Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[MageBlack]

This sentence baffles me. How would you have us take the fight to the RMT? Reporting? Many people already do that, and often end up spending more time reporting than actually playing the game. We ask SE to do something because they're the only ones who can. Us players can't do anything to stop the RMT, we don't have those types of resources. SE could get the resources to at least slow down the threat of RMT if they wished, and so we turn to them to do something, yet they haven't. Reporting is all we can do, and they haven't even implemented a right-click report function in two years of players clamoring for it(which btw would not have been that difficult to implement in comparison to other things.) A few of these QoL functions would've been simple to implement and NOT intrusive to a player's experience, yet none were implemented. On an off note, I won't be able respond to you again for 4-5 hours, gotta go to work.

First off, I want to make sure you are clear that I am also not a fan of RMT, I do think more needs to be done and I too think the issue is worse (on some servers) than other games. I just don't think berating SE over it and leveling such harsh criticism does anything to help the situation.

Anyway, what i meant by taking the fight to RMT is doing a DDOS attack on their websites, spam them with emails, do unto them as they do unto games. Report the websites, or something actually proactive against them. What we can actually do, I dont exactly know but I see no one attack the RMT's or even consider it. Look at that thread that appeared today about "How should i deal with this kind of friend" where he talkes about a friend of his that buys gil. This is part of the problem. This person needs to be named, shamed, and banned. The RMT and the Buyers are the problem, if there wasnt a market for it, they wouldnt be here.

As for the right click report function, it was actually addressed at one point. they were worried if they implemented that and the right click block that people might accidentally use this. That was before the right click block was implemented so now that they have it, I too think adding the report to that mini menu would be a good idea. Something mentioned a long time ago. I know a lot of these "simple" fixes people casually throw out there sound easy to implement and an easy solution but we don't know their server structure, their coding, what other countermeasures they have in place, how the fix might inadvertently cause problems, etc.

Also, just like others have said, most of the fixes will fall under the "fixing the symptom but not the cause" Rather than more band aids on the RTM scaring, I would like to see more permanent solutions to stop them, I'm sure SE feels the same way. Even banning an account is just a band aid solution, its nothing for them to scam another account, hack someones account, just go and buy another copy, etc. SE puts up an IP blocker, they use VPN. SE blocks them from spamming chat, they make 6 new characters and cycle through them to spam. This is the biggest reason I think SE isnt going to tell us what they are doing, why would they tell us on a public forum how they plan to stop RMT? That's like the US government announcing on Public TV their secret plans to invade ISIS.

I think my problem is I have more empathy for the people at SE than i do for the rudeness I see in some posts here about this. I'm not a programmer, I'm not a tech expert, and I'm not a PR whiz but I do not envy the job SE has in trying to combat it.

I find it incredibly insulting and condescending when people say things like "SE is lazy". Really? They took a failed game, rebuilt it into something that is now gaining traction. All while still upgrading and supporting the current failure they knew they would be scrapping when they were done. They did it through the Tsunami and earthquake and nuclear disaster that wreaked havoc on Japan. They put up with barrage after barrage of players giving them grief. And they did it all in about 2 years time. Not sure what the average time a company has to produce a AAA MMO before release but I think its more than 2 years and did it with a skeleton crew (i think under 20 employees actively working on the game)

"SE is just profiting from the RMT/in bed with the/benefit from the numbers they provide" Somehow I don't think SE is altogether enjoying the RMT screwing with their balanced economy, Pissing off legit players, creating tons of more work for them to play damage control between players and media, More working trying to ban accounts, research accounts to make sure they are legit RMT, find out if it is a stolen account and try to recover it for the player, and then get constantly badmouthed for it.

Sorry for the rant, I could go on ad-nauseum but I'm sure i'm just wasting my time and breath as well as the time of people reading/skimming over this. People arent in this thread to come to any understanding, they are just here to vent their frustrations.

Just my 2 gil.