A way to get rid of RMT's

RMT's are getting worst and this could work (If possible)

Imagine if the Blist is updated to a scan system, that every time a player is blisted, the system scans the chat log and sees if they are offering gil for real money. Once this is detected the character is not just deleted, but the account is banned and the IP is banned.

Once we see the character deleted on the blist we'd know he's been permanently taken care of and we can just delete it from the list, now and then I find a "deleted" icon on my blist, but out of 200, 160 are still there, so I'm unable to delete them.

This would make it unnecessary to make the blist larger or infinite, as long as this system is implemented.

Is this impossible?

I like the idea, but I can think of 2 ways this can be abused. First, someone could say in chat a parody of the RMT spam as a joke and then gets banned. Another way is some scumbag troll could ask someone to copy and paste a message an RMT sent them, then the troll blists the person just to get them banned.

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Originally Posted by RyujinUzikin

Is this impossible?

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If the system were capable of detecting RMT spam, why would it need a blacklisting to trigger it? It could simply detect it immediately and take whatever action from there.

Which it already does to some degree, which is why RMT spammers change their messages all the time. Filters get made, filters get broken, the cycle repeats.

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Originally Posted by RyujinUzikin

now and then I find a "deleted" icon on my blist, but out of 200, 160 are still there, so I'm unable to delete them.

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Originally Posted by Enkrateia

Hello, all! This is LGM Enkrateia here. I had posted this in another thread; however, the information does seem relevant.

As time goes on, we are getting more and more RMT reports including the information that the blacklist is already full of RMT, so more cannot be added. Some reports that include a bit more information note that only prior entries that have changed to "Deleted" are being removed to make room for new entries.

I wanted to provide a bit of information and insight to address these concerns, which will hopefully help keep you from filling up your blacklist with RMT names that are never removed.

Once an account is found guilty of RMT solicitation, it is suspended indefinitely. However, the characters on that account are not deleted, since the suspension of the account is sufficient to prevent further solicitation from the account. Deleting the characters is an additional step that is not taken, since it is unnecessary, time consuming, and could result in account damage or loss in the case of a suspension that needs to be lifted, such as in the case of a compromised account used for RMT solicitation.

The blacklist is recommended as a temporary resolution to alleviate the unwanted solicitation, and is not meant to be a permanent state you place these names into. Removing the names periodically should allow us time to complete our investigation, and free up room in your blacklist if another account is used to solicit RMT.

Lead Game Master Enkrateia

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I support this idea, last night I afk'd to eat dinner and came back to TWELVE RMT messages! It's insanity. It's certainly getting worse, not better. Corndogs do NOT take that long to eat, dammit

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Originally Posted by RyujinUzikin

RMT's are getting worst and this could work (If possible)

Imagine if the Blist is updated to a scan system, that every time a player is blisted, the system scans the chat log and sees if they are offering gil for real money. Once this is detected the character is not just deleted, but the account is banned and the IP is banned.

Once we see the character deleted on the blist we'd know he's been permanently taken care of and we can just delete it from the list, now and then I find a "deleted" icon on my blist, but out of 200, 160 are still there, so I'm unable to delete them.This would make it unnecessary to make the blist larger or infinite, as long as this system is implemented.

Is this impossible?

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Then they would use different sentences, letting players know what they sell without using those specific words. An account-bound blacklist would work better. Blacklist 1 character, and every character ever made from the same account will be automatically blacklisted. Maybe they give up if they see they lose profit 'cuz they would have to make new accounts, not new chars on the same account over and over again.

And of course the way to get rid of RMTs is by not buying their gil :>

IP bans do nothing.

What's the likelihood that a single player will be blacklisted by lets say 30 people? 50 people? 100 people? Not very, unless they managed to piss off an entire zone.

What's the likelihood that a RMT will blacklisted by 30+ people? Probably quite likely. Since they tend spam /tell people over a period of time.

System should (and probably does) keep track of how many times a person has been blacklisted. However, also include the last X amount of /tells for review (for each time they get added to a blacklist). Once twice a day a GM, or STFU member should have a tool that shows the top X amount of people blacklisted. Review the /tells and be able to take appropriate action if needed.

