Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

...and once again, a good 2.5hr long live letter concludes that consisted of nothing but questions from the forums (and some other media I think), and there wasn't even any mention of anything remotely RMT-related.

I still get tells albeit not as bad as pre heavensward. The Hi Bro tell/friend req's have seemed to stop. the old main cities though seem to have at least 1 jumping bot saying their nonsense and they just jump every now and than to avoid the afk kick. I have also not had to go busy as much I think I only did it a few days when the friend reqs where frequent

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Originally Posted by Zabuza

So now that the dust has settled on Heavensward, how are the RMTs for people now? Any better? Still more of the same?

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By what I've seen on Coeurl:

The RMT Friend requests seem to have stopped. Blocking trial accounts from sending them seems to have helped at least that aspect of it, so that's finally something SE got right.

/tell spam is much like it was before the release.

There had, however, been a noticeable drop in /tell frequency around the end of May. We speculated at the time that it might be just a pre-release lull, but the /tell frequency seems to have only returned to roughly the early June levels (maybe every 10 minutes or so) and not to its early May levels (back when it was a constant flood of tells averaging about a minute apart). Maybe that drop in late May really was an actual change and not just a temporary lull, as we thought at the time.

From June 3rd:

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Originally Posted by Magusrex

Exodus has been better for about a week. Not gone but but notably less.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

The same on Coeurl. I'm just not sure whether it's a meaningful drop or just a pre-expansion lull.

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It seems to have stayed down since then. (At least on Coeurl. I can't speak for Exodus.)

At it's current levels, the RMT spam is still really annoying, but no longer the game ruining sort of constant harassment it had been getting to be for a few months.

It's still pathetically high, and SE have done nothing to alleviate the issue, checking my /tells I'm up to 60 spam tells today, one person has been sending spam for over 7 hours without being banned (couldn't be arsed with the /blist), usually I'd go /busy, but I'm crafting, and crafting for friends, being /busy means they can't trade with me, and obviously I can't get tells. I've lost all faith in SE, come 4.0 and 5.0 we'll still be getting spam from RMT because SE can't seem to do simple stuff, like, I dunno, allow us to have options on WHO can tell us.

I suppose the thing that baffles me the most is that they added so much content in Heavensward, but still couldn't add the simple right click report feature that would flag an account for investigation if reported by a multitude of people.

They still haven't allowed you to remove all names from your blacklist at once, or a group of names at once.

Why, 2 years later, in this expansion that has been rated top notch everywhere, do we still have to go through two prompts to decline a friends request? Why do we still have to go through a bunch of menus to report someone instead of a simple right click report?

SE, for a company of your caliber and resources, these should be extremely simple features to implement.

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Originally Posted by Lexxuk

"one person has been sending spam for over 7 hours" (couldn't be arsed with the /blist),

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Sound like not even trying here let me help you. Put this on a button.

/blist add <r>

They send it you click it and it's a done deal.

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Originally Posted by Symbiant

Sound like not even trying here let me help you. Put this on a button.

/blist add <r>

They send it you click it and it's a done deal.

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Problem is when that blacklist becomes full you either spend 15 minutes removing 30-50 names, or remove a name from blacklist every time you are sent a /tell. This is beyond annoying, and hurts the gameplay/social experience.

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...6ba0d8cbc16378

I wonder if this will actually do anything o.o

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Suspension of Free Trial to Full Version Upgrades on Mog Station

We have identified an issue wherein the ability to upgrade to the full retail version of FINAL FANTASY XIV via the Mog Station was being abused for malicious purposes by those involved in illicit activities. As a response to this, we have decided to suspend the ability to upgrade to the full retail version on the Mog Station.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but when seeking to upgrade to the full retail version, we ask that you purchase a copy from either the Square Enix Online Store or other retailers.

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Originally Posted by Sicno

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...6ba0d8cbc16378

I wonder if this will actually do anything o.o

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Hmm.. Didn't know they were going to do that...

Hopefully that helps, what I've been saying forever is they just need to make it where the cost for creating each RMT bot becomes more expensive than the revenue each one brings in, since RMT companies won't do this at a net loss and it seems to me that for every RMT bot that leads to a customer making a purchase, there are many more that simply harass non-purchasers for the span of their existence. So it's just too cheap for them to create all these accounts, and they're allowed to do far too much with them when in trial status.

Remember all the people saying: "Stop complaining about our lack of options in dealing with RMT, I'm sure they're working on a solution for when HW comes out and don't want to say what it is." Ha yeah so that didn't happen. Still can't control who sends us tells without turning them off altogether or going on busy, still got a blacklist maxed out at 200 people except for when I manually delete some myself. Still see those people standing in main cities in Say mode referring to the same C O M P A N Y N A M E in their spam going on two months now.

