Square, if youre going to ban Gil buyers, give them a PERMANENT ban

A temporary ban isnt going to solve much. Once they buy it, its likely theyre going to buy more gil after the ban is lifted, more buying, more RMT. It will also show that you have a zero tolerance towards buyers. Buyers are just as bad, if not, worse than the sellers. They let this cancer grow without any concern for its community or the game itself.

Indeed, when gilbuyers are banned, and potential gilbuyers too afraid to buy, then the RMT issue will truly be resolved.

But will SE do it? Given how much they love subscription money? They seem to like the money more than the game.

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Originally Posted by Radkat

But will SE do it? Given how much they love subscription money? They seem to like the money more than the game.

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The ban player might buy the game again and subscribe again, more money !

Banned guil sellers will buy the game again if they make money, banned guill buyers may not. It's a simple business decision.

What makes you so sure they even hand out temp bans to buyers? I don't think you'll ever see them ban buyers no matter how much you complain on the forums.

Fact is that they have no evidence to ban the buyers, they simply receive a large sum of gil. People could just claim ignorance and you would have no proof that they actually paid any money for it.

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Originally Posted by Shadray

Banned guil sellers will buy the game again if they make money, banned guill buyers may not. It's a simple business decision.

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If the goal of your business is to become a laughing stock / more and more disliked by your own fan base, yes.

Gil is easy to make in this game, why buy it?

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Originally Posted by Riepah

If the goal of your business is to become a laughing stock / more and more disliked by your own fan base, yes.

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No the goal of your business is to make as much money as you can. Thought everyone knew that.

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Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

Fact is that they have no evidence to ban the buyers, they simply receive a large sum of gil. People could just claim ignorance and you would have no proof that they actually paid any money for it.

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It is a simple matter for SE to trace gilsellers from bot accounts who send large amounts of gil to seller accounts who send gil to regular players. They have no problem banning the bots and the sellers, but they have been reluctant to ban the buyers so far.

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Originally Posted by Lilyarel

A temporary ban isnt going to solve much. Once they buy it, its likely theyre going to buy more gil after the ban is lifted, more buying, more RMT. It will also show that you have a zero tolerance towards buyers. Buyers are just as bad, if not, worse than the sellers. They let this cancer grow without any concern for its community or the game itself.

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Actually, people usually don't repeat an errant behavior after a temporary ban.

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Originally Posted by Twilite

Gil is easy to make in this game, why buy it?

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Gross incompetence, laziness, excuses (I don't want to grind, I paid to have fun) etc. You name it.

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Originally Posted by Radkat

It is a simple matter for SE to trace gilsellers from bot accounts who send large amounts of gil to seller accounts who send gil to regular players. They have no problem banning the bots and the sellers, but they have been reluctant to ban the buyers so far.

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Except it's not a simple matter at all, by that logic if a gilseller sends a large amount of gil to a character who didn't purchase gil by accident they will be banned. This could occur because the person who actually bought the gil made a mistake while entering their character name or even selected the wrong server.

Additionally, if somebody really doesn't like another player in game all they have to do is buy that character some gil and they'll be permanently banned. $50 to see somebody you hate disappear isn't a lot of money to some people.

Banning the buyers is not a feasible solution, which is why I don't think it will ever happen. Too much liability and things that can go wrong if they start doing that.

As far as I can tell, they've only been banning bots and rmt spammers, and even most of the bots get away with it.

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Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

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No, banning buyers is definitely feasible. Those caught the first time can be given a warning and the gil received wiped out. He will have a chance to plead his case. So the next time he receives gil again without buying, he will know not to accept it, or report to a GM immediately.

And come on, the chances of these cases happening are pretty rare.

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Originally Posted by Radkat

No, banning buyers is definitely feasible. Those caught the first time can be given a warning and the gil received wiped out. He will have a chance to plead his case. So the next time he receives gil again without buying, he will know not to accept it, or report to a GM immediately.

And come on, the chances of these cases happening are pretty rare.

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So what if I don't like you in game? I just have to spend $50 on gil twice and you disappear?

Give me a break, there is no way you can prove somebody bought gil, short of them saying within in game chat that they bought gil.

If you want to trust everybody who plays this game that's great, but I've seen enough malicious crap in my time to know better.

@DoctorPepper

Didn't you read my post? Read it again!

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Originally Posted by Radkat

@DoctorPepper

Didn't you read my post? Read it again!

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Yes I read your post and your idea is still flawed in my opinion, doesn't matter how many "warnings" you get. Buying gil is a service that SE has no control over and ANYBODY can buy gil for anybody else. So with that in mind, there is no way to prove somebody buys gil.

