Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

Nobody is claiming that the spam is the only problem from gil-sellers, but it is the biggest problem. The spam is the part that's constantly interrupting the gameplay of all the legitimate players. Certainly the gil farming bots are just as much a part of it, but they don't have the same sort of in-your-face harassment going on as the spam bots do. SE really should do a better job of taking care of both parts of the problem, but the spam should be the higher priority piece of the issue. It's the part that's driving customers away.

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Playing whack-a-mole with spam accounts isn't going to do anything if they have a supply. Cut their supply and they have nothing to sell...

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Originally Posted by ZettaB

Playing whack-a-mole with spam accounts isn't going to do anything if they have a supply. Cut their supply and they have nothing to sell...

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I don't care how SE does it, I just want them to reduce the spam. Your method is more effective but also more costly I imagine. I feel like implementing proper chat filters would be easier to do than trying to track down the suppliers. I'll take anything they can give me if it reduces the spam.

If they really wanna end it though, they have to make it so the RMTs lose profit through this cycle. Probably via something like them not being able to send /tells until level 10-20. If they really wanted to, disable them from trading until level 15, and keep a hawk's eye on low level players. However, I realize that would reduce the QoL from players as well.

Also, I think SE's deliberate silence of this matter is even more frustrating to me than the spam itself. Not reassuring in the least when devs who are known to be vocal remain completely silent no matter how much players cry out.

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Originally Posted by ZettaB

Playing whack-a-mole with spam accounts isn't going to do anything if they have a supply. Cut their supply and they have nothing to sell...

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It wouldn't be whack-a-mole if SE actually bothered to stop the spam. Gil sellers aren't idiots. They're trying to make a profit. If they lose money from every spam bot rather than earning money from every spam bot, then they're not going to keep creating new spam bot accounts. The only reason they're doing so now is that SE is allowing them to spam long enough to make a profit from it.

The farming bots can't be blocked so fast, so that's where it really does turn into a whack-a-mole issue. From the instant a spam bot sends its very first message, it's obviously a spam bot. That single message is enough that they've broken the ToS and can immediately be banned, rendering the account useless to the gil-seller. Farming bots, on the contrary, need some investigation for SE to see what's going on. That's going to take time enough for them to at least start making some gil. If they make enough gil to be profitable, then they'll be immediately replaced even when SE does manage to ban them.

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Originally Posted by ZettaB

The whisper spam should be the least of your problems if you realized their operations in gil making, they literally have 30+ blackmages teleporting underground killing things, then teleports to a crafting bot sitting in ul'dah turning things into materia. This guy has been doing laps converting materia for 20+ days 24/7 on leviathan and reporting him apparently does nothing. How is this not considered suspicious?

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This has been going on since Day 1 with little to no response from SE. Yes we get the "notices" infrequently that 100 accounts have been terminated blah blah but I too have seen with my own eyes the unresponsiveness. Almost Day 1 there were bots hanging out all over the Burning Wall. They would stand in one place and roboticly rotate killing any Golden Fleece in sight. At first you could jam them up by trading with them but then the bots got more sophisticated and that no longer worked. Weeks went by and I would observe the same "players" killing Golden Fleece and then back in Gridania turning their equipment into materia -- 100's of Converts one after another. I reported them day after day. Almost every day I would submit a report and nothing was done. Sure something was done maybe 2 months later, but by then its too late. The economy is ruined, inflation occurs. All the gil that needed to be gotten rid of by astronomical housing prices was SE's own doing - letting gilsellers run wild and exploit gil sinks, etc. Miserable >.< Massive /tell spam is just the icing on the cake :P

Which makes me worry about what's next. Are RMTs somehow going to find a way to pester us through the busy status as well? Perhaps spamming our moogle delivery mailbox nonstop is next. Maybe months down the line we literally won't be able to whisper our friends because the /tell chat flys by so fast we can't even see what they type. I wouldn't be surprised, seeing as the RMTs continue to gain ground. And still, SE will be silent when that happens.

I'm pretty sure money and the loss of subs is the cause of the silence, but like others have said, there will be newbies who purchase the game and start fresh with no friends and no ties to hold them back from not subscribing to this when they are on one of the servers where the harassment is 24/7 (like mine) and they don't have anyone to advise them about the busy status. They will get driven off before SE can even start making money off of them. I already warned my friend who wants to pick up the expansion. So what will amount to a greater net loss? Permanently banning all of the botters and making a right click report option? Or the thousands of potential subs that have been lost from the new people who don't have any in game ties and no reason to want to work around the constant spam harassment?

