The account suspensions and gil reset leave a black mark on this game.

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Originally Posted by JoRob

I'm puzzled.
a free market pricing system works only if there are no sudden bursts of coin from outside. The ability of a player to buy coin that can be summarily dumped into the market undercuts the market's ability to control a price, inflating it.
The FFXIV markets will never be the open market that people seem to think they are as long as outside sources of coin exist.
lots of statements from Firsts on setting their original prices, when they were the only source.
My question to the Firsts is--and remember, these are early days on the server--how much gil did YOU have when you first posted your mats? I'm assuming you were as broke as everyone else on the server.BEFORE you made your millions. if you didn't have much, in a land where most folks were broke, where did you expect it to come from? Who had the gil to pay you?

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Look everyone, common sense.

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Originally Posted by JoRob

I'm puzzled.
One thing that keeps bumping up against statements about the game's free market economy is this: a free market pricing system works only if there are no sudden bursts of coin from outside. *snip*
My question to the Firsts is--and remember, these are early days on the server--how much gil did YOU have when you first posted your mats? I'm assuming you were as broke as everyone else on the server. This is BEFORE you made your millions, remember. And if you didn't have much, in a land where most folks were broke, where did you expect it to come from? Who had the gil to pay you?

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I made just shy of 300k leveling to 50 and doing the storyline quests on my whm.

Honestly if I wanted my relic and needed ores, I wouldn't have even blinked at paying 39k... it's really not very much. Outside of repairs the only use I have for gil is to buy things I want on the market wards. If I didn't want to pay it I would have simply waited till the price dropped as supply increased. They capitalized on people's impatience and/or unwillingness to gather the items themselves... you do the same thing every time you put something up on the market wards to sell. The buyer would rather buy than gather themselves or put in the effort to be capable of gathering themselves. I get that a lot of you are jealous and angry that motivated crafters/gatherers made a ton of gil while you were grinding out your relics. But it's my turn to be puzzled... you had the same opportunity to level a gathering/crafting job and be one of the limited number supplying high demand items. So because you chose not too... you can criticize those who did?

What do you expect to happen in a free market when high demand items have very limited supply?

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Originally Posted by Nero92

1: No, just wondering how 1st gen determined prices and are now arguing they weren't overpriced when the game only accumulates ~500k and 1st gen lvl 50 DOM/DOW didn't have time to craft.

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The first crafters/gatherers determined prices by being first....duh. They try a price, if people are willing to pay then the price is determined.

First gen DOM/DOW didn't have time to craft because they decided not to have time to craft. If you aren't willing to put in the time to get to a point where you can create an item you want then you have only yourself to blame when the limited number of people that can make it set an aggressive price.
Why would someone sell something for less than they know it will sell for?

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Originally Posted by Vanidin

The first crafters/gatherers determined prices by being first....duh. They try a price, if people are willing to pay then the price is determined.

First gen DOM/DOW didn't have time to craft because they decided not to have time to craft. If you aren't willing to put in the time to get to a point where you can create an item you want then you have only yourself to blame when the limited number of people that can make it set an aggressive price.
Why would someone sell something for less than they know it will sell for?[/I]

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By your own admission ~300k gil. When people claim they made sales of 1mil gil IN THE BEGINNING, where did the extra come from? I wasn't referring to 30k sales, etc. Unlike the real world, people who can't afford things they want pay real money for gil because they're too lazy to get it honest. Being 1st is important enough to cheat. So they would pay any price for the armor.

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Originally Posted by Nero92

By your own admission ~300k gil. When people claim they made sales of 1mil gil IN THE BEGINNING, [b]where did the extra come from?]/b] I wasn't referring to 30k sales, etc. Unlike the real world, people who can't afford things they want pay real money for gil because they're too lazy to get it honest. Being 1st is important enough to cheat. So they would pay any price for the armor.

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From farming.

Remember all those post a few weeks ago about them being broke. That Gil went mostly to other players. Then you also sold Philosophy items to crafters. You can quite easily make enough gil doing all that.

You should not expect dinging 50 and then just be able to buy the currently best crafted items from currency you just got while leveling up.

