We anticipate that even with this update, third parties will continue

[AshDidit]

From what I understood about shady key resellers, chargebacks from stolen creditcards are actually very expensive on the company.

The way to fix -that- issue is the same way every other business does it.
Require the name and address of the credit card to match exactly to the game's account holder.

In other words,
Jane Doe
123 Maple Lane
Ul'dah, Eorzea
12345

cannot use

John Smith
32 Privet Drive
Hogwart's, England
64321
credit card to buy her friend a mount.

Problem solved.

And the credit card processor SE uses (Inteligo? I think) DOES have the ability to compare them to make sure they match.

[Tigerlilley]

RIP our annual christmas event.

Why are we being punished for gifting friends? If they have this new fancy tracking system, why did mounts/minions need to be removed ?

[Xeronia]

Well consider me thoroughly baffled. I saw the friend list restriction coming a mile away but we needed item restrictions? I can understand why but man is it an odd choice when you would figure several other options would be better suited to combat RMT, especially when it is admitted this will probably only staunch it for a moment.

[LyssaLittleBear]

This is such a bad decision on the part of Square Enix. I understand them trying to crack down on RMT. Fraudulent credit card use and charge backs from credit card companies must be costing them millions. What I don't understand is their inability to adapt their "you already have this mount" scan to look at the account of the person to whom you want to gift a mount. I certainly know they lost a lot of money from me.

[Lustre]

Theyll do this but they'll ignore bots farming Eureka for years, why with the passive aggressive punishment of players when they could actually act upon the minority? Get banned for placing markers outside an arena but leave your pc on for 6 months botting and that's absolutely fine

[deebug96]

This is such a bad decision on the part of Square Enix. I understand them trying to crack down on RMT. Fraudulent credit card use and charge backs from credit card companies must be costing them millions. What I don't understand is their inability to adapt their "you already have this mount" scan to look at the account of the person to whom you want to gift a mount. I certainly know they lost a lot of money from me.

Thing is, they say cause you might gift a mount or minion they could have.... but you also could gift a story or job boost they already have... or even an outfit they already have. It's insane honestly. It's a cop out.

[Kling-Klang]

Stupid change.

[LianaThorne]

This was a choice.
Still gonna get the mount cause I've been waiting for this one but this was a choiceeeeeee.

[Cheremia]

Thing is, they say cause you might gift a mount or minion they could have.... but you also could gift a story or job boost they already have... or even an outfit they already have. It's insane honestly. It's a cop out.

Why not tell people to go to their friends Lodestone and check what they have or don't have if you wan#t to gift them things.

And I mean SE. SE should tell people that the Lodestone shows Mounts/Minions a person has

[Aniya_Estlihn]

Pretty ridiculous change, the mount and minion restrictions genuinely make no sense because if someone is close enough to you that they're on your friend list, then you can just ask what they do or don't have or check Lodestone. I know Yoshida has been saying to provide constructive criticism on the forums in the recent PLLs, but when they keep making these strange backwards decisions this expansion, I really don't blame people for getting heated.

So my one constructive criticism and piece of advice is—

Please look into implementing and utilizing player surveys like every single other major live service game does so that you can get direct feedback on potential changes, player/user use cases for current features you want to depreciate and-or replace and scrap this idea that the forums provide any meaningful feedback.

Nonsensical decisions such as this could easily be avoided if they actually looked to the player base and surveyed us periodically to see how features are utilized and ask for opinions on these things rather than pushing out the changes and waiting to see how angry the player base becomes over a bad decision. Its 2022, not the early to mid-2000s and its time to actually act like this game is being developed and run in the modern era.