I find the situation unnerving. The emergency maint fixed the problem but from what we’ve seen before, seems like an ongoing issue. Look what happened to Fresh Finds. I personally right now don’t feel comfortable buying/trading even if that’s a smaller chance than before.

I’m sure appeals will go through for the innocent and I’ll hear from those people in game but right now an instaban and no customer service for their problem is too high of a risk. I’m reserving judgment for now because this is all new but my initial reaction is “that doesn’t sound professional”. Item exploit isn’t new to games, big cases where people are buying a lot of product would face higher punishment but the average joe who bought 1-2 things would just have their illegal items deleted with no reimbursement, which was fair. Here it seems like a one size fits all approach.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

I'm going to be totally honest about those getting banned for directly using RMT.

I think it's sad that people get so absorbed in the lobbies and café that they stop playing the game and become so obsessed with using it as a doll maker that they're willing to invest in their own downfall. It's like a full-blown addiction. The same goes for the weirdos that use their PQs for ERP. Why not just filter all of that into a place like Second Life? You can do literally all of that with a lot more freedom and without any consequences. Nobody is going to feel sorry for someone for self-sabotaging in a game.

@ApollosAmour

“I find it sad people don’t play the game the same way I do”

I happily play the game same as you do but people that like talking to their friends in the lobby and showing off a new look are having just as much fun as we are. Don’t you find that a little judgmental? I personally loathe Second Life, maybe they do too. They don’t want to dress up in SL, they want to in this game.

@Milk I don't really mean it like that. A big part of the game is being social and all, and the spaces do exist. I mean when lobby lounging is prioritized to the point where it becomes toxic. Like these people RMTing for fashion or the ERPers like I mentioned. It's sad when they're willing to sabotage their accounts to fuel a budding addiction or to feed an obsession.

It just makes more sense in my opinion to migrate toward a space where you can do all of that without any problem. People spend a ton on fashion in SL and run sex sims and the like and it's commonplace. And more versatile as well.

My thing is.. why would you buy currency for PSO 2.. like.. for what >.>

If you learn to affix, you’re set. I’ll be completely honest here. The only and only game I ever spent real life money on, was Final Fantasy 11. Probably 15 years ago however. But I was a teen, with my grocery bagging job and FFXI For like 8 years. That game at the time made it an absolutely necessity to pay Gil or you would never amount to anything. And it made sense to my teenage self.

But PSO2?? They hand you the best weapons just by playing it and doing runs. You have the option without spending a dime tbh. Sure premium is a must for me but still. This game of all games makes no sense to me why you’d ever need to spend real money on it.

I mean my wife plays that Elder Scrolls Online game and their guild leader has to pay real life money to keep their guild in prime selling locations in the game. Apparently that’s a known practice. But even there the way the game it setup makes sense. But PSO? Wtf why? If you can augment nothing else matters. There’s not much that a behind a content wall that’s hard to break through. Nothing.. so the only thing people would want for meseta is emotes and clothes?? You’re going to risk, and get, your account banned to dance in the lobby in waitu clothes??? I can’t wrap my head around that one.

@ApollosAmour

I understand your point a bit better. I’ve luckily not run into any ERPers on this game but it’s been a big problem in others. I had to lock my house on ffxiv because people were ERPing in it. anyways, those platforms may be better but for some reason they like this game. People are impatient and want what they want now, be it cosmetics or fancy gear, it’s unfortunately never going to change.

Even games that allow you to outright buy their currency in game still have gold spam and people pay it because they don’t like the official company’s conversion rate. They want 100m for a nickel. I’m really not sure what the company can do to be honest.

@Cult people want to make their dream waifus and all that crap. I personally only care about getting male cast parts and selling all that other stuff specially those revealing cloths people buy it at a high price.

@Milk I've never run into ERP once in my 6 years of FFXIV, even when i was visiting balmung quicksand.

@Milk said in Why are y'all surprised you got banned?:

Even games that allow you to outright buy their currency in game still have gold spam and people pay it because they don’t like the official company’s conversion rate. They want 100m for a nickel. I’m really not sure what the company can do to be honest.

Generally speaking there isn't much to be done, unless trading is disabled for everyone (and even with that, players can buy bots to farm currency on their own) or GMs proactively patrol players (something that costs much more money than doing ban waves with semi-automated log parsing).

Games selling currency will always have higher rates than black market and they end up getting the p2w stigma too, its a double loss for the IP.

Generally speaking, RMT is a snake that bites its own tail: market players (wrongfully) set their prices according to black market's rates (even with legal currency), players that do buy illegal currency fund gold sellers that in turn can lower their prices leading market players to rise theirs, rinse and repeat.

In this vicious circle, eventually the average joe will end up being cut out from a part of the market, be it rare items, required equipment or vanity items (like in pso2) and many may quit over that or give in to RMT.

One recent prime example was Maplestory 2, with (top) guilds selling dungeons runs to newbies/lazy people for prices that only who bought gold could afford.

At the end of the day, everyone partaking, directly or indirectly, in RMT is ruining the game for themselves and for everyone else.

@ZeeHero9271

That’s lucky! I’ve been playing since launch on Gilgamesh. They don’t usually do it out in the open(though once a couple did and my goofy husband ran over and did his god awful lalafell laugh in between them to break it up in Limsa), but my beautiful private house with my hot tub? That was more than one occurrence, so I lock it. I guess it’s polite they found someplace private but errr...leave my house out of it? There is also two “strip club” public houses on our server they could have gone to which host parties.

@condor

You’re right and it runs through the game like a venom. We don’t want a game where only the wealthy can play and where crooks control everything, it feels like it’s spiraling out of control a bit.

I do think the vast majority of the banned users are guilty and they deserve their ban, what I’m worried about is accidental purchasers. Buying from a generated code name isn’t a crime and there are people new to MMO’s period. I don’t feel a player who bought one thing is intentionally being malicious and I don’t think they deserve a permanent ban. A temp ban with their item deleted, yes. The company doesn’t seem like it has enough hands for that so they’re sticking to a one size fits all approach to doling out punishment.

I don’t know how to make a game fair for people anymore, RIFT had a problem so bad you had to spend $ to use the marketplace or mailbox at all so they could weed out bots, all it did was chase good players away who couldn’t spend money and the population shrank.

GW2 allows you to trade gold and money, the conversion rate makes it so you can’t easily whale so once again they deal with illegal RMT as well because people always want it cheaper.

Any drastic actions scare new players away and no action pisses off the loyal playerbase, it’s such a fine line.

@Milk Lucky? really? I doubt it, given my reliably awful luck all my life in everything. Maybe the problem is your server, Gilgamesh has a very bad rep.

I've played on Coeurl, Jenova, and Siren, not in that order but I've moved around a bit in my years there. Currently on Siren.

@ZeeHero9271

Yeah both servers I played had a bad rep. Mateus and Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is home of the “git gud” tryharder guilds, that’s what we’re known for. I love my dumb community though, they’re colorful characters.

I do have alts on Siren, it was a server my guild was considering when we were tempted to move due to Gilga being locked for months and it turning into a ghost town for a while, but it’s bright and bustling again. Siren seemed nice but Gilga is home.

I've never had issues with ERP from Mateus, but I've probably met more jackasses personality wise from Mateus than Gilga.

That's kinda surprising, since Mateus is the unofficial RP overflow server for when Balmung (the unofficial RP server) is full. But ERP's everywhere regardless of your server, sometimes people from other servers will even server-hop to advertise their ERP across their datacenter.

@Akonyl

Yeah Mateus didn’t really have an identity back when I played it at launch but it became Balmung Lite when Balmung was closed for so long.