Petition for a Realistic Solution to RMT's

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Originally Posted by Dyne_Fellpool

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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This right here.....I played EQ II since it went live, and I have never seen spam, until this article.

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Originally Posted by Donarudo

This right here.....I played EQ II since it went live, and I have never seen spam, until this article.

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Notice how SoE actually replies to their community regarding the issue. And keep in mind SoE isn't exactly thought of as a shining example of customer service in many circles of the MMO space. So in effect what does that say for SE being so tight lipped on this problem? Bad form guys, very bad.

RMT tells have broken the 'tell' feature of this game. Most of our FC knows not to use tells any longer because most of us have it on another chat tab. Shame how RMT's broke a feature of this game - we are not able to use all the features of this game due to RMT's. Shame. SE - your game is broken and you seem unable to fix it

It's not even hard to make gil in this game. I don't get it! I don't even have any of my crafting jobs to 50 and can manage to make 2mil a day selling materia (and that's on the lower tier, I usually expect to make 4mil+). I wish there was a way to tell who the gil buyers were because they are just as much responsible as the gil spammers.

Silence from SE is due to the no automated reply feature in forums or we would get the obligatory " although frustrating as it is know we are tryin to blow smoke up.. anywho but yes /busy in mmo ahh the sadness it states about ff14...Let me count the ways...Having report blacklist and so on gives us more work. most of us paying 15$ a month don't wanna then work instead of relaxing.. There paying people have 1 or 2 per server load in patrol.. yup in game gm's wow new concept that little noise feature works for us will also alert gm's of rmt / bot / spammer.. he goes to person reviews bans then problem gone. no I hate them will try banning.. nope he reviews it right there on spot bans ip after =) .. give or take 3 months spammers / bots / friend requests will drop

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Originally Posted by Hexy

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.

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This solution already exists. At least with Google:

Phishing - https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/
Malware - https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/

After an investigation, if they deemed the complaint to be of value, they will filter out the website from their database. I'm sure Bing, Yahoo!, and other search engines also have some kind of feedback mechanism. However, if you're just going on hunch but cannot provide actual proof, then these mechanisms will not work and neither will SE bother dealing with it.

I was enjoying this game (aside from having to blacklist often), now my list is full and I am constantly spammed. Fix or I'm gone, sadly.

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Originally Posted by Dontee

I was enjoying this game (aside from having to blacklist often), now my list is full and I am constantly spammed. Fix or I'm gone, sadly.

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No one should have to put up with that, especially in a big name sub based MMO.

Reducing RMT's isn't an easy task, but employing some basic chat filters and Right-Click>Report should be, and that's all it would take to at least improve our gaming experience. So how about we start with that for the next "hotfix, SE?

Bots are starting to spam Friend invites like insane on Lamia.

Square should just sell gill themselves and put these rmt people out of business

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Originally Posted by papichulo123

Square should just sell gill themselves and put these rmt people out of business

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Except selling currency still causes the issue of undermining the in game economy by causing inflation as the in game currency tends to devalue when it isnt introduced naturally into the server's economy.

I'd say SE could start selling extras (kind of like they already do with mounts and so forth) on the mog station that you could then turn around and sell in game for gil but that usually turns into a greed fest for the developer.

regex "hello my friend ,"
regex "let's make things better"
regex "(insert gold website masked URL string here)"

basic regex isn't terribly expensive to run unless your string is an absurd recursive case, and could be used to filter tells (possibly even silently) and/or flag for suspicious activity. the impact on geniune new accounts could be made nonexistent by careful regulation of what strings are used to identify gil selling - use complex phrases or character combos pulled by examining gil seller /tells or /yells or /shouts and legitimate players are totally immune to this behavior.

we're not talking about complex predictive heuristics here. it's freaking regex on a list of strings.

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Originally Posted by Dontee

I was enjoying this game (aside from having to blacklist often), now my list is full and I am constantly spammed. Fix or I'm gone, sadly.

