'Sup folks? Normally not prone to posting on Forums - especially when it comes to starting conversations - but felt like this is actually starting to get out of hand.
We've had a bit of a Pirate problem on Ship 1 recently, with one player (read: probably a mule for a RMT Trader) practically dominating the entire market with 20-30 copies of all the recent AC Scratch Items (If you recognize "Welcome ! ! !" then you know exactly who I'm on about), which made it practically impossible for anyone else to sell anything at a higher price; who'd buy for more when there's this near-infinite supply of items for much cheaper, right?
Eventually - after several days of trading - it seems they disappeared from the Market. Either they were banned, restricted in some sense or maybe they just realised they may have made their shop a bit too obvious and disappeared. Regardless, I think everyone trading on Ship 1 breathed a collective sigh of relief when they disappeared...
Then today, I saw this:
Not just one, but TWO shops, packed to the gills with AC Scratch items!
They stand out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the market, and they is literally no way in hell they could have gotten all of their stock without some kind of foul play involved; pick whatever reason you like. These can't be mega-whales either, especially considering just how new the accounts are and the fact that they have no Lookbook or details on their ARKS ID. Zero customisation, yet they apparently have all the money in the world…
Something's clearly wrong here.
Question now is... What can be done about it?
Boycotting the store isn't going to work; there's always going to be players who don't really care who's pockets they fill as long as the deal looks good, and in this case it's more than likely RMT Traders since no real player would have any need for the sheer quantity of Meseta being generated here.
The only really logical solution to this current problem - in my eyes at least - would be to flag it to the GMs that there's clearly something strange about these stores, but from what I've seen previously, even if the previous store was banned due to illegal activity it more than likely still made a ludicrous amount of money for it's owner.
The best prevention would probably be: Some kind of system to flag -not ban - users who put up so many items like this at once. I'm relatively the GMs have the tools to trace the source of all these items and it they find them to be legit, then let that store go. If not? Time to warm up the ban hammer, maybe for whoever's been directly trading (or very strange sales, like a normally cheap item being sold for a ridiculously large sum of Meseta) with these bots as well if they seem suspicious as well.
Regardless, these two titanic shops are currently dominating the entire market price; setting the baseline for anything they put on sale with zero exceptions. Their stock seems to be near limitless as long as the current Scratches keep supplying them, but who knows just how much they have in reserve as well? How long can they keep a grip on the market before SEGA actually figures out some way to deal with them?