Why is there so much RMT spam?

This last week, I have had to Blacklist over 20 Rmt spammers.
If it was not such a pain to have to constantly make room in my Blacklist, I would not care so much. Is anything at all being done to curb this annoying spam?

No filter/spam-prevention = fail.

But in all seriousness, lots of good discussion about it here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ls-till-lvl-20

Because there's a market.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

Because there's a market.

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Suppose that is true, then I think SE should keep reminding players keep away from RMT or they will be banned.

Maybe add "never RMT or get banned" on every loading screen. ^^;

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

Because there's a market.

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There's a market in every game, and most of them don't have anywhere near the level of RMT spam I see in FFXIV.

Hmm so many people don't seem to understand supply and demand principal. They are spamming more and more because nobody is buying.. so they have an ever growing coffer they need to get rid of. The less gil in their coffers the less they shout. So blame people for not buying gil to shut them up.

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Originally Posted by elkhorn

Hmm so many people don't seem to understand supply and demand principal. They are spamming more and more because nobody is buying.. so they have an ever growing coffer they need to get rid of. The less gil in their coffers the less they shout. So blame people for not buying gil to shut them up.

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ehm... righto .-.

I haven't seen much spam on Sarg. Not sure if being in the FC house areas is the reason why

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Originally Posted by elkhorn

Hmm so many people don't seem to understand supply and demand principal. They are spamming more and more because nobody is buying.. so they have an ever growing coffer they need to get rid of. The less gil in their coffers the less they shout. So blame people for not buying gil to shut them up.

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I disagree there. They spam more because people *are* buying. An amazing thing, go to a JP server, they don't have this problem nearly as bad. The reason is? They don't buy in to it.
It's the same reason you see annoying commercials for all these products you don't need. It's not because the toothpaste company has a storehouse full of eggplant flavored toothpaste. It's because people are actually buying the dumb thing ....

If it was the case that no one was buying, they'd not be spamming. They'd run out of steam and just go away. They make so very little in their home country. It actually takes very little to sustain them. So even if sales were low, they still make out well compared to the income potential where they live.

Agreed, people buy loads of gil.

Try this, make a character on a JP server, log in for a couple of hours. Do the same on a EU/US server. Guess where you'll get spam. It's culture related.

However, I too like to know what SE actually does to reduce RMT. My hopes are very low.

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Originally Posted by Lumidus

I haven't seen much spam on Sarg. Not sure if being in the FC house areas is the reason why

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I'm on Sarg as well. I do seem to get less if I'm in my house but anywhere else I sometimes get up to 1-2 every 10seconds..... I assume because my name starts with "A."

The spam exists because it's profitable. There is a big enough population that buys. Add this onto how there is no easy drop down command to report the spammers and you have a situation where the spammers go crazy. If you want to end it, blacklist anyone you know of that buys from them. It's about the only thing we can do as players with how bad the reporting system is.

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Originally Posted by Kerberon

The spam exists because it's profitable. There is a big enough population that buys. Add this onto how there is no easy drop down command to report the spammers and you have a situation where the spammers go crazy. If you want to end it, blacklist anyone you know of that buys from them. It's about the only thing we can do as players with how bad the reporting system is.

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While the reporting process could be streamlined, I report every single RMT spammer I get a /t or see a /shout from and /t spammers disappear in minutes, if I see another /t from them at all. Shout spammers don't seem to get handled so quickly... At any rate, reporting them does work, and very quickly at that.

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Originally Posted by Avarghaladion

While the reporting process could be streamlined, I report every single RMT spammer I get a /t or see a /shout from and /t spammers disappear in minutes, if I see another /t from them at all. Shout spammers don't seem to get handled so quickly... At any rate, reporting them does work, and very quickly at that.

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I'll be honest I don't because of the volume of them. Some nights I get them at a rate of 2 per minute. If I reported them all with the long form way we have of reporting I wouldn't actually get to play.

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Originally Posted by Kerberon

The spam exists because it's profitable. There is a big enough population that buys. Add this onto how there is no easy drop down command to report the spammers and you have a situation where the spammers go crazy. If you want to end it, blacklist anyone you know of that buys from them. It's about the only thing we can do as players with how bad the reporting system is.

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Yep...

