Notice Introduction of new game rule: Handling real world trade goods

So I just woke up and went to close my store in preparation for the server check. Someone (about 15 min before server check) smega'd selling APR at 8.5m. I was in FM so I immediately traded them and asked how many they had.

Most of the time I get an answer like <10 or <20. Or the rare <50. I was not prepared for them to have 200 for sale. Since it was 15 min to the server check and I was quite low on mesos, I decided to buy 100.

It was only later that I remembered the new rules (I had just woken up, it was 4:45am here ) and that I had just inadvertently "evaded" them since the total was under 1b.

Now I search their IGN on the forum and the account hasn't been logged into since 2021.

And even though I technically dodged the rule, now I'm wondering if I had just bought illegit APR. But it makes sense that someone might vanish for a bit and come back with a ton of APR (and 200 isn't that much for a long hiatus) to sell. The person was also decked out in head-to-toe RP so that gave me a sense of security as well.

Was I supposed to ask them about their forum account and potentially annoy them enough that they'd contact one of the many people who've surely whispered them? It was 15 min to SC after all.

The "total" trade would have been over 1b (1.7b) if I had bought 200, so is it a loophole that I chose to buy a partial amount? Will this happen to anyone selling 3 CS/WS for instance: the first person will just buy 2 to skip the awkwardness? Can a WS/CS seller limit 2 per person and avoid being questioned altogether? I hope you see how bizarre that is.

 

This rule is equivalent to what MapleStory did with Big Bang. The straw that broke the camel's back. You're asking us to do too much for a game..how is this even considered a game now giving all the extra hoops youre asking us to jump through?

 

Based on the rule, you were under 1b, so I think you are fine?

 

I understand that these rules are trying to keep RWT from running rampant, and at the same time this is not the solution. The onus of due diligence doesn't lie with the buyer. 8 questions that would take like 30 minutes to do just to buy a single item is a huge disincentive for players to progress. The rule is unenforceable because of the blurred lines it creates and requires so much manual moderation, all in the hopes that honest players are deterred from a ban they know they realistically probably aren't going to get even if they did break the rule.

I don't know what moderation tools you have to track RWT so I don't have any better ideas, but what I do know for sure is this rule is not going to accomplish its intention and it's going to disincentivize players from making progress.

Yes RWT eats the economy over time like inflation, yes it needs to be handled, but the vast, vast majority of players don't give a fuck about all this and most would break this rule on accident out of ignorance.

 

I appreciate the reassurance, but the point of my post was to highlight some of the problems the rule creates in an actual situation, mainly regarding time pressure (8.5 APR is a fair price, but sells fast) and the awkwardness of buying things like APR/CS/apple etc. while staying under 1B to avoid having to question the seller.

 

Can we get an official statement from staff to address the backlash from the community?

It's been a lot of silence after 2 days of the rule's implementation, while more bans were issued during this time period, not to mention the retroactive ban while moving the goal post prior to the rule's effect.
This is only further dividing the player base from staff, while I know it was not your intention, your actions speak louder at the moment.
I thought last year's new staff change of having "Community Managers" were to bridge this kind of communication, it's what community managers in official games do on their own forums, yet it is no where to be found.
If we're expected to have a conversation with those we make trades with, then staff is also expected to have a conversation with the player base.

More dialogue and transparency, please and thank you!

 

Earlier today in the shoutbox Matt stated that there will be some clarification soon enough and that the rule has been misunderstood overall. We just have to wait on an update.

 

You can already guess what the staff will say..

" We will increase 1b but the rule will stay ".

I am 100% sure not even 50% of this rule will change, they might change something but they will not delete this, because it would already been deleted by now.

Sad sad thing this server is going through. It's already universally known that royals has one of the worst staff members and now we are being laughed at even more in other servers. There are already other servers who took advantage of this rule which increased their player population.