It's my personal belief that a large portion of the crafters who were banned and had gil removed were victim's of an unfortunate circumstance. While I have no doubt most simply crafted and played the market fair and square, their gil was dirty which is why it was taken from them and they were blanket banned. Now I'm not in support of the ban (that was a bit drastic), but the gil being taken makes sense. This huge surplus in gil that was being passed around, largely to these crafters came from RMT means. It was hurting the economy and driving up prices to exorbitant amounts. Much like in the real world, these crafters were in possession of something they shouldn't have had, and also much like in the real world it was confiscated without any kind of reimbursement. Does it suck? Of course, and you crafters have my sympathy. While it might be an unpopular opinion, stripping the gil was necessary for the greater good (ie. economy) even if it did hurt the crafters who worked hard for it.

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Originally Posted by Amberion

From farming.

Remember all those post a few weeks ago about them being broke. That Gil went mostly to other players. Then you also sold Philosophy items to crafters. You can quite easily make enough gil doing all that.

You should not expect dinging 50 and then just be able to buy the currently best crafted items from currency you just got while leveling up.

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I appreciate the legitimate reply given maturely. That's a good point as well. We'll never know, but I'm still wary of the idea of people who want everything 1st taking the time out to farm for fear of coming 2nd; although that is a viable explanation of how income can be accrued. This is my 1st MMO and the idea of rushing sounds foreign to begin with so maybe I don't get the mindset of people who just want to make it to the end, but to each their own. That's why my main char's FC is Slow-Motion.

[QUOTE=scarebearz;1416333]snippet[QUOTE]

This was not directed towards you, however, there are others who did such transactions and they were suspended. While it may have seemed pointed, I didn't want to be the 1 millionth person saying "I know a person.." at the start of their post. Looking back, I should have.
You are the minority and unfortunately, still got screwed over. I've seen you in other posts and doubt anyone would spend that much time trying to be investigated if they actually cheated. Hence, why I haven't responded to any of your posts

So has anybody posted proof that they got banned or that their GIL got deleted without being compensated if they got it in a legit manner?

Nope and people are slowly starting to not-care either way.

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Originally Posted by HiirNoivl

Nope and people are slowly starting to not-care either way.

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Indeed, I have formed a final conclusion on this issue, stated in this post of mine.

So you're right, I'm starting not to care, albeit not about this issue ─equality of treatment between honest players, an indispensable prerequisite to me for an online game. I'm starting not to care about SE's games.

I should mention that I used to be a die-hard Final Fantasy fan; for instance I've been using the FFVI Mog as an online avatar for 10+ years now, and never once in talking video games with someone did I fail to mention how the FF series is great, recommending they play it, and so on. Since 1994. Well, I guess every page has to be turned someday. I just didn't imagine its very publisher would force me to admit in such a despicable way that the Final Fantasy is dead, and that no amount of great design could ever make it reborn, for SE sank too low in terms of customer respect/care and, frankly, I now fail to see their honor as a company.

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Originally Posted by JoRob

I'm puzzled.
One thing that keeps bumping up against statements about the game's free market economy is this: a free market pricing system works only if there are no sudden bursts of coin from outside. The ability of a player to buy coin that can be summarily dumped into the market undercuts the market's ability to control a price, inflating it.
The FFXIV markets will never be the open market that people seem to think they are as long as outside sources of coin exist.
Look back on the thread There are lots of statements from Firsts on setting their original prices, when they were the only source.
My question to the Firsts is--and remember, these are early days on the server--how much gil did YOU have when you first posted your mats? I'm assuming you were as broke as everyone else on the server. This is BEFORE you made your millions, remember. And if you didn't have much, in a land where most folks were broke, where did you expect it to come from? Who had the gil to pay you?

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The markets are free and open by design. If the markets cannot work due to the possibility of illegitimate sources of gil, as you're suggesting, what would you propose as an alternative? The markets are going to be player controlled no matter what happens, unless SE steps in and starts regulating the prices that players are allowed to sell their items for, and maybe the number of items one is allowed to sell on the markets in a given time period as well (after all, we wouldn't want people getting rich by mass producing lower priced items, as many already have).

Until this happens, what are we left with if we are to stop treating the market as is designed? A market that is free and player controlled on the surface, but which punishes players if they are to succeed? What is the proposed solution by many for the players who enjoy participating in the markets? It usually boils down to, just don't do well. Don't be successful. Sell less items. Sell items at lower prices. For no reason other than the possibility of RMT being utilized and more suspensions being introduced. If the markets are meant to be treated in a completely unnatural way due to the possibility of outside factors existing, and those crafting are meant to throw sound economic decisions out the window in favor of extremely poor decisions out of fear, then these issues have completely turned the markets upside down, and devalued its importance far more than a little inflation ever could.

