Banned for RMT?Follow

So are all the people that were banned selling on mule and sending gil to main? I would of assumed you would of sold on your main as posted for better gil from higher fame. I have a friend that does it that way and he still playing, although who knows how long.

No. At least one account that was banned would send the gardened items to another character with high fame, who would then NPC them. It's a little more complicated in this specific case as she was sending them off to another account's main (this other account has 15 gardening mules as well and has not as yet been banned) - but she was most certainly not sending gil to a central holder.

Do you use windower? Do you use some sort of automation to plant or harvest?


FYI. if you want to fix this get the bad press out to sites like Kotaku and 1up. You remember what happened when Pandemonium Warden was in the news.

Edited, Jul 7th 2009 4:06am by Lobivopis

Last week I decided to wait before trying to do another gardening cycle. Yes, I use wildgrass seeds, but I do NOT NPC the greens. I send all the choco food to a central mule and bazaar them outside a stables. It's a niche market and somewhat reliable (when I still have goods). I didn't start one due to not knowing what my RL work situation was going to be.

Now I check Alla and see this. I'm thinking about closing the choco shop for good after this. I have a main and 7 mules that garden. I'm not LM-17'd. (Yet).

It's also staggering that people harvesting platinum leaves and ice ores are also getting the axe judging from this thread. I think we all know what one countermeasure's likely going to be. Which begs the question: What are legit players with minimal playtime supposed to do when their options either get nerfed or get you a ban?

In my not-so-humble opinion, SE needs to ELIMINATE the Trial account thing. From my point of view, it has caused almost nothing but headaches for everyone involved, ranging from the infamous Brogames tells to the fact these accounts can apparently garden and appears to be related to 100% legit players now getting banned.

I'm going to be perfectly blunt: SE needs to get their heads out of their collective asses, completely reverse this round of bans due to the number of innocents caught in the crossfire, ELMINATE or HIGHLY RESTRICT the trial accounts, and redo their entire anti-RMT strategy.

I will have nothing positive to say should me or any of my friends/lsmates get an unjustified ban, and from what I am seeing there are plenty of people who feel the same way.

This is making me rethink even wanting to try FFXIV.

After reading through this entire thread, I have to say this all sounds ridiculous to me. Legitimate players are unable to confirm the reason for being banned other than an incredibly vague description from customer service ("RMT related activity"), and have absolutely no say in whether the account is returned, because players are not allowed to directly talk with, or state your case to, anyone high enough in the company to make those decisions.

SE hasn't stated any reasons as to why these accounts have been banned, which is even more frustrating. Is having a certain number of gardening mules a banable offense now? Are there certain recipes SE has a problem with, such as ones that produce high selling vendored goods like chocobo feed and platinum leaves?

I would love to hear from SE regarding this issue. If gardening on a mule or vendoring goods on a mule and sending the gil to our main is somehow a bannable offense now, please let us know before you go off on a banning spree and leave players wondering whether they did something wrong. If this round of bans did in fact mistakenly ban innocent players, issue an apology and reverse the bans as quickly as possible.

I agree with whoever it was that said an editorial on this site would be a good idea. It seems to be the only way to bring SE out of hiding and get them to address an issue. SE ignored us when every FFXI community forum was constantly asking what was going on with enfeebling magic until it was posted on the front page of this site. It seems apparent where we as players/community members stand on their chain of importance.



Edited, Jul 7th 2009 7:03am by Susanoh

Absolutely this. SE needs to make it crystal clear (no gardening pun intended) why this is happening. Vague explanations will not suffice.

I'm paranoid now...I have my main and 15 mules, 14 of which garden for me, the usual wildgrass recipe because HNM and an extremely active endgame LS doesn't give me the time to do much else.

I'm not sure whether or not I'll be greeted by an LM-17 when I get home now. If I am then I'm not looking forward to being in an awfully long queue of people complaining about it.

*Edited for fail spelling*

Edited, Jul 7th 2009 11:19am by Gra

What does this mean for those not directly affected?

