Spammers/Gil Sellers

I forsee my /blist filling up with spammers/gil sellers :(

Pushing this to the top once more. This is becoming more of a problem than 1017 or 90000 errors. Please do something to help at least make it easier to ignore them. Spammers are flooding the shouts and yells. I've had to turn off all but my party, LS, and FC chats.

You guys have only seen 9 since beta? Maybe I should move to your server?

Malboro has literally a gold spammer in every section of every major city spamming nonstop with macros flooding out all the chats, each zone has a gold spammer sending everyone tells non stop and blacklisting them then reporting them is beyond tedious at this point.

I've actually developed a SYSTEM to save me time because I have to report so many. Today alone I blacklisted and reported over 10 gold sellers and every time I get a response from Square about 3 hours later that was an obvious cut and paste because its the same message that they are "looking into" these accounts....but its the same damn people almost every time.

It's not hard to get a moderator to ban people who are being jerks. Or...y'know maybe a chat system with a spam filter? Oh you sent 3 messages to shout in < 2 seconds? Ok so wait 20 seconds for your next one...slow them down at least! Let us USE our chat!

Edit: I'd gladly take back 2 hours of attempting to log in if I didn't have to be constantly hassled by gold spammers because they can't log in either!

Also a quick note for anyone reading this....at least for PC players. Press F1 to select yourself, right click your status bar at the top of the screen, select...change status or something like that then set your status to "busy" if you have issues with spammers directly messaging you like I do. It will stop all incoming private messages. This is LITERALLY the only thing I can do to slightly enjoy my time in game now....and I still have to blist/report all the shout spammers. But it helps...every little bit helps...the gameplay is so good here but I've recently messaged Square stating if they cannot even figure out how to stop spammers from destroying their game I have little hope for the future and will request a refund.

Bumping up request.

Sharing with others this tip I got from FC leader:
In order to block the one who last sent a tell, type the following:
/blist add <r>

The alternative if spammer is not the one to send last /tell:
/blist add "FirstName LastName"

Either case, you will get a prompt if you indeed want to block someone. Of course, it is still not easy to send a harassment report :(

Hope that helps.

Agreed..100% agreed...................hell 1000% agree

Just saturday morning alone on Lamia I added 15 gold spammers in the afternoon more and Sunday even more....Reported everyone of them.

we need to help with this as i can say it ruins community interaction as its damn near impossible to have a conversation in chat with others and get to know people if i am chasing down gold spammers.

1) Give us unlimited blacklist and a right click block/report ** i would even have a separate option to block/report gold farm spamming (reason in point #2)

2) Autoban feature in the server that if (just tossing a number out) 250 people report the same account for Gold farm spamming the account is auto banned from the game/server entirely. If they want back in then they have to call CS and a CS agent can review the account and chat log associated with the reports (which we know gold farmers aren't going to do).

3) Maximum amount of lines per chat..say 4-5 lines or x # of words maximum...some form of control . These bots are spamming the chat with 20-30 lines of weblinks and doing it multiple times with in seconds. Its unfathomable an MMO would even release without some basic counter measures in place to defend against this kind of crap. i

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Originally Posted by CrazyCanukk

Its unfathomable an MMO would even release without some basic counter measures in place to defend against this kind of crap.

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I agree, It shouldn't be this difficult to block and report spammers. SE dropped the ball with this one. I hope they fix it soon.

Agree also sometime hard to get there name since the chat screen moves so fast and if you scroll up it will automatically move when a new message.

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Originally Posted by Lawpel19

Agree also sometime hard to get there name since the chat screen moves so fast and if you scroll up it will automatically move when a new message.

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That's one of the things I hate about the chat. Sometimes you want to scroll up reread something but you can't because every new message automatically scrolls you back down.

Well here one way to not be bothered. You can disable the shout and yell channels and set yourself as busy. there you go no spam at all.

And on an unrelated note: What the hell is the word "As" filtered in game. I can understand ass being filtered but as? Honestly SE!!

Well they need a system...Yoshi said they had some secret method to catch botting in a Dev letter. Lets hope they have a secret for spammers. They should do something like if you send the same messages (certain number of characters or sequential words and/or key words), X amount of times in the space of X amount of seconds/minutes you get automatically moved to a spammer chat channel

Adamantoise -> SO MANY GIL SELLERS!

Ifrit -> None.

Why is it so different? I need to block shout, yell, and tell on Adamantoise to even play the game. So yeah, no one can whisper me :/

fyi: Those Gil sellers are using bots. How else do they spam people tells without really clicking on them?

