Petition for a Realistic Solution to RMT's

My solution:

Target the buyers and come down on those like the hand of god. Put the fear of the ban hammer into the buyers to destroy the sellers market. If the sellers arent able to sell their gil then it wont be profitable and they will move somewhere else.

What many don't realise is that the Gil/gold farmers arent an army of sweat shop farmers on computers, they are normal players who are able to make large amounts of gil, either through bots, selling clears or high level crafting and then sell the gil to websites to make an extra bit of RL money.

Clear sellers which do that can end up in a roundabout, take Gil from buyers, sell that gil to the gil seller websites, that is bought by someone who then gives that gil back for a clear ^_^

Disclaimer: Not saying all content sellers do that, but don't be surprised if some do, especially the ones that are more aggresive in advertising their services.

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

My solution:

Target the buyers and come down on those like the hand of god. Put the fear of the ban hammer into the buyers to destroy the sellers market. If the sellers arent able to sell their gil then it wont be profitable and they will move somewhere else.

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I kind of agree here. I saw someone giving advice about making gil to a newbie earlier. It went something along the lines of "get high level enough to unlock a gathering class to sell materials, level leatherworker to craft from the drops you've gotten, or you can buy gil from one of the many sites that advertise in-game." Obviously, I don't know if they were joking or serious or whatever. And I'm not saying everyone or even very many people think this way, but for those that do, they need to be shown that buying gil isn't tolerated.

But come on, that's not going to happen. Those are paying customers. Still, whatever is being done isn't deterring these sellers from their aggressive marketing strategies nor is it preventing people from buying the gil so something more needs to be done.

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Originally Posted by Sapphic

My solution:

Target the buyers and come down on those like the hand of god. Put the fear of the ban hammer into the buyers to destroy the sellers market. If the sellers arent able to sell their gil then it wont be profitable and they will move somewhere else.

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I agree, though I believe they already are banning buyers when they actually catch them. You'd think there would be some alert that would go off when several million gil exchanges hands.

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Originally Posted by LandricFrey

I agree, though I believe they already are banning buyers when they actually catch them. You'd think there would be some alert that would go off when several million gil exchanges hands.

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They would be constantly being alerted then because people sell runs etc. for multiple millions of gil.

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Originally Posted by SarcasmMisser

Like cigarette companies? They are still a plague, they whine about losses but any obituary about their industry would be incredibly optimistic to say the least (or in your own words, "short sighted").

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Mm yes, because cigarette advertisements are completely illegal and no one is allowed to sell their products in stores at all. Please don't bring up something that doesn't fully match my example and act like it perfectly matches. Furthermore, just for giggles, google cigarette smoking rates in America over the last few decades. Oh wait. That would actually prove my point, not yours.

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Originally Posted by SarcasmMisser

Let's use the worse example you could possibly conjure, the war on drugs is a misguided failure. You can't artificially strangle supply from any end other than demand in a market economy.

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The "worst example" I could possibly conjure is an example someone else began earlier in this thread. I was simply refuting that. Not my problem you don't read. In fact, if you'd bother to read my whole post, including the part you'd actually quoted, you'd note that I mentioned that doing the thing I suggested is "infeasible" in real life. I completely agreed that the "war on drugs" was a failure. But a game is not real life, and the people who manage these games have the ability to control their made-up world in a way that real people, police, etc. cannot control reality. You can't stop drug dealers in reality. But you can stop a huge majority of RM tells in a game.

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Originally Posted by SarcasmMisser

This is naive to the extreme, people who want to buy will find out where to buy. I don't recommend revisiting your war on drugs analogy for this point because it is an even worst example than the last time it was tried. The advertisements are an exercise in competition; to make the choice for the buyer. The answer is not how we can roadblock them from getting what they desire because that is an arms race you can't win, but why they desire it, and if these reasons can change.

