Gold spammers - IT'S TIME TO FIX THEM

I need an actual solution. I'm tried of giving up my ability to be messaged with /busy, I'm tired of people I don't know and have never encountered, messaging me about gold. The fact that all facets of the game have been improved upon (pvp,pve,teleporting menus,ect.), OTHER THAN GOLD SPAMMERS, I believe it could be time to FINALLY address this.

I'm not going to spend additional MONTHS discussing solutions in game with other players. I've already been speaking with players about the legitimacy of efforts by anyone on the game staff to rid us of a CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT of messages, we all agree that LITTLE OR NOTHING has been done to fix this issue. More than anything that infuriates me about this situation, is the extra Spam messages I receive after communicating my issues with your team(GM) in game. It's almost as if these gold spammers are being allowed to effect my game-play, and are monitoring it enough to know if I have been in contact with GM's. I BELIEVE NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE TO REMOVE GOLD SPAMMERS FROM OUR GAMING EXPERIENCE.

If I continue to see no signs of effort by GM's, (or any game staff) or any reduction in the amount of messages i receive, I can ONLY assume that the game staff is knowingly allowing this abuse. (As I have said many things have been improved in this game, but gold spammers have remained a daily issue) Providing a platform for abuse with no way to remove yourself from said abuse is the POOREST of customer service, I'd even say you are paying the customer a large DISSERVICE by only providing hallow cookie cutter responses ie: the ridiculously long message you send in response to gold spamming issues. Ya know, the one where it goes on to say "just deal with it, we are working on it". Players are even suggesting that SE is gaining a percentage of profits from the gold spammers. So YEAAAAAAAAH, it's time to address this.

Here are VERY SIMPLE solutions!


1. Make a /friends option so we can at LEAST still communicate easily with friends and party with them without having to go through the "Are you busy? or am I? no it was you? let me try? no? try now!" that we go through now.

2. Make the first time someone messages you a "yes or no" choice to receive messages from that person from here on: Since gold spammers are removed so slowly and if at all, this would help us with the constant repeat spammers like: Ghfgh Ghfyrt, Ehgh Hreshss, Powleolo Fisher, Safdsf Dsfdsf, Deitrich Brlley, Gustonxa Weild, Erahha Hresh, Jhfgjhg Jhghh, Gfdsrew Gdddd, Dfsag Htrhss ect. BTW, can you do anything about those names? Ive been dealing some of those names for nearly 6 months.

3. Make messaging someone for the first time a face to face experience: If they cant click you, they cant message you, at least that way the lvl50 BLM's that sit in Uldah on Zalera aren't just spamming down the list of local people.

4. level 10 /tell requirement: Most of the offenders are not lvl 50 BLM they are lvl 1 newly created characters. We cant even help each other in the game really until after that point anyways, so this would at least make the goldspammer play the game and work for it each time they make a character, building a slow-building frustration for them, INSTEAD OF US!

Want more options? This isn't difficult to deal with AT ALL, it's just NOT being dealt with.

I'm very sorry for the tone of this post, but I'm sick of the constant harassment, and I know everyone else is too. Your team is letting the creation of a wonderfully immersive game be dismantled and distorted by !!!!BLING!!! WANNA BUY GOLD?!?!?!?! SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.....

::Passes the ball::

THE BALL IS IN YOUR COURT!

I'm not sure #3 is quite right---take for example the case of someone shouting out for a crafter. That message goes out over the whole zone, but there would be no way for anyone to respond (except for cluttering up the shout channel). I think perhaps that instead, you must be either on someone's friends list or be in the same zone in order to send them a /tell

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Originally Posted by Brazdon

Here are VERY SIMPLE solutions!

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No solution is simple in RMT. I will reply to your ideas explaining why it is not valid.

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Originally Posted by Brazdon

1. Make a /friends option so we can at LEAST still communicate easily with friends.

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You can already do this. It is called a Linkshell. Inivte your friends to a linkshell and you have your own private chatroom where you can be /busy and still talk to each other.

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Originally Posted by Brazdon

2. Make the first time someone messages you a "yes or no" choice to receive messages from that person

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This would discourage communication from legitimate players. Sure, you could filter out Adssg Dfffe, but it would be so easy to also decline messages from other actual players, damaging the community of the game and pushing it even more towards a Single Player game.

