Idea on how to deal with the RMT issues

My solution is fairly simple, make a couple level 10+ quests (only on new characters, does not affect existing level 10+ characters) where you have to complete a quest to unlock the /tell, /shout, and /yell, one quest per feature, and a quest to unlock the ability to send friend requests (they can still receive and accept/decline friend requests, but can not send till quest is done). This way it doesn't impact characters that are already level 10+, and makes it a lot harder for the RMT's to conduct their business of spamming tells, shouts, yells, and friend requests to people that do not want to be bothered with them. An average player should be able to make it to level 10 within an hour with very little difficulty, but an RMT will not want to spend hours unlocking those features only to have the character deleted by the GM's for violating the terms of service agreement.

does nobody else think this is a good idea to help get rid of the annoying real money trader spam that everyone hates?

so nobody wants to be rid of the annoying RMT's? with this method you can still receive friend invites, and use the /say from level 1-10, but you have to unlock /tell, /shout, and /yell, and the ability to send friend requests, these RMT's create a character load their spam macro and send out massive tells and/or friend requests, then log out, delete that character and start over. This will eliminate the speedy method they keep using.

So I had posted my own thread with a somewhat similar idea. Instead of restricting tells to be unlocked functionality, implement a whitelist so that only Friends, FC Mates, and manually specified people can send you tells or FRs. For those not added in that way, the friend request system should allow for a player to generate an authorization code for Friend Requests for a specific person. For example, a real-life friend wants to friend you and you know their name. You enter it, system generates a code, then you feed them the code to enter on their end and confirm the entire friendship for both sides once they enter it in their client.

I'm all for getting rid of the RMT spam, but restricting/locking chat features is not the way to do it. The thing is level wouldn't matter with my proposed system. I have yet to hear from anyone (especially SE) regarding my proposal, however I am hopeful that eventually it gets seen enough and people start demanding that it be implemented.

Link to my thread which details most of this (not the Friend Request part as I've yet to be friended or even attempted of such from an RMT person, however I will add that as well as a link to this post for reference in an edit): http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Tell-filtering

I like the idea of people having to unlock the tells thru a quest. I would also like Square to stop giving the scripted answer when you report someone. My blacklist was full withing the first two weeks of me playing.

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Originally Posted by Lathander81

I like the idea of people having to unlock the tells thru a quest. I would also like Square to stop giving the scripted answer when you report someone. My blacklist was full withing the first two weeks of me playing.

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I don't see a point in restricting tells to be a feature that is required to be unlocked through quests. A Whitelist would be the better answer as then no matter what level they are and whether or not they've completed the "unlock" quest, they won't be able to bypass the protection system. However, I do agree that Square Enix needs to tell their GMs to quit using bs scripted answers about having to flush the blacklist and then re-add people as necessary. No. That's not how it works SE. You are supposed to prevent this on YOUR end, not leave it up to the playerbase to decide that spammers need to get blacklisted. Spammers should not be able to send me a tell unless I choose to ALLOW it, which will never be the case so it's moot.

2nd post due to the stupid 1k character limit:

Fix this crap, SE. Nobody wants to be spammed nor be told that it's "our responsibility to blacklist and occasionally clear that blacklist." That's dumb. If you want to do it that way, Implement a method to mass-remove characters from it and also make it freaking bigger. But that won't solve the issue in a way that I feel the playerbase wants. We don't want this spam to even be seen by us, the players.

There are many MMORPG's that just blanket restrict tells/whispers below a certain level, usually 5-10. unfortunately the RMT's just bot their sock puppets up to the required level and the spam is just as bad. I don't see how a quest would stop them.

I have not used a whitelist in an MMO, but it sounds like a good idea - the current blacklist is a joke, mine remains full and has been for a long time.

That said reporting could be improved, I've just realised this morning in trying to report an RMT that SE have recently broken the default copy command (ctrl+c on a PC) which now brings up the currency window. so now as SE wants an example of the RMT spam message when you report, they just made it even harder to actually offer this proof. I hope there is a copy command I have overlooked, but I'm not going to type verbatim every single spam I want to report.

Spork: mine doesn't get interfered with even though Ctrl-C is the Currency window open command.

My idea:
Want to make a new character? Great, but you cannot delete it for 30 days.
Want to make a second character. Nope sorry, you have to wait until your first is level 50

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Originally Posted by T2teddy

My idea:
Want to make a new character? Great, but you cannot delete it for 30 days.
Want to make a second character. Nope sorry, you have to wait until your first is level 50

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Problem with that is still the restriction of features. Whitelisting is considered adding a feature as it currently does NOT exist in FFXIV. Plus, the code for that would be atrocious especially if an account has a character, gets it up to level 48 in 30 days and then deletes it. The system (unless coded magnificently or close to it) would have to track that although they didn't hit level 50, they have no characters on that world now. That is a pretty touch existence check because you know you have a Blacklist right? Did you know that the Blacklist does not remove deleted or banned characters automatically? If not, now you do and you understand the issue with your suggestion. Whitelisting still seems to be the best option.

