Customer service fail

Thought I'd enjoy SE's product a bit on this fine Saturday afternoon, but alas, the instant I logged on the spam began.

All reported, nothing done, same names keep coming up, report replies are just like a bot sending me a message about a bot sending me messages! lawl.

Up to 17+ so far in last couple hours; http://i.imgur.com/6dYzgaj.png

This is failure...

Have sent email report saying the in game reporting has been useless, email reply said use in-game reporting...

• Blacklist full (has been months)
• I use my tells, I need them
• Am playing, doing stuffs, can't be set to busy and need to diddle it to join a team/trade/etc.

Am at wits end and receiving zero help from the folks who ideally should be on top of constant, unrelenting in-game harassment...

SE makes little to no money off RMT. They use stolen credit cards or hacked accounts for most of their bots. People whose cards were used tend to place a chargeback on that, when actually costs SE money.

They ban thousands of accounts per week.

Spambots are the hardest to cope with, since, with every update SE does to the spam filter, RMT simply adjust immediately and continue.

Im really tired of the RMTs as well.. The spam is so irritating and they wont do anything to fix it >_< a lot of people gave good ideas to counter it too!

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Originally Posted by Tidbits

Thought I'd enjoy SE's product a bit on this fine Saturday afternoon, but alas, the instant I logged on the spam began.

All reported, nothing done, same names keep coming up, report replies are just like a bot sending me a message about a bot sending me messages! lawl.

Up to 17+ so far in last couple hours; http://i.imgur.com/6dYzgaj.png

This is failure...

Have sent email report saying the in game reporting has been useless, email reply said use in-game reporting...

• Blacklist full (has been months)
• I use my tells, I need them
• Am playing, doing stuffs, can't be set to busy and need to diddle it to join a team/trade/etc.

Am at wits end and receiving zero help from the folks who ideally should be on top of constant, unrelenting in-game harassment...

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Best fix? Transfer to a locked server. I get no RMT /tells on Balmung. :/

You do realize the customer service rep isn't the same person that bans accounts/handles in game activities right? Every major company uses an automated system to send a successful report received. What do you want them to do; apologize profusely for not having the power to ban RMT in 2 seconds?

Edit: I must've derped 'cause my phone sent this message before I was done writing. Dang new fangled devices!

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Originally Posted by Skivvy

Best fix? Transfer to a locked server. I get no RMT /tells on Balmung. :/

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If everyone did this, Balmung would crash and burn within moments, not to mention reward SE with more money that likely won't even go towards fighting RMT. This is hardly a "fix", only a bandaid on a gaping wound.

Try playing on a Japanese server. I've never received a single RMT tell...ever.
I've seen a couple of bots power leveling, but that's it.

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Originally Posted by FinaSel

Try playing on a Japanese server. I've never received a single RMT tell...ever.
I've seen a couple of bots power leveling, but that's it.

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so your best suggestion is playing on a server that is located on other side of world from me and contains not only very few people who speak my language, but probably no one in my timezone? hehe...

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Originally Posted by Ovenmitts

If you think this is bad, you should check out Blade and Soul. Their forums had moment of being overrun by nothing but RMT threads, and the game has entire chat channels filled with spam to the point of making them useless.

Off topic but I recognize you from the awesome huntbutsecretlytankraveparty linkshell btw. Hi! :)

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Blade and Soul is F2P though. That's always a breeding ground of RMT. SE not doing anything about this on a paid sub is only due to the part RMT has to buy a copy of the game each time they get banned. Banned account = new game purchased = more money for SE.

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Originally Posted by Skivvy

This would be a fun conversation to see the transcript of.

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wish i had saved it, but was in middle of healing Titan and just a bit too baffle-waffled to even think to save it...Try it though, just repeatedly ask to speak to live representative (your right as a paying customer in 99% of the world's markets). Am sure he'll give you same nonsense, its probably all pre-scripted :]

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Originally Posted by Jetstream_Fox

Blade and Soul is F2P though. That's always a breeding ground of RMT. SE not doing anything about this on a paid sub is only due to the part RMT has to buy a copy of the game each time they get banned. Banned account = new game purchased = more money for SE.

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Can't say I've seen that much rmt in pso2. Bots sure but they usually keep to themselves in private rooms. My blacklist is pretty empty.

