Let's rise up! ...again

[Epical]

[Demosthenes11]

We should all send uniform messages though to make each and every one so similar there is little doubt what we all want

"Please examine Castle O, Serket/Roc/Simurgh/Cassie, SSgrotto, and you will find many many gil sellers across all servers" ?

"Please play closer attention the duration someone stays in a zone fighting the same NM/monster over and over" ?

"Please stop being lazy sons of bitches and actually get off your asses and do something" ?

[AriaEminence]

As much as I think it's blatantly obvious who is selling gil, I think the GM also has a point about his restrictions. From his standpoint, there's just a bunch of characters in the zone killing a mob over and over. The 5 characters in Castle Oztroja probably have nothing to do with selling the gil at all, so for him to ban them for the simple fact of killing a monster would be outrageous.

This reminds me of when EQ2 launched, to battle RMT they made a program that would ban people sending outrageous amounts of currency through the mail system. What actually ended up happening was TONS of legitimate players who had only done crafting since launch were being banned left and right.

I say good luck in your endeavor for those of you who do follow through with this. Take my opinion for what it is; realize that I am obviously on your side and understand your points. I'm just trying to shed some light on the other side.

[ZamK]

Good conversation, always nice to see GMs that seem to understand our side of things. Just sent my feedback on the subject, and I'll hassle my buddies to do the same.

(Psst, let's bug 'em to do something about Kings while we're at it! >.>)

[Kero]

That's kinda the problem :/ I'm all in for a mass suggestioning, but what exactly is a 100% workable rule that would allow SE to eliminate only people breaking their terms of service? It would have to be completely foolproof too, because tbh I don't really see SE's motivation to remove gilsellers. They have hundreds of accounts and characters, and if anything actually force people to play longer, since as much as people bitch about horrible ulli camps they generally just camp longer rather than actually quit. All that only means more money for SE, until the problem becomes completely unbearable for the *majority* of players (that is, *not* the ones who camp ulli, since I'm willing to bet most ffxi accounts as of this moment don't even have a character with sky access) this is how it will be.

That having been said, e-mailing in all at once probably will have a good effect as long as what we ask for is actually doable. BANN ALL TEH RMT won't do much :/ nor will "Please remove from the game every character who has ever camped siren hair NMs, O-Kote, or Ulii". I did hear it suggested recently sky pop items be made r/e, which sounded like it would help a fair amount at least in short term (that is, until they start selling them right at the camp and buyers have to join and lot). Other short term stuff; make kote and fuma r/e, make siren hair droppable by a wider variety of mobs (really rare drop from the coffer sahagins? ;o Unpossible to keep those all under control effectively, while still keeping the hair rare-ish), etc. etc.

If you're looking to never compete against RMT on anything ever again though I don't really think SE has a solution; even if it were cost-effective (see first paragraph) it would still be ridiculously hard, and in the end the gs will just level more toons. Gilselling will end by calling out gilbuyers, branding them as the cheating sacks of shit they are, and refusing to pt with them, allow them in linkshells, respond to their shouts for absolutely anything, etc. Basically, drop demand to the point where making nikes is more profitable than selling gil for chinese sweatshops, and problem ends.

But yeah, things like that aren't really up to SE, so what are short-term things to ask for? Where are your server's RMT and what do they camp? Midgard here, ours are at amemet, SSG, ulli, and jebus only knows where else <_< I don't go to easily-farmable stuff like that so I'm not informed enough :<. Sorry for wall of text, please dont card me; ; it has paragraphs and everything!

[genome]

I agree with the suggestion of sending somehow uniform messages so they are easier to parse/count instead of just being discounted or lost in the large number of suggestions people might drop in...

However the frustration is that as much as this is a big problem and it's obvious to everyone who does it on each server, they do it in a way that basically doesn't violate terms/conditions agreement...

I hit the wall with GMs before on this. There are several categories:

Bots:deplete shared resources automatically (used to be just fishbots, now also farmbots, digbots, AH bots etc). It's obvious to us they are unattended, really annoying. I could see a farmbot behave strangely when he ran out of bolts for example. Problem is they are GM-proof. Why? Because they have an alarm that calls a person to the computer when they get a GM tell. The GM could just wave in front of them or observe them to see what's going on but that's not what their procedure is. They have to send a tell with the <GM> in front too...