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And I said this, didn't I? That people who are really dedicated to buying gil will always buy gil. But your response doesn't make sense here--first all, competition in markets drives down price. Lower prices incentivize people to buy and to buy more. Lower competition by lowering the companies' ability to advertise against each other and you will raise prices, which will ultimately lower sales. This is basic stuff. Furthermore, I never said anything about not also attacking the supply and finding ways to stop buying in the first place. I readily agree that those things are equally important to stopping RMT. Just because something is not the topic of my post doesn't mean I completely disagree with doing it, sheesh.

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Originally Posted by SarcasmMisser

There are thousands of accounts banned every week what on earth makes people think that the problem is that they're not playing whack a mole fast enough? How do they reconcile the fact that an automated reporting system as suggested is a reactive system which means absolutely nothing is done to stop tells from happening in the first place? If this much banning does not stem the tide it is obvious that a ban is not an effective countermeasure, because that is a cost of business and it clearly isn't steep enough to crush the margin. If you are to be serious about addressing RMT you have to address the factors in both ends of the transaction; why are players motivated to buy gil, why is it profitable for those who want to sell gil. It requires changing the design of the game fundamentally to reduce the avenues of making money and reduce the need to buy gil, and if this cannot be reconciled with other considerations of game design then it is not a solvable problem.

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Because thousands of accounts is not even scratching the surface on the hundreds of thousands of accounts that are being created? You're basically saying "If putting one brick up doesn't stop the wind from getting in, we shouldn't bother to put anymore bricks up." Certainly more things on the other end should be done to stop RMT. But the ability to instantly stop the advertisers would not hurt the situation at all, and you are basically suggesting that because RMT is an "unsolveable problem" until people no longer buy gil, that no one else's additional suggestions would be helpful at all. I agree with the OP, if you have no concrete suggestions yourself and aren't here to sign the petition, what are you here for?

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Originally Posted by Nanaho

They would be constantly being alerted then because people sell runs etc. for multiple millions of gil.

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Wow I never realized so many people were so desperate to clear content that would be obsolete in three months. Really goes to show how much of this is a problem created by players; I mean so many people must be buying from RMT sites, and then you have players advertising clears for obscene amounts of gil, further tempting people to buy gil. Still I know it is possible to reduce the amount of spam and RMT's. Plenty of other MMO's have reduced them to a small presence, why can't FF14?

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Originally Posted by LandricFrey

We are serious about severely reducing the amount RMT's in our beloved game! Show SE with a /sign, "Like!", a supportive post below, or all of the above!

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There is a single reason why SE will never do something permanently about RMT. Money.

Every time you are sent a tell, that means that RMT either paid for the game or hacked someones account. Since many (but not all) RMT companies aren't interested in that, that means they are paying SE money. When SE bans them for messaging, they go out and buy the game again (using money they made from people buying the currency)

This is also a consistent stream of income for SE and they are not going to permanently remove income by making it totally impossible for RMT to operate. They are a business after all and everyone has the means of blocking people by using the /busy to block tells.

They are doing the minimum of showing they are banning players for RMT but still allowing those people to repurchase the game again which also helps pay for your new content/expansions. To SE it is like a "win/win" situation. Banning an appropriate number of accounts for RMT while still allowing situations for RMT to not totally give up and find a free to play game to spam instead of paying SE money.

Somehow I highly doubt RMT's are buying many copies. Its more likely they are hacking accounts and/or using Key generators.

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Originally Posted by Spy

The only way RMT is going to fully stop is when players STOP BUYING GIL. And we all know the likelihood of that happening.

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This is true. However, SE needs to go after the websites that sell the gil and shut them down. They not only violate the game's ToA, but it's a phishing scam to steal accounts.

I want to see a better system to handle the flood of /tells from them (I get at least one every ten minutes here on Gilgamesh). A blacklist was a good idea in theory, but we really don't need to keep an ingame list of those we don't ever want to hear from again. And it fills up very quickly, only to have me go back and purge the deleted ones every week so I can /blacklist another round of new gil spammers.