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Originally Posted by Brazdon

3. Make messaging someone for the first time a face to face experience: If they cant click you, they cant message you.

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This is the best suggestion so far, but still missing the mark. How easy would it be for the spammers to just place their bots at high population areas like Mor Dhona, or around the GC NPCs and spam who ever came near. And yes, a level 1 can run to Mor Dhona, my compay created a bunch of alts and ran the gauntlet from Ul'dah to Rev Toll.

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Originally Posted by Brazdon

4. level 10 /tell requirement: Most of the offenders are not lvl 50 BLM they are lvl 1 newly created characters.

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True, but that would not stop them, just slow them down a little. You can easily make it to lvl 10 without purchasing anything, just using the starter gear, by running low level fates. All you would see is a hoard of identical THM leveling up to 10 (just like they do to farm WP) and then they would start spamming.

What SE is doing may not be in your face, like the spammers are, but they are doing the best thing they can to deter RMT. They track the farming bots, they track the gil flow and then they ban the characters holding the millions and millions of gil. This destroys the product they are trying to sell, driving the cost of the product up. A higher cost per mill means fewer customers willing to pay, which means less profit for the RMT. If people stopped buying gill, there would be no spam in the first place.

If every player stopped buying gil today. I guarentee you that within two weeks, RMT would leave FFXIV.

Think of it like drugs. When the police find someone with a gram of weed, they offer a deal to let them go if they rat out their dealer. Then they find the dealer, and give them a deal to get off the hook by ratting out their supplier. It goes up the chain till they have the info for a big enough bust. Take 1 dealer of the street, another will take his place tomorrow, but if you seize a few tons of narcotics, that actually hurts the cartells distributing the drugs. Sure, you still see the dealers in your neighborhood, that doesn't mean the cops don't care.

You can already do this. It is called a Linkshell. Inivte your friends to a linkshell and you have your own private chatroom where you can be /busy and still talk to each other.

- most people have their allotted amount of linkshells already and shouldn't be forced to choose between LS's just to avoid goldspammers.

This would discourage communication from legitimate players. Sure, you could filter out Adssg Dfffe, but it would be so easy to also decline messages from other actual players, damaging the community of the game and pushing it even more towards a Single Player game.

- I don't know what server you play on, but you cant play this game alone. I don't agree that the community would suffer at all, and goldspammers would be detoured

This is the best suggestion so far, but still missing the mark. How easy would it be for the spammers to just place their bots at high population areas like Mor Dhona, or around the GC NPCs and spam who ever came near. And yes, a level 1 can run to Mor Dhona, my compay created a bunch of alts and ran the gauntlet from Ul'dah to Rev Toll.

- Sure they can run around, but then we see them, we can call GM's point them out, and have them banned more easily. Plus it takes time to do that, which time is untaxed, untraceable some poor person's money, in these people's eyes.

True, but that would not stop them, just slow them down a little. You can easily make it to lvl 10 without purchasing anything, just using the starter gear, by running low level fates. All you would see is a hoard of identical THM leveling up to 10 (just like they do to farm WP) and then they would start spamming.

- That sounds like a pretty easy ban to me.


I believe that if you don't enforce the small rules, the large rules aren't taken very seriously either. It doesn't matter if you agree with me, people are being mislead and taken advantage of. You do know goldselling is generally a scam with no gil involved right? A paypal account is where the money goes, they don't have to do anything for you. In most cases it ends there. I don't think any of your counterpoints rung truer than general harassment on a daily basis, so I'm gonna keep fighting the good fight. Thanks for the input though.

#4 is the only thing that can effectively work. I've seen something like this in Aion, where we can block whispers from people under Lvl 10. I never get PMs from spambots that way and the only place where they can annoy us is in one of the two major cities (Or sometimes in a global chat channel). Restricting shout won't do much, since most of them are not using that (At least not in Malboro). But this should still be implemented and forbid ppl from using Yell/Shout if they don't have anything Lvl 10, in case the bots are going to resort to that next time.

But I came up with something that can slow them down even further. Most spambot likely use the Player Search to find and spam ppl to death. Let's make Player Search something you need to unlock before you can start using it. When do we unlock it? I guess the best option would be at the Main Story part where you use the Airship for the first time or when you unlock the first dungeon, Sastasha.

