Tell restrictions implemented in 2.3 for rmt are not adequate

There was a drop off in tells from gil sellers after the implementation of measures to slow them down, but now they are right back to where they were. Adding them to my blacklist is not a good enough solution. I still end up getting 3 to 4 different spammers a day. There are several more options that could be implemented.

1) Give people an option to restrict tells to friends, FC and LS members only.
2) Restrict the number of tells to new people that a person under level 15 or 20 can make in an hour.
3) Put an option to report as a gilseller when you right click someone's name. If their account receives enough reports, then the account can be frozen. To prevent abuses of this, give people a warning when confirming to report a gil seller, that their character will be logged as accusing someone of gil selling.

I'm definitely agreeing on third point.

I suggested to add a sub-command as "Report RMT & Other Illicit Activities" that will auto fill the Cheat report with date, time, location, data center, and world server. That will encourage people to report them, while selecting this option will also auto-black them.

It's odd, you don't get any of these tells on Japan servers, extremely minimal if any. As I never get any one single tell, advertising gil selling. They must do a really good job on japan server, or japan players just don't buy gil lol. I hardly see any shouts advertising gil selling either in any major cities in Japan servers.

Never give power to the players. That's just begging for trouble on point 3. At least with point one you can restrict it, though RMT tells definitely slowed down lately on Balmung

4 messages a day compared to 20+, I know this issue isn't fixed yet but the current situation improved a lot, you don't even have to bl them, they will most likely be banned before they get to send you a second tell from the same character.

There's no way to eradicate RMT spammers other than people cutting off the demand.

Was saying in FC other day about how much it's dropped off, then yesterday they all seem to come out of retirement.
Anything that makes it easier to report gets my vote
Also agree about cutting off the demand, a product only exists when their is a market for it, and everytime a Gil sink is added, it adds to the demand (hello novus I'm looking at you)
But saying that, SE could give all players a million Gil just for logging in each day and you would still get someone stupid enough and lazy enough to think they need more.

Add an /invisible tag which removes you from the search feature, that way they can't find you in search to send you /tell's, seems like a normal and easily added solution.

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Originally Posted by Alukah

4 messages a day compared to 20+, I know this issue isn't fixed yet but the current situation improved a lot, you don't even have to bl them, they will most likely be banned before they get to send you a second tell from the same character.

There's no way to eradicate RMT spammers other than people cutting off the demand.

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^ This. I've gotten a few tells lately but nothing like it used to be. It's quite pleasant in comparison.

I do like OP's third point though, good suggestion.

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Originally Posted by Enjuden

Never give power to the players.

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Case in point, The Hunt.

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Originally Posted by Luvbunny

It's odd, you don't get any of these tells on Japan servers, extremely minimal if any. As I never get any one single tell, advertising gil selling. They must do a really good job on japan server, or japan players just don't buy gil lol. I hardly see any shouts advertising gil selling either in any major cities in Japan servers.

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JP players do buy virtual currency, just as EU/NA ones would. The main reason you don't see so many of these instances is because of the language. Generally speaking, getting someone that can acceptably put together RMT spam and/or respond to people in English is a lot easier than finding someone to do it in Japanese. Catering to servers that are designed or dominantly populated by JP players isn't going to be a big source of income when you don't even speak the majority language there. Mind you though, the /shout spams aren't very common on a lot of NA/EU servers neither. Even /tells have been reduced a lot since 2.3. Getting 3 or 4 different RMT sending a /tell is a lot better than the 15-20 we were getting prior to.

The only increase I've noticed in the last few days was going from 0-1 tell every few hours to 2-4 in the same time period. My wife and I never get a tell from the same RMT anymore. The /tell adjustment in 2.3 was a complete win in my book. I imagine part of the slight increase is the patch and the isolated chance they ninja in Personal Housing which I'm getting the feeling is going to be 2.38.

Blacklist + Report in one go needs to happen.
I'd also like to see an improvement to blacklisting in general, so that characters that belong to recovered accounts or to banned accounts are flagged, indicating such, so that I know they can be removed. Sitting at 200 B-listed users is rather rubbish.
Custom chat filters would be good too. I can probably come up with a filter that'll block around 75% of the gil spam if they give us a decent tool.
I'd also like the ability to just block tells entirely without going busy. That prevents me from getting party invites apparently, which is a pain. And I could disable them from the chat menu, but I don't just want to hide them; I want them to be able to even send them to me.

And finally, create a system that auto-flags an account for review if it messages more than X number of people in a single day, or if it messages Y number of people with the same message (or 90% similar).

I definitely didn't see an increase in Balmung. Since the measures were applied I was sent tells exactly twice and I reported them immediately.

