Losing the RMT spam war SE?

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Originally Posted by kyuven

The only reason RMTs keep "winning" is because people keep visiting their sites and getting keyloggers on their computers, thus giving them more CCs/accounts to use for more spamming and gold to sell.
If a company would actually educate their playerbase on what RMTers actually are and do, then the numbers would drop drastically.
You could probably mitigate more RMT bots coming into existence by forcing your clientele to watch a 5 minute video on what RMTers are and how to stop them than by mass banning bots that get replaced in 5 minutes because people are too stupid to stop visiting these sites in the first place.
Just looking at this thread is more than enough evidence that people really don't grasp how RMTers actually work.

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"Education" totally worked for fixing professional sports' doping problem.

Just saying.

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Originally Posted by Bishop81

"Education" totally worked for fixing professional sports' doping problem.

Just saying.

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It really couldn't make the system any worse. And there's a world of difference between injecting cow hormones into your butt and visiting a website.

We are not asking for a miracle and SE to suddenly ban 100% of spam bots within 0.5 seconds, all we want is some control over OUR chat box. Simple filters would work

Allow tells from linked people (FC/LS's)
Allow tells from friends list (friends list...)
Allow tells from level 10 or below characters

Simple filters like that, on by default so you can receive tells from everyone, or, you can block /tells from people you don't know or have no connection to.

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Originally Posted by kyuven

It really couldn't make the system any worse.

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Fair enough.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/08/15/f...-mmo-industry/
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/UnSub/02...dit-Card-Fraud
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...ts.php?print=1

Talk about combating RMT and credit card fraud, if you think just banning accounts is causing RMT to lose RL money then they probably wouldn't be in business.

+1 million for account wide black list.

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Originally Posted by Lexxuk

Allow tells from linked people (FC/LS's)
Allow tells from friends list (friends list...)
Allow tells from level 10 or below characters

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I've said this before but this will not STOP RMTers, just force them to change tactics.
Can't send tells with a character under lvl 10? They level their bots to 11.
Friends list? They already throw out spam friend invites.
FC/LS? See friend invites.

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Originally Posted by kyuven

I've said this before but this will not STOP RMTers, just force them to change tactics.
Can't send tells with a character under lvl 10? They level their bots to 11.
Friends list? They already throw out spam friend invites.
FC/LS? See friend invites.

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not even counting that some RMT even go all the way of behaving normally the time to enter an established FC, then bot the crap out of the game, putting the shame on the FC rather than on their industry.

The amount of tells I get have increased so much since last summer. Stopped playing July/14 was getting maybe 4 tells a day, Came back in Jan/15 maybe like 6-10/day. Now its ridiculous, Spending more time outside of dungeons may be the issue I'm having now. Today alone in 6hrs I added 19 ppl to my black list..... Crazy.

I don't know what the filter FFXI used but Yoshida's team should try it. That or give us the option to turn tells on and off. I've also noticed that RMTs have gotten smarter with their choice of names, Use to be random letters, Now it seems like legit players sending me tells.

SoE, or rather Day Break Games now, has a very minimal amount of RMT activity. granted they are a more experienced company, and their games have all mostly been out much longer then this one.

at any rate, all i really want to see is SE actually say something. i just want to see SE say that they are ever constantly trying to improve the situation. but all i ever see is action taken once per week. and yes... whoever said they take action more then once per week, they don't. SE already said it themselves like a year ago. they will only take action once per week and collectively issue punishment for illicit activities. i don't know where the post is, but a red name most certainly said it.

all we need is some reassurance that they aren't just repeating the same thing over-an-over. that they are planning something, or will try something new.

i get spammed with tons of RMT I stopped black listing them. They just make a new char and respam me 10 seconds after...

Hate you'all who buy from RMT :(

I wish SE banned any player who make deals with them permanently, but they probably dont want to lose that potential sub... Sigh :(

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Originally Posted by Kuwagami

*snip*

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Heres the problem; you cant cure stupid. Its like keeping your child from crawling off a cliff. So the best thing you can do is prevent it.

Hate to say it, but I think there are the some ideas from other games that would work fairly swimmingly if SE actually wants to get rid of Gil Sellers.

EQ2 has a setup where it filters Tells that constitute as spam, I dunno the full elaboration of this feature, but in conjunction with the Mail and Broker restrictions on free accounts they have literally abolished Plat Sellers.

Rift also has mysteriously lost a significant amount of their currency sellers; owing partly to the implementation of REX as well as a severe crackdown on...Mailing and Broker services!

You get where I'm going with this, correct?

Two things can be done to prevent it far more readily since Bans/Deletions don't seem to be doing much at all. We need to make it significantly more costly for RMT to operate on our servers.

