Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[dejavutwo]

I finally caved in and disabled tells completely. In all the pay-to-play games I have played, this is by far the absolute worst I have ever experienced. Never have I seen such harassment from RMT. I don't expect the game to be 100% RMT free, but I do expect not to be constantly spammed.

SE may be banning thousands of accounts, but just banning those accounts is obviously ineffective. My favorite solution is Sony's implementation of a Naive Bayes spam filter as described http://nandor.szots.com/Bayesian_Spa...ng_in_MMOs.pdf It's a fairly basic machine learning algorithm that they tweaked with a few modifications to take advantage of the extra information the service provider stores about the users.

[LandricFrey]

I finally caved in and disabled tells completely. In all the pay-to-play games I have played, this is by far the absolute worst I have ever experienced. Never have I seen such harassment from RMT. I don't expect the game to be 100% RMT free, but I do expect not to be constantly spammed.

After months of no improvement I finally went /busy. Totally unacceptable SE. When are you guys going to up your game?

[Noshpan]

Keep in mind that the FF XIV staff is no where near as big as what Blizzard has for World of Warcraft. Also combating rmt is much like combating system viruses: it's more reactionary and it's impossible to plan for every possible form of prevention.

While I do commend the anti-rmt staff appointed to FF XIV for taking the effort of returning accounts used for rmt sales to their real owners, I'm beginning to feel that maybe they shouldn't do that, as the account owner (or primary user) is most likely the one responsible for compromising their account in the first place.

At this moment, though, I would settle for an easier way to mute and report spammers a la World of Warcraft. (For those who don't know, it's right click name> Report> Mutes spammer for the duration you're logged onto that character. But I am aware that coding in such a feature takes time.)

[Miah_Dakwhil]

Don't know if this one has been seen on other servers, but here on Famfrit, the SOBs are now standing around the city crystals (and other populated places in main cities) and shouting their crap in /say ........ I guess /shout and friend invites just wasn't enough for them.

[Zabuza]

Don't know if this one has been seen on other servers, but here on Famfrit, the SOBs are now standing around the city crystals (and other populated places in main cities) and shouting their crap in /say ........ I guess /shout and friend invites just wasn't enough for them.

Lol, not surprising. I'm just waiting for a group of them to somehow make their way to Mor Dhona and stand around that crystal doing the same thing.

[Zabuza]

With all of the talk of the RMTs lately, and the front page being littered with threads about RMT at this very moment, you'd think that would clue SE in as to just how majorly annoying this problem is for the playerbase - and if it irks existing players this much, think of what it will do to new players who have no reason to be attached to this game.

[Sicno]

It's because like with everything else, it's always down to this: if you're not Japanese SE doesn't care about you nor your opinion. If the RMT problem happened at the JP servers you can be sure they would be doing more about it. but since it doesn't then it's not a problem at all for them.

[Riepah]

It's because like with everything else, it's always down to this: if you're not Japanese SE doesn't care about you nor your opinion. If the RMT problem happened at the JP servers you can be sure they would be doing more about it. but since it doesn't then it's not a problem at all for them.

It does more and more seem that way, doesn't it? I can't believe we still haven't gotten a proper response from SE in any of these threads, or anywhere else. No apologies for the situation, no "We'll fix this soon, please look forward to it".

[LandricFrey]

It's because like with everything else, it's always down to this: if you're not Japanese SE doesn't care about you nor your opinion. If the RMT problem happened at the JP servers you can be sure they would be doing more about it. but since it doesn't then it's not a problem at all for them.

I think that's an unfair assumption; they have listened and responded to many of our requests. Underestimating the problem, more likely. It's not easy getting new people to join the game when you have to tell them that the most basic chat function in MMOs isn't usable. I mean that really says a lot about the developers mindset.

Last time players were screaming at SE to listen, it nearly destroyed this game. (1.0 train wreck) SE have admitted another mistake like that would mean the end to their company.

Are the stakes not high enough?

[Riepah]

Underestimating the problem, more likely.

What excuse can there possibly be to still underestimate it after all the threads and screenshots? All they'd have to do to confirm that the issue is huge is make a character on any of the more heavily affected servers.

I think the person you quoted had it right when they said that "SE doesn't care" about us, or they'd at the very least go take a look if it's really that bad - and then they'd notice that yes, indeed it is.