SE's 3 Member Special Task Force at Work

https://madviolinist.files.wordpress...nquisition.jpg

RMT Beware!

I don't know why but the picture make me wish SE would add red mage to the game already lol.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Sums it up:

http://i.giphy.com/guJZ84aiImq5i.gif
http://i.giphy.com/muusH3CHn1qLK.gif
http://i.giphy.com/7jrqFzxRu9QTC.gif

3 person task force?

http://img.finalfantasyxiv.com/t/69f...8dcb62f2_0.png

Hildibrand, Nashu, and Gilgamesh are on the case!

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Originally Posted by Gralna

3 person task force?

http://img.finalfantasyxiv.com/t/69f...8dcb62f2_0.png

Hildibrand, Nashu, and Gilgamesh are on the case!

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I love it. :D

They are going to add red mage it will be gated behind extreme alexander

http://media.giphy.com/media/sY1yvrxROgCM8/giphy.gif

http://media.giphy.com/media/HuHJo85TRetu8/giphy.gif

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Originally Posted by LandricFrey

http://media.giphy.com/media/sY1yvrxROgCM8/giphy.gif

http://media.giphy.com/media/HuHJo85TRetu8/giphy.gif

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Ok, I just nearly spit out my coffee. XDDDDD

That second gif is amazing

http://i1116.photobucket.com/albums/...tyslickers.gif

Then Yoshi-p shows up

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Z...WhoDoneIt3.gif

I love this thread :)

The Special Task Force enjoys time off from battling RMT.
http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploa...Head-Dance.gif

I am surprised so many people picked that up in the credits and figured it out.

I thought I was one of the only ones who watched the credits in full and noticed it.

But yeah, makes a LOT of sense with all the garbage that goes on, that there's only really 3 people in the whole world working on it.

I'm still wondering, from where Does it say they are the ones in charge of dealing with RMT?

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Originally Posted by Mature

I'm still wondering, from where Does it say they are the ones in charge of dealing with RMT?

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Yes, their website says it.

I, Personally, have a heck of a lot of respect for these 3 individuals. 3 people finding, investigating, and banning over 10,000 accounts per week? That's pretty impressive, and we, as players, don't make their job any easier.

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Originally Posted by tocsin

Yes, their website says it.

I, Personally, have a heck of a lot of respect for these 3 individuals. 3 people finding, investigating, and banning over 10,000 accounts per week? That's pretty impressive, and we, as players, don't make their job any easier.

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Yes it is impressive that only three people do so much. It's also sad that SE puts such a huge problem in the hands of just three people. With the game as big as it is now, SE should make the investment of hiring more people for their Special Task Force. Obviously three isn't enough.

The main point of this thread is to raise awareness of this issue, the RMT problem in general, and to have some fun at the same time. :D

The Special Task Force bravely faces the army of RMT.
http://hypeorlando.s3.amazonaws.com/...nty-python.png

The Special Task Force counting down the seconds before 3.0 goes live when the real RMT spamming begins.
https://movietalkexpress.files.wordp...paceballs2.jpg

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Originally Posted by LandricFrey

The Special Task Force counting down the seconds before 3.0 goes live when the real RMT spamming begins.
https://movietalkexpress.files.wordp...paceballs2.jpg

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And then after 3.0:
http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress...rce-ghosts.jpg

Me just trying to enjoy my game...
http://i1198.photobucket.com/albums/...majoy/spam.gif

Isn't it obvious?
https://38.media.tumblr.com/f10cf60c...snpdo1_500.gif

At first i thought so only 3 special forces huh? thats why there are so many rmts, but then i thought those 3 alone managed to ban thousands of accounts in weeks... omg the working hours must be dreadful

The STF on their way to work. (Yes they drive the Shaggin' Waggon.)
http://i.imgur.com/p0scPWx.jpg
The constant ringing of the Tell sound effect.

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Originally Posted by Gralna

3 person task force?

http://img.finalfantasyxiv.com/t/69f...8dcb62f2_0.png

Hildibrand, Nashu, and Greg are on the case!

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Fixed this for you, sheesh.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LandricFrey

The Special Task Force counting down the seconds before 3.0 goes live when the real RMT spamming begins.
https://movietalkexpress.files.wordp...paceballs2.jpg

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Actually, we'll probably have a couple week reprieve from it when 3.0 comes out, as the botters have to figure out how to make their bots work again.

They should have an incredibly easy time of it really. Just do a Lodestone search of every character with Sellgil in their name. They don't care about being coy anymore, they fly that flag high, all SE has to do is scoop 'em up. There's currently over 500 names on the Lodestone with the exact letters in the exact order of Sellgil, that's not even counting any sites that get a little more creative with their names. Those 3 staff members would be drowning if the sellers won't so bloody blatant.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LandricFrey

Me just trying to enjoy my game...
http://i1198.photobucket.com/albums/...majoy/spam.gif

Isn't it obvious?
https://38.media.tumblr.com/f10cf60c...snpdo1_500.gif

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I DON'T LIKE SPAM STF!

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Originally Posted by tocsin

That's pretty impressive, and we, as players, don't make their job any easier.

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Yeah, right, because us reporting bots is throwing such a wrench into their machinations! We should just all be silent and pretend RMT doesn't exist while the Task Force works on a solution.

