The Great Debate 3: FFXI Has Benefited From Having RMT

Yeah, that's why it's best to only consider player who spend money on these game. 5~10% of 156 millions sounds realistic to me, 7.8~15.6 millions customers who paid. Otherwise I kinda agree, the future of MMOs will be based on the Come-Stay-Pay* model, which is what F2P are all about. I just think that we can't compare AAA MMOs having a classic business model using a set monthly fee with MMOs using the Come-Stay-Pay model. They're just too different, targeting a different audience. The more casual is the audience you target, the more customers you'll have, that sounds pretty logical to me. 6 billions humans on Earth, one sure thing, more casual gamers than hardcore players. (especially knowing half of these 6 billions are woman /troll :] )

*That's how Shanda called in back in 2005. (Shanda is the chinese company publishing Maple Story in China)

Exactly my thought lol

Keep in mind that's second-hand, through a Japanese source. Guess we'll have to see. It sounded absolutely nuts to me, if true. Talk about being deaf to the market.

Given SE's track record, I wouldn't doubt it one bit.

I thought they wanted it to be more casual? Which would be awesome personally, I'll wait to see what it is really like before I see if I want to play it I guess.

Try stay on topic :)

That's what I had read/heard also and was hoping for. Not WoW "casual" necessarily mind you, but sure as hell not "hey this NM can spawn between 3-7 days and the drop rates are only like 1% so you better drink a LOT of caffeine" type of stuff.

/ontopic and in response to the OP, I would think that as frustrated as some players have become with the RMT's, I would personally think that SE would have lost money if anything, especially given the time, effort, and capital resources used by them to "counter-measure" RMT's.

Sorry lol, what he wrote was a shocking thing to read!

Indeed, I would like an in-between casual play mode, they do need to fix long spawn drop rates if they are around in 14 lol.

But on point, It is a business, and if SE would make their own and own it, they could not only make more money, but at least semi regulate it. Instead of selling raw Gil maybe they could sell items, I would think that would not hurt the economy like raw influx of Gil. Why should SE care how long you play as people suggest? As long as you play, they get paid, so I'd think a more casual play style would lead to more people and more money.

Buying Gil doesn't so much hurt the economy and FFXI as much as stupid people who buy it and have no concept of economy and just blow it on over priced things causing inflation, not everyone who buys Gil does that though.

FFXI would have been better without the RMT.

I don't think RMT have been a benefit at all.

However, once they were involved, removing them crushed the economy entirely. If they never would have been removed, the economy's would be much better. Though like I said, once they were a factor, removing them was detrimental.

It's like the story of a guy who gets in a car accident, and gets impaled with a pole. He was fine before the pole went in, the instant the pole was impaled inside him. Removing it would kill him. So, live with the pole, or pull it out, and perish.
(For those dim bulbs, the pole is RMT, the man is FFXI.)

Apologies -- that was mostly my fault. Back to original topic. =)

My huge brain dump notwithstanding, I think RMT hurt FFXI because the game wasn't designed to support it. However, I think trying to make these closed-system traditional MMO's without any sort of RMT is a losing battle, and not the way the market is headed.

I just think both models will co-exist. Sure MMOs like FF XI will become more and more rare, targeting only hardcore players. That's not a bad thing, there will always be a niche market for "non-RMT" games. And that doesn't mean companies making these game will lose money.

Lot of software in the video game industry only target like <0.1% of "gamers" (I'm thinking about all these game for hardcore gamers like most of Japanese shoot 'em up or anime-based adventure games which are just targeting the fan of the genre). These don't sell millions copies, even in Japan, usually 15-25K the first week, 40K at best within a year. Never ever reach 100K+. They still exists. Publisher and developers still make money with them.

Yeah a bit off topic but to be honest it's not like the question of this thread can be answered with anything else than a "no". Can't have a real debate when there's only one possible answer. Should start debate 4 :]

Was more referring to the FFXIV comments, plenty of discussions on that elsewhere, the rest was very welcome.

My comments to come soon, just need to put them together.

I don't think buying gil hurts the economy.

what really hurts the economy and the rest of the game is how that gil is aquired before it is sold/bought.

Example 1: RMT uses crafting to make gil by buying/farming ingrediants then selling crafted product on AH or in bazaars. While this can have some negative effects on prices of crafted items and hurt legit crafters, RMT is not directly injecting new gil into the game.

