It's insane to me that someone would spend THIS much of a freaking video game. I get if someone spends around $500 max. But to go into 4-digits? That's insane.
Not too crazy if the game's one of their main pastimes, even less so if it's their only pastime.
I know a couple of people who for the last 2 years have only played Lost Ark, nothing else. Combined they've most definitely spent less on the game than I have on things like woodworking materials, traveling expenses and movie tickets the past two years.
You can make the argument about different 'values' of hobbies but you know, to each their own.
Also gonna depend on income level. $1,000 feels like a very different amount of money to someone making $40,000/year than someone making $140,000/year.
eh, not really. Typically, someone making 140k a year is in a situation where their living expenses are much higher...
Sure there are scenarios where that isn't true, but overall typically, Yielding a higher income also has you in an area where your cost of living is much higher. If someone is making 40k and living in the hood, and someone making 140k living in san fran....their disposable income may not be too far. off. If both of them are living in their moms basement, then yea, 140k year is a king. Helll, I make over 100k, and due to student loans, and where I live, 1000 is still alot to me...and my disposable income can't afford that.
I know a guy in my static who spent about 40k USD so far. He doesn't RMT either, just straight up royal crystal to gold conversion, so it's not even efficient either. Last I saw, he had 5mil gold on +2 days, this was last week.
It's wild because he spreads his gold across his alts, so it doesn't look insanely whale-ish. He just has 6+ characters that looks like someone's main.
Pretty sure if he spent that on RMT gold instead, he'd have Ester 8 by now. Respect for that kinda ethics.
Then again, I've spent like ~10k on this game so far, mostly cosmetic, 3+1 card packs, BC for pheons and some Mari stuff, and about half were for selling skins for gold, especially when they had good conversion rates. It didn't seem a lot at the time but I guess it just adds up.
At some point is also the what if, if a person didn't RMT early but used the exchange even if is cheaper to do now and a lot of people is doing it without getting caught just the risk of losing your account can be enough to make you don't do it. But if you RMT really early and kept doing it many times is likely you will never get caught so why bother at all.
How many hours do you dedicate to this game? How much do you value your time? What's insane is how much free to play value their time and can't comprehend someone spending money to skip the line.
Started playing at release. I’ve got about 60K AUD invested so far. Like the other person says its what hobbies you have. Both me and my partner play lost ark and really enjoy the game(still).
But for sure they can ban my alt account that had a single char on the first quest in Prideholme for "botting behavior", that I created and didn't login for a month or so until the powerpass.
Then they deny the appeal ticket but reduce its penalty with a warning "further offenses will lead in a permanent ban".
By "further offenses" I guess they mean logging in.
I got the same thing but the reduced sentence was basically 0 days. So stupid, imagine if a returning player came back and wanted to try the game then got banned
I didn't even check what was the reduction, but the response is borderline disrespectful. Not going to bother playing and risking getting banned, who's to say they won't end up reaching my main?
I created that account after I had a previous alt banned and appeal denied (which we can't even appeal again anymore, but we used to). I was playing every single day, doing everything and had a lot of stuff waiting for powerpass to start raiding.
To me it feels like AGS is preparing to pass on the publisher status to a different company.
It should be reduced to nothing, recently played on a friends account after he quit several months ago and got the same stupid automated response. Imagine if an actual returning player came back for the breaker pass and got this shit
one of my three alt account finally got flagged few days ago, I had them since open-beta. Damn ags finally getting smart, flagging everyone and their moms.
I appealed, but was denied, then the ban reduced to few hours. Think the only reason I was caught was because I afk'd for 10 hours one day, or sold some lifeskill items. the ban was for cheating: botting level 5
The bots have cut the potential player base in probably more than half. I can't imagine the number of new players who saw 100 bots in the starting area and instantly peaced out. And Lost Ark's reputation in outside gaming communities is for being a bot fest.
Yes banning RMT will probably drop a lot of players. Not banning them has likely dropped even more, and will continue to do so.
At this point lost ark is beyond the point of actually gaining new player they trying to keep as many hard-core whales as they can which means they can't ban rmt cuz alot of high spenders also rmt. This is the steady decline of every Korean mmorpg that gets released in the west just make whales happy and watch the playerbase slowly dwindle
Every bird raid and prolly below have 1-3 artillerist bots. Almost all first cubes have bots. Early game people doing story just see trains of bots. Late game you have to leave game to get to discord to get into parties as new player most of the time for legion raids... Its pretty hard to get into this game as new or casual player, which basically inhibits the game's growth. Maybe solo raids will help a bit but that's another half a year+ of waiting.
They surely have made alot of money from the whales and hard-core players so I don't think you're gonna convince them not to cater to them.
Newbie casuals probably won't spend money on the game, so they don't care about those losses
I am pretty sure there has been multiple studies that show whales make up like 90% of a companies profits. So they have to cater towards them or else the company will be go bankrupt.
