Gold Sellers

I wish they would make an auto report option for the RMT advertising bots this would help out so much or make the report options instead of cheat make an RMT report option that would help them wed out the RMT's alot more...

To be honest... I don't believe an "Auto report" system would help at all. Just look at the life of these threads on this issue alone and see that they have not really addressed or done anything about the situation that would even remotely be helpful...

Auto report would be useless. I would rather have an option to where I myself can silence the incoming tells like BLACKLISTING THE ACCOUNT OF THE SPAMMER to where I wont have to deal with the next tell from the second, third, fourth, fifth or one hundredth character they created from the same account after I black listed the others mere seconds prior to the next tell.

This is the ONLY thing that really upsets me in this game to a point where I am almost willing to bet that SE has a hand in or is getting more revenue in secret from the in game RMT sites/distributors... I'm sorry, this is a really easy implementation and a quick solution so that players are not inconvenienced by the same account over and over and over again.

There's been a huge uptick in spam over the last 3 days for whatever reason. They are deleting the characters they are spamming with after as little as 5 minutes. Blacklist is ineffective when they do that.

In another game (free-to-play) they actually put cooldowns on the accounts and on the servers, because the RMT was filling up all the free character spaces on the server. (It got to a point where there was more RMT bots than there were players, resulting in long queues.) This can be partially mitigated by having 24 hour cooldowns on character deletion, and trial accounts only allowed to have one character.

And if SE wants to crank things up a notch, require a unique one-time-password generator to be used when multiple connections come from the same ip.

This is hugely depressing. There are so many good ideas here and on other threads and /reddit: {Easy to implement} minimum level 10 to use shouts and whispers. blacklist cap removed or radically increased. blacklist account option. Reports made as convenient as blacklisting. Cooldown for character creation. Limit shouts and tells to one per second (prevents mass spamming without limiting how a real person would use it). {Medium difficulty implementation} implement more adaptive algorithms for identifying mass spam and random "twertew retwtrt" type names. Have a new starting character complete an instanced quest where they have to identify a random object like an apple or a hammer from a list of twenty within two tries or get locked out for an hour before they can even join the world. And finally, have ACTIVE PLAYER ADMINISTRATORS! This last point is the most hatefully obvious and viciously stupid. I've never seen a subscription mmo that doesn't have player admins. And ultimately, all of these points have been covered over and over, and players have sent suggestions using the in game menu (these suggestions are probably never read,) made suggestions using these boards (you can tell me these suggestions aren't contemptuously ignored, but it's been OVER A YEAR of these threads suggesting easy, sensible fixes) and finally just curled up in a corner, whimpering and suggesting ways to deal with it ourselves, like disabling the /tell feature entirely. I've cancelled my sub and will probably go back to Blizzard. Their customer service department are aces, their dev team extremely effective at dealing with gold sellers, and I have more play hours invested there anyway.

Yeh... This really fucking ridiculous! Last night was the PRIME FUCKING example of why I am asking for an option to BLACKLIST THE ACCOUNT CONNECTED TO THE CHARACTER....

I was in Ul'dah, chatting with friends that were online... The same three Black Mages I've seen in the past surrounding the aetheryte crystal that has not moved since I began playing this game, my thoughts are the accounts of the gil farmers...

Anyway, I was at the entrance of Ul'dah, where you first start out when you pick your class (THM/GLA/PUG). First tell from the lvl 1 GLA came after standing next to him for three minutes. I quickly looked at account ID, as his name was pretty catchy (something similar to your cat walking across your keyboard), got a tell from him, I instantly blacklisted him, he was offline in about 5 minutes, maybe a tid bit more. I remained in the same spot, a PUG with the same account info came into Ul'dah with a similar name. The moment his character was visible for me in Ul'dah that was when I received the tell...

The above pissed me off big time! I sat there and thought "Yeh I could report this guy, but nothing will happen," "I could blacklist this guy again, but he will come back as another toon that is free to terrorize me with a new character," "What the HELL is taking SE so long to fix such a simple solution so that players can give themselves peace of mind from fucking RMT bots?!"

I got pissed logged out without even saying good night and went to xbox...

