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

Can someone elaborate to me specifically? If i understood this correctly.. i can't sell an item that is worth let' say 5 bil for 1 bil because that is bannable? I have always been that guy that sells extra cheap for the fuck of it, even items worth 100k mesos for 20k mesos. It's a free market, you make the prices not the market itself. What if i am a level 50 guy who has voted for 3 years straight, will GM believe me if all my income comes from AP / gachapon?

 

You did not understand this correctly.

 

i'm not expecting a forensic investigation or a full audit path for every item over 5b as per the current rules,
but the rule does not sit right with me, when there is a grey area of "due diligence", the blanketing nature of the rule - which affects all trades even though they are non profiteering along with such hard punishments when there are no unfair advantage given to fair value trades

all of us know when someone is just too sus, and most likely RWTing, like someone on the forums going S>91WA RC 20B (near/at market value), but joined: 3 days ago messages: 2
but if I see a player who smegaed S>91 RC 20B with a 150 Drk with regular equips (SC,FS,BFC), in a guild and the seller told me that that's they are quitting their main, and the RC was built slowly over the like 3 years to fund the Drk and Bucc
to me, that checks out as ok in my books, and i'm not gonna go further like "what is your forum name", "change to your NL and prove to me your NL is real", "send me SS to prove you are real over 3 years" - i definitely do not expect they level of interrogation

but hey what if they are actually a RWTer?
the knowledge of what i have is just the seller is a 150 Drk with regular equips, and that the history was a self built item
does a 150 Drk owning a 91 RC sound legitimate? to me yes, the server is old enough and playing NL 100% of the time forever sounds kinda meh
if i do get banned, and i said "a 150 Drk with a 91RC sounds legit to me" and " seller has a guild", did i do enough to prove my innocence that i did my due diligence? because really i'm convinced in my opinion that i saw enough the markers of a legit player there, but the general community might not think that was enough, and i have no idea what is enough in the eyes of the GMs
because as per the rules, it satisfies 3 of the example questions to ask in my opinion, and that should be enough - again, in my opinion

• Around how long have they been playing? (i heard it was 3 years)
• Why are they selling what they are selling? (to fund their other characters)
• Does it make sense for them to have these goods comparatively to their MapleRoyals progress? (3 year player with a 150 Drk sounds legit to me)

this grey area is what i fear the from blanketing nature of the rule

 

Elaborate then?

 

In your example, you are suggesting that you would be selling a legitimately acquired high value item for low value. In this case, since you did not acquire that item from RWT, you have no further concerns and are completely free to do as you see fit.
The person buying your high value item should be suspicious of the transaction, and seek to verify that you acquired it legitimately. For example, they might see that you created your forum account 17 days ago and wonder how you got such an item so quickly. (I know you might have made your forum account a long time after you started playing, I did the same thing) If it doesn't seem reasonable that you would have been able to acquire such an item legitimately, then the buyer would need to check with staff, who could then provide further guidance.
Again, assuming that you got that item via years of voting or whatever other legitimate means, there would be no risk to you. The GMs aren't just guessing, they have access to records of basically everything so they could tell where you got your item, so they aren't going to ban someone who just got crazy lucky or whatever.
Ultimately, you are still free to sell that item and they are still able to buy that item, there will just need to be an extra step in this case because the transaction is high value and highly unusual. And again, unless you are selling something that has a fair market value of 5b or more, you don't need to worry about it.

Legal Disclaimer: this is just how I'm understanding the rule, I could be wrong.

 

I guess, this rule still doesn't stop RWT.

 

No, but they specifically said "This rule was added to make it more difficult for real world traders to launder their goods"
Unfortunately, laws do not prevent crime from being possible, they can only work to dissuade people from committing crime.

 

Im fine with this rule as long as it's high value such as 5 b. I will probably never even get 5b so i don't mind. It's still super annoying to ask such questions this rule asks for, doesn't feel natural gameplay to me, no other game does this lol

 

And they all have major RWT problems.
I also think it's related to the rather unique nature of how equipment works in Maplestory. Every MMO has it's valuable items, but Maple is one of the few where an item can be worth so much in game that it would take you literal months of non stop grinding to earn enough to buy it. In most games the grind time for one item probably tops out at like 100 hours, not 5000 hours.

