Square Enix, This is for you and FFXIV

[Stumps]

I wrote this on Alla originally, but this is relevant for everyone.

Square Enix, if you wish the community here to even consider trying your new MMORPG Final Fantasy 14 it's imperative that you take a long hard look at your customer service. Now I'll be the first to admit that the MMORPG industry for you is still in its infancy, and it is true that you have learned an awful lot over these years, but with the upcoming release of your next generation MMORPG, you have a lot of growing still to do if you wish to have a strong presence of FFXI veterans in FFXIV. In the past, it hasn't been terribly necessary to maintain a strong customer service branch, mainly because defective products would probably be the only call you would generally receive.

Now, times have changed, and with the recent influx of false-positive auto-bans of legitimate players caught up in your latest it is clear that there is a growing discontent (to put it lightly) with your lack of decent customer support (at the very least amongst your English speaking customers). People are getting banned most likely by the automated programs for doing things which up until recently haven't seemed worthy of notice, that is until the Real Money Trader organizations started using them for their profit making schemes. And this isn't even a new type of development, as in recent years your valiant efforts against the RMT have seen a progressive destruction of less and less common ways for legitimate players to make gil in the game. And this isn't even the core of this complaint, but it is worth mentioning for it's relation.

My complaint, and I'm sure that many others share it, is that when the players not connected to any RMT organizations are automatically banned, they have little to no recourse in getting the mistake corrected. Their efforts in trying to get the ban removed are met with either ignorance, apathy, miscommunication, double-talk, or blatant lies most likely borne from ignorance. It is incredibly disappointing for people who have put many years of work into their characters to be told that their ban is permanent and cannot be negotiated at all, especially when the ban was enacted by an automated program without review by human beings.

All this is unfortunately just another example of the poor reputation your customer service has built up over the years through inadequately trained, informed, motivated and empowered staff and systems. And here at this time is finally where it can seriously hurt your financial gains. We as a fanbase have had almost infinite patience with your customer service over the years, and a relative few people ever quit and never returned due to your shoddy communication and service. Now is the crunch time where either you have to fix your faults in these areas or your next MMORPG is going to suffer, and not reach the full potential it can.

I was enthralled by the idea of a next generation MMORPG from a company that I have been loyal to for many years, a next gen game with similar systems to the ones I have become fluent in in FFXI over the years. I'm sure many other people felt the same way when you announced FFXIV, however that joy can be easily quashed when we have a reminder of how you (at least on the surface) think of your customers. In having a program ban people under false pretenses, and without being open, honest, and forthcoming with those people, you appear to us to be uncaring, so uncaring as to let an automaton destroy years worth of legitimate effort without any review or oversight by human beings capable of rational thought.

Now I ask you, as I'm sure people banned and not banned have been asking themselves, Why would I play another SE MMORPG when I could lose all my efforts to a false positive from an automated program without any hope of review? Why would any of us want to try another MMORPG from you when we see how easily our efforts can be made for naught simply due to machine error?

The customer service game is different for you from what it was before FFXI. In the game industry, there's a lot you can't really control about gamers and their preferences. If a gamer doesn't like one of your games, it could be due to any number of preference factors in style of game, artwork, etc... Never have I read or seen an instance where someone wouldn't buy an offline game because of the lack of upfront and honest customer service and community communication. In the world of online games, this is different, mostly due to the nature of the beast. In an online setting you need to be more honest and forthcoming to your players, they are willing to subscribe to your services and they deserve that much. If the players are treated badly, they will not continue to subscribe to your services, and they will be unwilling to give you more of their money in new games whether they be online or offline.

You have stated that you wish FFXIV to be familiar to FFXI veterans, and clearly intend for there to be some similarities between the two games. However, you won't have very many people willing to make the transition to a new game if you continue to treat us the same way you have for 7 years in terms of customer support and communication. One of the strongest pulls for people to continue playing FFXI after all this time is the connections that are formed with people they have met and adventured with on this game, a lot of us stay around for them, despite all your customer service and lack of communication has done to drive us away. When we start out a new MMORPG, we have no connections formed with people we have met on that game, and if the detrimental forces are still unchanged, there won't be much to keep us in a new place.

I know in the past years you have seen great success with your games, and they have resulted in revolutionizing a number of aspects of the gaming industry. I implore you though, Do Not Forget Final Fantasy I, so named because it was expected to be the final death whisper of your company. It was your fans that made your games such a smashing success, and it is your fanbase which continues to make your games such a smashing success. If you take the time to talk with us, be open and honest with us, and give us a little clarity when it comes to our punishments, we will stick with you. If you take us for granted, we will leave you, and your final fantasy will be just that.

-Stumps

[Greg]

As someone hit by this automated banhammer, I second this!

[Miori]

/applaud

[Stumps]

/applaud

Some credit is due to you actually Miori, it's what you said in the LM-17 thread that finally sparked me to write this.

[BRP]

You are assuming Blue Gartr is Square Enix's suggestion box. Don't think this will reach them.

[Khalil]

You exploited the shit outta of a "machine error". That's why you/they were banned. I'm sure most other MMOs would have done the same. That being said, leaving it un-patched for soo long is stupid.

[Ksandra]

You exploited the shit outta of a "machine error". That's why you/they were banned. I'm sure most other MMOs would have done the same. That being said, leaving it un-patched for soo long is stupid.

wait I missed something, weren't they banned for gardening? Not really an exploit.

[Stumps]

You exploited the shit outta of a "machine error". That's why you/they were banned. I'm sure most other MMOs would have done the same. That being said, leaving it un-patched for soo long is stupid.