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Originally Posted by Kerberon

I'll be honest I don't because of the volume of them. Some nights I get them at a rate of 2 per minute. If I reported them all with the long form way we have of reporting I wouldn't actually get to play.

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And yep...

Honestly, I have a hard time understanding why the effort has yet to be done to implement such a useful tool as a "Click name to report spammer" that sends a GM message and puts character on the blacklist. The sheer amount of GM time saved from not having to do anything to respond to the tickets anymore would be worth it on its own.

Edit: Granted, this is from the same company who thinks a 1k limit is a GOOD IDEA for message boards.

Probably because you don't report them. I always report them as soon as I get a /tell and they get banned within 5 minutes.

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Originally Posted by Miliant

Probably because you don't report them. I always report them as soon as I get a /tell and they get banned within 5 minutes.

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There really should be as easy way to report as there is to Blacklist.
Currently blocking a rmt seller forever takes 2 seconds while writing a gil seller rmt report through the menu system takes a full minute.

I almost never report but also I almost never get rmt spam because I've already blocked out the majority of rmt on my server.

Reporting RMT should be as easy as blacklisting.

What SE needs to change /add is:

- Possibility to blacklist offline players
- Local chat / tell filter so you can make your own dictionary based on which the chat will ignore the tell / shouts / yells

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Originally Posted by HEC

What SE needs to change /add is:

- Possibility to blacklist offline players
- Local chat / tell filter so you can make your own dictionary based on which the chat will ignore the tell / shouts / yells

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Change that to:
-Click -> Report as RMT option that blacklists the account used.

It'd be much better to have them work on an option that actually combats the issue instead of sweeping it away somewhere so it's just not seen.

SE just need to re-inforce their rules and be more strict. Start Banning the person who buy gils as well. So far they only Banning RMT once in awhile, it is not enough. Player who bought gils think they are getting away with it and no consequence for buying Gils.

Every time they do a Maintain, create a global message that say "We are beginning maintain shortly. We are looking through our Database and Banning Gil Buyer as well as RMT. If you cannot log back in, it mean you are Banned. Please look forward to it."

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Originally Posted by Enepttastic

Change that to:
-Click -> Report as RMT option that blacklists the account used.

It'd be much better to have them work on an option that actually combats the issue instead of sweeping it away somewhere so it's just not seen.

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This. All other suggested disclaimers wouldn't have any effect at all. Do you really think RMT will be like "Gee they don't want gold sellers in this game? Okay then!" How naive.

Because they honestly must not care that much or are secrelty getting a cut.

Well.

Release of the PS4 client brought new players to the game, so RMT sellers will try and get new customers. Also, on Odin, from going to maybe 1 seller tell a day to 3-7 a day I have also seen an increase in content sellers as well. From also one advertising in PF to 3-4 a day.

Coincidence? Or not?

I think the RMTs are out in force on this game over any other MMO I've seen (including WoW), is because they know people who pay a subscription fee has the money to pay for their gil. With F2P MMO (re: DCUO, GW2), I don't see them as much since they know they can't get really far with people not willing to pay extra on top of the game they bought.

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Originally Posted by Zaiken

SE just need to re-inforce their rules and be more strict. Start Banning the person who buy gils as well.

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There is a big problem with that, since there is no way SE can tell the difference between these two scenarios:

1.) A player gets lots of gil from a RMT character because he paid for it.
2.) Same as (1), but he/she never had any previous contact with him and did not pay.

Why would scenario (2) happen? Because if banning people receiving gil from RMT was ever enforced, they would use tactic (2) to bring that system down. If truly innocent players got banned (and even a few angry of them starting suing SE...), the bad press and publicity could seriously hurt SE and/or the FF14 franchise. Of course, you could argue that a legitimate, truly innocent player would report receiving an unexpected amount of gil immediately. But then, there are lots of newbies in the game not having the slightest idea what RMT is and just think they got lucky.

Scenario 2 would require the person add the RMT to their Friends List.... In any case I guarantee they ban buyers as well. It just takes a little longer to snag the buyers because they have to have the evidence. Half the reason they leave some bots etc. up is so they can follow the gil trail to the buyers. Use the collection bots to find the gil distribution characters and then the buyers. Also pay attention to the RMT posts. There ARE filters but the RMT use half gibberish and begin or end their messages with a unique string of five or six characters so each post appears to the game to be a different post.