RMTs are starting to bother me...

What really shocks me is that anyone was ever buying gil in this game to begin with. More than anything, I think the RMT were planning to stockpile for the event when the game finally took off and got big.

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I agree. The worst thing was making the Goobbue mount available to ANYONE.

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The Goobbue won't be obtainable going forward so once the RMT that have them are gone, this particular abuse will go away.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

The Goobbue won't be obtainable going forward so once the RMT that have them are gone, this particular abuse will go away.

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I completely forgot about that, because they will then be screwed lol :)

Thank you, Rukkirii, for commenting and informing us on this. It's really appreciated and I know that everyone on my LS (and my friends are on other LSs, too) will spread this news. Once again, thank you SO MUCH for informing us! :)

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Originally Posted by Rukkirii

While it might seem to many of you that we are not combating RMT related activity at camps like Cedarwood and other places, please rest assured that the operations and STF teams are proactively looking into this and performing thorough investigations. And to give you more insight of their investigations, we banned 700 accounts last week, but as you know they keep coming back.

In addition to ongoing STF efforts, we will be setting up countermeasures system wise as we head towards version 2.0. If you happen to notice any suspicious activity in your adventuring, please take a moment and help us out by making an STF report by going here: http://support.na.square-enix.com/co...hp?id=902&la=1

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yes banning them wrok to a degree the prob with stf is that most of us have to write dwn every name to repot it and have to log to do so and since they use the long name tatic ex: huyds jfuenc times that by 8 then its going to take a while and most just try to ignore them as far as repoting them iv told gm gm told me plz use webstie if gm gets report then gm should log in as a normal char sit there wright every ex ydfbg tuemv dwn then submit to the stf for banning and should b done atleast 2x a wekk randomally as i see it now gm dnt care much and do little even if you told them where they r at and the yet remain

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Originally Posted by Rukkirii

While it might seem to many of you that we are not combating RMT related activity at camps like Cedarwood and other places, please rest assured that the operations and STF teams are proactively looking into this and performing thorough investigations. And to give you more insight of their investigations, we banned 700 accounts last week, but as you know they keep coming back.

In addition to ongoing STF efforts, we will be setting up countermeasures system wise as we head towards version 2.0. If you happen to notice any suspicious activity in your adventuring, please take a moment and help us out by making an STF report by going here: http://support.na.square-enix.com/co...hp?id=902&la=1

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To be perfectly clear on specifying this, they are farming this one faction Leve that involves all of these sheep, wolves, and an enemy NPC. I am not sure how much that specific Leve gives for its rewards, but that is the Leve that these botters are farming it from. Just a little FYI :)

another way to kick rmt company where it hurts is create an se run"ed rmt like blizz is doing se makes a little and every 1 can get their fill or get rid of gill on the leves and make getting gill a little harder yes id hate the fact i get xp but little to no gill from leves but at least i know that rmt bots will have it so hard no goobuu to exploit leve's + little to no gain in gill = less rmt bots

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Originally Posted by Rukkirii

While it might seem to many of you that we are not combating RMT related activity at camps like Cedarwood and other places, please rest assured that the operations and STF teams are proactively looking into this and performing thorough investigations. And to give you more insight of their investigations, we banned 700 accounts last week, but as you know they keep coming back.

In addition to ongoing STF efforts, we will be setting up countermeasures system wise as we head towards version 2.0. If you happen to notice any suspicious activity in your adventuring, please take a moment and help us out by making an STF report by going here: http://support.na.square-enix.com/co...hp?id=902&la=1

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Tell those RMT to STFU!

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

Tell those RMT to STFU!

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I actually yell on the game, "GTFO you RMTs!!" Lol.

lol I forgot about this thread, are the rmt in nanawa still trying to mpk people on Excalibur?

Like I said, just tag them for PK, but make it so they can't fight back
Then SE still makes money from them, and the players can have some fun making the RMT's job impossible.
Win Win
Maybe throw in some rewards for high RMT kill counts.

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Originally Posted by Rukkirii

While it might seem to many of you that we are not combating RMT related activity at camps like Cedarwood and other places, please rest assured that the operations and STF teams are proactively looking into this and performing thorough investigations. And to give you more insight of their investigations, we banned 700 accounts last week, but as you know they keep coming back.

