Gold Sellers

I just wanted to quickly reply and say that gold sellers are the #1 thing that break my immersion in this game. I play on US-Cactuar and I get hit at least once every five minutes, both by Tells and friend requests from spammers.

I've turned off receiving chat notifications because it's faster than blacklisting/reporting each and every individual one. It would be awesome if Square added a "Report Spam" button under the Blacklist option similar to what other MMOs have. This would allow you to report and blacklist someone in one click.

I know that my server, (Shiva), tends to have issues, though I don't feel like it's as bad as other servers, or possibly that it's dying out due to the server being full. Still, if I spend more than just a couple of hours playing, I tend to get at least one or two friend requests from a "Ggatm'com Sellgil" line of players that are pretty obviously RMT accounts. The other night though, I got spammed by three separate accounts from different sites, in less that five minutes. One of which was your standard "/tell" spammer, but the other two sent friend requests. Since SE obviously either can't do anything about these spammers, or won't, the least they could do is give us an option to directly add people to our blacklist while they're still on our friend list as a "pending request". There's nothing more annoying than declining the request, only to realize you can't block the spammer, since you forgot to note down a their name. It's not an issue with "/tell" spam since you can just click to add to blacklist, but with the friend requesting ones, you can't add them to your blacklist until after you decline the request. And if you don't add them to your blacklist, you're left to be annoyed with them a few minutes later when they resend a request....

This is extremely annoying declining rmt friend invite no problem set busy! And I get kicked multiple times while I'm at DF server coz people get offended when I set busy can't even change to normal but oh well that's another problem with DF folks...

For gods sake this is far much worse than rmt tells I have a lot of invites still need to decline them its freaking a lot I have no desire to even stay online even my ls mates ...so much harassment with rmt horrible honestly .

Okay, I'm gonna say it. 41 pages, not one single response from SE, SE Developers, or even a moderator. Just the typical "ignore it and it will go away" mentality of the Japanese. The bots will not go away. In fact, the COMPLETE lack of direction by SE to deal with said bots merely emboldens them to increase their illicit behavior. Half of my blacklist is now those "Ggatm'com Sellgil" bots. I reported a bot used by the gil-selling sites who was mining in Thanalan. Hours later, same bot, same location, still mining. SE response to my complaint? Zero. Nothing. No GM, not one once of anything. You have bots openly shouting in cities, constant spam. Where are SE's GMs? Absent. Since I started playing, the bots, the hackers, and the gil sellers have increased no less than 1000% at minimum. Dozens of websites now spam their bots constantly. At first it was one or two. Now there are dozens. We get this lame, bland "report" about actions taken by SE against illicit trading, gil selling, etc. Out of millions of accounts, they ban a handful. Yet, they refuse to address the root cause of the problem, the websites themselves, and the people who BUY their gil. If proven to have made illicit purchases, that account of both seller, and purchaser, should be permanently banned. Kill the roots, the plant dies. Cut a few leaves, it will still grow. The roots are the people who support these sites, who buy their gil. The leaves are the bots.

For all your legitimate players, who are trying to enjoy what is otherwise a great game, SE's utter and complete lack of consideration for us is infuriating. The millions of us who play, pay monthly, and do the game as it's meant to be done, we are cast off, ignored and otherwise treated with contempt, because we dare speak up about the bots, hackers, and gil sellers. I think SE needs to re-evaluate it's business practices. I think SE needs to start caring about the player base. I think SE needs to stop pissing us off.

I have blacklisted over 200 gilsellers...

Every now and then I go through my list and notice that some of the accounts have been [Deleted], but after removing those I quickly fill the Blist up again.

These days I strictly reserve the Blist for the ones that send friend requests. I find them the most annoying. But yes, I wish something would be done about this. Even an increase in the amount of Blist slots would be a welcome "temporary fix" at this point.

Well, the fact it takes SEVEN separate steps to blacklist one of those friendbots. SEVEN. They request. You decline. scroll down, click on them, decline AGAIN. Then find their name in your chat log. Click on it, and THEN blacklist them. Seriously idiotic. If you decline it, why the hell should you have to decline it again?

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Originally Posted by moudoka

Well, the fact it takes SEVEN separate steps to blacklist one of those friendbots. SEVEN. They request. You decline. scroll down, click on them, decline AGAIN. Then find their name in your chat log. Click on it, and THEN blacklist them. Seriously idiotic. If you decline it, why the hell should you have to decline it again?

