Anti Gil Seller Ideas to help the future task force and help annoyed players!

Firstly, the fastest way to make an annoying gil seller leave you alone is to blacklist them. This can be difficult when they are spamming super fast as it's hard to right click their name. On this front, I would suggest a small forced delay between posts in public channels. Not a huge wait, but a small one, maybe a 3-5 seconds.
Additionally, I'm sure that this has been suggested previously, but a right click + add to blacklist option would be great!

For the anti RMT task force have some way that you guys can collect data on who is blacklisted. Maybe use a tally system. This system could flag accounts who have been put on a large amount of blacklists. Once a character has been put on 100+ blists the account is flagged to be investigated. I wouldn't suggest an instant ban because it's always possible it's just a troll... but then who really wants to keep those either?

Please Like or comment and suggest your own ideas to help out with the RMT problem!

Agree here, just had my first dose of serious gilseller spam today, it makes reading chat in cities nigh impossible. A couple sec delay between shouts (in cities only, maybe?) would be very handy. And definately need a right click block option. It doesn't help that their shouts take up an entire standard chatbar space either.

Should just do what wow does the reporting them also puts them on your ignore list. I would like better tools to ignore/report to be added alot of people the past couple of days and with actual names and not fdafdaf afasfaf so chances are they are people who've been hacked by the sellers.

I agree it could be easier to add folks to ignore, however /blist add <Name> also works. I use a macro to blacklist the last person to send me a tell for the ones that do that. For the shouters, I right click the name in the chatlog, select "send tell" and then left-arrow to /tell, delete it, and replace it with /blist add

Always report the spammers you blacklist, as it will help to get them off the server. If we can keep them from making their 30 bucks back before the account is banned, it helps to keep their numbers down.

I have recently noticed more gil spammers with non-random character names. I presume that these folks have either used a leveling service, or are hacked accounts. Either way, account security is your friend :p

10 second chat cooldown across ALL public channels. This include shout and yell currently. If RMT continue to be a huge issue, even allowing us to right click a name and have a 'report RMT/bot' option that sends an automatic report and blacklist would be amazing. I think there should be one GM per server dedicated to responding to these calls 24 hrs/day until they start to die down. You'll put so much fatigue on the RMTs by instantly banning the botters, hackers and shouters that their income just won't outweigh their need to but additional copies.

And please feel free to ban every single person that player has traded gil with, the gil buyers as well, they are an equal part of the problem and I harbor no sympathy if they get banned.

/blist add <r>
adds the last person who messaged you to the Blist.

Logged in..within 2 seconds had /tell gil spam and city gil spam. It's ridiculous

I think reporting would be much easier on the players and the GMs if we could go Right Click > Report This Message. The game then gathers all the relevant data automatically: server, character name, location, time & date, chat channel, message content, etc. All that data is filled out by the client itself, in a ready-to-use format that is easily sorted by the system and GMs on the other end. The player needs only to select the category of report they are sending (this could be used to report harassment, or other infractions), and voila -- the whole report is accurate, complete, comprehensive, and sent off in a few seconds.

And of course, add an optional checkbox within that system for "Add This Player to Blacklist." There can also be an optional "Notes" text field if the players wishes to explain more complicated situations in further detail.

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Originally Posted by Myrdyn_Wyldt

I agree it could be easier to add folks to ignore, however /blist add <Name> also works. I use a macro to blacklist the last person to send me a tell for the ones that do that. For the shouters, I right click the name in the chatlog, select "send tell" and then left-arrow to /tell, delete it, and replace it with /blist add

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OMG, thank you for posting this! I knew about the /blist add <r>, but for the /shout spammers I had been copy/pasting the names manually into the blacklist menu. This is much easier!

Edit: Actually, I can't get this method to work. In fact, I have yet to get /blist add <Player Name> to return anything but an error message saying I can't do that. Am I doing it wrong??

Best way to have rmt disappear is to not feed them any money, too bad people will anyways and I doubt SE will clean rmt out quickly enough to matter. The only thing they can do is restrict how often you can shout or implement a level where shout becomes available so rmts can't just keep tossing more shouts the moment they login. Players stop the rmting by not participating though, nothing else helps on our end unless they add an in-game report button for RMTing.

