Why Was the Official Statement Ignored?

[LloydShade]

The current "crisis" about how SquareEnix dealt with the major surplus of gils in their economy, brought by cheating means, is getting annoying.

DISCLAIMER: I will try to keep speculations to a minimum (or at least make it obvious that it's speculation). This post was made after cumulative annoyance and the will to show that the current situation is just an overreaction mess. Please feel free to argue and bring counter-arguments.

Just as a reminder: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/news/detail/f3bb7c4e6c562af552189b2dda8d1f1df953c121

Let me put in quotes an important section of the official statement:

- Date: Sep. 28, 2013
- Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activities: 568 accounts
- Action Details: Termination/Temporary suspension from FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn
* Accounts of egregious violators will be terminated.

- Total Frozen Gil: Approximately 367,700 million Gil
* Gil of temporarily suspended accounts will be confiscated.

Included in the above are players who used/obtained gil, items, or actions through fraudulent means.

In bold are the most noteworthy elements. 568 accounts were temporary suspended. Some of them were permanently banned, others were returned to the game. In ALL cases, gils have been removed.

WARNING: ANALYSIS, WARNING: ANALYSIS, WARNING: ANALYSIS

SquareEnix already stated what they have done and why. In other words, about 600 accounts were involved in RMT activities. There is almost no distinctions possible between those that bought the RMT gils and those that received such gils (crafter/gatherers for instance). In both cases players have received illegal gils. In both cases, these players were free to spend it or keep it. In both cases, if the players were caught, their gils were removed (at the very least). The difference is if SquareEnix was able to bring evidences of the player actually buying gils from RMT (or being an RMT seller), these players were permanently banned.

To get even more basic: account temporary banned = gil deletion.

Why? Because it was the most efficient way to deal with the situation and not receive a temporary ban of more than 30 days for a proper investigation. It was stated early so it's not a surprise.

Why were the players left with some gil? Because SquareEnix wanted to show some kindness and it's almost as easy to bring gils down to a fraction of its total or to a straight 0.

To go beyond SquareEnix's methods, at most 568 accounts were temporary banned for further investigation. In these 568 accounts, a good deal of account were permanently banned for being directly involved in RMT activities. The rest benefited from RMT activities, but were not directly involved.

If SquareEnix actually wrote that statement, which was part of a community reassuring statement, that means that most of these 568 accounts were deleted (otherwise, they wouldn't have stated it or would have choose another wording format), so at a logical most 283 players (less than half) were temporary banned and their gils were removed, which is about 0% of the reported player base. If we spread these players on a per server ration (there are 61 servers), that's less than at most 5 players per server.

WARNNIG: RANT, WARNING: RANT, WARNING: RANT, WARNING: RANT

Therefore, 0% or at most a handful players per server are unhappy and the forums are at war against SquareEnix and for losing a virtual currency which has absolutely no real value and was brought to these very few players because of cheats and exploits... Seriously? I mean: is that for real?

All of the few affected players were left with all the tools they need to rebuild their fortune (they kept their characters, their levels and their items). Gil is almost useless at end level to get the best equipment (which is currently the endgame goal). As such, these players were stacking gils in prevision of the future with absolutely no idea of what could be coming or when.

In the end, what was lost is simply the idea of the possession of a fortune, because said fortune was worthless without any way to spend it. Considering we can at best hope major update 2.1 of the game will bring something to spend gils on and we don't know when it will get released, players still have quite a bit of time to restock their fortune to a crazy amount, which is still possible players still need/want to buy stuff from the markets. The only downside is that the market is now more fair to buyers with more competition for sellers, so there is no more an easy way to become rich super fast again.

The amount of people affected by losing their gils because of the recent purge is so small compared to the reported player base and the penalty inflicted is so "minor" that I can't even feel sympathy for the few of these "unlucky" players, let alone players that benefited from MMO-just-released exploits.


In conclusion, I strongly believe people are overreacting. They demand details from SquareEnix, but everything that a player need to know is in the official statement, which was fast enough to be delivered. The rest is personal and you don't divulge personal information online. End of story.


Note: I don't want to defend SquareEnix more than anyone else and I'm not a Final Fantasy fan (I'm not even considered a SquareEnix fan). Yet, I've seen what happens when a MMO starts listening to stupidity and it's not pretty. Right now, I feel this is by all mean stupidity at its best.

[10TailBeast]

Players had their Gil divided by 100. 10 million became 100,000 and so forth.

[Quesse]

Simple question then.

If a crafter (assuming they did not buy gil) had 10 million gil it seems the amount taken was 10mil divided by 100. So they were left with 100k gil.

But they made at least 300k of that from questing/leves/fates/etc.

So where did the other 200k go? These people didn't knowingly do anything wrong - why take their quest/leve gil too?

[Bibimbap]

Because despite this action, there are still people appealing on a personal level. These people say they are completely innocent, and they are waiting to see if anything else is done about it. This is the new response that we want to hear. Is S.E. going to do anything more than what you've posted, or is that the end of it?

[BlazeChronic]

*clap clap clap* for OP.