The actual reason for all this mess is becoming a lot clearer....on other boards. You just won't see the facts here because SE is sweeping them under the rug.

I never post on the forums, but I think I just need to voice my opinions here.

Although I'd be incredibly annoyed if it was me that lost the gil, you have to unfortunately look at the bigger picture. Some of that gil that was taken never should have existed in the game in the first place. There is evidence to show that some people have used hacks to pretty much generate gil. Whether or not you earned the money legitimately on the Market is irrelevant, this money should never have existed in the first place.

Sadly, the same thing can happen in real life too. If you buy a stolen car in real life, whether you knew it or not, that car can be confiscated without any reimbursement to yourself.

I do feel for those affected, but I also don't think it's right to bash SE over this, action needed to be taken and that gil came in too quickly to stop it before the economy was damaged

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Originally Posted by RagingRush

Although I'd be incredibly annoyed if it was me that lost the gil, you have to unfortunately look at the bigger picture. Some of that gil that was taken never should have existed in the game in the first place. There is evidence to show that some people have used hacks to pretty much generate gil. Whether or not you earned the money legitimately on the Market is irrelevant, this money should never have existed in the first place.

Sadly, the same thing can happen in real life too. If you buy a stolen car in real life, whether you knew it or not, that car can be confiscated without any reimbursement to yourself.

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This is exactly what I've been saying here and on Reddit. What happened to the crafters sucks, and they have my sympathy. But they were in possession of a lot of "dirty" gil and something had to be done.

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Originally Posted by Kherza

This is exactly what I've been saying here and on Reddit. What happened to the crafters sucks, and they have my sympathy. But they were in possession of a lot of "dirty" gil and something had to be done.

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Wasn't the fact that it was so easy to "generate Gil" SE's responsibility in the first place? Then perhaps they should have admitted to exactly what and why they did it instead staying silent and letting legitimate player's reputation get tarnished. This is less about the Gil confiscated than it's about how SE handled the situation. No matter how you look at things, SE is the one at fault here.

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Originally Posted by ogopogo

Wasn't the fact that it was so easy to "generate Gil" SE's responsibility in the first place? Then perhaps they should have admitted to exactly what and why they did it instead staying silent and letting legitimate player's reputation get tarnished. This is less about the Gil confiscated than it's about how SE handled the situation. No matter how you look at things, SE is the one at fault here.

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While I can agree that the banning was an bad overstep, the rest was okay. To date, every MMO has hackers/bots/cheaters. Could they make better systems to counter-act these people? Sure, but it won't stop all of them, it never does. A majority of the fault lies on these cheaters who ruined the game for others. Everyone knows why these players had their gil removed, they were in possession of "dirty" gil at no fault of their own. To my knowledge no reputations were tarnished because everyone knows that a vast majority of crafters were not at fault.

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Originally Posted by Kherza

While I can agree that the banning was an bad overstep, the rest was okay. To date, every MMO has hackers/bots/cheaters. Could they make better systems to counter-act these people? Sure, but it won't stop all of them, it never does. A majority of the fault lies on these cheaters who ruined the game for others. Everyone knows why these players had their gil removed, they were in possession of "dirty" gil at no fault of their own. To my knowledge no reputations were tarnished because everyone knows that a vast majority of crafters were not at fault.

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Except as it's been said on this and similar threads over and over MANY members of the community seem to think any crafter who was effected by this did something wrong, the community is full of small-minded jealous individuals who have been quick to gather the fire wood for witch burnings because someone got punished for being richer and better at the game than them, look at how many say "They deserved it" or "They are liars who bought gil." The fact of the matter is SE should have compensated the crafters, for example, if every legitimate crafter who lost their gil was given a free year of game time, I feel most probably wouldn't be as unhappy, yes it would suck, yes it would still be unfair, but at least they were compensated instead of given NOTHING, for losing all their hard work.

No one will care or remember in a month.

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Originally Posted by Tenkiei

Except as it's been said on this and similar threads over and over MANY members of the community seem to think any crafter who was effected by this did something wrong, the community is full of small-minded jealous individuals who have been quick to gather the fire wood for witch burnings...