Example 2: RMT farm common drop items and NPC them to make gil. This introduces new gil into the economy because it creates new gil which is then bought by players and spent on the AH. when the value of npc'd items exceeds the value of "gil sinks" (paying npc's to tele you or buying items from npcs) the economy becomes unballanced and inflation rises

Example 3: RMT hacks players accts to steal their items to sell to make gil. I do believe that this is a desperation move by the RMTs it may be that they actually have run out of ways to make gil. However this is by no means a new tactic to RMT or to FFXI it just seems to be more common now then it used to be. remember RMT are business too and if you can pay 5 guys to hack accts to make gil or 50 guys to farm items + the cost of accts and new accts when you inevetably get banned, which are you gonna choose?

I'm not here to say there is a right or wrong way for RMT to go about aquireing their gil.

However, I do support EVE-Onlines method of combating RMT in which players can buy a "time code" that will add 30,60,90 etc days to ur act then either use the time code on their own acct or sell it via a secure server that verifies the code is legit before it allows a sale to go through. of course time codes can only be bought with in game currency. this way the devs don't set the price of the in game currency, the players do.

one more point i'd like to make is that players who buy items/currency place little to no value in said items or even their accts as they have not worked hard for them. this has two ripple effects, one affects the players, the other SE. the first is that these players will sell items they bought gil to buy for far less than their value just to get rid of them, as the player will just buy more gil to get the next item they need. The second is that most of those players who buy accts, items, gil etc don't stay around, they come and go. They may play for some time, then move to another game often reselling their acct.

Well, have at me.

If these are going to be weekly debates, can we try to at least wait 4-5 days between them instead of 2-3?

That said, so far, I've enjoyed them and people have been pretty good at staying on topic and rerailing the train when it strays. Keep up the good work!

Well that's not the topic :< OP starts with a (false) assertion : FFXI has benefited from having RMT. /discuss. What would be nice is having Karusan explaining himself his own assertion. How did FF XI benefit from having RMT ? Cause so far no one agree.

about only thing they helped with was the availability of moat carp on ah for peeps trying get lu shang rod.

Korpg that avatar is so distracting it makes a person forget what the threads about ><;

The Original one for this week got done the same night it was posted. Hot topics burn fast.



I think Kurasan should have make the topic a Question.
Has FFXI benefited from RMT?
This would'va been less confusing but wouldn't have stirred debating.

I think RMT makes the Value of Gil go down. Think Gil as real money. 1 million gil is going for about $31.00 give or take a dollar. Thats about 32K a dollar. A few years ago the value of Gil was so low you could get 1 million for only $5.00 (200k per dollar). Nowadays there's not as much Gil circulating as it once was. In no way I endorse people who buy Gil or the sites that sells it. It hurts the economy by devaluating Gil, hence making things cost more.

Then comes the Price fixing. Sell things for less and less and less so less people sell it then start selling for a lot more, making the price go insanely up. Then like monkeys those who used to sell but stopped 'cuz they weren't not seeing a good profit, start selling at the price the RMT started selling.

Another thing is the In-game tell spams. I think players make it a lot bigger than it really is. I do not seeing as less annoying than a Miss tell or anything, but yet still annoying. This situation may lead in SE to take out the free trial or fixing it somehow. I say they should open one of the other closed servers and put all people on trial in there. Once the trial is over then they choose which server to end up at.

In the end, Has FFXI benefited from RMT?
Nope. Au contraire.

Believe it or not, every time you synth something, you make gil for the economy. Lets use this as an example:

Melon Pies.

All items can be bought from NPC. You don't have to kill anything to get them. You make the pies, you sell them on AH. What didn't exists before now exists (since NPCs don't have a limit on the number of items you can buy from them, and the real world does). You sell that item, you created gil.

Also, every time you kill a beastmen, gil drops.

And all the time you NPC useless junk? Thats gil created also.

What do you think RMTs use to mass-produce gil for sale?


Boing.

I don't think inflation was really that bad. I used to do the PCC bcnm and it was worth 20mil, now its worth 2mil. Haubergeon used to be 2mil now its under 200k. The only thing that deflation has actually done was make it more expensive to OP teleport, ride chocos, and buy anything from an NPC because now gil is harder to come by.

I don't think the gil aspect of RMT has hurt the game but rather the NM hoarding. I wasted many hours in sky trying to camp Ulikummi(is that how its spelled can't remember?) only to have some RMT with a claim bot get it everytime. This lead to me quitting for over a year. I think SE has gone in the right direction with NM's. ANNM,FOV,ZNM's etc make it harder for RMT to manipulate.