If anyone has doubts that bots exist come down to the rock salt mines in Central Thanalan (half way north between the rats nest and the sil'dih excavation site) on the Behemoth server and tell me the miners there are not bots! : )

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Originally Posted by Pimomo

Agree here, just had my first dose of serious gilseller spam today, it makes reading chat in cities nigh impossible. A couple sec delay between shouts (in cities only, maybe?) would be very handy. And definately need a right click block option. It doesn't help that their shouts take up an entire standard chatbar space either.

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When you scroll up the chat window, it stops autoscrolling. At that point it's easy to pick off the gil seller's name. Agreed that there really needs to be a blist option on the right-click menu.

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Originally Posted by Altheras

On this front, I would suggest a small forced delay between posts in public channels. Not a huge wait, but a small one, maybe a 3-5 seconds.

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Why would anyone legitimately need to enter a shout every 5 seconds?

How about a delay of 5 minutes for shouts, 3 minutes for yells and 1 minute for say? (No delay for tells)

EDIT: And also a length limit. One of the things these gil sellers do is make their message so long that their name scrolls off the top, making it difficult to blacklist them.
How about a 4 line limit (on default settings) for shouts? 5 for yells and 6 for say (no limit for tells)

Plug-in API is coming next year.
I'm going to be there day one, writing one that filters RMT spam.

-Limit shouts and yells to 500 characters. There is no reason why anyone should ever need to shout or yell something more than that.
-Add shout/tell msg delays (5 seconds between posts)
-Block Duplicate shouts to 1 every 15 minutes. E.g. if you try to shout something you have shouted exactly in the last 15 minutes block it. This prevents macro spam. I could see this negatively impacting players shouting for raises, but they can just modify their shout. RMT bots will have to have 5 different shouts to bot it with this change.
-Add Right Click "Add To Blacklist" on player names
-Allow us to scroll up in chat without it scrolling back down when someone says something
-Remove the limit on how many people we can blacklist. It makes no sense to have one, and a measley 200? If it impacts performance let me make that decision.

-Advanced
1. Allow a Reporting system on the black list "Why are you black listing this person? 1. Real Money Trade, 2. Spamming, 3. Trolling

Then give us chat filters we can configure ourselves

--Filter Screen
[x] Real Money Trade: Block [x] Allow[ ] | Apply Ratio: Any [x] | Percentage [1%]
[x] Trolling : Block [x] Allow[ ] | Apply Ration: Any [ ] | Percentage [10%]

First Line: What this would do, is block anyone who has been reported for RMT regardless of how many people have reported them (but only for me because I set it to do so)
Second Line: What this would do, is block anyone who has been reported for trolling but only if at least 10% of the people in the zone have blocked them.

Percentages should be calculated as you zone into an area based on who is in the zone as you are zoning into it by querying their blacklists.

Option 3:

Finish your addon system so we can make chat mods and your player mod community can do this for you.

I do agree with several people's statements that it would be truly awesome to have a right click + report option that can also blist the player for you. Having a special button to report the player as an RMT or spambot could be extra helpful too.

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Originally Posted by Amnesia

Why would anyone legitimately need to enter a shout every 5 seconds?

How about a delay of 5 minutes for shouts, 3 minutes for yells and 1 minute for say? (No delay for tells)

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I've seen people have conversations in shouts and yells, so I think making the delay too long would irritate players who like to talk to people in the zone. The absolute most the delay should need to be is 1 minute. The delay won't be there to stop the RMT from spamming so much as it would be there to stop the scrolling long enough for players to be able to catch their name to blacklist it. Once they are blacklisted, you don't have to see their shouts anymore, so there is no reason to make this delay too long so that players can't communicate with each other as easily. The key here is to do things to make things harder on the gil sellers while simultaneously making it easier for players to add to blacklist and/or report them without also inconveniencing the players needlessly.

They could also implement something that automatically blocks shouts with a url included rather easily, that never solves the issue fully though. It's best to restrict shouting to certain levels, implement a quicker method of reporting bots and having SE identify the bots much more quickly so they can be removed before they start sale shout wars.