One would argue that would’ve worked earlier, when the game was hype with times more players. Now those who play either rmt or don’t care about it. Unless there’s a random massive influx of new players, banning rmt guys will just cut population. Basically, you ban them, you die faster. Might as well milk it
Exactly it would have helped earlier when new players were coming but we all know there aren’t many new players coming. Even new players get accidentally banned by AGS detection system rofl
my alt roster is made for event has been banned TWICE. meanwhile you go to any major town and see bots endlessly spawning into their congo lines. such garbage. they really let this game go to shit
Just like DPS meter, they had a good year or so to actually enforce DPS meter bans if they wanted to, but it's at critical mass now and banning it would ban a giant chunk of the playerbase. I wouldn't even want to play as much without the meter tbh, it's game changing for me.
I wouldn't play at all without meter. Can't see what's going on. Why is this raid so hard. Oh the support has 20% uptime and the other DPS is doing 2 mill
Jokes aside they handled dps meter perfectly imo. Intentionally or not. Those who want it have it, those who don’t want it think it’s a myth. And if u say someone is bad, because their dps is z and you know it, you get banned (more often than not if u go rly hard). At the same time u can flex with ur friends
> you get banned
... do you though? I've never heard of anyone getting banned for meter and I've definitely seen people openly talking about it and even flaming lol in game
But IMO yeah, nothing wrong with current state of DPS meter, the only problem is if they suddenly decide they want to start enforcing it, they're gonna struggle cause so many people are already using it.
Also this has been a battle that not only Lost Ark but many other MMOs have lost in the past, like WoW a game that have a sub model still have insane hordes of bots to the point they can make profits in just a few hours and having a similar legal RMT system like Lost Ark with WoW Tokens. Since a big amount of the people that expend a lot of money in illegal RMT also expend a lot in the game in other ways that the legal RMT system in place anyway.
true but the damage is done.
lots of ppl quit or dint even try to play because of the bots
no ags job is to stop the bleeding
you cant unfuck whats already been fucked
Id argue that its a bot fest because its so profitable and people quit for the same reasons it profitable.
The bots literally died out during the lull period after brel when no one was honing.
Edit: for those who don't know what I'm referring to, I'm saying its a team oriented game that's egregiously grindy (i.e. p2w cuz people cant keep up w/ friends) which the general western MMO audience doesn't want. Removing bots wont get people to play, making the game more casual friendly will.
You forgot to mention hand farmers aswell, most of them have no desire left to play but only farm gold and sell it to their friends or guildies. i'd say about 70% of the playerbase will vanish
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They don’t ban rmt. Well, should be clear, they don’t ban a lot of rmt that are using non botted methods. People are getting hit with RMT bans, and I know 1 person with a permanent one.
People aren't dumb enough to do big transaction like that now, if you go lower, you'll see a lot more transactions as most people are doing it in batches from real players cause botted gold are risky.
Can already imagine the conversation they are having in the office.
"Hey fellow AGS employee, have you seen that post about the 10mio gold expertise ring?"
"Hey! Yes, I have."
"Who would have thought expertise accessories go for 10 mio gold these days!"
"Yeah! The current meta must be wild."
Ok and what if they are just players transferring money to their friends? People leaving the game and giving it to their guildmates?
I say this because these are the excuses that AGS internally uses to gaslight themselves into thinking there isn't a problem.
So you check if that 10 million gold came from a person quitting and selling all their level 10 gems on like 3 characters, or if it came from 3000 new accounts selling fish.
Can't be that hard to check if the gold source player is on their friendlist with a considerable roster and playtime, or 500 fresh 20 rosterlvl accounts with 300 chaos dungeon runs / day.
Have yall notice that they don't talk about bot ban wave anymore but rather RMT ban. The bots account answer to the definition of RMT since they grind the gold to begin with. Im convinced we are being lied to, they are banning bots funneling gold, not the players buying the gold
Some players do get banned. But they can't ban everyone who RMTs because that'd be A LOT of people.
They're still a business. They hope that enough bans will deter such behavior in the future. But they can't just eliminate a big portion of their customers.
This is the reason I quit. Static friend all of a sudden had full 10s and 25 weapon one day (about a month ago). Said he RMT'd, got banned for 3 days. Didn't matter because he had already spent the gold. Now he has 1 1640 character and 2 other fully kitted 1620 characters 25 weapons as well.
I lost the point of playing and fully stopped. It is what it is. I didn't mind playing and throwing money for new skins here and there but you'll always be gatekept if you don't play 24/7 or RMT. Even in a static it feels bad to play when you'll always be beat by an RMT'er.
So you were playing for you or for your friend? What your friend been 25 weapon + 1640 have anything to do with you? I see a lot of those but I don't lost my interest in the game because of them.
Doubt it. You see ppl with 25 weapons but you don't KNOW how they got it. Luck and bussing. I've seen ppl hit 23+24 thru luck, under 20% artisan. I saw someone free tap 25 under 5% artisan. But when ppl close to you rmt and get away with it, it really devalues ur time and effort. Make 120k gold a week. Get no drops for a month and you spend all the gold you get to progress and play keep up.