In addition to ongoing STF efforts, we will be setting up countermeasures system wise as we head towards version 2.0. If you happen to notice any suspicious activity in your adventuring, please take a moment and help us out by making an STF report by going here: http://support.na.square-enix.com/co...hp?id=902&la=1

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Any countermessure you plan to implement, gathering fatigue, levelling fatigue, item exclusivity etc, will only harm the honest players.

Anything is hackable and RMTable. Any countermessure will get its counter-countermessure from the same RMTs. And in the end it will only be a pain for the players.

Just plain ban them and sorted. Same as botting afk players. No answer to a tell? Sorry mate, you were supposed to be there when you were moving around.
It's so obvious I don't even understand what kind of investigation is needed to prove all this.

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Originally Posted by Rukkirii

While it might seem to many of you that we are not combating RMT related activity at camps like Cedarwood and other places, please rest assured that the operations and STF teams are proactively looking into this and performing thorough investigations. And to give you more insight of their investigations, we banned 700 accounts last week, but as you know they keep coming back.

In addition to ongoing STF efforts, we will be setting up countermeasures system wise as we head towards version 2.0. If you happen to notice any suspicious activity in your adventuring, please take a moment and help us out by making an STF report by going here: http://support.na.square-enix.com/co...hp?id=902&la=1

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Please, for the love of all that's Holy PROVIDE AN IN-GAME METHOD OF REPORTING TO THE STF.

It's a major PITA to have to log to a web site to make a report .. do I need to remind you that your game crashes when you ALT-TAB out of full-screen mode???!!!??? .. so much so that I expect the vast majority of RMT (and other) activity goes unreported due to your player-hostile reporting mechanism.

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Originally Posted by Ingolf

I don't mind the RMT. Each one of those is another payment that SE really needs to support this game. It's not like they do anything harmful to other players.

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The Problem was that RMT really screwed FFXI's economy for those of you remember about 5 years ago when RMT totally messed things up .. of course that was a loooong time ago in FFXI but I havnt been there in a long while .. how is it doing BTW anyone know ?

Hope they catch it before it screws this games economy too

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Originally Posted by Kraggy

Please, for the love of all that's Holy PROVIDE AN IN-GAME METHOD OF REPORTING TO THE STF.

It's a major PITA to have to log to a web site to make a report .. do I need to remind you that your game crashes when you ALT-TAB out of full-screen mode???!!!??? .. so much so that I expect the vast majority of RMT (and other) activity goes unreported due to your player-hostile reporting mechanism.

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This. Maybe just make it an option from when you're cheking an NPC.

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Originally Posted by Bebekurenai

Any countermessure you plan to implement, gathering fatigue, levelling fatigue, item exclusivity etc, will only harm the honest players.

Anything is hackable and RMTable. Any countermessure will get its counter-countermessure from the same RMTs. And in the end it will only be a pain for the players.

Just plain ban them and sorted. Same as botting afk players. No answer to a tell? Sorry mate, you were supposed to be there when you were moving around.
It's so obvious I don't even understand what kind of investigation is needed to prove all this.

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Ok you say no investigations are needed, ok I have been mining all day, someone decides to report me for botting, some time later my phone rings when I am half way through a node, I receive a GM tell and can't answer it because I am on the phone, should I be banned for a badly timed phone call or should they investigate?

I am doing leves, decide to stand at camp to eat, someone has seen be doing leves all day, should I be banned?

This is what the investigations avoid it ensures they only ban guilty parties not people who afk'd for a short time in a bad position.

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Originally Posted by Bebekurenai

Any countermessure you plan to implement, gathering fatigue, levelling fatigue, item exclusivity etc, will only harm the honest players.

Anything is hackable and RMTable. Any countermessure will get its counter-countermessure from the same RMTs. And in the end it will only be a pain for the players.

Just plain ban them and sorted. Same as botting afk players. No answer to a tell? Sorry mate, you were supposed to be there when you were moving around.
It's so obvious I don't even understand what kind of investigation is needed to prove all this.

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Short of catching an individual completely in the act, an investigation is needed.