I think instead of a blacklist, have /ignore and /report gil spammer buttons. No list to keep ingame, just 2 simple buttons. Report gil spammer for the actual spammers that sends a report to SE, and an Ignore for those players that are just jerks.

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Originally Posted by sarehptar

Mm yes, because cigarette advertisements are completely illegal and no one is allowed to sell their products in stores at all. Please don't bring up something that doesn't fully match my example and act like it perfectly matches.

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I know it's hard for Americans but think outside of America for once, maybe even assume that someone isn't talking about your country by default. There are places where cigarette advertising is totally illegal and it doesn't stop people.

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I agree with the OP, if you have no concrete suggestions yourself and aren't here to sign the petition, what are you here for?

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Because it's not up to you or the OP to limit the scope of the topic, if I believe the premise is flawed I'm going to say so and there is nothing you can do about it. If you are serious about the issue you wouldn't limit the topic to only ideas you are comfortable with.

Like I posted on other threads:

You can't stop gilsellers. The only thing you can do is restrict their actions, making it harder for them to the point it's not profitable. Now it comes to the part where you have to carefully choose those in order not to hurt your legit community. One suggestion taken from other games was the options to block incoming tells from certain levels range. Spammers are lv1 chars that get deleted every few mins and remade after, even reporting them is useless because they'll no longer exist. Give people the option to block them directly at Lv1. This would force spammer bots to either give up or level up. Leveling up means time lost for them, and then getting banned after spending time in leveling up, not profitable.

http://i.imgur.com/icWXeqR.jpg

Some say this is very newbie unfriendly. But truth is, the way it is going right now, we have the Busy status, which basically works the same but it punishes us, not being able to be traded, tells from friends, invited to parties or whatever. So far I've never got a tell from a newbie asking stuff, they usually ask on Shout. Also in the hypothetical case I don't want to be whispered or "bothered" I would ignore those newbie tells anyway, so this wouldn't really hurt them, but it would help the rest as we're not obliged to reply.

-- Also --

Adding a right click "RMT report" button. If a spammer gets reported via this button a certain amount of times, said reported player gets a pop up with a captcha to enter something to verify it's not a bot. If captcha isn't entered correctly within 1 minute, that player or account gets suspended. If a legit players is abused through this, ticket verification would work for this, with GMs checking logs from the reported/suspended character.

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Originally Posted by Rhas

There is a single reason why SE will never do something permanently about RMT. Money.

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Not really. A LOT of these accounts are compromised, or purchased with stolen credit cards.
Ever had to deal with doing a chargeback? Yeah, SE has to do one of those whenever someone reports their card stolen. They not only have to refund the money paid for the account, but they have to pay a penalty many times.
And in the case of stolen accounts, they don't gain money but have to expend resources when the person attempts to reclaim their account.
Basically, SE doesn't actually make money off RMT accounts. The only thing they "gain" is padding their account...counts. That's it.

I'm getting a little tired of people saying that nothing can be done and the solution is for people to stop buying. Yes, that is the ideal solution. It also happens to be the same ideal solution to every problem in society, such as theft, murder, rape, drug use, etc: "If people stop doing bad things, then the bad things won't happen!" For those of us in the real world, this is not referred to as a "solution," but as "wishful thinking."

Furthermore, this is not a discussion on how to eliminate RMT altogether. It is just about how to reduce or eliminate the annoyance of RMT advertising in-game. That is a whole different ballgame and this is an achievable goal.

I am also tired of hearing people say that SE won't do anything because they get money from RMT a account subscriptions. Just because you are frustrated does not give you the right to assume the worst motivations. SE has taken steps to combat RMT. It is one thing to say it has not been enough. It is another to ascribe a foul motive to them.


People who ask for restrictions on various forms of communication mean well, but do not realize such restrictions would put the game on a slippery slope towards eliminating communication in general. Say we restrict tells. Now the spammers use shouts and yells. We ban those. Now they use say. We ban that too. Now they use custom emotes. We ban those. They use friend requests. We ban friend requests. They start spamming applications to FCs in hopes of spamming on FC chat. Players don't let them in. Then they start using real names on their characters. Meanwhile, new players are left out in the cold. When you propose a solution to RMT, you have to think it through to the end.