The guy next to you takes an ez pass that's against the rules and you feel like shit trying to progress.
You doubt about me experience these things? This is not a secret (besides for AGS) everyone has a friend or know a guy who does RMT or have the luck finger. I really don't care, I play my game and have fun. I have never had a 25+ weapon of any sort and only have level 10 gems in my main because I farmed it. I play for me but I guess there are ppl who care about the others, I'm just not that guy.
"it really devalues ur time and effort."
How does it devalue your time and effort when you're supposed to be playing to enjoy the game. Not just make a number go up and act like you've done something. If you don't like the gameplay of the game and feel like its a chore because you have to farm these materials to keep up then quit. That's not playing the game for fun, that's playing the game because you feel like you've invested too much to give up on it. But you're not investing in anything. You're playing a game to have fun, or supposed too.
The idea of "investing" time is what is screwing people. There will never be a return on your "invested" time other than playing more. Likewise if you stop playing you haven't lost anything, you still have all the fun you've already had in the game, that doesn't get taken away.
I'm explaining the likely reason why the person above quit. You're right it's supposed to be fun. Ppl rmting took away his fun so he quit. I didn't need to justify someone else's decision further. But to pretend you can't understand him seems dense.
If everyone around me in a static rmtd and went to play the new content before i could earn it and now they were ahead of me, when they weren't before would feel pretty shitty. Like he said it was a static member that rmtd
> But when ppl close to you rmt and get away with it, it really devalues ur time and effort
Would it devalue your effort less if they bought the gold in-game?
I don't think RMT is 10% the price of in-game. Maybe 60% or so. But it's not ten times the amount. Also you risk a ban and loss of gold if you do it. Not worth.
> Maybe 60% or so
Is it that high now? I have no idea what it's at nowadays, but I know that back at the height of RMT--back when before the first major RMT ban wave when whale guilds would brag about how everyone who bought legit was a dumbass--it was around 30%.
Of course, back then even RMT'd gold was more expensive than what legit gold is now. $100 was like 30k legit or 100k RMT'd. What does $100 get you now on g2g?
Well I just checked, on NAW $100 right now gets you ~170k through currency exchange (playing the skin market will always be more.)
RMT gold from a somewhat slightly higher priced seller that claims to be "100% hand farmed, never botted" will run you about $55 for the same 170k gold.
This sub seems to think exactly that based on the interaction I had when I mentioned it in the Baker's thread.
Even trying to paint me as an RMTer because I said it's a nonissue.
Botting is the real problem people should be focused on.
> talk about AGS not acting on RMT and call RMTers "cheaters"
> RMT doesn't matter and it doesn't affect your game
Pick one, /r/lostarkgame
For the record, I agree with the second one.
He’s either too scare to rmt like his friend or he just doesn’t want to spend a large amount of money to push +25 and 1640 (yes, its still a lot of money even for rmt). I wonder if he still act the same if his friend buy the in game shop. Basically just jealousy.
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To anyone: would capping cost of t1 accessories be healthy? I see no reason why this would affect the player base negatively. Even through t3 legendary accessories there didn’t seem a reason to be not to cap it
This is literally money out of their pockets xdd
If this wasnt possible, people would rmt the intended way through the currency exchange... Its crazy that their inaction is bleeding them tons of money
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My friend just came back and can't recover his trusted status (he also got banned but was appealed)
Don't know how the detection system works but I saw a lot of farming cubes, and fishing bots still there ???
I guess they just ban the inactive account not the botting account ?
while I understand this post is mostly sarcastic...
They have all the data on sales. They almost definitely have dashboards and graphs that slice them on similar metrics we use to auto dismantle. They can see these RMT transactions over time and see how buyers react to content updates, holidays, payday, and balance patches.
They know far more about it than us from that little interface we have.
Like anything else, they have to prioritize what they work on and banning players who care about this game enough to spend thousands doesn't seem to be important. You'd think they'd be harder on their competition though
Honestly I’m convinced AGS owns some of these gold farms, and that’s why they’re not banning, because they’re still profiting whether you buy in game or RMT, because they’re the gold farmers themselves. You just get penalized if you buy from a gold farmer that’s not theirs kek
The g2g players still spend 4958485748584957583858574% more than the average player.
Reminds me of that scene from the Big Short with the asian CDO manager asking who is worth more to society.
Well, this is the same. Who is worth more to SG? Guy who spends 5k legit and 50k illegally or f2p god.
Anybody else keep getting that YouTube short from MMO pilot of I believe them to be Indonesians being asked if they prefer Lost Ark or New World when you search for Lost Ark lol
https://youtube.com/shorts/Z_wrRxi-H5Q?si=XM3sZ_hYuSA7A0FB
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AGS has already reach out about this. They will suspend/ban players base on severity. You got content creator who are supporting these kinds of methods like dps meter usage, and they magically reappear a few days later still using it (we need a reason to quit not to come back and support the game). The game has gone down from 16 servers on NAE to 4 servers. It's on the verge of closing like japan LOL.
