Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

Quote:

---

this is a 100% player problem, if players didn't buy gil then prices wouldn't be so inflated. ppl gotta have their stuff now...

---

I disagree.

The moment an honest player like me is impacted by all this spam -- and when there's absolutely no way for players to mitigate this, and the development team moves incredibly slowly to implement even simple fixes -- then it's no longer just a player problem. This is now a problem with the game.

I also think it's a bit unrealistic to expect to solve the problem by asking people to stop buying gil. People will NEVER stop buying gil, which is why these RMT services exist. The demand will always be there. And if RMT have supply, then there will always be buyers.

It's equally important for SE to take action (which it does, but slowly), and also important for SE to give us chat filters and/or right-click reports.

Long ago in this thread, I listed three or four simple steps SE could take to make life much harder on RMT. I did not include a chat filter in my request. The only downside to a chat filter is that it would be so effective in blocking out spam that fewer players would be making reports about RMT activity... but if SE isn't really going to do anything about the spam, then having all those RMT reports is worthless anyway, and we might as well have chat filters.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Thayos

I disagree...

---

there are only rmt spammers because there is a demand, which comes from the players.

the spam doesn't bother me. I just ignore it. I used to get all riled up and blacklist and report them but now im no longer sensitive to this issue. I just go about my day. I just made a channel with no whisper as I really don't receive many /tells. most of my communication comes from LS's and FC chat. the only tells I get are from rmt or some weirdo telling me he likes my cats butt lol...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Brightsayge

there are only rmt spammers because there is a demand, which comes from the players.

the spam doesn't bother me. I just ignore it. I used to get all riled up and blacklist and report them but now im no longer sensitive to this issue. I just go about my day. I just made a channel with no whisper as I really don't receive many /tells. most of my communication comes from LS's and FC chat. the only tells I get are from rmt or some weirdo telling me he likes my cats butt lol...

---

You may not mind just turning off tells, but there are quite a few people that dislike being forced to turn off the discrete form of communication just to avoid the spam. That's an entire social aspect that's being shut down thanks to the presence of RMT advertising.

I can't privately have a conversation with someone without having to sift through all the spam.

Quote:

---

there are only rmt spammers because there is a demand, which comes from the players.

---

Right, but when honest players like me can't perform simple actions to block out that spam without completely turning off /tells or /shouts, then that's a problem with the game.

These are two separate issues. There's the problem (in all of gaming) with gamers trying to get ahead by buying currency, and then there's the problem of game developers building their clients to minimize these impacts.

There's really nothing SE can do to solve the societal issue, but there's plenty SE could do to fix its game.

Its completely ridiculous that SE thinks they can get new players to start with this ridiculous amount of spam being subjected to all its players. You cant even make it through the opening cutscene without a barrage of tells.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MagicalPony

Its completely ridiculous that SE thinks they can get new players to start with this ridiculous amount of spam being subjected to all its players. You cant even make it through the opening cutscene without a barrage of tells.

---

Agreed, I wish they would at least say hey, we're going to do something about this. But the way they are handling this is just...poor is being modest. I wonder if they realize how many new players they'll lose if they don't fix this by Heavensward. Especially when the market is saturated with other MMOs and other games for that matter, it really doesn't take much to turn off a new player to the game.

1. I'll sign this. Kynd Koena -Exodus server

2. I currently have unsubbed due to a mix of real life demands (baby arriving anyday now) and duuuude, can't a homegirl just gather in peace for the love of the 12. I can't even be logged in more than a minute without receiving RMT /t spam. It's beyond annoying. It's enough in real life I have to deal with /mom /mom /mom /MOM! I really don't want it in game as well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zabuza

Agreed, I wish they would at least say hey, we're going to do something about this. But the way they are handling this is just...poor is being modest. I wonder if they realize how many new players they'll lose if they don't fix this by Heavensward. Especially when the market is saturated with other MMOs and other games for that matter, it really doesn't take much to turn off a new player to the game.

---

Exactly. What is the all important first impression new players get when they see all of that spam? "Wow, there are lots of cheaters in this game. I'm going to try another MMO."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by FudoMyoo

Like shark fins or any other endangered species. STOP the eating (buying) and the killing (selling) will STOP!

