Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Morbid]

Sorry Tiggy but SE is doing nothing of impact in this situation. Also it's common sense that GMs are not the actual developers and coders for the game. They are separate teams. The amount of people on the teams is something to consider... HOWEVER... You don't need to know the code to simply ban an RMT account or take action against large hordes of bots in an area.

I don't think folks deny that Square is hard at work making sure the expansion is ready to make more money off of people (us the monthly subscribers).

All we ask is the considerable amount of attention this issue needs is also implemented and not showing up every other week with a continually dwindling list of RMT bans.

[Ren_Taka]

The problem is getting worse and worse. I was doing crafting for my FC mates and I had to keep busy on to prevent from screwing up due to all the pop-ups from friend requests from level 1s in ul'dah. All of my FC were on busy due to spam bots. In the time it took for me to do a trade and my friend to give me 4 mats, she had 4 spam tells and a friend request. /r is useless right now because it will most likely be a spam bot you got a tell from last. It's utterly ridiculous.

[Starcade]

I'm going to say it openly: I think Square-Enix is getting money from these illegal outfits.

Since the STF is overwhelmed, it's a clear merchandise-counterfeiting situation otherwise, and the only real alternatives are either that Copyright/Legal has to get in on it as a merchandise-counterfeiting operation or that Square-Enix somehow sanctions and allows for it.

[Morbid]

I'm going to say it openly: I think Square-Enix is getting money from these illegal outfits.

Since the STF is overwhelmed, it's a clear merchandise-counterfeiting situation otherwise, and the only real alternatives are either that Copyright/Legal has to get in on it as a merchandise-counterfeiting operation or that Square-Enix somehow sanctions and allows for it.

No need for all that SE theoretically would be happy with the $15 a month and the bump to subscription numbers...

[tocsin]

No need for all that SE theoretically would be happy with the $15 a month and the bump to subscription numbers...

Theoretically, maybe. However, SE is a business, and only obtaining $15 a month from all the subscribers only nets the company a little over ten million a year, which isn't a sustainable amount of money, for a company with as much going on as SE does.

They make more money, because they can get away with making more money. and the bigger the cash cow that FFXIV is to them, the more support it will get.

The question it all comes down to is: is the money they would make from the added subscribers that stay due to lack of RMT, worth more profit than the money that RMT brings them (illegal money).

Personally, I think SE has a different answer to this question than we do.

[Starcade]

No need for all that SE theoretically would be happy with the $15 a month and the bump to subscription numbers...

Not with the number of RMT outfits that are running around and the apparent levels of business they seem to be doing, if all the RMT spam is any freaking indication.

It makes me wonder if we're back to the point where XI had 2 million players -- half of whom (at least!) were RMT-farmers.

[Morbid]

You can't spell corporation without the letters G-R-E-E-D..

[Waeksyn]

This thread has been on the front page for weeks now - and still no SE response.

I guess we know that they just don't care. It would be so easy to add a feature that allows you to set (in character configuration) an option so that you do not get tells or friend requests from anyone below a level of your choosing. With a bit more effort, they could also add a white list to the feature so that people on your friend list, in your FC, etc., are not affected.

[Welsper59]

Best stop feeding her (him?). This thread is still our last, best hope for victory, so we'd better not let it go toxic and get locked by a well-meaning forum mod.

Right-click reporting. Not a perfect solution, to be sure, but it's better than what we have at the moment, which is nothing. We can use the existing systems as workarounds for sanity preservation, but an actual UI component would help us help them do their jobs better, since they seem to be so very overextended. How is that not win-win?

Right-click report function would be nice, but it doesn't alleviate player irritability. It's a helpful feature for them to find RMT easier assuming the function is for use exclusively for illicit advertising, no doubt, but it doesn't change much on our end. No amount of reporting will change the speed that they ban (which is currently as realistic as it'll get), so RMT will continually annoy us. They need to change a number of things to make QoL possible. This being adding filters for Friend Requests and /tell functions.

Ideally, a right-click feature will function similar to how Blizzard did it, where it will filter/remove all current chat log interactions by this person and automatically block them. Obviously, this means they'll need to remove that stupid 200 name limit too. Honestly though, this particular change isn't nearly as important as the others, if it came down to a choice.

This thread has been on the front page for weeks now - and still no SE response.

I guess we know that they just don't care. It would be so easy to add a feature that allows you to set (in character configuration) an option so that you do not get tells or friend requests from anyone below a level of your choosing. With a bit more effort, they could also add a white list to the feature so that people on your friend list, in your FC, etc., are not affected.

Given that it's mostly a problem on NA/EU servers, I'm assuming they just don't understand how dramatic of a difference it is. Our GMs and CMs likely understand, but for one reason or another, it doesn't mean much. Communication might be severely lacking, in the form that the only actual interaction is through a list of concerns, unable to stress how impacting they are. CMs can't say much if they don't have anything meaningful to say.

Many could argue that Heavensward is the reason, and that might be true right now... but it certainly wasn't true back during launch... and anytime after launch. This isn't a problem that exists only as of late, their means have always been around. It was nice that SE actually stepped up to do something during launch, but that was only because RMT presence impacted every server (spamming /shout and /tell with messages non-stop every millisecond) and pretty much made it impossible to communicate at all.

RMT were very stupid about their approach back then. Since that time however, RMT have dropped back from such ridiculous measures and somewhat moved away from JP servers. "Out of sight, out of mind"... and that works. Our asking for things like appropriate player controlled optional filters and right-click reports have been around since the beginning, yet overlooked as something too destructive for players to use. Had they done it, we wouldn't have the problems we do now.

Yes, RMT would disappear.

Ignoring the obvious of the other parts, you underestimate RMT. They'd simply undercut when dealing with popular games. If there's more people willing to buy because it's viewed as acceptable in the game, there's more business to be had. Bots don't care about time spent, nor about morals regarding hacks.

[Remilia_Nightfall]

Ignoring the obvious of the other parts, you underestimate RMT. They'd simply undercut when dealing with popular games. If there's more people willing to buy because it's viewed as acceptable in the game, there's more business to be had. Bots don't care about time spent, nor about morals regarding hacks.

I kinda forgot to mention the other, needed step that SE would need to take.

Fall HARD with the banhammer on all RMT sellers.

The revenue they will lose (or the additional costs sustained) for this operation would be covered by all the people now suddenly buying gils from legal sources. Once SE starts to seriously hammer down on illegal sellers AND buyers, people would NOT risk it simply because "official" gil is a bit more expensive.