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Interesting fact about gilsellersFollow

#1 Dec 26 2004 at 3:08 AM Rating: Good
Square Enix is a Japanese company. IGE is American, and the majority of Gilsellers are Chinese. Transactions are done via internet and are therefore nearly immune to any form of legal or corporate enforcement. To take any legal action, SE would have to have government approval of both Japan and whatever nation the other party is located, America or China. The only thing that SE can do, is try to find gilsellers and buyers and delete their accounts, which is hard to do, since they only can see the gil being either sent by Delivery Box, or by trade.

Now, the methods of gilsellers use to obtain gil aren't hard to spot, but having the actual proof of gilselling and buying is. I've often sent large and delivered large amounts of gil, I could be a gilseller myself, right? But I'm not, but for all SE is concerned, me sending 100k gil to a person in my LS is an act of gil selling/buying. It's hard to know for sure.

Gilfarming isn't at all wrong, or illegal by the Terms of Agreement. In fact, nearly 100% of all players have 'farmed' for gil at one point or another. Be it camping an NM, or farming Beehive chips, doing BCNMs, or quests. So you can't just lable a person or group gilsellers based on the fact they've been in Batalia Downs for 10hours killing all the tigers. You need to catch them in the act of actual buying and selling. Again, that's hard to do, SE can't obtain (legally anyways) the receipts of transactions between players and companies.

To make matters worse, GMs seem inept at ending other ways that gilsellers get gil, which by the TOA, is illegal, such as MPKing. I've sent two messages to a Game Master about the Wangcai team, for MPKing me alone. I'm not the only one, I've talked to various other players who have also been MPKed by them, and sent messages to GMs. Common sense would dictate that after so many calls about a certain group performing actions like this, you'd think it would be okay to at least imprison their characters for a bit, if only for a couple days.

I realize that many gilsellers are literally doing this as a business, and make a living by doing this. In China, the money you can get from this, is far greater than you would get from doing 'normal' work. But by the sheer stupidity of this, they've ruined their own form of living. I don't know how it used to be, but I've been told a Million gil used to fetch something in the $300+ range, now, you can get a million gil for $60. That's 1/5 of what it used to be. Can gilselling still be so profitable for them? At a certain point, the time invested in this will no longer be supported by the amount of money you make.

Here's what SE needs to do. I'm almost positive somebody has brought this up, but here goes. Have SE set aside both a character for buying and selling a small amount of gil. Have one character buy only a small amount from IGE, last I saw that had a 10dollar amount. Once they recieve that gil, instantly delete the senders account. No questions asked. I'm sure he/she would have more gil than just that, so you're preventing more of this '*******' gil from entering circulation. Now, I'm not entirely sure how the selling of gil to IGE works, but I think it'd go something like you notify them, then they give you the character name of to either sell it too, such as a designated gilseller, or a normal gilbuyer. Whichever, once you see those names, instantly delete those accounts, no questions asked.

By doing it instantly, they can't quick send the gil to some form of backup account, all that gil is terminated. Do this in one quick sting operation, and in a day you'll have killed off a large number of gilsellers and buyers. Also, with the constant threat of a SE sting agent, gilselling and buying would be rather risky, and I can' think of many players who would risk 6 months over a 100k gil.
#2 Feb 27 2005 at 12:49 PM Rating: Decent
was browsing some old topics, and i thought this was interesting to bring back to life. that's all, just interesting reading :D
#3 Feb 27 2005 at 1:08 PM Rating: Decent
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379 posts
I would assume the gilsellers have a buffer between themselves and the end-buyer.

So if a person buys gils, the gilsellers have an account with only enough money to pay that one person. So if there was a "sting" operation set up by GMs, then the gilsellers wouldn't lose all their money.

