Patch 3.4: Where are we with Gil Spammers

So I went to visit a friend in the mist and the way messages kept popping was shocking! It was more like a Battle log in the message window and it was hard to read through my message log. I think that spammers focus at specific locations and start spamming their messages.
What progress are we having on solving this never ending problem?

Can there be some resources (GM) available online monitoring spam messages and suspending accounts on the spot? or can mentors / anyone have some privilege to report a snapshot of these messages that could be checked by GMs and still suspend these accounts on the spot.

As much as the upcoming patch hold exciting contents, people are still looking forward to any updates on RMT

My guess that we are not. Nothing other than the "looking into it" that has been thrown in the face of countless threads talking about this subject. Regardless of any legitimate reasons for S-E to not give details of what they are planning, I'm not holding my breath on anything happening to help curtail the gold spam in 3.4.

Well they are looking into a new way to deal with the spam which we don't know the details of yet. But yep, it's as bad as ever on my world at the moment. The thing that actually bothers me personally more than chat spam is just seeing the clone bot characters around, in packs, sometimes even clipping through objects which normal players can't pass through. It hurts my immersion and annoys the heck out of me. A huge improvement to the game, for me, would be being able to prevent the display of certain character by adding them to blacklist, so not only can I not hear them but I also can't see them and just forget the problem is even there. It would fix my main problem with the game, so I can enjoy certain areas again without seeing notorious bots that work there for hours without being banned.

Wait, Gil Sellers are still around? Haven't met them in along time, even though I play two characters on two different worlds. Guess some places are still not clean.

In my experience they tend to set up a /s message bot near the market boards in the 3 capitals and every 10-30 minutes one will send a /tell at you. It's come to the point where I rarely register it as someone trying to actually talk to me, I almost always ignore the sound thinking it's another spam message.

All I need to do to get away form it for the most part is go to Idyleshire and it's stops. If only it had a market board I could be free....

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Originally Posted by Alestorm

If only it had a market board I could be free....

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You could hang out in Ishgard :)
They can't get into HW areas, that's why you are safe in Idyllshire, but Ishgard is also a HW area - and it has a market board ;)

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Originally Posted by Atoli

You could hang out in Ishgard :)
They can't get into HW areas, that's why you are safe in Idyllshire, but Ishgard is also a HW area - and it has a market board ;)

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I also get gil spam in Ishgard, Idyllshire, hell even Hinterlands. Far less common than in the housing wards and original zones but still is a thing in HW areas.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Well they are looking into a new way to deal with the spam which we don't know the details of yet.

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My guess is the new methods are similar to the ones they added with 3.0
1) Make crystals (shards) no longer used for crafting, so RMT gatherers make less gil from us on the MB
2) Increase the gil players earn in the new expansion areas to reduce the necessity for using RMT

Very passive-aggressive, and requires no real development time. The perfect solution!!!
I mean, obviously the most effective solution being real-time GMs who actively hunt for RMTs and ban their accounts immediately.
No real reason to 'watch' the RMTs for months so you can follow the money trail, when you're stopping the money from even needing to be trailed.
But that costs real dollars to do, so...... Please look forward to this game just slowly becoming less profitable to RMT over time until they move on to the next big MMO

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Originally Posted by Balipu

Wait, Gil Sellers are still around? Haven't met them in along time, even though I play two characters on two different worlds. Guess some places are still not clean.

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go sit in by the Marketboards in Gridania, at most given times, there is usually 3 of them going nuts.

new trick I've seen now, the latest ones are hiding under the map, and they spam 2 lines of the same rubbish in quite fast succession ><

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Originally Posted by Balipu

Wait, Gil Sellers are still around? Haven't met them in along time, even though I play two characters on two different worlds. Guess some places are still not clean.

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Visit any Market Board on Phoenix and you'll see them.

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Originally Posted by Lisotte

I also get gil spam in Ishgard, Idyllshire, hell even Hinterlands. Far less common than in the housing wards and original zones but still is a thing in HW areas.

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I think they were referring to the /say spam around marketboards.

That said, it's not that they CAN'T get into Ishgard, it's more along the lines of it's a waste of time getting a spambot to Ishard given how obviously bannable their actions are. The bots to be concerned about in HW areas aren't spamming, they're generating gil and trying to fly under the radar.

