty good idea of how these gil sellers are working together. The reason they have a set of common names is for cataloging, naming and recognizing. If they use a generator or a list of names then they will not be easily spotted. To simply put, they are EXACTLY like a normal players. Kill several targets to earn better gear/money. Collecting rare/ex items and distribute to members. Pool all the loot and sell/craft on AH to make the best gil out of it. The only difference is how they use the gil. Normal LS will have a 'paycheck' for its member, some of the gil/items will be kept by the leader for LS purposes. The gil seller will get 'paychecks' in cash form and all the gil/loot will be send to a particular mule to wait and sell to other players. This means finding evidences for their crimes will actually require infiltration (police work!) and bugs (read chat logs). Now if the gil sellers are... communicating using voices then it would be near impossible to know which is which.

Has anyone else noticed that if the extra acronym of Unit (Special Task Force Unit) was added at the end, this would make them... STFU.

Thoughts?

Well, I just sent a comment via the PlayOnline site, but I guess I'll restate that I definitely appreciate this move. I look forward to seeing the results!

I agree completely. If its possible to catch anyone buying gil, they should be punished regardless of how much was purchased. Of course it may be difficult to track every single purchaser, but it would quickly get to the root of the problem if a large quantity of gil buyers were punished.

I'm very pleased by this announcement. I look forward to seeing more results.

wow. is this SE's version of "war on [insert item to wage war on here]"

to me this is a waste of resources by SE, period.

isntead of targeting RMTs and other stuff, why dont they improve game elements to eliminate the need of using RMTs and third party software. why do people buy RMT money? becayse they are either lazy, dont want to waste time doing repettive things, or they have the money to do so, all of which are acceptabe reasons to me.

you build a fence to keep the pets out, the bring a wire cutters with them. you make it an electric fence, they will earn how to jump it, so on so forth.

i no longer se RMT's as the biggest problem if at all in this game. the fact that from lv 30-60 on any given server there is only 5% or less of that level range is a huge problem to me. it makes leveling low level jobs unbearable and impossible. a problem which would warrant a drastic change in which exp is obtained to accomodate that change. its gotten to a point where everyone is either too high or too low and not enough in the middle.

addressing drop rate of variosu items in game, rare/ex items, dynamis raids, and other various things all of which SE could spend time improving instead of waging a futile war on a groups of people that have been alowed to grow beyond control.

this task force of theirs will prove to be as useful as an ant would be at lifting your new sofa.

Just reading through and thinking, about how many people use windower in FFXi, I know that almost everyone in the mass of linkshells i have use it, and for the simple fact people like to have the otion of alt-tabbing. If Square-Enix put this into the game it would stop a mass of people from using windower.

Games like WoW and Everquest, EVE Online and Guild Wars all have no problems with such a smal meaninal thing. So why hasn't S-E kicked in yet?

Yes, I believe RMT accounts and botters/hax0rs should be banned, but for people who would like to multi-task their desktop, without the inconvinience of being stuck with-in one program, why should they get banned if S-E isn't providing them with that option. Sure people might say to me, "Well fish-botting" isn't an option either, but that doesn't make it right." No it doesn't...but fish botting affects AH prices and leaves legit fishers at a disadvantage. (eg. A high depreciation of fish prices has happened on Kujata over the past 3 months.) There is nothing wrong with being able to alt-tab, as it does not affect players inside the game. I also may have people say "Well if you can alt-tab you can look up information such as maps or recipes which you may not have obtained in the game." Thats true some people may use it for that, but whats stopping people who don't use windower from printing of this information and using it anyway?

lol I speak too much.
(And i know Mikhalia said alot of this but I wanted to add my 2 cents)

Byuu
(Kujata)

Edited, Nov 7th 2006 at 12:32am PST by jsquara

You are an idiot for going so far off topic while stating something as stupid as this. It really sounds like you are trying to justify gilbuying while crying about drop rates. If gilsellers weren't around pulling 7 billion gil out the system some of it would probably be in your pocket dumbass. If it's unbearable and impossible then quit, I wonder how people like you make it past the install and download time. I bet you leveled all DD jobs and not one tank job, and wonder why it's hard to find a party when tanking is too hard for you. It is amazing how many DD jobs you get to pick from when you level either advanced job designed for tanking. Sadly enough, the ant trying to pick up my sofa has a larger brain than you.