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It's an even bigger problem if you don't have them in your chat log. You have to write down their name, then manually enter it into the "Add to Blacklist" page. Why not just give us the option to directly add someone from our friend list/friend request list to our blacklist? Give a confirmation message after clicking "add to blacklist" to be certain, but there's no reason we have to remove them and completely decline their request before we can blacklist them....

Square Enix I hereby volunteer to be an ingame GM on Sargatanas. Give me the power to silence RMT in regular chats and tells. Not ban, just silence them. Then I would compile a list of all names silenced and send a report directly to an appointed member of SE.
I would also ask that we ALL be allowed to post the names/servers and full messages of any RMT HERE in a special forum dedicated to exposing RMT.

That would just load up the specific forum/topic with at least 50 replies a minute. They should just actively ban the entire accounts of the RMT bots as soon as they make their first message. And I mean ban those accounts completely, not being able to retrieve them ever again. Either that, or sue the RMTers for Stalking/Harassment. There's gotta be some kind of lawsuit we can throw at them.

nevermind lalahugs .. <3

I don't know if the other servers are having this problem but on NA Excalibur I'm constantly being harassed with friend requests and tells from sellers. I've reported 6 this morning before I head to work and I've had another friend request from the same seller that I reported and SE said they'd dealt with.

My blacklist is already full and it feels as though SE aren't doing enough to stop this

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Originally Posted by Gamer3427

It's an even bigger problem if you don't have them in your chat log. You have to write down their name, then manually enter it into the "Add to Blacklist" page. Why not just give us the option to directly add someone from our friend list/friend request list to our blacklist? Give a confirmation message after clicking "add to blacklist" to be certain, but there's no reason we have to remove them and completely decline their request before we can blacklist them....

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But declining the friend request should put them in your chat log. It generates a messsage.

This is still an issue on Midgardsormr. So many gilsellers whispering me and throwing friend requests my way, it's ridiculous. Something needs to be done!

So...instead of addressing the problem, they delete my post of a blacklist FULL of those "friend bots" from the same website. Good job, punish the legit players, while allowing the bots to run rampant and free.

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Originally Posted by moudoka

So...instead of addressing the problem, they delete my post of a blacklist FULL of those "friend bots" from the same website. Good job, punish the legit players, while allowing the bots to run rampant and free.

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The "Technical support" forum is monitored for the rules a LOT closer than general discussion is. My post earlier was also deleted, for expressing a negative view of SE. Its okay, it was rule breaking when I looked at the rules again.

However, posting of screenshots with usernames in it has always been deleted on the forums, whether for RMT or otherwise. I mean, even "good" posts with a screenshot of people mandervilling and such, if it has usernames in it, gets deleted.

Well naturally, we can't show off the problem. That would be bad! -_-;

Two toggle options.
1. Accept friend requests on/off
2. Accept tells only from friends/FC/LS mates on/off (ok, I see this could be a set of three options, but still)

That's all that is needed. Can it really be that hard for SE to implement such a thing?

I have to set myself to busy to stop all unwanted tells and friend requests but I shouldn't have to do that every time I log on. Its worse than World of Warcraft and thats saying something

i find it funny that this topic is in the being addressed/reviewed section of the forum, when clearly nothing is being done about the problem. u want proof. right now on the Cactuar server, in Ul'dah steps pf thal there is a gold seller bot near the market board broadcasting his message every 20-30 seconds. I reported the bot when i first saw it 40 hours ago. its still in the exact same spot it was then. i've seen it jump on occasion to keep from being logged due to being afk.

dealing with the gold sellers isnt a difficult task. the people in charge of doing so are just lazy. the gold sellers all come from the same places. i havent seen more than 15 sources on cactuar.
possible permanent actions:
IP range ban, ban their DNS Number, or their MAC address

The RMT Spammers have adopted new tactics to avoid SE's attempts to ban them, so why isn't SE adapting their existing procedures to account for these? GMs are telling players to blacklist, that the bots are only used one or twice then abandoned, it's really getting on a lot of people's nerves, and it's increasing.

Current observed tactics;

1. /tell spam
2. /tell snipe (spam then immediately logout before a /blist can be effected)
3. /shout
4. /say in key areas of starter zones
5. Creating bots with RMT websites as the name and spamming friend requests (no /tell associated)
6. /tell spam with friend request
7. Random friend requests from bots (no /tell associated)
8. /tell bombardment from several bots

Now the only one that we can effectively combat is the sixth one, which I've posted a macro for on these forums several times. However, now they've basically found a way around it and are more harassing than normal, players are just simply logging in and setting their status to busy straight up, which is killing the social aspect of the game.