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Nobody is claiming that the spam is the only problem from gil-sellers, but it is the biggest problem.

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This, kind of.

I don't think /shout or /tell spam is the BIGGEST problem. But it's the part of the problem that affects the most people on a daily basis, and it's super easy to fix.

Plus, losing the ability to advertise so easily in game would definitely be a kick in the balls to RMT.

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Originally Posted by ZettaB

Playing whack-a-mole with spam accounts isn't going to do anything if they have a supply.

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Playing whack-a-mole with spam accounts will cost the RMT $15 per account. That's not enough to get them to close their business, but it WILL make them adjust their business model to be less annoying to common players. Right now, $15 gives the RMT spammers full access to advertise their services for roughly a month between ban waves. If a wave of spam to every player led to an immediate account termination, it would be deemed too expensive a form of advertising.

SE is treating RMT like a drug operation, and they favor long investigation and massive busts once a month. Doing so is allegedly the best way to reduce RMT influence on the economy. The problem with this method is that without constant bans being given out for overt and obvious violations of game RMT rules, the common player has to deal with literally dozens of forceful "pushers" per hour.

SE has a little over 10 GM's employed to combat this, they're working, but at a limit. Judging this off credits though.

But anyway, turn off tell. Just turn it off. You don't need secret convos to talk trash about ppl behind their backs, just... turn it off.

/blist the shouters, and report where you can, but as much as what more we can do, nothing.

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Originally Posted by MyKotoShi

SE has a little over 10 GM's employed to combat this, they're working, but at a limit. Judging this off credits though.

But anyway, turn off tell. Just turn it off. You don't need secret convos to talk trash about ppl behind their backs, just... turn it off.

/blist the shouters, and report where you can, but as much as what more we can do, nothing.

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Some people would like to use the /tells for trading purposes, or to organize parties. What do you propose in order to get around that? To use /shout instead? Even if we were to do that, my point is why should we have to? An intended function of our game has been blocked off, and that is not okay. You're right, there is absolutely nothing more WE can do, it is up to SE to fix this. So far they don't seem very enthused to do so. That is the most frustrating part. If they only have 10 GMs to combat this, why do they not hire more? I'm quite sure this game is turning a sizable profit at this point, it is not as though they could not afford it. Why do they not implement anti RMT features into the game. I saw a great suggestion in a post somewhere that suggested players under level 10 or 15 could only send someone a /tell if that person sent them a /tell first. Apparently WoW does this and it works very well against the RMT. Games like WoW have features in place which vastly reduce the spam/RMT harassment. FF14 has learned other lessons from western MMOs, why can they not learn this lesson as well?

Turn off tell? You want to see all of my conversations about "Hey I'm going to get a pizza", "brb in 3 minutes, I'm getting coffee", and various other riveting facts cluttering your text log? Because I'm going to stand next to you and type it all in /say from now on.

But yeah, contacting support GMs should be something we do concerning in-game bugs, item and character issues, and in-game cheating and harassing. Someone being abusive in game? Contact a GM. Stuck in a rock? Contact a GM. Bank ninja? Contact a GM. And Blacklist? That novel thing is for blacklisting PLAYERS who you don't like or find abusive. Someone call you a dirty word? Blacklist. Someone cause trouble in a dungeon? Blacklist. I've used Blacklist for that purpose maybe twice in two years, but I've forgotten the names and most likely removed those people from the list when I was clearing out 200 spam names so I could fill it with 200 more.

I had a nice experience with an RMT last night. RMT send a /tell, per usual, so I responded with very many polite /tells acting like I was just a child and asking the RMA random questions that a child might ask and telling the RMT about things I like, speaking like a child and after about a dozen or so /tells sent to the RMT the RMT /blacklisted me! So, if you're bored you might spam the RMT with polite, friendly, nonsense /tells and attempt to have the RMT /blacklist you. This is in no way a solution to prevent all RMT /tells, but, to me, it felt very rewarding to have the RMT gil spammer /blacklist me rather than me have to /blacklist him, which I have no way of doing anyway as my /blacklist is full of..you guessed it, RMT.

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Originally Posted by MyKotoShi

SE has a little over 10 GM's employed to combat this, they're working, but at a limit. Judging this off credits though.

