Everyone complaining about no action on RMT, please read

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Originally Posted by Eye_Gore

Where is the logic in assuming that they only have 3 people working on it? You have one little piece of evidence as to who's doing what. What info other than the 3 names in the credits do you have? They aren't they only ones. A little digging around SE's website proves this otherwise. People are so quick to assume, and have no idea what is really going on. Assumption is the mother of all f-ups.

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One thing I am aware of, SE looks for rmts using different methods than other Western mmos tend to use. SE uses complex algorithms to look for suspicious behaviors within the game, i.e. selling too many items to a vendor, and their focus from my experience in XI seems to be less on tracking down transactions than the behaviors that rmts use to get the gil that they sell.

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Originally Posted by Havenae

Yep, so instead of 3 RMT spam tells per 30 second interval we'll see 2.

It's not a matter of them not doing anything. It's a matter of giving us tools to make what they're doing more efficient. We KNOW they do try to combat it, but look around. CLEARLY.. It is PAINFULLY OBVIOUS, that it is not enough.

10,800 bans. Do you honestly think that is even remotely close to being within the realm of how many spam accounts there are?

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10,800 accounts means up to 66,400 spam bots created per day. 66,400 divided equally amongst 64 servers would be ~1037.5 spam bots per day. 1037.5 spam bots per day should mean between 43 and 44 new spam bots per hour.

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Originally Posted by Eye_Gore

stuff

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I don't believe I said anything about se only having 3 people working on the team that deals with RMT. The logic is in seeing whatever number of people they do have and the methods they use is obviously insufficient.

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Originally Posted by Havenae

I don't believe I said anything about se only having 3 people working on the team that deals with RMT. The logic is in seeing whatever number of people they do have and the methods they use is obviously insufficient.

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How many people and what method do they use to find the end of a circle?

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Originally Posted by Eye_Gore

How many people and what method do they use to find the end of a circle?

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You can't claim the credits are insufficient evidence unless you can provide evidence that supports your claim... This is how debate works.

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Originally Posted by Taliph

You can't claim the credits are insufficient evidence unless you can provide evidence that supports your claim... This is how debate works.

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I did in another thread.

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Originally Posted by Eye_Gore

I did in another thread.

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You provided a list of employees direct from SE? No? That's what the credits are, so you have to provide evidence with those standards to refute.

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Originally Posted by Taliph

You provided a list of employees direct from SE? No? That's what the credits are, so you have to provide evidence with those standards to refute.

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How many GM's were listed?

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Originally Posted by YukariOro

It's just so time consuming to report it currently that more often than not, I just don't bother anymore and just go on busy instead and I'm sure others do the same. I definitely think making the reporting process simpler, streamlining it, would go a long ways to helping reduce the problem

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The lack of reports because most people won't bother is only one of the problems with the current reporting system. The other is that, by having players fill out all the details, it's possible to lie. As long as it's possible to send a false report, every report needs to be investigated before it can be acted on.

If the process were properly automated, with the software itself pulling the message and sender and all the other details it needs directly from SE's system, then the only investigation needed would be to determine whether that message is indeed a violation of the ToS, something which can generally be seen at a glance.

So it's obvious from our end of the reporting system, which is both cumbersome and falsifiable, that the Task Force's end of that reporting system is also needlessly cumbersome. We have a reporting system where it's both difficult to report spam, and then difficult for SE to act on those reports. It's no wonder that the final action is too minimal or too late to be effective.

They need a streamlined automated reporting system and a full sized team that can have someone always on duty to monitor and respond to those reports (as well as spending the rest of their time investigating suspicious activity, since although spam could be dealt with immediately, some of the cheating bots would still take some effort to reliably identify).

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Originally Posted by Eye_Gore

AS the cash flows to the sellers we will keep having spam. Anything short of disabling all communication except direct contact, will not work. There is always a way. Put in tell filters, they'll use shouts, they already do. Put in level restrictions, they'll just level the bots. Put in friend request restrictions, they alienate new legit players.

No matter what is done there will be a counter-point to it.

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No, the spam won't continue as long as players are willing to buy gil. The spam will continue as long as the spam bots can reach enough of those players that their spam brings in more money than it costs.

Every spam bot costs the gilsellers money. If it gets to spam tens of thousands of players for a week or so before being banned, it will find enough gil buyers to bring in a return on that investment.

If it's banned for its first /tell message and before it's had a chance to send out more than half a dozen others, then it won't find enough gil buyers to bring in a return on that investment.

Note that both of those scenarios end with the spam bot being banned, but just the change in timing means that in one case it was profitable and will keep getting replaced, whereas in the other case it's not profitable and once there are enough that being unprofitable is a clear pattern, they won't be replaced anymore. Gil sellers aren't going to keep spending money on bots that don't bring them back more money.

This is why the efficiency of the reporting and banning process is so important. Bans only work on spam bots if they're immediate.