RMT Spam...enough already, SE!

To whomever may happen to read this who can actually address this issue:

Enough is enough Square. I realize that you have little control over who signs up for and plays in Eorzea, but after playing for over a year at this point, I am frankly tired of having my Blacklist constantly capped at 200 individuals - the majority of which are level one characters with a name consisting of "Hfljlsdf Lpaijf" or something along those lines.

Now that that irritation is off of my chest, here's a suggestion or five:

1) Add an ingame feature to the chat log that allows you to file a report by selecting a characters name. You did this with the "Blacklist" feature. A couple of options: "Report Spam", "Report Harassment", etc. Whether or not you decide to have it open a small form for the user to fill out, or just have it file a small sub-report which uploads to the server, is completely up to you.

2) While this suggestion is a bandaid on this issue: increase the blacklist size from 200 to, oh, I don't know, 500? Basic, simple, not nearly as effective as people would hope.

3) Increase monitoring of server side chat logs. The fact that a level 1 individual (for example) is sending out hundreds of direct tells and friend requests to essentially everyone in a particular zone should raise some flags...I mean, really, it should, right????

4) Please patch friend requests. RMT Sellers / Spammers are sending tells pandering their goods and promptly following up with friend requests. The reason they're doing this is because currently if someone sends you a friend request, You. Can't. Blacklist. Them. Please separate the two or adjust how they function. Instead of having a friend request block someone from being blacklisted, make it so blacklisting someone automatically declines their friend request.

5) This goes hand in hand with suggestion #1. Please refine the in-game reporting of harassment feature. Square requests a "Username of of the person who conducted the behavior" and the approximate time, location, world, and type of behavior they were conducting. This form does not need to be this "clunky". Again, it should be very possible with server/client technology to have a small pre-determined report that a user can open on an individual from the chat log.

In a nut shell, there are some serious improvements that need to be made to this system and adjustments that need to be taken to improve the overall health and attitude of the community.

These are merely my suggestions and I am certain that there are a multitude of similar posts and reports like this that the Support Desk receives on a weekly basis. Please please please Square, take this seriously and help put an end to this cancer that is eating away at the enjoyment of Eorzea!

TL;DR - Suggestions for how to possible improve the social aspect of the game by helping to eliminate RMT Spam.

Hopefully this doesn't fall on deaf ears, but this is just my 2 gil.

How about just put a filter on who can send you Tells? Something like --

Allow Tells from:
-- All
-- party
-- friends
-- fc
-- ls
-- none

That way we can prevent the bastards from even reaching us from the start, and it requires far less memory on the servers than doubling or tripling the size of each person's blacklist would.

But that would limit the ability for players to communicate. I don't think SE would want to do that.

Personally, instead of increasing the size of the blacklist, I would rather SE would add "rmtlist". So the blacklist could go back to its original purpose (blocking annoying real-life players) and the rmtlist could be on the server side and reserved for gilspammers. It wouldn't need to be cleared out and when an account is placed on the rmtlist by a certain number of people, it is automatically flagged for review.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Amnesia

But that would limit the ability for players to communicate. I don't think SE would want to do that.

Personally, instead of increasing the size of the blacklist, I would rather SE would add "rmtlist". So the blacklist could go back to its original purpose (blocking annoying real-life players) and the rmtlist could be on the server side and reserved for gilspammers. It wouldn't need to be cleared out and when an account is placed on the rmtlist by a certain number of people, it is automatically flagged for review.

---

You'd still have /say and /shout to communicate. Hell, you could add in a "within 25y" limiter to tells you could decide to allow or not.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Numenor1379

How about just put a filter on who can send you Tells? Something like --

Snip

...., and it requires far less memory on the servers than doubling or tripling the size of each person\\'s blacklist would.

---

I should not have to block tells from all random people just to deal with spam. Some of my closest in game friendships started that way. I dont expect them to ever rid it entirely, but some common sense solutions (ie right click name and hit report spam....and someone to actually monitor that) seems reasonable.

in regards to memory they could expand the list 20 times and it would have zero noticeable impact on their storage requirements. We are talking if everyone maxed it out it would maybe be a few gigs worth (secondary memory not RAM so basically irrelevant). I imagine there bigger concern is a performance hit to check against the list every time you are sent a tell. Theoretically the larger the list the longer each lookup takes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Amnesia

...I would rather SE would add "rmtlist". So the blacklist could go back to its original purpose (blocking annoying real-life players) and the rmtlist could be on the server side and reserved for gilspammers. It wouldn't need to be cleared out and when an account is placed on the rmtlist by a certain number of people, it is automatically flagged for review.

---

I agree with this. That way, the Support Team doesn't have to deal with over 9000 individual RMT report messages. Instead they can check an RMT list and just occasional RMT report messages.

TBH restricting tells and shouts is something that should be avoided. Main reason being that REAL new players would have communication problems. Putting a level restriction on chats is also a problem because we can change jobs. the rmtlist would be difficult to implement and could be possibly abused by adding real players on it. Sorting the real players from the rmts would take more time then the RMT reports. With the RMT tells SE has it's hands tied and there is no possible fix without big drawbacks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zexth

TBH restricting tells and shouts is something that should be avoided...

