An Easier way to report Gil Sellers/RMT!?

I have another thought, though it would be tricky to do I guess, have a shared server blacklist for RMT spammers. Though I can see that being abused so it probably will not happen :/

Hi OlyverW,

Long lists of in-game and network security
suggestions from customers are being ignored.

Given that FFXIV is all about do something, then get rewarded ...

:eek:#1 - Reward players who report spam-bots, battle-bots,
and gathering bots. Consider gil-rewards, atma-rewards,
sol-tomes rewards, etc. Players who report bots are rewarded
as soon as gamemaster deletes the bot owner's account.
Safeguard real players from accidental deletion.

:eek: #2 - Reward the Gamemasters. Compensate gamemasters
via Salary plus commission or bonus for number of bot-owner accounts
deleted/banned per work shift.

Do gamemasters ever read these forum messages?

For both suggestions above to succeed, Square Enix would have to
switch from the "wait for weeks or months for the next ban wave," to
immediate banning of bot owners and employees of the giant
RMT criminal corporations.

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Originally Posted by SCUBA_Instr

IV is all about do something, then get rewarded ...

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Gotta disagree with this, though your heart's in the right place.

For player rewards: If you start providing in-game rewards for submitting reports, it creates a metagaming situation that players will look to exploit for an advantage rather than simply squash a massive irritant. It's a bad route to go down, as it devalues the actual in-game means by which these things are meant to be earned (whether or not those means are fair/balanced is it's own, entirely separate debate). Personally, having an upfront, easy way to submit a report knowing that a GM will see it and will take action is vindication enough.

For GM rewards: I speak from intimate familiarity here when I say that crushing exploiters, bots, spammers, and overly abusive players through a dedicated reporting system through which the details are easily obtained and reviewed for fairness' sake is it's own satisfaction. Really, it's just doing one's job. Reason I say this: I'm a GM for a different game.

The biggest misgiving I have about this aspect of the job is that I can't satisfy players of the game I work for by describing exactly how we've laid down the law after a report is received. It's for very real ethical concerns regarding privacy, even though it has the downside of making players think that reports aren't being taken seriously. They are. Oh, they are.

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Originally Posted by Mahri

The biggest misgiving I have about this aspect of the job is that I can't satisfy players of the game I work for by describing exactly how we've laid down the law after a report is received. It's for very real ethical concerns regarding privacy, even though it has the downside of making players think that reports aren't being taken seriously. They are. Oh, they are.

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But, now all we know is that they are taken seriously in ANOTHER game... we are still in the dark on THIS one. :(

I, myself have reported the exact same bot in the exact same location for about half a year or more. I've even made a point of including what I felt was the key phrase of "interfering with my gameplay" (it actually was. the bot auto-targeted some mobs I had to kill for a story quest and robbed me of the [admittedly few] exp I would've gotten from them.) Did this multiple times for my alts. And of course, the bot is still there.

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Originally Posted by Sadana

But, now all we know is that they are taken seriously in ANOTHER game... we are still in the dark on THIS one. :(

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This is true, and it's a shame. I have a sneaking suspicion that the dev and community teams for FFXIV have deliberately chosen not to make a buzz about it. It's understandable, as obviously you want to talk about the good stuff in your game and not make a huge deal of things like this, but ultimately this choice could end up doing more harm than good.

It's a problem that impacts every single side of things. Players deal with the constant irritant of that spam. The spam itself, more often than not, comes from characters on hacked accounts -- nothing illustrates the flagrantly parasitic nature of RMT more than this fact. RMT doesn't tread through new account after new account to do this. That's not cost-effective when there are so many ways to steal login info via the internet, a danger of which many people are still unfortunately unaware.

I think the community would welcome more transparency and education over just what the real deal with RMT is, to be provided with advice in staying safe and secure, and to be given easier tools to help squash it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sadana

But, now all we know is that they are taken seriously in ANOTHER game... we are still in the dark on THIS one. :(

I, myself have reported the exact same bot in the exact same location for about half a year or more. I've even made a point of including what I felt was the key phrase of "interfering with my gameplay" (it actually was. the bot auto-targeted some mobs I had to kill for a story quest and robbed me of the [admittedly few] exp I would've gotten from them.) Did this multiple times for my alts. And of course, the bot is still there.

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This strikes me as off. not only do you still gain xp from mobs that have been tagged by others, just not materials, but if a mob was a part of a quest, if another player tries to attack it, they receive the message "this target is a part of another players duty, and cannot be harmed." this prevents just this exact thing.