I think it's fair to say you don't need to shout even once till level 15 maybe, although people will complain that makes the game seem "lonelier" in the low level zones even if it stops bots from spamming uldah. Hard to please everyone.

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Originally Posted by Krystal_Storm

If anyone has doubts that bots exist come down to the rock salt mines in Central Thanalan (half way north between the rats nest and the sil'dih excavation site) on the Behemoth server and tell me the miners there are not bots! : )

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Idk. When I am mining, I tend to watch tv/movies while moving my character around and mashing numpad0. I keep myself on a set route so that i don't really have to think too much about what i am doing so i can enjoy the show. Of course, i have accidentally sent some poor chaps a bunch of zero's a few times cause i wasn't paying much attention to what i had targetted.

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Originally Posted by AjoraOak

I think it's fair to say you don't need to shout even once till level 15 maybe, although people will complain that makes the game seem "lonelier" in the low level zones even if it stops bots from spamming uldah. Hard to please everyone.

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I think a lot of people when they first start need to be able to shout to find FCs and linkshells, and also sometimes to ask for raises. They also often have questions they need to ask in public channels in order to get help since they do not yet know anyone else they can ask.

I've played Aion where you can't talk in any public chat until lvl 15, and let me just say that it is unnecessary and a little annoying.

Just making it easier for people to report and blist bots + the chat delay should be more than sufficient to solve the spamming bot problem without inconveniencing or irritating players.

Also just imagine if it took away your right to any public chats anytime you changed to a class below lvl 15 o_o That would certainly get old fast.

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Originally Posted by Fyrebrand

I think reporting would be much easier on the players and the GMs if we could go Right Click > Report This Message. The game then gathers all the relevant data automatically: server, character name, location, time & date, chat channel, message content, etc. All that data is filled out by the client itself, in a ready-to-use format that is easily sorted by the system and GMs on the other end. The player needs only to select the category of report they are sending (this could be used to report harassment, or other infractions), and voila -- the whole report is accurate, complete, comprehensive, and sent off in a few seconds.

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Wow, it's my doppleganger!

Great minds really think alike, because I would definitely prefer to see something like this. It's similar to how it's handled it World of Warcraft. You right-click the name in the chat log, and there is a 'report spam' option. You are then given a popup that confirms you really want to report them for spamming. When you click yes, the report is sent and they are automatically blocked.

The problem with just blacklisting is it only helps us. It doesn't help SE by reporting the offender. However, until they make an easier way (instead of asking us to go through the help desk menus and filling out a report), a lot of people just won't bother.

I like the suggestions added so far and seeing as how every time I log in I spend close to 5 minutes or more of my play time adding players to my black list and reporting them having one simple function that would allow me to do multiple things at once would be fantastic.

I want to right click that players name in chat and have the option to whisper/tell, to report for spam or harassment. In doing the latter to if those were the options I chose that players account and all the names they would create on that account would go to my blacklist. That way I would not have to keep getting the same account making new names that I would also have to block.

A simple right click that would give your gm a full report of who did it, a copy of the chat log with time and place on it would save everyone a lot of time and make it that much faster and easier to get those accounts closed and or back to their rightful owners.

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Originally Posted by Cathicam

I want to right click that players name in chat and have the option to whisper/tell, to report for spam or harassment. In doing the latter to if those were the options I chose that players account and all the names they would create on that account would go to my blacklist. That way I would not have to keep getting the same account making new names that I would also have to block.

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I would love to see a feature that made blacklisting account wide! If you don't want to ever be spoken to by a person again on one character, you don't want to be bothered by them on any of their characters. Account-wide! Yes please!

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Originally Posted by Altheras

For the anti RMT task force have some way that you guys can collect data on who is blacklisted. Maybe use a tally system. This system could flag accounts who have been put on a large amount of blacklists. Once a character has been put on 100+ blists the account is flagged to be investigated. I wouldn't suggest an instant ban because it's always possible it's just a troll... but then who really wants to keep those either?

Please Like or comment and suggest your own ideas to help out with the RMT problem!