#4 Feb 27 2005 at 1:18 PM Rating: Decent
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978 posts
Actually once you have the "sender" you can watch the transactions and see who sends large amounts of gil to them. This can be used to track down "gil-sellers", for those worried about legality of just deleting someone with scarce evidence they could then put these people on a watch list and delete them when mpk'ing complaints come in or other proven violations. Also once they have the account of the "sender" they can delete all on that credit card and cross reference it for other accounts on that card or that name. Becouse IGE is a legitamite company they can not use false names in credit card purchases as this would be a felony as a result once you pin down the name on the credit card for the "senders" you can delete a big chunk of thier gil. You do this often enough with new characters and it will result in IGE begining to question who they should send gil to for the $10 purchases and other low numbers. Since most gil buyers most likely buy these low amounts (I would guess $50 or less makes the bulk of the buisness) then you will eat away at the profit margin.
#5 Feb 27 2005 at 9:07 PM Rating: Decent
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181 posts
Myth: Gilsellers are Chinese.

Fact: While it is true that the profit you can make selling gil is a decent income in certain below poverty townships and home clusters in China, there is no evidence that points to these players being Chinese. Most of the "groups" speak fluent English and reside all over the world if you've taken time to party with them and get to know them.

Myth: The gilsellers "******* gil" should be deleted.

Fact: This gil was not created by the gilsellers, it was created by the multitude of players who gain drops off Beastmen, and other mobs and sell those drops to NPCs. Also created through quest/mission rewards. Other than that, there is no way to create gil. This gil was made by someone and the gil seller serves no purpose other than a middle man who profits off real life dollars each transaction. The AH serves a smiliar role as a middleman, only the profits the AH makes are in the AH tax that is charged.

Myth: SE is based in Japan, IGE is based in USA, and gilsellers are Chinese, giving no one legal authority over the transactions.

Fact: There is nothing illegal going on in any of these transactions. SE has made it a policy in their TOS that you cannot violate these rules however they are only able to enforce rules 'inside' the confines of their creation. No police authority will ever put a stop to these transactions, even if SE was in USA, IGE was in USA, and all gilsellers and gilbuyers were in USA. The legality of this is not an issue.

Myth: Gilsellers ruin the economy.

Fact: Inflation is not occuring because gilsellers are selling gil. Every player in the game is creating the gil. When a gilseller camps a NM and gets a drop (Monster Signa), there becomes a demand for this item. That is shown as deflation as the value of gil compared to number of items is decreased. When a player completes a quest or sells the beetle shells they get EXPing to an NPC they create more gil... making the gil less valuable in comparison to the number of items produced. Thus we get inflation. When a player sells something on the AH they are charged a tax, this tax is gil paid back into the game... or destroyed. This leads to deflation. As we all know Deflation is good if you want your gil to be worth more, however inflation is bad. Gilsellers who camp NM's for the drop to sell on AH actually aid in deflation x2. First by adding items to the pool against gil. Also by paying the tax to put the item on AH.

Myth: Gilsellers are all bots who cheat to get claims and farm.

Fact: Unfortunately most gilsellers are truely just normal everyday players. The reason why everyone is so focused on the wangcai's and the oo's and the superstar's is because they are obviously playing the game for one purpose. If you've ever noticed the 'buying your gil' links you will understand that these gilselling companies buy from everyday players quite often. The accounts that are up for sale are most likely your friends who quit playing the game and sold them to IGE for $50 instead of getting nothing for it. Bots also have no advantage over any player on getting a claim as bots are all third party programs that have to operate within the rules of the game, but from outside of it. They are almost literally another person behind a keyboard who is repeating an action over and over again to get a result. You can spam provoke just as often as they can and if you use the same methods as them you can get 50% of the claims on average.

Myth: IF SE deleted all the gilseller accounts the economy would go back to normal.

Fact: The economy is operating at normal. No MMORPG to date has been able to adequately deal with the problem of inflation. What was worth 40k one day, is worth 255 million in 5 years. This will be an exponential increase in FFXI due to the effectiveness of the AH in increasing trade between players. Increasing the AH tax is the best way SE was able to combat this problem, alas, its far too little to correct this forever.

