RMT Enforcement - Something Interesting is happeneing

@NefarioCall

I agree, It is easy to make Gil and don't know where to spend it.

Here is what I noticed people spend Gil on:
1- Buying clears.
2- Buying rare mounts and minions.
3- Buying crafted sets, food and potions for endgame.
4- Sell to Gil sellers.
5- Glamour.

If you are doing none of the above then Gil is useless to you :rolleyes:

You forgot T5 Materia and buying mats to make more gil! Those large plots dont buy themselves! ;)

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

I am hoping the numbers are the real numbers and not an error. Such an error existing for so long would be difficult to explain away and look very poor. That said, I think SE is sophisticate enough to realize that an intentional policy of inflating numbers like that would ultimately backfire on them.

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SE in general might be on top of things, but this is what shows up on the news ticker today:

Time Period: Nov. 24, 2016 to Nov. 30, 2016

・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 25,682
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 293
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV


25k advertisers and 290 actual bots, I still have moderate confidence numbers aren't being inflated, but now I'm CERTAIN that whoever is writing these posts is goofing up. Please SE, fix this T.T

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Originally Posted by HaelseMikiro

SE in general might be on top of things, but this is what shows up on the news ticker today:

Time Period: Nov. 24, 2016 to Nov. 30, 2016

・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 25,682
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 293
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV


25k advertisers and 290 actual bots, I still have moderate confidence numbers aren't being inflated, but now I'm CERTAIN that whoever is writing these posts is goofing up. Please SE, fix this T.T

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You think they mistakenly reverse the numbers of advertising vs other illicit activity?

Its probably harder for them to find the accounts that are actually handing gil over from sales, than it is to find the accounts that people are reporting but the truckload for spamming say or party invites or w/e other form of advertisement is being done. So the differential between those two numbers, advertising and actual RMT/illicit activity, is not surprising.

I haven't really seen any bots on Famfrit lately. I haven't been on as much lately either because of Steam sales, but aside from that even when I've been afk in the main cities for a while without a party or anything no invites recently.

The thing I noticed on Tonberry was no gil shouters/tellers at all. Since they brought in the report feature, suddenly there is one at the main aetheryte and one at the MB of every capital babbling constantly. They get reported and certainly don't last long. This is pretty classic honeypotting from the RMT lot, they want to see how long a bot will last, if there's a timetable for clearing out based on reports, and if SE is seriously coming down on them. They will also want to know how many of their bots are getting caught up by association. The war of escalation continues.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

But, most interesting to me is the way that the number of accounts banned for something other than advertising has shot up, and is increasing week on week.

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I noticed last week that the grade 1/2 materia has been empty on my server. I'm guessing that they found a way to identify bot armies and take them out.

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Originally Posted by XiXiQ

The thing I noticed on Tonberry was no gil shouters/tellers at all. Since they brought in the report feature, suddenly there is one at the main aetheryte and one at the MB of every capital babbling constantly. They get reported and certainly don't last long. This is pretty classic honeypotting from the RMT lot, they want to see how long a bot will last, if there's a timetable for clearing out based on reports, and if SE is seriously coming down on them. They will also want to know how many of their bots are getting caught up by association. The war of escalation continues.

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I've never gotten RMT tells on Tonberry before or after their changes to the report system. And the RMT bot spamming /say in capital cities existed way before the report system change.

On NA servers, RMT sellers are using party invites to advertise instead. On Tonberry, I have yet to receive a single random invite from a RMT advertiser. We just are not on their radar likely because we are technically a JP server.

Here's the fresh ban hammer report:

Time Period: Dec. 15, 2016 to Dec. 21, 2016

・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 17,594
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 8
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for participation in RMT/illegal activity: 394
・Action Details: Temporary ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

SE seems to be very inconsistent the last 4-5 weeks on whether they want to put advertisers or farm bots on the top line of the report, making it more difficult for the few of us who keep tabs at a glance on anti-RMT efforts, but it seems they stick that larger number on top no matter what now?

Anyways, the point I'm looking at this week is.....HOW could they only find 8 bots the entire week among all the servers? Pretty sure I could stand in 1 place on any given server for 2 hours and come up with better results than that.

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Originally Posted by HaelseMikiro

Here's the fresh ban hammer report:
**snip**
Anyways, the point I'm looking at this week is.....HOW could they only find 8 bots the entire week among all the servers? Pretty sure I could stand in 1 place on any given server for 2 hours and come up with better results than that.

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I agree, I wish they would be consistent with how they list the numbers, so we can track it more easily. If those numbers are correct it seems that they are still working more on removing the advertising than the farm bots.

The number that interested me was the seeming up-tick in temp bans which are usually associated with players caught in RMT transactions and/or cheating of some other kind. 394 is more than I can remember being listed that way for many, many months.

Unrelated but interesting: I noticed bots are forming their own closed FC's to farm in ... and these do show up on weekly rankings!
Did report this to the STF, not sure if they are aware of this or not (since they do not reply to these issues) but might help to peruse these rankings to weed out bot FC's (they're pretty easy to spot too)

I haven't been able to get much done today because I've had a bad headache, so I've had the game tabbed out while I watch stuff to try and see how long it takes RMT bots stationed at the major city aetherytes to come back after you block and report them.
http://i.imgur.com/GPk67Ku.png
So about 7 hours in Gridania.

