How to eliminate Real money gil sale spammers

1. Characters on brand new accounts cannot send a PM or use Shout until level 15.

2. Exception: if another user has added that new account character to their friend list, the character can PM the character they are friends with.

Problem solved.

Not fair to legit players. Sorry.

If someone's a legit player they shouldn't have any trouble getting to level 15. They could even make it level 10 for people who whine about how it's not fair.

But seriously I don't see how that's not fair to 'legit' players.

I don't think people should be able to send /tells, or /shout, until they're i85+.

Well, the way I see it, SE is a Japanese company. It is also a multi million dollar company. They claim to be against these gold spammers.

So I have to ask. Why don't they just hire some Ninjas to take these bastards out?

That's not a reasonable method, they need to add a "Report RMT and blacklist" below the blacklist option.

With this they also need to:
-allow blacklist for players offline, to get around the tell and dash
-mute accounts from tell/shout/yell that hit a report threshold pending GM appeal
-scale the threshold up for accounts that have been around longer, more levels, progression in quests, etc
-have a GM verify the chat logs for long term accounts that hit the threshold
-have a system to punish abuse of reporting

We need a more permanent solution and not a bandaid. If you put a level restriction on tell, RMTs will just bot their way to 15 and we'll be back to square one in a few days.

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Originally Posted by Arkista

Not fair to legit players. Sorry.

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not really. elsword is f2p and doesn't allow trading until you have your first job and 3 days have passed. the same thing could be done here.
it would for the most part work. most chars made (unless alt. toons or RMT) are from people with little to know background knowledge and are trying to just get through the main story.

though its a moot point anyway, i would rather live with RMT and have SE crack down on botting and fix their customer support.

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Originally Posted by StouterTaru

That's not a reasonable method, they need to add a "Report RMT and blacklist" below the blacklist option.

With this they also need to:
-allow blacklist for players offline, to get around the tell and dash
-mute accounts from tell/shout/yell that hit a report threshold pending GM appeal
-scale the threshold up for accounts that have been around longer, more levels, progression in quests, etc
-have a GM verify the chat logs for long term accounts that hit the threshold
-have a system to punish abuse of reporting

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how they don't do something like this with the current blacklist just baffles me. i looked at my blacklist a few days ago, and only ~4 or 5 of them had been deleted...

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Originally Posted by Shref

i looked at my blacklist a few days ago, and only ~4 or 5 of them had been deleted...

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Ban != Delete. I keep my blacklist rolling by filling it up, deleting the oldest 25~50, and repeating. Most of the ones I delete I don't hear from again. Then again, with names like Dsaf Dfgas, it's hard to tell if it's the same character or if it's a new one, but since I don't get spammed by 50 characters all at once, I think it's safe to assume some were banned.

Aion tried this. They raised the lvl requirement twice. Guess what? didnt work.

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Originally Posted by Lyrinn

We need a more permanent solution and not a bandaid. If you put a level restriction on tell, RMTs will just bot their way to 15 and we'll be back to square one in a few days.

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Other games have limits like this and it stops all the bot spamming. It's simply too much effort to try to bot a chara up w/o it getting caught by GMs before the needed level, just to have it banned as soon as it sends out a bunch of messages.

Right now they just make brand new characters and spam until the whole account is banned, and then just make a new account and do it again and again. It requires little effort.

And seriously. As a brand new player below level 15, what need do you have to send PMs? It's not like you're going to join a FATE party or something.

Bots making brand new characters to spam people with, and bots needing to actually level a character to 15 are two completely different things. You put enough hurdles in front of spammers and they will stop using a tactic that requires too much effort for too little gain.

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Originally Posted by Moheeheeko

Aion tried this. They raised the lvl requirement twice. Guess what? didnt work.

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Then Aion's GM team isn't spending a lot of effort having the server track unusual player activity to catch the botted players before they reach the necessary level.

That isn't a problem with the method. It's a problem with Aion's enforcement of their own rules.

In FF XIV the bots literally teleport around the maps from enemy to enemy. It's very easy for the dev team to detect. But right now the spammers don't have to do anything but setup a bunch of accounts and let lv1 characters spam the rest of the server. It's too easy for them to abuse the game. Make enough hurdles where the time and money investment is wasted on trying to get a chara to be able to spam in the game, and the spamming will stop because it's not profitable.

this will not even be considered, as it hinders social activities for newbies legit players. to you all westerners think that lvling up to 15 is no problem, you may want to look to the east where we enjoy mmorpg in a different way than you.

