Infinite accounts+ bots evolving to go around ban algorithms… Do you really think we can prevent bots in every single way possible to the point there will be no bots at all? I just said even KR with strict restriction has bots in my previous post. Do you really think its possible to make them NOT make money eventually… when they cannot even ban obvious RMT transactions on auction house?
What you’re suggesting is “lets keep endless chase on bots, they will get banned, and come back, and get banned, for them to just come back”
We will never have 0 bots. Please don’t suggest I’m saying that.
But currently a bot can make 100+ new accounts in less than 2 minutes without having to:
Spoof a phone number
Type in any 2FA authentication
Verify an email address
I understand that bots can and likely will find ways to go around all of these methods but putting in measures to make it harder for them to create their new accounts is the best solution to dealing with RMT.
Also getting better at detecting bots inputting the exact same keys for 24+ hours straight would be a good start.
IMO these things need to be addressed for any impactful change. A new post from Roxx saying
“We are going to be perma banning all RMT’ers we find. If you get caught up by mistake please submit an appeal” isn’t going to change anything.
as long as somebody can go on g2g and see millions of gold for sale for 1/4th the price in game people will risk the bans. When g2g doesn’t have millions of gold for 1/4th the price, we may see some real change finally.
Yea this is how most games tackle their evolving bot problems since tracking down and banning every RMT’er to the point that any potential RMT’er would be too scared to buy isn’t very effective.
At the end of this day, it’s a game and I’m not going to report people I’m friends with. It’s not illegal, just against a ToS in a game. Also what evidence do you have that reporting does anything? See, that card can be played both ways
No, if they get banned it was ultimately their fault.
This should be an automated process, not a manual one where players have to snitch on other players. That’s not scalable or reliable.
People in top guilds are consistently getting reported, to a point where they probably have shown receipts to prove they are not. At this point you’re probably just trying too hard to find an RMTer in that midst. Also if you’re getting banned once or twice for RMT, you don’t tell that anyone, because then it means you publicly admitted to RMT and would open possibilities of people trying to get you caught by mass reporting again.
They might have been banned once or twice after they have accumulated their gears, meaning even if harder detection systems are found, it won’t make a difference to those already on the top.
SG/AGS should rather change the punishment to reflect the amount that was RMTed with, but again that would require extensive research…
I just don’t agree with this statement. If you go buy gold at 1/4 the price and get that gold removed and a 3 day ban almost every time, you will quickly stop that behavior. Why? Because you are losing more money (and play time) by risking it than just buying through the cash shop. For RMT to be as rampant as it is, the risk has to be very low.
They don’t even need to say they got a warning or ban, people find it right away when someone who religiously been playing 24/7 stops logging on for few days. Yeah… they say vacation, family business, business trip but most people figure out
Some people I know from public server and some aren’t. People in public don’t really mention about RMT or bans. If anything people who compete with other guilds in gvg call each others out because they want them banned.
People in closed server are more open with saying they got a warning/ban because it lets their friends/guilds watch out for possible ban wave.
This. Or when you’re in discord with people who frequently throw up a stream for hones or armor dying or whatever and they suddenly went from 1000 gold to 500k. They must have sold some flowers on the auction house
Also this. Some guild discords I’ve seen are very open about RMT. People aren’t always as guarded as you would think when inviting a pug healer to their Valtan HM static.
How about if you got a 3 day ban and only the gold you had on you was removed? So if you spent it all and only had 2k left, they just put you at zero.
This is what currently happens if they even touch the gold at all.
Now If I get hit with a negative gold amount like they do in RU, I would probably agree with your statement and it would deter people from ever buying RMT again.
But there will always be stories of people buying RMT gold that avoid the ban or keep the gold and people will continually take the risk.
If the devs could actually detect the majority of RMT transactions and put them at negative or perma ban them and it was widely published on social media, it would have a real impact on RMT. Unfortunately this doesn’t look like it’s happening since most of us personally know people that have RMT’ed hundreds of thousands of gold and received no punishment at all. To be clear I would support harsher punishments for RMT’ers.
I still think a larger impact could be had if better detection methods and 2FA for creating new accounts prevented bots from auto farming hundreds of thousands gold every day across hundreds of characters.
Yes and I suggested they do this somewhere above. I think this is definitely necessary. There should also be increasing ban times leading to perma ban with repeat offenses.
This is all I’m saying. We don’t know why they can’t. Either they aren’t prioritizing it, or there is some other limitation. Would be nice to get some communication to clear that up.
Some guilds share info on where they buy gold. Some even have section in their discord where they can buy gold, gold bot script, chaos bot script, etc. A lot of things happen in guild scale where most of guildies do it.
The thing is: this isn’t the same situation, bots are not like drug lords, they are more numerous than their buyers, so fighting them is harder than fighting the buyer
Think of it like this: there is a store owner that sells phones, they buy from lots of thiefs and resell them. The owner is the person that RMT, the thiefs are the bots. Your should try to put both in jail for sure, but taking down the owner is faster and more efficient to reduce crime than the other, so priority should be to take down the store owner
IMO they would lose a significant amount of the real players still playing the game. I would guess that atleast 30% of the current playerbase has engaged in some third party RMT and these players are probably ones that started off spending real money in game before realizing it’s a better deal to get it from bots.
It seems like the dev team for our version is significantly understaffed or something since it takes months for simple changes (cursor bug still in game and is the clock fixed after the DST change).
My whole point of posting was that If they need to prioritize targeting RMT buyers or detecting bots/implementing effective 2FA, they should focus on the detection/2FA since it would have a greater impact on the RMT situation, IMO.
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. My opinion differs here though. I think targeting buyers would be easier to sustain because they ultimately care more about their account. Punishing them is easier and leads to the same result. Trying to punish sellers is signing up for a constant battle as long as there is demand for gold from buyers.
Ideally they would do both but you’re probably right about this:
So maybe they don’t have the resources to target buyers in a way that wouldn’t be too ham-fisted and cause people to quit. It would have also probably been simpler if they established that much earlier in the lifespan of the game so people would try RMT, get punished and then stop. It didn’t start at 30% of the player base or whatever it is now. It’s so widespread at this point that they do risk losing a substantial amount of players with severe penalties. I do think it would ultimately lead to a healthier game but they may disagree.
when drug dealers get caught, they post bail and are back on the corner selling again the next day. Then they show up to court, get probation, and back to the corner again.
OSRS is a really good example of RMT off the rails getting curtailed a bit by banning the gold buyers instead of trying to ban the millions of gold sellers reestablishing themselves. U have to stop the practice by removing the clients so there is no more demand for cheating gold prices.