 

Honestly, I think if they increase the 1b limit, it can be worked with. I'm down to do my "due diligence" for something of value that exceeds at least 10b. Just an opinion. Others might want it higher or lower.

 

it's not about the money.. it's about sending the message ( insert joker here lool )

It's about a crappy rule like this, punishing players, free market not being free anymore, GM's putting too much pressure on players etc. You follow your own protocol, but most of us don't. Read the comments man, it's more than just mesos. You do your diligence, but it still shouldn't be punishable if you mess things up. It should be more of a general thing to be cautious when you handle billions of mesos in a trade, but it still shouldn't be bannable, you fkin kidding me dude?

 

I have read the comments and I understand where people are coming from lol. I also understand that it is more complicated than just it being based around the 1b meso limit, but like I said, Matt mentioned clarification soon since he believes the majority of people misunderstood the new rule.

 

i don't think we misunderstood the rule, and i doubt the players who got banned / quit over this rule didn't either. Let's wait for the clarification, but i doubt this shit gets fixed.

 

I think this is inherently a core problem of the staff team. Most people understand the rule perfectly. They just strongly disagree with it.

How patronizing to handwaive every argument away to say "you clearly only disagree because you don't understand let me explain again and you'll see it my way."

That's not how this is. However, that is a clear symptom of out-of-touch staff.

 

Couldn't agree more, but I think the negligence and out of touch were already obvious when a mass amount of people were hacked and waived off immediately with no effort to do even the slightest investigation (maybe with the same tools that are used to track rwt? or just being a bit creative), but rwt was always the main obsession for some reason, instead of helping out devoted players who were hacked and got their time and effort invested taken away from them.

 

All in all. This rule only means one thing.

RWT can't be proven. 99% of the cases ( I assume ) There is 0 evidence that RWT actually happened.
The only thing they got is that X character suddenly have to much mesos / items.
They ban you and then ask you how you get everything.

Then they make some sort of calculation if the amount of stuff / mesos equals to time played, bosses killed, possible gach / day etc etc.
Unless someone show a paypal history of one recieving money and then connects that to a Mapleroyal trade. Which is in itself impossible. There are 0 evidence again.
Most bans here due to RWT is just that, assumptions. You have a hunch, you think.

This rule is made so that they can get away with banning you easier , without having to do the digging, the evidence searching ( there is no evidence really ) and not needing to explaine themselves.

 

Nobody "misunderstands" this rule. It's putting a burden of doing the "diligence" on players, and punishing them if they don't. Literally says that in the post.
It's bad. No amount of explaining is changing the fact that it isn't right. It's the staff's job to handle RWT, not the players that are literally just trying to play the game

 

Hello everyone. Please remain a bit more patient with us while we finish up some internal discussions from the past few days. We've been reading all your constructive criticism, and nothing has been ignored.

Changes are coming and we will announce them soon.

 

I have a potential solution.

If you raise the cap to around 10b and require the SELLER to provide the info to the GMs directly in a forum post or face a ban, this rule could make sense.