The RMT spammers are only half of the problem. The other half of the problem are those who purchase in-game currency from these RMTs (and, in turn, get their accounts stolen so that they become another spam account; and legit accounts who unknowingly sold items to a gil-buyer gets punished for it).

S.E doesn't care about bot people.

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Originally Posted by Seirra_Lanzce

this will not even be considered, as it hinders social activities for newbies legit players. to you all westerners think that lvling up to 15 is no problem, you may want to look to the east where we enjoy mmorpg in a different way than you.

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Whatever dude.

First off, "Westerners" isn't even a thing. There's like 100 countries on the West hemisphere of the planet, who speak different languages and have different customs.

Secondly, there's no need for PMs for most of the game, let alone below lv15. If you want to talk privately with someone you just met, add them to your friend list or form a party!

Only gold farming bots benefit from PMing at low lvs. Legit brand new players have little to no use for PMs outside a friend list. The early storyline is an exclusively solo experience.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

Secondly, there's no need for PMs for most of the game, let alone below lv15. If you want to talk privately with someone you just met, add them to your friend list or form a party!

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1. Adding someone to your friend list doesn't let you talk to them automatically. Guess how you still have to communicate? In /tell. Unless you have a linkshell, but of course, WHO at low level will have a linkpearl?

2. You cannot be in party to advance certain parts of the storyline. Great idea.

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Originally Posted by whoopeeragon

1. Adding someone to your friend list doesn't let you talk to them automatically. Guess how you still have to communicate? In /tell. Unless you have a linkshell, but of course, WHO at low level will have a linkpearl?

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Re-read what I originally posted. I specifically said that if a pre-lv15 character on new account was friends with another character, the new player would be able to PM that friend.

The restriction is specifically to stop bots, not legit players. Legit players can add others to friend lists in order to PM.

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2. You cannot be in party to advance certain parts of the storyline. Great idea.

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Dude. There are no story battles that allow you to be in a party. You have to do them solo.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

Dude. There are no story battles that allow you to be in a party. You have to do them solo.

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Exactly why your idea of 'just form a party!' fails on that account? o.O Are you for or against, I don't know anymore. Maybe you should take your own advice and reread.

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Originally Posted by whoopeeragon

Exactly why your idea of 'just form a party!' fails on that account? o.O Are you for or against, I don't know anymore. Maybe you should take your own advice and reread.

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Well that's why he had two ideas, so if one didn't work you could use the other one.

I think it's a reasonable idea but won't stop all the spamming, I think restrictions on tells (consider RMT sends them out in mass it should be pretty easy to limit someone's tells per minute or somesuch to the point where it never will effect a legitimate player) is necessary in addition.

I also agree somewhat with our xenophobic anti-Western buddy up there just a tiny bit in that some people don't just race to 15, so I think the level limit should be 10 as that's when you can switch classes and that's where most people will start getting distracted. If you're not level 10 and not working or trying to be level ten I don't know what else you could be doing in this game.

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Originally Posted by Shref

how they don't do something like this with the current blacklist just baffles me. i looked at my blacklist a few days ago, and only ~4 or 5 of them had been deleted...

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They don't do it because they don't have the time, they had a huge issue with RMTs in 1.0, and they knew they would with ARR, that is why we have things like not being able to mail things to your alt. They had to rush the game, they didn't have nearly everything they wanted to have finished by launch, so a lot of things got put in half done. Now instead of being able to work full time on things like moving forward, half their team is still trying to play catch up with what they didn't deliver to begin with.

The only reasonable way to kill goldsellers is:

Legally sell GIL yourself.

People will most likely buy legal GIL at a higher price if that means no risk of getting banned.

Of course, this solution requires SE banhammer to work properly.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

Whatever dude.

First off, "Westerners" isn't even a thing. There's like 100 countries on the West hemisphere of the planet, who speak different languages and have different customs.

Secondly, there's no need for PMs for most of the game, let alone below lv15. If you want to talk privately with someone you just met, add them to your friend list or form a party!

