Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

To much work to report so I stopped

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Originally Posted by Nicobo

I think it is better than before.
Recently I have not recieved any Friends Invitation from RMTs, do you? ^^;

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I haven't received any Friend reqs from RMTs.

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Originally Posted by Solaria_Luna

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Originally Posted by Nicobo

Recently I have not recieved any Friends Invitation from RMTs, do you? ^^;

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I haven't received any Friend reqs from RMTs.

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When 3.0 released, SE made a change to Friend requests to block anyone on a Free Trial account from sending them. I haven't gotten any RMT ones since that change. The RMTs' Free Trial spam-bots now just stand around Aetherites spamming the /say channel while their paid account spam-bots spam /tell messages. But at least the Friend Request spam was addressed.

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Originally Posted by Zhexos

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

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All of this is great. But we still have had zero movement in over a year about the RMT advertisement spam in /tell. While we are getting less since Heavensward's release they are slowly getting worse and worse. Can we get a chat filter setting or at least can YOU improve the current text filter to catch more of these.

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Originally Posted by Solaria_Luna

I haven't received any Friend reqs from RMTs.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

When 3.0 released, SE made a change to Friend requests to block anyone on a Free Trial account from sending them...

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Thanks for the information!

I am a relatively new player with a history of playing MMOs for almost a decade. I am used to RMT tells, and can ignore them. That said this MMO has by far the WORST RMT tell problem of anything I've ever played. Something needs to be done. It won't make me quit as I can ignore them (and sometimes they are funny to read), but it would improve my game time significantly if they didn't exist.

My number one recommendation that I can think of: add a right click report spam button. Put in some code to prevent accounts from sending whispers to ANYONE or talking in /shout if they receive 10 or more report spam clicks within say 15 minutes. This would not only stop RMT rather quickly but it would also eliminate public channel trolling (which I haven't seen at all in this game).

Anyone else notice the RMT bots in Coerthas spamming FATEs now? Must have gotten the idea from players botting FATEs in North Than.

-They use classes, not jobs.
-Their gear is 20-30 levels lower than them.
-They don't have a FC or GC.
-Their names aren't jibberish, but instead 2 word sentences.

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out they are not a legit player.

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Originally Posted by Zhexos

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

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What about the free companies named like "asdfds" with somewhere around 5 characters in them, are still rank one after months of been created, are all mostly summoners with ifrit-egi, are all wearing level 45+ bought gear to spirit bond and killing the same things over and over (which usually consist of ornery karakul's)... pretty sure they don't need investigating.

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Originally Posted by Lucke

Anyone else notice the RMT bots in Coerthas spamming FATEs now? Must have gotten the idea from players botting FATEs in North Than.

-They use classes, not jobs.
-Their gear is 20-30 levels lower than them.
-They don't have a FC or GC.
-Their names aren't jibberish, but instead 2 word sentences.

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out they are not a legit player.

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Yeah, ive seen them too, but they'll most likely "need investigating"

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-They use classes, not jobs.
-Their gear is 20-30 levels lower than them.
-They don't have a FC or GC.
-Their names aren't jibberish, but instead 2 word sentences.

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out they are not a legit player.

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About those Bots seeking non stop the duty finder, they are even easy to track if you do a "/sea all" they are all side by side. I was wondering if maybe Square-Enix could employ someone in game to check and take countermeasures against them or maybe the Special Task Force staff are not enough for the huge amount of works that requires to hunt them I don't know, anyway I do think that a right click report would makes thing faster as well.

Something struck me as amusing last week but I couldn't find this thread to chime in. It's about those Black Mage / Thaumaturge bots running around.

1) they're really kind of creepy
2) they're amusingly appropriate given FF9's use of Black Mages

That said there was about a week in which I didn't see much in the way of spam. Now it's back with a vengeance. Was easier to ignore by disabling the sound effect for /tell. But recently I've been trying to keep an eye on the log for certain things. Really difficult to watch the log when there's constant spam coming in so I had to disable /tell logging. Hope nobody uses /tell for something useful in this game because it's not feasible to pay attention to it with all the spam.

Allow ppl to sell a house. My fC lost 56 million trying to buy a large before. We got scammed and the head gm said there Is nothing they can do about it. Selling Is against the game rules. Gil sellers are on party finder selling hours every day because they know se won't go after them /sad

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Originally Posted by Whiteprincess

Allow ppl to sell a house. My fC lost 56 million trying to buy a large before. We got scammed and the head gm said there Is nothing they can do about it. Selling Is against the game rules. Gil sellers are on party finder selling hours every day because they know se won't go after them /sad

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Really? I'd try another GM because as far as I was told, creating a deal/agreement between parties and then one side not fulfilling their end of the bargain is a big no no, more so if you got proof of the agreement.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

Saying reporting helps while they still refuse to give us the proper reporting tool we've been asking for since the game started ... :(

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Give the guys some slack. If you read Heavensward credits after last cut scene, you'll see that the Special Task Force consists of two people and a supervisor. The less reports they have to sift through, the easier their job.
Plus, bots and RMT used to supply like 90% of crystals and shards on AH. Remember good old days you could craft in peace not worrying about going dry on your crystal supply? :)

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Really? I'd try another GM because as far as I was told, creating a deal/agreement between parties and then one side not fulfilling their end of the bargain is a big no no, more so if you got proof of the agreement.