Now I know this is not going to completely stop the spambots, but it will severely slow them down and we won't be annoyed by spambots every few damn minutes. Heck, some of the bots won't even bother with that. This might not be that much of an improvement, but any improvement at this points will be a good one. Right now, I can get 5-7 spambots within 1 minute (!!!) bugging the living moogle out of me. With something like this implemented, that case will be more rarely to occur.

There's no way to actually get rid of rmt. Nothing truly slows it down either. And if you go by name, my alt would be banned already. I made dgdggdg hghghghg as a joke, she's a lv 25ish arcanist, fc (not sure why soneine let me in) and all. they do give options around blocking tells, linkshell/fc being the best options. While not optimal, it is completely your choice to not accept/form an ls for friends, and should not have other things, such as restrictions for low-leveled players just because you refuse to give one of your ls spots up. Nobody needs 6 hunt ls's anyways(considering that's the majority of players main ls concerns). I have helped many legit players through tells, and forcing us to be next to each other is stupid, as I would not willing waste 3 hours walking someone through the beginning of the game, even just pre-15. At least with the current set-up, I can be grinding fates in cch to level while responding to tells from that lv 7 person who wants to know where to get items and the best ways to level are.

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Originally Posted by Brazdon

Here are VERY SIMPLE solutions!

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*deepbreath* IF IT WAS SO SIMPLE, THERE WOULD BE NO RMT IN ANY MMORPG, EVERY MMORPG HAS THIS PROBLEM, EVERYONE THINKS IT'S SO SIMPLE BY THROWING MORE STAFF AT IT, YOU CAN ONLY FIGHT BOTS WITH MORE BOTS *exhale*

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Originally Posted by Brazdon

1. Make a /friends option so we can at LEAST still communicate easily with friends and party with them without having to go through the "Are you busy? or am I? no it was you? let me try? no? try now!" that we go through now.

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That's called a linkshell. Defect: Being busy screws up readycheck.

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Originally Posted by Brazdon

2. Make the first time someone messages you a "yes or no" choice to receive messages from that person from here on: Since gold spammers are removed so slowly and if at all, this would help us with the constant repeat spammers like: Ghfgh Ghfyrt, Ehgh Hreshss, Powleolo Fisher, Safdsf Dsfdsf, Deitrich Brlley, Gustonxa Weild, Erahha Hresh, Jhfgjhg Jhghh, Gfdsrew Gdddd, Dfsag Htrhss ect. BTW, can you do anything about those names? Ive been dealing some of those names for nearly 6 months.

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Would not work. There's a lot of Roegadyn names that look like keyboard facemashes. SE could apply the simplest of logic at name creation, that if a custom name is picked that it contain monophthongs and diphthongs. That would remove a lot of names that have more than two consecutive consonants and make it harder to "buttonmash" a name. In particular, had the game started with a bit more "enforced" name roleplaying, no bot would ever be able to roll anything and be stuck with defaults, thus making it slightly harder to identify.

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Originally Posted by Brazdon

3. Make messaging someone for the first time a face to face experience: If they cant click you, they cant message you, at least that way the lvl50 BLM's that sit in Uldah on Zalera aren't just spamming down the list of local people.

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That would make more sense, but bots are generally using memory or packet hacking to bypass client-side enforcement. So they would just send a packet that says they are telling you from right beside you or something like that. A slight improvement on this would be "client rejection" where a tell would be rejected in the same distance as a "say" unless also on the friendlist. This would also apply to Guild Invites (as one guild incessantly spams invites every day)

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Originally Posted by Brazdon

4. level 10 /tell requirement: Most of the offenders are not lvl 50 BLM they are lvl 1 newly created characters. We cant even help each other in the game really until after that point anyways, so this would at least make the goldspammer play the game and work for it each time they make a character, building a slow-building frustration for them, INSTEAD OF US!

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So you're gonna make it so no player can ever ask for help? Nope. TERA did that with free trial accounts before they went premium and it was infuriating to say the least. This would also just make the bots clutter up the newbie zones, preventing new players from ever getting out.

SE might have all of 4 people monitoring reports, and reporting RMT spam is probably the most irritating thing to do manually. There really needs to be a "right-click" report that sends a screenshot for a GM or some mentor system to validate and take action on. That would get rid of the RMT spam faster, but it would do nothing to prevent them from continuing.

