Anyone else lose their Report RMT button?

I reported two RMT today with this button.

Now the button is gone; it looks like this:

http://i.imgur.com/ediFq7y.png

Anyone seeing this? (Before I report it as a bug)

[EDIT] Came back a day or two later, then vanished again last night.

I still have it. Honestly just noticed it.

Really helpful. Ty SE

They probably set a limit as to how many you can report in a given period to prevent it from being abused.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OliviaJ

They probably set a limit as to how many you can report in a given period to prevent it from being abused.

---

If the limit is at 2, that wouldn't be preventing abuse, that would be preventing it from being useful. (And in any case, abuse shouldn't be much of a concern. These are reports to the GM team. It should be pretty easy for them to deal with anyone sending them false reports.) Unless one of those two reports Zeno sent wasn't about RMT spam, he shouldn't have lost the ability to report the next one.

Yeah, I'd report that as a bug.

I know you can only use the button on a chat message someone sent you. I've tried sending /tells to bots to report them that way and it doesn't work that way. Are you using it on a third separate RMT? It's possible the function can only be used once per (RMT) account. So if an RMT switches characters and sends you a second tell, you may not be able to report?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HaelseMikiro

I know you can only use the button on a chat message someone sent you. I've tried sending /tells to bots to report them that way and it doesn't work that way.

---

Why would you send them a /tell? It's the message that they send that's reportable. With no message from them, there's nothing to report.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by patch notes

* This menu is strictly for the purpose of reporting RMT messages. All other misconduct such as verbal or play-related harassment should be reported via the Support Desk.

---

This feature is specifically about RMT *messages*. The only thing for which reporting can be automated this way is spam, because the message that you're clicking on is itself the violation. For anything else, you'd need to fill out a report to say what it is that you're accusing someone of.

So we can't do anything to those bots that sit in one place spamming /say? That sucks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Niwashi

If the limit is at 2, that wouldn't be preventing abuse, that would be preventing it from being useful. (And in any case, abuse shouldn't be much of a concern.

---

Yup i was reporting RMT near marketboards pretty frequently because there was only one standing there at a time.
But i noticed recently ( like the last 2 weeks ) they probably got tired of being banned every time and now there are 3 to 4 spamming in succession standing by the mbs. So by the time i could fill a report and get the 4th banned they would have time to create another 2.

A time limit would make me unable to report them all at once every time i see them...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OliviaJ

So we can't do anything to those bots that sit in one place spamming /say? That sucks.

---

Is that right? It does't make much sense. A message in the /say channel is still a message. So long as you're reporting a message that the RMT bot itself had sent, it shouldn't matter whether it sent that message through /say, /shout, /tell, or any other channel.

The thing you can't do is use this feature to report characters whom you suspect might be farming bots. For that, you'd have to fill out a report saying why you'd suspect them. (Spam is a lot more straightforward. You can click directly on the message that violates the ToS, so that message, and therefore the violation, can be a automatically incorporated into the report.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HaelseMikiro

I know you can only use the button on a chat message someone sent you. I've tried sending /tells to bots to report them that way and it doesn't work that way.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Niwashi

Why would you send them a /tell? It's the message that they send that's reportable. With no message from them, there's nothing to report.

---

When you cycle through your list of recent /tells (alt + r on keyboard) you can reply to people that haven't messaged you in several days, as long as they are within the 15 people to send you a /tell. If a person should be disconnected from game (or desire to report RMTs from before the feature was added) I wanted to test if reporting was still possible, or if you must patiently wait for another message from the same person. I found my answer. /bow

Probably the game auto-fills out a reporting form and copies the message text from the same message you use to right-click/report

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Niwashi

Is that right? It does't make much sense. A message in the /say channel is still a message. So long as you're reporting a message that the RMT bot itself had sent, it shouldn't matter whether it sent that message through /say, /shout, /tell, or any other channel.

The thing you can't do is use this feature to report characters whom you suspect might be farming bots. For that, you'd have to fill out a report saying why you'd suspect them. (Spam is a lot more straightforward. You can click directly on the message that violates the ToS, so that message, and therefore the violation, can be a automatically incorporated into the report.)

---

I don't know if that is how it is or not. Maybe I read the posts above and misunderstood it to only be /tell

While on this topic, I wonder why the report screen doesn't auto-populate ANY information. You have to manually punch in every detail from your server, device, location, ect. just to MAYBE get them punished for breaking rules. Honestly I feel like I'm the one being punished when I do this, so I stopped bothering.

Seriously, it's not even a slightly difficult thing to do. It's a minor fetch and fill script, they simply just don't feel like making it for some reason.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Reptiletc

While on this topic, I wonder why the report screen doesn't auto-populate ANY information. You have to manually punch in every detail from your server, device, location, ect. just to MAYBE get them punished for breaking rules. Honestly I feel like I'm the one being punished when I do this, so I stopped bothering.

