Reports do nothing

RMT reports do nothing for gil site spammers. The other report functions don't seem to do anything. Still see questing bots teleporting between quest points, and similar named RMT bots coming back again and again. I know they make new accounts, and change IP addresses after an IP ban, but you CAN try banning the IP address that their ISP provides. They can't change that themselves. And if their ISP discovers that they're having them change the IP addresses to come back for their massive ToS violations, then these cheaters and bots can be denied internet in general. Just a suggestion.

I mean, if someone makes multiple reports, the offender should NOT still be standing there over 2 DAYS LATER!

Sadly they are never going to win the war against RMT. However, they certainly did turn the tide once the report RMT function was added. Before that people would be spammed at least once or twice a minute through /tell, leaving them no real choice but to set themselves to Busy status which takes away from a key part of any MMO: the social interactions. RMTs would also spam friend list invites. It was bad. Really bad. After the report RMT feature was implemented I was never bothered again. If I see one in shout chat or /say I will report them though. Just consider yourself fortunate that you weren't here before we could easily report them.

Fair point. Just sucks that they don't IP ban them through their Internet Service provider. They have a seperate IP address for customers that the customer can't change themselves.

It wasn't the report RMT function that fixed anything.

They just imposed several restrictions on communication/player interaction for trial accounts around the same time they introduced that function (Which doesn't even work as it's supposed to mute reported players if they keep spamming), including not being able to invite other players to parties.

The silly thing is that some of the sellers are still using subbed accounts to spam shout chat regardless. I'm inclined to believe they have to be cheating the system somehow to get free subs if they can afford paying for a new spam bot on a daily basis across several servers.

IP bans are tricky because you could have several players using the same one to access the game. In the East for example internet gaming cafes are quite common and yeah sure some of those players could be doing RMT, but the rest could also be bonefide players enjoying the game. You might also have other people in the same household using the same IP, a ban could result in punishing the wrong person etc, things like that.

IP bans are extremely easy to avoid while account bans are a loss of [character] data and work. Also, IP banning punishes anyone under that address or people that use a renewing address and happen to land on a banned one.

The report RMT function has definitely helped with the RMT problem - it was leaps and bounds worse before the function was added due to how time consuming and annoying it was to report people for it.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

Sadly they are never going to win the war against RMT. However, they certainly did turn the tide once the report RMT function was added. Before that people would be spammed at least once or twice a minute through /tell, leaving them no real choice but to set themselves to Busy status which takes away from a key part of any MMO: the social interactions. RMTs would also spam friend list invites. It was bad. Really bad. After the report RMT feature was implemented I was never bothered again. If I see one in shout chat or /say I will report them though. Just consider yourself fortunate that you weren't here before we could easily report them.

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This, to be honest. There was a stark contrast of 'before the RMT report function' and 'after the report RMT function.' The limiting on trial accounts was placed in ... uh ... I think near the end of March 2017? The RMT report function was added in patch 3.4 (September 2016).

All in all, cracking down and actively pursuing RMTs all of the time is an endeavor in futility. This is partly why you see companies ban RMT in waves.

I just wish they had an easy report feature for all bots or cheaters in general, not just RMT spammers.

I can't be bothered to type a report every single time I see the same gathering bots on a daily basis. The issue might simply be that there aren't enough different people reporting them (Or so I'd like to hope), and making reporting easier would encourage more people to report them.

I'd also like the ability to report people from player search, because you can't always target potential offenders, such as the warping gil farmers or the crafting bots that always stay holed up in their houses or apartments.

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Originally Posted by Salaru

Fair point. Just sucks that they don't IP ban them through their Internet Service provider. They have a seperate IP address for customers that the customer can't change themselves.

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IP bans are easy enough to get around with the use of a VPN. Besides, a IP ban can very easily hurt innocent people who happen to use that IP address for a variety of legit reasons.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

The silly thing is that some of the sellers are still using subbed accounts to spam shout chat regardless. I'm inclined to believe they have to be cheating the system somehow to get free subs if they can afford paying for a new spam bot on a daily basis across several servers.

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Majority of sub'd RMT bots are paid for with stolen credit card information. People that buy gold get their information stolen, and there are currently websites you can go to to buy credit card numbers in bulk. SE doesn't like this either since it isn't free money for them, as soon as a card is reported as stolen their bank would issue a charge back to SE to get their clients money back (and refusing to pay them could get SE into hot water with that bank). Lead Dev of SWG years ago revealed in an article that charge back fees were costing the game just over $1M a year, I'd image it's gotten worse in more recent years.

Random thought. Why doesn't the site have their own bots sending periodic reminders in shouts/yells that it's a massive ToS violation to buy/sell gil from third parties, and that it can/will cost a person their account?