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Originally Posted by HaelseMikiro

1) Make crystals (shards) no longer used for crafting, so RMT gatherers make less gil from us on the MB

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The bots appear to have moved onto ephemeral and legendary nodes. So they're into crystals, clusters, aethersands, and other high level mats now. The maybe good news is that the suspected bot that I've seen doesn't have high enough gathering stats to collect HQ legendary mats.

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Originally Posted by HaelseMikiro

2) Increase the gil players earn in the new expansion areas to reduce the necessity for using RMT

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My apologies, but this doesn't help the issue one bit - it only means the prices on the market board go up.

Money =/= Buying power, that's why we have exchange rates. If you print money, you'll just devalue it to the point people swap goods directly, rather than using money, because money has no real value. There is a slight difference in the ingame world in that gil does have an innate value - repairs, teleports, housing plots. But any market transaction (including carries) works analogue to the real world and that's where gil gets used the most.
If you don't want inflation and no actual effect on RMT demand, the only alternative is redistribution. And that means giving people a reason or even forcing them to trade gil back and forth, rather than accumulating it.

Good luck >_>

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Originally Posted by aesteval

That said, it's not that they CAN'T get into Ishgard, it's more along the lines of it's a waste of time getting a spambot to Ishard given how obviously bannable their actions are.
The bots to be concerned about in HW areas aren't spamming, they're generating gil and trying to fly under the radar.

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They can't get into Ishgard on an ARR license :)
So additionally to the (very low) cost of an ARR license they'd need a serious time investment AND the extra cost of a (not quite as cheap yet) HW expansion.

The bots I've seen in HW areas were all regular players who had a bot running to do the gathering for them, not "corporate" farmbots which tend to stay in ARR even after hitting 50.

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Originally Posted by Lisotte

I also get gil spam in Ishgard, Idyllshire, hell even Hinterlands. Far less common than in the housing wards and original zones but still is a thing in HW areas.

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But I bet only as a /tell message, not as a /say message.
/tell messsages can reach you everywhere, except in instances

I believe they're working on a context menu report feature at least...

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Originally Posted by Atoli

They can't get into Ishgard on an ARR license :)
So additionally to the (very low) cost of an ARR license they'd need a serious time investment AND the extra cost of a (not quite as cheap yet) HW expansion.

The bots I've seen in HW areas were all regular players who had a bot running to do the gathering for them, not "corporate" farmbots which tend to stay in ARR even after hitting 50.

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^^^^^^^^^^^
The best reason to oppose the suggestions about story skipping or MSQ collapsing to facilitate easy access to new areas. Forcing all players to go through MSQ, as well as have the expansion license, definitely cut's down on the number of RMT Bots outside of ARR zones.

On Mateus I still have to leave my tells disabled because of all the whispers I'll get over the course of a minute. I've had to keep tells disabled for over a year at this point due to the RMT whispers.

Every time I go to Limsa I have to blacklist a /say spamming gil seller. Sometimes there's more than one.

I recall the dev team mentioning the creation of a streamlined method of reporting such bots a while back, but have heard nothing of it since.

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Originally Posted by Atoli

They can't get into Ishgard on an ARR license :)
So additionally to the (very low) cost of an ARR license they'd need a serious time investment AND the extra cost of a (not quite as cheap yet) HW expansion.

The bots I've seen in HW areas were all regular players who had a bot running to do the gathering for them, not "corporate" farmbots which tend to stay in ARR even after hitting 50.

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I've seen a FC which appears to be the basis of a bot group. BLM battle classes, gatherers leveled, bare minimum quest progression to get to certain areas, bare minimum mounts, minions, GC rank. It certainly looks like the FC's purpose is to house bots. Small FC as well. One of the characters in the FC appears to be hitting ephemeral and legendary nodes 24/7 (the rest appear to have capped at 50.) I question whether an actual player is behind that FC given the absolute lack of progress outside of anything related to making Gil.

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Originally Posted by Reptiletc

I recall the dev team mentioning the creation of a streamlined method of reporting such bots a while back, but have heard nothing of it since.

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That would be the context menu report function I mentioned.

Right click -> report



I am certainly hoping for it soon...

Why not just give us the option to set tells to friends only, and a on/off option for friend requests problem solved.

well, tomorrow is the official implementation on Right-click -> Report RMT. 3 cheers all, we're finally taking this step!

Tmrw will be a reporting spree

Honestly it's been so long I've just sort of accepted it. Like a cancerous growth.