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The large majority of people I've seen (though granted it was on Reddit) were largely sympathetic towards the crafters. While no doubt some of them did buy gil, I think a large majority didn't and most people I think know this. Also, as other people mentioned, it's similar to the real world. They were in possession of something they shouldn't have had and it was taken from them by those with authority. They were victims and it's unfair, sure. But I'm baffled that SE is getting so much heat for this when the brunt of this outrage, though not all, should be directed towards the cheaters who caused this.

Because SE did...what no reputable MMO company has ever done without extreme backlash, punished innocent players for the company's mistakes.

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Originally Posted by Tenkiei

Because SE did...what no reputable MMO company has ever done without extreme backlash, punished innocent players for the company's mistakes.

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Exactly this. And after they did that, they offered no support through any of their channels that could help them by any accounts. They offered no communication to their player base over the issue, other than a vague statement which implies that they went after RMT and cheaters. Anyone sympathetic to the suspended players, as Kherza mentioned many are, are sympathetic because we as players have pieced together enough information to get somewhat of an idea of what happened, not because of the vague and useless level of communication that we get from the developers of this game who carried out the punishment.

The bans that were given out and lack of specific communication are why SE are not faultless. For that, I can certainly understand a level of anger. But going through this thread, I can't find a single comment that places blame on the real perpetrators, the hackers/cheaters/botters/RMT people. It's like taking your frustration out on the police who repossess your stolen car, rather than the crooked salesman who sold it to you in the first place.

Compensation for the taken gil would have been a nice gesture, but isn't necessary. While completely unfair to the crafters, removing the gil was the right thing to do. Leaving that much excess gil in the economy hurts it and over time badly. Hence why there is such a big move to drive away RMT. In all, SE shares some of the blame but a large portion of this anger should be directed towards the real violators, the cheaters.

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Originally Posted by Kherza

The bans that were given out and lack of specific communication are why SE are not faultless. For that, I can certainly understand a level of anger. But going through this thread, I can't find a single comment that places blame on the real perpetrators, the hackers/cheaters/botters/RMT people. It's like taking your frustration out on the police who repossess your stolen car, rather than the crooked salesman who sold it to you in the first place.

Compensation for the taken gil would have been a nice gesture, but isn't necessary. While completely unfair to the crafters, removing the gil was the right thing to do. Leaving that much excess gil in the economy hurts it and over time badly. Hence why there is such a big move to drive away RMT. In all, SE shares some of the blame but a large portion of this anger should be directed towards the real violators, the cheaters.

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No one is talking about the cheaters because no one expects anything from cheaters. Some will exploit to their hearts content, some will hack your account without a second thought. Yeah, a lot of us dislike them, but they exist, so there isn't much to talk about.

I would expect more from the developers of this game than I would a cheater. They're the ones who are providing the experience, who one would think would be on the side of the players, but in my opinion when it comes to situations like this they are doing an extremely poor job of it. The developers are supposed to be who players can turn to if they have an issue, instead they provide no support or communication, and arguably have been causing more issues than they've been solving. Saying that compensation for those SE targeted isn't necessary is your opinion and not one that I share. In another game that I played recently, the developers clearly messed something up. They responded on their official forums almost immediately, and denied it at first, and it seemed they legitimately did not believe anything was wrong. Well, it turns out they were wrong, and some players ended up feeling cheated. It wasn't anything overly major like losing weeks of progress or anything, but it was a minor annoyance and clearly the developers were at fault. Well, a few days later I logged into the game, and I received a letter of apology from the developers (that I had not even asked for), stating that they had made a mistake, and along with it the very item that was related to the mistake they had made, for free. This is in a game that I never paid a dime for after the initial purchase, by the way.

Now, let's compare that situation to this one. SE has clearly messed up in allowing this to occur to begin with. After seeing the inflation occur, SE is faced with a choice of exactly how to deal with it. Their solution is to take a week away from paying customers, and reset their progress completely. You may find player progress something to be taken lightly, that players who spend time in their first month progressing is worthless and something that can be easily tossed out in order to reset balance, but many don't. Many also don't enjoy paying money for developers to take their game access away. But alright, maybe SE doesn't isn't ahead of the curve when it comes to preventing the cheaters of exploiting. Maybe the don't have the manpower to do a real investigation, so all they can manage is an obviously inaccurate method of taking the richest players and taking away 99% of their funds, while leaving everyone else who also benefited from the inflation to keep 100% of their funds (though I would argue that even without the manpower to do a thorough investigation, this is just flat out ridiculous). Does SE do anything to try to make it right? Do these players even get so much as a "Yeah, sorry guys"? No. They get a message that says that they banned a bunch of people suspected of RMT and exploiting for gil, leaving their reputation tarnished and a bunch of people all over the place saying things like "Can you really trust these guys? They probably bought gil, etc."