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Honestly, this is the only way to get the spam fixed. Vote with your wallets. SE is notorious for both poor customer service and sticking their heads in the sand when a problem arises. No surprise it's happening again here. As the RMT spam seems to only be an issue with NA servers I think SE isn't seeing it as how big of a problem it is. The only way they will is when people start leaving. I myself have maybe two weeks left till my account expires and my primary reason is because I found another mmo that's just as fun that I'm not being spammed to oblivion on.

2.55 is upon us and not a single peep about the rampant RMT problem...

I wish every time a RMT related thread got bumped, Yoshi-P's cellphone would make the same noise as an in-game tell.

I'm 100% agree on this. SE MUST act and do something about it. I know there is some servers were it's hardly seen (reports about JP servers and EU server not having much RMT tell spamming ) , but speaking as a player in Ultros server , it's really REALLY annoying . I will not even rant about how they ruined the final cutscene to the main story ( cause I should've known better and just /busy) .but to miss a lot of tells from friends cause I couldn't see it with all the spam, that's really shitty... atm I'm sharing LSs with friends just so we can talk but if I want to say something private I mostly invite them to a party and chat... is this how SE wanted the chat system to be...?!!

What i would do. Set /tell and /shout to lock until level 15. When dungeons open up. That will force RMTs to level a job. But here is the bigger issue i have. I think the spam is a breach in the program a back door. There is no way to spam say 700 or more players in a 5 min gap unless you backdoor the program. You can ban the account but its not even a real account its a generated program built from within and then backdoored. What SE could do is sue the websites for breaching there game and unsolicited advertising making money in SEs intellectual property . BUT SE wont . Because i believe they allow this backdoor long as they get a percentage. But you or me stream the game and ask for donations or take screens and sell posters of our Chrs or FCs is illegal......Think about it

Made an update to my original post. Please add your signatures here, and post any suggestions or personal stories in this thread. Thanks!

Just add a "Report RMT" to right-click drop down, if you have 25 or 30 reports you are unable to send tells/chat (chat meaning shouts/yells/etc.) until you contact Support. Also that if you have reports against you they clear daily or weekly if you don't accumulate enough for your tells/chat functions to be disabled. Reason to disable chat functions is RMTs will start yelling/shouting in zones to advertise. Hopefully something can be also done about them adding you to FL.
Forgot to add that all accounts who were reported will be looked at by GMs and actions will be taken.

This wouldn't solve /say or /shout messages, obviously (though I've not really seen such for quite a while, either), but at least it could solve /tell harrassments: implement an option to allow /tells only from people on our friend list? It's really mind-boggling why this hasn't been done yet, to begin with.

On a sidenote, and mind you I'm completely in the dark about this, but honestly: couldn't SE, as a company, go against the actual sites that are "doing business" in the game? Either to the ISP or straight to court? I mean, is there really absolutely no way to take up any sort of legal action against whoever's running such a "business"?

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Originally Posted by BreathlessTao

On a sidenote, and mind you I'm completely in the dark about this, but honestly: couldn't SE, as a company, go against the actual sites that are "doing business" in the game? Either to the ISP or straight to court? I mean, is there really absolutely no way to take up any sort of legal action against whoever's running such a "business"?

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No, because the RMT sites are a business with employees that can't be touched in the courts on that level. Even if they could, how can you say that a site can't provide service for a game? That's the broad stroke of it. It's a website that provides a service. The intricacy of it is only known to players and the developers but to the courts, it's probably not important. And once the law deems to restrict services within the game, then you'd need to restrict ALL services within the game.

SE also can't really tell a business not to operate. They can only say that they don't want them to operate there and do what they can while they are within their domain. Otherwise, until the RMT enter their game, they aren't under any legal obligation to care anything at all about what SE wants.

bump/10char

SE have already a solution for Heavensward against RMT.
Put most things (including access to the new zones) behind 2.55 story progression.

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Originally Posted by Ophie-Mio

No, because the RMT sites are a business with employees that can't be touched in the courts on that level.

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Uhh this might come as a surprised to you but businesses are entities that can be, y'know, sued.