I think it's safe to say they will not implement ANY of these ideas. They make too much sense. The archaic way you have to clear your black lists, the extremely long and tedious report menu that does NOTHING to ensure anyone reads your messages...yeah. The game itself is great (except for RNG, that can burn in hell), and I've many friends who play. But these bots, the constant, unending spam is getting far too excessive. I've seen the messages "we banned x amount of accounts for RMT" but they don't even scratch the surface. Once again, just look at the market boards to see where the gil sellers are making their gil. CRYSTALS, SHARDS. When you see the same freaking retainer selling 10k wind shards, 10k lightning shards, 10k fire crystals...you tell me that's a human getting those. JUST ONE freaking administrator can log onto the server, and just look at the damn market board. It's EXTREMELY obvious who's botting, find the account those retainers are tied to, ban it. This spam NEEDS to come to an end, or at least slowed to the point where it's not endless harassment with zero chance of relief. I'm tired of having to disable features in a game I PAY FOR, because the developers refuse to implement ways of stopping the spam. In the time I've taken to type this up, I've gotten 7 tells, all from the SAME DAMN WEBSITE bots.

I took my complaints to the extreme and was temp-banned for kicking up too much crap about RMT policy neglect. They aren't going to do anything about RMT until it seriously begins affecting their business, which you think it would have already done.

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Originally Posted by IsaacDamodred

I took my complaints to the extreme and was temp-banned for kicking up too much crap about RMT policy neglect. They aren't going to do anything about RMT until it seriously begins affecting their business, which you think it would have already done.

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i suggest players start a formal lawsuit against SE for negligence on their TOS. we are after all obligated to hold them to their end.

I got a forum ban too. All you gotta do is go to a certain video playing website, and you can literally look up all the mass hacks, spambots, minerbots, and the rest. They don't even bother hiding it. So I got a temp ban...because I dared point out that SE is failing COMPLETELY on EVERY level to stop the bots. I've never seen a pay to play MMO fail so hard when dealing with bots, hacks, and third party programs like this game does.

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Originally Posted by Jentaru

i suggest players start a formal lawsuit against SE for negligence on their TOS. we are after all obligated to hold them to their end.

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If they were an American company that would be possible. TOS is not enforceable anywhere else in the world. Most of the countries where people play FFXIV - I doubt they would even know what "law" or "lawsuit" means unless they Googled for an hour or so.

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Originally Posted by moudoka

I got a forum ban too. All you gotta do is go to a certain video playing website, and you can literally look up all the mass hacks, spambots, minerbots, and the rest. They don't even bother hiding it. So I got a temp ban...because I dared point out that SE is failing COMPLETELY on EVERY level to stop the bots. I've never seen a pay to play MMO fail so hard when dealing with bots, hacks, and third party programs like this game does.

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If there is one thing that would scream SE IS permitting RMT on the secret end, this quote would be it.

I seriously and strongly believe now that there are some sites that they ban because they are not making revenue from them, but the ones they do allow are ones they are actually getting something from... There is no reason for them to do anything about RMT as there are a select group that does on behalf of SE... Like I said before many many many many times over is this is a simple situation to fix, but they've not lifted a single friggin finger to do anything about it. It's literally infuriating. I reiterate my stance before. I couldn't give a flying fuck if anyone else buys gil from these pricks, I just don't want to be incon-fucking-venienced by these assholes. Please give players a friggin option to silence these bastards!

ie: an option to BLACKLIST THE ACCOUNT CONNECTED TO THE CHARACTER....

Sincerely,

A pissed off PAYING customer.

The gil sellers even breached into the gold saucer which was supposed to be a place of fun :/

But the ones at most fault are the people who are buying gil they making it so the rmts have a reason to keep doing it and they make a lot of money doing it.

It doesn't matter if it's just data I say SE just sue the biggest rmt site that's selling gil make an example of them its their product they broke the TOS and I'm sure there's a law some where that can justify this because I see rmts as nothing but hackers.

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Originally Posted by Dererk

But the ones at most fault are the people who are buying gil they making it so the rmts have a reason to keep doing it and they make a lot of money doing it.

It doesn't matter if it's just data I say SE just sue the biggest rmt site that's selling gil make an example of them its their product they broke the TOS and I'm sure there's a law some where that can justify this because I see rmts as nothing but hackers.

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Incorrect. The ones at-fault are the ones responsible for enforcing the ToS regarding RMT...

I'm sorry but with as high as a volume this game has with gil spammers, I seriously feel, outside of their neglect to do anything about them, that SE is allowing a select few sites to do this for them, as if SE sold the gil on Mogstation directly it would immediately break the game and many players would leave...

You guys keep mentioning "law" You DO realize that laws are different in other countries, right? You can;t sue RMT unless they are in a jurisdiction that would actually recognize it. And this has to be done on multiple levels:

- Easiest if the Plaintiff and Defendant are in the SAME country AND that country enforces TOS recognition
- Harder if the suit is international, even if both countries recognize TOS as something that can be sued over
- Bloody impossible if international and the country has no laws regarding intellectual property rights or TOS.