The comparison between this company and the last game I played is night and day. SE is not only not "faultless," they perform poorly every step of the way. When developers make a mistake, you would think they would want to try extra hard to make it up to their player base. When SE makes a mistake, they issue the quickest, easiest and most inaccurate fix possible, and don't even say a word. If they cannot keep up with hackers, then that's one thing. Maybe they tried to the best of their ability, maybe not. But the lack of communication, the lack of support, the lack of any regard for the customers who spend their time and money playing their game, is abysmal. And it affects all of us, even if we have not been hit by this specific event. I remember seeing a thread made by someone just a few days ago asking whether the community thought transferring money from one account to another would be ok, or whether he'd be flagged for suspicious activity. This type of thing is something we all have to keep in mind when playing, that even if we don't cheat, if we get caught by one of SE's RMT catching bots, we are just screwed. The very people who players would want to come to for help in a situation that puts their account in jeopardy are actually the people who players are coming to realize that they need to be most afraid of.

You do make a valid point, and even I've admitted in past posts that SE's communication skills have been less than adequate in regards to this issue. However, unlike many people, I see SE as stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand they can take these swift, far reaching measures to eliminate RMT quickly but also catch legitimate players in the net. However, on the other hand they could have meticulously, and very slowly, checked every single person suspected of RMT. While this 2nd method would surely not catch any innocent players it also wouldn't make a dent on the cheating population. People would then accuse them of doing nothing about the cheaters and we'd have 20pg threads about that. Aside from not banning the suspects and having better communication, I'm not sure what they could have done that would have made everyone happy. Had they compensated all people who had gil removed, the cheaters would have also been compensated and we'd be back at square one.

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Originally Posted by Kherza

You do make a valid point, and even I've admitted in past posts that SE's communication skills have been less than adequate in regards to this issue. However, unlike many people, I see SE as stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand they can take these swift, far reaching measures to eliminate RMT quickly but also catch legitimate players in the net. However, on the other hand they could have meticulously, and very slowly, checked every single person suspected of RMT.

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I disagree that SE only has those two choices, and if it truly is the case, then they either put themselves there by not allocating sufficient resources to deal with the issue, or is simply mind-numbingly incompetent. I've mentioned this before(not sure if this thread), but look here:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/0...rency-traders/

CCP managed to track and ban over 6,000 RMT accounts in one fell swoop with almost laser precision, with less than a dozen false positives. And no, CCP didn't suspend a bunch of people's account while they take their sweet time to "investigate"(not), they did their investigation in the background, identified the offenders, and went after the offenders, not innocent players who did nothing wrong.

Most importantly, they clearly communicated to the player base what happened, punished the right people, and reversed those that were wrongly caught in their net, which there was almost none as they didn't just do a "lololol 1/100 their wallet" script.

Also: "We are quite confident that false positives are practically non-existent, but we examine all requests for review," he explained. "So far less than a dozen have been found to be false positives." The project is ongoing, and so far CCP has banned approximately 9,000 accounts.

SE should be ashamed of itself on that point alone, whereas CCP look at requests for review, SE just give people the good old runaround routine - CS: lololol go talk to GM; GM: lololol go talk to CS kthxbi.

To add insult to injury, CCP was, and remains a FAR smaller company than SE with far less resource to work with.

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While this 2nd method would surely not catch any innocent players it also wouldn't make a dent on the cheating population. People would then accuse them of doing nothing about the cheaters and we'd have 20pg threads about that. Aside from not banning the suspects and having better communication, I'm not sure what they could have done that would have made everyone happy. Had they compensated all people who had gil removed, the cheaters would have also been compensated and we'd be back at square one.

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It's not an "either/or", there are many MMO operators out there that have effectively fought RMTs without SE's signature brute-force method. Your scenario only makes sense if SE really is that incompetent. Sometimes it feels like many of those who supports SE's action here have never played any MMO run by any other company.