But, the likelihood of actually being able to pursue a foreign company in court that won't even talk to you and doesn't even have an address you can go to is pretty nil, plus who knows what jurisdiction they'd even be tried in. And if you somehow do all that you have to prove that RMT actually caused a measurable business loss you can sue for. Now you have to do this against every company ever and wow good luck

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Originally Posted by Krr

Uhh this might come as a surprised to you but businesses are entities that can be, y'know, sued.

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It may come as a surprise but anyone or anything can be sued...whether or not it can be done successfully is another matter. I didn't feel the need to bring up any sueing business because the only things that enter the domain of SE are the bots and such that make gil. Making gil isn't a crime one can sue for...and cheating (botting) while in a game? Yeah, good luck with that being brought to court and not being laughed at by an entire industry.

But yeah, the reasoning that you gave is the very reason why I didn't bother to even bring it up. Saying that they can be sued but then saying that they are almost untouchable is exactly what I said.

This idea could be better restrict tells unless these conditions are met.

1 frendslist
2 you have a party finder up.
3 ls or fc.
4 in a party with you or open world alliance.

In other words unless they on some list of a group your in no tells.

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Originally Posted by Ophie-Mio

No, because the RMT sites are a business with employees that can't be touched in the courts on that level. Even if they could, how can you say that a site can't provide service for a game? That's the broad stroke of it. It's a website that provides a service. The intricacy of it is only known to players and the developers but to the courts, it's probably not important. And once the law deems to restrict services within the game, then you'd need to restrict ALL services within the game.

SE also can't really tell a business not to operate. They can only say that they don't want them to operate there and do what they can while they are within their domain. Otherwise, until the RMT enter their game, they aren't under any legal obligation to care anything at all about what SE wants.

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sad thing is they aren't sueing them even though they are selling data of something they don't own its in the tos all data is SE.

I suggested this to my friends in game over a year ago on why they not doing this then some one told me this.

A guy last year in the UK I think made over $300,000 selling Gil and that nothing can be done to him because he paid in back taxes thanks alot tax code laws you ???? Again

Uh.... Don't charge ridiculous prices and the rmt sellers won't have a market?

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Originally Posted by Dererk

sad thing is they aren't sueing them even though they are selling data of something they don't own its in the tos all data is SE.

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Yeah, that there. They're basically selling game data (am quite sure it can, however loosely, be translated to IP) that is not their own - making a profit from something that belongs to someone else. I'm pretty sure that is illegal in ... most countries, at worst? :confused: Sure, whether they could/would win the case is another matter, but perhaps the procedure itself, getting dragged into it, could potentially be bad enough to discourage the sellers?

Again, I've no actual knowledge of these things, just thinking. Or trying to, anyway. :p

How about we go after the problem and not the symptoms that arise from the problem? SE needs to disable the ability to trade gil between characters. How would the RMT companies sell you gil then?
As for botting, SE needs to download the various bot programs, analyze the way they work and build detection algorithms into the game client. This IS possible. I'd be fine with an additional program running on my computer that scanned for the various bot programs continually and or randomly. Small price to pay to keep the bots out.

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Originally Posted by aresgodofwar30

How about we go after the problem and not the symptoms that arise from the problem? SE needs to disable the ability to trade gil between characters. How would the RMT companies sell you gil then?
As for botting, SE needs to download the various bot programs, analyze the way they work and build detection algorithms into the game client. This IS possible. I'd be fine with an additional program running on my computer that scanned for the various bot programs continually and or randomly. Small price to pay to keep the bots out.

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This would only limit legit players and the RMT would easily find a work around for this unfortunately. If they couldn't trade gil, they'd probably just arrange to buy something worthless off of one of your retainers for millions.

As for the second suggestion, SE should already be aware of the bot programs as they should being in the MMO gaming industry, but who knows? Maybe they really are so clueless.

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Originally Posted by aresgodofwar30

Small price to pay to keep the bots out.

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I don't know how much experience you have with such programs, but from my experience (playing 30+ different games with such software) I can safely say that this software is a major inhibitor to gameplay, and can decimate a playerbase. Due to the unlimited quantity of differing infrastructures in each platform (different specs on PC, different internet capabilities on consoles, etc.) ALL of these programs are highly buggy, and tend to have more false positives than they do actual caught programs. they also tend to be MUCH easier to hack than the games themelves, and usually come with built in keyloggers and such, which make identity theft MUCH more likely with players playing such games.