1. The way to stop RWT is to stop RWT sellers, not the people trying to buy items with real world currencies. Nobody goes around saying B>21fs for $300 because you'd be instantly banned. RWT buyers will always find a way to pay a RWT seller because it can be done outside of the game. But RWT sellers will always have to transfer their item for sale within the royals ecosystem, and that's where the GMs have the authority and capacity to stop RWT. If RWT sellers can't get the item into the hands of the buyer without getting caught, the RWT market dies. My proposal puts the onus of DD on the potential RWT seller instead of trying to regulate innocent buyers while recognizing that malicious buyers can't be controlled.
2. trades of 10b or greater rarely occur. It's easy for GMs to moderate by having a forum section for verifying the few legitimate 10b+ trades that occur. subreddits like /r/hardwareswap have a similar system for verifying trades where the seller posts information and confirmed trades are tracked.
3. The seller knows off the top of their head all the information in your checklist so its faster to have the seller do it. GMs can verify that the seller information is accurate. Under the old system, buyers can't verify seller information and dont know how much work they need to do to not get banned. Yes, my proposed system still creates some additional barriers to the free market, but not as much as the current proposed rules, while helping just as much to catch RWTers to my knowledge.
4. The proposed change still provides the GMs with the exact same information as the old rule.
5. raising the cap to 10b means its way harder to argue negligence. If you have 10b net worth, you're well known in the community, you've spent 30-50 hours grinding to get 10b on top of all the hours spent leveling characters. Its reasonable to expect them to spend 30 minutes making a forum post. Anyone legitimately playing already makes a forum post to trade items worth 10b.
6. This system is efficient. Sellers spend maybe an extra 5 minutes typing up a bit of extra information in the forum for trades they will make probably max 10 times on this server. It's super easy for GMs to moderate. Just verify info the sellers provided is correct (it will almost always be correct, rwters know they cant provide this info, they will just try not to get noticed), ban anyone who sells 10b+ without posting on the forum. Buyers don't have to do anything extra.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don't know what tools you have to track RWTers, and I'm willing to help find solutions for the server if GM's give me that information, but this is the best solution I've come up with with the information I have.

 

The point of the rule is to punish buyers though. To place the burden of "due diligence" on the seller wouldn't make sense, since this rule only penalizes for dealing with "a real world trade related character." And any seller of this sort is obviously not going to make an effort to advertise their goods on the forums. This is besides the fact that it is virtually impossible as well as unreasonable to force players to sell their goods exclusively through the forums.

I think one of the central problems with way this rule is worded is the heavy emphasis on "due diligence." This results in the implication of placing the burden of enforcing this rule on the players, which the community (rightfully) seems to have such an issue with. I think the starting point for any further revision or clarification of this rule should focus much more heavily on the core issue at stake: discouraging players from intentionally and maliciously "orchestrating high value trades with suspicious individuals" in order to gain massive unfair advantages over other players.

 

The buyers don't need to be punished if the RWT itself is stopped at the root. I understand that it may not be possible to stop RWTs on the seller side because my system assumes GMs have a way of tracking trades over 10 billion. If this can't be done, then putting the onus of DD on buyers becomes understandable. The next best solution is then to recruit the efforts of the community as a whole to stop RWT by making buyers take a part in this too, which I understand is the intention of the initial rule. But the current system could still be improved.


1. Still raise the minimum to 10b or even 2.1b
2.Require forum posts from the SELLER, and only require buyers to check the IGN of the seller with the forum post, or risk being banned.


This solution is not ideal:
1. It's placing additional regulation on a free market. I understand free markets cant be completely free (see:cryptocurrency tax evasion, dark web deals).
2. It forces anyone trading items over 10b to make a forum post (not a big deal, you spent 30-50 hours grinding 10b you can spend 10 minutes making a forum account)
3. It eliminates the ability to sell anonymously. (again, see the IRS's ability to now track cryptocurrency as evidence in favor of removing anonymity in currency systems)


But, if the GM's can't solve this on the seller side because of limitations on information they can track , then yes the buyers would have to get involved to prevent RWT. With my changes. Sellers and buyers are minimally disturbed while still getting the job done (requiring buyers to prevent RWT, creating punishment for abusing RWT as a buyer).



In the majority of legit transactions, it would go something like:
1.Buyers and sellers meet
2. seller links forum post they would have normally already created except they spent 5 more minutes including personal information, or buyer asks for forum post and seller provides.
3.buyer clicks forum post and verifies the ign in the post is the same as the character
4.transaction occurs



If the seller is RWT, then when the buyer asks for the forum post the seller can't provide it, and the buyer would just report the character in game for RWT, and GMs have an efficient system for catching RWT. If the RWT seller provides the forum post, then the GMs would catch them when they verify the forum post info. Checkmate.