I am still RMT free on Exodus, sorry for those of you still in bad shape. I am so happy, RMT was making me miserable now I have a great game. THANK THANK YOU THANK YOU

Well...I haven't seen many posts complaining of this lately, so I can assume they've actually taken effective measures at dealing with RMT?

Am glad your situation improved Magus, you seemed to be one of the angriest ones about the RMTs ruining your gameplay.

I still get the tells on Coeurl I just have had them muted for so long it doesn't annoy me as much as when I had the sound on. There is still that annoying bot spamming in /s their marketing gibberish by the main atheryte in Gridania ( I assume Limsa and Ul'dah but don't go there as much) and it is always a new bot every day for the same gil selling site. Though I have not recieved a friend req from one for at least 2 weeks

Sadly Coeurl is still swarmed with them. The one thing I would appreciate is a way to change the color of tells from friends and non friends, much like friends show up as orange by default when walking around. On the upside, least the "Hey bro" has stopped, guess the realized it had no real help to them.

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Originally Posted by Zabuza

Well...I haven't seen many posts complaining of this lately

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There was a thread about it in the New Player Help forum.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...mall-Complaint
(I think the OP there may still be too low level to post here in the General Discussion forum.)

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Originally Posted by Zabuza

Well...I haven't seen many posts complaining of this lately, so I can assume they've actually taken effective measures at dealing with RMT?

Am glad your situation improved Magus, you seemed to be one of the angriest ones about the RMTs ruining your gameplay.

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Yeah I was, and your post makes me consider my anger....the situation affected me...yes ...but it was the handling of it that made me angry. I felt like I and others were paying for a service and we were being harassed. The silence gave the impression they did not care, I understand they may have cared, but they made me FEEL like they were indifferent. I think the PR team failed them. I can't be angry any more because the problem is resolved for me. I feel bad for those that are still having issues though. The recent announcement should give people some hope because they are clearly trying new things, that was all I was looking for.

Suspension of Free Trial to Full Version Upgrades on Mog Station

We have identified an issue wherein the ability to upgrade to the full retail version of FINAL FANTASY XIV via the Mog Station was being abused for malicious purposes by those involved in illicit activities. As a response to this, we have decided to suspend the ability to upgrade to the full retail version on the Mog Station.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but when seeking to upgrade to the full retail version, we ask that you purchase a copy from either the Square Enix Online Store or other retailers.

There are 2 ways of fighting RMT effectively:

1) Create a game system where currency is useless to a point nobody feels the need to buy. A system where all players have a fair chance at ALL content without having to rely on mercenary players (like FFXI).

2) Identify AND PUNISH Gil Buyers. They are the source of the problem. Put their name in a Hall of Shame for everyone to see, get their character online on youtube/twitch and kill their character over and over till their items are broken, delete all his items and finally delete his character. Make them an example and make potential gil buyers to be very scared of becoming one. Or make like H1Z1 devs and oblige them to do a public apology on youtube to the community and then put them under observation status for forever, 1 strike, permanent ban.

Evrything else is just putting a bandaid in a river of blood.

I think SE has been taking several measures to fight RMT spam. I've noticed at times, on two seperate servers, when RMT spam was almost nonexistent. I'd like to note that at least one of those times was before the final patch for 2.0, and following a smaller patch for the game. That's just conjecture, though. Either way, SE has made making strides to cut down the RMT spam from restricting character creation to modifying what actually needs to be farmed in Heavensward to make Gil, and making it harder to do so.

For myself, I have a macro that will automatically deny a friend request and block whoever last sent me a tell, and I have all my tells in a separate tab that I occasionally check. The sound is turned off. I think the only thing missing from the equation on my end is the ability to quickly report someone...perhaps if there were a function designed specifically for reporting RMT spammers, such as a template that was partly/mostly filled out already? That would go a long way.

Though it dips in frequency now and then, RMT spam is still very present.

You'd assume Square Enix has a filtering system that allows for wildcards and blocks the common messages that have been around for almost two years now, and that Mr. Sellgilz would be told to sod off (i.e. ban obvious bot names) but none of that appears to be the case.

I removed all the RMT bots from my blacklist this week (which was a slow and painful process). Almost immediately, those same bots were messaging me again. After many months, you'd think these bots would've been deleted, yet they were still around, sending the same messages. Why can't we right-click to report? Why are the players responsible for reporting to prevent this (which takes ages, so people don't bother)?

At the risk of sounding rude, are your staff incompetent, SE? I don't want to insult any hard-working people whom are trying to better this game for everyone, but this RMT spam is ludicrous.

Fix this, Square Enix.

/signed

Add my name in support to ending RMT spam. I play leviathan server and some days I have to play with "BUSY" on the whole time.

RMT spam in tells is still as bad as usual in Adamantoise. I can't have a normal /tell conversation without their walls of text interrupting.