 

You are welcomed to sell an item valued at 5b, for 1b if you would like! Don't be surprised when your buyer f6’s you and asks why so cheap. You can tell them why, all is good. If you obtained your item legitimately, it is your right to do with it as you please. Your buyer will also be capable of doing their research into you and verifying your legitimacy.

If your purchaser reports you, that doesn't mean you auto get banned. It just means staff is going to look into you and your history.

All of your income comes from selling APR/Gachaponing? That's great! That's information that can easily be verified by our admins. Now if you randomly gained 500 APR overnight at some point from another character you don't own, free of charge, then yeah, you have something to worry about.

The reason these RWTers offered to sell their items below market value is so they can avoid having to advertise their items publicly, while being able to make their transactions with the players they know can afford to front the mesos to flip the item themselves (which the legit player can advertise without fear of being caught). It was a mutually beneficial relationship.

I feel like I'm over explaining, but once again this is why the rule change was necessary. In order to hold those players accountable who were knowingly negligent and abused the gray area in the T&C.

 

Hey thank you, good info here. You just said "Now if you randomly gained 500 APR overnight at some point from another character you don't own, free of charge, then yeah, you have something to worry about."

What if i have a friend who has agreed to vote and give me his 500 AP resets from his own account that i do not own? We share our internet sometimes when we have sleepovers though when he needs my wifi but he has his own computer. Not actually doing this but just curious since this rule makes me little confused.

 

Then you might get the opportunity to explain your situation in a ban appeal.

 

I see. Is there any sort of formula i need to follow here? Such as screenshot, recordings, docs etc? What is the best way to do all these transactions so i have a good proof to offer for the staff? If there is a specific guide for this, link me up!

 

If your friend gives you 500 APR, then you're fine if that is the truth. Just make an effort to reach out to Staff and let them know that the transaction is occurring. Otherwise you risk the chance that staff sees you gained 500 free APR out of no where, and you get banned for suspicion of RWT, where you would need to explain the situation in your ban appeal.

Additionally, keep in mind that your friend is also able to be investigated. So if you gained 500 APR for free from them, staff looks into your friend, and they were vote abusing on 10 accounts over time to afford those APR, then the situation is going to get sticky. I'd say best case scenario you end up having all 500 APR removed if that is still possible.

Yet again, don't make your transactions blindly. Do your research, recognize red flags, and don't ignore them. I'd hope if your friend gives you 500 APR for free that you both know each other very well.

 

Sounds like you understand correctly. Doesn't sound like this is a very formulaic rule. Where you could get banned because you "look suspicious".

I tend to agree with the posts saying the amounts should be much greater e.g. 20b. However, I'm not sure what the going rate for mesos is. So I am not sure if we are talking you get banned for a suspicious 1b trade, and that is like $1 (real world currency), or if that is a significant amount irl (maybe $1000)

 

We actually tried this yesterday, but we couldn’t get his maple work on his mac, so we tried bunch of things with no luck, so i kind of dropped this idea ^_^ no free ap to me meh it’s more fun to work your own progress anyways and see the fruit of your labour or what ever.

what if i sell items worth over 5 bil via stores in FM? Such as 20 chaos scrolls or scrolled items, do is still get instant ban? Do i need a SS for that too before i open up a store?

what is time limit for this too? It i sell 2b item via trade and 9 hours later i sell 2b again and tomorrow 1b, that’s 5 bil totally but not on a single trade, is that still bannable? Or does this rule work only as a single trade? Rule says 5b but what if i sell 2.5b first then after 2.5b? What if i sell 2.5b now and tomorrow 2.5b?

 

As someone who's been taking hiatus for half a year (some exceptions like events and visiting), I now don't know if I ever want to come back again.

Going to admit I've always been on a fence with how this server enforce rules since I started, as to me there's a fine line between just wanting to enjoy the damn game and feeling stress from rules I need to be mindful. It's already bad enough assuming I do come back my very first question I would ask friends is new rules instead of new contents or events.

After a week of thinking after finding out this new rule, I don't think staff's intention are bad, but it revealed Royal's flaw with RWT and staff's ability to handle them, and now it left us to do some "due diligence". My big concern is the new rule is half completed and too universal, along with getting banned as punishment felt too harsh.

