If I were to SPAM these forums...

Let's say I just created 20 new threads, each containing an identical advertising message. SE would act IMMEDIATELY. The threads would be gone, my account would be blocked, and I would never be welcome back. I'd wager it would happen in a matter of minutes.

Why is it then, that we're expected to deal with constant RMT SPAM in this game while SE does little-to-nothing to relieve the annoyance of it for paying customers? I reported over a dozen people in one day a couple of days back. When I look at my blacklist, all of the names still exist. They're still allowed to run around the game and harass people. All we can do is fill our blacklist. My blacklist from TWO YEARS AGO (when I quit, which partially was because I was so frustrated at having to spend so much of my time reporting RMT when I'm trying to play) is still mostly populated with the names I added. Maybe 5 of the accounts are gone, and the rest are still there... AFTER TWO YEARS!!!

I'm not saying this can be solved with finality. I am saying that there are easy things SE could have done years ago, and for some reason they have not done them. There is no auto blacklist/report feature. There is no management of who can send you /tells. There is no mechanism by which, when a certain number of people report RMT in a short time, the offending parties are promptly cut off to prevent further spam. The staff seems to have done very little beyond banning certain patterns of /tells, and it's just not effective.

Why not treat your thousands of paying customers with the respect with which you moderate your forums? Pretend that you care and help us. We spend good time reporting these RMT to you, and all we get in return is more RMT to report. I notice I can't even type a long thread-starter here. You're clearly on top of this forum situation. Now get on this FFXIV situation.

(obligatory thisthreadagain.jpg)

The names are still there on your blacklist because they get banned. It doesn't change to (Deleted) because they haven't been deleted. If the names change to (Deleted) it means that the spammer themselves has deleted it and made a new one in its place. I'm not sure how many more times this needs to be reiterated. It's been mentioned countless times in other threads about RMT.

By the way, you can bypass the 1000 character limit by editing your original post.

"The names are still there on your blacklist because they get banned."

I'm not challenging the assertion you made there, but you do see that those two things have no logical connection, right? People appear on my list as a result of them getting banned? Ok, but they also appeared on the list before they're banned too, didn't they, so... I guess it's not really reasonable to expect anyone to be able to glean anything at all from that. There doesn't seem to be any way I can tell whether someone has been banned if this is the way its done.

"I'm not sure how many more times this needs to be reiterated. It's been mentioned countless times in other threads about RMT."

Oh, my bad, I guess I didn't read EVERY thread on the topic in here. Is that the expectation? Maybe if this wasn't an ongoing problem since the game's release, there would not have to be dozens of thread complaining about the very same topic, and reading a handful of them would give me enough of the story to speak on without revealing that I'm not intimately acquainted with the minutia of the banning process.

In the meantime though, I find it funny that the issue of persistent spam has gotten to the point where regular players like (presumably, based on forum activity) yourself are resigned to the point where, when you see another user complaining about it, you're more likely to speak critically of that user for not knowing enough about the issue (ironically, for being annoyed at seeing a new thread on an old topic, which could be considered a microcosm of the SPAM phenomenon I've experienced in FFXIV) than to express any annoyance at all at the issue of the SPAM that is causing the frustrated post.

That's a great tip about the character limit in the posts though, thanks for that.

the easyest way to advoid rmt spam is to move to a jp server theres like none ever on masa :)

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie-Amber

the easyest way to advoid rmt spam is to move to a jp server theres like none ever on masa :)

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I actually might consider it had I not joined up with a couple of friends, and have an old friend on the server who might return soon. Still though, I feel like there are tools that could be made available to us at this point that could greatly mitigate the annoyance of having RMT around, and I can't understand why we don't have them.

Personally, I ignore the RMT whispers - they're hardly a nuisance for me.

I imagine it can't be easy for them to address, and personally there are many other things i'd rather them concern themselves with.

i used to play on moogle ages ago and them tells so annoying also there seems to be some rmt people tonberry no many but some so any jp server but that one is safe atm

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Originally Posted by GordonLiu

I'm not challenging the assertion you made there, but you do see that those two things have no logical connection, right? People appear on my list as a result of them getting banned?

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No, people's names appear on your blacklist because you put them there. They remain there if the character is banned. Their names aren't changed to (Deleted) unless they are deleted or they transfer server (which I doubt you're going to see much of from RMT bots). If you're using your blacklist to filter RMT tells, you can typically remove them in a few days.

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There doesn't seem to be any way I can tell whether someone has been banned if this is the way its done.

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You're not supposed to be able to tell if they've been banned.

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(ironically, for being annoyed at seeing a new thread on an old topic, which could be considered a microcosm of the SPAM phenomenon I've experienced in FFXIV) than to express any annoyance at all at the issue of the SPAM that is causing the frustrated post.

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That's because it tends to come off like "well, I'm still being spammed ingame so I'm going to go spam the forums."

RMT spam sucks. We all hate it. I know a few people that have installed the Guildworks client for the express purpose of blocking it.

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That's a great tip about the character limit in the posts though, thanks for that.

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No problem. The character limit is a relic of the nastiness that plagued the beta forum, if memory serves.

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Originally Posted by GordonLiu

Let's say I just created 20 new threads, each containing an identical advertising message. SE would act IMMEDIATELY. The threads would be gone, my account would be blocked, and I would never be welcome back. I'd wager it would happen in a matter of minutes.

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That isn't what happens to any of the people that spam "<Server> Static looking for <job(s)>" threads that get put into every single server forum until the poster hits their daily limit.

There's at least a few per week.