Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[BobbinT]

I didn't play XI, so don't have first-hand experience there, but taking your word for how it was in that game, it seems that, yes, Yoshi and the rest of SE's team are just acting as they always have, and that's the problem, because the way they've always "handled" it (i.e. by not handling it) is wrong.

Well... I did play XI for quite fair amount of time, and I would probably continue again given the chances since it's quite tough playing 2 MMO @ once. Anyways, I felt RMT situation over there are quite limited, and that's because power of messaging tools over there are quite limited than XIV. For example, you can't spam /shout or /yell continuously since the game added restriction of around 10-20 seconds before you can do that again. Even with that, RMT didn't dare to do that because from what I heard, they were dealt quick enough.

I do get /tell from them, only around like 1 per day, and not quite often. Usually there's no more of that for long time, assuming SE taken care of that real quick too.

I admit that I don't feel the similar treatment I had over XI on this game though.

[LandricFrey]

Come on SE!

[Velhart]

snip

FFXI is a lot more tame than it was years ago. Back then gil sellers were botting and stealing HNM's and NM's from Sky and other areas, while at the same time, destroying the economy by drastically raising the value of items and taking inflation to a point that 90% of players could not afford anything. Thankfully, SE -eventually- did something about it.

I hate the FFXIV gil seller spam as much as the next person, but I always tell myself it could be worse and think of FFXI's situation back then.

[Niwashi]

FFXI is a lot more tame than it was years ago. Back then gil sellers were botting and stealing HNM's and NM's from Sky and other areas, while at the same time, destroying the economy by drastically raising the value of items and taking inflation to a point that 90% of players could not afford anything. Thankfully, SE -eventually- did something about it.

I wonder if this is why what little effort SE is putting towards combating RMT is so single-mindedly focused on the economic effects of it. They're ignoring the far more direct and pervasive harassment almost entirely.

Somehow we need to convince them that the first priority has to be stopping the spam. That's the easy part that they should have already taken care of and haven't. Just getting that part of the problem taken care of would remove the harassment that's driving players away from the game. It would also have a secondary benefit in reducing the economic impact of the RMT itself, because without in-game ads there would be fewer RMT buyers, but the harassment relief would be immediate.

[Velhart]

I wonder if this is why what little effort SE is putting towards combating RMT is so single-mindedly focused on the economic effects of it. They're ignoring the far more direct and pervasive harassment almost entirely.

I don't remember SE taking any drastic action towards RMT in FFXI besides making desirable items no long available to sell. A lot of items becoming Rare/Ex. RMT was still around, but it died down due to the game's dying popularity and not much to benefit money wise from it anymore. A lot of times when a game is not profitable, you will rarely see RMT or they work purely in the background. So I have never seen SE take any actual dramatic steps on fixing the RMT situation.

These three people who are the Special Task Force may be really good at their job, but I can't imagine only three people being able to control the worst RMT I have seen since WoW, and WoW's team against RMT spam is pretty big. Won't pretend to understand what is going on in the background, but they should really start taking more I would say -preventative- measures as opposed to cleaning house whenever too much get in there.