Losing the RMT spam war SE?

[Darius-Stormcrow]

^ I bet this feature would make a lot of people feel better even if it didn't really do anything.

[Aerowaffle]

Get real. RMTs are here because they have a market. On Balmung, I had rarely if even a tell. Bad example cuz of character restriction BS ? yeah ok, how about Cerberus (my current server) ? It's not overcrowded like Balmung, 100% open, yet decently crowded and the market there is overly inflated because of a crafting LS negotiating the prices and overpricing like there's no tomorrow, so RMTs should be here and spamming like hell right ?

But nope. I'm not even sure I got a single tell in the last month. Why ? because they have no market on my server.


You want to blame someone for the RMT feast ? BLAME THE STUPID PLAYERS. You live on a server where they have clients. Your loss.

and seriously, can you name even ONE (not dying) successful MMO where RMTs aren't selling ? They are always here, because people always buy their gold. Even in a game where gold is as insignificant as in FFxiv. No matter what the companies did to make the spam stop, the RMT were able to bypass it

Yes, RMT will always be where there is a market. But that's absolutely no reason to simply give up and stop trying to prevent them.

On the heavy spam servers, the tell system is either getting placed in different tab (to be ignored), or players are simply placing themselves in busy status to avoid the spam. It's unacceptable that there are no preventive measures taken to avoid this problem. Not only that, but farming bots seem to roam free for multiple weeks, despite being reported (which fuels the whole RMT machine).

Yes, The buyers are to blame for creating a market for gil selling in the first place. But they're also the hardest targets to hit. A bot that creates multiple accounts to spam send hundreds of tells is easy to spot. A bot that is in one area for 16 hours constantly killing the same group of enemies, not responding to anything else, is easy to spot and ban.

So why aren't they getting taken care of quickly?

[Kuwagami]

snip

because banning a bot has little to no effect. If you value your time, you'll try to go and get the head. Little fishes (tell spams, farming bots) have no value because they are replaced faster than you can ban them. Instead, you'll want to go for either the sellers themselves (which is hard to do because you can't really ban their ip and think they won't come again, can you ?) or the buyers, which are for the most part awfully hard to spot right away because the majority of them do little transactions.

As much as the farming bots hurt the economy (shards and materias are directly funding RMTs), they aren't worth getting rid of them. Especially shards bots, as it's just that fast to have an other bot ready to take the vacancy. SE is trying to get rid of the selling accounts rather than the gatherers as far as I understand their process.

But that's absolutely no reason to simply give up and stop trying to prevent them.

Actually there is only one way to get rid of RMT. Have a game where you can't trade, and where there is no levelling up. At all. Want something ? Go get it or craft it yourself.
That would be a shitty game.

And even with that, I'm sure they would find something to sell.


Don't take it personally, but people thinking that banning the bots is going to help are just deluding themselves. It won't help. It has never helped. And it will never help. You'll just see different name tags every time instead of the same one.

And if the farming bots bother you, just MPK them. It will still be useless, but if you can feel better that way, well...

[raela]

+9000 for account-wide blacklist. These RMTs would be forced to buy new copies of the games to make a new account just to spam us further. Yes please

Except these are actually stolen accounts/credit cards of people who bought gil, or, gil sellers scamming SE by using credit card charge backs. The gil sellers aren't paying for their spam accounts.

[Taliph]

1. Daily mass banning of bots that are farming and bots that are spamming.
2. RMT replace said bots, which costs them money.
3. RMT increase prices to cover increase in costs, losing some customers.
4. RMT has less money to replace bots.
5. Return to step one, RMT decrease daily.

The whole problem with this is if SE decreases RMT they also decrease their own income, which is why SE chooses to maintain the status quo.

Except these are actually stolen accounts/credit cards of people who bought gil, or, gil sellers scamming SE by using credit card charge backs. The gil sellers aren't paying for their spam accounts.

Those stolen credit cards cost them money or time.

They also don't account for the bots that are still unbanned and operating since launch.

[Kuwagami]

1. Daily mass banning of bots that are farming and bots that are spamming.
2. RMT replace said bots, which costs them money.
3. RMT increase prices to cover increase in costs, losing some customers.
4. RMT has less money to replace bots.
5. Return to step one, RMT decrease daily.

The whole problem with this is if SE decreases RMT they also decrease their own income, which is why SE chooses to maintain the status quo.

here are the real steps of your "idea"

1. Daily mass banning of bots that are farming and bots that are spamming.
2. RMT replace said bots, which is free for them as they use hacked credit cards and accounts.
3. Meanwhile, SE is losing money fighting a pointless war against an enemy with infinite supplies.
4. SE stops throwing money by the window.
5. RMT laugh a bit and go back to business as if nothing ever happened

didn't see that coming ? Did you really think it was free to investigate RMT reports, RMT accounts and then banning them, one by one, manually ?



edit : at this point, I'll just grab some pop corn and watch people deluding themselves I think..

[Taliph]

You know that they likely would only use stolen credit info for spam bots... somehow that same bot who has farmed wind shards since launch hasn't had its card reported? This is known as 0-day info, meaning it won't be valid long.

No, most RMT run just like any other business, with advertising costs (spam bots) product generation (farm bots), if you ban enough bots (and the info associated with them) you make the game unprofitable to operate in.

[Kuwagami]

You know that they likely would only use stolen credit info for spam bots... somehow that same bot who has farmed wind shards since launch hasn't had its card reported? This is known as 0-day info, meaning it won't be valid long.

No, most RMT run just like any other business, with advertising costs (spam bots) product generation (farm bots), if you ban enough bots (and the info associated with them) you make the game unprofitable to operate in.

if it was that simple, there wouldn't be any RMTs left in any MMO. Just how long has it been in the MMO industry ? Everything has already been tried. And everything has failed. Every single time.

[Taliph]

if it was that simple, there wouldn't be any RMTs left in any MMO. Just how long has it been in the MMO industry ? Everything has already been tried. And everything has failed. Every single time.

Funny, you seem to ignore where I explicitly stated that effectively combating RMT cuts into the developers bottom line. It really comes down to this, no developer is willing to cut into their own bottom line enough to truly rid any game of RMT. They will however make a calculated decision as to how much they will combat it to appease the players. RMT will always win as long as developers let them.

[kyuven]

The only reason RMTs keep "winning" is because people keep visiting their sites and getting keyloggers on their computers, thus giving them more CCs/accounts to use for more spamming and gold to sell.
If a company would actually educate their playerbase on what RMTers actually are and do, then the numbers would drop drastically.
You could probably mitigate more RMT bots coming into existence by forcing your clientele to watch a 5 minute video on what RMTers are and how to stop them than by mass banning bots that get replaced in 5 minutes because people are too stupid to stop visiting these sites in the first place.
Just looking at this thread is more than enough evidence that people really don't grasp how RMTers actually work.