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I was under this impression too, unless SEs policy has changed and now you can scam other players without worry? Would be nice to get official clarification on that.

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Originally Posted by Lucke

Anyone else notice the RMT bots in Coerthas spamming FATEs now? Must have gotten the idea from players botting FATEs in North Than.

-They use classes, not jobs.
-Their gear is 20-30 levels lower than them.
-They don't have a FC or GC.
-Their names aren't jibberish, but instead 2 word sentences.

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out they are not a legit player.

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Originally Posted by EZ5902

What about the free companies named like "asdfds" with somewhere around 5 characters in them, are still rank one after months of been created, are all mostly summoners with ifrit-egi, are all wearing level 45+ bought gear to spirit bond and killing the same things over and over (which usually consist of ornery karakul's)... pretty sure they don't need investigating.

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The issue in both these cases is that, no matter how clearly suspicious, none of those things are actually against the rules. Before SE can ban those accounts, they have to verify the actual RMT transaction taking place, since that's the part that is against the rules. (And also because that will lead them to finding the buyers whom they also want to stop.) That's where the investigation part comes in. The task force needs to monitor these bots to track where their gil goes.

Their basic approach to that part isn't too far off the mark. The main thing is simply that they clearly aren't tracking enough of them or stopping them soon enough. (That could just point to being severely undermanned, or could be a lack of suitable tools for efficiently tracking the info they need. I suspect a combination of both.)

Where they're really dropping the ball, though, is on the advertising spam. There's nothing to be investigated there. Spam-bots wouldn't be handling the gil, so they aren't going to lead SE's investigators to other accounts. And it's their spam itself that's against the rules. There's no excuse for not putting in the tools to be able to stop them immediately as soon as they start sending it.

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Originally Posted by Zhexos

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

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I understand all this, and I totally agree that the investigation of farming bots and potential gil buyers needs to be very carefully made. Now, there needs to be a difference between reporting and investigating farmers/buyers and reporting and investigating chat spammers, since that's something that should be able to be verified very fast. No long investigation needed in this case, just a look at a few messages containing advertisement should be enough to identify a breach to the ToS.

So, as opposed to what some players suggest, I don't think a "right click report player" (that could be abused) is that good an idea. What we really need is a "right click report MESSAGE" feature. Add this to the menu displayed when you right click on a player name next to their message on the chatlog, the same menu that already has the "add to blacklist" feature. I'm guessing one issue with investigating spammers who use /tell is that you can't go reading private messages right away. I'm guessing that you can't openly browse their /tell history, and that's why you need us to copy and paste the spam message in our report so that you can do a search and see if it's there somewhere in their history. But with a "report message" feature you could get a direct link to the message in question and take immediate action.

Mikaka Meiakanaka from Excalibur world here. I'm snappy-happy to report that since HEAVENSWARD launched, I've gotten a total of FOUR RMT /tells, ZERO RMT Friend Requests, ZERO /shouts, and ZERO /says.Excalibur is almost RMT-free!

Holy #@$! An official response to an RMT thread! Subs must be dropping sooner than I thought! I can't think of any other reason they'd reply to a topic they've been silent about since day one.

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Originally Posted by LandricFrey

Holy #@$! An official response to an RMT thread! Subs must be dropping sooner than I thought! I can't think of any other reason they'd reply to a topic they've been silent about since day one.

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Because clearly that is the case.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Because clearly that is the case.

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Clearly.

It was more of a thank you post more than anything, but at least it isn't just a blatant ignoring of the player base. I'm sure they have their reasons.

I'm a new player, and I have seen these tells. I get at least one every time i log in and sometimes one will pop up in the dungeon. But nowhere near as many as people are saying here. Perhaps is my server.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Really? I'd try another GM because as far as I was told, creating a deal/agreement between parties and then one side not fulfilling their end of the bargain is a big no no, more so if you got proof of the agreement.

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Ya we tried a few times until my friend asked for the head gm. They kept saying ppl aren't asked lower to sell houses. Both parties we be banned due to square game terms. It's get our money back and be banned. Or leave the Gil seller alone. My friend got fed up and took the risk. In the end they said they can't do anything. Ppl have an I'd number when searched In lode stone. That guy changed his name as server and gave the house to his other account.

Oh well, figured it was worth a shot to try again.