The cowardice of failing is all I hear in your voices! What if it doesn't work? AT LEAST WE DID SOMETHING. Stand up, take action, and TRY! If you don't like the solution, FINE! Make a better suggestion. I don't care about being the person to get his idea involved. I just want this addressed properly, and it hasn't been. If your comments have anything to do with "Just deal with it" attitudes, you are in the wrong thread. This thread is intended to promote ideas for removing goldspammers from our daily experiences in game. Things can be better, and the people slowing down that process obviously aren't just goldspammers. Just post some usable solutions PLEASE!

*deepbreath* IF IT WAS SO SIMPLE, THERE WOULD BE NO RMT IN ANY MMORPG, EVERY MMORPG HAS THIS PROBLEM, EVERYONE THINKS IT'S SO SIMPLE BY THROWING MORE STAFF AT IT, YOU CAN ONLY FIGHT BOTS WITH MORE BOTS *exhale*

Sorry everyone, but I'm gonna keep calling this wrong. I've played many games without this issue. Runes of Magic for example is a free to play, money involved, and farming very valuable. NEVER.ONCE.GOT.GOLD.SPAMMED. Farming bots were quickly and effectively removed. Never worried about it in Ultima Online, just played a wonderfully immersive game.

Again this thread is for ideas, not a pissing contest about who's idea is the best.

That's called a linkshell. Defect: Being busy screws up readycheck.

- Many of my friends have 3 hunt LS's because we play at different times, and meet different people. What if you could only be communicated with by friends. that would effectively avoid an issue and provide a solution. That's the whole point. To not have to be busy as a solution, cause it's not. You could be in /friend mode and party up, no issue.


Would not work. There's a lot of Roegadyn names that look like keyboard facemashes. SE could apply the simplest of logic at name creation, that if a custom name is picked that it contain monophthongs and diphthongs. That would remove a lot of names that have more than two consecutive consonants and make it harder to "buttonmash" a name. In particular, had the game started with a bit more "enforced" name roleplaying, no bot would ever be able to roll anything and be stuck with defaults, thus making it slightly harder to identify.

- No... it would totally work in combination with the level 10 tell requirement.

That would make more sense, but bots are generally using memory or packet hacking to bypass client-side enforcement. So they would just send a packet that says they are telling you from right beside you or something like that. A slight improvement on this would be "client rejection" where a tell would be rejected in the same distance as a "say" unless also on the friendlist. This would also apply to Guild Invites (as one guild incessantly spams invites every day)

- check it out an idea, cool. You also ALMOST agreed with me. You guys are funny lol. "It was a good idea once I fixed it." lol!!

So you're gonna make it so no player can ever ask for help? Nope. TERA did that with free trial accounts before they went premium and it was infuriating to say the least. This would also just make the bots clutter up the newbie zones, preventing new players from ever getting out.

- the help blasts in your face when you start playing, and then beyond that, there is a site called the Lodestone to further help, and beyond THAT, there are forums, and guides, and videos online. I don't think that argument is valid :/

Actualiy, there is a simple solution to the RMT spamvertising, and it would be pretty trivial to implement:

Add an option for user-configurable regexp filtering to incoming chat text.

Leave it blank for no filtering, or add a few lines of regular expressions to screen out anything you'd prefer to not see. Anything that matches never shows on your end. Have all incoming chat text to the client go through the filter unless the person speaking is already on your friends list - friend chat would be unchecked. Assuming FFXIV is coded in C++ or C#, it'd take more code to provide an interface for the user than it would to add a regexp-based chat filter. (The filter itself wouldn't take but a handful of lines of code.)

It would be trivial to implement since regexp handling is standard to practically every programming language in use on the planet, and since it's entirely client-side it would require zero horsepower on SE's end. Players could also easily share their favorite regexp strings and could even selectively screen out other chat traffic they don't find interesting or useful (example: people advertising primal or coil clear carries in Mor Dhona).