I guess for me I wanted it to be something people actually thought about. If I had simple asked the question has RMT benefited FFXI people would have said no and left it, by making the statement it brings people in for discussion because they want to prove the topic wrong. That said, I also like to look at these as debate topics as debate topics would normally be treated, being a group of people pick a side and argue its merits with another group arguing the other side, because not many people have, I'll be arguing that the statement is true.

Measuring the net result of RMT in FFXI is impossible, the positive and negative effects on RMT in the game are too different to be comparable, as such I will be arguing that RMT have had a positive impact on FFXI in a number of ways. The negative impacts, I argue, are as a result of greed by corporations, not the core of Real Money Trading itself.

The first benefit that can be seen by Real Money Trading is the injection of money into the market which in turn stimulates the economy where it would otherwise be lacking. A recent example seen in todays economy is through the stimulus packages provided by certain governments. People were not spending money and as a result the economy was going further and further into recession. By giving out what could be called free money, people are able to spend that money on goods and services they normally would not have, thus stimulating the economy. While yes the money had to come from somewhere, by injecting it back into the community it will further generate income for other players who will then spend money on other goods and services as well. Using my same example, if the Government were to hand out hundreds of thousands of dollars to each person, item costs would skyrocket and, as was seen a few years back, the economy would be overinflated and ridiculously expensive to enter the market. In this way, mass injection of gil into the market would be catastrophic (again) but a slow steady injection is healthy, if this wasn't the case, SE would not do the Mog Bonanza for risk of destroying their market. Not only are they injecting gil but they are also injection items into the auction house that would not be there in as much bulk.

My second argument is that had there been no RMT in FFXI there would have been no need for SE to invest in RMT countermeasures. These countermeasures are not only directed at the RMT Organisations themselves but also at players who perform botting activities. We have all heard stories of people farming up millions upon millions of gil through fishbots or farming bots that have nothing to do with RMT, these still damage the FFXI economy, possibly worse than RMT Organisations because there are no repurcussions for people that obtain their gil through these means (real life cost). If it wasn't RMT Organisations that were taking advantage of certain gil raising activities, it would be the player base that is doing it. Using the Auction House manipulation as an example, anyone can do it and people have admitted to doing it. Not only that but people are happy to take advantage of selling an item at a high price due to someone jacking the price up. Other examples such as changing certain item drops to Ra/Ex, changing the way mobs despawn are all things that SE has changed to reduce events that are commonly related to RMT Organisations. Nowadays when you go to camp Mee Deggi, you can be 100% sure that the person is getting it to use, not to sell. While probably not considered a countermeasure, Wings of the Goddess is a huge example of SE trying to deliver something to the players where there is no benefit for RMT Organisations, had RMT not been around, campaign and the way item rewards for campaign are obtained would never have happened, RMT changed SE's way of thinking in delivering content.

RMT give players a common ground. SE and the player base don't want RMT in their games. Regardless of the differences of players out of the game it's something they can agree on. While the beastmen are the imaginary enemies of the players, RMT Organisations are real enemies. Players will band together and form bonds that they normally wouldn't have had there not been an RMT representative trying to do something they're working towards. Players would team up and create new friends through difficult circumstances, without it they would be enemies.

FFXI has benefited from RMT.

I think that RMT has kept people playing FFXI, which means that SE continues to support it.

Like it or not, a lot of people just don't want to or can't put in the in-game effort to get the things that they want, so they buy gil/characters/etc.

A lot of people would probably quit if they couldn't buy gil; probably more people than the number who have quit because of RMT.

I contemplated buying gil at one point because I still enjoyed playing, but I had just moved from Hydra (360 Beta Server) to Odin and seeing things cost 10 Million gil when you have like 80,000 gil (that was a lot on Hydra) is overwhelming. I thought about it good and hard, and a knew a lot of people coming from Hydra who went ahead and did it.

For some of them it was a one-time thing and they got on their feet, learned how to make gil and survive in a mature server, and never went back. For others, it became an ugly circle. Buy gil, blow through it, buy more, etc.

One of those people in the latter group even got banned for stealing a KClub from an EGLS and then trying to launder it through a borrowed friend's account. He almost got an innocent third party banned in the process, which was very disheartening to a lot of the people who knew those involved.

Anyway, love it or hate it, I think that FFXI has benefitted in a lot of ways from RMT, in the sense that it has kept a lot of people playing.

Also, it's really fun to MPK the RMT when you can, although it got a lot tougher over time. After the "BST" MPK patch (spawn area despawn) it became tougher, but not impossible, since some mobs like Goblin Diggers and NMs don't despawn. Goblin Diggers at East Altepa zone and Kazham were greatly fun places to wase piles of RMT...

no.