---

- I totally agree with this. Limiting of tells and shouts needs to be avoided - the tells and shouts aren't the issue. It's the people abusing them.

Quote:

---

Sorting the real players from the rmts would take more time then the RMT reports. With the RMT tells SE has it's hands tied and there is no possible fix without big drawbacks.

---

- I have to disagree with this. Unfortunately for SE, FFXIV is a pay for play business model - Which I am totally ok with btw >.> - and that holds them to a higher standard of service if they wish to continue having a game community with positive growth. Saying that it would be difficult for SE to enforce their own policies (which are in the EULA) and that there would be drawbacks if they did enforce their own policies, comes off as a cop-out IMHO. They receive our money on a monthly basis to improve server performance, game stability, and enforce their policies.

Again, it isn't difficult to either A) Increase their GM / Helpdesk staffing in order to research "RMT Reports" and B) Data-mine their own in-game logs in order to root out the serious offenders of RMT spam.

And, before people get up in arms about the "data-mining in-game chat logs"...it is their (Square's) game. We all accepted the EULA in order to play this game. They are well within their rights to take it to that degree.

I feel the spamming has only gotten worse over the last few months - mostly due to people making those purchases - it's about time that Square does something about this. I don't claim to know the development team's ideas our minds, but I do feel they know that this is and will have a negative impact on the overall community.

I'm not trying to upset people with this - I just feel this is an issue that occasionally gets swept to the sides for the greater progression of future content of the game...

And, thank you to all who have posted to try to keep the suggestions and recommendations on here positive! Here's to keeping my lala fingers crossed that someone from the Dev Team takes this seriously!


Just my 2 gil! Have fun out there everyone ^.^

Hmmm my blacklist never gets near 200 but then I am generally deleting previous days blacklisted people the next day. Since more often than not most get removed within hours some even minutes of the tell(if I'm not next to my system and I get like 3-4 tells from the same person when I try to blacklist it will more often than not tell me that that player does not exist)..

But yeah I agree there should be a report for > reason sub menu on the context menu which opens up a prefilled form about it with you just needing to put in a reason(hell this could be drop down premade with an option of other for those special cases).

Restriction on /tells is not a such a bad idea, I really doubt a fresh newbie would ask another player for help in a /tell.

And if there are 2 newbie friends starting then I'm 100% sure they have another way to communicate for the time being.

Also I like the idea of an rmtlist.

Having been reporting gil spammers for some time now, being absolutely sick to death of my chat window being completely filled up with that crap in the middle of several conversations at once at times, and of course if I am using /r to reply to a friend and a tell from a spammer comes in while im typing my message, omg...

Not knowing either how SE actually tracks and detects purchase of gil and the trade itself, if at all, doesnt help us to help the RMT team.

My reporting has now dropped off due to the number of times I have to stop what Im doing and report (within short spaces of time)

My solution? : BUSY MODE. Where no one can talk to me. Imagine for a moment if everyone had to start or did start doing that just to have some peace... that, imo, would be worse for the game, the business, and the awesome social/commendation setup and system that SE has going.

Sad that I have to do that.

Keep the tell function locked until level 5 or 10, gradually unlocking communication functions that aren't /party or /say. Getting there isn't much work at all (for anyone that isn't a bot)

Or
Back to the option of restricting tells; allow level based restrictions I.e. No tells from players below level 3 or something like that.

I would like to say again to the people contributing to this thread: thank you for keeping the suggestions positive and not turning this into an all out gripe fest.

[sarcasmfont] Now if only we could present these points and ideas in a productive and positive manner on some kind of forum(sp? O.o)
where the development team could review these ideas or let us know if we're ever going to be heard... [/sarcasmfont]

Have fun out there everyone! Someday they'll understand our frustration! xD

Unfortunately there is no way to clean and efficiently wipe RMT from the game. You implement features to block them they will come back. You can't ban IP addresses because a good majority of RMT bounce their IP's you cant restrict chat because it impacts new and returning players. All in all the real problem is the people funding RMT. Those people who buy Gil. Looking for the easy mode to obtaining gil.

I get maybe 2-6 tells a day about buying gil, not that bad honestly. It'll always be a problem the best you can do is deal with it cause no matter what a company does to block attempts The RMT just find another way to exploit it. Yelling at SE to fix something won't solve the problems and in fact there is very little they can actually do to stop advertisements other than hire people to sit in game and read chat 24/7 (who would want to do that seriously >.>). Just something you are going to have to deal with and if you are getting mass spammed from RMT, there is probably a good reason for it as they designated you a pretty open target. My Blacklist isnt even full yet and I been playing since launch.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sipherous

All in all the real problem is the people funding RMT. Those people who buy Gil. Looking for the easy mode to obtaining gil.

---

I 100% agree with this. It sure would be nice if there were stronger systems in place to catch the people who are purchasing these wares. I feel with most of them looking for the "quick fix" or "easy way out" to attaining their virtual fortune either A) have no idea what kind of impact their purchases have on the server and/or B) Don't care if they get their credit information stolen while simultaneously causing drastic inflation on their server economy.

Perma-bans or removal of items / gear purchased with virtual black market peddled wares, imho, should be more prominent.

Just my (personally earned) 2 Gil. xD