Edited, Nov 7th 2006 at 1:24am PST by mrfriendlyII

I personally use ps2 but even if I did have a pc, I wouldn't use even a windower. I think it ruins SE's intended game experience (Which I belive is quite good).

I've loved every step SE has taken against RMT and cheaters. It's been quite notably on atleast my server. And heck, FFXI would certainly not die if some botting ls' were broken up or anything of the like.

It's all well and good to say look we are doing something. Kinda like George Bush saying he is gonna change his tactics after 2 years of turmoil in Iraq. You can't get rid of gil-sellers until you eliminate the need for them. If you level a meelee at lvl 59 you need a haubergeon otherwise you are considered gimp. Most people I know can't make 4 million gil so they just buy gil online. If you don't make a way for someone to obtain armor such as that other than buying it than gil-sellers will always be around.

Well if SE's going to read this...

I think this is great news but I'm concerned how the banning of mass account holders will be carried out. My brother and myself share the same payment address and credit card details out of necessity, but we don't live under the same roof anymore and obviously, that means that if he uses third party tools, I'm not going to be able to stop him (plus I'm out working most of the time anyways).

Does it mean that people who play with others in the same family, specifically under the same credit card, are at risk of being banned if any one of the other family members breaks the rules? I think those of us with younger siblings who aren't that convinced of the risks of third party tools would like to know.

Firstly, let me applaud SE for attempting to "do the right thing" with regards to those who do not respect the rules of the game. However, I do not think that the task force approach will be successful by itself.

The reasons people buy/sell gil are related to basic economic principles of supply and demand. The current Rules do not allow for the existence of a market where one clearly exists (the market for changing RL assets into virtual FFXI assets). So long as this situation exists, there will always be an incentive for people to cheat and SE will always be acting as policeman in one form or another. As they get more aggressive in their enforcement, they may inadvertently erode the player base to the point where running the game is no longer profitable (then we are all out of luck).

What I cannot understand is why SE refuses to tap into the RMT market in order to increase the profitability of the whole FFXI business. What SE REALLY needs to do to combat RMT is to enter the RMT business. If SE sold gil directly, they could put out all RMT (since all SE has to do to make gil is push a button). By pricing the external RMT out of the market, SE could recognize additional revenue for a marginal increase in costs. In fact, costs may actually be lower in the long run because enforcement investigations (which SE admits are time consuming) would be reduced.

SE would have to track the value of gil by server in real time (like RL currency markets) so that individual world participants could understand how their server's economy is changing as a result of gil selling.

I understand that initially, this will cause a huge amount of inflation, but SE can adjust the gil sinks in game (prices from NPC's, chocobo vendors, etc.) to compensate for the purchased gil and create a stable economy.

Kudos to SE for talking the talk, but I can't help but think this is really just a way to make us think they're trying to solve the problem. As someone earlier pointed out, all the RMT characters are making big bucks for SE and until SE finds a way to make more money by doing something else, then they have no financial incentive to remove RMT's.

SE get you duff in gear and open up shop in RMT. Quit letting others leech your property to make profits.

P.S. SE should also consider selling items directly for RL money. This would be harder to set up, but could be added to a gil-buying system. Obviously Ex items could not be bought so I'd expect some adjustment to items to make them Ex and anything new that is good will be Ex (and preferably obtainable through an instance).

Overdue step, makes me not quit for another couple months though just to see it.

Not exaggerating about Sozu room either, they're there with Serket Breaker and Roc Star titles, all 15 of them, AF and cheap gear, their THFs all already have the f*cking knife... Dia claimed the instant it appeared on radar, before Sozu even materialized in the room. RMT can rot, buyer and seller. So sick of this waste of life crap, I want to see the STF there today. Simurgh pretty disgusting too. And Behemoth. Haven't seen KA camp in ages, since Hacker started bot voking every day.

Also, Ulli camp is a huge waste of time generally; crummy exp compared to decos or toau or even lufaise meadows. Fighting Ulli after 2-?? hours of killing statues kind of makes up for it. Losing Ulli to a crew of RMT blms and plds can sort of ruin a whole evening for a whole LS.

If you want to find some major perpetrators too, check LoO camp and, especially, Lower Jeuno. Lower is a hotbed of RMT shouts lately, and little else.