Are the GM's on strike?

Around 24 hours ago I reported a spambot in Limsa, you know the ones, trial account, spamming /say with "come to our website to buy gil"

A few hours later, the spambot was still there, so I figured I may have not sent the report into the GM's, checked my log and yeah, nothing there, oh, I thought, so I went through the process again, put in another report.

Now, almost 24 hours later.... the spam bot is STILL THERE. There is no point in reporting to SE, they do nothing, nada, zilch, no wonder RMT are rampant in this game, they know they can get away with it and SE does nothing.

How about you spend some of that $52m a month you get from our subs and hire some GM's? Only thing I can possibly say about GM's response to RMT bots is useless.

In MMOs, bot bans tend to go out in waves.

Why?

When you find someone that's botting, the right answer is not to ban them right away.

It's to see how they're evading the bot-detection measures that are in place so that you can update the detection mechanisms.

Then, you use that detection mechanism and run it to see if it catches them. If it does, then you also make sure that it's not picking up people that aren't botting, because you don't want to ban someone that doesn't deserve it. If it meets those criteria, then you implement it and it bans everyone using that bot. If it doesn't, then you go back to the drawing board and try again.

In other words, be patient. Banning bots one at a time is not merely inefficient, but actually counterproductive, as it can tip off botmakers that there's another ban wave coming, giving them an opportunity to unload all of the resources that they've harvested before the accounts that they're stored on are banned and locked.

https://cpsobsessed.files.wordpress....nka-ewlzcs.jpg

RMT threads were a dime a dozen before 3.0 because the spam was so bad and these accounts/characters were around for days. Changes made in 3.0 had them gone for a few weeks, but they're slowly coming back.

The RMT issue in this game is much worse than any other MMO I've played, I've never seen them this aggressive. Part of me is wondering if the issue is because of the high price of housing and players using their services as a quick way to get a house. Besides that, I don't see much purpose for them, I don't otherwise see much use in having tons of gil, the best staff has to be farmed the hard way after all.

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Originally Posted by Selli

https://cpsobsessed.files.wordpress....nka-ewlzcs.jpg

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Check my join date >.> I know there have been 1,000,000 threads on RMT and SE's lack of progress in dealing with them.

This however isn't a mining bot that needs watching to see who gets the gil, to trace that all the way to the money mule.

It isn't a process which requires 1,000 hours worth of watching to check if the char is actually a bot or a real person.

It's a person, in Limsa, spamming the same line CONSTANTLY for over 24 hours. A GM could go there, have a look and instantly ban them.

Let's put it as a time perspective, RMT site sets up a bot, sends it to Limsa, 24 hours later it's still there, so they need 1 bot per day, 1 account per day, no hassle in that. Knock that down to GM's getting rid of them within an hour? That's 24 bots per day, 24 times to go through the opening CS/Quests, 24 new accounts, 24 new emails etc.. per day, the hassle starts to affect the RMT site. So which is better for them?

I don't think it is reasonable to expect a GM to ban an account in a matter of a couple hours or even a day, especially with the amount of these requests they probably get on a daily basis. You do have realize that GMs could be buried in a mass of requests at any given time. A bot report is probably not prioritized over someone having a legitimate personal game-breaking issue. There are also probably plenty of requests to wade through from people who have nonsense complaints.

I'm sure they'll get to it when they get to it, but I wouldn't treat it as though there is a GM sitting at a desk waiting for your complaint about a bot with nothing better to do. Just because you personally did not see a potential "bot" removed immediately does not mean that GM's are not doing their jobs and are not busy assisting other people with more immediate needs.

It's also the weekend.

RMTs disappearing during 3.0 launch is due in some part due to it being tough to create new characters on full servers.

Can you stop defending SE on this matter, it's the weekend, they are busy, it's unreasonable to expect service. Their response is unacceptable, this isn't a F2P game, SE is pulling in roughly half a billion dollars per year in sub fees (4 million subscribers according to a newspaper). I'm pretty sure "RMT can't log in because servers are full" is not really acceptable RMT countermeasures, if they can't log onto a full server, they will just log on to a less full server, but that isn't even the point

The point is that there has been zero response to an obvious RMT spam bot, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who will have reported this bot, and it would take a GM all of 30 seconds to read the report, pop in to where the Bot is, wait for them to put their spam and then instantly ban them, 30 seconds, it's not really too much to ask for GM's to respond to reports in a timley manner, sure, 1 hour, that's okay, you're busy. 2 hours? Getting a bit long there, but okay, maybe you're on your lunch break. 8 hours? Okay, shift change, that's okay. 16 hours. Another shift change. 24 hours, wow, the GM's who were at work when I reported it are back again, and it still hasn't been sorted.