Stupid spell check screwed my reply up. Can't find an edit button on cellphone lol

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Originally Posted by Whiteprincess

Allow ppl to sell a house. My fC lost 56 million trying to buy a large before. We got scammed and the head gm said there Is nothing they can do about it. Selling Is against the game rules. Gil sellers are on party finder selling hours every day because they know se won't go after them /sad

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How did they scam you? Took money and didn't relinquish house? Or did they relinquish it, and a third party bought house before you did? The latter is not a scam.

All I want is:

Right Click > Report RMT Spam > Puts player on a special ignore list that doesn't interfere with my actual blacklist

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Originally Posted by aesteval

Something struck me as amusing last week but I couldn't find this thread to chime in. It's about those Black Mage / Thaumaturge bots running around.
2) they're amusingly appropriate given FF9's use of Black Mages

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Yes! That's such an awesome parallel, especially given that they're always in the BLM AF1, which looks like the FF9 Black Mage outfit xD (well, like all of the FF black mage outfits, but still!).

I come across a tanking bot on a near daily basis in low level roulette. If there are newer players they are somewhat scared to leave or dismiss the bot because they need the dungeon for their main story quests. Its an annoyance to me, but to newer players....

giving my sign as well its ridiculous to see how many bots are spamming about gold buying sites that are selling and nothing being done

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Originally Posted by Zhexos

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

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How about a faster/easier way to file a report? Filing a report should not have us going from section to section. Get us to the report section fast as possible for better results.

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Originally Posted by LandricFrey

Holy #@$! An official response to an RMT thread! Subs must be dropping sooner than I thought! I can't think of any other reason they'd reply to a topic they've been silent about since day one.

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doing a quick dev search, they have replied(multiple times) to RMT with the "We are working on it". kinda the players fault that there are 30(exaggerated) threads on the same thing, as if having more of the same thing is some kind of flag of importance.

So SE - Here's a question - how can we report well over 200+ RMT's? Is there an e-mail address that we can send screenshots and stuff to you? RMT caught in the act - a picture is worth 1000 words.

If FFXIV we're a Casino, and SE, the management...

There are two dudes at the Blackjack table, one sitting, focused intently on the game. The management is obsessed w/ this guy cuz they think he's counting cards. They just some way to prove it so they can confiscate his winnings. Mean while, the other guy, his "buddy" wearing a shirt and flannel, is harassing everyone who he spots with the same line over and over...

"For just a few $$$ I can get you some high priced chips.*wink* *wink*"

People complain and complain about this guy... they want him gone! But SE is too busy focusing on the card counting guy. Eventually they kick the other dude out cuz he's not betting. They toss him out on the street. The dude picks himself up, takes off the flannel and puts on a pair of glasses and walks right back in. Management never notices cuz they still too focused on the card counting guy. And thus everything repeats itself over again... and again... and again... eventually everyone else in the Casino goes over to this guy known as Guile D. Works, whom offers these amazing app for their gam... er phone, that block out the annoying spammy dude...

The end...

That's my tale... it may be ridiculous... it may be full of grammatical and spelling errors! But it's my contribution to this topic. And I think it's a nice analogy... :)

Just putting this here...
In the wake of yet another post about the banhammer count, I've reported 10 characters on Thursday and Friday - and I was online like maybe 12 (let's be generous, 16) hours combined those two days. Today, I've not been logged in for a whole hour, I just submitted a report about a third character - yes, that's 3 in less than an hour. All in all, 13 people in <48 hours.
Someone somewhere said SE does have text filters enabled for chat/tells... I'm not sure about that. I mean, surely, in all these months, it's become more than obvious that part of the RMTs are advertising the same site, so why can they still send their tells with the site's address in plain text with common characters in them?? It's not new, it's one of the oldest to have hit the game. Yet they can still advertise without even needing to resort to special characters or somehow chopping it up. Yeah...

And indeed...

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Originally Posted by Esper

How about a faster/easier way to file a report? Filing a report should not have us going from section to section. Get us to the report section fast as possible for better results.

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...especially when the Support Desk, which we have to use, is as clunky and cumbersome as the one we have in-game. Just to get things to load takes longer than writing and sending the report.

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Originally Posted by Zhexos

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

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I find the response disappointing. While I understand investigations to prevent false punishment is important, their process is so opaque that it seems like they have an intentionally poor process of dealing not only with RMT but also the major cause of annoyance to most players: the RMT spammer. I don't understand how the investigation for an RMT spammer should take more than 5 seconds.

All they have to do is make a character, (or even go inviz mode with the GM characters) plop down near the aetherite and market boards and wait. I guarantee they will be spammed within 5 minutes. What more proof do you need?

ALSO you will see BLM's (50's) teleporting in and out

It's not just the RMT spams. The botting is just out of control. There have been way too many times where my husband and I have been unable to progress on a quest because bots have flooded a zone and are killing the mobs we need. A week ago in the Sylvan glade, we saw five sets of 4 bots teleport in and out of that place. It was ridiculous.

You are all so very naive. They can't discuss how they get rid of bots or the botters will know what to work around. I am quite sure that they are doing everything that they can REASONABLY do. Do some research on this topic.