This would allow almost instant removal of RMT spam with very little (read: practically zero) cost to SE, and could be slipstreamed into Heavensward.

only the players care about gil sellers and the harassment they bring. there has been spam all day in /shout and nobody cares except the players. if it really bothers you, unsub. that's what i did and when i told them why i got the exact same form letter i have always received. they really don't care.

but in the spirit of this thread, my suggestion for a solution is to ban anyone advertising rmt or rmt websites. start with a 1 week ban, then a month, then buy the game again because your account is done. even if they don't have logs it isn't hard to collect the info and they really should have logs. even though it should be doable, i wouldn't automate the process because banning is serious and it should always have live eyes on the individual situation. basically it would be something like a handful of people and a supervisor. after the first couple of months the wages should be cost neutral or even generate a little revenue in the form of new account sales.

doing this would stop what is happening at the present. the sellers will then change tactics and then the whole change/adapt cycle will begin. employ more people, make a little more revenue, keep the playerbase happy, and make the sellers actually work for their money. it's a good thing.

if they cared, they would do something. but they don't, so they won't.

another thing that bugs me. gil sellers aren't stupid. they are in business and make pretty serious money and have real expenses. when i am averaging a tell every 2-3 minutes they must know how annoying that is. so annoying that even if i was a buyer, i wouldn't use any of the annoying guys just out of spite. so they have buyers who will buy even if there wasn't spam and they have the rest of the playerbase that are getting annoyed, some to the point of unsubbing. i think the sellers are doing it in the most intrusive, harassing, and annoying way on purpose and it has nothing to do with sales. which should concern se but for some reason they just don't care.

oh, and don't get me wrong here. i'm not talking about the devs not giving a hoot. i love the devs. they do a great job. they've put out a world class mmo worthy of the ff name. aar anyways, the first one was... lets not talk about the first iteration.

Question about coding, since I'm not a programmer--I have seen on other threads a demand that the blacklist be a one-click report that would also 'ban' the spammers entire account as far as the player is concerned, making it impossible for that account to ever spam that player again no matter how many 'new' character are made on it.

Is this possible? If so, is it difficult? Because it seems like that would go a long way towards solving the issue, as whole accounts--not just characters--would be rendered useless by a single click.

I believe that its easier to be a RMT seller these days, because the RMT report system is broken, becasue the Support icon keep flashing, its so annoying that I feel tempted not to report any RMT..

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Originally Posted by Dyandi

Question about coding, since I'm not a programmer--I have seen on other threads a demand that the blacklist be a one-click report that would also 'ban' the spammers entire account as far as the player is concerned, making it impossible for that account to ever spam that player again no matter how many 'new' character are made on it.

Is this possible? If so, is it difficult? Because it seems like that would go a long way towards solving the issue, as whole accounts--not just characters--would be rendered useless by a single click.

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There's no technical reason for it to not be possible. Other games have the mechanic.

There are resource requirements that might make it impractical. Remember that any weapon can be used on good guys and bad guys. If players start reporting everyone that they disagree with, or if there are rewards for reporting, people start intentionally making abusive accounts. Look no further than Twitter to see how effective reporting is when you can make hundreds of new accounts per day.

However even in those other games, when GM's are able to get on top of spam, the problem still goes back to security. Those characters you see spamming? Those are almost always stolen accounts. So they can't just delete every account that sends spam.

I cant tell you how p**sed and frustrated i am because of the damn RMT's... On Goblin they spam extremely aggressive. I block 20-50 RMT's a day... I have to unblock them after a few days have passed just to make room for the next names.

I played through a lot of MMO's and i never had this experience before. Almost all MMO's give permission to send /tell's at lvl 10. Or the MMO's allows addons that simply let you check every incoming chat and let you set filter words. Hell even in FFXI we got rid of the tells at one point... Why not here in FFXIV?

For the past week i have been /busy all day long and i wasnt able to talk to my friends... You say i should make LS's? I already did that but do i want everyone on my friendlist to read what i have to say to a special person? No i dont. I want privacy and i wanna be able to talk to my friends. And i wanna be able to see the ready check and get invited to a party without having to change my status to online.

You say new players wouldnt get any help if SE would set the /tell function to lvl 10? Do you think they will get help if we are all on /busy?

Going the wrong way. Remember, there's only spambots because there's demand for buying gil.
Start banning buyers, let the word spread, and people should think twice before attempting it. Who would want to lose their characters (along with their money) ?
That, and also dealing with sellers. I too have the impression that nothing is being done at all. I posted some more ideas in another thread, you might want to have a look:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...RMT-Some-Ideas

Right-click 'Block and Report' option on the name. These reports are tallied on the servers over all characters on the account. Once an account 50 (or whatever) reports, the account is muted - unable to shout, yell, say, tell or send friend requests. A muted player can raise a ticket to a GM who can then refer the character for investigation to the STFU. It doesn't prevent them from playing.

