STOP the Gil Selling Tells PLEASE!

[LineageRazor]

I don't think anyone is claiming that RMT isn't a problem. It's a huge problem and SE seem to be ignoring it (to the displeasure of many customers).

Well, to be honest, if anyone thinks SE is IGNORING the problem, they haven't been paying attention at all. SE regularly churns out reports of RMT accounts banned and so on and so forth. Just look on the main Lodestone page under "Notices". See all the entries entitled "Actions Taken Against In-Game RMT". There's more than a dozen in the past couple months alone!

More legitimately, some folks are displeased with the presumed (note PRESUMED - none of us know exactly what SE does, and we are not told on purpose; if we know, RMT knows, and can use that info to refine their methods) methods SE is taking to curb RMT, not that they are ignoring the problem (which they clearly aren't, unless you're paranoid enough to suggest that these notices are pure fiction intended to placate the gullible masses). And, to be fair, since the /tell spam is bad and getting worse these folks have a right to be displeased. Many have even submitted suggestions to "fix" the problem, some of which sound sensible to me, some of which sound outright stupid. But even in the case of the sensible-sounding ones, I know I'm no expert; I don't know how they'd affect the game long-term, or how they'd affect the profitability of the game.

Striking a balance between pleasing the players and making a profit is an important thing for a business, after all, and it's just as foolish to assume that a company should be obligated to cater to any customer's whim (customers in general don't fully understand what it takes to run a big business), as it is to assume that a company will coldly take any action that looks even vaguely profitable no matter who it hurts (happy customers are a SIGNIFICANT source of profit).

Do understand, though, that simply because SE doesn't march into the forums to respond at length to every proposed "This will fix RMT for realz!" thread doesn't mean that they're in bed with RMT and allowing them to run rampant on purpose.

wonder how much rmt would slow if they require you to get to level 5 to trade, make friends and other basic features.

I don't think that would slow them down at all. I think it takes about fifteen minutes to reach level 5 once you get past the inital unskippable cutscenes? I'm sure RMT could create bots that fully automate that and, in fact, probably already do