Every time I go into a major city I'm hit with a WALL of text. I'm can't speak for everyone but for me this it totally ruining my MMO experience. If I wanted to play a game by myself and not chat with others I have a lot more options I play an MMO because I like interacting with other people. and before someone tells me how to black list I know how to do so in fact I have over 30 spammers on there so far.

if you right click the name and select tell it will bring up their name for you to copy past (CTL C - CTL V). This should save you from having to type their name.

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Originally Posted by Metalplosion

Every time I go into a major city I'm hit with a WALL of text. I'm can't speak for everyone but for me this it totally ruining my MMO experience. If I wanted to play a game by myself and not chat with others I have a lot more options I play an MMO because I like interacting with other people. and before someone tells me how to black list I know how to do so in fact I have over 30 spammers on there so far.

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my sentiments exactly


the handling of this RMT issue is incredibly bad, they are acting like its their first rodeo
the development team needs an award, the marketing and community teams need to be fired

Enlarging the chat window can help a little.

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Originally Posted by BaconMage

What I find ironic is that the gold spammers are still able to create more characters and that SE is only deleting their characters and not banning their accounts.

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I'm really curious how you know that. If it's true it is a travesty! I want all Gill spammers tracked down IRL and sent to the south pole with no internet to live in a special place they've earned the right to live in! (and they can never return! >.< )

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Originally Posted by MakinaAuran

Even automatically deleting the name from your blacklist once said character is eventually banned/deleted would be helpful.

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Yes, I believe WoW had a "player no longer exists" when you logged in and that character....no longer existed.

Also, Yes. We need the ability to simply right click on the person's name and select "spamming". And also, Yes. We should not have our blacklist counted against. It should simply block all future messages automatically (once clicking spammer). And honestly, if the cap is truly 200 I would hope that SE would put in some things in place before I cap out the blacklist with spammers....In 5 years of playing wow, I probably only blocked 15-20 players total.

Or how about this novel approach - SE employ some GM's?!?!?!?!?!

Really, how tight are their budgets that they can't afford a dozen people to trawl two or three worlds each over the course of an evening and just ban every account they see spamming gold selling.

It beggars belief that this wasn't implemented from the off.

Blocking someone so that you don't see their text is burying your head in the sand.

What about those that do use these services and are ruining the economy in game. The sellers and botters will soon give up if a live GM banned 20 accounts in the space of an hour.

I'm not a big fan of getting hit with a wall of spam when I walk into a city, or getting beeped every five minutes by someone sending me a private message to buy their gils. The biggest trouble is trying to grab a name when there are 5 sellers in one place and blisting them one by one by copy/past. A spam/blist option would be lovely. To avoid accidentally getting someone that's just a pain in the general behind like area, there could at least be a little pop up saying [Is this a Spammer or General D-Bag?]... or [Do you believe this person violating SE Policy Y/N]... I guess the second one would be more professional.

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Originally Posted by carlos777uk

The sellers and botters will soon give up if a live GM banned 20 accounts in the space of an hour.

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no they will never give up, ever

these are starter towns, its the first experience people have with the game in its MMO state.
a very bad first impression to say the least.

the game itself is being judged and until they get off their arses and actively engage in countering this problem LIVE then its going to leave a long lasting detrimental effect

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Originally Posted by carlos777uk

Blocking someone so that you don't see their text is burying your head in the sand.

What about those that do use these services and are ruining the economy in game. The sellers and botters will soon give up if a live GM banned 20 accounts in the space of an hour.

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Disagree. ability to more easily block spammers is a quicker fix to help people enjoy the game. Hiring GMs takes awhile. We need it to be easier now while they are in the hiring process.

What game was it that allowed you to not block that character, but block that character's entire account? That would help.

No idea what that game was but It sounds like an awesome idea.

The creators of this game need to make a call to the nice people at CCP in Iceland that develop EVE-Online, a while back they installed a type of Sniffer program that seeks out Spammers and in-game item & Currency transactions and automatically send the gathered information to a team dedicated to enforcing the TOS Agreement

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Originally Posted by Kelryth

The game hasn't been out very long and they are already invading our game. We as players need better tools to help combat this growing threat.

Reporting these gil sellers manually through the Support Desk is a drawn out affair and is very annoying.