But anyway, turn off tell. Just turn it off. You don't need secret convos to talk trash about ppl behind their backs, just... turn it off.

/blist the shouters, and report where you can, but as much as what more we can do, nothing.

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People shouldn't feel like they have to turn /tell off because SE cannot properly tackle the issue with gil seller spam. They need to hire more people who specialize in tackling these type of things. RMT will always be a thing, especially in a game as big and popular as this one, but seriously, I easily get 4-5 messages within the hour, especially if I am in a housing area and it is from different RMT. This is definitely the point where SE needs to realize that just a few people cannot handle this and need to bring in an expanded team to get on this and start banning these ISP's every day.

My suggestion would be for SE to have as many employees as possible log into one server each, for at least one hour a day, and just simply ban the RMT directly after they receive a /tell attempting to direct them to a website where they can purchase gil. Seems to me that it would be fun and rewarding for the Dev Team to do this and they would have the benefit of knowing that they are finally taking real action to prevent us from being inundated with RMT /tells and, by doing so, they would be providing us with a much better experience as we adventure in Eorzea. Maybe I'm wrong but this seems like a simple and effective means of combating the RMT, and when I say as many employees as possible that implies employees who can devote an hour of their time, without neglecting important issues such as patches, hotfixes, and continued work on future content such as Heavensward. This is just my 2 gil, but it does seem like this could effectively, and eventually, put a stop to the vast majority of RMT /tells.

I'm one who have my /tell off and use it when needed, but couple of things I'd like to see to combat it somewhat. First give us the option to set a level range 1-50+ to even receive /tells /shout /yell if they don't meet are level requirement say it lvl20 make those rmt work for it by making them have to play the game each and every time negative aspect legit new players can only use /say to get ahold of higher level person. A alternative option would be having a set range on how many /tells you receive from any player in a game day/or every 2 game days etc, you set it to 1 or 5 or 8 etc /tell every game day and if you reply to that person you can receive /tell from them at anytime, negative effect if this works to well and rmt's revert back to /shout and /yell making first request an option to use. Third if on your friends list they have unlimited /tell to you and bypass the filters you set completely until removed from friends list.

I don't see RMT's going away anytime soon tbh and the problem is in the people buying the gil from them in the first place supply and demand.

I've been back to the game for about 2 months after a break. My server, balmung, has never been too bad got maybe 2 tells in the first month and a half. . But I've noticed the last 2 weeks or so it picked up a bit. Going from the 2 tells over a month and a half to 2-3 per couple hours I'm logged in.

Add to that, with my coming back I brought my roommate to the game. Now I couldn't get her into balmung normal, I had to transfer her. So we made her a character on another server, midgardsormr. Not only was she not even logged in for a full minute, but her screen hadn't even loaded the first cs of the entire game and she got 3 rmt tells. Had probably close to 15-20 by the time she. Got control of her character the first time.

I haven't seen rmt shouts since the game first came out.... And I receive point a few rmt tells a week on balmung.

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Originally Posted by Velhart

They need to hire more people who specialize in tackling these type of things.

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They actually have a full-time dedicated anti-RMT and anti-cheat staff known as the Special Task Force. How big the team is, I don't know, but they operate over both FFXI and FFXIV in dealing with reported RMT and cheaters/bots. They are the people who ban around 2000 accounts for RMT activity per week in FFXIV alone.

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Originally Posted by MugenMugetsu

Maybe I'm wrong but this seems like a simple and effective means of combating the RMT, and when I say as many employees as possible that implies employees who can devote an hour of their time, without neglecting important issues such as patches, hotfixes, and continued work on future content such as Heavensward. This is just my 2 gil, but it does seem like this could effectively, and eventually, put a stop to the vast majority of RMT /tells.

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If they are anything like a normal development team, then there is never a spare moment that they can do things like that. There is always something to be done that only they can be doing. It's better to have more dedicated staff doing this.

The best thing that SE can, and need to do, is make it easier for players to report RMT and that can be done by adding a "Report Player..." option on the right click menu. This would probably need to open up a quick dialogue box to specific for what reason you are reporting them, but that's not a hard thing to implement either. It's simply about making it more convenient for players to report, because most aren't willing to open up the actual report menu to report them the normal way.

posting in support of SE doing *anything* at all to help alleviate this problem. thanks.

They're probably hesitant to actually address the RMT issue because the RMTs buy new copies of the game every time SE mass bans them

Thirty bucks times two to three thousand every few months with guaranteed repurchase is pretty nice!