FFXI has NOT benefited from having Real Money Trading.

Individual people have benefited from using Real Money Trading.

Overall the majority of people have NOT felt any benefit from RMT presence.

All the thousands of people sturggling camping against RMT at the numerous NM camp sites will agree with me on this.

An RMT ran economy is terrible. Your entire thread is completely HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE.

Without RMT - the botting Linkshells that get members banned would NOT be able to just buy a new account and keep playing with their friends in their endgame Linkshells.

Ultimately this would mean that the players who play legit would end up running the end game scene, instead of the botting ***.

Once again this thread is complete trash.

I bet your next "Great Debate" is going to be "selling weapons to 3rd world country warlords have been good for the country since if weapons dealers wouldn't go there if there was not a demand.

I'm sure the thousands of people getting slaughtered daily would disagree that their country getting weapons is a benefit.

Attacks aren't needed. If you don't feel you can contribute to the discussion appropriately I'd ask that you don't.

If that's your opinion, explain it.

Also great debate topic, PM me that when I'm doing the next one!

ill be honest i started playing this game back during the huge inflation about 4-5 years ago

i was a noob (and prolly still am xD)

i had no idea how to make gil or nothing when i woukld go to the AH and see those HUGE prices for things it scared the living hell out of me cause i was running around with what maybe 30-50k which is like 200gil in today's economy

some people would even reffer me to gil buying sites but i never bought any. after like 2 months of playing and not getting anywhere gilwise i stoped playing and canceled my account a few months later the big RMT ban occured and a few months after that i came back now with everything being lower in price i felt like it would be a lot easyer to get into the game granted i still have no idea how to make gil i get by with scraps, hand outs and the ocasitional avatar fight gil run

but this being an MMO the point (atleast to me) is to be social and play withother and have fun so speaking out of my expirience someone new to the game might feel like i do and eventually quit i left i came back yes but some people might not cause they might think it will never change i dont think the game has benefited from RMT

however studying to be a CPA i can understand how RMT companies can seek out this game as a way to make money they wouldnt keep coming back if there wasnt a market like someone said before yes the invest money in getting account and bots but its an investment they get back fast i dont think that the recent boom in RMT tells is a last ditch effort ato make some profit in the other MMO WoW things are just like in FF you get constant tells from bots to buy in game curency if anything the recent boom in RMT tells i think is a sign of their thriving buiness

(p.s. i know i have some spealling errors english is not my first lenguage xD)

I personally don't mind RMT. However, I do understand why people can find them irritating and such, but I thought it was fun to play the AH. Given, you could lose a lot of money, but at the same time, there was a lot more money to be made by just standing at the AH and studying the patterns of how the prices fluxuated.

In addition to this, RMT just seemed to make the economy "more real" because let's face it; there are people who do these things in real life too. I know there are those who just say, "Well if you want a real economy, go play with the one in real life. There's no need to *** up a fake one." While this is true, it's just more fun to take risks with fake money than staking your entire REAL life on something so sketchy.

There's my take on this entire thing, and also at least one support for RMT in FFXI haha.

Please note that telebots can be a form of RMT.
I've heard of people complaining for the lack of telepo, and this is why. Where people are too lazy to sit for hours on end to teleport someone, RMT bots are not; they provide a service that people aren't willing to, as a whole.
The prices were always the same as normal people, but as we can see on Bahamut, the quantity of telepo has gone down severely, hampering what would otherwise be progress-per-time.

if you take your topics by PM who sent you the topic to say that RMT was benefiting XI? it kinda seems like that's your opnion and not something PMed in by someone else. i can understand if the topic of RMT was sent in but come on...we were discussing things about RMT and bam! (STAY ON TOPIC RAWR I HAS CLAWS!) what they were talking about has substance to the debate. that's like saying hey lets talk about how everyone is losing their houses in the US now, and then someone bring up laws that were passed in the 90's that created the opportunity for just about anyone to buy a house.

you can't stop a discussion about RMT and why they do things and how it's such a big market that obviously people want to get into when you brought up the topic if it benefited XI or not. i myself enjoyed the little rant jaierik had. i found it informative and understand why RMT are RMT. lol but screw understanding stuff, this is obviously more about justifying RMT's presence than discussing it.

I've stated this before. I believe SE silently finances specific RMTs. Its the perfect scam. Call it a conspiracy theory but I have little doubt they get kickbacks from RMTs this way.