Gil sellers and spammers are ALWAYS in countries where they can't be touched. The MOST that can POSSIBLY happen is they get banned from the game, to which they will just start a new account and keep on botting. And going after buyers? Same result - most you can do is ban them, but these are people with money, and money is power. They'll just turn around, and do the same thing as the botters - make a new account and buy their way to the top. Most people that buy gil also live in places where they cant be touched - just banned from the game.

The one solution I have not seen in this thread which might hit the sellers and buyers - ban entire country IP ranges. Do not let IP addresses from countries that do not cooperate with certain laws play. No one that is legitimate lives in those countries anyway so it would be no loss to the game. Oh wait . . . enter another technicality - proxy programs which would allow them to log on anyway masking themselves as residents of legitimate countries. Ah well, but I'd ban all those IP ranges anyway - just to make the botters work a little harder for their connections. and the buyers work harder for those same connections.

Long story short - those of you saying "sue the gil companies" obviously grew up and only have lived in places like the United States or UK where people actually sue each other over everything. Most other areas of the world have bigger problems to deal with than some game company issues.

Well, judging by the tells I've gotten from the hundreds upon hundreds of bots, there is a prime location for their operation: China. Some of the bot creators are European, which if I'm not mistaken, do honor these sort of laws. Of those from Europe, most of them are Eastern European, like Romania and the like. Broad, blanket bans are like taking a hammer to a sewing needle.
As I've suggested, and oft demanded, have in-game GMs. People paid by SE, to literally roam the game worlds. They get spammed, bam, instant ban. As such, while typing this short response, I've gotten four tells, all spamming for the SAME website. Honestly, if these mass tells are going out, identify key phrases, words, and ban. I would put up the words, but I'd get banned, because banning a paying customer is far preferable to these people than dealing with the greater problem with any sense.

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Originally Posted by moudoka

Well, judging by the tells I've gotten from the hundreds upon hundreds of bots, there is a prime location for their operation: China. Some of the bot creators are European, which if I'm not mistaken, do honor these sort of laws. Of those from Europe, most of them are Eastern European, like Romania and the like. Broad, blanket bans are like taking a hammer to a sewing needle.
As I've suggested, and oft demanded, have in-game GMs. People paid by SE, to literally roam the game worlds. They get spammed, bam, instant ban. As such, while typing this short response, I've gotten four tells, all spamming for the SAME website. Honestly, if these mass tells are going out, identify key phrases, words, and ban. I would put up the words, but I'd get banned, because banning a paying customer is far preferable to these people than dealing with the greater problem with any sense.

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You wouldn't even need to pay the GM's probably.

back in the glorious days of the old classic Everquest, I was a GM. I played on Vazaelle and was a GM on Mith Marr. I volunteered to do this job and my only payment was no subscription fee, so basically I did customer service for $14.99/month . . . out of everything that has changed economically isn't it amazing that MMO game subs are still basically the same? :) Anyway I digress. So my job was: help players out of stuck situations (not an issue for FFXIV since players don't get stuck) and assist the company with investigations of harassment or illegal activity. We were not visible to players, most of the time. Most of the time we stayed invisible . . . we could be standing literally on top of you and you'd never know we were there. As such we could spawn into anywhere in the world, monitor chats of people around us, and watch for malicious activity being done. If we caught a player red handed, one of most common procedures was to "pull" them into a special zone we had, which was basically just a blank cube that had no distractions, and discuss the issue with them. More often then not we'd give the player a chance to plead their case, and depending on the results, they could end up banned or maybe the case dropped altogether.

The catch was as GMs we were customer service agents, and customer service was our foremost priority. We had powers to pull players to talk, and we could make ourselves visible to the public just for kicks or PR. We'd even sometimes hold events where we transformed into "NPC's" that players had to interact with, kill, do a quest for, etc. to change things up a bit sometimes. However we could NOT ban players. We also could not discipline players beyond what a mall security guard could do in real life - basically we intervene and stop harassment, but it was up to the actual game devs if a player got banned or not, and based on our reports they would usually listen to our recommendations on disciplinary action against the suspected player.

I would not expect pay if SE were to make such a program - I'd HAPPILY volunteer just for free game time again. But it would take lots of work - systems would have to be introduced that monitored us VERY closely and made sure we did not abuse our powers or misrepresent the company, because the primary goal of a GM is always customer service - to represent the company. An in-game Gm is an ambassador between the player base and the development team.