What Delsus above me has said holds true. And even when he comes back, if his /linkshell chat scrolls the /tell off the screen and he's not too interested in scrolling back to read his /linkshell chat, he's not going to see the /tell either.

How are these players botting? What method/program are they using? Can the method/program be detected? If it can be, which players are logging into the game with this third party program running in the background? How many of these players have been reported? Are all the players with this third party program using it for botting purposes?

i.e. I wouldn't want them banning folks just because they had a Razr gaming mouse, an Xkeys keyboard, a gamepad-keyboard emulator, or used macro programs for non-gaming. Even though there are some individuals that may use this to achieve unattended gameplay, it does not make all individuals using these devices banworthy.

If the individual was using a program where the program's sole purpose was to perform actions in FFXIV, I could see any individual with that program on their machine getting suspended and/or banned without further probing.

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"Ban 'em all and let the mods sort 'em out."

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Originally Posted by Delsus

Ok you say no investigations are needed, ok I have been mining all day, someone decides to report me for botting, some time later my phone rings when I am half way through a node, I receive a GM tell and can't answer it because I am on the phone, should I be banned for a badly timed phone call or should they investigate?

I am doing leves, decide to stand at camp to eat, someone has seen be doing leves all day, should I be banned?

This is what the investigations avoid it ensures they only ban guilty parties not people who afk'd for a short time in a bad position.

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No one care if you are AFK or on the phone while standing still.

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The use of programs or tools within FINAL FANTASY XIV that allow certain continuous actions to be performed automatically are often referred to as absentee play, which is also prohibited in FINAL FANTASY XIV. Additionally, during the course of an absentee play investigation, players may be requested to respond to or comply with a GMs instruction. Failure to do so is consider a violation and may result in disciplinary action being taken against the account.

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The GM won't supsend you if you are static doing nothing. They're not that stupid. You'll be most likely observed for few minutes, /tell will be sent to you, if you keep on mining or do w/e you're doing without replying, they will send you another /tell. If you keep on going you'll end up jailed and will have to explain why you did not comply. That's how it worked on XI.

Failure to comply to GMs instructions at any given time during your gameplay is a violation of the ToS.

Anything that is a mini-game, fatigue, or otherwise designed to require more input or slow the process of gathering/crafting only hurts people trying to play the game legitimately.

If you take a look at FFXI's fishing minigame, it primarily served to force anyone who was a fisher to begin using third party tools because it was impossible to catch money making fish at anything close to a decent rate gil/hour otherwise.

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Originally Posted by dragorian

yes banning them wrok to a degree the prob with stf is that most of us have to write dwn every name to repot it and have to log to do so and since they use the long name tatic ex: huyds jfuenc times that by 8 then its going to take a while and most just try to ignore them as far as repoting them

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• make a macro with /echo , <t>
• tab through the names and use the macro
• copy/paste the names from your chat to your report
• delete the first ","

But you are right that it would be faster and better if we can report ingame without first visit the SE support page.

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Originally Posted by Bebekurenai

Any countermessure you plan to implement, gathering fatigue, levelling fatigue, item exclusivity etc, will only harm the honest players.

Anything is hackable and RMTable. Any countermessure will get its counter-countermessure from the same RMTs. And in the end it will only be a pain for the players.

Just plain ban them and sorted. Same as botting afk players. No answer to a tell? Sorry mate, you were supposed to be there when you were moving around.
It's so obvious I don't even understand what kind of investigation is needed to prove all this.

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I often, I'd say 90% of the time, watch TV/movies while i'm crafting/fishing.

I never look at my chat log, nothing i need to craft/fish appears in the chat log.

I'm almost always doing the same thing over, and over, and over too. I also have a mule that i exclusively fish on. (so i can accumulate rested XP for my DoW on my main)

Not to mention sometimes insomnia kicks in and i'll fish all night.

should i be banned?

it's not always that simple as just sending a /tell or even looking for repetitive motions. for some of us, that's just what we do.

Question isn't "should I be banned?". You accepted the ToS before playing. You have to ensure that you can comply.