I'm not sure what machine error you think anyone has been exploiting, the machine error I was referring to was the false-positive RMT flags being acted on by an automated program to ban people with no RMT connections. People who have been told through various means that they cannot appeal a decision that wasn't even made by a human.

And yeah I realize that SE most likely won't read this, but a lot of the most respected members of the community frequent this site, so I feel it's a good place for something like this too.

[Darkyrm]

wait I missed something, weren't they banned for gardening? Not really an exploit.

So what was the deal about gardening? Was that the "ilegal" way of making money named in the the recent updates some weeks ago? Sorry to ask, but Im not aware of all that.

[Stumps]

So what was the deal about gardening? Was that the "ilegal" way of making money named in the the recent updates some weeks ago? Sorry to ask, but Im not aware of all that.

Legitimate players are being flagged with false-positive RMT markers and getting automatically banned by a program set up by the STF because they use a method of gardening similar to a new flavor of the month RMT method of assembly lining their gil production.

[Ksandra]

So what was the deal about gardening? Was that the "ilegal" way of making money named in the the recent updates some weeks ago? Sorry to ask, but Im not aware of all that.

This is the gist I'm getting. Refer to here:

http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/77075-lm-17-wtf.html


Bunch of people were banned recently for "unusual activity". What it seems like is SE has some automated way of banning people if they seem like they are doing things "rmtish".

Not all, but a lot, of people that were banned had gardening mules. And I guess were growing a particular type of plant? which I supposed got them flagged as rmt even if they were legit players.

The retarded thing is no one is getting a straight answer from SE at all, and are having a hard time getting their accounts recovered.

[Yugl]

And yeah I realize that SE most likely won't read this, but a lot of the most respected members of the community frequent this site, so I feel it's a good place for something like this too.

Actually, the *best* place to post this would be at livejournal.com since people with journals are apparently superior to posters. Alternatively, there is a thread here:

Allakhazam.com: Final Fantasy XI

and here

http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/77841...t-tells-2.html

Edit: For those unaware, this is in reference to SE's auto-ban bot that apparently is hitting a lot of gardeners. Not surprised since you can get busted gardening the same shit in RL (Wild "Grass"). I remember years ago when people were bitching about SE not taking action against RMT claiming that RMT as easy to spot, and now that they have taken action, players can see that RMT may not be as distinguishable as originally thought.

[Khalil]

Legitimate players are being flagged with false-positive RMT markers and getting automatically banned by a program set up by the STF because they use a method of gardening similar to a new flavor of the month RMT method of assembly lining their gil production.

Ohh, my bad, then. I was assuming it was still about the Salvage dupes and shit. Carry on.

[Stumps]

Ohh, my bad, then. I was assuming it was still about the Salvage dupes and shit. Carry on.

People actually have some issues with that situation as well, considering how tight lipped SE was about their criteria when deciding who got permanently banned and who was only suspended. I realize there is some call for discretion, but a simple "People who performed the exploit in obscene amounts were banned, lighter offenders were let off with a suspension". No real specifics, but it transmits a sense of openness which a lot of people here would find very refreshing.

[Darkyrm]

Oh I see

thanks for the info and references.

[TummieGaruda]

So what was the deal about gardening? Was that the "ilegal" way of making money named in the the recent updates some weeks ago? Sorry to ask, but Im not aware of all that.

Remember this?

Sundi: We used to look at the logs but now the tools are more reliable and they can be used to throw people into jail without waiting for us to look at the logs.

GW: At VanaFest, you made a small comment about testing the tool.

Sundi: Ah, yeah, I did let that slip. (laugh) We wanted to try it out a bit so we tested it on one world. Unfortunately, some users who had done nothing wrong ended up in jail. We had the same issue before where GMs would be thrown into jail. Because of that, we wanted to see what would happen now on a live server. Within about 10 minutes of turning on the system, 2 or 3 people ended up in jail. To those people, I’m really sorry.

Basically right now, the RMT's are abusing gardening by growing wildgrass and then NPCing it and then sending their gil to an account (bank). The current theory is that SE developed a program similar to the one above that detects certain behavior and flags the account for RMT activity. Basically what the program is doing is flagging accounts that:

- Receive gil from multiple different players/accounts over an extended period of time
- NPCing harvested results
- Sending harvested items to a main for NPC or AH sales.

or all of the above.

None of these are illegal activities, but SE is going after behavior that is legal and claiming players are taking part of illegal activities.

[donnie]

I strongly suggest to submit this letter to

1- https://secure.playonline.com/supportus/index.html
click on special task force> comment and suggestion

2- https://secure.playonline.com/supportus/index.html
and click on comment and suggestion ( I think this goes to developers)

and if anyone want to take it to media:

1- Kotaku - About
here you can find the emails of each of the editors and correspondents on the left side, you can explain the history of SE customer service. you can probably link the threads in BG so they can see the situation in detail.

[link deleted]

I will probably going todo that tomorrow , SE needs another slap from the media so they can spend more training and re-structuring their after-sales support.

[Chen]

Greg, you never get that ban fixed? ;/

[Miori]

Some credit is due to you actually Miori, it's what you said in the LM-17 thread that finally sparked me to write this.

I don't deserve anything... except my account back for this wrongful banning.

[Stumps]

Funny, when I try to submit this letter to SE directly, it's apparently too long for their automated mail system

"Please be as detailed as possible in the space provided"

but do it in 100 words or less -.-