While deleting all the gilsellers and gilbuyers would mean lots of high level players, many of your friends and partymates would disappear overnight, it would also create a huge level of deflation in the game. This of course would reduce AH prices if those players carried nothing on them but gil at the time. Deleting their high valued items would also create inflation and somewhat balance this out. It would make it a lot easier for you to camp for your armor though, as there would be a lot fewer players on the game. After time though, the prices would raise again, and continue raising past what they are now...
#6 Feb 28 2005 at 4:22 AM Rating: Good
i talked to a GM today. unless a gil seller says "i am a gil seller would u like to buy some" or "i sell gil come to www.########.com" then SE wont do anything. thats what the GM told me. even though they are monopolising NM they could very well be real players.
#7 Feb 28 2005 at 7:02 AM Rating: Decent
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1,239 posts
IGE maintains its administrative offices in New York City and Miami, Florida. The Company's market making and currency exchange services are operated by Internet Gaming Entertainment, Ltd., the Company's wholly-owned subsidiary in Hong Kong. The Company's auction exchange services and content network sites are administered by wholly-owned subsidiaries in the United States.

does that mean IGE is owned by HK ppl?

Edited, Mon Feb 28 07:17:18 2005 by Fiorina
#8 Feb 28 2005 at 9:24 AM Rating: Default
Ok first off, the way to stop gilsellers is to stop buying gil. Its as easy as that. Not everyone will listen to this, so gil sellers will never leave, they will find a way around everything.

Second Neo i disagree with 2 things u said. 1. Most of gil sellers are chinese. Most groups only speak poor english if any at all, and even if one person can speak american u cant just say the group is american. A lot of people can speak 2 languages. 2. Gilsellers do hurt the economy, not all of inflation is due to em but some is. Examples... Light crystals, thanks to the gilseller Daly pre patch, light crystals went from 4k to 6-7k. Now what about Emps Hairpin which SE had to make a counter part to help us out. And dont get me started with sniper rings. Are gilsellers the reason for the inflation in the economy? Hell no but they do effect it.
#9 Mar 02 2005 at 1:57 PM Rating: Good
Neoloop, you sound liek my teacher with the inflation/deflation explanation ><
I can break it down simpler, even though I think everyone already know what they are
Inflation - when prices go up, and stay up (its a simple as that)
Deflation - when prices go down (duh!!!!)
Continuous occurance of both is called Fluctuation, if some of you synth (wich i dont doubt) you may notice the prices keep changing
Prices fluctuate a bit too much on crystals, because none really takes their time in farming a whole damn lot and selling it on the same price to make sure that the whole history shows the same price and then everyone will sell for that, cus if a person sees prices of 2k - 2,4k for a lightning cluster on ah they think "well if someone sold it for 2.4k i think I can too" but they dont realize that someone already is prolly selling them for 2k to ensure the purchase at the cost of a slightly bigger profit, but the other person will have his cluster bought eventually, thus keeping the 2k - 2.4k range still in the AH

So...if you dont want fluctuation in prices, be it large or insignificant, then try not to be liek they guy who goes "maybe I can sell it for this much"
Cus if you sell it for more then its actually worth, then youre causing an inflation in a massive amounts of items

Think about it this way:
Do you want the price of shihei to go up? no? well then stop selling wind crystals for 3.4k per stack =)
cus that leads to woodworkers to pay more for ingreedients and wanting a nice profit still, so they bump up the prices =)
having wind crystals at 1.7k was so nice, and at the same time shihei was 6k =D
but after wind crystals went up, so did shihei
It based on the chaos theory O.o
One thing leads to another, leads to another, and another, and so on
So to stop one thing, you have to stop the engine that powers it, not the steam that comes out of that engine (very bad metaphor yes, but my history book is open and it has the first steam engine on the page -.-)