--Require finishing the Level 20 Main Scenario quest to use the Marketboard, Trade only allowed with Friends or Free Company members until that point as well.
--Accounts flagged via player report for tell spam or suspicious activity (I.E. these weird 99 stacks of Tin Ores/Bat Wings for 1 gil apiece on broker) will have Mail, Marketboard, and /tell functions disabled pending an investigation.

This would more effectively cripple the RMT because it would make the players more obvious. The second one might require some player policing, but it is still more useful than how we're going about it now -- people can't report fast enough to counteract the remake-and-spam again tactics of the RMTers. Just an idea though.

http://media.giphy.com/media/128UMaujdjX7Pi/giphy.gif

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Originally Posted by Lexxuk

We are not asking for a miracle and SE to suddenly ban 100% of spam bots within 0.5 seconds, all we want is some control over OUR chat box. Simple filters would work

Allow tells from linked people (FC/LS's)
Allow tells from friends list (friends list...)
Allow tells from level 10 or below characters

Simple filters like that, on by default so you can receive tells from everyone, or, you can block /tells from people you don't know or have no connection to.

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The best solution I found that's available is to shut off the /tell channel. The game became much better without it.

Here on Balmung I have no clue what you are talking about.

Remember, the only reason we still have this issue is because there are people too lazy, too apathetic, too selfish to give a crap and willingly buy in-game currencies from RMT service providers.

Ever since launch I have suggested that the team implement a reporting feature similar to what WoW has: right click the offender's name (maybe have options such as report for spam, report for harassment violations), select "Report Spam" and it not only takes a "screen shot" and sends it off in the report, but it also flags the account for investigation and mutes the reported character for as long as you are logged onto the character that you made the report with. This not only clears up our blacklists & helps us customers retain some sense of sanity.

I also think that the team should become harsher when dealing with those who buy from RMT service providers. These people are the only reason why EVERY SINGLE MMO STILL HAS RMT SPAM TO THIS DAY. They should be banned, and I know that some do. And those of us, whom are victims of RMT users, the worst that we would get would have the illicit gil (that we unknowingly gained from an RMT buyer) would have that gil confiscated. Sure, it sucks to lose it, but it's better than being banned. The lesser of the two evils, you could say.

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Originally Posted by Zohar_Lahar

The best solution I found that's available is to shut off the /tell channel. The game became much better without it.

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I have done, but I'm a 4 star crafter. When my friends want something crafted, they can't send me a /tell because I'm /busy. When I go into dungeons, I can't say I'm ready on the ready check. Going /busy is a terrible solution in a social game, I've missed talking to friends who only come on for a short while because I'm /busy and they can't say "hey there". It is however the only "solution" SE have given us, and until SE give us a proper solution, we're going to get more spam tells and from more companies.

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Originally Posted by BLaCKnBLu3B3RRY

taking action ONCE PER WEEK is hugely ineffective. again... unless something changes, we will quite literally never see even a slightest decline in RMT activity.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Um, why do you think SE only takes action once a week? They report the action taken once a week, that is not the same thing as taking action once a week.

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+1 for Kosmos

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Originally Posted by CrystalRainbow

Here on Balmung I have no clue what you are talking about.

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Same on Ragnarok

I don't know why but I'm getting RMT messages almost every minute and blacklist is full. I get constant spamming if I dont blist them right away and today they are starting to try and friend request me. Something needs to be done and I say I play this game everyday and it's getting worse.

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Originally Posted by Kuurei

Two things can be done to prevent it far more readily since Bans/Deletions don't seem to be doing much at all. We need to make it significantly more costly for RMT to operate on our servers.

--Require finishing the Level 20 Main Scenario quest to use the Marketboard, Trade only allowed with Friends or Free Company members until that point as well.
--Accounts flagged via player report for tell spam or suspicious activity (I.E. these weird 99 stacks of Tin Ores/Bat Wings for 1 gil apiece on broker) will have Mail, Marketboard, and /tell functions disabled pending an investigation.

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Back in the day, RMT used free accounts to get what they wanted and it wasn't anything to get banned on them or whatever. Since SE implemented a change to how the free accounts work, there hasn't been any change at all...except that it got worse depending on server. The current restrictions for free accounts is:

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- Class levels are capped at level 20 for Free Trial characters.
- Gil (in-game currency) is capped at 20,000 for Free Trial characters.
- The chat options /shout, /yell, and /tell cannot be used by Free Trial characters.
- The Market Board cannot be used by Free Trial characters.
- Trades cannot be made with or by Free Trial characters.
- The Moogle Delivery Service cannot be used by Free Trial characters.
- Retainers cannot be used or hired by Free Trial characters.
etc etc etc

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So if all of that isn't enough to stop them, when they have their actual accounts or stolen ones, how can anything else stop them? RMT spam is a thing in MMOs. Always has and always will be until the game ain't rolling anymore.

