Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Kuwaitum]

Actually, Bots and Player bot programs don't exactly have a time value of zero. Even with the best teleporting bots, there still is a limited amount of shards that a bot can gather in an hour. doing a small google search (and not even clicking the links), most gathering bots can only gather a maximum of 600-700 items per hour. that's 16,800 max per day of paid subscription. its a lot larger amount than any normal player has, but its a far cry from zero time value..

Again, i repeat. Zero value. a non-zero value is a value that consumes a real person's time. in which case both a real person and a BOT user are paying the exact same subscription.

16K shards a day. Set the BOT and go out for a whole day. Work, shop, hang with friends, and go to the movies. For the Cry, a person gathers on his own all day, and the other lives the fullest day knowing that he will have his 16K shards ready to use. Now that's fair, isn't it?

Another thing, why aren't RMTs/BOTs selling shards as they used to in Sep-Dec 2013, ie. in range of 20 gil a shard?

[tocsin]

Again, i repeat. Zero value. a non-zero value is a value that consumes a real person's time. in which case both a real person and a BOT user are paying the exact same subscription.

16K shards a day. Set the BOT and go out for a whole day. Work, shop, hang with friends, and go to the movies. For the Cry, a person gathers on his own all day, and the other lives the fullest day knowing that he will have his 16K shards ready to use. Now that's fair, isn't it?

Another thing, why aren't RMTs/BOTs selling shards as they used to in Sep-Dec 2013, ie. in range of 20 gil a shard?

Not saying that its fair, just making the point that it isn't at zero value.

Not everyone who bots does so completely AFK. otherwise, you would see a bunch of broken bots. many people use bots in order to do the same thing they would be doing normally, but for a longer period of time at a faster pace.

I knew someone in the fc I was in a few months ago who did that. he was actually there, and was one of the primary gatherers for the FC, but had to resort to botting, just because his in-game workload (dealing with requests for materials) became more than he could handle on his own. he would still watch it go, and type in chat and enjoy his multiplayer experience, he just let the program handle his boring tasks for him.

then, even botting couldn't keep up the requests, and he inevitably fell behind and lost a bunch of gil in delivery guarantees and bankrupted his character. Goes to show that even bots have limits.

Personally, this thread is about RMT. I care about hindering and blockading RMT at every corner. Player run bots aren't even on my radar of things I have issues with. Bigger fish to fry.

[Zabuza]

Does anyone know why RMTs send you friends requests? I usually don't even get one accompanied by a /tell, just randomly(pretty much always from some variation of "gg" and "sellgil". What can RMTs possibly get out of this besides harassing you?

[tocsin]

Does anyone know why RMTs send you friends requests? I usually don't even get one accompanied by a /tell, just randomly(pretty much always from some variation of "gg" and "sellgil". What can RMTs possibly get out of this besides harassing you?

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.

[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.

[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.