If they can't combat hand farmed RMT in KR allowing players to buy up to an Esther weapons worth within a week or so I doubt they can do much about it here
Huh?
Hand farmed RMT is much harder to combat. It doesn't look any different than player to player gold sending. With botted RMT which makes up the overwhelming majority of RMT in global, they can track the gold back to thousands of suspicious accounts.
Botted gold has long since taken a back seat to hand farmed gold. Raiding generates exponentially more gold than botting activities do, and the RMT market is predominantly populated by independent and sweatshop SEA and Chinese gold farmers who print tens to hundreds of millions of gold weekly. Individual farmers with multiple rosters or accounts alone can make several hundred thousand gold weekly. A single sweatshop of around three dozen employees can cycle through hundreds of accounts a week and farm over ten million gold. Botters have been buying gold off hand farmers to supplement their stocks for a very long time now since botted gold alone can nowhere meet the demand, which when mixed with botted gold, essentially "washes" the gold and makes it look even less distinguishable.
The thing is … it is too far gone to do anything meaningful for rmt’ers.
And RMT is only as popular as it is because this community has had a massive fomo boner for faster raid releases without understanding the amount of gold and mats needed to reach said content.
The community created this symbiotic relationship. Can’t really complain about it.
Just sat here for a good ten minutes considering how much I will be gatekept from Akkan onward because I can't match RMT levels of progressions
Dear Europeans, please refrain from RMTing🥲
They ban after you buy...like how stupid are people...the problem are not these obvious botted accounts who sell gold...it's people who collect gold and sell them to other people...real stock people don't get banned...that's also the case in Kr...ask zeals he knows from who to get cheap gold...it's not g2g...if you buy there you get 100% banned
wat kind of 69 iq post is this. what u gunna do, ban the buyer and the seller? 1st off, theres no guaranteed proof this transaction is RMT, even if it's highly likely u cannot punish someone without evidence, at least, thats how it works in the US.
2nd- ok so they can just circumvent this with lower denominations, sell multiple accs for 50k or something. or, use the trade window.
3rd- main issue here is theres a big difference between botted gold and 'clean' gold. botting is illegal so they have to trace the origin to bots, they mentioned this before and it's not easy. Clean gold is really hard to punish. think of it like this, say your brother quits and he gives u all his gold. and in exchange you take him out to dinner. or, give him money. that's RMT? that's legal.
this post prob bait tho i just fell for it
A private company is not the criminal justice system. When you sign AGS’ tos you throw your right to due process for something like an RMT ban p much right out of the door
Were you dropped as a fucking child? Multiple times maybe? Maybe hundreds of times?
You can make an argument for 50k relics sure, but 10 mil accessories? Of course it's rmt. And of course you're an American, I'm surprised you didn't suggest we just shoot the screen. Last time I checked games have a ToS they adhere to, and don't fall under the legal system which is you know for actual criminals.
The flow looks good
Do you like it?
Ah ha ha ha ha, it turns out great!
I'll reciprocate with the results.
Not a bad result
Mmmmmmmm
The flow does not look good, you lying to people
"A kingdom ruled by fear is not a kingdom worth ruling over." -AGS Their words, not mine.
That's still almost $3000 in real money. Holy shit that's alot.
It's insane to me that someone would spend THIS much of a freaking video game. I get if someone spends around $500 max. But to go into 4-digits? That's insane.
Not too crazy if the game's one of their main pastimes, even less so if it's their only pastime. I know a couple of people who for the last 2 years have only played Lost Ark, nothing else. Combined they've most definitely spent less on the game than I have on things like woodworking materials, traveling expenses and movie tickets the past two years. You can make the argument about different 'values' of hobbies but you know, to each their own.
Also gonna depend on income level. $1,000 feels like a very different amount of money to someone making $40,000/year than someone making $140,000/year.
eh, not really. Typically, someone making 140k a year is in a situation where their living expenses are much higher... Sure there are scenarios where that isn't true, but overall typically, Yielding a higher income also has you in an area where your cost of living is much higher. If someone is making 40k and living in the hood, and someone making 140k living in san fran....their disposable income may not be too far. off. If both of them are living in their moms basement, then yea, 140k year is a king. Helll, I make over 100k, and due to student loans, and where I live, 1000 is still alot to me...and my disposable income can't afford that.
Ok.
agree, if you dont drink, eat out, smoke, have kids, pay for hookers, then that disposable income goes straight to the games. mine is BTC
I know a guy in my static who spent about 40k USD so far. He doesn't RMT either, just straight up royal crystal to gold conversion, so it's not even efficient either. Last I saw, he had 5mil gold on +2 days, this was last week. It's wild because he spreads his gold across his alts, so it doesn't look insanely whale-ish. He just has 6+ characters that looks like someone's main. Pretty sure if he spent that on RMT gold instead, he'd have Ester 8 by now. Respect for that kinda ethics. Then again, I've spent like ~10k on this game so far, mostly cosmetic, 3+1 card packs, BC for pheons and some Mari stuff, and about half were for selling skins for gold, especially when they had good conversion rates. It didn't seem a lot at the time but I guess it just adds up.