Gilseller NM Camper: deplete NMs and keep a monopoly of items. Once again, it's obvious to us they are played by a whole sweatshop of people and play and camp 24/7. Problem is they are GM-proof. Why? Because nothing says someone has to sleep or log off to pass as a legitimate user. It's obvious it's not just 1 person, but it *could* be a crazy person losing sleep and camping the same NM for a crazy long time so they are untouchable from GM policy and procedures. They can loophole the monopoly clause too by alternating a couple different chars every few days, swapping 2 chars between oztroja and ssg for example, and back.

flee-hackers and argus users: use hacks that give them huge advantages over other players in... everything. Problem is GMs are lazy. These could be caught, the whole conversation says GMs don't do anything unless users are reported. That's already a take home message for me I will start reporting people on when I see them use it in front of me, but it's annoying and wrong they don't just do the work and need to be right there observing after a report to eliminate these hacks...

Anybody has solutions to these I welcome suggestions. I think the 3rd one is the one that should be easiest to change, screw the 'avoid witch hunts'... but the first two look pretty grim, I'd like to make a suggestion and not just say "it won't change anyways", but I don't really know what could work and be loophole-free.

[Severance]

I sent in a feedback message detailing Hades (sky,gilnms). 8)

[Senoska]

I no longer have my screenshots my friend has givin me but I happan to know a GM in real life; Just so your aware[I dont know if this has been stated yet] that NA GMs are hired by SoE[Sony online] JP GMs are hierd thru SE.

The high-up Gms feel the RMT is no longer a problem in the player baises. Why would they? They know very well who they are. Like you said it doesnt take much to figure this out. Tho SE is all about money, if they were to bann every gilseller out there they would loose over 2,000+ accounts on 33 servers. 24,000$ per month; 288,000 dollers a year. This is with only 1 charater on the accunt. Do you really think they will ban all these people and loose that much money? Of corse not! They will ban a very small majority of them just to make it look like they are doing somthing when infact they are sitting on their asses. They know if they say "we banned 500million gil lawl!" that you will go "oh sweet they are finaly getting rid of the problem" and they wont loose you as a player.

What you have to understand is that SE is a buisness, they are in this for the money. They arnt here to make you giggle, they want your 12$ a month. They will not do anything about this untill people threaten a greater loss if they were not to bann the gilsellers. We, as players need to write letters to them telling them our accounts will be cancled if not fixed, this is the ONLY time they will do something.


/totaly off subject just kinda want to rant about it:

Another thing kinda off subject im going to bring into account here. On the subject of SE changing things and people threating with their account, Just so you know if SE totaly gimps another job, this will lead to the finish of FFXI. If BLM is nurfed you know a large majority of the player baises would be gone. SE well knows this and I highly doubt they will nerf another job. If they do, you will see my account as well as many other peoples accounts gone, maybe this will make SE relize and wake up that the players are right, and needed to be treated as so, or they will loose their money. I hope they relize this is the same with gilsellers.

Sorry for the long on going rant.
Take care I hope to see some change after your post.

[Fhqwghads]

If SE approaches FFXI as just a tool to make them money, then SE is going to lose in the long run. Their corporate office needs to understand that this is a game. A game will only be successful as long as it is fun. A game rife with assholes leveraging it as a means to earn money in real life will quickly ratchet the fun factor down. When it's no longer fun, people will leave in droves. This is the direction FFXI is headed, and quickly accelerating on top of it.

On a side note, to the person who said they think it doesn't impact most people because a lot of them still don't have sky, I think you're mistaken. Before the new jobs were released/XBox, I did a random sampling of player levels on a few different occasions and times. More than 75% of the population was 70+.

P.S. "Loose" is the opposite of tight. "Lose" is the opposite of win. Pet peeve.

[Selk]

On the topic of countering gilsellers, instead of everyone suggesting they ban/monitor/remove gilsellers/hacks, how about suggesting they change the R/E status of items? They've done it before with emp, LL, argus, etc etc. It's been suggested by the goddamn GM in Epical's conversation. Deep down we all know O.kotes (and whatever other non R/E item that makes $$$) is kept the same so to keep the gilsellers in play, so SE can earn their extra $300k a year.

Y'know I sometimes think SE are indirectly (perhaps knowingly) promoting gilselling because making cash in this game can be quite tough for the majority of players - why farm/camp/craft when you can just get a mill for $20 in a few minutes?.

[Turtlesoup]

This reminds me of when EQ2 launched, to battle RMT they made a program that would ban people sending outrageous amounts of currency through the mail system. What actually ended up happening was TONS of legitimate players who had only done crafting since launch were being banned left and right.

When the hell did that happen? I played from launch til 4-5 months after and never heard about that.

[Lockecole]

Last I checked, in the ToS it states they can cancel any account, whenever they want, for their own reasons without repercussion? Im calling bullshit on the "legal issues" if they just banned someone. More like "we're losing $15 a month, so its not worth it."