Seriously, it's not even a slightly difficult thing to do. It's a minor fetch and fill script, they simply just don't feel like making it for some reason.

---

My guess: They reworked their GM backend, which is why this option took so long to get implemented. This is probably some counter based system where it increments by one.

This happened again to me. It came back eventually, last night it went away. I had 20 RMT messages overnight and no more Report RMT button.

It's possible that they have a queue of reports to file through on their end, and when they hit a certain threshold of them, it cuts it off from receiving new ones until they sort them out.

Haven't had mine go away yet but can't say I've used it two dozen times in one gaming session. Probably a dozen at most. I'll say this, it seems to be working decently. The quantity has decreased noticeably.

Mine disappeared yesterday too. It might be just a coincidence but I just restarted the game and it was back.

I have seen a positive impact on the amount of RMT activity on Lamia. I had one negative experience of reporting multiple times on a RMT advertiser with no effect but it was at odd hours also so it didnt get me too riled up.

Balmung hasn't had chat spammers in an extremely long time, but every few months or so you'll see a hoard of farming bots doing their thing - as is the case right now. Sadly, there's no quick way of reporting them even though it's obvious as hell what they are.

I haven't had the Report button disappear like that, and I've used it quite a few times, though I don't think I ever saw 20 in one session. If it were a timed limit (only X number can be sent in a given period of time), I'd expect an error message to appear rather than the report button itself to disappear.

I have seen a marked decrease in the amount of spam since this feature went live. :D

It would be nice, though, if it automatically added the characters you report to your blacklist rather than making reporting and blacklisting them two separate actions. (Of course, blacklisting would have to remain a separate option for cases where you want to BL people for reasons other than spam, but I can't imagine the other way around, of reporting someone and not also wanting them blacklisted.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Knahli

Balmung hasn't had chat spammers in an extremely long time, but every few months or so you'll see a hoard of farming bots doing their thing - as is the case right now. Sadly, there's no quick way of reporting them even though it's obvious as hell what they are.

---

This reporting feature is intended to handle RMT that directly harass players through intrusive messaging. Mine-bots and level-bots and whatever do not directly impact you in any way, aside from a buzz of irritation when you see them. They may indirectly harass you by negatively affecting the economy, but by and large the RMT most people hate are the ones flooding their chat with stupid ads.

To be honest, though, I think the whole thing is a placebo to begin with. I firmly believe that SE ALREADY had ways to quickly identify and ban RMT spammers. It's probably not hard to pick out players broadcasting the same message to random players for hours at a time without ever changing zones. It's why you'd rarely see the same spam-bot longer than a day at most. All the reports players painstakingly filled out? Binned instantly, because the RMT Task Force already knew about the bots in question. I believe the report feature is purely there to comfort frustrated players who want to have the feeling that they're doing something to help, without having to go through the painful process of filling out a report. In short: SE gave us the feature because we asked, not because it in any way helps the problem.

RMT, being composed of countless independent businesses, have more manpower than ANY single business could possibly hope to match and still maintain a profit. They will always be able to field new spam-bots as fast as SE can take them down, no matter how fast SE takes them down. The only relief will be found on overpopulated servers like Gilgamesh or Balmung, for the simple fact that it's difficult to create new characters on those servers - and even there, the RMT will squirm through the cracks as quickly as they can manage.

I just right-clicked on a message in the fc chat, where no RMT spam would possibly be, and there was the option to report. So it's not filtered. To /tells.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OliviaJ

So we can't do anything to those bots that sit in one place spamming /say? That sucks.

---

Sorry, what now? You can do something about those by opening the standard report screen and reporting it that way. I think the quick report option for RMT is designed to help with the messages sent through /tell. But that doesn't stop you separately reporting some RMT beacon standing in Uldah spamming /say, you just can't do that with the 'quick' report option.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

I think the quick report option for RMT is designed to help with the messages sent through /tell. But that doesn't stop you separately reporting some RMT beacon standing in Uldah spamming /say, you just can't do that with the 'quick' report option.

---

The quick "Report RMT" option is for any RMT spam messages that come through the chat system, regardless of what channel it uses. I've used it both on /tell spam and /say spam.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Niwashi

The quick "Report RMT" option is for any RMT spam messages that come through the chat system, regardless of what channel it uses. I've used it both on /tell spam and /say spam.

---

Cool, thanks. I've only used it a couple of times on the pernicious tell-spams. I definitely think that the more people who are aware of how to use the feature, and that it is there in the first place, the less RMT spam we'll have to deal with.

I've lost the button too now. No idea why. And just as there was a spammer to report, too.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OliviaJ

So we can't do anything to those bots that sit in one place spamming /say? That sucks.

---

If they use /say to sell gil, then you can report them