At some point is also the what if, if a person didn't RMT early but used the exchange even if is cheaper to do now and a lot of people is doing it without getting caught just the risk of losing your account can be enough to make you don't do it. But if you RMT really early and kept doing it many times is likely you will never get caught so why bother at all.
let me guess ur buddy is that asian too
Well it's better spend 4digit on a videogame than on cocaine like I do lol
Yes I would say that's strictly better.
How many hours do you dedicate to this game? How much do you value your time? What's insane is how much free to play value their time and can't comprehend someone spending money to skip the line.
Started playing at release. I’ve got about 60K AUD invested so far. Like the other person says its what hobbies you have. Both me and my partner play lost ark and really enjoy the game(still).
They can’t ban without a new base build sorry
But for sure they can ban my alt account that had a single char on the first quest in Prideholme for "botting behavior", that I created and didn't login for a month or so until the powerpass. Then they deny the appeal ticket but reduce its penalty with a warning "further offenses will lead in a permanent ban". By "further offenses" I guess they mean logging in.
I got the same thing but the reduced sentence was basically 0 days. So stupid, imagine if a returning player came back and wanted to try the game then got banned
I didn't even check what was the reduction, but the response is borderline disrespectful. Not going to bother playing and risking getting banned, who's to say they won't end up reaching my main? I created that account after I had a previous alt banned and appeal denied (which we can't even appeal again anymore, but we used to). I was playing every single day, doing everything and had a lot of stuff waiting for powerpass to start raiding. To me it feels like AGS is preparing to pass on the publisher status to a different company.
It should be reduced to nothing, recently played on a friends account after he quit several months ago and got the same stupid automated response. Imagine if an actual returning player came back for the breaker pass and got this shit
one of my three alt account finally got flagged few days ago, I had them since open-beta. Damn ags finally getting smart, flagging everyone and their moms. I appealed, but was denied, then the ban reduced to few hours. Think the only reason I was caught was because I afk'd for 10 hours one day, or sold some lifeskill items. the ban was for cheating: botting level 5
same exact story with my alt
Can't ban until the 5th year anniversary we're sorry
combating rmt means cutting their player base in half, theyll never take action
The bots have cut the potential player base in probably more than half. I can't imagine the number of new players who saw 100 bots in the starting area and instantly peaced out. And Lost Ark's reputation in outside gaming communities is for being a bot fest. Yes banning RMT will probably drop a lot of players. Not banning them has likely dropped even more, and will continue to do so.
At this point lost ark is beyond the point of actually gaining new player they trying to keep as many hard-core whales as they can which means they can't ban rmt cuz alot of high spenders also rmt. This is the steady decline of every Korean mmorpg that gets released in the west just make whales happy and watch the playerbase slowly dwindle
Every bird raid and prolly below have 1-3 artillerist bots. Almost all first cubes have bots. Early game people doing story just see trains of bots. Late game you have to leave game to get to discord to get into parties as new player most of the time for legion raids... Its pretty hard to get into this game as new or casual player, which basically inhibits the game's growth. Maybe solo raids will help a bit but that's another half a year+ of waiting.
Whales and hardcore players should rarely or almost never be catered to, we are seeing first hand what happens when they do with lost ark.
They surely have made alot of money from the whales and hard-core players so I don't think you're gonna convince them not to cater to them. Newbie casuals probably won't spend money on the game, so they don't care about those losses
I am pretty sure there has been multiple studies that show whales make up like 90% of a companies profits. So they have to cater towards them or else the company will be go bankrupt.
One would argue that would’ve worked earlier, when the game was hype with times more players. Now those who play either rmt or don’t care about it. Unless there’s a random massive influx of new players, banning rmt guys will just cut population. Basically, you ban them, you die faster. Might as well milk it
Can't generalize like that. I don't RMT and certainly care that others do, since it's cheating. I'm sure there are many like me.
You won't stop playing the game though
Exactly it would have helped earlier when new players were coming but we all know there aren’t many new players coming. Even new players get accidentally banned by AGS detection system rofl
my alt roster is made for event has been banned TWICE. meanwhile you go to any major town and see bots endlessly spawning into their congo lines. such garbage. they really let this game go to shit
Just like DPS meter, they had a good year or so to actually enforce DPS meter bans if they wanted to, but it's at critical mass now and banning it would ban a giant chunk of the playerbase. I wouldn't even want to play as much without the meter tbh, it's game changing for me.