First, Gardening now conceivably falls under the watch of the STF. In case you're wondering why, it's quite simply because RMT does nothing but take what normal players do, and exploits it on a mass level. Gardening with one character is fine. Gardening with 30 is most likely now going to get you flagged. So, those of you with 5 mules, with 15 mules, with 40 mules, you are now performing these actions at your own peril.

Second, we are forced to wait until the next STF report in early August to confirm. Unless the bannings and backlash are so massive (entirely possible), SE will not say anything until they mention it in whatever blurb they write up to describe the fact that they banned for this practice. Even then, we may not know if Gardening was targeted specifically because of the simple fact that it can be described at a very generic and non-specific level.

I know it has me on edge. I've been gardening since mid-2007 with a full complement of mules and a second account designed for that purpose.

In the meantime, I highly suggest that strongly worded, but intelligent, letters are written and sent to the link provided in this thread to the STF with a complaint about this. If you don't know what to write, copy and paste what Magicide wrote.

Because I can almost guarantee you, if there is not a significant community response against this, none of it will be overturned.

Edited, Jul 7th 2009 9:33am by Acturus

Sent email about my/our situation to STF and hope they take care of it soon.

Anyone know if the STF is JP onry, or is there an office in the US/EU also? I am just wondering because I want to know in which time zone it will be fixed, if it is fixed at all that is.

Meh, Sue 'em.

There are three branches of customer service in each of the markets where FFXI is. However, all global changes to the game take place on JP time.

Basically, no one can give you more than their best guess.

Keep in mind he could be talking total nonsnse, sounds too stupid to be believed.

If there is an exploit whereupon RMT is allowed to harvest plants multiple times without emptying a flowerpot, I am completely unaware of it. I have been gardening for four years.

I think what was meant when the word "exploit" was used was slightly less nefarious. They simply take the means that players have been using to make gil and reproduce them on a massive scale. Thus you have thousands of trial accounts created every month, stocked with flowerpots, and made to garden until they are inevitably banned. This is "exploitation" of a different kind.

Rather than take the obvious recourse of limiting what one can do on trial accounts, the STF has instead, bizarrely, chosen to sink into an endless cycle of instituting mass bannings on the trial accounts which are no doubt recreated with minimal effort on the part of the RMT organizations. As this thread is showing, the potential for collateral damage inherent to this philosophy is extreme.

The fact that S/E, and the STF in particular, is a completely faceless entity with next to no presence amongst their playerbase, is particularly harmful in this case. Any other company would already have representatives on their official forums addressing these complaints.

With S/E, those wrongly affected by the bannings have no recourse except through a cryptic system in which a powerless middleman delivers a message to the higher-ups that maybe they made a mistake and maybe they should correct it. There is no obligation for them to show any evidence that the banned players were actually involved in RMT. There is no obligation to disclose anything specific as to why a certain player was banned. Even the common thread of gardening mules is something that the wronged players were forced to piece together on their own.

Yes, one can quote the TOS back at anyone making these complaints: we don't own our accounts, they can ban us for any reason at any time, etc. etc. etc. Just because they can doesn't mean they should. It doesn't make it sane or reasonable business practice. It doesn't make it a very serious consideration for any customer that might be on the fence when it comes to Final Fantasy XIV in particular. Knowledge that Square/Enix can and will ban loyal customers who have done absolutely nothing wrong, and that the victims of their negligence have essentially no recourse except via the secretive "escalate your investigation", which for all we know involves an email being sent to the STF which is summarily deleted by their spam filter, is very precisely the sort of information which will turn potential customers away from their games in favor of the multitude of other MMORPG's on the market.

In short, this has the juice to be a PR nightmare for Square/Enix, and unless the complaints that those who were wrongly banned are filing with the STF are addressed swiftly and definitively, that's the only option left. The one impetus that has been proven to force S/E to change has been a bad headline.

Luckily my account has been untouched. I have 5 characters altogether (nowhere near some of you) and gardening is my main source of income as well.

Anyways good luck to those that have been unfairly hit with the ban stick and hope you get your accounts back fast with reasonable explaination and perhaps a free month or two.