A big Thank You for the Report Option

I would like to thank the programming and development team for this long awaited function: submenu option to report RMT spam.

It's been 3 years since the community has been asking for it and now we have it. I cannot express how happy it truly made my game, without being /busy, without disableing tells, just playing normally how I should be. May it be because the patch is still recent and bots have yet to fully walk around it, or the reports work as intended.
The spam is significantly less right now, and when I get a tell or see the standard derp character glued to the market boards spamming, I just click the option and it's done.
I can now truly enjoy the game, questlines and have conversations with friends without being interrupted by some bingo language with silly codes, or even fearing my reply to a tell reaches an RMT instead.

A big Thank You SE! I think on the long run, this is truly the star of this patch :)

Ditto! I haven't turned on busy since patch, before that it was the first thing I'd do after logging in.

While the spam tells haven't disappeared on my server, they've dropped dramatically. I've had tells on their own tab with no sound notification for a very long time. I used to get 1-2 tells per 5 minutes on Malboro and now I get maybe 1-2 per night. If this keeps up, I'll be able to add tells back into my normal chat!

Agreed. :D This was really needed and it's great to finally have it.

It's working, too. Spam is way way down from what it had been. Now, without that constant annoyance, the game is freed to be more social.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

Agreed. :D This was really needed and it's great to finally have it.

It's working, too. Spam is way way down from what it had been. Now, without that constant annoyance, the game is freed to be more social.

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I'm looking forward to being able to send tells to my friends and noticing that I've received a tell in a timely fashion. The game has trained me to ignore tells for so long, it will be nice to be able to add an additional communications tool back into our tool belts.

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Originally Posted by moleverine

While the spam tells haven't disappeared on my server, they've dropped dramatically. I've had tells on their own tab with no sound notification for a very long time. I used to get 1-2 tells per 5 minutes on Malboro and now I get maybe 1-2 per night. If this keeps up, I'll be able to add tells back into my normal chat!

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It's unfortunately the normal downtime following an RMT related change. If SE has implemented undisclosed chat filters, that would also further explain the reduction in /tell spam. There's always a way around it sadly, since things like the requested player controlled /tell filters still have yet to be a thing. There's a very high probability they'll be back to normal operation sooner or later.

But yes, this was a long awaited, player requested QoL change. At least 3 years in the making lol.

Given the horrendous problem FFXI experienced with RMT especially over the infamous Christmas 2005 period I was appalled that such reporting mechanisms weren't baked into FFXIV V1, let alone V2.

Agreed! I've been getting maybe 3 gil spams over 8 hours of playtime, and never more than once from the same bot. It's so nice to be able to use the game normally, finally. Nice job, SE.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

It's unfortunately the normal downtime following an RMT related change. If SE has implemented undisclosed chat filters, that would also further explain the reduction in /tell spam. There's always a way around it sadly, since things like the requested player controlled /tell filters still have yet to be a thing. There's a very high probability they'll be back to normal operation sooner or later.

But yes, this was a long awaited, player requested QoL change. At least 3 years in the making lol.

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Apparently the way it works is, if you get reported enough times you automatically get blocked from sending more tells. Previous fixes were to add more word filters, but eventually the RMT would just slightly change what they were saying to get around the filters. I don't think there's a reliable work around for getting outright muted, so I'm thinking (and hoping) that this is a more long term fix than what we've seen in the past.

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Originally Posted by Beckett

Apparently the way it works is, if you get reported enough times you automatically get blocked from sending more tells. Previous fixes were to add more word filters, but eventually the RMT would just slightly change what they were saying to get around the filters. I don't think there's a reliable work around for getting outright muted, so I'm thinking (and hoping) that this is a more long term fix than what we've seen in the past.

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I'd imagine one way around it is going to be akin to their way around blist this whole time, which is to brute force their advertising. Program bots to create new characters every short period of time (or until the mute takes effect, assuming there's a notification). Part of the reason for downtime is to redo bots to work in a certain way. At least now, we have some tools at our disposal though, but expect some of it to come back in short time.

It's already made its way back on Siren. The first several days after the patch, my guildmate and best in-game friend switched to /tells and were finally enjoying private chat outside the FC. This was spoiled last night when both of us started getting spam around the peak hours rate. Not quite that much, but enough to finally put the status back to 'busy' :(

After the first few days of 3.4 there's been no RMT tells at all for me on Leviathan. I keep logged in 24/7 for genuine reasons (if I get a stable connection it's a good idea to keep it) & my chat box was using almost all tells when I'd sit down to play, now there's none. It seems to have made a huge difference already.

On my server, RMT embed themselves in the ground in Limsa around the aytheryte and spam in /say to avoid being blocked via /tell. This feature is a nice work around for the annoyance and I have seen a huge reduction in tell spam. I can go off busy now! Thank you so much SE!

Also SE please notice the pos hacking bots flying in dozens across the air from npc to npc and back under the ground in Quarrymill/Shroud.

Now you have the power to report this rmt without so much hassle. In 2 clicks and report have been sent.

Ive been using it and I see less and less spam.

Thank you

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

I'd imagine one way around it is going to be akin to their way around blist this whole time, which is to brute force their advertising. Program bots to create new characters every short period of time (or until the mute takes effect, assuming there's a notification).

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Well, the blacklist is character based, and though the description wasn't very clear about it, I'm really hoping that this RMT muting is account based. Continuously creating new characters would be a whole lot more expensive if they have to establish new accounts for each of them. The trick to genuinely getting rid of them (rather than just delaying them a bit until they re-work their bot scripts) is to make it more expensive than the little bit of advertising they're able to get out of it is worth.

For that matter, though, I'm really not sure why the blacklist itself isn't account based, and it's possible that this isn't either. If it's just the individual character that gets muted and not others on the account, then yeah, this would be as easy to get around as the blacklist. They'd just have to speed up the rate at which they recycle characters.

I've actually been wondering how it was working out. I haven't reenabled tells yet myself due to concerns that the bots will just end up switching characters frequently to bypass the reports. There always seem to be some that frequently change characters to keep spamming while others stay on one character for long periods of time.