Okay, so just to be clear you decided to fight spam, by spamming the support desk? Look, I get it. It's annoying as all heck to be inundated by tells from random RMT asking you to 'plz buys gils', but reporting each and every one is counter-intuitive. A number of these will be linked to the same accounts, or will at least give SE a base on which to investigate further RMT you have received because they can read your tells.

So, report once and let their investigations team do their job of investigating. Spamming is not doing anyone any favours, least of all you.

For the longest time SE actually was taking RMT sites to court, especially back in FFXI. It's a problem that's hard to deal with. The advertisers are a low cost thing for RMT. They make a new character that used to never leave the opening instance, now I think they have to at least get them to a certain level. You're better off blacklisting or going on busy status because at any given moment there's at least 10 RMT sites advertising, each one with several bots. In the time it takes to ban one, they can make 10 more bots to take its place. It's a hydra. Instead of banning them as they pop up, it's more effective to pursue other methods. The problem is, you just can't eliminate the issue. There's a 1 tell per second limit in place to slow them down. There's the tell level limit. They have a chat filter set to catch spam, which is why RMT advertisements constantly get more convoluted. It's a problem more complex that it seems on the surface level.

It's only a shame some smart guy can't invent an internet 'bomb' which disintegrates RMT sites so they slowly degrade from within and people become less trusting of where their money is going. It's probably not legal, but I'd argue that most of what these sites do is borderline illegal anyway. It'd wither away the support they get from gil buyers and attack them where it hurts -- their purse.

Only by not supporting RMT and not buying gil will this problem ever go away permanently. Sadly, all too many people want a quick-fix of cash because they're too lazy to earn it.

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Originally Posted by Lusavari

For the longest time SE actually was taking RMT sites to court, especially back in FFXI. It's a problem that's hard to deal with. The advertisers are a low cost thing for RMT. They make a new character that used to never leave the opening instance, now I think they have to at least get them to a certain level. You're better off blacklisting or going on busy status because at any given moment there's at least 10 RMT sites advertising, each one with several bots. In the time it takes to ban one, they can make 10 more bots to take its place. It's a hydra. Instead of banning them as they pop up, it's more effective to pursue other methods. The problem is, you just can't eliminate the issue. There's a 1 tell per second limit in place to slow them down. There's the tell level limit. They have a chat filter set to catch spam, which is why RMT advertisements constantly get more convoluted. It's a problem more complex that it seems on the surface level.

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That's why a lot of people aren't looking to "stop" them, but rather to give us (that means them too) a way to filter manually filter out things. Even if it meant to block all incoming /tell from non-Friend's List/LS/FC type of filtering, it'd be something and it'd be optional. Allowing us a far larger Blacklist would also help, and is also a very simple QoL change... while we're at it, maybe add in an option to delete all Blacklist names at once if we want to. Again, SIMPLE fixes that give us the power to mitigate these unstoppable annoyances if we choose to do so. Hell, those suggestions are likely easier to do than having a right-click report system lol. Yet here we are, without them.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

Only by not supporting RMT and not buying gil will this problem ever go away permanently. Sadly, all too many people want a quick-fix of cash because they're too lazy to earn it.

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RMT activity has become an established (corrupt) business. Even with little to no customers from said game, they'll still be here because it doesn't cost them a thing to be on these games (stolen credit cards, hacked accounts, etc). Their presence is no different than a "legit" player misbehaving or cheating. Similarly, the people who buy from them is not something you can just stop. Telling people to stop doing something bad, is like telling murderers, rapists, thieves, etc to stop doing what they do. Wanting devs to find a way to prevent those people from doing it, is like telling the cops to prevent the person from committing said crime. We know that things would be better without the bad, but it's here and it's not going anywhere.

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Originally Posted by Ovenmitts

Can't say I've seen that much rmt in pso2. Bots sure but they usually keep to themselves in private rooms. My blacklist is pretty empty.

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Pso2 is Eastern player only game with probably 1/12th the player base size of XIV. A restricted market and highly limited market makes RMT very unprofitable. If Sega opened up the market that game would be swamped as hard as Blade and Soul.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

they'll still be here because it doesn't cost them a thing to be on these games (stolen credit cards, hacked accounts, etc).

