Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[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.

[Remilia_Nightfall]

It is funny how the ONLY intelligent (and possible) solution to this issue would be most likely shunned by most of the playerbase.

Allow players to buy Gil legally, directly from SE.

Yes, it would be a "pay to win" system. Yes, people would hate it. Yes, RMT would disappear.

Other games implemented this quite successfully already, like EVE Online.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

I do not agree with pay to win being a solution since, as I said before, you're using a fire hose to put out a grease fire; RMT itself is already pay to win in a sense, so all you're doing is swapping the face of RMT with SE. Prices for in game goods would massively inflate and nothing would have any value. People are already skittish on the cash shop itself, despite it selling only vanity items. The minute gil becomes buyable directly, you're gonna open a huge can of worms that will never be closed.

[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.

[Fenral]

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.

On the contrary, it will give them an actual trackable metric to better monitor the distribution of RMT bots across worlds (and thus, let them know where their attention is needed most), and greatly reduce the time between report, confirmation, and ban by streamlining the way the initial reports are handled. It'll force bots to adopt even less conspicuous measures.

I'm not saying it's a magic bullet solution, because there's no such thing, but it's at least one bullet for our otherwise empty clip. So long as it remains more trouble to properly report spam than to simply blacklist and move on, it's definitely not going to get any better.

[KisaiTenshi]

It is funny how the ONLY intelligent (and possible) solution to this issue would be most likely shunned by most of the playerbase.

Allow players to buy Gil legally, directly from SE.

Yes, it would be a "pay to win" system. Yes, people would hate it. Yes, RMT would disappear.

Other games implemented this quite successfully already, like EVE Online.

Are you admitting to being a Gil Buyer then?

No game has ever implemented this and not have the bots/RMT take advantage of it. And you're in some alternate reality if you think they don't. Archeage tried this, and the RMT just commit a lot credit card fraud to sell it to players, then they turn around and launder the gold so they turn around and sell the gold back to the players too. That's how it works every single time.

If you want to see the end to bots, the technology for it was used back in the 80's, called a "hardware dongle" to prevent piracy. Back then the DRM was just some trivial to crack code on the dongle that could just be emulated, since there was no online component. Put a 4$ crypto processor on a NFC card or USB stick and all forms of account theft go away since the game won't connect without the device present. Then to raise the axe on RMT, you only send these cards paired to their accounts, and don't send them to places like China where RMT comes from. Ta-da RMT solved. Or at least it makes it so risky, inconvenient and expensive to do RMT.

But hey we could get half way there already by requiring authenticators on all accounts. This does nothing to prevent RMT from just running authenticator emulators, but it slows down the process so much that "spamming" becomes inefficient.

[Morbid]

EVE Online doesn't sell Isk (Currency), they sell Gametime which can be converted into Isk but at the players discretion and at what ever price they feel. This is how they try to alleviate any RMT by basically putting it into the playerbases hands.

It's a great system in the fact that you can essentially play the game and never have to open your wallet to buy gametime. The issue however is that Gil is much easier to accumulate here than Isk in EVE. The price on any Gametime like item would near 20-30mil+ depending on server. They'd have to implement something that keeps people from purchasing low on one server and transferring to another.

That's one other difference in the systems/games is that EVE is one mega server for all players. Not seperate shards and servers like FFXIV.

They could maybe put the Gametime item as a Vendor only item perhaps but that would mean that Square Enix sets the price which could still open up avenues for RMT...

[Remilia_Nightfall]

Are you admitting to being a Gil Buyer then?

Where does this insinuation come from?

I've never bought any kind of virtual currency via illegal means. When I did buy currency, it was in games that allowed it to be bought via official channels (again, EVE Online).
I strongly hate both gil sellers and gil buyers, because I hate people who make money exploiting the intellectual property of others.

I fail to see where what I am saying implies that I buy gil.

At any rate, yours is a valid suggestion. Still too complicated, at the end of the day - especially when gil sellers clearly are advantageous for SE. When and if they will take the effort to remove them, it will be because they will have found a way to speculate on it themselves, somehow.

EVE Online doesn't sell Isk (Currency), they sell Gametime which can be converted into Isk but at the players discretion and at what ever price they feel. This is how they try to alleviate any RMT by basically putting it into the playerbases hands.

It's a great system in the fact that you can essentially play the game and never have to open your wallet to buy gametime. The issue however is that Gil is much easier to accumulate here than Isk in EVE. The price on any Gametime like item would near 20-30mil+ depending on server. They'd have to implement something that keeps people from purchasing low on one server and transferring to another.

That's one other difference in the systems/games is that EVE is one mega server for all players. Not seperate shards and servers like FFXIV.

They could maybe put the Gametime item as a Vendor only item perhaps but that would mean that Square Enix sets the price which could still open up avenues for RMT...

Yes, CCP sells game time, which is tradeable, so as you say it is basically the same thing. It is like when SE put up the Wedding item on the Mogstation and made is sellable on the marketboard. Same issue - legal RMT. Too bad people whined and they changed that.

[slml320]

It is funny how the ONLY intelligent (and possible) solution to this issue would be most likely shunned by most of the playerbase.

Allow players to buy Gil legally, directly from SE.

Yes, it would be a "pay to win" system. Yes, people would hate it. Yes, RMT would disappear.

Other games implemented this quite successfully already, like EVE Online.

as much as i hate cash shops pay to win bs… you have hit the nail right on the head it is and will be the only true way to stop rmt with in the n/a server.. the down side being it will lose subs most are not going to pay a sub and then a cash shop for gil double dipping customers ffxiv will drop like a lead ballon and with no sub and just cash shop it will be more of a slower demise.. although in its current state with so much rmt its just a little slower again!!..
i do love this game 2 accounts 5 lvl 50 characters most with at least 4 classes at 50 my main is 50 everything.. it saddens me to see such crappy response or lack there of from devs and alike about the n/a server problems not just rmt but most stuff in general..enforcing my belief that with this type of rmt offer me something a little better game wise with less rmt.. why would i hang here.. ESO on the ps4 and xbox.. PPL WILL GET SICK OF THIS BS AND THE AMOUNT NOT DONE !! THEY WILL SLOWLY LEAVE IF THERES SOMETHING AS A ALTERNATIVE .. i just can't see why SE is so short sighted to this fact!! and if not why hasn't things been done!!