It's not like GMs won't give you a small window of time to reply anyway. You could be distracted etc. But if you are not watching your screen, the result is exactly the same as having a bot doing craft for you.

On XI fishing required full focus, but skilling up did not. Someone in my LS got banned because of using scripts to skill up magic (he was at fault, so deserved it). He wasn't banned because the GM did prove that he was using scripts, but because he did not comply and kept on casting magic for a good 5 minutes.

- He could have been spamming macro while watching a movie
- Could have been -that- famous 6 y/o little brother who was crafting for him while he was away for a smoke and couldn't reply the tell because he didn't know how. (that little brother is so famous in all MMO!)

In the end, he got banned for "absentee play" which is different of "using third party tools".

So be on the safe side, filter your logs so you can at least see tells and keep an eye on them if GMs start investigating often on XIV. Do what you can to fully respect the policy you accepted.

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Originally Posted by Antipika

Question isn't "should I be banned?". You accepted the ToS before playing. You have to ensure that you can comply.

It's not like GMs won't give you a small window of time to reply anyway. You could be distracted etc. But if you are not watching your screen, the result is exactly the same as having a bot doing craft for you.

On XI fishing required full focus, but skilling up did not. Someone in my LS got banned because of using scripts to skill up magic (he was at fault, so deserved it). He wasn't banned because the GM did prove that he was using scripts, but because he did not comply and kept on casting magic for a good 5 minutes.

- He could have been spamming macro while watching a movie
- Could have been -that- famous 6 y/o little brother who was crafting for him while he was away for a smoke and couldn't reply the tell because he didn't know how. (that little brother is so famous in all MMO!)

In the end, he got banned for "absentee play" which is different of "using third party tools".

So be on the safe side, filter your logs so you can at least see tells and keep an eye on them if GMs start investigating often on XIV. Do what you can to fully respect the policy you accepted.

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There is a huge grey area here. Keep in mind the policy also says we are not allowed to reverse engineer game data.

So technically Kannican's beautiful post about attack damage, damage taken, etc. are all against the policy. while he is not using it for monetary gain, it is still reverse engineering.

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Activities that destroy game balance
Activities that destroy game balance
Using third party programs or tools in FINAL FANTASY XIV is strictly prohibited since they allow users to gain an unfair advantage over other players. The use of programs or tools within FINAL FANTASY XIV that allow certain continuous actions to be performed automatically are often referred to as absentee play, which is also prohibited in FINAL FANTASY XIV. Additionally, during the course of an absentee play investigation, players may be requested to respond to or comply with a GMs instruction. Failure to do so is consider a violation and may result in disciplinary action being taken against the account.

The following activities are also prohibited in FINAL FANTASY XIV.
•Modifying, analyzing, integrating and reverse engineering game data
•Utility creation and distribution
•Exploiting SQUARE ENIX programming that does not run as intended to gain profit or damage other players

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The bolded statement is the official definition of absentee play.

The italics section is an expanded definition. IE: me watching a movie is against the policy, since i'm not paying attention to my chat log.

Curiously enough there is nothing in the policy about dual-boxing. (personally i feel this gives a far greater advantage to some players than absentee play) but then again there are not many machines capable of dual boxing the game at this point. You'd need to computers.

Anyway, looks like i need to revise my habits.

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Originally Posted by Onisake

So technically Kannican's beautiful post about attack damage, damage taken, etc. are all against the policy. while he is not using it for monetary gain, it is still reverse engineering.

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It is against the policy. All datamining is. But SE decided not to hunt these people, however they have the power to legally attack a website using datamining to provide data that cannot be obtained by normal means to the community.

The policy is also there to protect SE and ensure they have the right to take legal action if they want to. Reverse-engineering in general is not a good thing for any company and can cause harm.

The harm won't come from a random player over there, trying to figure out of gameplay mechanisms are working or from your average FF XIV item database. However what about someone stealing a part of SE's code/technology through reverse engineering and using it for his own products?

(Yeah I know it's not like anyone will steal anything from XIV anyway...)

Another example would be using reverse engineering techniques to make a plugin that allow you to decode the music files present on the game data (such plugins existed for XI and data can be extracted on XIV). This can cause SE harm. Music is their intellectual property, they do whatever they want with it, we do not.