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Originally Posted by St0rmchild

Unrelated but interesting: I noticed bots are forming their own closed FC's to farm in ... and these do show up on weekly rankings!
Did report this to the STF, not sure if they are aware of this or not (since they do not reply to these issues) but might help to peruse these rankings to weed out bot FC's (they're pretty easy to spot too)

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Yeah sometimes it gets harder for them to investigate them, specially when they start to "mimic" player behaviors more. Even after they are convinced they are RMT/Bots think they also have to track the gil made and sold as best as they can too.

I've noticed "bot fc's" some time ago, just doing searches for sprouts to invite to the NN. If the name is questionable, I'll check their FC (if any). If no FC, and a questionable name, I won't invite to the NN. Regardless of the name, if the FC is an actual player run FC, I'll toss them a NN invite.

Yes, I'm one of the people who just invites to the NN without making contact first. It can make for some interesting conversations, but overall, more people than not are happy to get in.

Overall the tells say pm yell shouts are gone forever.

Thanks team fantastic idea of giving us the power to report this vermins

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Originally Posted by Gumbercules

Yeah sometimes it gets harder for them to investigate them, specially when they start to "mimic" player behaviors more. Even after they are convinced they are RMT/Bots think they also have to track the gil made and sold as best as they can too.

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(Un)fortunately they're not very good at imitating 'real players' and a quick eyeball search/inspection will quickly confirm what's going on.
(Not going into details, don't want to give the botmasters any good ideas to get better at hiding!!)

Using the community to help was a great idea. Haven't seen a bot tell for a while.

When I get private messages they're from ACTUAL people now lol

What I'd like to know if the reported numbers are correct since there have been now two severe discrepancies.

I've been writing down the reports into an excel sheet since the first one and getting neat graphs like these...

http://i.imgur.com/dVtQV8m.png
The graph data contains my "corrected" entries.

the numbers did never deviate from the usual pattern of "RMT/illicit activity" being the highest, "RMT advertising" being far lower than the first and "temporarily suspended" being a few and hundred at most.

Pattern: RMT/illicit activity >> RMT advertising >> temporarily suspended

The two reports in question are the 1. Dec and the 22. Dec.

RMT advertising of November follow the usual pattern:
946 2368 1005 129 25682 453 1,029
RMT/illicit activity of November do the same:
19,980 23,299 28,080 9,701 293 36046 24,685

The 1. Dec numbers in bold as they were reported don't quite add up. Now it could be that they ran out of bots to ban but if you take a look at the next report from the 8. Dec you will notice that the report form has been changed to 1st "RMT/illicit activity" and then "RMT advertising" which was reported the other way around since the beginning, iirc.

If you flip them they fit the usual pattern as described above and are also much closer to the following 8. Dec numbers.

The format was then changed again for the 15. Dec but those numbers fit the usual pattern. .-.

Here comes the 22. Dec report and the format has been changed again! The numbers deviate heavily from the usual pattern (again). If you check the last format from 15. Dec (blue, green, orange) and add the numbers in the same order (17594, 8, 394) they will now match up perfectly with the usual pattern.

http://i.imgur.com/1n2O4Fk.pnghttp://i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/...omguardian.JPG

It's been a great change and I can actually use the Tell system now. There's a reason why players have been asking for this instant report feature for so long, it's damn effective. Now we just need that option extended to anyone's name we right click so we can start reporting the party invite bots that have suddenly popped up.

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Originally Posted by HaelseMikiro

Anyways, the point I'm looking at this week is.....HOW could they only find 8 bots the entire week among all the servers? Pretty sure I could stand in 1 place on any given server for 2 hours and come up with better results than that.

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Well, they could be tracking a lot more than those 8. We already know they don't ban farming bots immediately when first identified, because by quietly tracking their activity instead, SE gets information about which other accounts the gilsellers use to accumulate and disperse the gil and which accounts are then buying that gil. A low number of farming bots banned, particularly when combined with a fairly high number of "participation" (gil buying) temp bans, could just indicate SE is expanding how long they track the bots, placing more of their efforts on finding gil buyers.

We've seen plenty of threads pointing out the most effective approach is to go after the buyers and remove the gilseller's market. Maybe we'll get a chance to see whether that's true.

While I've been impressed with the effectiveness of the RMT report function in game, now we're seeing random party invites from obvious gil sellers. It's obvious what they want--to advertise their services--since the character names are random sorts of names that always contain things referencing gil selling.

I've been hesitant to use the RMT report function when I get these party invites, since the person hasn't actually tried to sell me gil and I don't want my report to seem like a "false" report when SE looks at it. I've tried accepting the invite to see if they would say something so that I could then report, but as soon as I accept the invite, they drop party.

Thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Velisra

While I've been impressed with the effectiveness of the RMT report function in game, now we're seeing random party invites from obvious gil sellers. It's obvious what they want--to advertise their services--since the character names are random sorts of names that always contain things referencing gil selling.

I've been hesitant to use the RMT report function when I get these party invites, since the person hasn't actually tried to sell me gil and I don't want my report to seem like a "false" report when SE looks at it. I've tried accepting the invite to see if they would say something so that I could then report, but as soon as I accept the invite, they drop party.

Thoughts?

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Can't report them using that function even if you wanted to. The function only works when there is a message on chat.

Yea now they are using party invites so they dont get banned. And sending party invites isnt doing anthing wrong, but you know they are a gill seller just by their name. But they dont say anything so its hard to really report them.

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Originally Posted by SigSauer

Can't report them using that function even if you wanted to. The function only works when there is a message on chat.

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Ah. I hadn't actually tried it so I didn't know that it wouldn't work anyway. That's that then.

So I guess I'll just ignore it for the time being. I'm not sure there would be a way for SE to combat this new gil seller advertising technique!

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Originally Posted by Velisra

I'm not sure there would be a way for SE to combat this new gil seller advertising technique!

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Well, all it would take is to block character names from using certain RMT related strings.

In chat, they can get around rules like that by forming their URL name with other symbols that just resemble the letters needed, or with placeholders and instructions on what to replace. But that doesn't really work with only a first and last name that are already limited to letters and a few special characters (apostrophe at least, though I think that may actually be the only one).

If SE prevented using certain RMT site names in character names as well as terms like "sellgils" or "sellsgil" and variations, I don't think these invite ads would work. At least not unless the bots started actually sending advertising messages to whoever accepted, but at that point, they'd be subject to the reporting feature that already drove them out of /tell spam in the first place.

You can call me silly for this but why hasn't SE tracks the MB's? we all know the RMT's and botters control the shard markets, that would be the first thing they can take action to stopping them outright.It might take time but in the end, they will net a lot more people.

RMT still comes in bits but truly love the option they had added to report. I think the way it was before players did not want to be bothered, but now that it is so easy to report perhaps the playerbase have started to report more which is great.

Well RMT pretty much dead on Balmung and Giglamesh, since the servers are locked as once they die out or get banned there no coming back for them to those servers. Not sure if that will cause a increase on smaller servers though.

I hardly see ANY at all I probably see one once a week.

It's a lot better nowadays. I haven't had a single tell for years

Yes the new system definitely works better towards banning those accounts. It definitely feels better now. I just wish they would move and ban people who bot and gather nodes and speed hackers in PvP. I made lots of reports for some specific players and they are still botting 24/7 gathering nodes non stop. Same names same locations same movement paths. SE is doing better for RMT but they also need to take action on gathering bots and hackers.

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Originally Posted by Riardon

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Maybe something will be done now that there's a financial incentive to see some bots as something other than just "another account that pays a sub, don't care" instead the ones using bots to level jobs could be seen as "this person isn't paying for the level boost".

Eh. The issue is actually two fold. They are combating RMT and those in business to try to sell gil/housing/whatever for real life money but what about those who are actual players who use bots to farm millions of gil everyday, fate grind all jobs to max and have bots automate the rotation during raids/dungeons? Pvp botting is VERY bad right now with 30-40% of those in the frontlines being bots if you look at the patterns enough. Those are legit players who choose to cheat and need to be banned as well. They need to let us right click to report for possible botting without having to fill out 3 minutes of details and headache just to report one person. 10+ bots in fate I am not wasting my time reporting them all manually.

What i'd like to learn is how many accounts are being banned for actually using RMT.

Certain servers will most likely not be seeing any more rmt's such as Gilgamesh since the server will be closed for over population. So I'd imagine that when capacity reaches a certain point in other servers, they may consider the alternative as well. Which isn't a bad idea. I haven't received a tell from rmt since HW released. Before that though? In ARR? Every fricken day.

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Originally Posted by Oldschoolegamer38

You can call me silly for this but why hasn't SE tracks the MB's? we all know the RMT's and botters control the shard markets, that would be the first thing they can take action to stopping them outright.It might take time but in the end, they will net a lot more people.

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When they talked about this in 11. It was felt more beneficial to allow a certain flow of items and try to catch the big bank rmt. The truth is no one has proof which system is better. But as a player you see instant benefit when they ban a bot. But maybe catching the bank and removing billions of gil is better. It also looks good when they say we eliminated 100 billion gil. Police do this all the time when they report busts to the media.

The pessimist in me thinks allowing those shards into the world is needed. Right now Balmung has 13 stacks just over 14 thousand wind shards total. They start at 79 gil and go to 150. If we got a crafting patch with a few recipes that needed 10+ shards the price could get crazy. If players were paying 1000gil per shard SE would probably have to reevaluate how they distribute the crafting catalysts.


And Holy Necro Batman :)

While the lock servers every time they delete a bunch they might have to go to plan B. Which in some cases is try to steal accounts. And while you may think it is ok I have an authenticator. They seem to get around this other ways. When money is involved people seem to find ways /sad face.