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This is a stereotypical and gross misrepresentation of the industry. If they had so many stolen credit cards they wouldn't even need to sell gil. There may be some RMT companies hijacking accounts and stealing bank credentials, but if we assume that as the norm then there is literally no reason for their RMT presence in the first place, and hijacking accounts is contrary to their purpose of selling gil to those players. It makes no sense as a business model, so for arguments sake let's assume that's the exception rather than the rule.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

Telling people to stop doing something bad, is like telling murderers, rapists, thieves, etc to stop doing what they do. Wanting devs to find a way to prevent those people from doing it, is like telling the cops to prevent the person from committing said crime. We know that things would be better without the bad, but it's here and it's not going anywhere.

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Firstly, it seems kind of harsh to compare gil-buyers to thieves, murderers and rapists. It's against the ToS, but that's about it. Secondly, these businesses can't exist without a web presence, and certainly not without someone being able to log onto said site and buy their wares.

Taking down an RMT account is like cutting the head of a hydra; two more will appear in its place. Take down the body of the beast, and the whole thing comes tumbling down. Of course, no one said the beast would be easy to kill otherwise it would have been done already.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

This is a stereotypical and gross misrepresentation of the industry. If they had so many stolen credit cards they wouldn't even need to sell gil. There may be some RMT companies hijacking accounts and stealing bank credentials, but if we assume that as the norm then there is literally no reason for their RMT presence in the first place, and hijacking accounts is contrary to their purpose of selling gil to those players. It makes no sense as a business model, so for arguments sake let's assume that's the exception rather than the rule.

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Petty theft to the degree of applying someones credit card to a video game is hardly cause for action anywhere in the world. Plus, in no way am I implying that is solely the primary means of them being around.

Think about it for a second though. Of the amount of accounts banned in the last report, ignoring the advertising accounts since those are generally going to be trial accounts, of the 4550 accounts banned for activity, let's be conservative with your argument and assume 1000 of those are paid accounts by RMT so they can reach higher levels (as they clearly do). No stolen accounts or anything bad attached to it. That's $13,000 to $15,000 from one month of those 1000 accounts. And this happens every month. Which makes more sense in the grand scheme of things? That they're paying that much money out of their pocket? Or that they're going about things in a shady way?

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Firstly, it seems kind of harsh to compare gil-buyers to thieves, murderers and rapists. It's against the ToS, but that's about it. Secondly, these businesses can't exist without a web presence, and certainly not without someone being able to log onto said site and buy their wares.

Taking down an RMT account is like cutting the head of a hydra; two more will appear in its place. Take down the body of the beast, and the whole thing comes tumbling down. Of course, no one said the beast would be easy to kill otherwise it would have been done already.

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The point is behavior. You're not going to stop someones behavior and choice to act on it. I could have very much chosen something less harsh, such as some random player botting. Either way, it doesn't matter. People are going to be bad no matter what you or anyone tries to do.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

This is a stereotypical and gross misrepresentation of the industry. If they had so many stolen credit cards they wouldn't even need to sell gil. There may be some RMT companies hijacking accounts and stealing bank credentials, but if we assume that as the norm then there is literally no reason for their RMT presence in the first place, and hijacking accounts is contrary to their purpose of selling gil to those players. It makes no sense as a business model, so for arguments sake let's assume that's the exception rather than the rule.

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But there is a big difference between a credit card and money. They use the cards (I've read it's often info from people who bought gil) and then issue a charge back to prevent the charge from sticking. It costs the game company due to the constant charge backs, and though they blacklist those cards, RMT just sells the info and uses another.

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Originally Posted by Tidbits

Thought I'd enjoy SE's product a bit on this fine Saturday afternoon, but alas, the instant I logged on the spam began.

All reported, nothing done, same names keep coming up, report replies are just like a bot sending me a message about a bot sending me messages! lawl.

Up to 17+ so far in last couple hours; http://i.imgur.com/6dYzgaj.png

This is failure...

Have sent email report saying the in game reporting has been useless, email reply said use in-game reporting...

• Blacklist full (has been months)
• I use my tells, I need them
• Am playing, doing stuffs, can't be set to busy and need to diddle it to join a team/trade/etc.

Am at wits end and receiving zero help from the folks who ideally should be on top of constant, unrelenting in-game harassment...

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Hi,

By default the 'Tell channel' makes a sound every time you receive a tell. You can switch that sound off by going to, 'Character Configuration', 'Log Window Settings', and then 'Notification Sounds'. Uncheck 'Tell', and from there on no sound will be heard every time that you receive a tell.