The idea put forth by the OP is one that will actually shut up the spammers as the community flags them, rather than restricting everyone's communications and forcing spammers into alternate channels. It will be extremely effective. As long as the process is dependent on SE employees manually flagging accounts or filtering certain words like it is today, they will not be able to keep up with the RMT. By contrast, how long do you think it would take for 100 players to hit "report RMT" on one gil spammer? Probably less than one minute. Leveraging the player base for manpower to fight RMT advertising is the smartest move they can make.

Well I think everyone agree's that SE needs to do something, even if it means stopping ALL work on everything else to fix this issue first and foremost.

I'd like a Mod to chime in on this, is the right click/Square button idea of marking RMT something SE would consider doing?

Reality is, if they don't do something soon, I'm going to cancel my pre-order of Heavensward, and not renew in June; it's just not worth my time to MacGyver ways to talk with people in the game when we're being hit so hard and fast, by RMT.

Nate.

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Originally Posted by SarcasmMisser

I know it's hard for Americans but think outside of America for once, maybe even assume that someone isn't talking about your country by default. There are places where cigarette advertising is totally illegal and it doesn't stop people.

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And did my post say anywhere that completely limiting advertisement would completely end RMT? No. In fact, the very end of my original post says that it won't. So I fully recognized in my original post that stopping advertisement wouldn't stop sales completely; please read the posts you are attempting to respond to. And anyway, you are still conflating the real world with the game world. In the real world, even in places where advertising might be banned, many countries still have cigarettes legally on shelves and they can still be legally sold. Gil sellers are not doing "anything" legally, and their product is not on display for passer-by to see in-game. They have to advertise their sites for a majority of people to know they even exist. Your comparison just doesn't work. (Also, oops, pardon me for preferring to use an example I know of instead of trying to speak for others' countries. I'll make sure that I start speaking for others' country from now on, as well as my own! Bah, it doesn't matter what country you use anyway, the results still hold--less advertising, less usage. The end. My point. Tada!)

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Originally Posted by SarcasmMisser

Because it's not up to you or the OP to limit the scope of the topic, if I believe the premise is flawed I'm going to say so and there is nothing you can do about it. If you are serious about the issue you wouldn't limit the topic to only ideas you are comfortable with.

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Dude, all I can hear is a toddler screaming "Wahhh, I can say what I want to say whenever I want and there's nothing you can do about it!" If you actually have something concrete, useful, and practical to say about solving this issue in a way that is different from anyone else has suggested, go make your own thread and magically solve the problem with your incredibly vast knowledge. Until then, all you are doing is naysaying someone else's ideas using poor logic without contributing in any meaningful way to finding solutions to stopping the problem yourself. If you don't like the OP's suggestion, you'd do yourself a lot more favors by not bumping it with your posts. :)

Realistic Solution to RMT's

1) Stop buying gils.
2) Migrate to JP servers (0 RMT /tells /shout here)
3) Stop buying gils.

Make the "Report RMT" option available only when you RECEIVE a tell or shout. Suspend players who try to abuse it.

No more player abuse. It's that easy.

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Originally Posted by FudoMyoo

Realistic Solution to RMT's

1) Stop buying gils.
2) Migrate to JP servers (0 RMT /tells /shout here)
3) Stop buying gils.

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Congratulations, that's not a solution to the problem.
I don't buy gil, nor do many people.
Telling someone to server transfer doesn't actually solve the problem. RMT would continue to exist on the server you transferred from.

make it so you can't spam /tell

there you go

The Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XX has been announced recently in which any type of questions on FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn may be asked and possibly addressed. Please visit the thread here and "Like!" Canadane's post at the bottom of Page 1 regarding RMT. And why not go to the heavensward letter and "like!" Zephanoa's post about it as well? Who knows, the silence on the issue may be broken if we get enough people on that. Thanks!