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1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_world how people usually accept as "westerner" and "easterner" though that doesn't really matter on my server :D we only got 2 type of people, 日本人JP　and 外人gaijin.

2) Keep your own play style to yourself. Some people actually try to make friends from low level and would actually want to know the person a bit more before adding them to flist.

By limiting PM is not going to do anything, you are just going to see shouts/say/yells in the starting cities/mor dhona/coerthas, anywhere where people are going to gather. Nor is botting to level15 or whatever is hard. There's already bots out there that runs FATES, you can even try to youtube some of these. SE is pretty notoriously bad at banning these bots, I don't see much teleport harvesting bots on my server anymore but spiritbinding bots is rampant. Got these people with 1 level 50 class - everything else 0 and no job, but class that just sits in the same spot killing things that is within their attack radius, never moves. Once in awhile goes back to town and literally spends over 5 minutes converting all the bound gear. Same bots been around for many months, nothing been done.

You're not going to get rid of RMT if there is demand for what they are selling. You can hinder them at the cost of possible collateral damage to the legit players, but they are not going to go away, they will find new ways to advertise.

However, if there is no demand, you aren't going to have much RMTs. Here on Mandragora, my blist is empty and I haven't received any RMT tells in at least a month, they don't have much business here and leave.

As for people saying to legalize gil selling... gil is already relatively worthless on XIV, selling it would just make it worse. For now, the only thing that you actually need a lot of gil are the FC housing... might as well sell the house? While we're at it, going down a slippery slope, let's sell tomestones? Make this into a pay to win game (with subscription since Yoshida says it's never going to be f2p)

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Originally Posted by whoopeeragon

Exactly why your idea of 'just form a party!' fails on that account? o.O Are you for or against, I don't know anymore. Maybe you should take your own advice and reread.

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Actually I don't need to re-read anything. I'm not the one arguing it would inconvenience new players; I'm very sure my suggestions would have little to no impact on legit players, but do a lot to diminish the bot spamming everyone is subjected to.

You're the one that has to prove it would somehow hurt the pre-lv 15 gameplay experience, not me.

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

2) Keep your own play style to yourself. Some people actually try to make friends from low level and would actually want to know the person a bit more before adding them to flist.

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First off, don't quote Wikipedia in a debate, it's not a reliable source. "Westerners" is nothing but a derogatory term used by people ignorant about geography and other cultures.

Secondly, my suggestion doesn't have any impact on people able to use the local chat to talk to someone in their immediate area. It doesn't stop them from using party chat either.

There is absolutely, positively no legit reason for a pre level 15 character to need to send a PM to anyone not willing to first add them to a friend list.

None, zilch, notta.

The early quests tell the new player everything they need. There's nothing a pre-lv 15 character needs from another player, at all.

And you're not a new player, so this change would have no impact on you anyway. Maybe you're a gold farming spammer and that is the real reason you're so adamantly opposed?

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There's already bots out there that runs FATES, you can even try to youtube some of these.

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Unless you spend all day monitoring the bots, you have no idea how long the botted accounts last until they are banned.

From what I have seen in-game and read on various forums, a lot of these accounts are low lv and try to harvest low lv items to sell before the whole account is banned. Gil is so hard to make in this game that a lot of the RMT gil comes from people who got scammed in power leveling services. All their items get materia converted and the rest sold as vendor trash for whatever tiny bit of gil its worth.

In the quantities the RMT merchants sell gil for and the cheap, cheap price they do it as, hacking other legit players is the only efficient way to do it.

The point isn't to stop RMT sales. It's to dramatically reduce the constant spam legit players receive from lv1 bots trying to sell us gil we don't want, or offering to hack our accounts for $15. The only accounts they'd be able to efficiently use are the accounts they got by scamming power leveling services, but when they can't make an army of lv1 characters the number of people getting scammed will be reduced, too.

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_world how people usually accept as "westerner" and "easterner" though that doesn't really matter on my server :D we only got 2 type of people, 日本人JP　and 外人gaijin.

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Could you possibly keep your own personal bigotry and over-inflated nationalism off the boards? It's not alright when I've seen my fellow Americans do it and it's no less disgusting when people from other countries do it.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

None, zilch, notta.