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Originally Posted by Behr

There was a drop off in tells from gil sellers after the implementation of measures to slow them down, but now they are right back to where they were. Adding them to my blacklist is not a good enough solution. I still end up getting 3 to 4 different spammers a day. There are several more options that could be implemented.

1) Give people an option to restrict tells to friends, FC and LS members only.
2) Restrict the number of tells to new people that a person under level 15 or 20 can make in an hour.
3) Put an option to report as a gilseller when you right click someone's name. If their account receives enough reports, then the account can be frozen. To prevent abuses of this, give people a warning when confirming to report a gil seller, that their character will be logged as accusing someone of gil selling.

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Point 3 sounds cool. To be honest though. I can tolerate gil seller tells now because of the /tell restrictions. They bug me once in a while but it's not that bad. Before 2.3, they were driving me insane.

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Originally Posted by Dark-Saviour

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I don't think BL+Report is that critical anymore for the 1 or 2 tells per gaming session we're down to. Plus it would need to be implemented right or you'd be getting annoyed by the report pop up just blacklisting nuisance characters that don't require reporting. Completely clear out your BL now and you're probably good btw. No need for the devs to waste resources. If you remove a nuisance character by accident you can readd if they annoy you again. I don't even BL anymore because I know I wont get another /tell from them. The autoflag isn't necessary anymore because of the /tell limit imposed in 2.3. Will you people really not stop until you have 0 tells? That won't EVER happen....

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Originally Posted by Luvbunny

It's odd, you don't get any of these tells on Japan servers, extremely minimal if any. As I never get any one single tell, advertising gil selling. They must do a really good job on japan server, or japan players just don't buy gil lol. I hardly see any shouts advertising gil selling either in any major cities in Japan servers.

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Because as an american i hate to admit this but most of people dumb enough to buy gill are US players. so to many people are very lazy, without gill buyers there are no RMT. but sadly this will never go away, we'll have to deal with RMT so long as people do stupid things like buy gill.

I also thought they slowed down but i am back to seeing 3-5+ in a day it's pretty sad when 80% of your tells are spammers. in some perfect world i do wish they would go away but unless SE takes drastic measures much like roaches they can only squash them to reduce numbers but they will keep coming back.

My idea is to give a option to block tells from low level people of course this could be a problem when new players are trying to contact friends but if it's optional, maybe. but there is no huge way to fix this problem without hurting player base in the process. unless they find some way to block the location they come from.

They have improved their efficiency since the changes initially rolled out. For me, it's still a lot less than before. On a good day, I don't get any RMT. On a bad day, I will get 2-6 over the course of an evening. Prior to the changes, a "good day" meant I made it out of my Inn room or watched an entire cut scene without getting spammed.

I still like the idea of a streamlined reporting process from the chat log that automatically imports all the info needed. I also like the idea of automating account freezes, but the threshold has to be very high, enough so that a hunt mob couldn't generate enough reports get a player's account auto-frozen. If it took 100 reports within an hour, for example, it would be virtually impossible for players to use this against each other maliciously (remember, it is tied to the chat log, so someone who wasn't there to have something from the person on their chat log can't report). However, a RMT spammer will have no problem racking up that many reports.

A right click report gil spammer option seems like a good idea, but an auto-account freeze not so much.

Maybe the more reports, the higher it goes in a "queue" of RMT reports for a GM to review, so the most reported, and active RMT spammers get hit first. And if anyone tries to grief someone this way, a GM will investigate, and be able to see something like that all the members of the "report random people as RMT spammers for the LOLz" Free company did the reports, or whatever.

And keep that warning that abuse of the system is reporting anyone other than a RMT spammer by that method is considered abuse of that system, and for other forms of player abuse or other issues, to submit a petition.

I know Eve online has a system just like that, a right click to report RMT spam, and I have never seen a RMT spammer in that game, ever.

Similar to point 3 - there does need to be an easier and clearer way to report a gil spammer or bot instead of going through that current report filing process.

Resistricting tells for under level 15 isnt going to work as many of them (on my server at least) are level 50 in everything.

I have spied upon some of the websiters these gil spammers advertise and its interesting to see how frequently they are used (some have a ticker at the bottom of latest sales, even exposing the email address of the person who bought gil - HINT HINT SE)

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Originally Posted by Shori

I have spied upon some of the websiters these gil spammers advertise and its interesting to see how frequently they are used (some have a ticker at the bottom of latest sales, even exposing the email address of the person who bought gil - HINT HINT SE)

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A smart person would make an account to be discreet. Then again, what smart person would buy gil?

I would go a similiar route to what WoW does. Allow users to report a gilseller AND blacklist at the same time, except use a separate blacklist for those names, so that we don't waste our precious 200 spaces on scum and can use them on idiots. Like people who buy gil.