Although I will assume this rule would remain implemented, I would strongly prefer this new rule to be in plan B. My rough idea is to encourage more players to use marketplace in this forum. For threads that an item is "valued over 5b", it must contain more info of player themselves similar to the questions which the rules stated, and staff must verify the thread before it gets accepted and become visible in public, otherwise it would be rejected and asked to do it again.
E.g. S> A pro weapon 999b
Reason for selling: Funds for another character
Main account(s) and level: Lv 999 Aran
Join date: 9/9/9999
Extra info: Obviously fake

Afterwards buyer and seller would be free of potential ban of suspicious activity (unless found out to be RWT).

For anyone advertising in game, like smegaing, leaving title in store etc, they could refer to their accepted forum post. If not, THEN staff's original rule which I stated should be plan B would be applied instead.

I'm sure after 14 pages of posts there are much better ideas as I don't have time to read it through, and I can't say whether everyone agreed to this new rule given there's no poll (yet). I prefer the rule to be aborted given how Royals already enforce their rules and how I personally feel, but because I assumed it has to stay then some tweaking must be done to reduce the risk of ban as it's too universal. With this forum idea it created exception from this new rule as it helps reduce risk of ban and save some time from researching other players.

 

This would require you to sell 1 item, close the store to claim the mesos, reopen the store, sell another item, and repeat this until all 5 items were sold. Thus, it would be 5 separate transactions, presumably to 5 different people.
If you had already agreed to sell all 5 of these items to the same person, there is no reason you would sell them via a FM store like this, and it would be 1 transaction that would then trigger this rule.

 

This is such a weird topic, it is very detrimental to the playerbase when you start creating paranoia when it involves basic game functions like trading, people don't really care about who or what they trade with as long as their trades are legit (from their point of view).
There is no easy way to solve RWT/RMT, however, it should not be forced upon the users to do the job that GMs need to do, all the players need to do is report suspicious activity/individuals, regardless of their involvement with them.
The vast majority would not bother investigating much beyond face-value when it comes to evidence available to them (I.E FM merchant shop that has arrows for loads of meso, or cheap items being sold for expensive amounts/expensive items being sold for very low prices to the point of illogical).

A good solution is delegate the work from Tim to the other staff, GMs are GMs for a reason, they should be able to investigate these matters and it's completely possible if you create a database account that is view-only that has no permissions to look at specific things (I.E making the accounts table invisible to them and only letting them look at it via a _view that doesn't show passwords/PIN/PIC), you could make it that it is integrated to the GMs accounts on the website in case you have a GM panel, or allow them to connect to it via SQLbrowser.
This kind of a thing would require training said staff/GMs to know how to work with SQL, but it is not a hard thing to do.

I find it very weird that despite of the majority of the community expressing negative opinions over this change/thing the staff still pushes forward with it, it is not the right approach even if the intent or end goal are good, especially with some of the very valid points players made on this thread here before.

 

now what to think of this listing

• What is their forum account? (clubcard - though in signature, it's stated that the forum acct is not the original old one from 2015)

• Who are their main characters? (clubcard)

• Can they contact you from those accounts? (via forum and in game - though i have not done either)

• Around how long have they been playing? (stated since 2015)

• Why are they selling what they are selling? (unstated)

• Does it make sense for them to have these goods comparatively to their MapleRoyals progress? (2015-2023, 8 years for having the listings of 36B ish worth, i would say why not)

• Is there a forum thread on this item to get the best offer? If not, why not? (both items are at market rates)

• Any of these points not making sense? inform staff prior to trading (all makes sense to me, assuming its factual, but not enough cross ref to guarantee, so im guessing im supposed to poke a staff?)

considering that there is some pieces of information that could be argued to be "due diligent enough", proceeding on with the trade is safe...?
For: because there are indicators of legit enough and there are some traceability in audits later, and the trades are more or less at market value so its not an unfair/ dubious trade
Against: but there are some points which are taking the info at face value for the truth - which can be seen as ignorant/negligent

or just poke staff for everything above 5B to proceed?
cuz this rule be devolving GMs into part time brokerages if players would want to stay on the safe side all the time