How to eliminate Real money gil sale spammers

[Lamentations]

The only way to ever truly end RMT is for people to stop buying gil. Unfortunately, IMO SE is going about stopping RMT exactly the wrong way. They're trying to make it so hard to get gil (making crafting worthless, low resell to vendors, low gil drops, teleport fees) that only RMT can succeed at making gil, as they're the only ones who have the time to devote themselves to making gil because they've literally nothing else to do. Meanwhile, people who are desperate for gil, whether to buy a house or get materia or level a craft, end up being the ones buying gil. They have, ironically, created a marketplace where RMT can thrive.

They're very efforts to stop RMT are enabling RMT, and they don't see it.

I have tried to explain these very observations before, finally someone else who gets SE's **sbackwards approach to RMT's.

[HeroSamson]

I want something done about it also, I am fed up with seeing their spam, we all pay 9-15 dollars me being the 15 dollars and I am sure a lot are doing the same.

I shouldn't have to sit there Blisting all damn day every day for spam and they spam me 4-10 times daily once i blist a new one pops up.

Listen SE make a Option Box where I can click on or off if they aren't on my friends list then they can't send me a tell please and leave it optional that way I can check mark it if people feel its unfair but I'll let you know I will be the first person to check that box so I don't have to put up with the crap anymore.

[HeroSamson]

Can't they add a filter likePlayer set the filter, not mandatory imposed to all)
A) Denied all chat from Level 15 or below characters
B) Add exception to FRIENDSLIST and FC.
This removes the concerns SE has on restrictions. Problem solved.
Could any SE staff respond how viable this is? Or is it too demanding on servers.

I like the second option people who are in Linkshell, Free company or friendslist and leave a option to check box turn on or off if I wanna see others messages but I assure you I will turn this option on so I don't have to see it anymore, I do not care if RMT pay subscription they are breaking tos.

[Aethaeryn]

I am at 84/200 on my blacklist since 2.0, and not all of those are RMT. Gonna guess that's because Excalibur is always locked for new character creation. I only get whispers from RMT a couple of times per day usually.

Anyway, I'm sure this has already been said (too tired to read 14 more pages of stuff), buuuuuut... Requiring a certain level to whisper people is ineffective at stopping RMT whisper/chat spam. I've played several other games that tried this, and it's really only a temporary fix. :/

[PhyloVezana]

The guys at Extra Credits did an episode once about harassment where they propose an alternative to the blacklist style of blocking messages:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt9GwmOWoqo

I think their approach to auto-mute is a pretty solid resolution to the mass messaging style that spammers use. While I can't speak for the requirements on a technical basis, the concept is fairly simple. What we really need is a feature that rather than simply adding to the blacklist, we can report a person as sending spam(e.g. right-click the name, "Report Spam"). If a certain number of people report spam from the same character in a set amount of time, that person is disabled from sending tells/shouts/etc. This doesn't have to be a permanent lock, and is open to a review process to get the chat functionality re-enabled.

[Velocy]

I really have to agree on a "Chatban" Feature. I came from another MMORPG where this was well established. If a Player gets reported for spam / blacklisted by 20 People within 15 minutes, this will take away his ability to Chat for 24h

This Feature has been fine tuned later in the game to exclude Party Chat and Guild Chat. These would still be possible, since the Feature got "exploided" by People to prevent other guilds from Advertising for member recruitment.

[Nova_Dresden]

Your example is something that again can be track by the sql transaction table history

It can be tracked, but it's not seen as a one-sided transaction which makes it harder to track. Even if the item in question doesn't make sense it still shows someone bought something from you.