---

Actually, the most effective way to reduce the number of buyers would be to go after the advertising spam. Without the ads, there would still be some buyers, but only the ones who think of it on their own and go searching for someplace to buy from. That's a lot fewer than will buy gil when they're constantly reminded that it's available, always know where to get it, and are being constantly reassured that SE doesn't really (at least not effectively) act against it.

The gil sellers know this. That's why they're sending us all that in-game spam in the first place — because doing so increases their sales figures. Similarly, not getting to advertise to us in-game would reduce their sales figures.

They need to either disable shout, yell, tell, and friend requests for trial accounts or place restrictions not allowing these on new accounts until they have at least 1 level 10 character, I have seen this work great in other games.

Is is a bit harsh? Yes.
Will it work? Yes.

Idiots will still go searching for gil on google but at least this way I wont have to deal with having to disable tells and stay on busy all the time just to stop the ungodly message and friend request spam, this has gotten way to far and needs to be dealt with now obviously what is being done about it is not nearly enough.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vaclue

They need to either disable shout, yell, tell, and friend requests for trial accounts or place restrictions not allowing these on new accounts until they have at least 1 level 10 character, I have seen this work great in other games.

---

*in monotone*
Trial accounts cannot send tells, shouts, friend invites, etc. Any RMT spam you get is not from a trial account.

Where does this misconception that trial accounts are the problem keep coming from?

/signed

Acha-cha-cha

Just filled up my blacklist with these spammers... And they still persist!

Definately /sign!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aerowaffle

*in monotone*
Trial accounts cannot send tells, shouts, friend invites, etc. Any RMT spam you get is not from a trial account.

Where does this misconception that trial accounts are the problem keep coming from?

---

Because the spammers are level 1 accounts. And often disappear in less than 15 minutes. It's far more likely those are characters on stolen accounts (idiots who bought gold,) burner accounts paid with stolen credit cards, or prepaid cards.

Like there isn't a good solution.

If you make it so that only US/CA/EU credit cards can be used, then anyone else who wants to play, can't. If you make it so that prepaid cards can't be used, then you prevent people from being able to pay cash as well. Cash is how illict funds are laundered. These people running these RMT racketeering spam are criminals that are laundering money, and MMORPG's are just a super-convenient way of doing so. Think about how much of those messages are really meant for players.

If you have money you want to disguise the source of, you buy game content that can be re-sold. In freemium games, this is done through gachapon and "PLEX" types of things that can immediately be sold to players through burner accounts, and then you take the gold and sell it to the gold buyers to cash out.

/signed

These RMT's are real frustrating to play through. It's annoying to keep cleaning up the blacklist and always have very little (Deleted) in the pile.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GazaelNoxlucis

/signed

These RMT's are real frustrating to play through. It's annoying to keep cleaning up the blacklist and always have very little (Deleted) in the pile.

---

As far as I know an account only shows as deleted unless they themselves delete it. Not if they are banned. Even so, the constant spam makes it apparent SE's measures are not working. Also ignoring any cries for help, no reassuring the players, nothing whatsoever. Doesn't bode well, really.

/sign

I'm really tired of all these RMTs. I can't even get out of busy mode now therefore I cant talk to a lot of my friends. This has to change.

Did I sign his yet? Even though personally I don't really get many of them at all, maybe a couple of times per week, it still sucks, and especially for those people who have to deal with it constantly, so...

/sign

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Brightsayge

this is a 100% player problem, if players didn't buy gil then prices wouldn't be so inflated. ppl gotta have their stuff now...

---

This ideology of "if no body buys they'll just go away" is so naive. They won't, not just because you will NEVER stop every player that buys currency from buying it completely. But because RMT companies KNOW there is potential profit that can be made. I don't know how many betas and launches any of you have participated in but let me assure you RMT is always there first. So it really doesn't matter if players buy or not because ultimately if you launch it, RMT will come. And they will continue to stay there until they are 100% convinced that no profit will be made. Which to be honest I doubt theres really a lot of overhead involved in setting up a bot to spam a game's chat system.