The only thing that's impressive here is that SE thinks 3 people are enough for this job.

The FFXIV task force are... dazed and confused!

http://johnwelbourn.powerathletehq.c...confused-1.jpg

The STF taking care of business.
http://media.giphy.com/media/RhEvCHIeZAZ6E/giphy.gif

Yoshi-P Supervises.
http://media.giphy.com/media/gsaWHQ4mn6o4E/giphy.gif
"If you could just go ahead and take care of that RMT problem, that would be great."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tocsin

Yes, their website says it.

I, Personally, have a heck of a lot of respect for these 3 individuals. 3 people finding, investigating, and banning over 10,000 accounts per week? That's pretty impressive, and we, as players, don't make their job any easier.

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There's a part in the credits that list "Special Task Force" followed by three names.
http://i.imgur.com/zThJSmy.png

I speculate that only one member is active at any given time, with each having there own eight hour shift. In any case it's not enough and they need to do more. RMT Spam is making a mockery of the game.

Mr. Yasukawa, Mr Morimae, and Mr/Ms. Okabe need to each make their own GC of underlings to fight the evil garlean RMTs

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Originally Posted by Waffilicious

Mr Satoshi, Mr Harutaro and Mr Makoto need to each make their own GC of underlings to fight the evil garlean RMTs

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It's Mr. Yasukawa, Mr Morimae, and Mr/Ms. Okabe. And yes they need more people on this. The overload of SPAM is about to reach it's boiling point.

oh yeah i forget that custom, my bad. edited out.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laraul

There's a part in the credits that list "Special Task Force" followed by three names.
http://i.imgur.com/zThJSmy.png

I speculate that only one member is active at any given time, with each having there own eight hour shift. In any case it's not enough and they need to do more. RMT Spam is making a mockery of the game.

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I can probably answer this.

When you send a report, it doesn't land in the STF's inbox, it lands in a processing queue where GM's deal with the easy-to-ban RMT's, and the STF collages reports against the same player to open a case and collect evidence. That evidence is then used against future RMT's/cheats when they create/steal new accounts.

So they're probably not the ones that are banning the RMT spammers, they're the ones that are following the money.

At *placeIwillNotName*, there was a separate "bad people" and "bad items" department. I worked under the latter. You'd see the same stuff posted by the same chinese sellers, over and over and over and over, and they thought they were being clever. But I wrote a script that compared every listing they made character by character and that made the job so much easier. We weren't allowed to outright ban people unless they were selling counterfeits "again", everyone would claim innocent, and really, none of them are ever innocent.

But here's the thing you never realize. When I worked there, the department removes nearly 100% of the bad/counterfeit/fraudulent items before they even hit the public part of the site. The place I worked for invisibly delays items based on *not sharing* criteria so that almost none of it is ever able to hit the public part of the site. Despite brand names still sue the company but won't tell us how to ID anything, with good reason, they don't want to tell us how they know something is fake, so the counterfeiters can't "fix it" and try again.

So from SE's perspective, 3 people are probably enough, because one report might contain a dozen names, or a dozen reports might contain the same name. I'm sure they would hire more people if they didn't have a handle on the RMT traders. The spammers however are unlikely going to the STF, and are likely being banned by semi-automated tools that detect things like blacklisting and messaging rate.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laraul

http://i.imgur.com/zThJSmy.png.

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Mwahahaha, I love seeing people using the image I originally cropped and uploaded (and added the background discoloration) in other threads. it really shows that one person can make a difference!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

snip.

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Except, that the automated response given by GM's, when RMT is reported, is that the in-game staff does not handle RMT reports, and gives a direct web link to the STF submission form.

Why aren't they adding more members to this team? Lord knows XIV subs pull enough money to afford it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tocsin

Except, that the automated response given by GM's, when RMT is reported, is that the in-game staff does not handle RMT reports, and gives a direct web link to the STF submission form.

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I said RMT spam. I sure hope you've been using the "report cheating" form in the game for the actual stuff you want sent to the STF. You know... after someone translates it. It's more likely that there's a dedicated NA/EU STF that just isn't listed in the credits.

At any rate, I think it would be absurd for them to be doing all this manually all this time, they probably had tools written back after FFXI was released to combat RMT, and revised them ever since and applied them to FFXIV v1.0 and v2.0 as they went. Trust me. When I worked at *above* , everyone has their own personal scripts for dealing with the stuff they see repeatedly.

We're special, we're the Special Task Force.
We roam around Eorzea banning RMT in due course.
We're special, we're the Special Task Force.
We take from RMT and give back to the players, that's right!
We may look like we're pointless, but watch what you say or else we'll put out your lights!
http://i.imgur.com/8xe89cT.gif
We're special, we're the Special Task Force,
Always on guard, the rules of the game we enforce!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

At any rate, I think it would be absurd for them to be doing all this manually all this time, they probably had tools written back after FFXI was released to combat RMT, and revised them ever since and applied them to FFXIV v1.0 and v2.0 as they went. Trust me. When I worked at *above* , everyone has their own personal scripts for dealing with the stuff they see repeatedly.

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You assume that they have tools or have the knowledge/resources to create their own. This does not appear to be the case. For example... take a look at this listing of characters and see if you can spot the spammers from the legit accounts. It should be fairly easy to spot a pattern right away. If they had tools for this they could spot these before they start...