does GGG even ban RMTers

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Fair enough. Nothing wrong about that. I don't understand you, but I respect your opinion and I sympathise because the current situation seems to be completely flawed by RMT. I guess you'll have to wait and hope for the best. Although I hate to say it, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Yeah, My hopes are not big anyway :/

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Antnee a écrit :

Hate to sound like a broken record, but botting is almost all of the problem; RMT is a tiny fraction.

Lets say we live in a world where Chris and Company implemented a SFL. Everything is account bound, drop trading doesn't work, a perfect utopia of complete social isolation. RMT doesn't exist, right?

But, oh shit, it does. People still use bots, and grind a ridiculous amount of currency... enough to craft truly perfect gear themselves. RMT will still exist in the form of selling accounts with all this nutty stuff. (see Craigslist, and all the WoW accounts for sale there) On the surface, the problem appears to be greatly diminished. Upon closer examination, the problem is only exacerbated. In the tiny, solo player league, the botter levels faster, gains more gear, and cannot possibly be competed with.

*hat tip*

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Antnee a écrit :

I am not trying to comment on SFL here, I am just eliminating the trading aspect for the sake of exposing the actual issue at hand. You can not, will not ever escape RMT, no matter what. As with all things people struggle with in this game, you have to learn to balance your own expectations and goals against what the reality of the situation is, not what you want it to be.

*double hat tip - brofist - high five - vigorous nodding in approval*

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Antnee a écrit :

I am not trying to comment on SFL here, I am just eliminating the trading aspect for the sake of exposing the actual issue at hand. You can not, will not ever escape RMT, no matter what. As with all things people struggle with in this game, you have to learn to balance your own expectations and goals against what the reality of the situation is, not what you want it to be.

Anu already described the reality many times.

You are forced to trade if you want to enter end-game even if you don't want to trade.
You are even more so forced to trade if you want to do high end crafting.
High end orb usage are in pyramidal lord-peasant scheme (thanks bots here BTW!).

Ok, I'll bite too...

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Issue No. 2: RMT is affecting everyone except players who do not participate in the economy

CLARIFICATION: RMT is connected to botting which injects a huge amount of currency in the economy and leads to inflation. This makes gear more difficult to obtain. However, gear accumulates and there are currency sinks in the game, which makes gear cheaper in the long run. RMT does work as an opposing and price-inflating force, but it affects mostly the top-end, ridiculously good items. Also, most of the perfect crafted rares would not exist without the enormous amounts of currency injected by RMT.

SOLUTIONS:
a) the game can be played solo and self-found, but this is difficult and not for everyone

That's not a solution, is a choice. Just like opting out content is not a solution. That was one of the points I was trying to made, this is exaclty a 'self-centered' 'solution' (a solution fixes a problem, this does not fix a problem systematically, it just fixes your personal perception of the problem). From an engineering/design point of view this suggestion is garbage (sorry to be rude, but is how it is, a personal choice is not a systemic solution, which is what you would have to consider as a developer).

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b) it is unclear to what extent RMT is affecting the price of gear which is not absolute top-end and BiS, but it is certainly possible to play the game and trade with/for pretty good items. The prices for these items are not unreasonable at all.

What is 'reasonable' or 'unreasonable'? I can't take that seriously. That's why we have market-driven economies, because the valuation of goods by a single individual agent is meaningless in the context of a system. Again, this is exactly 'self-centred' because it doesn't matter if you can sell and/or buy good items or if you find these exchanges reasonably or not. The crux of the matter here is if in the process of getting from point A to B (in progression) you are getting disturbed by these external influences, and if so by how much and if it can be minimized.

(BTW I skipped entirely about your first point about competitiveness because I don't care much either about that, but actually GGG INTENDS the game to have some competitive factor, otherwise there wouldn't be such things as 'ladders' or 'races', including one-week race, which are very much influenced by RMT/FG. If you prefer to act as if it's not competitive is again a choice, not a solution.)

At this point I would ask GGG if they have the game balance exactly how they want, and if they have done it with the influence of RMT in mind. If the answer was yes, I would proceed to shut the fuck up and just uninstall the game and don't waste a single second more with the game. If the answer is no, my next question would be 'what steeps are you willing to take to smooth the process of getting from A to B; beyond the war on RMT/bots which you cannot win anyway, specially if you try to keep your F2P model', if the answer to that was 'none because...' again I would just STFU and uninstall... Maybe in a veiled way they are doing this and we should take that as an obvious signal, but I want to trust GGG still a bit more (specially when ORIGINALLY there were systems planned to deal with this).

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c) RMT affects the objective value of gear (measured in currency). It does not affect its subjective value. Subjective value depends on the amount of time and effort spent to obtain a certain item. Estimate your income and the subjective value you are willing to invest. Set a realistic goal you will be working for: i.e. this item costs X currency and I am willing to farm for that amount of currency. Be aware that costs fluctuate and your estimations will be reliable only for short-term goals. If you have long-term goals, your estimations should be a range, not a fixed cost - the longer the term, the biggest the range.

Value is, by definition, subjective. There is no such thing as 'objective' value. There is a 'clearing market price' for almost anything (even trash, IRL), but price != value. I don't understand how this is a solution? (Again sounds pretty much like a personal approach to the game, which is fine, but besides the point.) Anyways, the underlying 'economic problem' is that RMT accelerates very fast the natural price instability of 'online arpg's' (both inflationary an deflationary forces). To 'lessen the gap' you either fix the price instability implementing proper sinks, or make the economy matter lesser to players, or both. Which is also the underlying grip most players have with this games at the end.