As other people already stated, bans tend to go out in waves. You can check that in their "ilegal activity reports."
Sorry but no one will start flipping tables because you have seen a RMT. It is not gamebreaking.
And I could name 10 MMOs that had bigger RMT and Bot problems, but I dont want to advertise other games. :)

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Originally Posted by Lexxuk

The point is that there has been zero response to an obvious RMT spam bot, I\\\\'m pretty sure I\\\\'m not the only person who will have reported this bot, and it would take a GM all of 30 seconds to read the report, pop in to where the Bot is, wait for them to put their spam and then instantly ban them, 30 seconds, it\\\\'s not really too much to ask for GM\\\\'s to respond to reports in a timley manner, sure, 1 hour, that\\\\'s okay, you\\\\'re busy. 2 hours? Getting a bit long there, but okay, maybe you\\\\'re on your lunch break. 8 hours? Okay, shift change, that\\\\'s okay. 16 hours. Another shift change. 24 hours, wow, the GM\\\\'s who were at work when I reported it are back again, and it still hasn\\\\'t been sorted.

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Perhaps you missed the July 9th "Actions taken against RMT" in the launcher....i think you did. You can also go back and see every week they release ban numbers.

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Originally Posted by Lexxuk

stuff

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There are tons of bots in N. Than, spiritbond bots that go unbanned for months (they're still playing) and people that are botting gathering nodes that are still unbanned. Some of these are pretty obvious ones. (Ones that speed hack and teleport to nodes) I've given up caring, since they don't seem to care too much if they don't even want to ban those. Some of these have also been reported by multiple people.

Yes, they could probably stand to hire some more GMs. Looking at the credits, there's are less than 10 for NA which is actually pretty sad.

RMT spam isn't a new problem. Every game has this issue unless they outright just sell it themselves. Bigger games like WoW have had this same issue and they probably make more money than this game.

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Originally Posted by AsteriaStarfall

Perhaps you missed the July 9th "Actions taken against RMT" in the launcher....i think you did. You can also go back and see every week they release ban numbers.

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Time Period: Jun. 25, 2015 to Jul. 8, 2015
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 1777
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 7417
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

Now expect arguments that these numbers mean nothing and SE made them up.

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Originally Posted by StrejdaTom

Time Period: Jun. 25, 2015 to Jul. 8, 2015
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 1777
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 7417
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

Now expect arguments that these numbers mean nothing and SE made them up.

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If im not wrong these are like 1 week bans xD? And the perma bans were like 34? 34 is like the amount of bots i find at any moment of the day in north thanalan in our server alone and this is ment to be world wide bans??

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Originally Posted by Rose-Wild

If im not wrong these are like 1 week bans xD? And the perma bans were like 34? 34 is like the amount of bots i find at any moment of the day in north thanalan in our server alone and this is ment to be world wide bans??

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The 35 number was temporary bans for participating in RMT/illegal activity.

The 1777 RMT advertisers and 7417 participating in RMT/illicit activity got permanent bans.

Here is the full notice: http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...455b882e79fbc3

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RMT and other illicit activities upset the balance of the game and, as such, are prohibited under the Terms of Service.

Because we have confirmed the existence of players who are engaging in these illicit activities, we have taken the actions listed below.

Time Period: Jun. 25, 2015 to Jul. 8, 2015
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 1777
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 7417
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for participation in RMT/illegal activity: 35
・Action Details: Temporary ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

Players who discover any confirmed cheats should, under no circumstances, exploit or disseminate such information. Instead, we ask that players file a report by using the in-game command [System Menu] -> [Support & Information] -> [Contact Us] -> [Report Cheating].

We will continue to take stringent disciplinary action against any accounts with confirmed involvement in RMT/illicit activity; players should take care to steer clear of any activity that violates the Terms of Service.

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Originally Posted by SecretCrowds

In MMOs, bot bans tend to go out in waves.

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That is not entierly accurate, for the advertisement bots after being reported they normaly get removed within a few minutes. So if the Op's case is an occurance where a specific advertisement bot has been reported, then left up and running for 24 actual hours. So i wouldnt be so quick to defend SE or the GM's, they could do a better job. SE in particular could provide gm's and players with better tools on multiple levels that would aid in dealing with a large amount of it.