Can one of the devs please show us that our cries aren't falling on deaf ears?

It is starting to irk me how much time I have to spend dealing with this.

Adding sellers to my blacklist... Deleting old sellers from the blacklist because I KNOW that the 200 limit will fill up at this rate... Declining friend request from sellers, and then having to click decline a second time on the friends list?! Why does the request stay there after I decline once?

Apparently a ban system based on stopping level 1s from sending out mass tells and friend requests advertising doesn't work. How about a SE employee just makes a character of their own and bans the people that will surely advertise to them?

This is ridiculous. I stop and start playing off and on and each time I come back the gilsellers are just as bad, if not worse.

The spammers seem to have kicked it up a notch recently as well. Maybe in prep for the expansion. They are far more brazen about it as well, open shouts everywhere, bots doing all their conversions right at the mb in limsa, constant friend requests. It almost make me want SE to remove the high level crafted gear and/or materia from the game...

Ya this is ridiculous SE needs to do more. The spamming has been going on since the game launched. I don't care how you guys do it just do something to curb the gil spam.

Still getting spammed... But does anyone else think it's kinda adorable that they are calling us "bro" now? They are learning our language! D:

Give us the insta report system by right clicking of the actual spammer's line please.

I would really love to see something done about the spamming, i keep getting non stop tells from gil vendors when ever i am playing. They seem to keep creating an armada of level 1 characters to mass spam people, its pointless to even blacklist them since they keep recreating new ones in a daily basis. A level limit to send tells would be nice to discourage them, there could also be an exception so new characters can only send tells to their other free company members or friends till a certain level.

Could be sorted so easily, just add a blacklist for character naming, majority of bots that have pestered me are like WTS*** or WTb***

The amount of spam shouts whispers and friend request is enormous. I am getting one or more of each every few minutes. Hey, Square-Enix, you know what makes a game fun to play? not the rampant abuse of the built in social systems that's for sure.

I think the best way to serve the customers is to allow a user configurable filter. Base allowable whispers and shouts on level and friends lists. Base the filter settings for friend requests on level.

Of course the solutions are easy to think of and relatively easy to implement. If anyone thinks that SE have no idea of how to relieve their paying customers from the annoyance caused by gil sellers then they are delusional. I would venture a guess that the prevalence of openly operating gil sellers is purposely being ignored. The reason for this could very well be that SE development staff and management are making personal profits from the monetization of game content. What proof is there for this suspected collusion? The proof is in the complete lack of action on the part of SE to curtail the annoyance to the players.

So that's my two cents on the spam and gil selling issue, I have another few cents to add. but i'd like SE to take seriously the spam issues and implement a fix.

This has been a problem for years and nothing new has been done. The only solution at this point is for players to quit subbing in mass and cite RMT as why. When the amount of profit SE loses from players quitting exceeds the profit made by gilsellers buying accounts they will finally care enough to take real action.

You can report them ingame, however, if you have suggestions on how to help stop them, they will just get you to post on this forum.

Here are some ways to stop the RMT from posting ingame on the chat menu. Block any text that has a ".com", ". com", "website", "com", "$", and so on with in each string. Just look at what has expired from the rmt postings to get even more ways to block it.

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Originally Posted by Paiden

Here are some ways to stop the RMT from posting ingame on the chat menu. Block any text that has a ".com", ". com", "website", "com", "$", and so on with in each string. Just look at what has expired from the rmt postings to get even more ways to block it.

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That's not ideal. What if someone was posting a link to these forums discussing how to block spam? Their post would be blocked lol. How ironic.

The RMT spammers are able to easily get around any filters that are added. No matter how many filters you add, they will find ways around them. They can replace .com with "dot com" and just not use a dollar sign.

I don't know if they put filters in to limit who can yell/shout in zones but I see a lot less spam than when I last played last year. And the /busy option almost makes it feel as though the sellers aren't in the game.

I haven't read the thread but I'm sure it's been mentioned many times: a way to right-click and simultaneously report and block a character would be very nice to have.

And if any of you have bought gold you really shouldn't bother complaining in this thread as you are part of the problem...