Requires very little infrastructure and most if not all RMT wouldn't bother raising a ticket. Can also be used to penalise abusive players.

The warning must exist that any players found abusing the system would face penalty, so if players unjustly reported other players, after the investigation they would face suspension.

Right now there are ~34 lvl1 RMT online on Goblin and i just catched 14 tells in less than 20 minutes, forcing me to go /busy again... Being /busy makes this game a single player game cause i cant stay in contact with my friends and i cant stay in contact with ppl i could make money with for offering my crafts...

Yes i preordered Heavensward but i gotta say that i already thought of quitting the game cause i wanna communicate with ppl in an MMO. I have payed SE for 11 years and 2 accounts and it looks like they dont really care about their costumers.

Regex chat filtering, period.

How about players report those they may know or know of buying gil? If no one bought gil then there wouldn't be a reason for RMT to be here. While we are at it report players that are supposedly selling gil or accounts. Don't pay for carries or ponies. Don't support FC's that prey upon other players. We all are frustrated and can get mad at SE for it, but in the end it is the players buying or selling gil that are the root of it all.

Wulfyn, my thoughts exactly, and I have written a long post about it. The buyers, IMO, are worse than the spammers. Spammers only exist because there are buyers.
Unfortunately, reporting never got me anything done. I have reported people who obviously bought gil (single lv.50 class, not cleared T5, no crafters/gatherers leveled, with a 100M house + 150M of furniture), and even one who admitted having done it, "because he started playing late and needed to catch up". Nothing ever happened, and I have no reason to believe nothing ever will. It's been about a year and a half on this game, and SE has always looked the other way when it comes to RMT. I'm even starting to think SE in fact owns or is somehow affiliated some of the gil selling websites, to display such a lack of interest in dealing seriously with the problem.
Check my other post if you like: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...RMT-Some-Ideas

Well if I was SE, I would just start auditing gil transactions on accounts making looking for common connections ie: x # of players all got x amount gil from x player and go from there. Keep digging making a list of names. As for spammers, if they are using free trial to advertise, I would adjust free trials. Make it so that free trials can't send /tells or use zone chats. Free trials have less "privledges" and are lvl capped. That would be a sneaky thing if they owned some of the gil sites lol. Hmm extra income conspiracy. Sadly it seems more and more that a portion of the NA gaming community is willing to cheat. There are more things that are wrong with these players than that, but doesn't belong in this thread. I can only guess that they currently do not have the #'s GM wise to deal with the load of reports etc that they get from the NA servers. Time will tell and it is only a matter of time when someone does get banned. We just have to be more patient I suppose.

If you check the information/general on the forum you may be able to see that they actually are taking actions against it.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-%28Mar.-26%29

It has been doing for months, one year to be exact. But there is no solution and yet no changing for the actions taken against it.

So we conclude that ban or blocking bots won't stop the source to keep creating more bots.

But if the source wouldn't be able to create more bots or if the source didn't even exist in the first place. We wouldn't talk about this today...

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Originally Posted by Felghanna

If you check the information/general on the forum you may be able to see that they actually are taking actions against it.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-%28Mar.-26%29

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Yeah... I see this every now and then. I'm not saying that they don't do anything at all. I'm saying that they don't do anything effective.
Facts:
- I get spammed via /tell every couple minutes (sometimes more);
- Blacklist goes from empty to full in about 2 days (that because I only play a few hours every night);
- People continue buying gil, nothing happens;
- Blacklist gets about 1-2% deleted after a few weeks.

So, what are my conclusions?
- SE is not treating the spam situation seriously;
- SE is not punishing gil buyers;
- SE is not being the least considerate to the overwhelming number of player complaints by at least giving some reason as to why they are not acting on it.

It's very weird... if someone gets reported for using a parser, they get temp banned most of the time. Report a spambot, or a gil buyer.. nothing ever happens. I don't know about the rest of you, but I couldn't care less if people are parsing or not, as long as they aren't being a**holes to others, but I do care about people buying gil nonstop, and being spammed to much to the point of making me having to turn an MMO into a single player game.
There are so many ways to either solve the problem or at least make it so inefficient to spammers that it wouldn't be feasible to maintain, that I really can't understand SE's lack of interest.