^ Same as like Olyver and AlphaFox said. RMT is still living happily on Couerl. The 'Hey Bro's went awol, at least. I've had 5 RMTs spam me back-to-back with maybe a second between them, once. "Badu-ring!...Badu-ring!....Badu-ring!....Badu-ring!.........baduring!" *Flips table at the ringing*

Like someone else mentioned, I've had a few instances where someone's messaged me, and just as/before I hit alt R to bring their name up to reply, I get an RMT tell. Soooo, of course my reply goes to the RMT bot. -_- Not a huge deal because I can just copy/paste what I wrote and correct it, but it makes me paranoid and annoyed that it didn't go to the right person in the first place.

has anyone else noticed gil tells almost never come while in the expansion areas? spent a few hours in new mor dhona, and not one tell, but went to limsa to use the MB, and was hit with 3 before i was done.

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Originally Posted by Kaze3434

has anyone else noticed gil tells almost never come while in the expansion areas? spent a few hours in new mor dhona, and not one tell, but went to limsa to use the MB, and was hit with 3 before i was done.

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Sadly I get them all the time in the xpac areas. Yes I didn't get any tells in those areas during EA but a few days after the offical release I started getting them everywhere -.-

Why can't SE, at the very least, automatically hide the repeating, offending urls in the /tells, /says, /shouts, etc., and completely block the ability to use those words when creating character names? They're making it too easy for RMT to get away with blatantly advertising their websites for long periods before being banned.

I understand they can work around it using symbols, but then new text blocking filters can be implemented when those are reported. Why make it so easy for them to get their advertising out? At least make them look stupid for spamming chat that advertises nothing. Or better yet, completely block chat containing those words from ever being sent.

Also SE should limit the number of /tells sent in a minute, or the people sent tells in a minute. Also should be limited the number of characters created per day and keep a week delay on process of deletion of characters, so that way it will prevent characters created -spam -deleted to avoid catch.

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Originally Posted by Lenne

Why can't SE, at the very least, automatically hide the repeating, offending urls ...

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It's harder than you think

I explained it here

It requires too much "lag" time to filter for everything, because the bots just change their tactics faster than a human can. Make it too aggressive and then it gets too many false positives, making people demand that it be turned off. To prevent "repeating", requires a keeping track of everything the bot says. But since they keep making more bots, it has to be tracked server-wide (if not data-center-wide.) So stuff stops looking like it's repeating when they shuffle the positions in the text, and rotate out cyrillic and greek characters.

And it's been stated before, but the Japanese servers, and the Legacy servers don't get nearly so much spam, so the problem is inversely proportional to the popularity of the server.

It's been a while since I last posted a pic of how things are on Moogle.

http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/44...2015203623.png

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Originally Posted by Sicno

Arkann I would have censored the sites too on that chatlog...

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Welp. Maybe not a bad idea.

Arkann I would have censored the sites too on that chatlog...

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

It's harder than you think

I explained it here

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Thanks for your link. I'd like to say I fully understand, but I'm not sure I do. xD

For me, the problem is they aren't using those symbols to pad their urls. I'm saying they are straight out writing their urls cleanly and plainly for all to see and understand, because they are allowed. I guess my lack of knowledge hurts me, but I assumed with how swear words could get filtered out in XI with asterisks, even with spaces and stuff between the letters, the same could be done for reported urls. :/ I know my request was nothing new, but it is extremely frustrating to see these bots get away with blatantly advertising with no setbacks whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Because they go from www.example.com to example.com to e x a m p l e . c o m to "$.com Google $=example" , so straight up blocking one doesn't block the other 3 examples, to say nothing of the cyrillic and greek substitutions. So you also have to consider шшш.example.℃0㎡ as well as "еxample.cоm" (the e and the o are cyrillic, but on your screen they look the same as latin)

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Thanks for the further explanation. It just sucks that it's too hard to combat. Like I said, I wasn't trying to claim it was an original idea, stupid me just thought it was possible to implement. ._.

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Originally Posted by Lenne

Thanks for your link. I'd like to say I fully understand, but I'm not sure I do. xD

For me, the problem is they aren't using those symbols to pad their urls. I'm saying they are straight out writing their urls cleanly and plainly for all to see and understand, because they are allowed. I guess my lack of knowledge hurts me, but I assumed with how swear words could get filtered out in XI with asterisks, even with spaces and stuff between the letters, the same could be done for reported urls. :/ I know my request was nothing new, but it is extremely frustrating to see these bots get away with blatantly advertising with no setbacks whatsoever.

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Because they go from www.example.com to example.com to e x a m p l e . c o m to "$.com Google $=example" , so straight up blocking one doesn't block the other 3 examples, to say nothing of the cyrillic and greek substitutions. So you also have to consider шшш.example.℃0㎡ as well as "еxample.cоm" (the e and the o are cyrillic, but on your screen they look the same as latin)

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Originally Posted by Zorlinta

Also SE should limit the number of /tells sent in a minute, or the people sent tells in a minute. Also should be limited the number of characters created per day and keep a week delay on process of deletion of characters, so that way it will prevent characters created -spam -deleted to avoid catch.

