1460 isn’t that hard for ftp players who have been playing consistently since launch.
Most of my buddies in the game are 1430-1470.
Eh, you can whale there like a normal person. Really doesn’t mean they’re an RMT’er especially since even F2P players can be 1475+ if you play enough currently. Even I’m 1470 and that’s with playing 4 characters though that is with me buying the founders pack and ark pass so I’m not fully F2P.
This is what makes 0 sense to me. If they are committing the crime more than once then why are they not getting permanently banned? It just makes 0 sense from a business end too. AGS/SG are just losing more money. First time offenders make sense since if you scare them off then they’ll not buy gold illegally but second time offenders should always be banned.
let me fix something for you friend
“Most of the time I don’t even play my main character.”
Yup agreed…In reality, AGS/Smilegate knows that even though the whales are RMT’ing, that they are still whales, still the target customer and hope that they will spend some of that money in the actual store at some point. THIS is why they aren’t being permabanned. If the 3 day bans scare just a few of these whales from RMT again and they actually spend in the store, they will get more revenue. If they permaban them, they run the risk of them never coming back to spend anything.
So what we have here is a system that ultimately and totally screws the masses by screwing the entire economy. It coddles spenders, RMT or not. It ruins player experience by filling lobbies with bots and destroying queue times too. It’s CRYSTAL CLEAR that AGS/Smilegate are prioritizing big $$ spenders so much more than the normal player, that they’re actually sacrificing us.
@JC41 Your frustrations and sentiment are valid. RMT is cheating, plain and simple. Please continue to report instances of cheating so that these issues may be investigated. Lost Ark - Support | Amazon Games
Instead of focusing all youre efforts on fighting an infinite wave of bots though many of us would rather you focus on the reason why so many players are placing the illegal gold orders.
The bots are just a symptom of a much larger issue, another way to fight the amount of bots is to infuse gold into the economy, if players are getting healthy amounts they wont be pressured to resort to rmt’ng so often, obviously alot of them still will either way, I understand that but its a step in the right direction.
Our client has been bot infested from day 1 which devalued all life skills mats right off the start eliminating 1 avenue of gold, we recently lost gold on oreha HM after 1415, with the continued rising honing costs and relic accessories normally being listed for 300,000-500,000 gold EACH there is nowhere near enough legitimate gold in circulation for the 150-300k actual people you have playing.
Tldr: start addressing why so many players feel they have to resort to rmt to play this game and enjoy it, the bots will never stop if there are legitimate NA players placing the gold buy orders, supply/demand, devalue the resource, infuse gold into the economy, help the players before burning the house down to kill the ants please.
@JC41 I understand your perspective. A “cut off the head of the snake and the body will die” approach. I will share your sentiment with the Dev Team. Thank you for your thoughtful feedback.
Here is an idea, if they RMT ban their account, and if they want it back they have to pay a fee to amazon for it. each 100K gold = $2k U.S.D or something like that.
At the least put in some real fear factor to deter the would be players that are tempted to buy gold from gold seller botting sites. Not just a slap on the wrist. These people are 18+ for god sakes, stop baby them like children.
Pretty sure there is a law somehwhere saying that isn’t quite right.
I mean I get why they cant ban everyone that ever buyed gold, im not naive. We know what those steam charts would look like. Its just frustrating when the conversion rates are so bad that players feel forced to risk negative gold and soft bans.
Tbh what I have asked for from the start on this specific topic was they ask the simple question “why are they still buying so much gold, nonstop” from the responses we recently got from Miner I feel a little more confident that they will take a look at this.
Honestly if you didnt feel so pressured to buy gold to keep up with this intense content release cycle the bots would slow way, way down. You will never get rid of bots but can you get rid of the need soooooo many players need for them.
They buy gold because they have a psychological needs to display their vanity. You cant help those people no matter how many gold income the game gives. Because they are not playing the game, they are competing for that top 1% so they can feels good. And the thing about competition is, they are not playing the game, they are comparing themselves with others.
That is the issue with these RMT buyers.
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Thats the issue with the top tier yes but you are forgetting about alllllll the middle tier players who struggle to afford a simple 3x4 setup or think an lv7 gem is a pipe dream. Many of these players feel forced to buy gold to catch up or to even enjoy content with their friends, thats the demographic you are attacking.
The part you are talking about is right, but its a %, and no matter what you ever do they will buy it and they also buy so much in game currency none of us expect them to get banned, we all understand some whales literally fund entire content updates. You infuse gold into the economy to help the casuals and in between folks.
