Gold Sellers

[Dyandi]

Not that it will make a difference, but I'll toss my 2c in and kick this back up to the top.

I played the 2 week trial and liked it enough to buy the game; I played the one month free and liked it enough to subscribe. I think that's probably a good general description of new-player behavior. Here's another one: I got so disgusted with the /tell spam that I shut off /tells completely. Less than a day later, /shout spam started up; I've shut that off of my crafters/gatherers, as they don't need it, really. But--and here's the thing--if I weren't goofy about crafting in all the games I play, I would no longer be here and I would have canceled my subscription due not only to annoyance, but to the fact that this thread exists...because it clearly shows that, for whatever reason, SE either doesn't care or is completely incompetent in solving this issue.

So, final note--once I get my crafters where I want them and start adventuring again, I'm giving SE one month--or less--to fix this before I cancel my sub and move on, because I can tell you right now that this game isn't good enough to make me put up with the annoyance of spam or the isolation of disabling all communication due to spammers.

Take heed--or not.

[KisaiTenshi]

The problem with that is due to the limited inventory space players do actually put up items they intend to keep but at an inflated cost. That's why you see those listings for 999999999 gil I wouldn't want them banned for RMT.

That's a different scenario. By putting stuff at "nobody-would-buy" prices, you're actually trying to use the market as a bank. It shouldn't be encouraged, so SE should probably increase inventory space, or charge a non-refundable listing fee.

Let me tell you though....
In Mabinogi... I put stuff everywhere, the mailbox, the house's shop, I maxed out the number of spare characters and setup a second account just so I could mail stuff to it. But all this stuff had fees based on the NPC sell price. I basically quit the game because the tiny inventory was ticking me off in ways I can't describe and I wasn't paying for the cash shop just to rent a tiny amount of extra space. When I switched to Wizardry Online, I pulled the exact same thing and setup a second account and mailed stuff back and forth to circumvent inventory limits. Unfortunately this is very reflective of how I organize stuff in reality, and even how I organize stuff on my hard drive. When people started recycling in the 80's... a lot of stuff got kept because the impression given is that throwing away anything reusable/recyclable made you a bad person.

I've so far survived this game by ramping up the crafting skills and then selling/npc'ing any gear I can just make again. MMORPG's trigger peoples hoarding tendencies for some gawdawful reason. Since dyes are easily accessible, there's no reason to keep rare colors of anything.

Anyway, you'd just have such items that remain on the market without a purchase after a week delisted and returned to the Retainer's Inventory. If the Retainer's inventory is full the player would be prompted to make space in the retainer's inventory before selling any more items. Simple enough.

[QT_Melon]

Inventory is another issue indeed, and even now when we get 3 new classes, SE has stated they will not increase armory/inventory space. It is rather ridiculous given that we were allowed to have multiple classes, and this means I have to juggle sets of gear for DOH, DOW, DOL and DOM.

But yes that is besides the issue.

I don't think trying to monitor prices will help, while I still maintain that changing your flags if say like a status like /busy Sets a bunch of flags in programming to "no" why not have a copied and modified flag for "invisible" which just puts you out of being searchable.

I'm also curious about the scripting of the game since in less than a minute of logging in I was already spammed. Are the bots able to execute searches and send tells so quickly? Are they using the outside player database ie Lodestone to get player information?

I think knowing how it works would help users come up with solutions that devs can work on, otherwise it's something of an exercise of throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks.

[MrKyo]

Inventory is another issue indeed, and even now when we get 3 new classes, SE has stated they will not increase armory/inventory space. It is rather ridiculous given that we were allowed to have multiple classes, and this means I have to juggle sets of gear for DOH, DOW, DOL and DOM.

But yes that is besides the issue.

I don't think trying to monitor prices will help, while I still maintain that changing your flags if say like a status like /busy Sets a bunch of flags in programming to "no" why not have a copied and modified flag for "invisible" which just puts you out of being searchable.

I'm also curious about the scripting of the game since in less than a minute of logging in I was already spammed. Are the bots able to execute searches and send tells so quickly? Are they using the outside player database ie Lodestone to get player information?

I think knowing how it works would help users come up with solutions that devs can work on, otherwise it's something of an exercise of throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks.

I'm sure the autotell program they are using parses information from the search feature based on level, race, zone, class, FC status and etc to be able to send out their spam to as many people as possible.

