In Game SPAM issues Suggestion

[Changillo]

I know this has been going on for a very long time, recently it has become increasingly more annoying and the Black List is no help. I wanted to make a suggestion.

Instead of using the Black List, can you add an additional list, lets say SPAM, to tag those specifically that continue to post messages about money and websites. This can be similar to add people to as in the black list, however it would be great that in doing so it logs the time and if possible spam message to report, and further more it would be great to have this linked to specific GM's that are tasked with handling these accounts. This would help with reporting these issues. There must be a way on the GM side to track the names to accounts they are linked to in order to assist in locating them and banning them.

[Bacent]

What's to stop players from adding random users on there just because they were told to shut up? (Like user A is being annoying, user B tells them to quit it or called them a n00b, and users A puts them on their spam list)

[Amnesia]

What's to stop players from adding random users on there just because they were told to shut up?

SE of course knows who put someone on the RMTlist. And they have access to the chat logs. Misusing the RMTlist could be a punishable offense.

[Caldara]

SE needs to give us right click report AND an easier way to empty our blist (which takes a LOT of time away from the stuff and want and need to do, to make more room for more RMT)

[Sargerous]

Here's a thought: The Gil Spammers use a permanent account to farm the Gil etc, and because accounts get banned for advertising and trading the Gil, I believe they are using the 14 day free trial on a new email address, so when it gets banned, they are not losing anything. I think that if they limit chat options to /say and /party only on trial accounts, the spammers need to buy the game to spam their adds, making it so they actually lose in real life for their annoying actions.

[Sargerous]

also, the right-click/report option is a fantastic idea as well

[Kataz]

I have put my input on a ton of these gil spam threads but I don't think SE has any intention of taking any feed back on the issue. There are so many ways to address it, the fact that they have not implemented even one of the countless options is quite frustrating. Here are the good options I have seen others recommend or have recommended myself -

1 - You, as a player, should have the option to set a level threshold where players under a certain level cannot sent you tells. Set it to 2, set it to 49, it would be up to you as the player to decide. Gil farmers do NOT use level 50 accounts to spam tells, they use level 1 characters. I doubt a spammer will take the time to level a spam bot to level 2, or 5, or anything, considering the player set threshold can only be known to the player.

2 - Option to click on the spammer and report abuse. Make it a double "ARE YOU SURE" situation, and after making double sure that its a spam bot you never want to hear from again, it gets reported to SE and it gets blocked from sending you tells/friend requests. This should NOT add the spam bot to the black list since the black list only has room for 200 blocks. This double sure option should be a block that works different from black list.

3 - Impose restrictions on level 1 characters - least likely to be well received - but basically put level 1 characters in a sandbox, rework the first couple quests, and then only after completing the first couple "welcome to the game" quests does a player have the ability to send tells.

4 - Restrict the trial game accounts to only say/party chat, which isn't a bad idea really, but I have had friends hop on and give this game a go on a trial account and them not being able to /tell to me would have really put them off. Basically when a company gives you a trial and hopes to earn your money based on your interaction with their trial, that trial should be one hell of a salesman, and restrictions are counter productive to that.

While we are on the subject, how many of the gil spammers on your blacklists have actually been changed to status (deleted)? Cause the answer is not many on mine, which tells me that those spam accounts still exist and were never purged by SE. To that I raise a big WTF.

Most of the excuses I have heard defending SE's practices is that they don't want to limit the social interaction in their game. To that I pose this issue - The current "in the know" way of not getting bothered by gil spam is to set your status to busy. While in busy, no one can send you tells, friend requests, party invites, and I found out yesterday that it even blocks ready checks. So SE, what is preferred? Player controlled social interaction blocks, or most of your population running around in busy mode where no one can interact with them ever?

[Changillo]

I agree with you completely. Thread response erased for some reason. But these are excellent ideas that should be implemented now.

[Maquinna]

a right click, report RMT would be nice, than as each report happens, it steps up chances to ban the account, not just the character being reported. along with it, pulls the chat logs for the player being reported. if found to be posting options to buy gill goes the direction of the ban, if not, the player reporting gets a step closer to a form of punishment; ie; not able to use DF for awhile, and repeat offenses leading to temp or perm ban for abuse as incentive not to misuse it for raging on someone for a disagreement. just some food for thought.