Banned for RMT?Follow

Nothing in the TOS even remotely suggests this. There is nothing nefarious going on here, no bug being exploited, as there was with the Salvage duping. People already routinely purchase multiple content ID's for the purpose of using characters as storage mules. Given that there is nothing in the game, written or implied, that prevents such characters from being used as gardening mules as well, why would a reasonable person not try to use these characters to make a little gil on the side? That's how I got started in gardening on multiple mules. I imagine it's similar for most people. I certainly haven't heard any complaints from S/E about the extra $12 a month I'm paying them.

If it were really Square/Enix's intent to limit the amount of gardening one could do on an account, there are any number of very easy countermeasures they could apply to prevent it. A minimum level before one is able to garden would be one very easy countermeasure to put in place. If Square/Enix were to release a notice saying that mass gardening was not allowed, I would glady cancel my content ID's. My profits from gardening might not even be that adversely affected, as no doubt the price of the platinum nuggets I grow would rise significantly in accordance with the crippled supply.

Regardless, so-called "abuse" of the gardening system is not the reason that these players are being given as to why they were banned. They are being told their activities are RMT-related, which is plainly not true, and this is the discrepancy which the affected players are taking issue with.

I have been told by a friend that since I use walmart visa gift cards for the game that might be another red flag. arggggg.

******.

"Common sense" says to me that the limitation of 10 flowerpots per character, and 16 characters per account, means that S/E obviously approves of having 160 flowerpots, actively gardening, per account. Indeed it seems to me to be an obvious incentive to purchase multiple content ID's, which S/E has "common sense" reasons to approve of (it means more $$ in their pocket).

And again, the reason that S/E is giving for the bannings is not because they see multiple gardening mules as an abuse of the system but because they are apparently unable to distinguish between those who garden for their own profit and those who garden for the purposes of RMT. It is not reasonable to expect that the STF, whose primary purpose is to track down and ban RMT, would be unable to make this distinction.

If it is accessable by normal route and not weird workarounds, thats kind of retarded.



Please explain to me how strategically using a mule is abuse? If they were to ban for abuse that would be one thing all together.

But last I checked, having mules to garden is just like gardening on two separate accounts all together, or flat out something as off as using a second char of pling yourself. PLing yourself via secondary account can be considered that if you were to stretch it to gardening, and that is the reason why most people have multiple chars I'd say.

Are you also suggesting people who made mules and used them in bonanza were abusing square's intended systems?

It sucks for people who do this for legitimate reasons that they got banned with the rest of the RMT.

Hopefully the SE STF will learn from the data they gather from this. To differentiate legitimate accounts from RMT ones.

If not then... well you could see this as an opportunity to break away from FFXI and get another vice :)

SE allows us to make storage and crafting mules. They made a vana'diel tribune article about it if I remember correctly. They also know we do it for bonanza marbles. They mentioned it in the most recent census. When nearly 15% of the character population is level 5, obviously there's a lot of people, and a lot of mules, doing this. Were extra characters on accounts meant for this? Who knows? But SE obviously approves of it as they've brought both up and I've never heard of anyone getting banned for either.

So how does it make sense that we can create as many mules as we want for other purposes, but not gardening? Even if you are correct, and SE shares your thoughts about gardening mules, the bigger issue then would be that we aren't given any warning as to what activities are grounds for a ban. Are we supposed to just guess? Is creating 15 inventory storage mules on one account too much? I'm not sure if SE intended for everyone to have such a large inventory. SE only allows one 100 craft per character, though we can have several with multiple characters. Is having five crafts at 100 due to crafting mules cheating? Who knows what SE really approves of and what they don't?

If SE really has a problem with gardening on mules, they need to come out and say it. "Hey guys, we know you garden on mules but we don't like it. Stop pls, or we'll ban you," would be enough. Some people might be upset to hear this, but not quite as upset as they'd be when they try to log in and get a surprise ban. Guessing what SE approves of and what they don't isn't good enough, and banning people without telling anyone it was a bannable beforehand offense would be ridiculous. The fact that people were banned and not told why, and that community members had to piece this together themselves is ridiculous.

I seriously doubt SE disapproves of gardening mules. The way I see it, this was only a way to try and get rid of RMT, though it sounds like they screwed up and hit a wave of innocent gardners. But if by the off chance you are correct (highly unlikely, especially since everyone is being told they've been banned for RMT activity), there would be a ton of things wrong with intentionally banning legitimate players over this without warning.

I'm not familiar with this. If you need hacking programs to enter this village, then I could understand banning for it. If, on the other hand, you can waltz right in through standard methods of travel in game, then I would find banning for it to be ridiculous as well.

/sigh still bant ; ;

So your saying we didn't use common sense by paying SE more money because of a limiting storage space, way to make enough gil to purchase items for our mains. Then your right any logical person would say ok I am done this game is fun but not for that. However obviously we all believed the enjoyment we got out of the game was more than worth it. How were we repaid for this a ban that had no warning, no answer to those caught in the crossfire, and no one to talk to about this. Some have mentioned automation of the STF, if this is the case SE can take a hint from the American Economy when companies used automated means to buy stocks/properties. To Inivis who might not know what happens when you use common sense that machines are infalliable(they have completly failed) Sry for the rant but true common sense would say to listen to the community and have individuals in the community to address such concerns.