Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[SweetP]

/sign
Thank you for this!

[Thandronen]

The biggest problem I have with this is it is a such an easy thing to fix yet they have done NOTHING about it. The time is now, please add my name to the list.

Thanks!

[Niwashi]

Most endgame non-botting gatherers (read 80% of gatherers) would need shards to be priced at least at 400 gil or better per shard, to make them more profitable than mining or harvesting any other item.

I think you may be ignoring what makes shards so profitable. It's not the amount you make per shard. It's the fact that you can sell lots of them without flooding the market so nobody buys any more. When I was trying to earn enough gil for a house, I started gathering and making a number of items I thought would sell well and which were going for pretty good prices, but I quickly found the market wouldn't support any of them for long. I ended up switching to just gathering and selling shards and crystals. They didn't initially sell for as much individually, but unlike anything else I tried, they would keep selling consistently (and often pretty quickly), which made them the best money maker overall. (Plus the fact that they can be put up in lots of 200 or 500, or even more, rather than being limited to 99 per lot, made it possible to sell more of them than I could anything else.) These, of course, are the same reasons a lot of RMT bots gather shards, but they apply just the same to legitimate players.

Now, shard prices would fluctuate a lot if RMT suddenly disappeared, and would likely end up higher than now by the time it found a new equilibrium. But I doubt it would be all that much higher. As the prices start to go up a bit, a lot of players would find it worthwhile to gather and sell them (as it already is for many of us), plus a lot more crafters finding it worthwhile to gather their own rather than buying them. After all, shards don't cost anything at all unless you want them to. They're a level 1 item, so you don't even have to have leveled a gathering class beyond just unlocking it. Having a completely free alternative is going to put a cap on how high prices would rise.

[Zabuza]

If you accept it, they will usually spam your mog mail with gil selling messages. They are preying on people just randomly accepting friend requests from anyone.

Yet another way to harass new players who don't know any better... Can't say I'm surprised though. I've seen a few posts around lately from new players saying the only reason they haven't quit is because a friend got them to play. What of those who don't have friends who play? Think of all the people who have quit because of this already. I've seen people say that new people quitting over this is bs, but this problem is in fact very real. Truly saddening indeed.

[tocsin]

Even worse, as an update to this, Yoshi-P was asked about RMT spam in a recent interview (you can read the internet article here http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen..._yoshida_this/

and this is what he said (copypasta):

regarding RMT spam

We actually have a special task force dedicated to control and get rid of much spam, and control it within the game and not only the incidents that are reported by our players. Internally we have a special group always checking, allways researching, allways going after RMT spam and trying to find them and strike them and make sure to removed this incidents as much as possible. We also are going through with like an undercover investigation where we try to find out larger groups of people who are doing the RMT spam and try to control it from there as well. Also from a daily basis we are banning a few thousands accounts and tens of thousands of accounts per month so on the players inpoint it may not seem that the incidents have reduced but we are doing that best to control it, there is a lot of RMT spam thats happening so we have to be continously vigilant in order to stop them and avoid those incidents.

it sounds suscpiciously like Yoshida, and SE, are taking a "we are doing as best we can, stop pestering for more." attitude.

Figured I would share, since this is the closest to an SE response as we have gotten.

[Adire]

lol That would have been perfect for the task force thread

I wish I had seen that thread

[Etsinderion]

Definitely agree with this one. If my friends weren't here, I would have left a LONG time ago. SE, I hope you take us seriously. If not... well. You can imagine.

[Starcade]

That's even worse. lol SE should be DELETING those characters too, so they never come back.

And here's where the problem is. Not the characters... The ACCOUNTS.

This is why you get the tells, because these RMT pieces of crap basically are on paid accounts. Whether their own or hacked, they are paid accounts.

[Starcade]

No, Yosheep.

You have THREE PEOPLE. (You can check the 2.55 credits -- the number of people on the Special Task Force is precisely THREE.)

Who are getting absolutely OVERWHELMED by the amount of RMT flooding into the game.

Why? Because the fact is the people are getting a huge market here. I think I've counted at least EIGHT websites these jackasses are promoting.

Get Legal/Copyright on them and treat it like counterfeit Final Fantasy merchandise. Jail the freaking lot of them.

[tocsin]

(issue resolved, deleted)

Back on topic, however, I think we need to actually send this petition to yoshida himself. I don't think he is actually seeing the effect this issue is having on people.