'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?

Or you know he could be a super whale Putting thousands of dollars into the game? I mean rumors or jsut rumors.

IF you have no proof tets not accuse anyone of anything.

Having a monopoly of in game items is no big scene since every game has them.

Im not here to defend said person or yourself. Just saying you seem rather jealous.

@Caex said in Pirate Problem 2: Electric Boogaloo (Ship 1):

Or you know he could be a super whale Putting thousands of dollars into the game? I mean rumors or jsut rumors.

IF you have no proof tets not accuse anyone of anything.

Having a monopoly of in game items is no big scene since every game has them.

Im not here to defend said person or yourself. Just saying you seem rather jealous.

Aye, that's fair enough. Jealousy's got very little to do with it though when you look a little into them

I sell the odd thing here and there on the market - mostly AC items I know I don't want - so seeing a shop spring up like this and set a baseline for everything is a bit galling to anyone trying to make some profit off of whatever they have spare.

Like I said though, it's the sheer speed at which it's set up though. Plus, most whales I know would have picked the prime pieces of the bunch to dress themselves up with to flaunt with. Hence why the empty Lookbook seems so suspicious at a glance. Add in the lack of other details - empty rooms and ARKS IDs - and they do seem a bit off. Could be an alt account for a whale, but why would they need one, unless their sheer quantity of goods far exceeds what they can put up on one account?

Could be it's a legitimate whale - in which case fair enough - but it's the lack of any flaunting that really rings a bell that something is up. Add in the bots that're already plaguing the game, and it makes you wonder just where their Meseta income comes from.

Either way, nothing any of us can do about it directly. Just got to discuss it and maybe see if SEGA may look into it at some point to refine the system if someone has been taking advantage of it.

41 rabbit headphones, drop rate is 0.3322%.

In theory, in order to get 41 rabbit headphones, u need to pull 41 / 0.3322% ~= 12,342 times.

Say it costs 2200 AC to pull 12 times, that's around 1028 x 2200 AC + 6 x 200 AC = 2,262,800 AC.

10300AC = 132.99 $CAD

2,262,800 / 10300 ~= 220, 220 x 132.99$ = 29,257.8$ CAD

29,257.8$ CAD ~= 22,156.02$ USD.

In theory he spent 22k USD on this gasha just to undercut everyone for his own enjoyment. yap. I see no problem with this person lol.

(side note: if someone is abusing the promotion we have atm, its only $1030 USD to get all those inventory. )

My take on this , It's more than likely that there are people who spend a great deal of money on this game. Just maybe, they are able to get all these things that are cluttering their own inventory and decided to sell them in order to make room for more. From my own experience and from what I have witnessed in other F2P games, Some people Literally spend thousands in just a span of one month. So legitimately , it can be just "overstock" .

Sega's weekly ban is a joke to me at moment.

They aint going to spend time to tackle the root of the problem, even multiple players like us have been reporting.

Nothing heard, no action has been done.

We have already stop spending extras on AC because there is no point of getting extra copies to sell, when bots can always out price us.

To those of you out there thinking bot is doing goods to keep the cost low. Think about why there is a suddenly surge in AC item inflation after PC release, and to those havn't pay much attention, why AC scratch items r getting more expensive everytime even bot is constantly undercutting.

I guess I will shut up and this is the last time I complain about this problem.
Disappointed.

@Ash-Lv1 bans don't happen right away even more when involves currency that has being bought, they need to analize if the person did get from a illegal form or just decided to dump tons of money right away

@Ash-Lv1 said in Pirate Problem 2: Electric Boogaloo (Ship 1):

Sega's weekly ban is a joke to me at moment.

They aint going to spend time to tackle the root of the problem, even multiple players like us have been reporting.

Nothing heard, no action has been done.

We have already stop spending extras on AC because there is no point of getting extra copies to sell, when bots can always out price us.

To those of you out there thinking bot is doing goods to keep the cost low. Think about why there is a suddenly surge in AC item inflation after PC release, and to those havn't pay much attention, why AC scratch items r getting more expensive everytime even bot is constantly undercutting.

I guess I will shut up and this is the last time I complain about this problem.
Disappointed.

Make sure that you change the "We" to you . I am not Included in what you deem to generalize.

@DDDDLife said in Pirate Problem 2: Electric Boogaloo (Ship 1):

@Ash-Lv1 said in Pirate Problem 2: Electric Boogaloo (Ship 1):

Sega's weekly ban is a joke to me at moment.