Gil selling and the inflated item cost (with the expection of land/house which is a static value set by SE in relation to the amount of gil in each worlds system), is a chicken and the egg concept. Prices are high because either the item is rare/hard to make/etc and has a value higher that players are willing to spend their gil on. Primal Clear is that expensive because people are willing to pay for a carry. BUT all these prices are inflated do to the fact that right now you can buy all the gil you feel like from an RMT and the odds on you getting banned for it are low compared to the risk of the buy. If the gil in the economies was what SE expected at the start based on quest rewards, leve payouts and fates, then prices for everything would be lower as the amount of gil in game would be corospondingly lower. Why do you think the FC house cost so much? it is remove all that gil from the economy.

Every charge in the game, be it from SE or players, is defined by the money available in circulation. This includes the gil present on gil sellers wheter it's in circulation or being held. I've talked with several people about the primal clears for 1M and we're still taken aback as to who believes that is a common amount of gil to have on one character. I have ~500k on my toon at any given time and that's maintaining what I can. Gil is easily accessible to anyone willing to buy it which becomes increasingly more likely when prices stay high. High prices create more demand for gil which opens up more markets for the gil sellers. It's one of the reason why SE made sure that NO best in slot item could be crafted because they didn't want anyone paying real money to buy gear to win.

Your example of WoW is only based on your experience, I played Wow for 7 years and yes I got some spam in game, more spam in email out of game. What you are probably not aware of is that Blizzard is very aggressive behind the scenes in monitoring gold.I have had several Guild members go poof for gold buying (granted less then got poofed for using "glide" and or botting). Also remember WoW is a lot more mature economy, the cost of a basic mount today is cheap compared to vanillia. This is still a new economy and one that the Devs are still tweaking.

If Se wants the economy to be relatively stable as WoWs then they need to have the same proactive monitoring of both ends of the exchange.

WoW's economy doesn't have more stability due to maturity. It's more stable because gold isn't the driving factor in the game. It buys food, training, repairs, flight paths, and cosmetic or trivial items such as mounts or pets. You could buy stuff from the AH, but it was much easier to farm your own mats to craft. Nothing really used gold after that outside trivial items or rare cosmetic stuff. Tokens, valor points, justice points, or emblems back in the day was what drove your gearing. Gold was a secondary currency and so there wasn't as much of a market on that game as there is on this game.

I like the second option people who are in Linkshell, Free company or friendslist and leave a option to check box turn on or off if I wanna see others messages but I assure you I will turn this option on so I don't have to see it anymore, I do not care if RMT pay subscription they are breaking tos.

That's a little harder to have than you think. If you block characters below that level then a new player you want to friend will have to wait until level 15 to /tell you they're in game and receive a FC or LS invite. It's counterproductive to having new players join the game (which is something the game needs) if they have to spend their first hours in the game alone and unable to ask for help because of this.

[Cyrusskorrey]

report RMT harassment button for tells.

let SE figure out how it will function as far as dealing with the ...

[Wulfyn]

Someone suggested checking players gil. With all the Primal sales going on(which I dont think was not intended) there is going to be a market for gil. Thus said, if it someone did buy gil then wouldn't they have to confiscate gil w/e from the primal sellers? IE: bad gil.
I just don't really see that working. Atleast on my server with the prices.

I can't bl anymore gil spammers since my list is full and I rarely see any names deleted. Maybe there should be some sort of filter that automatically picks up repeated /tells? When it does it auto blocks that accounts ability to send /tells.

[BLaCKnBLu3B3RRY]

i play on the PS3. it takes very little time to report. get a cheap 10~12$ keyboard from Wal-Mart.

don't get me wrong. a quicker solution to reporting RMT bots would be nice.

but honestly. 15 seconds(or less) to report one /tell.

you must be ever so firm with these bots! one day we shall revel!



in any case...

just keep reporting them. it may not be so effective. and they seem to pop up faster then they're banned. but the fact is is that if peeps just stop reporting, they're gonna get stronger and stronger.

keep reporting them so SE doesn't have to play catch-up. besides... it doesn't matter if it's a nuisance. if you aren't reporting you're just giving them a free pass to infest this wonderful game. or maybe peeps don't love the game enough? i joke :P


just keep reporting!