Edited, Wed Mar 2 13:57:29 2005 by RFSancho
#10 Mar 02 2005 at 6:37 PM Rating: Decent
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181 posts
Kuzy, where is your explanation of why all gilsellers are Chinese? Also I am unfamiliar with the 'gilseller Daly prepatch' causing light crystals to raise in price. But I've kinda noticed all crystals raising in price. I used to buy stacks of fire crystals at 1.2k per stack. I havn't done any goldsmithing in a month or so, but they were 3.5k a stack last time I checked. As far as I know gilsellers aren't out farming crystals, all that is still done by new players. Also what is this about gilsellers and the hairpin. I dont believe any of the gilseller groups have been associated with farming the hairpin, which has risen in price on all servers, but is still decently low in Shiva compared to others. Likewise with the sniper rings across servers.

IF anything gilsellers are helping the economy in terms of putting the items out there. I'm somewhat familiar with the drop on the Dodge Earrings. Did you know that at times there are no players there. That also means that there is no one there camping the Ooze and killing it. Which means that there is no Dodge Earrings dropping from it. Which means that there are fewer dodge earrings out there right now than there could be if someone was killing it every second it was alive. Kinda odd, seeing as how we hate gilsellers they are actually putting the products we want on the market so they are available to us on a whim if we want to pay the gil for them. If it wasn't for oovv I bet there wouldn't be as many Dodge Earrings on AH as there are. Think about it...

RFSancho you get a rateup for being the first person to actually look at it from a larger perspective and understand what is really going on. ^^
#11 Mar 03 2005 at 5:11 PM Rating: Default
1. I still never said ALL gilsellers are chinese, i just said most ( if anything most are not american).

2. One thing Daly didnt farm light crystals creating the inflation. Daly bought about 15 stacks a day at any price. She did this because fishing bots in yugrotto fished up picks and cap(was good money before fishing update). And had 2 messagers going to yugrotto and warping back. And it wasnt just daly, nomolove also bought out in windy. As far as i no the only reason fire went up was because of the crafters which is part of the games economy.

3. OK maybe not emps pin, not completly sure its been awhile since i been there. Another thing not all gilsellers have the save like name. you can just say none of them are gilsellers because they dont have names like AAEB, AABE, but there are other ways of telling. There are gilseller linkshells, and if a freaking lvl 45 DRG is using lvl 1 armor this is something up.
And im completly possitive of Snip Rings, if u check Ordelle Caves u will find Gilsellers because they camp Stroper Chyme like 24/7. There are Gilsellers on every server so if it happens to another serveru cant just say its not because of gilsellers.

4. HOW CAN U SAY GILSELLERS HELP THE ECONOMY!

Just because there is no one camping Ooze doesnt mean that no one camps him. God i have been the only one in Giddeus camping torrent before, and u well no there can be 5-10 people camping him at a time. And hell if there is 2-3 gilseller pts camping a NM after awhile, YEAH no one will camp him anymore. If the Gilsellers were gone, there still would be supply of Dodge earrings. And to i have also gotten word the earring went up about 30k in the last month.

I personally dont want to go any farther with this, because its pointless. But if u want to try go ahead Neo.
#12 Mar 03 2005 at 9:19 PM Rating: Good
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1,220 posts
I usually stay outta these gil selling threads but this one peaked my interest towards the end because of this:

Quote:
IF anything gilsellers are helping the economy in terms of putting the items out there. I'm somewhat familiar with the drop on the Dodge Earrings. Did you know that at times there are no players there. That also means that there is no one there camping the Ooze and killing it. Which means that there is no Dodge Earrings dropping from it. Which means that there are fewer dodge earrings out there right now than there could be if someone was killing it every second it was alive. Kinda odd, seeing as how we hate gilsellers they are actually putting the products we want on the market so they are available to us on a whim if we want to pay the gil for them. If it wasn't for oovv I bet there wouldn't be as many Dodge Earrings on AH as there are. Think about it...