I've been logged in for less than 20 minutes. Doing my routine morning things... feeding the chocobo's, mini cacpot etc. and I've already received 5+ RMT tells. Seriously SE implement some additional counter measures. There have been plenty of great suggestions. If you don't want to do that then at least increase our Blacklist limit... I'm almost at 200 AGAIN (98% from RMT)! >.<

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Originally Posted by Syrehn

I've been logged in for less than 20 minutes. Doing my routine morning things... feeding the chocobo's, mini cacpot etc. and I've already received 5+ RMT tells. Seriously SE implement some additional counter measures. There have been plenty of great suggestions. If you don't want to do that then at least increase our Blacklist limit... I'm almost at 200 AGAIN (98% from RMT)! >.<

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I would be happy with just a response, an agreement that there is a problem and they are indeed working on improving their chat logs/other systems to improve the situation. This complete silence on the matter is disturbing.

It's getting bad in Balmung.
Anyone else?

I just started playing FFXIV again since the initial release and the first thing I had to do was figure out how to make a new tab for Tell's and mute the notifications for it. That is not something a new person to the game should have to do immediately once they start learning how to play the game. You can blacklist them, but it is a constant battle. It's obvious that the blacklist function doesn't report them in any way. I would prefer a Report Spam option that would send CS a report on the player and blacklist them as well. I stopped playing FFXI primarily because of the constant RMT folks camping NM and normal player's had very little chance at getting any kind of quality loot without spending millions of gil, which would just fuel their sales. I hope the dev's can find a solution to this issue because I can't even use their tell system to talk to people in game.

It's sad that you'd more likely get a temp ban for naming someone on the forums, even if they are an obvious RMT, than the RMT themselves getting banned.

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Originally Posted by Aerowaffle

It's been suggested that RMT spam would be lessened by some sort of character creation restriction in the form of limiting how many characters you can create in X time. The disadvantage to this would be, any new character wanting to create a new character because they didn't like how their character looks after viewing it in game, wouldn't be able to.

But what about using a Captcha system? I mean, it's used to prevent automated account creation in the internet browser, why not use it to prevent automated character creation?

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CAPTCHA might stop them for a couple minutes until they figure out the system. IMO, it's the worst type of security available. I ran a personal forum for awhile, and it didn't stop any of them. I'm more of a fan of a question related to something a bot wouldn't know (That might be difficult for FFXIV, I always made it something people involved with the activity would know, and that'd hurt first-time players and people that hadn't progressed.) or a special checkbox that is invisible by normal means, but a bot may check/uncheck it as part of its program even if it's not there.

Ban .... CC, SE account, IP address, Stop Tell pre level 5, Must complete a quest to use tell, Right click report, both side Sell and Buyer. known VPN/proxy address ranges.

My huuby gets 3-4 an evening on balmung where I may get 2 a week... playing same times.

Max tell per mins 5-10.

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Originally Posted by Kewitt

Must complete a quest to use tell

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Make the amount of tells you can send out per hour based on your main story progression. Adjust as needed with each storyline patch. Add that a person can talk to someone unlimited if the person is on their friend list. Add in deny and blacklist friend request.

Look for players that send tells full of punctuations and brackets and numbers in excessive amounts. Because I'm tired of seeing [[[[[[ģ1˩4cΆϛϞ.fak3]]]]]]]]]]

Right click > Report for > Spam
10+ reports: GM ticket generated, chat logs saved.
25+ reports: Reported account muted, possibly temp banned.

I'd say more but honestly the more I think about the subject, the angrier I get.

SQUARE-ENIX. WE ARE BEING HARASSED. DO SOMETHING. AND SAY SOMETHING.

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Originally Posted by Mahri

Right click > Report for > Spam
10+ reports: GM ticket generated, chat logs saved.
25+ reports: Reported account muted, possibly temp banned.

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Yes this seems like a perfectly safe and non-abusable solution.

Some of the "solutions" on this thread are genuinely laughable and it's good that you aren't in game design.