The last tell I got from an RMT was in this format (I removed the website):

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WWW.<REMOVED WEBSITE>.COM★★★★★★★★★★★★★★WWW.<REMOVED WEBSITE>.COM★★★★★★★★★★★★★★WWW.<REMOVED WEBSITE>.COM★★★★★★★★★★★★★★WWW.<REMOVED WEBSITE>.COM★★★★★★★★★★★★★★1000K=$2 And 7% Bonus★★★★★★★★Instant delivery after you pay.★★★★★★★★★★★WWW.<REMOVED WEBSITE>.COM★★★★★★★★Welcome★★
6537

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Will this catch them all? No. There are many other tools needed as well. Then again SE may already have something similar in place. It's not like they'll share that info because then behaviors can be changed.

edit: Just got another RTM /tell

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（⊙.⊙）Welcome to ♥www.<REMOVED WEBSITE>.com♥……1000 K GIL = 2$, Cheaper and Faster, Have a nice day!!! HW_x

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We need to get rid of the buyers. They fund the RMTs. You can ban all the RMT's you want but unless you knock out the buyers it doesn't make a difference. Even if they don't spam in world, people will search for them on the interweb. They aren't too hard to find at all.

I honestly don't think there is a way to get rid of them aside from blowing up their isp locations with strategic bombing runs.

Personally I just want the blacklist to be increased by another 1k names allowed....im capped 200 daily and have to keep removing names from the top of my list to add more in, I don't even have any deleted names to remove.

Forget about the IP bans, they are ineffective and even counterproductive because a legit player can one day get the banned IP on their machine.

The game already has a spam filter, it just won't ban accounts, it silently drops the message so it never shows to anyone but the sender. Why not ban? Because that would immediately draw RMT companies' attention, while silent filtering is far less noticeable, so they are not immediately changing their posting format.

To be honest, from my experience the problem is not the banning. After each and every one of the reports that I've done, I've been able to remove them from my blist just as soon as I've got the GM message thanking me for reporting them and telling me to remove them already. And only in one case I did get a new tell after doing so, but it was promply solved after replying the ticket (they're human, after all, and mistakes happen).

The only things that I would improve would be:

1) A right-click + report RMT feature to make it easier to report and blacklist them without having to stop playing. Even if it takes just a minute to copy&paste the message and send the ticket, it would make our lives waaaaay easier. This has been asked for months, and it will help with people that don't even report RMTs anymore. More people reporting equals more and faster bans, and less spam.

2) A way to auto-delete them from the blist after they're banned.

As preventing it is kinda hard because they'll keep finding ways to bypass the filters and there's still morons that buy gil from them, I think that those two things would improve it a lot.

Stop buying services from them. /done

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Originally Posted by Lufir

Stop buying services from them. /done

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Since there apparently is a part of the population that does, what do you propose until this new mindset kicks in where people stop doing so?

make it so you can't /shout, /yell, /tell until after you have completed the lvl 10 job/class quest.. could also make it so trial accounts can't do any of these options as well.... problem solved...

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Originally Posted by Lufir

Stop buying services from them. /done

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The vast majority of us done yet have put put up with the endless spam so your solution only works in a perfect land of butterlies and fairies.

In the real erozea of course there is some segment of the population that will always take this route if they perceive it as low riskand percieve I as giving some sort of advantage.

They could certainly help reduce it if they can convince buyers that this is a high risk activity likely to get you banned (I dont know the numbers but this does not seem to be the case currently).

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Originally Posted by samnas

The vast majority of us done yet have put put up with the endless spam so your solution only works in a perfect land of butterlies and fairies.

In the real erozea of course there is some segment of the population that will always take this route if they perceive it as low riskand percieve I as giving some sort of advantage.

They could certainly help reduce it if they can convince buyers that this is a high risk activity likely to get you banned (I dont know the numbers but this does not seem to be the case currently).

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And no MMO is a perfect land of butterflies and fairies. In other words, every successful MMO has RMT problems. There is no solution to it because RMT use legit means to advertise their product. Put a level requirement on shouting, telling, or yelling? Okay, that will become a minor annoyance for RMT, but they will suck it up and level to 10. (or whatever the level may be) That kind of solution would hurt only hurt new players.

I would at least like to have the (deleted) entries on the blist auto clear out. That is one small step to make the blist and rmt spam more manageable on the player end.

The easiest solution would be to allow us to filter /t messages. I know a lot of people think this is a bad idea, but frankly if you aren't in my FC/Friendlist/Party/LS I really don't need direct messages from you. There is still /shout and /say.

Letting me chose who I receive Tells from would solve the RMT issue 100%.