Reporting that you received a large amount of gil by mistake will only get you so far. I see spam advertising prices like $1/million or less. The $50 value I gave was an example but in reality somebody could harass you for a long time with $50 because if they are banning buyers they would have to ban them regardless of the amount received or people would just bypass it by buying small amounts.

Don't get me wrong, I don't support the buyers or the sellers. I just don't think that there is enough evidence to prove somebody buys gil because they received gil from rmt. So go ahead and ban buyers who say they're buying with in game chat but good luck getting the buyers to say something about it in game.

Or you reread again and see that you're not forced to accept the gil. So really, your idea is flawed

Interesting conversations here. I think what DoctorPepper is saying is this: SE can rightfully ban bots and RMT spamming characters because all of the actions bots and such do are done within SE's servers and are thus able to be monitored, sorted, parsed, have metrics done on, whatever. The actual act of buying gil via a RMT website is completely outside of SE's ability to police or monitor, and thus they can never prove that the person receiving gil ever actually committed the act of buying it themselves. It would be poor PR for SE to consider paying customers as guilty before proven innocent, not to mention the overhead such monitoring and litigation with irate customers would cost.

Personally, I think buying gil in a game that doesn't even require it to have the best gear is foolhardy, but realistically, SE can't ever prove the 'illegal act' was ever done by the receiver of gil.

Would have to be pretty spiteful to waste anout $100 just to get another person banned.. spiteful and financially secure.

Perma-banning people who buy gil is really the best solution as it would make people more reluctant to put their account at risk. No clients = less people selling on xiv, on FFXI i cannot honestly remember a single time I ever got rmt messages until the game fell in to decline, after which I would just report the sellers and then stand there and watch them get the red ball of death and vanish as i got my automated thank you letter from SE. That was nice, felt like making a difference all 59 times on my af blue mage rmt hunter :3

There needs to be more co-operation like that between the task force and players, and a larger group to make that happen

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Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

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First of all, buying gil is not a 'service''. Sure, anybody can buy gil for anyone, but are you really dumb enough to accept large amounts gil from players you don't know? Even if you are, you will get a warning first and a GM will educate you about accepting gil from suspicious sources If you accept gil from gilsellers before sending them to me, then SE can easily tell that both you and me are regular players from our records, so you will be the one that gets banned, not me.

THere is no need to defend gilbuyers that hard. Just don't buy gil and you won't have anything to worry about.

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Originally Posted by MirielleLavandre

Interesting conversations here. I think what DoctorPepper is saying is this: SE can rightfully ban bots and RMT spamming characters because all of the actions bots and such do are done within SE's servers and are thus able to be monitored, sorted, parsed, have metrics done on, whatever. The actual act of buying gil via a RMT website is completely outside of SE's ability to police or monitor, and thus they can never prove that the person receiving gil ever actually committed the act of buying it themselves. It would be poor PR for SE to consider paying customers as guilty before proven innocent, not to mention the overhead such monitoring and litigation with irate customers would cost.

Personally, I think buying gil in a game that doesn't even require it to have the best gear is foolhardy, but realistically, SE can't ever prove the 'illegal act' was ever done by the receiver of gil.

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This is exactly what I mean, thank you adding another perspective.

Basically, I think it's SE's responsibility to prove the person is guilty, not the player's responsibility to prove their innocence.

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Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

Don't get me wrong, I don't support the buyers or the sellers. I just don't think that there is enough evidence to prove somebody buys gil because they received gil from rmt. So go ahead and ban buyers who say they're buying with in game chat but good luck getting the buyers to say something about it in game.

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You can't receive a mail from someone that isn't your friend so that reduces the chances of being frame by like 95 %.

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Originally Posted by lololink

You can't receive a mail from someone that isn't your friend so that reduces the chances of being frame by like 95 %.

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Just playing devil's advocate, but I know I've mistakenly been in battle and clicked "accept" on those annoying weird name friend requests without paying attention // didn't notice till I checked my list later to see if a friend not in my FC was online... I truly wish they could have a 'decline all friend requests' option somewhere... like turning off PvP in some games.

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Originally Posted by MirielleLavandre

Just playing devil's advocate, but I know I've mistakenly been in battle and clicked "accept" on those annoying weird name friend requests without paying attention // didn't notice till I checked my list later to see if a friend not in my FC was online... I truly wish they could have a 'decline all friend requests' option somewhere... like turning off PvP in some games.