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And this is exactly banning PM going to do to RMTs, you replied before I finish my edit to get past the character limit.
You can go ahead and call everyone in the thread that's against your "method" a RMT, but it just sounds like you're losing and resorting to name calling.

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Originally Posted by DMooseJ

Could you possibly keep your own personal bigotry and over-inflated nationalism off the boards? It's not alright when I've seen my fellow Americans do it and it's no less disgusting when people from other countries do it.

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Though I originally posted that more of a joke, especially the 2nd part of that, I guess it didn't come off as that.
I'm just stating that there are what people consider Western and Eastern cultures, not saying either are good or bad, but just different.

Though nothing could match this phrase

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Originally Posted by DMooseJ

our xenophobic anti-Western buddy up there

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

1. Characters on brand new accounts cannot send a PM or use Shout until level 15.

2. Exception: if another user has added that new account character to their friend list, the character can PM the character they are friends with.

Problem solved.

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Originally Posted by Moheeheeko

Aion tried this. They raised the lvl requirement twice. Guess what? didnt work.

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^
This, a level requirement is not going to stop them from being able to send mass tells.
A regular player can get that level a couple of hours, it should be no problem to program a bot to do the same, faster.

At the same time, as others have said, this will disadvantage any new player in the game.
Not everyone that starts the game does so with already playing friends.

Ok... since when "Westerner" is a derogatory term...
I guess FOX, CNN, BBC and almost all major news network out there must be pro-Russia since they are calling all the European and US countries Western, the West, etc... in the Ukraine crisis right now.
It is not a derogatory term unless YOU make it out to be. To me and hopefully most people out there, calling or being called Western/Eastern does not devalue them in anyway.



Back on topic, I can't speak for everyone, but this is how I started out in ARR.
I deleted my 1.0 characters as I wanted a fresh start then I made multiple characters on different servers to chat with people that I know from before and also people that I might be interested in playing with and finally decide which server I wanted to play on.

On Typhon server, there was a Taiwan FreeCompany, I sent PMs to the leader so they can invite me into the FC so I can get to know them. It would be relatively difficult for a low level character to go across the world to hunt down someone just because I need to talk to them in say/shout/whatever. And I don't know... would you accept random friend invites? Never knowing the person before? What if they are RMT? Because that's how they used to send stuff, they ask to be added to flist in their shouts.

Another case on Mandragora server, some of my friends from FFXI is playing on the server and have already joined an FC. I chatted with the FC leader in tells for quite some time before deciding not to join their FC. He/She is out doing their own thing (running FATES, doing quests, who knows what) and I'm just sitting in town asking questions.

Majority of my AION friends on Behemoth, and my linkshells from FFXI is split between Balmung and Hyperion. My 1.0 server was Trabia which was also incorporated into Hyperion. I would log on and chat with them through PMs occasionally though much less and less after I decided which server to play on. I don't know if I would really call them friends, but rather acquaintances being in the same large legions/linkshells from previous games.

You are right as this does not impact me anymore as I am not new nor does it effect you. Who it effects are new players looking for a place where they want to play, and not everyone have friends playing this game already. They are the collateral damage by banning PM for characters under 15 just because you want an army of level 15 RMT bots spamming you instead of level 1 RMT bots.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

1. Characters on brand new accounts cannot send a PM or use Shout until level 15.

2. Exception: if another user has added that new account character to their friend list, the character can PM the character they are friends with.

Problem solved.

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Considering that I've seen RMTs levelling up on FATEs on Archer, all the way to lv50, I don't think any kind of level requirement will actually help out. It's not hard for a legit player to get to lv15, and it certainly isn't hard for RMT to do the same in order to use the chat commands.

These RMT are usually only trying to make a living. The only way to discourage them is to make it impossible to actually sell gold or accounts, or to provide any kind of service in exchange for some real money. I think the only way to really achieve this is to not have the game in the first place. Otherwise, where there is some potential (which in the use of bots, is always almost positive), it will be found and used.

Everyone is blacklisting gold spammers. Just ban and IP block anyone whose name appears more than 100 times in black list. Yes, some of them will find a way around it. But it would be the biggest detour yet and without touching the real players.

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Originally Posted by JemC

Everyone is blacklisting gold spammers. Just ban and IP block anyone whose name appears more than 100 times in black list. Yes, some of them will find a way around it. But it would be the biggest detour yet and without touching the real players.

