I love conspiracy theories!! Yay

heh, all i have to say is .... This is a Win for all the honest players. Now maybe I can finally camp something and get a drop.^^

I really wish SE would make Garlaige Citadel Coffer a little bit easier to find >< lloking for 4 days now ><

Ayways, Go SE!!! w00t for the good guys!1!

This is a step in the right direction for SE. I think in the long run, this will limit the amount of these types of items on AH and forcing people to go out and get it themselves.
I think rare drops off of camped NM's should be like a non-repeatable quest. If everyone has one chance to get it, that is all you need. You are always going to have ppl who don't even need the items, and sell them. When I unlocked Rng, I had no intention on being a ranger, so I sold the necklace. It didn't sell quickly, but that is how it should be. Later on down the road if I ever want to start going Rng, then I will have to buy it from someone. I see no problem in making rare drops non-repeatable.. maybe earrings and rings are the exception since you can wear two at a time.
The economy would be better off with this method, because the ex-campers will be forced into being tradesmen and tradeskills. For all intents and purposes, I think that would benefit everyone.

Has anyone considered the possibility that SE is employing the gilsellers? SE is interested in real world money. Creating shortages of desired items, by nerfing the drop rates and/or hiring low cost Chinese labor to camp and monopolize them, forces players to buy gil to obtain the best gear. SE would make more money on everyone who buys gil. Transactions in the game are easy to trace. SE knows who is selling gil and real money trade is illegal. Maybe they only deleted the freelancers or the ones who violated the unpublished "Gillseller's Agreements".

Want a real fix to AH inflation? Make everything that is not Rare/Ex availble for sale from NPCs. Prices at AH wouldn't rise much above the NPC price, real players could still make gil (although not as much as with uncapped prices), and the gill sellers could continue on their merry way while players who choose not to buy gil could still obtain gear at reasonable cost.

PS...I've degrees in economics and business. If you don't think a Japanese company is incapable of deceit and double dealing on this level...get real!

I don't think the real problem here is the cost of the items that the GS are camping the NM's for. People's main issue is that they feel they can't properly compete with Gil Sellers for the NM's. I don't mind going up against another 'player' for a NM drop, or even don't mind paying the price at the AH for an item being sold by another player. I get upset if I have to pay top price for an item that i have to buy essentially from a GS. I also get annoyed if i see a GS camping a certain NM 24/7. The cost of the items isn't the real issue. The difficulty in obtaining these items through means other than buying them, because of the GS, is the true problem. If you can fairly camp an NM for a drop,(by not having to compete with the GS) but don't want to bother or spend the time, then paying for it at the AH is more for your own benefit of not having to put in the time to camp it. So, essentially, you are paying for whoevers time that went and got the drop. AGAIN - the issue being with the GS's 24/7 unfairly camping NM's, not the cost.

I don't think that it matters if the NMs are camped as much after as before. Which would you rather have? Twenty drops going to 1 gilseller (monopolist, call them what you will) or to 20 bona-fide players?

With one you have 19 pissed off people, with the other you have 20 people who have "hit the lottery".

Which makes for a better game experience for everyone overall?

Well, I know from talking with my roommate that well, prices will not drop as long as people have his type of mentality. Which, is perfectly fine, it promotes the economy.

Simply, I am of the mind of selling stuff just above cost for me (both him and I are crafters). So, typically I can sell stuff from 100-5k less then what they are posted in the AH and still turn a decent profit in my eyes (I can make 40-100k a day on the stuff I deal in). My roommate is currently on a kick with warp cudgels. Now the price to craft these things is rediculously low compared to the price they sell for. My roommate will put them at the current going rate. Now he can make 1 million gil in a day. I have noticed from comments here that many people share our split views on the economy and well, the two ideas are mutually exclusive. There are people out there (specificly posting in here) that complain about the high cost of goods and their desire for the price of the items to drop to a reasonable amount. Obviously the voice of the buyers. Then there are people who are complaining about the people who undercut the price of items so their items do not sell. Do I need to say this is the sellers?

