RMT Advertising on Leviathan Server is Off the Charts!

[Culfinrandir]

Actually a few weeks ago I cleared out my blacklist completely which had been growing since July. Before that day I'd only deleted the last few as I'd been told numerous times that RMT scum only last a few minutes.

Well, what a surprise I got when some of the names that had been near the top of the blacklist started to spam again. It seems like they're either reusing dormant accounts or they're recycling the list of names for characters.

As per the OP, it's getting terrible on Leviathan. I'm even getting the tell sound as I'm first logging in. They're spamming sometimes every 30 seconds then reducing to every few minutes.

[azlewood]

Its bad on Lamia also, i got tells from Four different websites as soon as i logged in.
its picked up and going to get worst as we get closer to the expansion

[Thayos]

SE can fix this problem in three steps:

1) Automatically remove permanently banned characters from our blacklists.

2) Create a "Report as spam" option that's selectable by clicking on tells (just as "add to blacklist" is), with two confirmation boxes to safeguard against accidental reports.

3) Instantly ban accounts that have been reported as spam by more than 100 players (and only count player accounts that haven't been flagged for spam; this would defend against retaliation/trolling by RMT accounts). EDIT: Also, only make this option available when someone has sent YOU a tell. On the backend, SE could have another automated script to disregard spam reports sent more than 5 minutes after the original /tell. This would safeguard against harassment and completely, 100 percent prevent RMT from abusing this.


Boom, done. No more RMT tells, and our black lists won't be packed full.


In addition, RMT characters send far more tells than the average player does. SE could implement some kind of back-end script that calls attention to accounts with disproportionate /tell activities or unusual /tell patterns such as sending just one /tell to one person, another to another person, another to another person, etc., in tight sequence and without any follow-up conversation.

Seriously, it's embarrassing that SE hasn't nipped this in the bud already. This isn't rocket science. They could end RMT /tells today if they wanted to.

EDIT: EVEN BETTER!!!

Rather than ban flagged RMT accounts, SE could basically mute them so they can't interact with other players. However, do this so that RMT don't know whether they've been muted... like don't have their /tells appear to be rejected by them. This way, at least SE can continue collecting their monthly fees while making their efforts less financially productive.

[Naliee]

I know it's really bad on some servers so could be PLEASE get some kind of answer to this why nothing is being done?

And I'm saying nothing cause it seems like nothing is being done.

[JayCommon]

It's been terrible on Goblin for about the same amount of time mentioned in the OP.

The "Hi Indaki Sativa, are you a good player?" tells have been largely replaced with about 30 hearts to begin the tell, and several more to end it. I usually won't blacklist them until I see either the exact same messgae over and over, or the same character name send me a tell more than once.

I've had to blacklist a lot of people in the last week based on my criteria...

[Kio]

It would be greatly helpful if there was a separate blacklist for spam. It's luckily very rare that I feel the need to blacklist an actual player, but the select few I did were long ago lost amongst the sea of RMT names. I run the risk of whitelisting them again while purging the list to add more RMT to it.

I really wish we could get an official response to this. I'm starting to feel a bad relationship with the company for ignoring such vocalized issues just because the issue in question is a problem primarily within only one population.

[Amaya-Asha]

In the last week, there has been a massive increase in the number of tells (and now shouts) advertising RMT through various websites. The amount is now many times that of normal, and this has been mentioned by dozens of players in the last few days. Many players are now setting themselves to a status of "Busy" to avoid this spam, which in turn makes the game less social. I greatly appreciate Square Enix's dedication to dealing with RMT violations of ToS. I hope that an increase in vigilence to stop this behavior will allow RMT to return to minimal levels.

P.S. All our blacklists are full! This Lala is begging! Give us larger blacklists and hunt down these gil spammers!

Many thanks!

Sweet Popoto

Totally agree RMT spam is worse.

[Culfinrandir]

I logged on tonight at 19:50 UST, did some housekeeping and ported to Gridania, then travelled to Hawthorn Hut via Sweetbloom Pier. Noticed most people had busy status around the Hut. I thought to myself, that's unusual, can't be that bad. At 20:00 the tells started and I got one every TWO minutes until I just said screw it, ported home and logged off.

It's now getting so annoying having to switch off tells (a useful tool if not misused), casino crap, auto shouts spewing from a certain Hunt Tool, yells (which are now being used because people are ignoring tells & shouts), that I just can't be bothered being in open world any more.

If I was a new player I'd not be willing to pay for this. It's like a cross between Facebook and a F2P.

[Miste]

Excalibur has been getting a bit worse now also. I think there used to be two different websites that the RMT were spamming for now there is a third in the mix. I can get one tell every 5-10 minutes sometimes or sometimes like 3-5 tells in the span of 3 minutes. There are like tons of people with /busy on almost constantly now, and I also put it up sometimes.

I also used to have the /tell noise setup so I could hear if a friend sent me one but I've had to turn it off since it just ends up annoying me cause of the RMT spam.

[Blissa]

All I have to say is the same bot farming wind shards in bent branch since last summer. I see a lot of bots all over the place on the server. We are never going to get rid of RMT tells as long as the bots are running and making gil 24/7. What SE needs to do is permanently ban anyone buying or selling gil and people will think twice about buying gill if they know they are going to lose their account.