I propose to square that a system needs to be put in place that would easily allow us to report these dastardly creatures. This most awesome of features would include:

1. Add an option to the chat name click menu to report as a spammer/gil seller.
2. Automatically add reported gil seller to your /blist.
3. Remove Gil sellers text from the chat window.
4. Automatically ban a character and/or their account from even using the chat system if a certain amount of players have reported them for spamming until SE can investigate them.

This issue is going to get a lot bigger in the coming months and we need the right tools to fight back.

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Good ideas all around, but your number 4 is dangerous, because if 5 or 6 people report someone just to grief them, it will ban the victim from using his chat system until the SE investigation...

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Originally Posted by Hamingju

another thing that might be helpful is when you right click that name and report them as a gil seller that it records the text or the message as proof that you were getting something along that line.

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In other MMOs, there is a /report command that does exactly what you are describing. It was there in Everquest back in the late nineties, so the concept is not something new. At that time, it was simply to report harassing players. Gold sellers were not an issue. Today, the same command is used for both functions. However, given current UI capabilities, I would expect a right-click option to be standard.

The only idea I have had to get rid of gil spammers, is to make an instant ban on anyone that puts so much text or so many messages in a short amount of time. Like anymore than 3 messages in 5 seconds will get you kicked or make it so you can't use the chat system for so many hours.

Again seems targeted at "advertisers" but no responsibility or consequences for those that are buying the Gil and power levelling. If no one supported them they would not exist..

I would just like to be able to block them from chat with a simple right click -> Blacklist. Its such a pain to spend time trying to catch "asdsad sdfsad" to block while in a town (I shouldn't have to turn off shout to talk to others who are asking questions). Even more so when you have 2 or 3 in the same area constantly spamming.

For those that wanted a quick way to address the problem with gil sellers sending you /tells:

/blist add <r>

You can add that as a macro to your toolbar, and it will add the last person that sent you a /tell to your blacklist. Haven't found a way to quickly report someone yet, but this is the fastest way to blist them, and then you can freely send a message to S-E at your leisure for the actual report, listing all the ones that did the tells that day.

Hope it helps! :)

An easy solution would be to make a puzzle game when you log in... not a captcha, an actual little mini-game with even 9 squares that have to form a picture before you are allowed to load your character in.

We put this into other games, and it works fine.

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Originally Posted by Hansem

Good ideas all around, but your number 4 is dangerous, because if 5 or 6 people report someone just to grief them, it will ban the victim from using his chat system until the SE investigation...

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That is a good point but I was thinking more along the lines of 50-100 people.

a nice solution would be a "vote" system . when enough peoples (300-400) have blacklister somone (shouter or /tell bots) this account get a temporary ban untill a GM get in the case and check if this Worth a perma-ban or an simple warning , that way the whole communauty participate to the effort against RMT

honestly , you blacklist them anyway , might as well use that fonction to help everyone , you blacklist=you vote . easy and simple

I like that idea...lol

yeah these gold sellers are getting pretty ridiculous,and every time i blacklist one i end up running into that character.......just standing in the same city im getting gold spammed in.

+1 here, for the love of god these assholes are starting to piss me off.

Can't we also get some GM's in all the major towns to automatically ban them the second they get their first /sh out?

Just to add to this: the Japanese servers have been so slammed with volume lately that they have all been locked for new characters (not like just the handful on the NA side). Because of this there were no gil spammers. But after the updates today, they opened the worlds all up, and I already have come across 3 gil spammers.

I used the tell trick to blist, but because I am on the PS3 it is impossible to actually report them... (They so need to fix that...sigh...)

Anyway, just to give a heads up to people who (like me) have been spending more time on the JP servers when possible to avoid this annoyance. The JP servers are starting to almost look like the NA side now. Yay?

I just hope..
1. If the gold sellers / farmers / spammers are being reported by like say 10 players after they post in chat window, they are banned from creating new characters in that specific server. Or else, the cycle will keep going on and on.
2. If the gold sellers / farmers / spammers are banned in more than like say 3 servers, then the whole SE account is banned. It will means they need to buy new digital copies in order to keep spamming. It will be a Win-Win situation for SE and genuine players.

I think that it needs to be more than 10 to prevent abuse, and should require review. But honestly what I think they most need is to have an infrastructure where game shout and yell chat is fed to people who can monitor this (so they can have a few people monitoring all worlds). This could be both auto-checked for spam, and manually reviewed. That way they wouldn't even need to be logged into a server to see it for themselves. They should still probably have roaming randomized character GM's, to try and catch directly tell spam though.