This would be true except for one overlooked fact. The gil sellers are monopolizing certain NMs, therefore they could get 50 of a rare item and put them all up at the same time. This would not force the market down as they control the price. They are not going to underbid themselves to sell the item faster just because there is now a huge supply, they will keep it the same because there is no fear of undercutting or the price lowering no matter what the availability is. This is why monopolies are illegal in most countries, it absolutely kills the economy.

This is part of the reason gil sellers are dominant about their territory. They do not want their items to be on the open market for fear that it will drive down the price. Also, if you note on some items even if someone starts to drive down the price by getting a particular item, the gil sellers will buy/sell to themselves to run the price history back up.

Until SE does something, the inflation will continue to rise. Also, the economy is growing and like any economy, inflation will happen. The time line for FFXI as everyone knows is exagerated. If you take the Vandy time that has elapsed and compare that to RL, 3 years in RL is decades in FFXI terms. Are the prices of today the same as the 1940's? Not even close. Same with FFXI, the prices from a year ago is gonna raise.
#13 Mar 04 2005 at 6:40 AM Rating: Default
Yeah Daly's group had light crystals up to 7k and they did it every hour of everyday...now they're down to 4k post-patch after it got fixed and they're hardly ever on.

But more importantly to what Lokkii said:
Its true, gil sellers do camp the oozes and produce dodge earrings into the economy when regular players are not. HOWEVER, don't you think regular players would resume camping them if the Oo's (the group in beaudeux that camps them) left? I know I would...90k a pop [Yes, please.]

#14 Mar 04 2005 at 11:42 AM Rating: Decent
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145 posts
i'm certainly not an economist, but unless more taxes are enforced, npc prices increase or events requiring more money are added, there isn't much ingame to take the infinite money supply out and its the amount of money in circulation that is really causing your inflation (and greed of course)

infinite money supply is what causes the devaluation of gil

infinite money supply comes from quests and missions that pumps gil into the pockets of a PC ... how often does someone buy expensive goods from npc vendors? pretty rarely... npc vendors are one of the few things in game that take money out of circulation but at the same time, selling a drop, any drop to them creates gil

even if no gil sellers ever appeared in this game, crap would still be ridiculously priced given time, for the simple reason that when you do a quest you create gil ... do enough repeatable
and you've dumped *** tons of gil into the economy

finger pointing at others for inflation problems is silly because everyone does quests, everyone gets gil from it

people just don't like gil sellers, and i can't say i do either, but i am not going to blame them for the economic woes of the server

the non-NM camping gil sellers keep the crafting economies stable.
they keep a semi-constant supply of materials up for sale but because the materials they sell are not terribly rare and cannot be monopolized, they can't raise prices like they could with NM drops

those gil sellers, while annoying are serving a purpose
consider the amount of time it gets to camp and get a certain drop
then weigh that against some kind of alternative money making plan ... sometimes its cheaper to buy it rather than camp it, in terms of opportunity costs and what not

hate the gil sellers because you don't agree with what they do but don't scape goat them entirely for the economy
#15 Mar 04 2005 at 12:05 PM Rating: Decent
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1,239 posts
you also ignored that inflation not only caused by creating currency from nowhere. this is only 1 of the reason.

inflation also can be caused by the speed of circulation of currency. the faster of cycle of money, the higher the inflation.

if you want to argue, i will ask you 1 question, where does the inflation of US or UK came from if they are not printing out dollar or pounds? they have regulations that they can't print more bank notes unless they burn the same amount. why UK's house market raise 20% per year for the last few years? bank of england of cos didn't print additional bank notes did they? UK's economic were a bit stronger than europe because they keep spending money and it is the cycle of money keep it strong.

quicker the cycle of money, more inflation. and gil seller are the catalyst because they gave away gil to other ppl (well using real money) in the game.