Try to enjoy the game a lot better this way. To communicate with your friends, use a Linkshell, or the Free Company channel.

Hope this helps.

In Runescape I could just disable the equivalent of /tells from randoms, that'd be nice, though I also have my /tells on a separate channel with a soft bleep, will just check it from time to time if I hear it go off, it results in me maybe missing some messages though, but at least it's not in my face XD

If you pay too much attention to the worst of the worst, it will drive you insane, just try to not obsess over it, I get it, it's unavoidable at times, but we've all dealt with it this long, I play the game because I enjoy it, for friends, if the most I have to do is move my /tells to another tab and maybe blacklist a little, it's not too far out of my way (But I understand these aren't the best solutions compared to the other suggestions) also chatting in other networks/skype, what have you

The biggest issues with RMT is buyers of gil, SE need to find a way to change the buyers spending in order to curb all forms of RMT, the RMT sellers are still running things like a business, whats the most basics of a business, you sell to a buying market, how do business close down, when no one in that area buys their products, this could be due to poor products or competition. I honestly think the RMT situation is too large for SE to try ban players, they will have to imo compete with them and they can do this better by allowing most if not all items on the cash shop to be traded to another player for gil.

Also if people don't realise, as long as theirs buyers, and more people try to block specific forms of tells, RMT sellers will find more ways to advertise to you, /tells so far is the most unintrusive method, there have been cases where RMT sellers would add you as a friend, I would not like it if they started to make the bots come to players and start bugging you directly.

The best method right now is to eliminate their business by SE competing with them, they have a cash shop, they might as well use it, though buying gil is never great, I rather buyers gave SE real money then RMT sellers, it will reduce or stop RMT selling, and SE get more money to get more staff, they bloody need it for this game.

One possible solution to RMT would be to make it so you can't use anything besides /say (and Novice Network) until level 21. Why? This forces the RMT advertisers to use a paid account. This means, with each account ban, they WILL lose money. This will unfortunately give them incentive to just steal an existent account, which means increased hacking incidents/sabotaged accounts. Further security precautions would be necessary for the user upon login to keep their accounts secure. There does currently exist security measures that take way too long to bruteforce and have a mathematical 1-way encryption, tho obviously account-sharing compromises that too.

As for making the gil buyers disappear, I think that may be way harder. Gil buyers are often discrete about it, and while you can try to put filters that put users who may have bought gil on high alert, it's a far more scattered problem.

Alternatively, (or additionally) do what WoW is doing - allow players to buy gametime for resale for gil on the marketboard. They do not choose the price, the system automatically chooses for them. Gil buyers now can "buy" gil legitimately without the risk of getting banned.

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Originally Posted by Luxea

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This also means legit new players can't use the say channel either and considering that a free trial player can't send tells either, you effectively made new players unable to communicate with their friends. The devs can only implement so many restrictions and whatnot until it starts to burden actual players and may even turn them away from the game.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

This also means legit new players can't use the say channel either and considering that a free trial player can't send tells either, you effectively made new players unable to communicate with their friends. The devs can only implement so many restrictions and whatnot until it starts to burden actual players and may even turn them away from the game.

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It doesn't take all that long to lvl to 21 you know, just let them still use party chat or something, and limit party invite spam for people not on your friendlist. I mean, no reason you gotta spam party invites to 50 different people in 5 minutes, or even 10 minutes. ;)

That's still very counter intuitive and saying "Oh it won't take long" is a pretty weak excuse (kind of like how people say the current relic "doesn't take long" to justify why it takes a lot to get one up to date). What may be just a short time to you can be longer to someone else. You say "use the party chat", yet you can't be in a group when doing solo content until your first dungeon at LV15, thus you'll still be cut off from talking to others every time you have to do solo instanced content. How much farther are we going to go to make even more restrictions for the sake of being less annoyed by RMT? Have people fill out surveys before registering? Watch a video?

It's been said before. Whitelist. Only allow /tells from friends/LS members/FC members. If some random person wants to know where I got my wicked awesome sword or where I got my pants for glamour, they can use /say. If someone needs help clearing content, they have the PF for that, they really don't need to /tell random people for help.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

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I got my relic in like...3 days of casual farm. It really didn't take long. Got i210? You've basically got the 230 as well, just do the buffer farm. Besides, I've not met a lot of talkative newbies who's a legit newbie. Most of them hardly respond even if you /tell them and I used to go around /tell-ing low levels when I used to recruit for my FC.