[Zanarken]

So here we are on page 38 now...has there been any communication from Square Enix as to whether this is being addressed or not? What is being done about this? I am a new player to FFXIV & when I logged in for the first time, the gil spam nearly made me quit the game almost immediately.

Why?

Its a sign of poor moderation.

And?

It means as a player, you are going to be constantly harassed. It means that your immersion will be broken constantly. It means that you are surrounded by players purchasing in-game currency with real money as a means of getting a leg up on you. It means that cheating is not only tolerated, but rewarded.

Do you honestly believe this is the type of experience new players are looking for Square Enix?

[Kassandros]

I found this on the Final Fantasy wiki. If it has been posted on the wiki you know Square Enix doesn't care enough to do anything to resolve the issue.

Square Enix's Reaction: Square Enix bans RMT in both Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV. Nevertheless, RMT has had a significant ongoing presence in, and impact on, both games. This presence is likely due in part to the fact that Square Enix only bans the sellers, but never punishes the buyers in any way. They even get to keep their illicit purchases.

The Players' Reaction: Most of the players are indifferent to or outright hostile to RMT, but do not believe Square Enix is willing to do much about it. There is also a certain belief, not uncommon, among players that poorly thought out anti-RMT actions do more damage to players than RMT itself.


Of all the bullet points on the Final Fantasy wiki I found the last two to be most interesting.

* RMT advertise their services in-game relentlessly, producing an irritating barrage of noise that can't be blocked out.
* By exploiting easy ways to make money, RMT ensure that Square Enix will patch them out of existence, angering legitimate players by destroying their income.

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/RMT

[Tristamwolf]

Am I the only person here who's sick of this to the point that they feel we need to start up a petition to Square Enix stating that we will leave the game if they do not fix the issue? I am trying to draft one up right now that would probably drive the point home pretty well.

[Felghanna]

These spamming bots seems to be a problem, at least the most "shallow" from those that was mentioned.

You see... Blocking them is not like could solve the problem itself, the bots will continue to exist and also the main cause of them, the RMT site.

Another concern is we can only report them in-game, to get an idea this forum has no support for reporting players (also bots). And the GMs seem not know how to react from problems that doesn't consists in technical issues. We are seeing this on first hand here, this is one of most viewed and replied topics in this forum and yet we have no answer from any community representative.

So if the Square-Enix itself will not do anything to change this, maybe we can find a way to shut down all these sites...

[MrKyo]

These spamming bots seems to be a problem, at least the most "shallow" from those that was mentioned.

You see... Blocking them is not like could solve the problem itself, the bots will continue to exist and also the main cause of them, the RMT site.

Another concern is we can only report them in-game, to get an idea this forum has no support for reporting players (also bots). And the GMs seem not know how to react from problems that doesn't consists in technical issues. We are seeing this on first hand here, this is one of most viewed and replied topics in this forum and yet we have no answer from any community representative.

So if the Square-Enix itself will not do anything to change this, maybe we can find a way to shut down all these sites...

Good luck with that, this isn't a corner shop promoting racism. We can't just picket out front of their office.

There are hundreds of websites. Hundreds.

If one goes down, another one comes up.

What squenix needs is proper moderation.

There is a reason that World of Warcraft has little to no gold spamming, a part from 1 or 2 bots in major city trade chat that gets banned almost immediately.

RMT Sites will always exist, you have to depend on the company to mitigate the problems caused by them.

Just like how there are tons of aimbot/wallhackers in FPS games, you have to depend on the developers to, well.. Develop a solution to the problem.

[Felghanna]

Good luck with that, this isn't a corner shop promoting racism. We can't just picket out front of their office.

There are hundreds of websites. Hundreds.

If one goes down, another one comes up.

What squenix needs is proper moderation.

There is a reason that World of Warcraft has little to no gold spamming, a part from 1 or 2 bots in major city trade chat that gets banned almost immediately.

RMT Sites will always exist, you have to depend on the company to mitigate the problems caused by them.

Just like how there are tons of aimbot/wallhackers in FPS games, you have to depend on the developers to, well.. Develop a solution to the problem.

It was said that the same situation happened in Final Fantasy XI, and it seems that the developers doesn't have a effective solution... I mean... How long this game existis with this problem?

I may mention one thing that happened years ago... When the "Chrono Trigger Ressurection" was announced, it didn't take long until the project was publicly closed after Square Enix issued a cease-and-desist letter to Resurrection Games for trademark and copyright infringement.

So... We can't wait anymore for something that may never happen.