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Originally Posted by Themis

They actually have a full-time dedicated anti-RMT and anti-cheat staff known as the Special Task Force. How big the team is, I don't know, but they operate over both FFXI and FFXIV in dealing with reported RMT and cheaters/bots. They are the people who ban around 2000 accounts for RMT activity per week in FFXIV alone.

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It is the same team that was formed during the FFXI days, and if history has shown anything, they barely made a dent on anything. Like I said, they need to expand and strengthen their team. You can ban 2000 a week if you want, but those same 2000 are coming back the next week doing what they do best. They need stronger preventative measures, not just squashing the bugs that make it in.

They have a task force, but that task force doesn't have the tools they'd need to be effective. Until we as players get the right-click "Report RMT" option we've been asking for since launch, the task force isn't going to be getting the immediate reports that they'd need in order to be of use. The RMT spam will only go away once the system is upgraded to the point where they can be banned immediately, as soon as they start sending messages to anyone.

As long as there are reporting delays followed by investigation delays followed eventually sometime later by a ban, then the RMT bot will have already had time to make money, so it will just be immediately replaced. Once the bot's very first /tell can become a report within a couple seconds, show up that same second on the screen of the task force member who's on duty for real-time monitoring of these reports, and be banned within a few seconds after that, then the bot account won't have made enough money to be financially viable to replace. It takes real-time reporting, real-time monitoring, and real-time bans to eliminate this issue. The software should be taking care of all the "paperwork" for documenting these reports and bans, rather than making both players and the task force get bogged down with it.

So what can be done? Short of a massive unsub over the RMTing, is there any possible way to get SE to even recognize this as an issue that exists? Or perhaps step up their efforts against the RMT? Does there need to be a formal petition with 20,000 signatures or something?

/signed

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Originally Posted by Zabuza

So what can be done? Short of a massive unsub over the RMTing, is there any possible way to get SE to even recognize this as an issue that exists? Or perhaps step up their efforts against the RMT? Does there need to be a formal petition with 20,000 signatures or something?

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They know it's a problem, they are just being quiet about it. The lack of additional action is what's causing issues. Everyone in this thread can agree that banning thousands of dummy accounts every month is a waste of time. In my opinion, if they are not going to step it up then they need to lower the sub price of the game, because RMT severely impacts the integrity of quality in which Square Enix claims they care about in their Final Fantasy games.

Single worst RMT of any MMO I have played. The community managers HAVE to have noticed this thread. I am on a pretty full server and it is insane. I have also had two different recruit a friend players not shell out a month's subscription BECAUSE of the RMT. As great as the game looks, they can't take it serious with this amount of spam (a little random spam is normal in an MMO, but not like this)

My point is that I love this game, it is like a giant thank you to all of us long time Final Fantasy fans. We need new players coming in to keep the game growing and moving in the right direction. The fact that I KNOW community managers have read this post and haven't even posted a canned "we will report this up to the powers that be and get back to you" is pathetic...and they are great in nearly every other regard.

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Originally Posted by SummerSkye

Single worst RMT of any MMO I have played. The community managers HAVE to have noticed this thread. I am on a pretty full server and it is insane. I have also had two different recruit a friend players not shell out a month's subscription BECAUSE of the RMT. As great as the game looks, they can't take it serious with this amount of spam (a little random spam is normal in an MMO, but not like this)

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Yeah, here on Zalera we average a /tell every single minute. Sometimes we won't get a /tell for 3 minutes or so, but then get 3 /tells at once. You go into any city and the shout spam is happening too, it's not just Ul'dah. I could show so many chat logs which prove it is like this all the time, but I think the one in the very first post of the thread was enough to prove it. I live with it because I moved my /tell tab and turned off the chime. This means I pretty much never see any legit /tell I receive because I barely even look at that tab anymore. If I get friends request spammed I go /busy. This is not something I should have to do, and new players definitely won't know to do this right off the bat. Imagine how immersion breaking it would be if you were watching the cutscenes from the end of 2.55, which is over 30 minutes, and hearing the /tell chime throughout the whole thing because of RMT spam.

I'm a trial account, as a new player yes RMT spam is highly discouraging. Out of the 14 days I didn't bother playing that often until I learned about "/busy" I have played a lot of free to play games, and the gold spam is about on par with that. This is bad considering I will have to pay for the full game and then a subscription after. As I am on disability I have to deeply consider all purchases, and the RMT spam greatly hurt this as I feel like I am in a low quality free to play game. From what I have played I love the story, love the game, but I am not going to pay for something where people can just cheat their way through.

