SE not banning Goldsellers

[Drako]

Besides the other advise already given in this thread, my only additional advise on trying to blist people, esp shouts is this. If you are sitting in a zone that they are just shouting non stop, and your finding it very hard to scroll up to get their name, just zone out to another zone, or zone into your inn. This will stop the constant scrolling giving you time to find the name to /tell, or w/e you need to do to blist them. I see so many complaints of people not able to get the name cause of scrolling, I'm like dude just zone out somewhere.

I agree this is just a plague atm, but I'm sure they'll have a solution soon. It doesn't really bother me too much, i have my /shout and /yell on a separate chat tab, so it doesn't clutter my other channels. It's unfortunate I have to do this, sense it kinda disconnects me from people that may genuinely need assistance, but until its fixed that's my solution so it doesn't bug me. If i need to monitor the channels for important shouts, ill switch to the tab i put it on temporarily and deal with any /blisting i need to do.

Also forgot to add, before all the RMT shouting got bad, there was already a lot of crap in shout going on anyhow from players. So it isn't really a big loss either way, putting it on a separate tab, imho.

[Araye]

snip

So you don't think there will be FCs that gang up on some griefer and get him banned?

I think the GM in game is the best option.

The interesting thing is this: I read over and over how SE doesn't have the resources (man power) to sit and watch all the areas of every server blah blah.

RMT seems to be able to automate all sorts of things. I don't see why SE cannot create a GM bot or server side script that looks for RMT tells and shouts then bans. If the bot can't do this because there needs to be some sort of human intelligence deciding to ban, why can't they hire one person to monitor all areas for RMT shouts and tells? SE is not limited to be in only one area at as time.

Rather, they prefer to wait and do a sweep. This stops them for a short period of time but within a few days, RMT is back bigger than ever, until the next sweep.

I had more to say but 1000 char limit is a PITA

[Aleksandr]

I am of the impression that SE lacks the manpower to ban them in a timely manner, and even if they did, there are always more. It's not actually as bad as it used to be on Balmung.

On Balmung it is horrible. The same gathering bots are everywhere. The same ones I added to my Blist since head start are still there. The way you decrease RMT is quickly ban them. Not the whole I'll investigate them for several weeks let them make a lot of money and then ban them. You hurt their pocket books, by quickly banning every single last one as quickly as possible and eventually they will move to where they do not have to play wack a mole and can make easy money.

[Delsus]

On Balmung it is horrible. The same gathering bots are everywhere. The same ones I added to my Blist since head start are still there. The way you decrease RMT is quickly ban them. Not the whole I'll investigate them for several weeks let them make a lot of money and then ban them. You hurt their pocket books, by quickly banning every single last one as quickly as possible and eventually they will move to where they do not have to play wack a mole and can make easy money.

Please see my last post stating why bans don't work to decrease RMT, SE need to find the exploits being used on their servers to prevent the bots, if they can do this it will take much longer for RMT to make gil and the spam shouts will vanish.

[Nanga]

Left the game for abit due to University. Come back, we still have Goldsellers that spam SO MUCH, that I actually have to take a picture of the screen with my phone, to be able to have time to type his name into blacklist.

Because gold sellers are still out there spamming, this is hardly cause for making the very bold statement, "SE not banning Goldsellers."

I suppose you don't have a lot of knowledge about how the RMT "profession" works. Each tiny little aspect of their operation is separated by different accounts. There's Botanists who go out and collect botany items. Miners who go out and collect Mining items, Fishers who go out and collect Fishing items. Then there's accounts that those items are sent to and held. They fan those out to various accounts to put on the market to bring in gil. There's accounts that the gil from sales is sent to which holds that gil in small amounts here and there. And yes, there's also separate cheater accounts that do the hacks, exploits, etc, and they, too, have their own network of suppliers, consolidators, etc.

When someone places an order for gil, the consolidators THEN send various amounts of gil to yet another separate account, individually, and then that account fills the order by sending it to the person who ordered it. These accounts are usually stolen accounts. The spammers are also usually stolen accounts. They steal the accounts when potential customers go to the RMT websites and create accounts there with the exact same email and password as they use for the game, OR, they inadvertently install a keylogger on their computer...the most common is actually the former because naive people use the same passwords for everything.