Ban people or restricting their chat when they black listed by a certain number of players? Lol. I know an entire FC of people on my server that hate me because I named & shamed them as Triple Triad tournament cheaters on the forums. Really think the same kind of people wouldn't abuse these kind of systems? Any kind of system that let's an organized group of players cause mutes/bans on people they don't like is an awful idea. Players have shown time and time again that they cannot be trusted with any system that can be abused easily.

The suggestion by Dillia is just amazing /s. Let's not only promote RMT - by literally encouraging players to buy from the websites, but also cannibalize our own business model, all to ban one account! Freakin' genius. I wonder why no game has ever done that before, there's absolutely no way it can backfire.

Taking on the websites - lawyers aren't cheap. These websites also tend to have many websites run by the same group under different names. You take one down, they make another.

One of the few good ideas is to add an option to only allow friends to whisper you. I've been after that for a while.

It's really amusing that people on this thread seem to think SE do literally nothing to combat RMT. You really think that? You do know why they're so quiet when it comes to fighting botters/rmt right? Because it's fucking stupid for a dev to publicly post about what they are doing to fight it. It makes it even easier to RMT to avoid being caught. Every MMO I've ever player has issues with these kind of issues. If you think SE are gonna come out over night with an efficient and permanent solution I'm afraid you're very, very wrong.

Other games have literally changed the entire back-end of how a game works, and you know what happened? The bots were broken. For a week or two. Then they fixed the bots to work on the 'new' version of the game and they were back in action. It is not a 1-2-Fix.

And btw, PSA: Characters aren't deleted when an account is banned. Just because the RMT you blist aren't becoming (deleted)s doesn't mean the accounts aren't being banned. Characters just get deleted after a while in order to free up space to create a new character that isn't blisted by as many people.

We've already tried in the past on multiple threads to make Square-Enix pro-active about RMT, but the fact of the matter is they never reply. Even went so far as posting a question about them in a Live Letter thread, which they promptly ignored (it had over 90 Likes). I've reported the same group of afk-Spiritbinders on our server eighteen times and have been told specifically to stop reporting them in the future. What am I supposed to do in that situation?

I can definitely see a link between Balmung almost always inaccessible for new character creation and the explosion in RMT tells in the past few days. It used to be perhaps one or two a day, but it's easily been six times that amount since Thursday. Reported a few of the spammers yesterday and since then my Service Desk seems to be broken. I can't submit a new ticket. It shows no History or Information, but I'll get a message two minutes after entering a different zone telling me my case has been replied to...

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Originally Posted by SongJoohee

It's really amusing that people on this thread seem to think SE do literally nothing to combat RMT. You really think that? You do know why they're so quiet when it comes to fighting botters/rmt right? Because it's fucking stupid for a dev to publicly post about what they are doing to fight it. It makes it even easier to RMT to avoid being caught. Every MMO I've ever player has issues with these kind of issues. If you think SE are gonna come out over night with an efficient and permanent solution I'm afraid you're very, very wrong.

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It would be somewhat mean-spirited to laugh at the people in this thread, who are genuinely frustrated by a very visible lack of progress. SE is certainly doing something (after all, they ban lots of accounts) but what they're doing isn't working particularly well - for example it seems that /shout spam is making a comeback and the rate of /tell spam is increasing.

I wouldn't consider it completely stupid to publicly acknowledge some of the players' concerns, or to announce anti-spam features such as single-click-report-message-and-blist, whitelist/communication preferences, personal filters or filter add-ons, preventing friend requests from blocking blacklisting, a feature to note (or automatically delete) banned characters on blacklists, larger blacklists, etc..

Moreover, they could also comment on how well or how badly they think the anti-spam effort is going, and apologize for the measures that haven't worked so far; they could say that they're working on additional measures and whether we could expect to see them deployed before the expansion. They could say that they appreciate our suggestions and to keep sending them in, that they are expanding the anti-spam task force, developing more anti-spam tools, sharing information and technology with/from other MMOs, allowing players and GMs to help with anti-spam efforts, implementing an in-game jail for any players who bot or buy gil, etc.. They could even share some data about spam reports over time as well as abuse of various communication mechanisms like /shout, /tell, and friend requests, and the effect on use of /busy, and what they think about it.