I have long viewed RMT bots as a necessary evil to dealing with the crushing economic mechanics SE has put on crafting. They single-handedly prevent the shards that we all use in huge amount from skyrocketing, by being the lone devices with the sheer manpower to satisfy our demands. Look at shard prices right after a ban wave. they tend to quadruple in price for about a week, until the bots can repopulate themselves. this makes crafting thoroughly unprofitable for that entire week, and devalues an entire side of the game.

as far as tell spammers, and friend request spammers, yes they are annoying, and we need a way to manually set up our own spam filters, hopefully by acount, but overall they arent quite detrimental enough to my gameplay that I feel the need to rant about it.

A couple things I have noticed, rmt spammers never seem to hit you twice anymore, which means SE is likely getting them down before they can. So I have completely stopped blacklisting /tell spammers since either I am on the very tail end of their lists or they are getting taken down quickly so no need to fill my blist with bots and can reserve slots for annoying but real players.

Also when I do report bots I do not get a confirmation message that the message was sent anymore, nor do I get an auto-reply. I have reported many but that just started last week. Not sure if my msgs are even getting to SE anymore. And there has been a resurgence of underground bots not only gathering but farming mobs and experiencing. I have seen this in areas like the shroud where mob names turn purple and they are killed but no one is there. I target the mob which links me to the bot allowing me to target them and get their names, examine them and so on. I sent reports but still no confirmations or auto-replies.

Idk maybe I just reported so many they don't want to hear from me anymore.

1. When someone is reported via the new right click function you add, log the last few number of lines of text they send.
2. When someone gets reported X number of times in Y number of minutes, lock their tell, shout, etc...
3. Put a function in help that says "I got locked, please unlock me".
4. When Help desk gets a report for unlocking, check their logs and see if they are a RMT. If so ignore the request and put a little 'correct' indicator on their ban.
5. If they were banned by mistake, put a little 'wrong' indicator next to their ban.
6. Have the system automatically adjust the X number of reports over Y number of minutes to minimize false bans and maximize correct bans using a stupid simple classification algorithm that anyone that has taken intro to computer programming could write in about 1 hour.

This is NOT hard. Spam filters do this stuff all the time. Unless Square is hiring its programmers from a highschool coop program they should be able to fix this.

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

A couple things I have noticed, rmt spammers never seem to hit you twice anymore, which means SE is likely getting them down before they can. So I have completely stopped blacklisting /tell spammers since either I am on the very tail end of their lists or they are getting taken down quickly so no need to fill my blist with bots and can reserve slots for annoying but real players.

Also when I do report bots I do not get a confirmation message that the message was sent anymore, nor do I get an auto-reply. I have reported many but that just started last week. Not sure if my msgs are even getting to SE anymore. And there has been a resurgence of underground bots not only gathering but farming mobs and experiencing. I have seen this in areas like the shroud where mob names turn purple and they are killed but no one is there. I target the mob which links me to the bot allowing me to target them and get their names, examine them and so on. I sent reports but still no confirmations or auto-replies.

Idk maybe I just reported so many they don't want to hear from me anymore.

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The reason why RMT don't typically spam you repeatedly under the same character name isn't because SE suddenly snuffed them out in a blink of an eye. It's because a while back they implemented a cap on how many /tell messages a player can send in a period of time. So the RMT have to send so many, then log out and back in with an alt character and spam some more in a repeating cycle. I have had the same ones message me repeatedly in the same day, but cause they cycle through all the alts to their account it takes a while before I see that name appear again. But it does still happen.

Unfortunately the cap kinda backfired for us. Instead of getting spammed a dozen times by the same character which was easily backlisted, now i have to blacklist and report the same amount of messages but for individual names and its really filled the blacklist up in a big hurry. Unfortunately it's something that ended up inconveniencing the players just as much as the RMT.

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Originally Posted by Bluejay

1. When someone is reported via the new right click function you add, log the last few number of lines of text they send.
2. When someone gets reported X number of times in Y number of minutes, lock their tell, shout, etc...

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Auto-squelching can work, though it's most effective when the spam is coming through global channels rather than /tell, and it's a careful line to tread. That threshold has to be kept rather large (like, a whole lot of reports in very very few minutes) to avoid too many false positives, which are inevitable regardless, and the proper addressing of such has to be coordinated carefully on the GM side to make sure nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

See, though...I'm really confident that SE could do that if taken to task on it. The development and release aspect of this game is absolutely stellar in how smartly it's been planned, something that any other MMO developer should look to and take inspiration by. I do not doubt that they could coordinate effective and efficient ticket handling alongside this sort of system.