And furthermore your comment on how they pracctise banning cheating in general and how it goes out in waves, thats been done for over 10 years now. It's not exactly a very effective way of doing it either.

The thing is that there should be a distinction between bots doing the gil farming and bots doing the spam. While a farming bot requires an investigation to see their behavior with spambots it's just a matter of checking their chat messages. The ones doing /tells may be a more delicate issue since I guess they won't just spy into players' tells right away but there's nothing stopping them from checking the /say spammers' history since those are public messages. It's unacceptable for /say bots in cities to remain for over 24 hours without a ban.

Now, the thing is after said ban setting up a new character under a new account may be super fast (they may even have new free trial accounts prepared in advance for whenever one gets banned) so said bans are not an effective meassure, but if the same /say bot remains unbanned for so long after who-knows-how-many reports it means SE is not even trying.

They ban in waves, huge waves.

Just because the botters get comfortable and then come out in droves and then get washed away in a holy tidal wave of bans.

When dealing with a hydra you take out as many heads as possible, not one at a time.

I think the anti RMT plays more like CSI rather than the local street police guy. They investigate for a while to check the acounts connected to that RMT and after some weeks they ban all of them. Instead of chasing that dude around the streets only to have 3 more doing the same thing the next second.

At least i like to believe they do this rather than nothing at all.

they do it in waves as normally those gil/etc bots normally come in contact with other accounts (ip tracing). They aren't looking to ban a few trees they are looking for the forest. Yes I know More trees pop up but there are plenty of forest to mow down . Go to a server like Balmung and you will rarely have this trouble. All you will see is a deserted wasteland because there is no new fresh soil.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

The RMT issue in this game is much worse than any other MMO I've played, I've never seen them this aggressive. Part of me is wondering if the issue is because of the high price of housing and players using their services as a quick way to get a house. Besides that, I don't see much purpose for them, I don't otherwise see much use in having tons of gil, the best staff has to be farmed the hard way after all.

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Just logged into WoW as I got 7 days free and the gold spam was unbelievable. That said, I'm not even sure I've seen any gil spam after HW release so on my regard it goes unnoticed.

The problem isnt the mmo, its the gil buying players that are making such a demand. Need a radar that catches both RMT and Gil buyers, with suitable punishments.

We know SE tracks the flow of gil, they know who's buying and how much they are buying. Now we just need some retribution. Their actions ultimately hurt the balance between players.

For what it's worth, I've seen GM response time taking several days, and it's not uncommon for them to take as long as 3 days to respond to something.
Yes it's disheartening to see a bot in the exact same spot doing the exact same thing for several days in a row, but your options to combat this are limited.
I was quite disheartened myself to see spiritbonding bots in North Shroud where I sent 2 reports and I feel like they were there for a whole year...
The best thing you can do is write a report and move on with your life.

Filing multiple reports doesn't help. A better idea would be to appeal to your server community and ask other players to send in a report about the same bot. Single reports from multiple people carry more weight than multiple reports from a single person.

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Originally Posted by StrejdaTom

Time Period: Jun. 25, 2015 to Jul. 8, 2015
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT advertising: 1777
・Accounts receiving disciplinary action for RMT/illicit activity: 7417
・Action Details: Permanent ban from FINAL FANTASY XIV

Now expect arguments that these numbers mean nothing and SE made them up.

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And three times that get made every week to keep the cycle going because people are lazy.

Having fluff items that sell for millions doesn't help. Want a house on Excalibur? Get ready to pay 50 mil for a relinquish first.

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Originally Posted by Imoye

Just logged into WoW as I got 7 days free and the gold spam was unbelievable. That said, I'm not even sure I've seen any gil spam after HW release so on my regard it goes unnoticed.

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I've not seen gold spam in wow in close to three years. They don't send tells or advertise sites outright, instead they're "wts [expensive rare mount]" and give you the info upon request.

Gil seller spam has been rare on Excalibur since HW but I made an alt on Diabolos to test stuff.. Two tells in 20s.

I just reported a character name I found rather offensive and got a reply within half an hour. The bot I reported a week ago is still there. So the GMs are working hard, but their hands are probably tied when it comes to banning accounts.

They don't ban in waves, they just list the number of how many they have banned over the week. They don't suddenly wake up Monday morning and hit the ban button on 2,000 people, that would be very, very time intensive, there is also the issue of if they don't ban them, they continue which can upset a games economy. So, they ban them, then add +1 to the number, then, they list the number banned that week for people to say "it's all done in waves".