It's a case of SOL. You had dirty money. They took it. Game over, man. It's as black and white as that.

EDIT: In all honesty, if you were the server first of any DoL or DoH, a good chunk of your millions DID actually come from RMT funds, there is NO doubt about that. The market was hugely inflated with illegitimate money, and now it is less volatile. Will you make your 10 million again? Probably not, because you won't have a stranglehold on any specific market. But the way I see it, you were just a funnel to ill-gotten Gil in the first place. But being the smart traders you are, you will be rich again, its just the wealth will be more fairly distributed.

Instead of 1% of characters owning 90% of the money on any given server, 10% will own 80% of the money.

It was a risk you all took by deciding to plow a DoH/DoL class to cap in the first few days. I mean, come on, you can't sit there with a straight face and tell me you didn't know the Gil you were making was coming from people who bought Gil in the first place.

In the first three weeks, every second thread on these forums was "There's no way to make gil in this game!" and "Repairs cost too much, too many sinks, not enough fountains!" ....

And you were sitting there, with 10 million Gil, thinking it was all legit? SE didn't just decide to take all of your gil for poops and giggles. I'm pretty sure they mulled the decision over and decided it was the right course of action to take, you know, considering THEY ARE THE ONES WITH ALL OF THE DATA. ...........

[snugBubz]

OP says that the players who were suspended and had the majority of their gil taken away are overreacting because they were left with their tools. Just make your fortune again guys! Stop overreacting. Gil doesn't even matter at end game!

Except that it does; repairs, much? Though, definitely repair bills have gone down, previously repairs took a ridiculous amount of gil, to which the player received no refund (to which I'm not saying they should.)

But, the main argument: what about the players' time? Does time mean nothing? Crafting, gathering, playing the game all equal time, non-refundable. Sure, I guess if you're immortal, who cares? Just amass your fortune again! But for players who have a definite life span, time is a very important thing. And taking away players' gil, ie. time, with no recompense except that some of their gil was RMT is wrong. SE's response is basically this, "We don't care about our customers' time." And these players should be upset.

[JonnyBigBoss]

It's clear that those whining about being banned did in-fact purchase gil but don't want to admit to it.

[10TailBeast]

99% is not a fact. It has been reported by a few angry players on the forum and as such is not a trustworthy source.

Also, it was apparently 99% of the gils of the players (player which has been considered as related to RMT activities) and is not linked in any way to the market. This is just an arbitrary value. It could have been 0. Calculating exactly how much "fake" gils each account would have required a lot of manpower and time, which would have pushed the investigation time to weeks.

It wasn't just this forum for one, and every person that got their account back reported having their Gil divided by 100. That's pretty consistent. Also, heaven forbid SE actually put some effort into a real investigation when it's so much easier to just push a button and let some program do it, even though that would screw some players over. Who cares about them, though, right? I mean, they're just a minority, it's not like it will ever happen to you, right?

-SE is also a company that appears to not care how long it takes to do anything about something because bots reported teleport hacking 2 weeks to a month ago are still at it.

[Ralemont]

*clap clap clap* for OP.

It's a case of SOL. You had dirty money. They took it. Game over, man. It's as black and white as that.

Except they didn't take the dirty money. If they had, the % taken from each player would not have been the same. Furthermore, gil loss would not have been limited to "players above total gil X."

Here is the process which leads to the result we have: SE has a general idea how much illegitimate gil has been generated, but they have no idea who is currently in possession of it. So they suspect that the richest players have a good chunk of it without doing any real investigation and divide all their gil amounts by a % that will net them around the same number of gil lost as they believed was generated by RMT.

[LloydShade]

OP says that the players who were suspended and had the majority of their gil taken away are overreacting because they were left with their tools. Just make your fortune again guys! Stop overreacting. Gil doesn't even matter at end game!

[...]SE's response is basically this, "We don't care about our customers' time." And these players should be upset.

Please do not confusion frustration and overreaction. Suspended players have all rights to be angered. Yet, the angered players are part of a very slim minority and the overwhelming majority of the players has been left intact even though SquareEnix missed people directly involved in RMT activities because of it. Hence the overreaction. That means SquareEnix managed to care enough in their customers to make sure most of them would be fine. Whatever they would have done, collateral damage was inevitable. Does SquareEnix deserve so much negativity because of a really restricted amount of individuals?

EDIT:

It wasn't just this forum for one, and every person that got their account back reported having their Gil divided by 100. That's pretty consistent. Also, heaven forbid SE actually put some effort into a real investigation when it's so much easier to just push a button and let some program do it, even though that would screw some players over. Who cares about them, though, right? I mean, they're just a minority, it's not like it will ever happen to you, right?

-SE is also a company that appears to not care how long it takes to do anything about something because bots reported teleport hacking 2 weeks to a month ago are still at it.

Regardless of how many angry players claim to have lost 99% of their gils, it still comes from an unreliable source and thus, can't be taken for granted. Otherwise, your argument becomes inconsistent. You are changing the subject and making personal attack against me.