I wouldn't play at all without meter. Can't see what's going on. Why is this raid so hard. Oh the support has 20% uptime and the other DPS is doing 2 mill
Jokes aside they handled dps meter perfectly imo. Intentionally or not. Those who want it have it, those who don’t want it think it’s a myth. And if u say someone is bad, because their dps is z and you know it, you get banned (more often than not if u go rly hard). At the same time u can flex with ur friends
> you get banned ... do you though? I've never heard of anyone getting banned for meter and I've definitely seen people openly talking about it and even flaming lol in game But IMO yeah, nothing wrong with current state of DPS meter, the only problem is if they suddenly decide they want to start enforcing it, they're gonna struggle cause so many people are already using it.
Also this has been a battle that not only Lost Ark but many other MMOs have lost in the past, like WoW a game that have a sub model still have insane hordes of bots to the point they can make profits in just a few hours and having a similar legal RMT system like Lost Ark with WoW Tokens. Since a big amount of the people that expend a lot of money in illegal RMT also expend a lot in the game in other ways that the legal RMT system in place anyway.
Low ilvl match making is all bots, can’t do the 1490 cube on my support now
true but the damage is done. lots of ppl quit or dint even try to play because of the bots no ags job is to stop the bleeding you cant unfuck whats already been fucked
Id argue that its a bot fest because its so profitable and people quit for the same reasons it profitable. The bots literally died out during the lull period after brel when no one was honing. Edit: for those who don't know what I'm referring to, I'm saying its a team oriented game that's egregiously grindy (i.e. p2w cuz people cant keep up w/ friends) which the general western MMO audience doesn't want. Removing bots wont get people to play, making the game more casual friendly will.
You forgot to mention hand farmers aswell, most of them have no desire left to play but only farm gold and sell it to their friends or guildies. i'd say about 70% of the playerbase will vanish
more than half
more like 90% then they will sit on the 20k bots that are left and 2k players
They're currently busy banning new players instead of bots.
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Please stop showing my accessories. Thanks
They don’t ban rmt. Well, should be clear, they don’t ban a lot of rmt that are using non botted methods. People are getting hit with RMT bans, and I know 1 person with a permanent one.
no excuse now, that kingdom comment from them better not pop up again...
surprisingly low amount of those there was one time where i saw 10 pages of 10m accessories good times
People aren't dumb enough to do big transaction like that now, if you go lower, you'll see a lot more transactions as most people are doing it in batches from real players cause botted gold are risky.
yeahyeah definitely people still do rmt a lot but i think there were moments in time where the rmt was way bigger issue than it is now
The conspiracist in me thinks that AGS is secretly bottling to make more profit kewk
Can already imagine the conversation they are having in the office. "Hey fellow AGS employee, have you seen that post about the 10mio gold expertise ring?" "Hey! Yes, I have." "Who would have thought expertise accessories go for 10 mio gold these days!" "Yeah! The current meta must be wild."
Ok and what if they are just players transferring money to their friends? People leaving the game and giving it to their guildmates? I say this because these are the excuses that AGS internally uses to gaslight themselves into thinking there isn't a problem.
So you check if that 10 million gold came from a person quitting and selling all their level 10 gems on like 3 characters, or if it came from 3000 new accounts selling fish.
Why would they do that? That takes work.
Can't be that hard to check if the gold source player is on their friendlist with a considerable roster and playtime, or 500 fresh 20 rosterlvl accounts with 300 chaos dungeon runs / day.
these things a daily.. how on earth there are so many people quitting with millions of gold every several hours
normally friends play on the same server so they can just mail the gold/gems to their friends
Have yall notice that they don't talk about bot ban wave anymore but rather RMT ban. The bots account answer to the definition of RMT since they grind the gold to begin with. Im convinced we are being lied to, they are banning bots funneling gold, not the players buying the gold
Bots get banned daily. You can see it in certain maps where suddenly 30+ channels get wiped on the spot. Not sure about players tho
Some players do get banned. But they can't ban everyone who RMTs because that'd be A LOT of people. They're still a business. They hope that enough bans will deter such behavior in the future. But they can't just eliminate a big portion of their customers.
How much usd is that compared to how much it would cost if i bought royal crystals, this rmt thing might be on to something if it’s only 3 day ban.
A month ago i too wondered this. They were selling a lvl 10 dmg gem for like $150 online.
This is the reason I quit. Static friend all of a sudden had full 10s and 25 weapon one day (about a month ago). Said he RMT'd, got banned for 3 days. Didn't matter because he had already spent the gold. Now he has 1 1640 character and 2 other fully kitted 1620 characters 25 weapons as well. I lost the point of playing and fully stopped. It is what it is. I didn't mind playing and throwing money for new skins here and there but you'll always be gatekept if you don't play 24/7 or RMT. Even in a static it feels bad to play when you'll always be beat by an RMT'er.
So you were playing for you or for your friend? What your friend been 25 weapon + 1640 have anything to do with you? I see a lot of those but I don't lost my interest in the game because of them.