Yes . . . i think this is an outstanding idea - if SE would consider it. Live GM's roaming the world could certainly pick up and catch bot activity more efficiently than random algorithm reports.

They need to put a button in so we can just report them like how u click their name to send tell there should b a report option there too

Is Square Enix doing anything to prevent these third party botting programs? I haven't found anything other than "we will look into the matter" cookie cutter responses. I want to know specifically what is being done.

They'll periodically announce "We have banned X amount of accounts for RMT" which really means little to nothing. At least with in-game GMs, there is an opportunity to show the community as a whole that SE is trying to do something. As it sits now, it really does appear they get kickbacks from the RMT guys, to ply their trade at our expense. Their system in place for both reporting, and the methods the bots use to find people is very poorly designed. I won't stop my disdain for this behavior. Especially when SE gives us zero response to the issue. But, given their utter LOVE for RNG in EVERYTHING in this game, they could care less about what the community thinks, as long as those dollar signs keep racking up.

This will get me banned, but I don't care. SHUT DOWN THE FUCKING SITE WTSGG. Those goddamn idiots spam me hundreds of times a day, and SE does NOTHING.
These people have Facebook pages. They are on twitter. And yet, miraculously, SE doesn't do ANYTHING about them. Constant harassment by their bots, all day long. Report them, nothing happens, their bots are never deleted, or banned. Their accounts continue to spam and harass paying players. You've got one month SE. End this harassment.

http://i61.tinypic.com/xbpf4.png
If you see "stacking", it's definitely bots. This is exactly how they work in a dozen other MMO's.

http://i62.tinypic.com/2eci5hf.png
If you see "players" that never move, and are in the same spot every single day and minute until a new patch (these guys only disappeared after maintenance, which suggests that they needed time to update their bot software.) That is also a characteristic of bots. Also these ones in particular can be tested for botting because you can time them.

http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/...psjejdnska.png

That to me is just sad that there's that many bots in this game that we pay for. I would expect this from a Free to play. Every single player in that list was the same Class, same levels and farming all the same things. How is this not a red flag? Having one single Admin for a few hours a day per server would clean this problem up so much. These guys are level 50 bots!!! All on Faerie Server =/

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Originally Posted by Reikon

http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/...psjejdnska.png

That to me is just sad that there's that many bots in this game that we pay for. I would expect this from a Free to play. Every single player in that list was the same Class, same levels and farming all the same things. How is this not a red flag? Having one single Admin for a few hours a day per server would clean this problem up so much. These guys are level 50 bots!!! All on Faerie Server =/

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This is Excalibur:
http://i61.tinypic.com/acv84.png
Also there's dozens of bots not shown because their names end with a '
http://i59.tinypic.com/rk3rz5.png

All run by the same hacksite I'm sure, that SE does nothing about whatsoever.

http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/...psdveqv7cv.png

Here is a great example of the same and the spam we get on this server. Faerie. Making this game less fun to play and bringing my subscription into question.

I'm getting a CONSTANT stream of spam via tells, I can't even carry on a normal conversation with friends without the messages being interspersed with spam messages from multiple senders. This is unacceptable and has to stop!!! Now my friends and I have to go on busy so we don't get spam and that limits our options with conversing with each other. The only other place I've received so much spam is older email addresses long since abandoned for that very reason.

The best thing I can think of to equate this experience to at this point, is if you and a bunch of friends were to make reservations at a nice restaurant, spending more money than you would pay at a typical restaurant so you could have a stable. hassle-free environment to enjoy each other's company, and as you're trying to converse and eat dinner, a steady stream of people walk in, get up on the table and kneel right in front of each of you, and fart directly into your face. A couple minutes after they leave, someone else comes in and takes their place. And then when you complain to the management about all these people who keep facefarting you, thinking- 'Surely they'll put an end to this right now!'- they tell you to just pinch your nose, hold your breath, and ignore it.

That Free Week Campaign is coming, and that's great. Let's have potential new players and subs get constant /tells from these people. Yeah, that's a good way to get new customers SE. Constantly reporting via some antiquated system is getting tedious. I don't even want to report these guys any more because it's such a waste of time, and takes waaaaay too much time.