Having a policy/rule doesn't mean it will always be strictly enforced. But I can tell you for sure that on XI, skilling-up without responding to GM would get you jailed. (crafting/fishing as well, but well to do this you must cheat obviously :p)

I guess when I want to go AFK I should cancel auto-attack while fighting an NM. lol

Hi Guys!

I thought I would take a moment to chime in about in game reporting features.

If you include the Name(s) and which activity is being performed, the GM staff will submit the names to the Special Task Force on your behalf. I will look at the message we send to you as we do not want any misunderstanding or feelings of neglect. Also, the Special Task Force is the department who handles all the investigations into RMT and Cheats, so the GM staff cannot always get involved in the ways you wish.

Thank you for helping keep our game running smoothly and I will bow out from any further discussion.

-Senior Game Master Jhanaka

What you describe has been happening on Karnak (now Excalibur) since the beginning. If they bug you take some screenshots and go narc on them to the Special Task Force Unit.

Edit: lol quick reply... "what Jhanaka said."

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Originally Posted by Delsus

Ok you say no investigations are needed, ok I have been mining all day, someone decides to report me for botting, some time later my phone rings when I am half way through a node, I receive a GM tell and can't answer it because I am on the phone, should I be banned for a badly timed phone call or should they investigate?

I am doing leves, decide to stand at camp to eat, someone has seen be doing leves all day, should I be banned?

This is what the investigations avoid it ensures they only ban guilty parties not people who afk'd for a short time in a bad position.

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As Antipika already answered, you should'nt be moving if you are afk.
And also I mean by obvious not someone who is going afk once and missed a tell or too lazy to scroll back. I mean repetetive behaviour which is obvious, like ppl turbocrafting inside the wards for a WEEK come on! Don't tell me its someone who went for food, how can you compare that to when you are at camp after a full day doing leves cause you're hungry and decide to go afk?
Or fishers at lakes blinking for hours, supposedly running a bot that tries to equip a bait.
Please some common sense ppl. I didnt mean any of you guys who need to afk from time to time, I mean obvious botters and/or RMTs. Those who we keep complaining about but are still at our camps and are supposed to be investigated, this is what I mean, investigate WHY?

What really gets me is why the botters are using CNJ to fight and farm the Leves. I don't understand 'why' they chose CNJ instead of THM. Then again, they do use Fire when they are CNJ (I can tell from the equipped weapon). I'm guessing it's because of Aerora and Stonera, since those are specific to CNJ but Fire can be used as well; all three spells are AoE.

What I really don't understand is why they are wanting to fight the Faction Leve that has those sheep/ram, the wolves and the NPC... Why that Leve and nothing else?

I did get a giggle out of this two weeks ago; the lead RMT got killed during the fight, laid there and the surrounding RMTs just stopped fighting while getting beat up by the enemy monsters. It's like if one of the fishing RMT leaders gets KOed, the rest stop what they are doing and become inactive.

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Originally Posted by Jhanaka

Hi Guys!

I thought I would take a moment to chime in about in game reporting features.

If you include the Name(s) and which activity is being performed, the GM staff will submit the names to the Special Task Force on your behalf. I will look at the message we send to you as we do not want any misunderstanding or feelings of neglect. Also, the Special Task Force is the department who handles all the investigations into RMT and Cheats, so the GM staff cannot always get involved in the ways you wish.

Thank you for helping keep our game running smoothly and I will bow out from any further discussion.

-Senior Game Master Jhanaka

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D: you took the words out of my mouth, I demand that you put them back in.

When I am waiting for a queue to log in I will decide if I care. Until then, nope. I don't see why I should.

RMT are perfectly justified in what they do. The reason why RMT exist is because there is a demand for their services. And nothing in the "Terms of Agreement" is going to convince a judge that what they are doing is harmful. A Judge is going to see it as part of the free enterprise system. You people talk about RMTs as if they we're Shylock from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

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Originally Posted by Antipika

No one care if you are AFK or on the phone while standing still.