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OP's second paragraph is the best option I have heard. It has to be very time consuming to go through all of the harassment reports people are sending in. If they could just simply see a log of people getting blacklisted, it would easily identify the RMT spammers. Looking at the blacklisted players chat history would be simple because the only test coming out of them is the RMT shouts. This would also make it easier for us to make a difference, I try to take the time to report them but sometimes its just inconvenient to do so.

I have almost reached the end of my tether with the gil spammers in the towns. Like the one in Gridania right now as we speak endless messages all down the page drowning out any attempt at communication. Now i know you are going to say blacklist them and that is all well and good as i did that but i have to add a new one to the list EVERY time i visit a main city. I have a list of over 20 gil spammers and rising i sure hope the list doesn't have limitations. -.-

I agree it would really be nice to see a right click option to add to the blacklist. Some of their names really mess with my eyes and before I can spell it out in the BL it scrolls away. Also, it would be really nice to see a feature so when I do scroll back up the chat log it doesn't auto scroll to the end, this is SO annoying.

One thing that does help is the fact that you can copy and paste from the chat log. Copy their name and add to the blacklist.

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Originally Posted by Krystal_Storm

I have almost reached the end of my tether with the gil spammers in the towns. Like the one in Gridania right now as we speak endless messages all down the page drowning out any attempt at communication. Now i know you are going to say blacklist them and that is all well and good as i did that but i have to add a new one to the list EVERY time i visit a main city. I have a list of over 20 gil spammers and rising i sure hope the list doesn't have limitations. -.-

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The limit is 200 I believe :/ I have noticed that some of the names I added early on no longer show a name and it just says Deleted. So you can slowly clear some of the names off.

I had to go afk for a little while and when I came back my /tell was completely full of RMT spam. If SE would get rid of these spammers and bots (they have to be getting the gil from somewhere) then it would open up spaces on the server. I'm on Excaliber and my /blist has well over 30 different names on it. I know a character can have 8 spots, so one account can have 8 characters, so who knows. But something needs to be done, I'm going to run out of room on /blist if it isn't done.

Also it takes up my playtime, a time sink I'm really not happy to pay for. I do report each and everyone though. If I'm going to /blist, it only makes sense to report them.

I remember when GW 2 and Rift came out they had the same problem. All MMO's do. Rift and GW 2, both have excellent reporting tools for RMT.

I'm sure that SE won't be putting up with this for too long. They have a lot of experience with dealing with it in Final Fantasy 11. (Last time I played.)

Also, there should be a way to create a log of tells from people in your FC or your friends list so you can see your tell's from people you know separate from people you don't know.

I would like to see the game producers and developers working with each other to help combat the problem, as it is spread over all games not just this one. They themselves should be sharing tips and tricks on how each individual game is dealing with the problem, and letting other games use any solution that they have came up with, this is without all the bickering about whose owns the IP or demanding lots of money for the solutions. As I said it effects them all, so they should be trying to solve the problem together, rather than individually.

I noticed yesterday I went to blist and the seller had already deleted the character by the time I typed the name. At first I thought I spelled it wrong but I triple checked. There is a bit of an annoyance making new characters but it seems they are already using that as a workaround for getting caught - which would defeat the purpose of checking blist for offenders. Obviously this only works if the server is open to new characters.

I am always curious why this tactic even works. Even if I wanted to buy gil, I would not do it because some random person offered it to me. But it is probably similar to telemarketing; even though I know of no one who bought anything from one, they probably wouldn't do it if it had zero success rate.

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Originally Posted by Fyrebrand

Edit: Actually, I can't get this method to work. In fact, I have yet to get /blist add <Player Name> to return anything but an error message saying I can't do that. Am I doing it wrong??

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Try /blist add "Person's Name". That method always works for me.

I turned off shout while in major cities, it helps a little

remove the ability to use Tell and shout to lvl 15(of your main class)

if this happens you get less spams of Gil sellers since they need to use time to level not just delete wait 1 min then start spamming again.

also add the function when you Blacklist someone all there characters get Blacklisted.

when i fist Blacklist someone i dont want to talk to them ever. is that hard to understand?(only way to get unblacklisted is to make a tell once every 3th day if not reported) ofc you can always get someone els to pass a msg to the other guy.

