One of the biggest reasons why so many people are buying RMT gold thinking they can do so with impunity is because many are under the belief that buying RMT gold lacks consequence.
I urge AGS to start giving them longer bans, if they haven’t done so already. The first offense should be at the minimum 20 days, with 100% of the gold they purchased deducted, including allowing their gold to go into the negatives.
The second thing they need to do is to PUBLICLY ANNOUNCE BANS. You need to strike FEAR in the playerbase. Players need to have a deterrence. The simple fact is that due to information asymmetry, many players are unaware what the actual ban duration and ban rate for RMT buying actually is. Because of this void in information, many take to Reddit and Discords and base their beliefs on rumors of people getting a slap on the wrist for buying RMT gold. Now is this true? I don’t know. But that’s why AGS must be proactive in announcing the severity and frequency of bans. I strongly urge AGS to start making a weekly or at least biweekly public report of how many bots and RMT buyers they have banned, and give a count of how many players have been banned for long durations (20+) or perma. This gives players information that, yes, RMT is dangerous.
I can cite plenty of literature in crime economics and criminology that can back up this logic. Again, it’s pretty simple. A show of force deters crime. How can AGS show their force? By announcing it.
(Ps: even if you slightly lie about the bans, for example declaring that 2000 players have been banned for RMT when only 600 have been, it will still be a positive effect)
Yea, whenever CMS respond to these types of threads, they always claim that they can remove gold and punishments vary based on severity.
But the thing is I really doubt they are actually removing gold. There hasn’t been a single viral screenshot of negative gold in NA/EU. If they were actually punishing this behavior regularly we would definitely have seen some screenshots by now.
You can easily find screenshots of negative gold from RU server, so at least we know they aren’t lying when they say they can remove the gold. Just wish they would grow a spine and take real action against cheaters.
They need to do that for every single case of RMT purchase. Fear is a good motivator, even if many people find it ugly. Using FF14 as an example, the actual ban rate for toxicity in that game is pretty low. Many people have gotten away with it for years. But because players actually fear being banned based on the rumors that FF14 has an extremely strict moderation, players act nicer and contain their toxicity. This is simply because a few people get banned for mild toxicity and publicly post it on Reddit and the forums, and over the years these few anecdotes become the wisdom that FF14 players hold to.
We need something similar in Lost Ark. Start heavily punishing cheaters and eventually a few will post about them on Reddit and the forums. This will be spread within the community and players will gradually adjust their expectations and more importantly behavior based on these few anecdotes of people going into negative gold or getting perma’d.
Yes. However, many players will see those false bans as being indicative of a harsh enforcement from AGS and will be scared. If even people who are apparently innocent are being banned, why would I risk something that’s actually in the wrong?
Obviously it doesn’t work out like this if enforcement is spotty and inconsistent.
Severe temporary bans are actually more effective than perma-bans, as WoW’s internal research suggests. Keyword on “severe”. That’s because perma-bans lead players to simply start a new account continuing the same behavior. Severe temporary bans incentivize players to continue on the same account but be more careful.
This allows them time to wallow in the loss of their progress and regret their actions, which in turn leads them to avoid repeating the actions that led to that loss. Temporary bans and loss of 3rd party purchased gold is significantly more effective than permanent bans from my own experience in another game.(which is why I no longer rmt, lol)
Scenario 1 - 3500 hours and $7k in rmt put into game then perma banned.
Effect 1 - Quit game and move on or start a new account with same behavior to catch up to old account’s progress.
Scenario 2 - 3500 hours and $7k in rmt put into game then temporarily banned and lost all 7k rmt
Effect 2 - Quit game and move on or continue to play after regretting decisions while avoiding rmt due to fear of loss of progress gained over time now that you’re aware that another rmt will cost you everything.
I find it very unfair, that many legitimately playing and earning gamers in Lost Ark, who play the correct way and buy from the in game shop, are having to witness these RMT buyers leaping ahead so fast with little consequence.
I support permanent bans for anyone caught selling or buying via RMT, they can start from scratch if they want to continue playing.
The biggest issue for lost ark is bots and this is driven by rmt, with that being the case how can u opt for temp bans on the rmters when they are the ones causing the biggest issue for the game, they can’t stop the bots so u get the players all games do this (because it’s cheaper and easier) but 85percent of other games go perma ban and so they should
So someone “buying” all these blue crystals legit right? lol? Remove this nonsense from the currency exchange NOW. There is NO way that 524,100 blue crystals being bought at these static prices are with legit gold coins.
524,100 / 95 = 5,516.84 units of crystals @ 700 gold ea = approx 3.9 Mil gold.
This has been happening since the start of this games release. It is not legit gold. It is also probably almost impossible to negate this gold as suggested via the thread. Because the gold is just sitting there in an offshore account basically untouchable by AGS. Just delete it, real players WILL NOT POST their crystals for sale at those prices. Why would you?
Please consider this? The issue here is that no one believes AGS’s blank talk. Start announcing a list of banned accounts every week and tell us who exactly in which server RMTed. These players deserve to get left out of every group content
While I personally think that would be ideal I think AGS also wouldn’t want to encourage witch hunts. I think the best compromise is to tell us the number of banned accounts on each server without telling us their names.
I know a lot of people want them to be perma’d but this post is informative on why a long suspension might be better instead:
I think the best way forward is to have a long temporary suspension (20 days or some such) with the explicit warning that the next infraction will be a permanent ban. This usually works out better in other MMOs as they have observed that the fear of a permanent ban actually motivates them to behave better. Whereas if you start with a permanent ban they often simply start a new account.
In any case, with a long temporary suspension AGS needs to remove their gold completely. There are a LOT of people who are saying that it’s not that bad to RMT even with the threat of a ban because it’s so much cheaper and you only get a slap on the wrist. In essence, a lot of people think you’re basically trading 3 days where you can’t play the game for massive amounts of cheap gold. If everyone knows that the gold will be removed completely, then no such incentive exists because all you’re getting is a suspension.
Yeah, the cost of some legendary engravings seems beyond belief without RMT existing and not getting punished. Seeing 20,000 gold for Grudge engraving is out of hand.