Ive never had RMT personal messaging spam this bad in any game ive played.

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Originally Posted by Darlan_Ashwood

Ive never had RMT personal messaging spam this bad in any game ive played.

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Same, and like I mentioned...EQ2 and Rift, both of which are still arguably populated, have both completely nuked it with simple restrictions that make it pretty much impossible lol.

Ban both the rmt and the country they're from. Which should be obvious.

Hello! I saw this post under the RMT tag and wanted to link to one I put under feedback. I think it would be a good idea to add a 'Report Gil Seller' button under 'Add to Blacklist' when you right click a name. I'm sure they'd have to add a system of some kind to handle that, but more people might report them if it was a little easier and didn't take 5 minutes per gil seller. I don't know if it's been suggested before and it's possible it might not make a difference, but I'd like to hope it might! Here's the post if anyone cares to comment, support, or disagree:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...10#post2852610

Just make another chat tab for tells then disable sound effect and vola no more RMT spam.

I came here looking for my daily SCUBA-INSTR post, relating to RMT, and it wasn't here. im sad. Come back, fiar lady, even if I don't agree with you!

anyways, just to stir the pot a bit (mah specialty!) I might say that SE may have a budding interst in keeping at least a part of the RMT industry alive. The entire crafting system in FFXIV would be completely unsustainable, without RMT shard bots. Literally, if all RMT was instantaneously shut down, the entire economy derivated from shards (crafted goods, potions, food) would all instantly skyrocket to 10 to 50 times its current pricing, due to lack of shard supply.

RMT is a backbone of the FFXIV crafting system. fact.

rmt messages bother people that much? I just ignore them.....Even times when Ive gotten em back to back to back, it usually happens and then doesnt happen again for another hour or so. You guys have chat logs that are THAT important or something?

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Originally Posted by Kuurei

Same, and like I mentioned...EQ2 and Rift, both of which are still arguably populated, have both completely nuked it with simple restrictions that make it pretty much impossible lol.

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I'm not sure if Rift has it, but EQ2 makes use of a system that lets people buy Gold subscriptions and trade them with other players, similar to PLEX from EVE Online called Krono
Thus since the game itself facilitates a form of legit RMT, there's no real market for the 3rd party RMTs.
Its actually proven to be a VERY good way to mitigate RMT spam as they won't exert the effort to spam a game that they can't profit from. It's one of the reasons Wildstar jumped on the bandwagon at launch and is probably the biggest reason the game is still P2P when its more popular contemporary, ESO, recently went B2P (not being a bugridden mess also helps, but i digress)

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Originally Posted by kyuven

And there's a world of difference between injecting cow hormones into your butt and visiting a website.

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Oh gods, I've been doing it wrong all these years.

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Originally Posted by tocsin

The entire crafting system in FFXIV would be completely unsustainable, without RMT shard bots. Literally, if all RMT was instantaneously shut down, the entire economy derivated from shards (crafted goods, potions, food) would all instantly skyrocket to 10 to 50 times its current pricing, due to lack of shard supply.

RMT is a backbone of the FFXIV crafting system. fact.

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Well, it might impact the sale of basic lvl 50 weapons and accessories so beloved of 'bots, but since those are sold on the open market, it's not like anyone is trying to sell to 'bots, but no RMT would decimate the sale of such items.

Not sure that having basic materials suddenly undergo a price correction would be a bad thing, it would restore the value to the efforts of gatherers.

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Originally Posted by kyuven

Its actually proven to be a VERY good way to mitigate RMT spam as they won't exert the effort to spam a game that they can't profit from.

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Proven? Not sure I agree about it being proven, that seems rather counter intuitive since RMT can take advantage of their automated gil fountains ('bots) to purchase those PLEX items to 'pay' for their time reducing their basic cost of operation. I honestly don't think that this PLEX thing you promote would do anything more than decrease the $$ value of gil in the sort term and enable more MRT in the long term.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

Speak for yourself. I almost never see RMT spam. Maybe one message a week. I think I have 2 people on my black list at the moment. Everyone does not share the problem the same way you do. You're assuming that all players have the same problem

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You're on fucking Balmung dude! Seriously, how are you people on Balmung still not getting it?!? If RMT can't create a character there, they can't do their create-spam-delete-create cycle that the rest of us are seeing. Are you special? I mean seriously dude. It doesn't even take a whole lot of thought to figure that out!