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cap /tells per minute = okay good idea
cap number of characters created per day = no way, thats the easiest way to piss off new legitimate customers --- never will happen.
week delay on deletion of characters = why should this matter? avoid catch? really? couldnt they just flag the account rather than the character?

It is in SE's best interest to ban as many gil seller accounts as possible. those people need to buy new accounts which in turn sells more copies of the game for SE and they make money on it!!!!

If you ban the buyer who's to say they just dont quit and then you lose the sub fee = buyers rarely get banned

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Originally Posted by SonTensei

cap /tells per minute = okay good idea
cap number of characters created per day = no way, thats the easiest way to piss off new legitimate customers --- never will happen.
week delay on deletion of characters = why should this matter? avoid catch? really? couldnt they just flag the account rather than the character?

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Why would anyone need to make multiple characters a day? I can understand 1, maybe 2 but you make it sound like making 5+ a day is common for a lot of people. =/

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Originally Posted by SonTensei

It is in SE's best interest to ban as many gil seller accounts as possible. those people need to buy new accounts which in turn sells more copies of the game for SE and they make money on it!!!!

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According to their updates, they do ban the accounts.

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Time Period: Jun. 25, 2015 to Jul. 8, 2015
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 1777
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 7417
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for participation in RMT/illegal activity: 35
・Action Details: Temporary ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

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Still, it makes me wonder how these people are getting into the game if their accounts have been suspended...unless they're running multiple bots at once that don't get logged out when an account is suspended?

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Originally Posted by Amiaze

Still, it makes me wonder how these people are getting into the game if their accounts have been suspended...unless they're running multiple bots at once that don't get logged out when an account is suspended?

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Sadly as people keep buying gil, that gives them money to buy new accounts. Think of it like this. If one person buys gil (and I dont know the prices of the gil per $) that pays for them to make 8 more RMT spammers on 8 different servers getting the cheapest account possible and even if they are not able to load the game up 8 times on one computer or however they do it, it still pays to replace the account with just one sale. If buyers stop, eventually RMT will give up cus they are not making money but sadly that is not going to happen unless buyers are openly seen being banned. Posting bans on a forum post that I would say a majority of people ingame never see or visit instills no threat to them.

I have gotten RMT spam with a brand new character, in the initial cutscene on the boat going to Limsa before I even have control of the character that I just created.

Yes RMT must be addressed. Immediately. Thank you SE

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Originally Posted by Amiaze

According to their updates, they do ban the accounts.

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I dont think they ban many buyers. In fact I ran in a merc LS alot during 2.x and customers would come up with 10 million, 50 million even to the point of one customer said "hold on before we run i need to talk to my friend"... this guy never got banned yet. after MONTHS! if they banned buyers those people probably wouldnt buy a new game and start over, they'd quit and SE would lose $ from Subscription fees...
They do ban the sellers/farmers and make a profit doing so, Those companies get accounts banned, then make new accounts buying new copies of the game. So if they ban 10k accounts per month and sell the game over for say 30 bucks, they are essentially generating an additional $300k in sales per month or 3.6 million per year... its in SE best interest to let sellers sell man

It's not that hard, there just needs to be an option to "Block /tell's from players under level 10" or let you pick a level. And I agree with the last poster, unless the RMT is really messing up the game economy, then it's in their best interest to let it happen. If a player is at 50, been playing for months then tries to buy gil and gets banned, do you think they will start over again? They probably will say screw that, and never touch the game, resulting in $12.99 less per month now.

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Originally Posted by SonTensei

I dont think they ban many buyers.

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I suspect you're right about this. Unless someone is conspicuous in their behavior (i.e. talking about it in game or somewhere that can be associated back to them), I'd guess they have somewhere near 0% chance of getting a ban.

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one customer said "hold on before we run i need to talk to my friend"... this guy never got banned yet. after MONTHS!

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WOW. I take it he never actually said he was buying right? He just used that "friend" euphemism to get around that?

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They do ban the sellers/farmers and make a profit doing so, Those companies get accounts banned, then make new accounts buying new copies of the game. So if they ban 10k accounts per month and sell the game over for say 30 bucks, they are essentially generating an additional $300k in sales per month or 3.6 million per year... its in SE best interest to let sellers sell man

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I think that's part of the reason that so much of what they do involves compromised accounts to keep their costs down.

On an only tangentially related note, the spam advertising/friend request strategy seems like a self-defeating strategy to me in the long run. It calls attention to them and based on the messages I receive, none seem like they would be coherent enough for the average user to actually act on.