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

[Masked]

Ultimately, all of the issues in the past 10 pages or so relate to one simple common denominator: Square's customer service is garbage.

Clearly legitimate people were caught in the crossfire. That's a fact at this point, we've established it's a fact, even statistically, this effected far too many people for SOMEONE innocent to have not been caught in the middle. This is why blanket algorithms are investigated by PEOPLE after getting flagged but, it is what it is.

Square's lack of available customer service to NA is indeed the crux of the problem.

No current MMO on the market, including those that are FTP have response times as bad as SE's.

Had they actually had quality CS, these people would've been reinstated quickly, the matter dealt with and the community could have move forward...However, now we're on week 3 and many users still don't have their accounts back...They have no recourse BUT, word of mouth.

At least now, most of you will know what happens when Square bans your account...An instant 2-3 week vacation.

[ArkhamNative]

lmao did I just read that?

Yes. The logical conclusion from lokust4's own argument is that he is a liar and a cheat (as are all humans), which is different from a more sane argument that it's impossible to tell whether an unknown someone is a liar or cheat based on that person's claims alone.

I don't know any people claiming this gil seizure happened, so my support of this issue is for justice and against apparently boneheaded actions like confiscating gil as "dirty"/"counterfeit" yet letting the people who provided the gil continue to play using the items they purchased from those crafters and gatherers. I also understand that RMT are an active adversary to SE, and providing details to us is also providing details to them. It's like conducting a campaign in war: the troops and civilians don't get to vote and don't have a need-to-know.

[OldGeezer]

snip

He omitted how long it stayed on, but he did say it sold overnight after a price increase. The point was he raised the price and put it out of the range of normal buyers and squarely into the hands of gil buyers.

No, the question you should be asking yourself is why would anyone price the highest level crafted endgame items based on whether a new player can afford it or not, especially when doing so means losing money. Does Bugatti price their Veyron based on whether a typical fastfood worker can afford it?

Because you can build a consumer base a lot easier when you aren't gouging people. You can sell 1 for 1.25 million or 5 for 800k. Which scenario gives you more gil in the end.

snip

Apples and oranges, Kevin. Your DS ores are going for 180 gil on my server, your gold sand, 15 gil. That's a depreciation of 98.4% and 99.8% respectively. You were at the front of the speculation bubble, you made the lion's share. The rest that follow, not nearly as much. So the first-to players on new servers mgiht have been able to buy that item, but the people follwing in their footsteps not nearly as much.

[KevinC]

snip

Well I'm happy I don't doubt everyone like that without proof since I'm pretty sure there's a mental illness with that as a main symptom lol...

Anyway, even if people don't believe us, you still have to admit that it's pretty fucked up to call their support which tells you to submit a ticket in-game and then the GM in-game tells you to call them, even when you wrote in the ticket that the phone support told you to contact them in-game. I doubt legitimate people would try that hard to get their stuff investigated if they were guilty of anything... You don't run at a police officier to check everything you do if you're a criminal, I just don't get how people can't see this.

[HiirNoivl]

You were suspended because you were part of the RMT chain. You hadn't just come into contact with RMT gil, you were actually suspected of either being a seller or a buyer. You stunk of RMT activity. Once they realized that you weren't actively participating in the RMT chain, they couldn't just leave the gil you made there. Because you were suspended you had to have been more "infected" with their gil than other people, or else you wouldn't' have been suspected at all. Rather than permanently ban your account, they modified the account and cleaned up the gil from it. Leaving your retainers alone and just hacking off the gil on your person.

I don't believe for a second that they used a robot in investigating the accounts. You can bump this thread and be upset, fine, but it could have been a lot worse. They could have just said, "Take all the gear and roll back the character." OR just banhammered you.

[Masked]

*Snip*

Where to start? Hrmmmm.

Every major MMO in history has a better track record with RMT...Even EVE.

The issue isn't RMT, it's with the people that took advantage of the market and were then caught in the middle.

Inflation is a real thing, game economies are a real thing and people ask for absurd prices all the time. - Something is only worth what the next idiot is willing to pay -

So if you purchased a 5gil item for 50k - How is that the seller's fault? ~ You're the idiot that bought it - That doesn't make them guilty.

It's logical that MANY of these people were just selling items priced that high because everyone else was selling them.

The RESPONSE from SE is the issue because there really isn't one and many of these individuals have been suspended for 3 weeks thus far without an answer.

I know of FTP games on Facebook with better CS than that. - There in, once again, is the actual issue with this entire situation.

[KevinC]

snip

Yeah sure, clean the gils I got from the main story quests/leves. I felt so dirty with them.

The only problem with your "well thought" logic is that people that spent that "dirty money" didn't get banned or had their items removed. Sellers didn't get their items back either, which would only have been fair.

[Masked]

I don't believe for a second that they used a robot in investigating the accounts. You can bump this thread and be upset, fine, but it could have been a lot worse. They could have just said, "Take all the gear and roll back the character." OR just banhammered you.

They already admitted they used a bot-algorithm to track the gil so, this is incorrect.

Read my thread above this, it's VERY possible that legitimate people got caught in the middle regardless of your beliefs.

[lokust4]

snip.

Correct young sir, a shiny cookie to you for realising what ive been saying all along and lying while you were doing it.

[Nica]

He omitted how long it stayed on, but he did say it sold overnight after a price increase. The point was he raised the price and put it out of the range of normal buyers and squarely into the hands of gil buyers.

No, the point is that you automatically assumed the worst, which clearly shows your bias. Your continued ignorance on what determines the going price of any item on a market is mind boggling.

There is no “normal buyer” price and no “gil buyer” price, there is only one price – the going rate on the market, which are influenced by a wide array of factors, the presence of gil sellers being only one of them.

Because you can build a consumer base a lot easier when you aren't gouging people. You can sell 1 for 1.25 million or 5 for 800k. Which scenario gives you more gil in the end.

The fact that you’d even pose this question shows you still have no clue how anything works. The answer can be either, depending on the cost of the components. 1 for 1.25mil is more profitable than 5x 800k when the 9 base mats are 100k each, as the latter would be 5x 100k gil loss. Stop confusing revenue with profit.

Second, there is NO building of consumer base in this economy for high end crafted gear. NOTHING is ever consumed(no one is going to turn ilvl70 gear into material), what you have is actually the reverse – there is a limited number of consumers to sell those items to for every producer on the server, the pressure is to sell as many of those as you can as soon as you can before the market is saturated.

Apples and oranges, Kevin. Your DS ores are going for 180 gil on my server, your gold sand, 15 gil. That's a depreciation of 98.4% and 99.8% respectively. You were at the front of the speculation bubble,

Learn to use the correct terminology. There is no “speculation” of any sort here, as speculation is when prices are driven higher, not lower, due to forecasted demand/trend. The only “bubble” here is that of demand, there was high demand at first for most of the unspoiled node materials due to their use in new gears – more specifically the crafter/militia/relic equipment, which with the exception of militia gears is a finite market - you can only sell so many blacksmith’s aprons before every BSM on the server have one.

As the numbers of potential buyers continue to decrease, the numbers of producer of those materials/products continue to increase, massively shifting the supply/demand curve in the other direction, hence the massive drop in the price of those materials and most produced goods. SE may have created a good crafting system, but they massively f’d up with how the economic system is integrated into the rest of the game. Even 1.0’s system was far superior to ARR’s, at least there is actual consumption in that economy due to the demand for and viability of materias.