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Originally Posted by Errors

What's the likelihood that a single player will be blacklisted by lets say 30 people? 50 people? 100 people? Not very, unless they managed to piss off an entire zone.

What's the likelihood that a RMT will blacklisted by 30+ people? Probably quite likely. Since they tend spam /tell people over a period of time.

System should (and probably does) keep track of how many times a person has been blacklisted. However, also include the last X amount of /tells for review (for each time they get added to a blacklist). Once twice a day a GM, or STFU member should have a tool that shows the top X amount of people blacklisted.

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Great point, I agree

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Originally Posted by Lufir

Stop buying services from them. /done

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I don't think that's ever going to happen. Some people will always give in and pay. So both RMT's and the people who trade with them should be perma banned.

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Originally Posted by Lufir

And no MMO is a perfect land of butterflies and fairies. In other words, every successful MMO has RMT problems. There is no solution to it because RMT use legit means to advertise their product. Put a level requirement on shouting, telling, or yelling? Okay, that will become a minor annoyance for RMT, but they will suck it up and level to 10. (or whatever the level may be) That kind of solution would hurt only hurt new players.

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Perfect. The harder you make it on rmt then the less profitable it becomes. Less profit then the less people engage in it. Simple economics.

There are many ways to limit RMT that SE has not even tried. Nobody is claiming they can eliminate it all but sticking your head in sand like you propose does not make it better.

For the record RMT does NOT use legit means. Whether the criteria is the ToS or common social standards their actions are far from "legit".

Whew, this is turning out long, but for a TL;DR version, my first short paragraph below covers the most important point.

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Originally Posted by RyujinUzikin

Imagine if the Blist is updated to a scan system, that every time a player is blisted, the system scans the chat log and sees if they are offering gil for real money.

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Far too much effort to make the blacklist act as a reporting tool, when they should instead just give us the reporting tool. That would be simpler for developers, GMs, and players alike (as well as far more effective).

Give us a "Report RMT" item in the chat log's right-click menu that automatically generates a report including the chat text we clicked on as well as the sender's name, our name, and any other info they want, and send that to the GMs. It should be as easy to report these guys as it is to blacklist them. If we could do that and the GMs would suspend those reported accounts (provided they are in fact RMT spam, which a GM could tell as quickly as we can, since the system would already give them the chat text with the report itself), we wouldn't have any of these spam issues. A spam bot wouldn't last long enough to justify the cost of the account.

The lack of such a reporting tool currently means most spam bots don't get reported at all until after they've already sent out thousands of spam messages, and they still have time to send out thousands more before a GM can investigate. That need to investigate the reports would go away if the reporting tool drew directly from the chat itself. The clunky reporting tool we have now only gives the GM what somebody claims was sent to them, leaving it up to the GM to search through their logs to verify what was actually sent. Even though this would mean a far greater number of reports for GMs to deal with, the fact that they could deal with them in seconds (or less than a second if it's set up efficiently enough) rather than minutes should more than make up for that in terms of how much GM effort this involves.

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Originally Posted by RyujinUzikin

Once this is detected the character is not just deleted, but the account is banned and the IP is banned.

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And if the next day, your computer gets the same IP address that the spammer was using, would you be satisfied with being banned just because you use the same Internet Service Provider as someone else who had been sending RMT spam? IP addresses don't belong to a particular machine unless that machine was set up for a static address (generally only done if it's being used to host a website, since you have to pay extra for a static address). Otherwise, you're sharing the same pool of addresses as everyone else who gets their internet service through the same ISP.

So no, they can't ban IPs. Just suspending the accounts themselves would work if they would get reports on all the accounts as soon as they start sending spam.

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Originally Posted by Lufir

Stop buying services from them. /done

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Only if you can somehow convince them to only spam the players who do buy from them and leave the rest of us alone. But since that's not likely to happen ...

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Originally Posted by dcdistro

make it so you can't /shout, /yell, /tell until after you have completed the lvl 10 job/class quest.. could also make it so trial accounts can't do any of these options as well.... problem solved...

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The level/quest requirement would be totally irrelevant to RMT spammers and do nothing but annoy new players who want to meet up with their friends. RMT spammers can be any level they like.

The restriction on trial accounts, however, could help if it's not in place already.

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Originally Posted by Lufir

every successful MMO has RMT problems. There is no solution to it because RMT use legit means to advertise their product.

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All successful MMOs have RMT, but they don't all have RMT spam. Many games eliminate this by immediately banning or suspending any account that's used for spam. FFXIV does not. SE has chosen instead to only suspend accounts that have been reported and to take a ridiculously long time in doing so, long enough for the spammers to get their money's worth.