As for restrictions - I need to ask you if you care more about attracting new players (esp the ones who need more than a few days to a week to hit lvl 21) or retaining your old ones. I genuinely feel for the people who are getting bombarded by RMT. Luckily, my server's kinda crowded so I don't get much of it.

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Originally Posted by Lucke

It's been said before. Whitelist. Only allow /tells from friends/LS members/FC members. If some random person wants to know where I got my wicked awesome sword or where I got my pants for glamour, they can use /say. If someone needs help clearing content, they have the PF for that, they really don't need to /tell random people for help.

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I personally think this is a good idea. Or, just allow X /tells to people not on friend/LS/FC. X= 1 (or some other low number) per minute or less regardless if they're sent to the same person or not.

Delete oldest blacklist entries. The oldest entries (at the top of the list) have likely been banned long ago. Then you can blacklist the characters that are actually spamming you presently.

The best way to report these is this web site:
https://support.na.square-enix.com/f...=5382&la=1&p=0

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Originally Posted by Luxea

One possible solution to RMT would be to make it so you can't use anything besides /say (and Novice Network) until level 21. Why? This forces the RMT advertisers to use a paid account.

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Free trial accounts can't even send tells, so this would be utterly pointless.

Worse than pointless actually, as it would impede actual newbies.

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This means, with each account ban, they WILL lose money.

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Considering you can get copies of ARR for $5 or so and those come with 30 days of game time, they aren't losing much.

I hate to sound like the pessimist or something here, but I hope you understand that most players that enjoy this game already know how to block out this "harassment". I appreciate that you're one of the people soldiering on, reporting each and every individual tell you receive, but if it's really so stressful to you, why don't you simply take steps to ignore it? Reserve a single chat tab to tells, use /busy all the time, disable tells entirely. All of these are incredibly valid ways to fix the problem. If it's so frustrating to you that the two man team working on this constantly isn't doing enough, I don't think anyone really knows what to tell you. It's not pointless to complain about it, but you're asking a heck of a lot for anyone to really care at this point in the game's lifespan.

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Originally Posted by Tidbits

[*]Blacklist full (has been months)

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You can usually remove blacklisted bots after a few hours/days - they tend to get removed by then. No they won't be marked as (deleted) their accounts get suspended that's all.

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Originally Posted by Jetstream_Fox

Blade and Soul is F2P though. That's always a breeding ground of RMT. SE not doing anything about this on a paid sub is only due to the part RMT has to buy a copy of the game each time they get banned. Banned account = new game purchased = more money for SE.

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Few accounts buy a copy of the game, but are more likely to merely pirate it someone or another. This has nothing to do with SE wanting money. Bots are an unfortunate annoyance in MMOs because Americans provide them a market. No measure SE takes will ever eliminate them anymore than advertisers struggle with a futile fight against adblock. The moment updates are made, bots scripts are altered to get around them. That, or they don't really care since they'll just make another. This is a whole business in China. You want bots to go away permanently. Find a way to curve the lazy people in NA/Eu who fund them. The reason JP servers see virtually no bot activity is because that player base won't purchase from them.

To the OP, if the abundance of bots gets to you. I suggest transferring to Balmung, Gilgamesh or other heavily populated servers. They are nearly non-existent due to how difficult it is for bots to get in.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Find a way to curve the lazy people in NA/Eu who fund them. The reason JP servers see virtually no bot activity is because that player base won't purchase from them.

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There really are very few people who rat out their gil-buying friends. xD At least on the EU servers...

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Originally Posted by Luxea

There really are very few people who rat out their gil-buying friends. xD At least on the EU servers...

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Not what the point of that post, no one is asking to rat out other people, we are saying, the best method is to out compete the RMT sellers, dwindle the market for the RMT sellers to the point where they can't make a profit anymore and will leave the game as a whole, it is better to cure the root of the problem here and its the only fix right now.

Dude...it's a comment. Sheesh...

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Originally Posted by raelgun

Not what the point of that post, no one is asking to rat out other people, we are saying, the best method is to out compete the RMT sellers, dwindle the market for the RMT sellers to the point where they can't make a profit anymore and will leave the game as a whole, it is better to cure the root of the problem here and its the only fix right now.

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I recommend you start farming tons of gil right now and give it away to anyone in need of gil ever.

That is the only way you'll ever out-compete the gil sellers.