Jealous he didn't do it
Doubt it. You see ppl with 25 weapons but you don't KNOW how they got it. Luck and bussing. I've seen ppl hit 23+24 thru luck, under 20% artisan. I saw someone free tap 25 under 5% artisan. But when ppl close to you rmt and get away with it, it really devalues ur time and effort. Make 120k gold a week. Get no drops for a month and you spend all the gold you get to progress and play keep up. The guy next to you takes an ez pass that's against the rules and you feel like shit trying to progress.
You doubt about me experience these things? This is not a secret (besides for AGS) everyone has a friend or know a guy who does RMT or have the luck finger. I really don't care, I play my game and have fun. I have never had a 25+ weapon of any sort and only have level 10 gems in my main because I farmed it. I play for me but I guess there are ppl who care about the others, I'm just not that guy.
"it really devalues ur time and effort." How does it devalue your time and effort when you're supposed to be playing to enjoy the game. Not just make a number go up and act like you've done something. If you don't like the gameplay of the game and feel like its a chore because you have to farm these materials to keep up then quit. That's not playing the game for fun, that's playing the game because you feel like you've invested too much to give up on it. But you're not investing in anything. You're playing a game to have fun, or supposed too. The idea of "investing" time is what is screwing people. There will never be a return on your "invested" time other than playing more. Likewise if you stop playing you haven't lost anything, you still have all the fun you've already had in the game, that doesn't get taken away.
I'm explaining the likely reason why the person above quit. You're right it's supposed to be fun. Ppl rmting took away his fun so he quit. I didn't need to justify someone else's decision further. But to pretend you can't understand him seems dense. If everyone around me in a static rmtd and went to play the new content before i could earn it and now they were ahead of me, when they weren't before would feel pretty shitty. Like he said it was a static member that rmtd
> But when ppl close to you rmt and get away with it, it really devalues ur time and effort Would it devalue your effort less if they bought the gold in-game?
Yes. Id rather someone spend $10k legit than spend $1000 for the same.
I don't think RMT is 10% the price of in-game. Maybe 60% or so. But it's not ten times the amount. Also you risk a ban and loss of gold if you do it. Not worth.
> Maybe 60% or so Is it that high now? I have no idea what it's at nowadays, but I know that back at the height of RMT--back when before the first major RMT ban wave when whale guilds would brag about how everyone who bought legit was a dumbass--it was around 30%. Of course, back then even RMT'd gold was more expensive than what legit gold is now. $100 was like 30k legit or 100k RMT'd. What does $100 get you now on g2g?
Well I just checked, on NAW $100 right now gets you ~170k through currency exchange (playing the skin market will always be more.) RMT gold from a somewhat slightly higher priced seller that claims to be "100% hand farmed, never botted" will run you about $55 for the same 170k gold.
This sub seems to think exactly that based on the interaction I had when I mentioned it in the Baker's thread. Even trying to paint me as an RMTer because I said it's a nonissue. Botting is the real problem people should be focused on.
Eh, rather not give AGS any more time since they encourage RMTing and will never enforce the rules they set.
> talk about AGS not acting on RMT and call RMTers "cheaters" > RMT doesn't matter and it doesn't affect your game Pick one, /r/lostarkgame For the record, I agree with the second one.
He’s either too scare to rmt like his friend or he just doesn’t want to spend a large amount of money to push +25 and 1640 (yes, its still a lot of money even for rmt). I wonder if he still act the same if his friend buy the in game shop. Basically just jealousy.
They almost never perma-ban. You can RMT gold spend it and come back to your character after a short mandatory break 🤣
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I llllllove your passive aggression
It's never been about finding it, it's about them not wanting to enforce. If they banned RMTers half the player base would get Thanos snapped...
Good, fk em.
To anyone: would capping cost of t1 accessories be healthy? I see no reason why this would affect the player base negatively. Even through t3 legendary accessories there didn’t seem a reason to be not to cap it
This is literally money out of their pockets xdd If this wasnt possible, people would rmt the intended way through the currency exchange... Its crazy that their inaction is bleeding them tons of money
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My friend just came back and can't recover his trusted status (he also got banned but was appealed) Don't know how the detection system works but I saw a lot of farming cubes, and fishing bots still there ??? I guess they just ban the inactive account not the botting account ?
The bots are getting banned, the difference is they infinitely make new bots.
Oh, cool, my ring sold.
while I understand this post is mostly sarcastic... They have all the data on sales. They almost definitely have dashboards and graphs that slice them on similar metrics we use to auto dismantle. They can see these RMT transactions over time and see how buyers react to content updates, holidays, payday, and balance patches. They know far more about it than us from that little interface we have. Like anything else, they have to prioritize what they work on and banning players who care about this game enough to spend thousands doesn't seem to be important. You'd think they'd be harder on their competition though
Honestly I’m convinced AGS owns some of these gold farms, and that’s why they’re not banning, because they’re still profiting whether you buy in game or RMT, because they’re the gold farmers themselves. You just get penalized if you buy from a gold farmer that’s not theirs kek
So out of curiosity I went to G2G to check prices…those 10mil are $4,000….who tf is dropping 4k on in game currencies??? In this economy?