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Originally Posted by Grim_Stabberson

This has been a problem for years and nothing new has been done. The only solution at this point is for players to quit subbing in mass and cite RMT as why. When the amount of profit SE loses from players quitting exceeds the profit made by gilsellers buying accounts they will finally care enough to take real action.

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RMT spam and their presence in general, plus their monopoly of some areas of the auction house, was the sole reason I stopped playing FFXI. I absolutely loved that game, but RMT ruined it for me. I'm hoping the same thing doesn't happen here.

Why don't they just limit the amount of messages a character can send in a certain amount of time? Or have some sort of system in place that automatically flags accounts that send out tons of messages?
Not only is it incredibly cumbersome to report spammers, there's also a limit as to how many people you can report in a certain amount of time.
**Bots sending out spam messages to an entire server in the span of a few minutes? Sure no problem.
**Players taking time to report 4+ spammers in a less than 30 minute period? Apparently not okay.

Easy resolution. 8 GMs spend 1 hour per server, each day, as anonymous, regular player characters. They monitor chat, and upon receiving /tells, seeing /shouts, /yells, or /s chats advertising gil selling sites they simply immediately ban the account associated with the characters promoting RMT. After the RMT receive enough bans to no longer make selling gil on FFXIV worth their time and money, hopefully they will leave the game entirely. Being that this allows an actual SE employee to see, with their own eyes, the breach of ToS by the RMT, I see no reason why the immediate banning of the accounts associated should be an issue. A right-click report option is also desperately needed. Glad to see this in the Being Addressed/Currently Reviewing portion of the forums! Thank you SE for your attention to the issue!!!!

I really hop this gets a serious eye...I think its more important then SE knows@

Tera has whisper lock until level 5 general cap is also 5 and gobal was 15+ i wish they had this for FF because trying to get in the game where people keep making bots is horrible cant play with my friends because of bot making over fills the world

Here is why chat filters are perpetually broken, I'll censor out the website itself but you'll see what I mean:

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>> ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥【【3ш.***********.℃0㎡】♥♥♥♥♥10000K+1000kBonus=40$♥, Delivery in 10mins,items,secure and best price,Good luck♥♥* * * * * * * * * * * *.℃0㎡♥♥ re8_

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So here's the analysis:
2 Greater-Than Sign U+003E
1 Space
19 ASCII hearts (003) or Black Heart Suit U+2665
2 Left Black Lenticular Bracket U+3010
1 3
1 Cyrillic Small Letter Sha U+0448 (looks like a W)
1 period
I censored out the website itself
1 period
1 Degree Celsius U+2103
1 0
1 Square M Squared U+33A1 (aka square meters)
1 Right Black Lenticular Bracket U+3011
5 ASCII hearts (003) or Black Heart Suit U+2665
A stupid price and Dollar value
1 ASCII heart (003) or Black Heart Suit U+2665
a bunch of bullshit
2 ASCII hearts (003) or Black Heart Suit U+2665
The website again padded with spaces in between each letter
1 period
1 Degree Celsius U+2103
1 0
1 Square M Squared U+33A1 (aka square meters)
2 ASCII hearts (003) or Black Heart Suit U+2665
4 randomly picked characters to bypass generic "repeat messages" throttles

The point of the hearts (sometimes they pick other characters, like there is no shortage of them) is to pad out the messages. Bots are always looking for ways to break the chat filters, so unless SE wants to inconvenience everyone who doesn't speak English by stripping all non-ASCII characters, there's no real mechanism for solving this short of forcing all players to use the auto-translate at low levels.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

The point of the hearts (sometimes they pick other characters, like there is no shortage of them) is to pad out the messages. Bots are always looking for ways to break the chat filters, so unless SE wants to inconvenience everyone who doesn't speak English by stripping all non-ASCII characters, there's no real mechanism for solving this short of forcing all players to use the auto-translate at low levels.

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I'm not sure even that would work... i saw a lvl 50 blackmage sitting around in uldah doing gold sell spam...

Remove all special characters that aren't letters belonging to languages supported by official clients?

All languages can be transliterated into "English" alphabet and English, French, German alphabet contains most letters used in most of the game's reach.

Most games don't support Russian for example. Yet here I can use Cyrillic if I want. And those hearts and "children's alphabet blocks" characters and the like serve no purpose.

I'd like to see a squelch as well on people that spam more than a couple lines too. ASCII art in chat is obnoxious.