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Originally Posted by Kherza

You do make a valid point, and even I've admitted in past posts that SE's communication skills have been less than adequate in regards to this issue. However, unlike many people, I see SE as stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand they can take these swift, far reaching measures to eliminate RMT quickly but also catch legitimate players in the net. However, on the other hand they could have meticulously, and very slowly, checked every single person suspected of RMT. While this 2nd method would surely not catch any innocent players it also wouldn't make a dent on the cheating population. People would then accuse them of doing nothing about the cheaters and we'd have 20pg threads about that. Aside from not banning the suspects and having better communication, I'm not sure what they could have done that would have made everyone happy. Had they compensated all people who had gil removed, the cheaters would have also been compensated and we'd be back at square one.

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That's a fair point, I'll admit. If they had not taken such swift action, I'm sure there would be people complaining about cheating. Although if SE had a representative who came out and told people that catching the cheaters would take time, and if they acted in the quickest way possible, they would almost assuredly accidentally start punishing real players, I bet that would sway most of the community in favor of letting them take their time. No matter how many people we see now saying "Who cares?" (I'm not saying that you're one of those people, by the way, but it seems many others have become standoffish and uncaring) I would be willing to bet that a majority of players wouldn't want to risk it, not knowing what methods they would use if they were to try to sweep up RMT, and not knowing whether themselves or their friends would be swept up.

If they did care enough about the innocent players they swept up, but felt they needed to act swiftly and didn't have time do conduct a real investigation, another option would be to do exactly what they did, then immediately come out and state that they would do their best to make things right in a bad situation. Maybe they would investigate every account, or maybe they would ask that innocent players submit a report and they would examine each case and provide some sort of compensation for players who were inconvenienced. Whether it be gil, another form of in game compensation, or free game time tacked on to their account to make up for the inconvenience. I can't speak for those caught up in that situation, but if I were in that situation and they decided to do something like that, I'd still feel pretty crappy about the way the situation played out, but I might at least look at the company without complete disgust for attempting to do something about it.

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Originally Posted by scarebearz

People still don't seem to understand that much of each crafter's gil Could Not Have Been "Dirty", yet other players in the lower millions etc will have had just as much % of their gil "Dirty". So why only punish those with the most gil?

It was not "Dirty" gil they removed, but gil from the richest players, regardless of how it was obtained.

If you have used the market board, in one way or another you probably now have at least Some "Dirty" gil.

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Couldn't agree more with you.

Fine they stuffed up and allowed hacks to create gil. But why just remove it from the richest player and not /100 everyone and admit the mistake.

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Originally Posted by Nica

I disagree that SE only has those two choices, and if it truly is the case, then they either put themselves there by not allocating sufficient resources to deal with the issue, or is simply mind-numbingly incompetent. I've mentioned this before(not sure if this thread), but look here:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/0...rency-traders/

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That's actually very interesting, and I'm glad you posted it because it's a great read. This is exactly the type of action I would expect from a large MMO developer. Precision, communication, and despite that assuming that you could very well make mistakes and working with your user base to correct them. That is how a team that clearly cares about the treatment of its players conducts business.

Silly question, but do Japanese servers experience an onslaught of spam when one enters a city? When I was 1017 for days, I don't remember, but at the same time I think it was only during open beta anyway..

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Originally Posted by Nica

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/0...rency-traders/

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That was a pretty interesting read, thanks for the link. I wish SE had done something like this, but there is one catch in this article that plays into what I mentioned. The article specifically states that CCP spent weeks observing RMT behavior to fine tune their "Unholy Rage" program. SE on the other hand didn't have weeks to do this. Had they waited that long we'd like have the 20pg threads i mentioned about how SE doesn't care about bots, spammers and the like. Could SE have done better in dealing with the aftermath? Sure. I'm not saying SE did nothing wrong, they made mistakes, only that the reactions here are too negative and over the top.

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Originally Posted by Kherza

The article specifically states that CCP spent weeks observing RMT behavior to fine tune their "Unholy Rage" program.

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Eh?

The blanket bans were on the 27th of Sep, they did have weeks.

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Originally Posted by scarebearz

Eh?

The blanket bans were on the 27th of Sep, they did have weeks.

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The cheaters and RMT didn't start immediately, they also didn't become a huge problem until about halfway through Sept. I don't remember seeing a single spammer in Early Acces or Beta. There were some shortly after release but it didn't get bad until shortly before the bans because the game was too young that even cheaters can't get that much gil in a week or two. Sept. 27 is about 1 month after the game launched and everyone knows the first week to week and a half was rough because of server stability. I stand by what I said, they didn't have weeks and if they had taken the time to do what CCP did, we'd have some other thread with tons of complaining about how they don't care about RMT.