1st think about this: is it a benifit $ wise to ban these people? No.

Have you ever heard of a gil buyer being banned? No.

There are numerous ways to fight RMT. Unfortunately it's about the $$$.

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Originally Posted by Xystic

We need to get rid of the buyers. They fund the RMTs. You can ban all the RMT's you want but unless you knock out the buyers it doesn't make a difference. Even if they don't spam in world, people will search for them on the interweb. They aren't too hard to find at all.

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I agree, we need to get to the root of the problem to actually stop the problem, and that is the buyer. Why? If no one buy, then there is no demand and no market place and they move on to another game.

Often times, I always see Banned the RMT, suggestion to stop the RMT. No matters what you do, RMT will not completely stop. Just take a look at all other MMORPG out there, they been battling for 10 years and not a single MMORPG have manage to stop them for good. Buyer think they won't be banned and get away with it by buying gils. Start Banning the Buyer, put up system warning you will be banned if you buy gil. They will think twice when they want to buy gil again.

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Originally Posted by abzoluut

1st think about this: is it a benifit $ wise to ban these people? No.

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That depends on whether it gets annoying enough that players prefer other games that don't have these issues. RMT messes up the economy, which annoys a lot of players who rely on the Market Boards, and RMT spam annoys pretty much everyone. While not many will consciously decide that the RMT is bad enough they should leave the game specifically because of it, any such continuous annoyances impact how you feel about playing. All it takes for SE to lose customers is for people to be happier while playing other games than they are while playing FF.

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Originally Posted by abzoluut

Have you ever heard of a gil buyer being banned? No.

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We certainly heard plenty about it when they suspended a bunch of suspected RMT buyers, though that was largely about the fact that their basis for suspecting them amounted to nothing more than saying everyone with more than a certain amount of gil is probably buying it. (On actual investigation, it turned out most of those players were legitimate and had earned their gil through normal in-game activities, they simply played a lot and had accumulated a lot.) Those suspensions were temporary, but it still upset a lot of people to be locked out of the game while their accounts were being investigated.

Since that issue, SE decided to do the investigation step first and only suspend/ban those accounts they can more clearly identify as being involved in gil buying/selling. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be particularly good at keeping up with such investigations, so most RMT just keeps going on without any hindrance from SE.

Wouldn't work due to VPN impossible to ban the right IP.

The best way to kill off RMT is basically kill off their communication with players.

1. Remove the friends list invite system and make a new one that involves putting a hub in each town, if you and the person click the hub your names pop up into a list and you can invite to be a friend you cannot invite unless you both click that hub and it can be in any town as long as you both click a hub.

2. Remove the ability /tell unless you hit level 30 make it a quest reward which will cause them a great deal of hassle.

3. If they begin shouting, do what you did on forums, 1-2 shout limit unless you level up on character higher meaning they cant shout until next day.

These 3 things will stop them from sending friends invites and stop them from spamming.

Having played many MMO's, major or otherwise, over the better part of the past two decades, I've seen quite a few RMT fighting systems come and go. Frankly, one of the best ones I've come across has to be from "The Major MMO" which I won't name because I'm pretty certain I'm not actually permitted to do so on the forums. Simply copying that system would probably stave off a great deal of grief that we suffer from RMT spammers here:

1: Add a "Report Spam" button to the right click menu. This will allow us to generate a spam report without actually doing anything outside of what we normally do with the spammers now. After -x- amount of people report spam a character/account, simply have it auto-flag and sent up the flagpole to the working GM at the time. Since we all know that RMT spammers hit character after character with their messages (I usually see my wife get them 30 seconds before or after I get them), we know that at least 10 or so players would hit that button in a short time frame.

2: Every time we hit the Report Spam button, add that character/account to a temporary blacklist that will last for the duration we are logged on. This will prevent us from filling our actual blacklist up with spambots, but still prevent us from getting more messages before the bot is dealt with. It worked wonders in "That other game".

3: Make it so we can Blacklist/Report Spam while we currently have a pending friend request from the spambot in question, and have it auto-cancel the request when one of those two buttons is flagged.

4: Allow players to flag certain phrases or words that will get caught in their personal spam filter and block out the message altogether. I know that if I could add four Stars to a filter, I would block out nearly every tell I get these days.