Also like it or not, economic design inside of games is partially responsible for giving rise to RMT (no it's not just this game, its various games in the past who never seem to have gotten the memo that most players no longer want to grind for hours on end to accomplish anything). Because developers have made in game currency exceptionally difficult to get in some case or require too much grind unless you just happen to get lucky with RNG. There are several factors and issues that contribute on that end, and I'm not going to waste time here listing all the ones I can think of let alone speculate on the ones I haven't. Yes players play a significant part but to sit and claim it's all 100% player created simplifies the problem far beyond ridiculous, its like saying two people have a conversation, said hello, answered each other questions, said good bye but then saying one never took any part in it to begin with. I'm not saying give players boat loads of gil/gold/isk/credits/ect and you won't have RMT, but if there is not a perceived need to consider measuring time over effort in terms of earning the currency as opposed to buying it, then RMT wouldn't occur. It is a multi-faceted dynamic that drives this particular section of the business. It is NOT as simple as "well if players would stop buying it..."

It's more along the lines of, "If players would stop buying it or if 'X' game developer would stop giving us turnips to squeeze blood out of and if players would stop buying it..."

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Havenae

This ideology of "if no body buys they'll just go away" is so naive. They won't, not just because you will NEVER stop every player that buys currency from buying it completely.

---

You are correct. We cannot root them all out, corruption is everywhere. Yet, least we should eliminate as much of them as possible.
The situation now is unbearable with the spams, RMTs/BOTs “thief” have no shame to go using /shout(s) and /yell(s). They know SE ”police” won’t do anything arrest/punish/penalty... This will imply:

-RMTs/BOTs keep doing the same (not being stopped/arrested by the SE “Police”)
-Players will feel free to buy stolen goods from them. (seeing the policemen doing nothing but eating doughnuts and drinking coffee while the thief is acting under their noses)
-Players will be sure that compared with the BOTs/RMTs, they will not be penalized nor punished if they also do similar acts of cheating.

In short: “if the Cat's away the Mice will play”

/sign

Umm yeah. I really think that something should be done about these gil spammers. It used to not be as bad, but it's really hard to tolerate now. I usually don't set my status on busy because I've got friends who aren't part of my linkshells or my free company and they communicate with me through tell. So it really gets on my nerves.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kuwaitum

You are correct. We cannot root them all out, corruption is everywhere. Yet, least we should eliminate as much of them as possible.

---

You're absolutely right, they should be rooted out as much as possible as well. In fact I'd be in favor of a more streamlined report feature for that too (because some people are just stupid and will actually brag about it) if I didn't know it would be abused to Thal's balls and back. But personally I think SE is too lax on their ban policy. I say: "1st time offense? Too bad you're gone, permanently." We know, we already know you're not supposed to do it. People do it anyway. They think they won't get caught or they'll get a slap on the wrist and be back in a few days. Sure you'd lose a few customers like that, but I think if this crap continues, they're gonna lose a lot more than those few who buy gil.

Mostly because it annoys the hell out of people. But it also degrades the social aspect of this game. You basically we now have an entire line of communication that can't be used, because if you do then you have to read all the gibberish these 'people' spam you with and chances are you're going to miss a reply from an actual person in the mess of it. So why bother? But then that takes away a method for people who aren't in the same FC or the same Linkshell to interact, essentially making this game more cliquish and socially devoid than it already was.

I couldn't tell you how many friends I've made in other games through whisper and tell features but it has certainly been much more than I have through guild/clan/alliance/<insert player ran group here> channels. Someone send a tell out of the blue, "hey I like your character." or "Hey we need another tank/healer/dps, wanna come run this with us?" or "Hey could you help me? I need to find...." You can't have any of that here. and Why? Because SE wants to pretend like they have it under control? "RMT report feature? Pfft no we;re not implementing that, we got this."

NO.YOU.DON'T

They need to make Busy a permanent setting so I don't have to be bothered resetting it every time I log in. Simply not worth putting up with dealing with them off busy.

/signed
pointless because se doesn't care, but signed anyways.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

They need to make Busy a permanent setting so I don't have to be bothered resetting it every time I log in. Simply not worth putting up with dealing with them off busy.

---

The equivalent for that is just to take the Tell channel off of your chat windows and remove the sound notification from it. Unfortunately that won't stop the Friend invites, but on the positive side it won't stop you from joining groups either.

I'm not quite ready to give up on communication in a social game yet, so I haven't done that. I'm still really hoping SE will eventually take this seriously and get rid of the spam so I don't have to resort to this, but if you've reached the point that isolation is preferable to the constant harassment, that's the best way its available.