They aint going to spend time to tackle the root of the problem, even multiple players like us have been reporting.

Nothing heard, no action has been done.

We have already stop spending extras on AC because there is no point of getting extra copies to sell, when bots can always out price us.

To those of you out there thinking bot is doing goods to keep the cost low. Think about why there is a suddenly surge in AC item inflation after PC release, and to those havn't pay much attention, why AC scratch items r getting more expensive everytime even bot is constantly undercutting.

I guess I will shut up and this is the last time I complain about this problem.
Disappointed.

Make sure that you change the "We" to you . I am not Included in what you deem to generalize.

I never intended to include "you" in this "we", my apology if I didn't make the disclaimer before hand. Please understand we referring to the group of players who is making an effort on pushing Sega to solve the problem.

Also special thanks to the person who risked his own account, and submited a video to Sega on reproducing the bot's AC scratch exploits.

And nothing heard back as expected.

@Ash-Lv1 said in Pirate Problem 2: Electric Boogaloo (Ship 1):

41 rabbit headphones, drop rate is 0.3322%.

In theory, in order to get 41 rabbit headphones, u need to pull 41 / 0.3322% ~= 12,342 times.

Say it costs 2200 AC to pull 12 times, that's around 1028 x 2200 AC + 6 x 200 AC = 2,262,800 AC.

10300AC = 132.99 $CAD

2,262,800 / 10300 ~= 220, 220 x 132.99$ = 29,257.8$ CAD

29,257.8$ CAD ~= 22,156.02$ USD.

In theory he spent 22k USD on this gasha just to undercut everyone for his own enjoyment. yap. I see no problem with this person lol.

(side note: if someone is abusing the promotion we have atm, its only $1030 USD to get all those inventory. )

This. This right here

No matter how you look at it, this is a ludicrous amount of cash to spend just to undercut everyone else in the market, although the promotion does make it more feasible that it could be a whale. Chances are they are more than likely abusing it to stock their shops full to the brim, possibly off of the back of stolen credit cards although that part is impossible to tell from our side. That's SEGA's job to investigate if there's something malicious regarding that.

What's definitely telling though, is the fact that their shop is absolutely loaded with all of these items all at once... If they wanted to make a hell of a profit off of them, surely waiting until the Scratch Tickets are over would make them more Meseta in the long run once scarcity settles in, so why sell everything so rapidly if they really wanted to just make the maximum amount of cash for whatever reason... Unless they're working on borrowed time? What they sell is literally miles above any other player store on board the ship, and they literally appeared out of nowhere.

@Ash-Lv1 said in Pirate Problem 2: Electric Boogaloo (Ship 1):

(side note: if someone is abusing the promotion we have atm, its only $1030 USD to get all those inventory. )

Isn't the promo just 50% off for a ticket? So even if you managed to milk it for all it's worth, it'd be ~11k USD (from ~22k), not $1030?

@Akonyl said in Pirate Problem 2: Electric Boogaloo (Ship 1):

@Ash-Lv1 said in Pirate Problem 2: Electric Boogaloo (Ship 1):

(side note: if someone is abusing the promotion we have atm, its only $1030 USD to get all those inventory. )

Isn't the promo just 50% off for a ticket? So even if you managed to milk it for all it's worth, it'd be ~11k USD (from ~22k), not $1030?

Pretty sure the promo is just for 1 ticket yeah which is..... just..... sad.

@Akonyl said in Pirate Problem 2: Electric Boogaloo (Ship 1):

@Ash-Lv1 said in Pirate Problem 2: Electric Boogaloo (Ship 1):

(side note: if someone is abusing the promotion we have atm, its only $1030 USD to get all those inventory. )

Isn't the promo just 50% off for a ticket? So even if you managed to milk it for all it's worth, it'd be ~11k USD (from ~22k), not $1030?

No, thats not the one I meant.

But 50% off a single ticket is a meh promotion lol.

While there is no single easy way around this, Speculation suggests that perhaps this just may be mere "market manipulations" as the case may be. However, there are still many things to consider, and may possibilities as to how this is being done. The real culprit: To come to conclusion that this is is completely wrong? - Quite possibly could be.

After all, there isn't any shortage of anyone calling out anyone else either a cheater or even a Hacker.