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The best course of action here is to think about solutions and suggest them to GGG - and not expect anything.

Agreed, which is why most people care to post at all (and lots have been made both in this thread and since Ob launch, which is when all this started to get progressively worse, and not only because the game got larger). if you don't care you don't post unless you are trolling.. If you check my posting history you will see I haven't got a 'troll' history, and if I start to develop one is because I'm playing less and playing the 'forum game' more lol (as is more fun). But did not get quite there, I don't consider my posts here trolley at all, you may not agree with my position or I may not agree with yours but that's all.

And in absence of action leave the game which is a lot of us are/will end doing anyway, don't know how that is a solution to GGG though? I don't understand why people focus over other 'feelings' about a game in game forums. As much as you may think, I dedicate very little time of my day to 'feel bitter about PoE', even when thinking about PoE I'm still mostly an analytical person (I must admit though, that this subgenre of games aka 'online arpg's' is the only that makes me leave games with bad taste in the mouth, and other games I may get bored over time or have issues with certain aspects, but I rarely end up being bitter about them, regardless of the time I have invested in them, as long as I had fun in the process; food for thought for developers as I'm pretty certain I'm not the only person who plays this games which feels that way). And if I do, is anyway my right, as logn as this bitterness does not get 'personal', as is your right to ignore posts and do not read threads anyway.

Not very fan of kumbaya (circlejerk) forums, boring as fuck and self-defeating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_(Roman) a forum was a gathering place of great social significance, and often the scene of diverse activities, including political discussions and debates, rendezvous, meetings, et cetera

TL;DR: Most important thing: personal choice is not a solution to a systems problem, get it in your head! A designer has to deal with system design not with the personal choices of each individual when treating/interacting with that system (which is a dumb way to approach a problem due to complexity, you will never solve anything this way).

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BisuProbe a écrit :

do you acknowledge that ggg is clearly not doing enough to at least, stifle the issue?
you have laughable thread like this http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/800613/page/1 floating about
and not too long ago a self-confessed RMT-er that streams that take almost a year to ban??

I agree more could be done. More could ALWAYS be done. The issue is, what are the repercussions of switching from the current, almost constitutional evidence based approach we have now, to a "gut feeling" based approach that arguably would be more effective?

More to the point, would it really make a dent?

I will always agree with letting ten criminals go to prevent one innocent person from suffering an injustice. I'm pretty sure this is what the devs are thinking as well.

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I will always agree with letting ten criminals go to prevent one innocent person from suffering an injustice. I'm pretty sure this is what the devs are thinking as well.

It's very easy to see who RMT's and who doesn't. It's goddam easy to ban those people aswell.

Another big thing is that GGG just seems to ban accounts, not every account from the person. I once managed (after making a huge thing out of it in forums) to get an account banned. The person though was aware of it because I had to make a big thing out of it so GGG would even think about taking action. So he just transferred all of his stuff to another account. It would have been so easy for GGG to check the IP and the items to proof that it's the same items and the same person ... but ... they didn't even care. So what did my 3 pages long report and weeks of waiting and discussing with Michael and other people do? WE BANNED AN EMPTY ACCOUNT! HEYYYYYY! The person is still around even laughing at me in PMs. Ridiculous.

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Xantaria a écrit :

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I will always agree with letting ten criminals go to prevent one innocent person from suffering an injustice. I'm pretty sure this is what the devs are thinking as well.

It's very easy to see who RMT's and who doesn't. It's goddam easy to ban those people aswell.

Man they don't even cover their fucking tracks that's the amazing part about it -.-

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CCR5 a écrit :

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Antnee a écrit :

I am not trying to comment on SFL here, I am just eliminating the trading aspect for the sake of exposing the actual issue at hand. You can not, will not ever escape RMT, no matter what. As with all things people struggle with in this game, you have to learn to balance your own expectations and goals against what the reality of the situation is, not what you want it to be.

Anu already described the reality many times.

You are forced to trade if you want to enter end-game even if you don't want to trade.
You are even more so forced to trade if you want to do high end crafting.
High end orb usage are in pyramidal lord-peasant scheme (thanks bots here BTW!).

I disagree with the first point. All of the gear on my level 90 Domination witch (who soloed every map boss at one point) was self found, with the exception of the Dream Fragments I switch out for Merveil. I'll concede that I played a friggin ton compared to some people, but still, trading is not the only means to the endgame.

Your second point, I will tentatively agree with.

Third is a home run.

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Xantaria a écrit :

"

I will always agree with letting ten criminals go to prevent one innocent person from suffering an injustice. I'm pretty sure this is what the devs are thinking as well.

It's very easy to see who RMT's and who doesn't. It's goddam easy to ban those people aswell.

Is it?

Aside from linking to WTB/WTS posts that could be interpreted that way, the only surefire way to truly catch someone RMTing is if they admit to it openly, or to set up sting operations and bait people into RMT activities.

If someone openly admits to it, or even streams themselves doing so, then I don't think anyone would argue about them being banned. If there are cases like this and GGG isn't banning, then clearly we have something to gripe about.

Banning is easy. Surety isn't.