Don't know about your server but on Odin we have been getting RMT spam since release and reporting it since then too.

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Originally Posted by Kherza

The cheaters and RMT didn't start immediately, they also didn't become a huge problem until about halfway through Sept. I don't remember seeing a single spammer in Early Acces or Beta. There were some shortly after release but it didn't get bad until shortly before the bans because the game was too young that even cheaters can't get that much gil in a week or two. Sept. 27 is about 1 month after the game launched and everyone knows the first week to week and a half was rough because of server stability. I stand by what I said, they didn't have weeks and if they had taken the time to do what CCP did, we'd have some other thread with tons of complaining about how they don't care about RMT.

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Not to mention them being hush hush about it doesn't mean it wasn't going on out of sight. If certain accounts are to be believed, the major Gil generation exploit had been going on since phase 4 until only recently.

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Originally Posted by Susanoh

The markets are free and open by design. If the markets cannot work due to the possibility of illegitimate sources of gil, as you're suggesting, what would you propose as an alternative?.

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I'm not offering one. What I'm asking about is what you (or any seller) expected the customer base could afford to pay in the early weeks of the economy. And by extension, how you or any First reached that conclusion.
I really want to know. Because, in the threads I've read about the Gil Removal, none of the sellers admits they believed (or had a sneaking suspicion) that RMT gil would buttress their pricing, prices that contributed to customers purchasing gil.

While I admire your willingness to speak out on behalf of a segment of the injured population, the open-market defense just doesn't hold up in that light, and I'm calling bullfeathers. If outside sources of gil did not exist, the early multi-million price tag would have had a much less chance of succeeding.

[QUOTE=Susanoh;1400905]No, I wasn't affected, but this is still important enough to talk about because if players don't stand up for the minority, then SE will be able to continually get away with hostile actions against its own player base. If SE targets 1% of the community and 99% says "Oh well, I wasn't affected, I don't care" then they could target a different 1% the next month and the same thing will happen.QUOTE]

You should go outside and use this kind of energy in the real world where this kind of energy will make a real difference then in a game where the devs are more interested on the majority then a select few who rely on their greed to accomplish their goals and not the communities.

You make 350k leveling in a best case scenario to 50 as a combat class. The crafters were selling items at 1M profit on my server, often 4 pieces at a time.

You are full of shit if you cry innocent about not knowing who you were selling your items to.

If you were perma-banned I would say that's unjust. If your gil was reduced by 99% that sucks but get over it or quit. SE has shown at this point that they aren't going to do anything no matter how much you cry.

I don't get all the "leveling to 50 only gets you to 350k" nonsense, people got to 50 in like 3/4 days.

I know lvl 50's who claim to make upto 100k an hour farming fleece.

There are also those selling titian runs, those selling expensive materia etc etc etc.

Just because you cannot make gil (because your not really trying) it's not our fault.

Endgame items are for endgame players not fresh lvl 50's who want an easy ride.

The problem is that SQ-E is allowing the Gold Sellers to make their money (REAL MONEY) while they go after the gil buyers in the game. No doubt these gil buyers were and are cheating. But it's the gold SELLERS that are ruining the game experience by Spamming shout and Tell to the point where People are turning them off. SQ-E should be eliminating the spammers as soon as they are caught or reported. This will also catch the power levelers since their characters are being used to spam the gold selling websites. ALL of those accounts should be banned permanently. Catch the gil buyers when you can but please get rid of all the gold spammers who are ruining this game.

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Originally Posted by Wyverna

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Spoiler Alert

RMT is a Business
Has many Employees
Electric Bills
Sub Payments
Internet Bills(Depending Country)
Program Cost

They only exist because people buy their service ! Ban the weak and the RMT will fade away or atleast a Bulk of it.

I think RMT are scum but I think even worse of the people who buy their services !

Might be innocents who got their Gil stripped because of some Weak Lazy Player who did not want to get their gil legit and paid for Items or Merc Services with Illegal Gil .

Gil Buyers caused SE to do this , RMT did not force anyone to buy their gil , heck they annoy me worse than a Fly that no matter how hard you try , it is impossible to kill.....