think about if mr Gates suddently give away 10millions dollar to every USA citizen (which he is capable). what would you do with money? of cos, buy everything you dream of and create a demand of upper market and hence inflation of those items.

you also under-estimated how much ppl give away gil to npc. i personally gave away 200k per day to the guild to buy rocks, and i believe i gave away more gil than get gil from npc in my entire game life. this is only 1 crafter, there are still 100s of crafters gave away more gil than me.

also, high lvl crafters' money are not active, many ppl's money stored in mule and become inactive if they don't sell gil. i already can name 3 or 4 goldsmither has multi 100 millions stored in their mules and inactive.

the inflation is down to greed more than the additional gil created by npc.

Edited, Fri Mar 4 12:10:18 2005 by Fiorina
#16 Mar 04 2005 at 4:20 PM Rating: Decent
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145 posts
i actually don't intend to argue anything because i did preface my post by saying "i'm certainly not an economist"

i'm also not following the entirety of your post and struggling to make sense over some sentences but will forego that because i am not looking to get into any kind of economics argument for the following reasons:
1) i don't follow current events ... all i care about is how much i make over what i pay, big picture economies mean close to nothing to me personally; so long as my salary increases more than the going rate of inflation i care to be oblivious (hence i could not and will not venture to tackle the economic situations of any real life nation in an attempt to draw some in game parallel)
2) despite having a degree in business administration, i am a dropout engineer and only have a business degree because information systems fell in within the business school's curriculum ... any and all economics classes i took were done so merely because the school required it (given a choice i would have been thrilled to just code all day) ... i am not equipped with the expertise to confirm nor deny the validity of your post and will accept it as truth ... i chose not to attend my most of my economics classes and was happy accepting the C grade i got in many of them

since i cannot run queries on the server economy to see how much gil is created vs how much gil is removed from the economy in any given time frame, i can't prove what there is more of ...
think about a person that had a fishing bot pre-patch ... nearly 0 cost and by selling every catch to an npc all of it is newly created gil

point is, everyone is responsible, not just gil sellers

Edited, Fri Mar 4 16:21:25 2005 by jetrodding
#17 Mar 04 2005 at 11:15 PM Rating: Decent
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181 posts
Hmm, I'm kinda tired at this point (*late*), but I'd just like to say I'm glad people are using their noggins now and understanding this a little better than just automatically blaming gil sellers.

I will say I didn't take into account the speed of circulation just because I wasn't thinking... but I dont think gilsellers effect this as they are still just a middle man. The money they circulate is from money made off NPC drops. Which comes from AH. Which comes from other players buying the item. If they didn't get it, someone else would get the drop and sell it on AH meaning that person that dumped the money on AH for the item is still dumping it. Doesn't matter to whom. They do then send the gil back to someone in game to use who pays real dollars for it, but if it wasn't gilbuyers spending that gil it would be the person who camped the NM for the drop and put it up on AH instead.

Also a bit about monopolies. Its kinda hard to monopolize something in this game. At best gilsellers have a 50/50 chance of getting claims on any NM, the only difference is they focus on the one thing while the rest of vanadiel looks at it for a day and then moves on. This leads into a catch 22 for the Dodge Earrings at what Sepukku said.

People claim they have a monopoly and drive the price up. But I'm saying they are putting more dodge earrings out there... If they didn't camp them Seppuku would, cause they are 90k a pop, but according to the theory floating there, if gilsellers weren't camping them, they wouldn't be 90k a pop, so would Sep still camp it? Or would he camp it and drive the price up? Thus taking the place of the gil seller. Would he drive that price up further since most likely there'd be fewer earrings on AH and a higher demand for the item?

Finally I wanted to respond to the Daly argument. I was mistaken and read it as a patch, which was called gilseller Daly. I really have no clue who Daly is, so I was just asking for some more information on it. I now have it ^^.
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