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Originally Posted by LandricFrey

True many of these individuals have it bad, but it's no excuse to disrupt a business. And it's not just tells, its market flooding, cheating, ect.

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I assume most spammers in FFXIV are actually pieces of spambot software, not actual humans. But some humans created and deployed that software, just as humans create and deploy computer viruses and other malicious software that causes misery for profit.

Telemarketers (or manufacturers of robocall machines), collection agencies, and organized criminal enterprises are all people too, but I don't like them either.

I wonder if they could use something like this:

http://eq2wire.com/2015/03/14/eq2-te...ame-plat-spam/

It has been extremely successful in reducing plat (gil) spam in that game

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Originally Posted by SongJoohee

Yes this seems like a perfectly safe and non-abusable solution.

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This is pretty much literally how it works in World of Warcraft, sweetie. The success rate is pretty high -- spammers still show up now and then, but for the most part, they are crushed hard.

To make it work, mind you, there's an infrastructure that includes GMs who can review each case as they come up and uphold/overturn/modify as necessary.

More often than not, the spamming account is a stolen account, at that, so it also helps people get their stuff back.

I know this because I am one of those GMs. I've worked there for six years and never once seen a case of Right Click > Report Spam auto-mute/suspend happen on a legit non-RMT player unless they were actually, abusively spamming. As the devs for that game like to say: working as intended.

EDIT: By the way, you want to see one way a company can make a clear statement about RMT? Right here, click me. Short, sweet, upfront, and if you wanted to know more, a WoW player can just put in a GM ticket and ask. Any would be happy to explain what the deal is what's being done about it, at least to the extent possible without giving enough away to help the spammers find ways around it...which they do anyway, and in turn are squashed once more by newer measures. It's an ongoing battle, but one gladly fought, because nothing destroys the enjoyment of a game quite like this garbage.

This is not by any means an easy problem to deal with, but SE needs to make a better showing, because what we have here is a flat-out infestation. What Blizzard did to combat this, and still does, took years of careful implementation and heavy modification to the game client to allow these anti-spam systems to work (like the changes needed to prevent some RMT from "spawning" corpses in the middle of town to spell out their site's URL...hoo boy...) but it was worth it. So, so very worth it.

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Originally Posted by SongJoohee

Some of the "solutions" on this thread are genuinely laughable and it's good that you aren't in game design.

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And to just rage about it and do nothing is else is so much better?

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Originally Posted by SongJoohee

Because it's fucking stupid for a dev to publicly post about what they are doing to fight it. It makes it even easier to RMT to avoid being caught. Every MMO I've ever player has issues with these kind of issues. If you think SE are gonna come out over night with an efficient and permanent solution I'm afraid you're very, very wrong.

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I just want them to admit its a problem and that they are trying new ways to combat/restrict RMT. Yes, RMT are in every MMO, but none have been so bad as in FF14, so consistantly. I never asked for a solution overnight either. Hope that clears things up for you. If you're just trolling, then I thank you for the thread bump.

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I know this because I am one of those GMs. I've worked there for six years and never once seen a case of Right Click > Report Spam auto-mute/suspend happen on a legit non-RMT player unless they were actually, abusively spamming. As the devs for that game like to say: working as intended.

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This is exactly why SE should take the easy steps of making /tell spam more difficult. As I said in my earlier post, it wouldn't be hard. Just a few steps are all that's needed. It would be exceptionally difficult for non-RMT players to abuse the system, the way I laid it out... but on top of that, I really don't think player abuse would be a problem, especially when it would be so easy to pinpoint attempted abuse and drop the hammer on offenders (again, read back to my post a page or two ago if you're unclear on the four simple steps I proposed).