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Originally Posted by Tincuptaru

I'm a trial account, as a new player yes RMT spam is highly discouraging. Out of the 14 days I didn't bother playing that often until I learned about "/busy" I have played a lot of free to play games, and the gold spam is about on par with that. This is bad considering I will have to pay for the full game and then a subscription after. As I am on disability I have to deeply consider all purchases, and the RMT spam greatly hurt this as I feel like I am in a low quality free to play game. From what I have played I love the story, love the game, but I am not going to pay for something where people can just cheat their way through.

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And this is exactly why SE needs to take care of this issue. You heard it here from a new player SE. I guarantee you a lot of new players will share this guy's opinion. Lost potential subs and $ for you.

By the way, I am now going to be making this thread a petition. I wish to make this an organized front. I'm sure SE will ignore that too, but there is no harm in trying. I wish to take a tally to see just how many are dissatisfied. If you agree that SE's level of customer support has been poor in the area of combating RMTs, and wish for a change, please reply with /sign or /signed from now on at the bottom of your replies. I am compiling the signature list as we speak.

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Originally Posted by Tincuptaru

I'm a trial account, as a new player yes RMT spam is highly discouraging. Out of the 14 days I didn't bother playing that often until I learned about "/busy" I have played a lot of free to play games, and the gold spam is about on par with that. This is bad considering I will have to pay for the full game and then a subscription after. As I am on disability I have to deeply consider all purchases, and the RMT spam greatly hurt this as I feel like I am in a low quality free to play game. From what I have played I love the story, love the game, but I am not going to pay for something where people can just cheat their way through.

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This is exactly why the TWO new players I brought to the game (who both love the FF franchise) did not subscribe. We need new blood coming into the game or it will become stagnant. We all KNOW that community managers have seen this thread and may be reading this very post and yet say nothing. It is very disheartening.

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Originally Posted by Zabuza

By the way, I am now going to be making this thread a petition.

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You mean like in THIS thread? Yea, good luck with that.

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Originally Posted by LandricFrey

You mean like in THIS thread? Yea, good luck with that.

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No harm in trying, is there? I didn't see actual signatures on your thread so I made it into this. If you want to add signatures I'll retract this and sign yours if you wish.

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Originally Posted by SummerSkye

This is exactly why the TWO new players I brought to the game (who both love the FF franchise) did not subscribe. We need new blood coming into the game or it will become stagnant. We all KNOW that community managers have seen this thread and may be reading this very post and yet say nothing. It is very disheartening.

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I'm new to FFXIV & yes, this was the reason I almost quit during my trial period. Its unacceptable.

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Originally Posted by Zabuza

No harm in trying, is there? I didn't see actual signatures on your thread so I made it into this. If you want to add signatures I'll retract this and sign yours if you wish.

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I apologize if I came off harsh, the more threads about RMT, the better and if you want to collect signatures of course you have the right to. I'll add my own here for what good it will do.

/sign

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Originally Posted by LandricFrey

I apologize if I came off harsh, the more threads about RMT, the better and if you want to collect signatures of course you have the right to. I'll add my own here for what good it will do.

/sign

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Thank you, we all want the same thing in the end :).

/sing x 10000000

I had to take out tells from my chat because it was too much. But I hate it bc now actual players cant tell or whisper @ me

/Signed if I may?

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Originally Posted by Tincuptaru

/Signed if I may?

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Yes you may :). Signatures updated.

I also am feed up with RMT. I posted about 2 months ago the same issue http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/f...threads/222360 i was told just delete the names well i do everyday i delete 30 names and everyday i fill back up 30 names. On Diabolos server you get spammed once everyother min or so . RMTs send tells using your name like your a friend or even send friend requests with the tells. I remember back when the game came out there wasca RMT breach that forced you to buy something in the MB and if you happened to have over 500k gil it would take all your gil. People lost millions . SE threatened a law suite . WHY cant SE sue the websites that are advertising IN THERE game ? Unless SE is making some money with every transaction. If this IS SEs intellectual property then how can they stand by and let a 3rd party bot advertise......think about that .

/sign me and my wife up for this.

/signed Either SE needs to fix this or I say we hit them in the wallet and unsub.