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even if you accepted it, it would then require you to accept the gils from the mail, you could delete it and tell a GM what happened to be sure, reducing even more the chances of being framed, that would only work on really noob players that wouldn't even know what a gil seller is.

Hate to say it, but one of the better ways of getting rid of RMT is SE selling their own gil... that way there's no point for RMT to exist here. Though that said, I don't think the RMT is that bad, yet, course its hard for bots to make new chars on my server so its not as big a deal here :o
So would you rather be spam'd by bots to buy illegal gil, or have buying gil a legit option offered by SE and deal with the pay-to-win people (though really in a PvE game who the hell cares?)

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Originally Posted by lololink

You can't receive a mail from someone that isn't your friend so that reduces the chances of being frame by like 95 %.

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I guess I just don't assume people are intelligent, just because I won't accept it doesn't mean somebody else won't. I know some genuinely nice people who are really slow and I don't want people to get banned just because they're slower than other people.

While I would actually do exactly that (send GM mail and not even touch the mail), there are probably some people who would just accept it because, well, easy gil and not enough intelligence. It is those people I was referring to who could lie and say they didn't buy it, even if they did. Sure, they'd get it taken away, but they couldn't really be punished. There's just so many ways to plead your innocence since SE cannot prove anything at all -- all they can do is take away suspicious gil // and all of the time and expenditure to police this kind of thing is something I don't think SE wants to invest in - or they would have already. All of these GM interactions cost money, after all.

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Originally Posted by Mizore_Canaan

Hate to say it, but one of the better ways of getting rid of RMT is SE selling their own gil... that way there's no point for RMT to exist here. Though that said, I don't think the RMT is that bad, yet, course its hard for bots to make new chars on my server so its not as big a deal here :o
So would you rather be spam'd by bots to buy illegal gil, or have buying gil a legit option offered by SE and deal with the pay-to-win people (though really in a PvE game who the hell cares?)

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Then why have gil if anyone can buy however much they want? That's pay 2 win right there.

As others are pointing out, you can't prove somebody bought gil unless they outright admit it. All the person has to do is say "I didn't buy it. A random stranger just gave me this I don't know why." etc and SE cannot prove they are lying. It would be a very bad business practice for SE to just start banning paying customers left and right based on circumstantial evidence and gut feelings.

When a player receives a large amount of gil from a known gilseller (who collects gil from multiple bots), he will be given a warning not to do so again. If he yet again receives a large amount of gil from a known gilseller and not report it, then he will have a hard time convincing a judge or jury that he is innocent. Despite popular belief, a judge or the jury do have some level of common sense!

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Originally Posted by Radkat

When a player receives a large amount of gil from a known gilseller (who collects gil from multiple bots), he will be given a warning not to do so again. If he yet again receives a large amount of gil from a known gilseller and not report it, then he will have a hard time convincing a judge or jury that he is innocent. Despite popular belief, a judge or the jury do have some level of common sense!

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You're making assumptions about things SE knows, like who is and who is not a gilseller. They have already stated they don't even know for sure who is a bot and can't ban them until they are sure. (And gilsellers don't just get their money from bots, some get it the same way legit players do, like playing the AH). Also I would think if they were positive someone is a gilseller they would ban them immediately rather than let them run around transferring gil to other players.

And it's ridiculous to think SE would spend money to have this "judge and jury" you're talking about. Since it's not an actual crime, SE would have to hire people and pay them to spend all their time reviewing everyone's gil history and all the people they've had gil transferred to or from, in a game with 4 million active accounts.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

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Heh, one thing I'll agree with you that this judge and jury thing is all hogwash. but people here seem to like to believe that SE needs to 'prove' that someone did buy gil before taking action or they will get litigation etc, I'm just going with their flow.

Now you have been misinformed. SE certainly knows who's a bot, and has been banning them. Go to the lodestone and read the ban reports. Gilsellers sell their bot farmed stuff on the AH like shards and crystals, sure. THey have activity logs on all characters, otherwise how would they investigate? Even when you make reports ingame, they want you to state where and when the offense you are reporting took place, so they can go back to chack their logs.

I actually don't think SE has to prove anything - I think it is the ToS that they can ban whoever they want, for no reason whatsoever, if they choose. But, they would be immensely stupid from a public relations and business side of it to do so. This thread is, I think, about banning people for buying gil, with the OP wanting a permanent ban. My only point is, SE can never, ever prove that someone bought gil and use that as a reason for banning them. Can SE ban whoever they want? Yes. Would they commit the time and resources into doing so, at the added cost of lower customer satisfaction and the bad way it would look for even the very few innocents caught up with this type of thing? Nope, I highly doubt it ^^

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Originally Posted by MirielleLavandre

Would they commit the time and resources into doing so, at the added cost of lower customer satisfaction and the bad way it would look for even the very few innocents caught up with this type of thing?

