Personally I think a much better way to solve this issue is to find ways to decouple the over-reliance of in-game silver in all aspects of the game. One way is to approach gear acquisition and enhancements in a way that rewards players for their effort involved in playing the game and not just throwing in game silver for the upgrades; which BOTs can easily farm and players can easily trade RL cash for.
For example, what if we change how Velcoffer gear is acquired? (Yeah I do know it is too late to implement this for Vel but it can be for future high level content.)
Instead of having players cough out silver to “buy in” for the equipment, have the base equipment available to all the players easily. By easily I mean recipes to such equipment are sold by the NPC and require around 8-10 hours of normal map farming to craft.
The catch here is these equipment have limiters. Things like anvil/transcendance limit, inchor capabilities and set bonuses need to be “unlocked” via equipment upgrades, which require Velcoffer fragments. Like:
- Increase limit of anvil level by 1 : 1 Fragment (2 fragments for level 11-20)
- Increase limit of transcendance level by 1 : 1 Fragment
- Unlock inchor upgrade : 5 Fragment
- Get a random set bonus : 1 Fragment
Velcoffer gears that receive any form/level of fragment upgrade will be bound to account (can’t be traded). Anvil upgrades of such gear is 100% guaranteed and require the same type of Velcoffer gear to upgrade (which can be easily crafted), with a max of +20.
Velcoffer runs cubes are limited to 2 runs per week per character (same) and cubes can’t be rerolled. Each run yields 2 fragments. Similarly like Saalus, fragments get a diminishing yield when a player runs Velcoffer over 5 characters per weeks.
What this does is while it still require players to spend almost the same amount/if not more time to get a fully upgraded piece of gear, it removes silver from the equation. It rewards players who put in time and effort to acquire and “nuture” their equipment without giving off the feeling that other players can just buy into the same power level as them just by paying RL cash, which is the main source of player discontent against players who RMT.
And it also give players who prefer the $ > time route some leeway too by allowing them to purchase crafted Velcoffer (unupgraded) gear from the market to use as materials for anvil enhancement. They still have to run the dungeon themselves to unlock anvil enhancement levels though.
With end game gear made like this, players have lesser excuse to consider RMT. And IMC has a good way to limit anvil enhancement, remove gears from the game (via bind to account and equipment removal through the “new anvil enhancement”).
@STAFF_Yuri While setting up restrictions to regulate/deter the community not to approach RMT yields results for the short term, do consider the option of using design (via game elements) to lead the community to what you want them to be instead. It is a much harder route to go but it is much more effective.