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Originally Posted by Amenian

You're on fucking Balmung dude! Seriously, how are you people on Balmung still not getting it?!? If RMT can't create a character there, they can't do their create-spam-delete-create cycle that the rest of us are seeing. Are you special? I mean seriously dude. It doesn't even take a whole lot of thought to figure that out!

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The point was literally not to make assumptions about the state on all servers. Not that this wasn't a problem. I draw attention to...

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

You're assuming that all players have the same problem.

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Based on your anger I'd say you completely missed the point of my message. It's about assumptions. About the falsity of blanket statements and the fallacies they represent.

In the end the only important part is this anyway.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

If they didn't have a market they'd go away. Blame the players for sustaining their business.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Um, why do you think SE only takes action once a week? They report the action taken once a week, that is not the same thing as taking action once a week.

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because they do... it was stated by a red name. i don't know where the post is, it was like a year ago. but it was stated that punishment issued for illicit activities will be done collectively on a weekly basis.


either way, no matter how you look it at... the situation hasn't changed even a tiny iota since launch. nor is there any sign of change coming our way. it is very discouraging. i have played MMORPG's since like 1996... heck, i can't even remember if they were actually called MMO's at that time. anyhow, i have never once ever experienced such high volumes of RMT activity as i have here.

Yeah, they are beyond more annoying than they have ever been so far in my time with this game. I was off yesterday, online all day, and I had to have gotten more than 50+ RMT spam tells.

There is only one way to stop RMT. That would be to remove trading of any kind. You will never get rid of RMT as long as there is something of value that people just want to pay for.

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Originally Posted by BLaCKnBLu3B3RRY

because they do... it was stated by a red name. i don't know where the post is, it was like a year ago. but it was stated that punishment issued for illicit activities will be done collectively on a weekly basis.

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I think though that you are misunderstanding their point. The take action continuously, they do ban in waves, but that doesn't mean that they are doing nothing in between. Each account ban has to be handled correctly, they cannot just ban on spec because there are reports of RMT spam. Your post says they do nothing but take action once a week, that's not true.

The situation has changed, the frequency of spam has gone down as well as up, and will again.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

Based on your anger I'd say you completely missed the point of my message. It's about assumptions. About the falsity of blanket statements and the fallacies they represent

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More exasperation than anger. It seems like every day there's a new person from Balmung in these threads going "I don't see what the problem is, I rarely get RMT tells. I'm on Balmung!!". The manner in which this is generally said makes it obvious they are saying it to discredit those who are fed up with RMT tells. It gets very frustrating when you're on a smaller server like mine and you have people acting like your problems don't exist because they can't see past the nose on their face. Rereading your posts I see I overreacted to you specifically a little bit. My apologies.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

I think though that you are misunderstanding their point. The take action continuously, they do ban in waves, but that doesn't mean that they are doing nothing in between. Each account ban has to be handled correctly, they cannot just ban on spec because there are reports of RMT spam. Your post says they do nothing but take action once a week, that's not true.

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I think people aren't articulating themselves very well when they say SE does nothing. Yes, SE does ban some accounts as we see in their reports. They've been doing this since the game launched and yet we see no appreciable difference in the frequency of RMT spams. In fact, overall the frequency seems to be increasing. It's not that SE does nothing. It's that SE does nothing effective. They, for whatever reason, seem to lack the ability to adapt at all. What they're doing isn't working, yet they show no inclination to change tactics.

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Originally Posted by Lori

rmt messages bother people that much? I just ignore them.....Even times when Ive gotten em back to back to back, it usually happens and then doesnt happen again for another hour or so. You guys have chat logs that are THAT important or something?

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Maybe on your server you get a tell every hour or so. On Goblin it's non stop. There is no break.
And yes, my chat logs *are* that important to me. I enjoy chatting with my friends in FFXIV or if I'm helping someone, I try not to have the conversation in /shout and instead in /tell.
I liked having the option to choose which chat channel I wanted to use to communicate with other players. I do not appreciate being forced to turn off one channel because of selfish pricks who buy gil.

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Originally Posted by Amenian

More exasperation than anger. It seems like every day there's a new person from Balmung in these threads going "I don't see what the problem is, I rarely get RMT tells. I'm on Balmung!!". The manner in which this is generally said makes it obvious they are saying it to discredit those who are fed up with RMT tells. It gets very frustrating when you're on a smaller server like mine and you have people acting like your problems don't exist because they can't see past the nose on their face.

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I'm on cerberus, a server which is (as far as I know) totally open for character creation at any time of the day. Yet I get even less RMT tells here than I used to receive back when I was on Balmung. Honestly, if your server is overrun by RMTs, that's because some of your server mates (enough to justify a market) are lame and went the easy road of the credit card. Not because your server is open.