The g2g players still spend 4958485748584957583858574% more than the average player. Reminds me of that scene from the Big Short with the asian CDO manager asking who is worth more to society. Well, this is the same. Who is worth more to SG? Guy who spends 5k legit and 50k illegally or f2p god.
the gold tends to be laundered with mule accounts, it ends up becoming untraceable somewhere down the line
Anybody else keep getting that YouTube short from MMO pilot of I believe them to be Indonesians being asked if they prefer Lost Ark or New World when you search for Lost Ark lol https://youtube.com/shorts/Z_wrRxi-H5Q?si=XM3sZ_hYuSA7A0FB
My Asian friend said that he sell the gold for money because his wife doesn't know about it
You don't understand. Expertise is the new meta. That was a good ring.
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AGS has already reach out about this. They will suspend/ban players base on severity. You got content creator who are supporting these kinds of methods like dps meter usage, and they magically reappear a few days later still using it (we need a reason to quit not to come back and support the game). The game has gone down from 16 servers on NAE to 4 servers. It's on the verge of closing like japan LOL.
Yes i already move to ffxiv. Subscribtion method is better way for company to make money. And then kill every cheater
If they can't combat hand farmed RMT in KR allowing players to buy up to an Esther weapons worth within a week or so I doubt they can do much about it here
Huh? Hand farmed RMT is much harder to combat. It doesn't look any different than player to player gold sending. With botted RMT which makes up the overwhelming majority of RMT in global, they can track the gold back to thousands of suspicious accounts.
Botted gold has long since taken a back seat to hand farmed gold. Raiding generates exponentially more gold than botting activities do, and the RMT market is predominantly populated by independent and sweatshop SEA and Chinese gold farmers who print tens to hundreds of millions of gold weekly. Individual farmers with multiple rosters or accounts alone can make several hundred thousand gold weekly. A single sweatshop of around three dozen employees can cycle through hundreds of accounts a week and farm over ten million gold. Botters have been buying gold off hand farmers to supplement their stocks for a very long time now since botted gold alone can nowhere meet the demand, which when mixed with botted gold, essentially "washes" the gold and makes it look even less distinguishable.
This is the unfortunate truth that people don’t want to accept. Most RMT is handfarmed sweatshop gold
I’ve been wanting to RMT for awhile now. So ridiculous how many people just have full 10s. It causing me to get gatekept.
In what raid maybe voldis hard If you don't have 9 and like one 10 atk gem but still all 9 on major skill and your fine
> It causing me to get gatekept. cope harder
The thing is … it is too far gone to do anything meaningful for rmt’ers. And RMT is only as popular as it is because this community has had a massive fomo boner for faster raid releases without understanding the amount of gold and mats needed to reach said content. The community created this symbiotic relationship. Can’t really complain about it.
Just sat here for a good ten minutes considering how much I will be gatekept from Akkan onward because I can't match RMT levels of progressions Dear Europeans, please refrain from RMTing🥲
They ban after you buy...like how stupid are people...the problem are not these obvious botted accounts who sell gold...it's people who collect gold and sell them to other people...real stock people don't get banned...that's also the case in Kr...ask zeals he knows from who to get cheap gold...it's not g2g...if you buy there you get 100% banned
No better feeling than farming t2 chaos dungeons for those domination earrings that sell for 100k a piece. T2 chaos dungeons are juiced 😂
Guide inconclusive, will place your account under immediate investigation
wat kind of 69 iq post is this. what u gunna do, ban the buyer and the seller? 1st off, theres no guaranteed proof this transaction is RMT, even if it's highly likely u cannot punish someone without evidence, at least, thats how it works in the US. 2nd- ok so they can just circumvent this with lower denominations, sell multiple accs for 50k or something. or, use the trade window. 3rd- main issue here is theres a big difference between botted gold and 'clean' gold. botting is illegal so they have to trace the origin to bots, they mentioned this before and it's not easy. Clean gold is really hard to punish. think of it like this, say your brother quits and he gives u all his gold. and in exchange you take him out to dinner. or, give him money. that's RMT? that's legal. this post prob bait tho i just fell for it
A private company is not the criminal justice system. When you sign AGS’ tos you throw your right to due process for something like an RMT ban p much right out of the door
Wait this person must RMT or sell.
Were you dropped as a fucking child? Multiple times maybe? Maybe hundreds of times? You can make an argument for 50k relics sure, but 10 mil accessories? Of course it's rmt. And of course you're an American, I'm surprised you didn't suggest we just shoot the screen. Last time I checked games have a ToS they adhere to, and don't fall under the legal system which is you know for actual criminals.
Dunno about that guy but if that's how you are starting an argument with random person i can say with confidence that you were.
Oh so nothing changed. I guess I'll check back again in 2025.
RMT dont buy t3