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When gilbuyers are banned, potential gilbuyers afraid to buy, gilsellsers will leave, and all the ad spam will disappear like in the JP servers. Customer satisfaction will in fact improve. That's the whole point!

I actually agree with you, Sylphia, but I just don't think SE would do it. They seem to take a back seat to such things and only ban stuff that they can get solid metrics on from their own servers. That's one reason I'm looking forward to Heavensward - I doubt, and hope, RMT can't get into those zones // I'd be shocked, and saddened, if they took the time to beat the main story just to go to Ishgard and spam...

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Originally Posted by MirielleLavandre

I actually agree with you, Sylphia, but I just don't think SE would do it. They seem to take a back seat to such things and only ban stuff that they can get solid metrics on from their own servers. That's one reason I'm looking forward to Heavensward - I doubt, and hope, RMT can't get into those zones // I'd be shocked, and saddened, if they took the time to beat the main story just to go to Ishgard and spam...

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It seems unlikely that they will go that far. Bots can easily level up by farming mobs in the overworld or having the bots do duties together. I REALLY don't think they could have bots be good enough to do the Steps of Faith.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

It seems unlikely that they will go that far. Bots can easily level up by farming mobs in the overworld or having the bots do duties together. I REALLY don't think they could have bots be good enough to do the Steps of Faith.

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Bots can teleport in the air and attack a boss from afar, leaving the monster no way to retaliate. 8 BLMs can probably just DPS it down.

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Originally Posted by Radkat

When gilbuyers are banned, potential gilbuyers afraid to buy, gilsellsers will leave, and all the ad spam will disappear like in the JP servers. Customer satisfaction will in fact improve. That's the whole point!

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Not unless SE proves they have a surefire way to catch the buyers. Harsh laws and rules rarely work as a true deterrent for crimes because people either commit them in the heat of the moment or they're confident that they won't get caught in the first place. The punishment is irrelevant to them. The risk of a permanent ban might cause some people to shy away from buying, but I'm willing to bet that most people that are buying gil right now would continue to buy it even if the punishment was as severe as the police coming to their house and physically arresting them.

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Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

What makes you so sure they even hand out temp bans to buyers? I don't think you'll ever see them ban buyers no matter how much you complain on the forums.

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http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...4cf9d31e16ce16
82 buyers got a temp ban. And that's just a 2-week period.
They've done this for a while.

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Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

Additionally, if somebody really doesn't like another player in game all they have to do is buy that character some gil and they'll be permanently banned. $50 to see somebody you hate disappear isn't a lot of money to some people.

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Hmm, see if someone did that to me, the RMT themselves would still either need to come up to me and trade, or add me as a friend to mail.
I already deny random friend requests. I'm smart enough to not take a random bajillion gil thrown at me out of the blue. If anything, the buyer would be out their $50 and I continue along my day unaffected.

I find it funny that people think that because there are more RMT advertisements in the game that means that lots of people are buying gil when in fact its quite the opposite. When sales are up up up companies tend to avoid big marketing ploys as they don't really need to market their product.

Tell me did you see a bunch of iWatch commercials lately? Probably not, save for prime-time advertisement slots (shows with large amounts of viewers), because they made profit for the item for the whole year in just a matter of a day or two. We are seeing more RMT advertisements in the game because less people are buying it, and when a company is down in sales the first thing they ask is "Do people know about us? Is our lack of an imprint in the community the reason why sales are down?" So they advertise.

Further noting the idea of perma-banning gil BUYERS is bad is because you perma-ban someone who plays the game with other friends (maybe some in real life friends...maybe friends who migrated from another MMO or online based game) if one of them get the perma-ban then guess what will probably happen? The other friends who play the game for the sake of playing together as friends have a high chance of leaving because they cannot play with their friend anymore. However if it was a temp-ban what happens is that player might be upset and a bit shaken about being caught, he will no doubt tell his close in game friends about it and it spreads the idea that gil buying will get you in trouble.

So one scenario has 7 people quitting (static-sized group of friends) and one being perma-banned for a total of 8 people not giving SE money.
The other scenario has 1 person temp-banned and 7 other people not willing to risk buying gil, for a total of 8 people not buying gil but still giving SE money.