As many have stated, there is no real cure for RMT spammers. They have existed since the early age of MMO's and will only get stronger as the years go on. But the system that they have in place here is utter bunk and does little to actually ease our experience dealing with these bots.

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Originally Posted by Errors

What's the likelihood that a single player will be blacklisted by lets say 30 people? 50 people? 100 people? Not very, unless they managed to piss off an entire zone.

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In a pre-Hunt world, probability is almost 0. Hunt groups go into full-on witch hunt mode when they identify an "early puller" and someone can get 100+ blacklists in a matter of minutes that way. It does happen.

This is why we need a separate function to report RMT easily, rather than tying to the blacklist system.

Then Square just needs to implement an automated process to either freeze accounts once a certain threshold of reports is reached, or to restrict sending tells, shouts, yells, and friend requests temporarily until a GM can review.

1. A report spam button and adding them to a temporary mute would be abused just as much as the vote kick system. Be realistic.
2. Cutting off communication means that it will effect all other players as well. Just because you don't use /tell doesn't mean others don't. SE has to consider the player base as a whole. This includes new players. Not just level 50s who sit in Mor Dhona/North Shroud all day.

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Originally Posted by Lufir

1. A report spam button and adding them to a temporary mute would be abused just as much as the vote kick system. Be realistic.
2. Cutting off communication means that it will effect all other players as well. Just because you don't use /tell doesn't mean others don't. SE has to consider the player base as a whole. This includes new players. Not just level 50s who sit in Mor Dhona/North Shroud all day.

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How exactly will a report spam button be abused? I'm really curious on your viewpoint here. Do you just expect 10-20 people or whatever they set the required number of spam reports before it's kicked up to a GM to just run around a city and chain report spam everyone they see? And I fail to see it equating to the vote kick system, since chances are the system would require more people to send spam reports for it to kick in than those that are actually with them in a party.

Spam report buttons have proven effective in other MMO's. Even if 1 in 10 players uses report spam on someone for a temporary mute outside of an actual spam report, it would still require all those other people to spam report them as well, so the chance for abuse is slim. "Be realistic" yourself.

I do however agree that shuttering tells for lower level players is a terrible idea, especially since "true" new players are often more comfortable asking a question in a tell than in shout/say/party/whatever.

implement player killing, we'll go and take care of their bots ourselves >:|

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

I would at least like to have the (deleted) entries on the blist auto clear out. That is one small step to make the blist and rmt spam more manageable on the player end.

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I'm gonna share a recent finding about the (Deleted) reference. It's a placeholder that still points to a specific character that still exists somewhere in the database. It can either mean that the person actually deleted their character or, jumped servers.

I had an issue with someone who I ended up adding to my blacklist and they changed servers within the next week. I maintain my /blist often. That person's character changed to (Deleted), and had a (Deleted) entry before his. A few days later, he came back with a different name. Appearantly the issues he was having warranted him to change his identity for a character he didn't want to lose. I'm gonna respect his clean slate maneuver without explaining details but I will explain the point.

The (Deleted) name still references a character ID, which will survive a server transfer away and back. Do consider if the person was a legit player harasing you or if it was an RMT entry before removing. If it's someone that bothered you before that came back, removing their name will allow them to harass you again. And the new identity that person took? It fell right into that (Deleted) reference, revealing to me his new 'identity'.

Again.... customizable /t filter, all problems solved.

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Originally Posted by RyujinUzikin

RMT's are getting worst and this could work (If possible)

Imagine if the Blist is updated to a scan system, that every time a player is blisted, the system scans the chat log and sees if they are offering gil for real money. Once this is detected the character is not just deleted, but the account is banned and the IP is banned.

Once we see the character deleted on the blist we'd know he's been permanently taken care of and we can just delete it from the list, now and then I find a "deleted" icon on my blist, but out of 200, 160 are still there, so I'm unable to delete them.

This would make it unnecessary to make the blist larger or infinite, as long as this system is implemented.

Is this impossible?

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Probably said before, but every time they got banned and IP banned RMT would just change their IP and make a new account. MAC bans they would just spoof their MAC. Also if they used a hacked account you aren't banning an RMT account you are banning and deleting the character of a player who could have just visited a hacked fansite.

I also thought it was common knowledge that the (deleted) players on the blist are only the ones the account holder has deleted, when SE bans accounts they don't delete the character, therefore you can probably remove every one of those accounts from your blist now, then you get a tell, blist wait one day and remove them, doing this I have never received a tell from the same RMT character.