I recommend a new Inquisitor job to root out the gil buyers/sellers.
It will allow for player killing and looting their bodies.
And I can not think of a single way that it could go titanically wrong.

Sign me up, I really think SE gets kickbacks from these Chinese sellers. The numbers, and actual websites are doubling every month. I've seen a new website being spammed every week. There's zero recourse to them. To those that buy gil, shut down their accounts too. They feed these animals. As of now, there really is NO penalty for buying or spamming everyone to death. These gil sellers don't care if you ban one account, they have fifty waiting to be used. Something seriously needs to be done.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by moudoka

Sign me up, I really think SE gets kickbacks from these Chinese sellers.

---

Shaking my head from the literal cray in this statement.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gramul

I recommend a new Inquisitor job to root out the gil buyers/sellers.
It will allow for player killing and looting their bodies.
And I can not think of a single way that it could go titanically wrong.

---

You'd see a pile of dead bodies constantly in the streets of Ul'dah, haha.

I do find it interesting that...

Ul'dah is painted as the most corrupt, money hungry city in the game's story, and also happens to be the headquarters of all the corrupt spam bots that are offering you "money exchanges."

Signed.

Please, SE... please fix this!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gramul

I recommend a new Inquisitor job to root out the gil buyers/sellers.
It will allow for player killing and looting their bodies.
And I can not think of a single way that it could go titanically wrong.

---

And they should look something like this. :D
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/.a...55cc970c-800wi

RMT won't even expect them! (and any other player that might get in the way)

/signed Brother Seaneth (Leviathan)

Sign me up! Esterine Element (Exodus)

Seriously, a PM filtering or a limit to when a player can send a PM/FRIEND REQUESTS WOULD BE VERY HELPFUL. Nothing on the RMT front... no updates or acknowledgements that these bots are wrecking havoc. We paid for service and we get spammed by bots. WOW. I know its an MMO but I'm fine with it being in F2P MMOs.. Not a P2P. Bots are growing more because SE fail to attack them. IF they are, its ineffective.

Yoshi-p if you manage to read this..... do something. Do I have to really go to an event just to tell you this one on one?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ElementEsterine

limit to when a player can send a PM/FRIEND REQUESTS WOULD BE VERY HELPFUL.?

---

That is what I said in another topic.

I would love for them to have a option where I can Turn On/Off friends invites, Then if I want to add someone I can simply turn it on and invite them and simply turn it right back off.

I'll shut off my /tell Option in General then give me another Option where friends can send me Private message and free company.
Also a Option to Turn On/off Linkshell invites just incase they get smart and try to do that.

This would totally lock them out, I really do not care for the /tell option now since its used as a RMT hub.

To the people who say well you are blocking people who join the game, you still have the option to use /Say and doesn't stop you from shouting to a person, they could shout back for a invite.

Which I rather have than spam in my /tell box and spam invites.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HeroSamson

That is what I said in another topic.

I would love for them to have a option where I can Turn On/Off friends invites, Then if I want to add someone I can simply turn it on and invite them and simply turn it right back off.

I'll shut off my /tell Option in General then give me another Option where friends can send me Private message and free company.
Also a Option to Turn On/off Linkshell invites just incase they get smart and try to do that.

This would totally lock them out, I really do not care for the /tell option now since its used as a RMT hub.

To the people who say well you are blocking people who join the game, you still have the option to use /Say and doesn't stop you from shouting to a person, they could shout back for a invite.

Which I rather have than spam in my /tell box and spam invites.

---

I agree with all of these ideas... Now for the real trick, getting SE to actually listen to us and implement them! :(

if only the task force was more like this:

http://www.vrworld.com/wp-content/up...-Age-Table.png

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HeroSamson

but we have this. (snipped)

---

Guys, please. We are trying to be serious here, and posting rude and tasteless photos of the mentally ill does not give this any help.

Although a lot of these ways of reducing RMT might not work in the long run, I signed this mainly in the hope that SE Would at least make some sort of response, any response at all, about the issue.

I don't even care about it for myself (Pink backgrounds on the chat log are an okay color scheme) but I care about it driving away potential new players.

/signed Sandra Dalvia (Adamantoise)

They have little reason to do anything about it. AS the community has shown to be complacent, which one of you is willing to unsub over this matter? Unless they loose financially its not worth it for them to get a hand on the matter.