Anyways, what I am trying to point out on the whole gil farmer thing is that I know enough people in this game that sell their E. Hairpin and leaping boods at the ah price to say that there is no number of accounts that they can ban that will cause the price to decrease. The only way it will go down is if the supply reaches critical mass. I will tell you right now, I would pull my 500k item out of the ah and put it in my bizaar or sell it for less if it got returned twice. That was the point of what Square is trying to do. However, people are still willing to buy the item instead of going to get it. I personally have not bought lizzy boots or a hairpin and thf and nin are my two main jobs. Simply because I spend my gil and time on leveling and crafting. Maybe someday I will either have the time to farm them or the gil to buy them, but, I don't care if I don't have the UBER gear. I keep the supplies to compensate. I mean, whens the last time you have seen a ninja heal themselves in an exp party? Or use a ranged weapon even? For the price of the Emporer's hairpin I can get 10 levels worth of Juji Shuriken. And with Provoke, Hi Potions, Ninja Tools and Shuriken I a) have no problems maintaining hate even with over zealous blms or rangers. b) average exp chains 3-5. c) comparable if not better dps (Damage per second) with and dt (Damage Taken) with other nins I pt with.

So, I guess what I am trying to get at is, I see my course of action for fighting gil farmers. Don't buy the crap. If you buy something that is typically "Farmed for gil" you are supporting their actions and in my opinion have no right to complain about them farming the item. There are alternatives to everything. Yes there are items that have stats the blow the doors off of other items, and yes people are going to farm them to sell them. And as long as someone is willing to pay the price, someone is going to be willing to sell it to you. So, if you are selling the item sell it cheaper, if you are buying the item, wait for the price to drop, otherwise, I don't think you can hold it against sony for having an open economy. I don't want someone to tell me how much I can sell something for, let the market tell me.

Anyways, that's 2 cents... Hopefully it will be taken with a grain of salt:)

Just a tought, but you think that perhaps the reason SE targeted MPK and NM monopolizing is that not only could it be easily proved they were doing so, but also that the violation of the member agreement would hold up in the unlikely case someone sued SE because they got banned? While it's known who the gilsillers are on each server, is there enough of a connection for SE to prove it against the POL agreement? And even then, I'm thinking it would ban only one account if that is the account doing all the selling, as I see only 1 name on AH for sniper's etc. all the time.

Now I wonder if they do track the amount of times someone calls a GM on an MPK/gilsiller and that could set a precendent for the future. Of course, I would just be thinking wishfully about SE too.

I am impressed. A few thoughts.

1) SE can't catch everyone. I think that we should remember that. 800 accounts is impressive. On most severs IGE had 10-20 sets of gil to sell at a time. As someone said SE banned about 25 accounts per sever. That is a decent number if you ask me.

2) Bots are a different issues from gilselling. The are doing other things to prevent bots like changing fishing (which has the benefit of making fishing more exciting BTW).

3) I like the fact that SE backed up there words with action. At the last update they said they would take action and they did. When they said they were investigating the situation it appears they really were.

I am quite pleased with the outcome.

Just a quick comment on the possibility of lower prices. On one of the more recent updates, SE changed the AH cost to reflect the value of the item on auction and not what it goes for to the NPC. This means that if I want to sell an item that goes for 500k on the Jeuno AH it will cost me roughly 10k. If I'm selling that item, I might undercut a bit but not too much because it's costing me so much to sell the item. SE put that fix in to try to stop undercutters and it has worked for the most part. Because of this, I doubt there will be much price movement on the AHs for NM drops. It's all simple economics from a college trained economist. We can all hope though ^^. Happy NM hunting!

I dropped my 2 cents in here cuz I love FF and
don't like to see ppl ruining it by gil selling.

I come back to find I was rated down for trying to help. WTF!

As for you Loning, I'm 27 and yes I went to college. Now since you have such a good business sense please elaborate as to what we could do to rid the FF worlds of gil sellers.

Anyone can dismiss my ideas and rate down, but how is that going to fix things?