The second problem is that although they are restricted, you impact new players coming from different MMOs where you can only be one class per character. That's wrong in my book. The no-delete for 30 days, i can live with as that would be a decent restriction to place. But saying that a person CANNOT create a new character until the first character on that world is Level 50 is absolute garbage and won't solve much. Hell.... Even the no-delete function would do no good without a whitelist function or a larger blacklist. My feature says that no matter the other person's level or whatever, they cannot send people tells unless the person they're sending to has either left the whitelist off OR the sender is on the recipient's whitelist. In my original post about this, the whitelist should be manually configurable AND be set to auto-allow friends and FC mates provided the appropriate options are checked/ticked.

ya this is my thread on the RMT problem with this game.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...106-RMT-Issues

Yet everything seems to be falling on deaf ears with SE.

They don't seem to care about their players. Long as they
are making a buck.

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Originally Posted by T2teddy

My idea:
Want to make a new character? Great, but you cannot delete it for 30 days.
Want to make a second character. Nope sorry, you have to wait until your first is level 50

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That would never work... these gold spammers are abusing the free trial accounts
they don't care if the account gets banned or not because they just create
a new free trial account to spam with.

They need to do something with these free trial accounts where the GMS have
the ability to be able to IP ban people from creating new accounts if they
are found to be abusing past accounts.

Right now from what I was told a couple days go from a GM supervisor
is that they do NOT have that ability to IP ban. That is a horrible system
to not give your GMs that ability when they see a constant pattern of
abuse coming from an IP

I can somewhat understand certain rules like that, but not to the extent that SE has made it into. I live in the US. My IP CAN change via either a MAC address change for my router box or just being offline for long enough. Plus what happens if the next person to get the IP I got banned on tries to play the game? They won't be able to. I use Comcast as an ISP. CenturyLink (the DSL provider in my area) uses a system that if you powercycle your modem, you get a new IP. They have an instant recycling policy. Comcast says that until your Lease expires and even sometimes for a time after that Lease expires, you will still retain the same IP address. Leases for IPs from Comcast last a week at a time. So if I lose power 3 days into my lease, I'll typically have 4 days to get power back online before my IP is recycled. If I'm 1 day away from expiration though, typically Comcast's system will place a lock on the IP for up to 3 days after original Lease expiration should've occurred.

Now if the IP is originating outside the US/Canada, then sure: i'd be fine with an IP ban then. If they're playing on a realm outside their zone consistently and getting reported for RMT spam, ban the IP that created the accounts.

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Originally Posted by Riinata

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So the IP address can change and if a person is abusing the IP address it should be banned and then
maybe these scumbag ISPs will actually start to take action against these people.

I know your IP can change via mac or IP.

The next person that comes along and has that IP can go complain
to the ISP and then maybe these scumbag ISPS will finally start
to do something instead of letting the abuse continue on.

Also the IP address is not immediately recycled either if it has been
pulled it is usually about 48 hours before the IP goes back into the
pool again on a dynamic IP system like cable and DSL modems.

If SE GMs are seeing a constant abuse of the free accounts then
they NEED to be able to have a way to stop that and stop the
people from coming back and creating MORE new free accounts
over and over again. banning the gold spammers are NOT going
to help if they can just laugh and create a brand new free account
instantly like they can right now.

Bottom line is once the ISP removes the offending customer then
the ban against the IP could be removed.

And chances are Comcast or any of the other big cable / DSL
companies here in North America are not going to be affected
and that these scumbags that sell gold are in China, Korea, and
other Asian countries.

Bottom line is the ISPs need to take some responsibility if there is
abuse even if it is Comcast or any of the major cable / DSL
companies.

I am tired of this abuse. If SE can NOT find a way to deal with the
trial account issue then they should TURN OFF the trial accounts
until they can because that is what is being abused by these gold
spammers.

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Originally Posted by DarkShado

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Thing is this: In the US, the only piece of legislation that would deal with what you claim is the "ISP's responsibility" is currently undergoing massive reforms. That law is known as the CFAA or Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and Aaron Swartz's death has introduced new fights for reforms of the CFAA. He was prosecuted for "downloading too many academic journals from JSTOR" and yet JSTOR refused to press charges upon cooperation from Aaron in fixing the issue, but the US Government decided to keep pressing the fight which ended with Swartz committing suicide. In fact, the ISPs have no control over that law but instead are supposed to inform the authorities, which they do. A LOT of government agencies ignore the issue because it's not an issue to them or a direct threat to national security.

Also, Comcast DOES do immediate recycling in the case of IPs that exit their grace period which can either be when the DHCP lease ends or a couple days later depending on last connection time and it's relation to the lease duration. I'm unsure of CL though. But anyways, you do realize that with the dynamic IP nature that it's difficult for an ISP to respond in such a way as to remove the customer from their network, right? Because of how dynamic Comcast's network is, it's not exactly easy to pinpoint who had an IP at this date and time without combing through routing logs and other verification logs.