In my vision bots shouldn't exist in a MMORPG in the first place, it changes the way that new players see the game.
I'm saying this because I didn't expect bots when I first log in the game, because bots show how failed is the game system.

In another post I saw that Square-Enix didn't react different in Final Fantasy XI, and posts like this seems to not having any attention from the staff.

Then I hope more action from the players than from the developers.

Given the amount of obvious bots hanging around the Ul'dah aetheryte, I've taken to jotting their names down and send a report from Report Offending Players option on the Lodestone. I usually send a report with around twenty offenders on the list. Within about 10 minutes I can get around twenty bot names. Sometimes they hang around, others quickly vanish the moment they jump in. Not sure if it does anything reporting them but it at least makes me feel like I've attempted to staunch the problem.

reporting bots seems to be a good work through the lodestone, I've just made it, thanks for the advice.

But still...

We could do more than that.

Lol this post is a joke. Rmt and bots exist in every mmo so stop putting the blame on SE. How would they fix it when all it takes is a whisper? Stop complaining and just ignore them in game I mean really it only takes 2 clicks of your mouse to ignore them. Please don't tell me you have no time for it becuz if you're playing this game you obviously have the time. Also why can't you treat their whispers like a random dumb msg on /shout

@Boi it's not the fact that they exist that's the problem, it's the sheer volume and the length of time they spend active per account before they disappear.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by elisis

Yeah... I see this every now and then. I'm not saying that they don't do anything at all. I'm saying that they don't do anything effective.
Facts:
- I get spammed via /tell every couple minutes (sometimes more);

- Blacklist goes from empty to full in about 2 days (that because I only play a few hours every night);
- People continue buying gil, nothing happens;
- Blacklist gets about 1-2% deleted after a few weeks.

So, what are my conclusions?
- SE is not treating the spam situation seriously;
- SE is not punishing gil buyers;
- SE is not being the least considerate to the overwhelming number of player complaints by at least giving some reason as to why they are not acting on it.

It's very weird... if someone gets reported for using a parser, they get temp banned most of the time. Report a spambot, or a gil buyer.. nothing ever happens. I don't know about the rest of you, but I couldn't care less if people are parsing or not, as long as they aren't being a**holes to others, but I do care about people buying gil nonstop, and being spammed to much to the point of making me having to turn an MMO into a single player game.
There are so many ways to either solve the problem or at least make it so inefficient to spammers that it wouldn't be feasible to maintain, that I really can't understand SE's lack of interest.

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Please do tell us how to solve this haha? Stop new characters creation? Or like op said face to face tell ? Haha

@Boi how about you be a man instead of a boi (actually try spelling it correctly) and stop trolling. Your replies are negative to finding any solutions. With your attitude I would say you are part of the problem in this game. Maybe you bot yourself or buy gil? Feeling guilty?

There a few examples of games which doesn't have bots in it, and like I've said, bots it's clearly a fail of the system.

It may take seconds to block them, but you realize how many of them are being created as we speak? (a hint, it's more than your blocklist can tell.)

What I'm trying to saying here is... This game would be far different if we were experienced it without bots.

And conformity as well doesn't solve the problem.

We could sit here and debate what is the best solution, but if we have time for this, why not use it wisely?

I've understand that most of us are here praying for a god to do a miracle, but it's been one year since these prayers are not being heard. Only by wish a great deed cannot be fulfilled.

Boi777: in fact, I posted several ideas in other threads. I didn't suggest disabling character creation.
Check a few of my ideas there:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...RMT-Some-Ideas

Most of them won't break the game, like your "stop character creation" idea. At least, won't make it more broken than it already is.
Most of them don't need extra staff (which means $$$, even though SE should be able to pay for it).
Most ideas are just technical solutions that would make it harder for spammers, without being inconvenient to players, because behaviors of players and bots are completely different.
And no, not every MMO has rampant spam like this.
So... instead of trolling the forum, do something useful and either bring some ideas or discuss the ones that were presented. Either that, or STFU. We are already harassed enough in-game, don't need to be trolled here as well.

We can change this right here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-RMT-situation.