RMT will still be in the game, but SE can easily nip /tell and /shout spam in the bud, and that would make the game much more enjoyable.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mahri

This is pretty much literally how it works in World of Warcraft, sweetie. The success rate is pretty high -- spammers still show up now and then, but for the most part, they are crushed hard.

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Thank you so much for your post. I put the same idea as the OP up on the forum almost a year ago and I have known this is the way to solve the problem.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by giantslayer

Thank you so much for your post. I put the same idea as the OP up on the forum almost a year ago and I have known this is the way to solve the problem.

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I'm glad! It's a topic that's kinda near and dear to me, and the more I think about the RMT spam situation in FFXIV, the more I go straight-up cartoon steam-out-the-ears-locomotive-whistle.

(Tangentially: Thank YOU for the guide in your sig, because I'm leveling SCH now and was actually looking for that kind of info. :) )

I'm going to say this much.

1. Clearly SE does "something" to combat RMT. I dont think anyone actually suggest that SE just lets it run rampant. But here's the thing. What they're doing OBVIOUSLY is not enough. Their strategy in dealing with RMT is no effective as is clear in the fact that it is getting perpetually worse. They need help, they need our help more specifically. The problem is, we can't help anymore than we have been without the appropriate tools.

2. Auto-banning can be abused. It would take very little more than someone that's popular enough in a FC to black ball another player into a banned account by getting his buddies and fellow FC members to report you x number of times. If this type of system is used, the better option is to only allow an RMT or spam report be accessible if it is through a tell. that way the person has to actually send you a tell to be reported.

3. Blacklisting is pointless unless it is done on an account basis. Blacklisting or blocking a specific character only means they can log out, make a new character and come back in to pester you again.

4. Only allowing tells from friendslists is a fucking STUPID idea. If you think RMT is annoying now with the random friend requests, wait until they find out you have to be on the friendslist to send a tell. You might not be getting inundated by tells, but you will be constantly pestered with friendlist requests.

5. A PLEX or CREDD system will not work. The only game to ever has successfully sold game time is EvE Online. There are two primary reasons for this. First, they only primarily have one server, which means one economy which, second reason, is incredibly stable and well thoughout as well as complex. FFXIV has neither a stable or well thought-out economic system and it has multiple servers with widely different price ranges on items. One thing that costs 1.54m on one server may only cost 600k on another, when you apply that to an object such as credd or plex it makes it unstable. You';ll end up buying game time for less money on this server than another because of population or needs of that population. This essentially makes it impossible to unify the $:Gil ratio.

6. SE cannot necessarily go after the company, it would require that the company be under the same type of laws governing commerce between two different countries. Considering SE is a Japanese corporation and most RMT companies are Chinese... That would probably create a bit of an issue. What they CAN do is IP ban China from NA servers.


So then what solution is feasible?

Right-Click report is feasible, as long as the offender's account is blocked from making any further contact with you. These blocked accounts should go to a global blacklist that has no limit. That makes it so we no longer have to deal with it and it should generate a report and chat log capture that is sent to SE. This can also discourage RMT companies as one their tells are no longer getting through or they have to constantly create new accounts (which can also be combated from auto-account creation with captchas and validation questions i.e "1+5=?")

Another option that can coincide with the above is a volunteer system of moderators pulled from the playerbase to help 'investigate' RMT reports. Give them temporary ban powers that they must provide PROOF of a LEGITIMATE temporary ban, before the actual GM gets to determining if the ban should be permanent. This also needs to be handled aggressively to prevent 'volunteers' abusing their powers. Personally I think at the slightest notion that the position has been abused results in the immediate removal of that moderator and possibly him/herself face a permanent ban. These volunteers could also be given squelch powers to shut the shouters.

Third option, allow ADD-ONs for christ's sake. WoW beat this problem a long time ago with an add-on that would filter out spam tells. It wasn't something that the dev staff did, players did it. There's plenty of talent in this community so there's no reason why we couldn't do the same IF we were given the appropriate tools to do so.

All that said and done, I do support more aggressive actions against RMTs

/signed