If SE adopted a dedicated client snooping program, and required it to be running in the background, I would be cancelling my subscription and backcharging whatever remained of it. I can also name 40 other players who would do the same, at minimum. I don't want spyware on my computer, thank you.

I have an idea.

And it's real simple, but it requires everyone's participation: don't buy from RMT'ers. EVER! I mean, it's simple economics of supply and demand: if there's no demand, and no sales, then... だよね

I only play on JP servers and almost never see any RMT spam or anything. And, the simple reason is (and I can safely say this for all my fellow gamers on JP servers) -- we play by the rules and don't succumb to instant gratification. as such, there is no market for RMTers to sell to -- so they don't.

Implication: If your server is severely affected by RMT spam and junk, there's a likely economic reason for that...

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Originally Posted by Kyonika

I have an idea.

And it's real simple, but it requires everyone's participation: don't buy from RMT'ers. EVER! I mean, it's simple economics of supply and demand: if there's no demand, and no sales, then... だよね

I only play on JP servers and almost never see any RMT spam or anything. And, the simple reason is (and I can safely say this for all my fellow gamers on JP servers) -- we play by the rules and don't succumb to instant gratification. as such, there is no market for RMTers to sell to -- so they don't.

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Then that's not really a realistic solution is it? The people who buy gil don't really care the effects it brings. The people who want this RMT plague to stop are unlikely to be buyers (as they would essentially be advocating getting themselves banned).

We're not some sort of singular consciousness that can control the actions of every player.

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Originally Posted by Aerowaffle

We're not some sort of singular consciousness that can control the actions of every player.

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That line right there. Brilliant. See the answer embedded therein. Though it may take some time...

In the mean time, if there was just a way to make it too expensive for RMTers to continue selling, and too expensive for buyers to participate in ...

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Originally Posted by Kyonika

That line right there. Brilliant. See the answer embedded therein. Though it may take some time...

In the mean time, if there was just a way to make it too expensive for RMTers to continue selling, and too expensive for buyers to participate in ...

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Theoretically, banning more RMT farmers before they manage to move gil around would do that. If you made it harder for the bots to gather up gil, they would have less gil to sell, which would force RMT to try and sell less gil for more money.

They have to be very careful banning people because they are taking away a service that people are paying for. They can be sued for it. Unfortunately its one of those legal loopholes that people from China and other countries like China (mostly third world or offshore types) can jump through because they are outside of the influence of several types of laws. This is why a certain other large successful MMO literally shut down their operations in China, refused service in their country, and blocked any IP originating from there. The number of gold sellers went to next to nothing overnight. Caused a big stink there too, but they got their own version of the game they could play on eventually. But they could only connect to their own servers.

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Originally Posted by Kyonika

I have an idea.

And it's real simple, but it requires everyone's participation: don't buy from RMT'ers. EVER! I mean, it's simple economics of supply and demand: if there's no demand, and no sales, then... だよね

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Works on paper, not in real life. With how many people play this game there will always be someone who will try to buy. A real solution would simply be to ban the buyers.

I'm hopeful that having 3.0 gated behind the 2.55 MSQ will inhibit the gil farmers to some extent. Presumably the level 50-60 mobs, quests and dungeons will drop more gil than the current content, not to mention all the new gathering nodes will also be gated by extension. If the botters want to keep up with the inflation of the economy resulting from that they will have to do the main story quests which will severely restrict their ability to keep creating new accounts when they get banned.

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Originally Posted by Alberel

I'm hopeful that having 3.0 gated behind the 2.55 MSQ will inhibit the gil farmers to some extent. Presumably the level 50-60 mobs, quests and dungeons will drop more gil than the current content, not to mention all the new gathering nodes will also be gated by extension. If the botters want to keep up with the inflation of the economy resulting from that they will have to do the main story quests which will severely restrict their ability to keep creating new accounts when they get banned.

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I hate to break it to you, but the chinese gil farmers do not start accounts from scratch. They hack accounts and use them. Gating of content means nothing to those crooks.