[Daahan]

I like this thread, when I get the chance I'll send them a message.

Welcome to the Church of Yin btw.

[Darus Grey]

Last I checked, in the ToS it states they can cancel any account, whenever they want, for their own reasons without repercussion? Im calling bullshit on the "legal issues" if they just banned someone. More like "we're losing $15 a month, so its not worth it."

Theres been legal cases already where the companies lost or settled, EULAs are for the most part, unenforceable in a legal sense.
However, consumer rights are most *definetly* enforceable in reverse.

No links because I'm admitantly lazy, but there was a case in UO where 4 players banned for blatantly duping and cheating sued.
They didn't win, but EA settled out of court for thier accounts to be reinstated, and $10,000(or $15,000? memories fuzzy) dollars would be donated to a charity in the plantiff's names.

There was also a case in China(which is much more relevant to RMTs), where one player sued the company who ran some random MMO(Redmoon I believe?) for damages when his account got robbed(by someone else), and won finanscial damages from the parent company.

(My exact details may be alittle off, they're a google search away if you really care.)

To sumarize: The ToS means jack shit.

[Silmarwen]

I can't believe I read that whole conversation...nice work by the way.

Not sure what to think =/ It's obvious the GM is bound by rules made by SE, governed, of course by, International Laws. It wouldn't be possible for him to have a conversation with any player that would in anyway be subject to scrutiny. To think however, they cannot offer feedback to SE based on the things they see and "know" or that SE wouldn't be interested in that feedback, seems a bit irresposible to me.

Addressing the argument that SE would lose set-amount of dollars by banning RMT accounts: would be curious to know how many accounts SE loses because of players that are frustrated by the inablitly to play the game as it is meant to be played. ie can't afford a kote, can't farm the kote themselves...etc. I would wager to guess that number would far outweigh the dollar value they would lose by banning the RMTs. In addition, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has seen SE's customer service rating according to the BBB (Better Business Bureau); it is quite bad. You'd think they fare better with higher customer satisfaction.

Maybe it's just me...

[Ksandra]

Here's steps that I think should be taken to counter gil sellers that aren't being done:

1. Actively suing companies like IGE. IGE is one of the biggest gil-selling businesses out there, they really need to start suing places like this and getting them out of business. For places like Ebay where that's not so easy, SE can call the company and say X item is an illegal action, and guess what? ebay will take it right off of there and ban the user. It's happened many times on ebay, but oddly enough never for gil/characters.

2. They've been banning the mules that hold the gil rather than the players that get the gil. Instead they need to start watching where all this gil goes to and from. If they are willing to ban these mules that means they know those mules are rmt. If they see X player day in and day out giving that mule gil, then it's obvious that player is a gil seller.

3. Start looking into the mass gil buyers. It would be harder to catch someone who bought 1 mil once, but there are playerrs out there who buy gil time and time again. If they started watching the rmt mules they can get an idea on which players keep getting the huge amounts of gil. And like we all know it's abvious who is a gil seller and who isn't. IF you get mass gil from an rmt account and it's well known your not a gil seller...probably means you bought that gil.


To me there's both sides to the story. Gil sellers would not exist at all if no one bought the gil. But people keep doing it over and over again. I think both sides should get attacked if this were to go anywhere. I'll send a feedback too though. XD

[Taj]

[17:32:41] [GM]Subina>> We can only do what we are permitted to do in bringing these players down.
[17:32:52] [GM]Subina>> We cannot just close an account without just cause, or we face legal disputes.

I could be wrong, but isn't there a clause in the Terms of Service that states they can suspend your account pretty much if they just feel like it?

[Darus Grey]

I could be wrong, but isn't there a clause in the Terms of Service that states they can suspend your account pretty much if they just feel like it?

May wanna try 2 posts up ^

MMO companies have a legitimate fear of being sued for damages closing accounts on a whim, especially accounts of companies with the means to pursue action.

My best guess is the ones they do ban they have *very well* documented solid proof of them creating this gil via "Illegal"(for lack of a better word) methods, i.e. Dupes and similar that are directly harmful to S/E themselves.

[Iku]

FFXI will probably die in the next 2-3 years. So they tried to make as much as they can.

Beside, this is 1st SE MMO. They did pretty good but time to move on to new project.

[Lordender]

SE's first MMO project, yes they did a pretty good job overall except if they release another MMO that has integrated servers with the japs (no thanks, i'll pass) thats a big problem that should have been avoided. Secondly, if you can't just "BAN" the gilsellers then you need to go out of your way and shake things up, like rehauling sky, its a bad attitude SE has when they add content they will never go back and change it even when it could still use changes to compliment all the newer players getting higher level and farming sky.