The GM won't supsend you if you are static doing nothing. They're not that stupid. You'll be most likely observed for few minutes, /tell will be sent to you, if you keep on mining or do w/e you're doing without replying, they will send you another /tell. If you keep on going you'll end up jailed and will have to explain why you did not comply. That's how it worked on XI.

Failure to comply to GMs instructions at any given time during your gameplay is a violation of the ToS.

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You can be banned for this, alot of cheating programs and bots have cut-offs, so if a character with GM appears or /tells them for example the bot shutdowns, usually in these cases the players will get banned.

But this is stupid for the fact that normal players can get caughtup in it from having to go AFK all of a sudden, for a phonecall etc.

You don't get banned if it shuts off, they just try to talk to you again later.

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Originally Posted by Churchill

You don't get banned if it shuts off, they just try to talk to you again later.

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Alot of games GMs ban characters that stop / are afk when they try to speak to them, in FFXI one of my RL friends got banned for RMT when all he did was trade his other account 15 million gil even though it was on the same Square-Enix account, 12 month investigation later and still banned.

That doesn't mean you'll get banned for stopping all actions. GM's in XI ban people for no reason all the time, you could get banned for crafting, get banned for farming the same item or get banned for having a lot of gil/earning a lot of gil in a short period of time. There is no investigation process in XI, it's all random and more than likely performed by a skeleton crew of weaboos and people who have never played the game or understand why people would do action a/b/c.

If i go afk and miss a tell or w/e from a GM, why should i have to scroll back or whatever to make sure no GM has messaged me ? Why should i do their job for them ? And they should not be banning people left and right w/o absolute proof of wrongdoings anyways, the community is dwindling as it is, start banning innocent people left and right, and guess who wont be recomending this game....

I remember when they drove prices up in AH in FFxi but all i see them doing is sit around lvl without even moveing

They didn't drive the price up lol...most people don't have any idea why the economy became what it did.

RMT took advantage of the inflation, they didn't cause it.

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Originally Posted by Laraul

RMT are perfectly justified in what they do. The reason why RMT exist is because there is a demand for their services. And nothing in the "Terms of Agreement" is going to convince a judge that what they are doing is harmful. A Judge is going to see it as part of the free enterprise system. You people talk about RMTs as if they we're Shylock from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

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You are so misguided and lost in the weeds here, it's almost impressive.

It's in the TOS that RMT and related activities are prohibited. All players - every single one, whatever their intention for logging in - is agreeing to follow those TOS in order to play. After that, whether or not what they do is "okay" is up to the developer/publisher. But, you know, go ahead and tell SE you're engaging in RMT, let them see that you are, in fact, doing so and then tell them "RMT is a perfect acceptable business and you can't do anything to me about it, because they're providing a service". Go ahead and try that. Let us know how it turns out for you.

It doesn't have to go to court (even though that's already happened, see below) because management of it is entirely within the power of the company. Yes, the developer of a game really does have the authority to decide what is and what is not permissible within their game, and you accept and agree to abide that authority every time you click "I Accept" on one of those TOS/EULA windows you probably don't bother to read first. You accept the penalties that would rise from being caught in violation of them.

Many of them exercise this authority on a regular and on-going basis. There are myriad examples. Your personal opinion of whether it's okay, or your conjecture of what a court would say on the matter are completely irrelevant. You don't decide the rules.

Incidentally, if you want to go down that road, there's far more precedence to indicate a judge would uphold the company's TOS and hold the RMT company or its related activity at fault than the other way around. Blizzard won an injuction against a RMT company some years back, hence showing that when enforced in such a matter, a judge absolutely would rule in the company's favor. Source

In short, you can lie to yourself, you can try to lie to everyone else. However you slice it, the facts are not on your side.

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Originally Posted by XxOstiaxX

If i go afk and miss a tell or w/e from a GM, why should i have to scroll back or whatever to make sure no GM has messaged me ? Why should i do their job for them ? And they should not be banning people left and right w/o absolute proof of wrongdoings anyways, the community is dwindling as it is, start banning innocent people left and right, and guess who wont be recomending this game....

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If you were afk and not moving or blinking or turbocrafting, then you shouldn't, since you shouldn't have gotten that tell to start with. If you did though, then yes, you should scroll back, but it might be too late anyways, so nah, don't bother.