The penalty for buying gold should have always been a permanent ban. None of this dumb three strike, 3 day temp-ban nonsense.
The main reason the game has such a huge problem with RMT is that whatever penalty currently exists isn’t a deterrent.
The fact that the game’s “player” count spikes back up to 500k+ 24 hours post-patch clearly illustrates that whatever measures are being taken to deal with the bots are doing nothing. It’s WAY past time to switch gears, dump the current penalty for buying gold and start permanently banning ANYONE who buys ANY amount of gold.
The only way to stop people from buying gold is to go after the only thing they care about: their account.
The middle and lower players will always be affected by the actions of these small % at the top.
Again, it’s the chasing tails in a race aspect. The ones at top are chasing for the win, the ones below are chasing to catch up, it creates an endless cycle of wants and needs aslong as the upgrades cap increases and the finish line get further away.
It’s people competitive nature that fueled their own greed and creates goals. In life, the working world this can be a good trait. In this game, they are wasting their life for very little gain.
If the new low become lv7 Gem, then they will be chasing lv8, and the cycle goes on. New tier, new low and high.
Other games have easily handled the issue by simply letting the people that are hellbent on buying buy gold, THROUGH THEM.
Neverwinter came to my mind first, there they know people would rather just pay to skip most stuff so they are setup to let you swipe. Here in Lost Ark the prices in the store are so outrageous and out of touch with reality and what people, especially in SA make. AGS isnt just losing the bot war, they are losing all that rmt revenue, thats all cold hard cash that could of been spent in the shop and exchange to swipe if the rates were even remotely fair.
There are better ways to fight bots, sofar all they have tried is stick, lets go carrot now please. Lowering prices isnt losing money if you bring in a good chunk of those gold buyers, many other games have done it.
Best way to describe it would be;
Ags to Player: If you could buy gold from us instead at comparable rates safely without harming the integrity of the game would you?
Player to AGS: Yes
AGS to Player: Why dont you now though, we have an exchange available for you to use?
Player to AGS: I cant afford the prices, online I can buy over 60k gold for less then 50USD, I know if caught its only a 3 day soft ban so its just mathmatically better for me to do it this way.
Thats all it comes down to if you really wanna get radical and nip this whole thing in the bud, rather then locking the servers lets keep get down to brass tax, adjust the rates and make the exchange user friendly, put all that money your losing to china in youre pocket and stop torturing the player base with 10k ques and drama.
Because they aren’t being banned.
Classic venture capitalist pipe dream. RMT whales are just people you can threaten into being future customers. NEWSFLASH! They aren’t. RMT whales RMT because money is actually an issue for them. AGS can keep playing this badly by not realizing that a single RMTer creates more work than revenue he will ever generate.
in my first guild i’ve seen some players openly saying they were rmt’ing, obviously they got faster than others and changed guild, i can still watch them walking around freely. As for myself, i’m 1415 all legit and mostly f2p, not that i care or compare myself to them but that’s a bit disgusting, especially when bots/rmt also impacts the market so badly. In the end i see myself almost not playing pve anymore, except a few raids by the end of the week eventually, i’m playing most of the time in the pvp Arena. the last place that is free of this crap and doesn’t suffer from it (also rmt and shiny gear doesn’t help them there… uh)
I dont disagree that they should be banned, im just being realistic, we know alot of them arent banned because of how much they spend, its true in many games its not outrageous for companys to do that.
All im saying is the last week our forums have called for insanely radical changes, all of which are intrusive and I dont understand why we havent asked the most simple question yet and went straight for the nukes, “if theyre hellbent on buying it why dont we just let them buy it and move on”, sell it to them, other games do it.
Or be like Tree of Savior and totally remove all the gold from the game and have monsters and quests drop bound coupons players can exchange for goods at npcs, ya that actually fkng happened. That was a better option in their mind, and here our solution aparently is to just lock all the servers or re-release the game. Im just saying before we get batshi* crazy just let the whales swim, setup a player friendly exchange with competitive rates.
Try not to confuse what they are going to do to make money with what you want done in a perfect world, at the end of the day they are still there to make money, and im ok with that aslong as my playing isnt impacted by it.
It’s a tale of being defeated by one’s own greed. Not banning RMTers out of fear of losing a whale has led to RMTers fueling bots that now keep whales from logging in.