It's not my job to provide security for Final Fantasy! LIMIT SPAM! ONLY ALLOW SO MANY MESSAGES PER MINUTE PER CHARACTER! I'm still trying to find security options for my online status, preventing non-friends from sending tells, etc... Where is the privacy option menu? Where is the security? I filtered my chat to not show shouts, now people are sending tells constantly. It's even happening out in the hunting areas!

Leviathan Server, do something about it

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Originally Posted by Altheras

I've seen people have conversations in shouts and yells, so I think making the delay too long would irritate players who like to talk to people in the zone. The absolute most the delay should need to be is 1 minute.

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I could live with 1 per minute. Any shorter than that and then you have people filling up your chat window with shouts and that's as bad as the gil spammers...

If ppl want to have a conversation, that's what tell is for. Or if there are a bunch of people, fine---have them form a party and /party talk all they want.

I'm more for a system that would remove them from the game quicker, and not just slow them down. The basic idea is on right-clicking on a name you would select spam/RMT. This would blist them on your chat as well as start a process that would bring in squares task force for RMT.

Then the system would start tracking that account/player so if they received a certain amount of complaints in a certain amount of time that it immediately kick them from the server and give them a 3-24 hour suspension or however long it took the task force to check the account.

If the account was found to be responsible for RMT spam then the account would be locked permanently. If a player comes forward and claims the account as a hijacked account they would be forced to put a authenticator on the account, and the next RMT violation from the account would cause the permanent loss of the account. The only way that it could possibly be overturned at this point is if there was a security flaw with all of square's tokens.

On the off chance that this could be used to 'swat' another player offline those who are found to be abusing this system in order to harass another player would be looking at a suspension that would start off at 72 hours and increase rapidly to the point of losing the account.

Too me this sounds like the best possible system to keep the RMT to a minimum. With a way to punish players who would want to use the system to harass others.

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Originally Posted by Rowyne

Wow, it's my doppleganger!

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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!! Stay back, demon!!!!!! ;-P

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Originally Posted by FluffyFluff

Try /blist add "Person's Name". That method always works for me.

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There we go, that worked! Thanks very much, the quotes were what did it. :-)

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Originally Posted by ZenZarco

It's not my job to provide security for Final Fantasy! LIMIT SPAM!

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Oh, wow. Really? Your brilliant idea is "LIMIT SPAM"? Sounds great, I'm sure they'll get right on that.

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Originally Posted by ZenZarco

Leviathan Server, do something about it

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I don't know what's worse -- that you think each server is a self-contained entity with its own unique methods for combating RMT spam -- or that, in thinking this, you are trying to push only your own server to eliminate spam.

I sadly have had to resort to turning anything but FC and LS chat off while in cities. The gil spam is beyond horrible. They are intentionally spamming such long message so quickly to keep honest players from being able to blacklist them. I wish we could just right click the text of the message and hit /ignore and be done with hit. These parasites are ruining the game experience for everyone.

I think the problem would go away if SE hired trained that would have access the city shout/yell logs in real time and then promptly sandbox the offending player the moment the abuse starts. If they can't spam shout for then a few seconds before the being sandboxed, they will give up.

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Originally Posted by lyse20

remove the ability to use Tell and shout to lvl 15(of your main class)

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This wouldn't do as much good as you think as many of the gil sellers are doing the main story quest chain to make the gil they are selling. :/ Also, it would inconvenience legitimate new players just looking for answers to questions and people to talk to.

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Originally Posted by Laraul

I think the problem would go away if SE hired trained that would have access the city shout/yell logs in real time and then promptly sandbox the offending player the moment the abuse starts. If they can't spam shout for then a few seconds before the being sandboxed, they will give up.

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If they had the man power to do this, that would be amazing, but an hourly paid employee for every single server 24 hours a day would get a bit extreme. Maybe they could set up some sort of system where a person could see the shouts of multiple servers in all the main cities at once? This might help them to quickly freeze out the RMT. Like you said, if they only get to shout for a few minutes before their entire account gets frozen, this would go a long way toward discouraging RMT.