So... what's going on,S-E? It is now 2015, and the game is still plagued with RMT spammers. If you think posting a monthly "action against rmt" update means anything to your customers, you are way off-base. You mean to tell us that you've brought this problem to the dev team, and they don't believe you? Maybe your customer support group in the US can't speak Japanese to communicate this properly to Yoshi P? Maybe your US boss is incompetent and has no idea what's been going on? Maybe the golden rule is you guys are making money on the side from these gilséllers? Is the dev team technically inept at BANNING ACCOUNTS INSTEAD OF CHARACTERS? Or how about this revelation... BAN IP ADDRESSES FROM KNOWN RMT WEBSITES. You guys obviously know the URLs by now? Or how about trying this strategy... HAVE S-E EMPLOYEES CREATE CHARACTERS AND JUST IDLE TO GET SPAM /TELLS EVERY 5 MINUTES EASILY to target ban them.What's it going to take? A psuedo-class action lawsuit? A petition with thousands of signatures emailed directly to your CEO? A massive drop in subscriptions to wake you guys up? What's the story, oh mighty Square-Enix?

SE needs to be more harsh on people BUYING the gil than just selling it. If I knew I faced a permanent ban if I'm caught buying gil by SE it's gonna greatly diminish the chances of people doing so because of the fear of not being able to play again. Less buyers = less sellers.

As it stands, people are getting slaps on the wrist and far lower number of any accounts being suspended from doing so in the first place.

Sure it's harsh and I'm sure they can develop a system showing actual RMT being traded.

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Originally Posted by Buff_Archer

I'm getting a CONSTANT stream of spam via tells, I can't even carry on a normal conversation with friends without the messages being interspersed with spam messages from multiple senders. This is unacceptable and has to stop!!! Now my friends and I have to go on busy so we don't get spam and that limits our options with conversing with each other. The only other place I've received so much spam is older email addresses long since abandoned for that very reason.

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I did find a workaround. Same - going busy - and now my friends chat with me via a linkshell I created just for us. Actually the cool part is even when I queue into DF i can still continue talking to them.

Is it right that we have to rely on this to avoid spam? No. But until a solution is found, this has been working for me and I hope it gives ideas to you guys as well.

SE could RMT spammed Tells most easily by:

1) Change command /busy to allow only tells from those on friend list.

2) Add command /superbusy to allow no tells.

3) Change new accounts (those with less than 30 days paid time) so that the option to send friend requests is unavailable.

This gold seller spam is getting out of hand now, I am literally getting them back to back now, my entire chat window is seller spam.

99% of my spam comes from the WTSGG bots. I ban one, fifteen more take it's place. They should eliminate tells for under level 10 characters as a starting point. Or even level 5.

[IMG]http://i1124.photobucket.com/albums/...pswy9cbyas.png[/IMG]

Now look at the seller. These are shards. His bot fills the entire first page of the board, and half the second page. The most OBVIOUS sign of botting, is putting up 10-20,000 shards at a time. This is JUST ONE TYPE OF SHARD.

There really needs to be a way to report these pests from the chatlog. I've added over 100 names to my blacklist in the past 4 days. This is really ruining my enjoyment of the game.

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Originally Posted by Bobbyky73

There really needs to be a way to report these pests from the chatlog. I've added over 100 names to my blacklist in the past 4 days. This is really ruining my enjoyment of the game.

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I completely agree it got so bad with tells I had to turn off my tab and now 1 seller keeps spamming me with friend requests if I blacklist 1 toon he will make a new 1 and spam me again -_-. Sad part is I'm on a small server I fell bad for all of you that are on bigger servers if this is what im going through on mateus can't imagine what y'all go through

Did you see WTSGG's newest ad? I've been spammed with in 25 times so far in the last two hours.


"Plus 30% extra Bonus. safe and secure, legal and fast"

If they're claiming legal, there's one of two things: They are lying, or SE has sanctioned their activity, making it legal.

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Originally Posted by moudoka

Did you see WTSGG's newest ad? I've been spammed with in 25 times so far in the last two hours.


"Plus 30% extra Bonus. safe and secure, legal and fast"

If they're claiming legal, there's one of two things: They are lying, or SE has sanctioned their activity, making it legal.

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It's a lie. People who buy/sell gold to these scum have their account stolen and stripped "some time later", always happens. In every game.

RMT = Drug dealers and Addicts. Still illegal, people make their own excuses why they're above the law or whatever.

I reported over 12 accounts on Zalera today, and on the PS3, which wasn't really all that fun. But I did it. While it's not affecting my gameplay THAT much (at least not enough to quit the entire game like some people) it is annoying. I wonder if there's a way to auto-ban or suspend an account that even mentions any of the .com RMT sites, and is under a certain level.