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Uh, no.
Most of them will find a way, do you really think these people use their own IP addresses to do this on?

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

How to eliminate Real money gil sale spammers

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Make people stop buying Gil, problem solved.

As long as people buy Gil, there will be RMT's. So you as a Player have 2 Solutions:

1) Report RMT's and those who you believe are involved in RMT activities, which includes your LS/FC Members.
2) Deal with it.

1. A LOT of the accounts you get spam from are hacked or sold accounts that are already past this level.
2. This would be too limiting to legitimate characters trying to do simple things like building a party, or answer questions about something in-game.

Only yakuza or other shady methods can stop rmt.

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Originally Posted by Shirai

Uh, no.
Most of them will find a way, do you really think these people use their own IP addresses to do this on?

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Why are you bothered? You think they are using your IP address? I know they aren't using mine. They might use a proxy so what if the proxy gets banned? What you are saying is they will resort to IP theft which is getting a little to paranoid but I think most people can put a password on their router/modem these days and do. Keep banning their proxies and they'll run out. It would slow them down at least. They'd have to start all over again each ban.

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Originally Posted by JemC

Why are you bothered? You think they are using your IP address? I know they aren't using mine. They might use a proxy so what if the proxy gets banned? What you are saying is they will resort to IP theft which is getting a little to paranoid but I think most people can put a password on their router/modem these days and do. Keep banning their proxies and they'll run out. It would slow them down at least. They'd have to start all over again each ban.

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No, I'm not bothered in the slightest as I know my own computer network is pretty secure, but you are talking as if these guys only have a hand full of proxies and will scream in despair once a few of those get blacklisted by the FFXIV servers.
These guys have hundreds, probably even thousands of infected computers, routers and other equipment through which they can route their trafic, most of the owners don't even know they are infected and more are getting infected every day.
IP banning is not going to stop them, heck it's not even going to slow them down.

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Originally Posted by therpgfanatic

You're the one that has to prove it would somehow hurt the pre-lv 15 gameplay experience, not me.

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Yes level 15 shouldn't be to big of a deal to get to But.....

Let's say I go to GameStop, Pickup a copy of FFXIV. I get on, I don't know anyone who plays. With your restrictions in place. If I got lost, Died, or couldn't find out how to progress I wouldn't be able to get help. Unless someone ran over my dead body, Or I would have to run around a zone trying to find people just so I could talk to them in /s.

I have had a few people in my FC who played around on different classes just to see which they liked. So what if I started off as a LNC and I don't like it, I want to play a MRD or GLD. So I have to ask which town to unlock them and how to get there. What if I get lost on the way to Limsa or Ul'Dah. I have to hope someone is near me just so I can seek assistance, What if I'm one zone away from Limsa entrance and I die, I can't /shout to get a raise. So then I will have to run all the way back from my Home Point (unless they know how to set a new one).


In short what the OP suggest will never happen. Could you imagine if what he suggested was in place, How many new players would get upset because they would be unable to chat outside of /s. Pretty sure a lot of them would just quit.

RMT's will find a way. They'll just work harder at hacking players.

I don't know a good way to stop botting and I don't really care since we don't have NMs to claim.

But a better way to slow RMTs /tell /shouts is to put a limit on how many a player can send per hour until you hit level 30 or something. Simple easy, Yes it won't stop them 100%, But giving like 30 tell/shout limit per hour should be good. Just an idea.

I played for about 8hrs or so yesterday and got 1 tell. I don't even see that many these days.

There is only one way to stop RMT, turn the servers off. RMT will always find a way around restricitons. As long as there are people who will buy gil, someone will sell it. Taking features away from paying customers needs to stop even being considered. I am tired of thing being taken out of games to stop RMT. We can't have NMs because RMT may exploit, we can't have a stable economy because of RMT, don't let players send /tells to stop RMT. If they truely want to stop RMT they need to put in the work and have more people dedicated to finding them in game and banning them. Don't just remove features, that is just lazy.

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Originally Posted by CYoung187

snip.

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Or SE could just make GIL worthless, We're pretty much to that point. GIL is only good for repairs and housing. Hell SE should just sell GIL.....