The point of this whole explanation is to let you have somewhat of an idea of how massive an RMT operation is, and many of the accounts they use to do their work aren't even owned by them...they're stolen accounts. Most of their highly visible, dirty work is done on those stolen accounts, and so long as people keep buying what they're selling, you'll never see an end to the spammers no matter WHAT steps and actions a gaming company takes to suspend, ban, confiscate, etc. The mere fact that such a huge market exists actually demonstrates that SE has created some pretty huge areas of the game that players loathe doing, but must be done in order to keep the rest of the game sustainable. This is where RMT comes in. They eliminate what players do not like doing so they can get back to doing what they enjoy.

The real way to stop RMT isn't by suspending, confiscating and banning. It's by changing core design problems and flaws that encourage RMT to exist.

[Noshpan]

It's gotten a smidge less over the past week or so, but I still try to avoid Ul'dah unless the story takes me there (or Hunting Logs in Thanalan). I have over 60 names on my blacklist, only one of them isn't an RMT spammer. So far, the number of days that I've had without seeing RMT spam I can count on one hand.

While I wish they could deal with these accounts faster, I know that they can only go so fast during their investigations. I still wish they had a more effective means of reporting these RMT spammers, at the very least.

The only reason these RMT spammers still thrive (regardless of game) is because there is a demand for their services. So long as there are people who are willing to buy in-game currencies/items/hacks, there will always be those will provide those services for a price (and a willingness to for the consumer to compromise their account).

Just an addition, RMT will also hack legitimate sites and install a script that installs a keylogger to anyone visiting the site, or they will have infected ads on legitimate sites (which is why no script and adblockers are suggested) One of the biggest hacks in FFXI was after the popular wiki ffxiclopedia got hacked, a script was installed and masses of people got hacked.

Just because someone doesn't visit dodgy sites doesn't mean they won't get hacked.

MSNBC's website once had an advertisement on their site that had malicious coding attached to it that would then send emails out to everyone on your contact list with the same malicious coding. They were not aware of it until they were informed about this ad. One of the webcomics I read also had such an ad, and they were quick to deal with that (and report the advertising company). I've been using browser addons such as Ad Block (Ad Block Pro) and No Script ever since.

[Delsus]

*snip*

Just an addition, RMT will also hack legitimate sites and install a script that installs a keylogger to anyone visiting the site, or they will have infected ads on legitimate sites (which is why no script and adblockers are suggested) One of the biggest hacks in FFXI was after the popular wiki ffxiclopedia got hacked, a script was installed and masses of people got hacked.

Just because someone doesn't visit dodgy sites doesn't mean they won't get hacked.

[TetsuyaHikari]

A company that allows so many goldsellers, is usually viewed in a bad light.

Ummm... What? I'm pretty sure they aren't allowing them. If you'd check their notes on this sort of thing, there have been plenty of accounts already banned for RMT related charges. How would you propose they deal with them? Everything seems easier when you're the one standing on the sidelines :P

This has always been a problem in MMOs, regardless of how much manpower a company has.

[Reiterpallasch]

Except you know, they are banning them...? Pretty sure gil didn't go from $5 to $30 for no reason, and I hardly ever see shouts from them now. I still get the occasional whisper here and there, but it's down significantly from the start.

Tip: Never go by your blacklist to see if they're banning them. Banning an account does NOT make the characters show up in your list as (deleted).

[Darken]

Here is an idea. SE obviously does not have the resources to have someone moderating chat all day on every server in every Zone. What they could do is allow players to moderate for them. Not everyone, but they could utilize a select few players on each server as glorified mods that could at the very least mute those accounts preventing them from using chat until SE can review the logs at a later time.

You may say, blah blah people will abuse the system. SE can have strict rules set on those chosen to mod. Abuse of the system would result in either a suspension or ban from the game. The worst someone could do is lock up a persons chat for a few days. SE would have to be very particular about who they choose as well.