Petition for a Realistic Solution to RMT's

[Culfinrandir]

The only issue with "only allow tells from friends" is that the RMT will turn to shouts & yells. There's some (albeit limited) evidence of this already occurring.

What I'd like is the inability to use /tell /shout & /yell until the level 15 quest is completed that allows air travel "The xxx Envoy". Yes, it's harsh but it's clear that the current situation is becoming intolerable.

Most people play to level 15 at their first sitting I'd imagine so it won't really affect them too much. I know that sending tells etc weren't even on my radar until a lot further along.

[sarehptar]

I think a lot of people suggesting that stopping the spam will have zero effect on the RMT are pretty short-sighted. Demand has a serious effect on sales, and if you can curb demand by limiting awareness of the product, you can indeed curb sales. Imagine if a major company with an aggressive marketing campaign was suddenly outlawed from advertising and could only advertise briefly and furtively before being caught. Would that company get as much business as it did before its advertisements were stopped? No way. And as the number of customers who are aware of the business dwindles due to the lack of ability to consistently advertise to bring in new customers, the company will eventually stop making enough profit to make their efforts worth it, and they will move elsewhere.

Let's use the drug dealer example--yes, major busts on large amounts of drugs are great because they take the product off the market. But imagine if no drug dealers were allowed to hang out on the street corners in the first place or could only do a single sale before being caught (this is not feasible IRL, but it is much more feasible in-game). The accessibility of drugs would dramatically decrease. Suppliers would have fewer people to peddle their supply out to because far fewer people would know where to buy in the first place.

Are players who buy gil always going to buy gil? Yes. The truly dedicated gil buyers will always be there. But with fewer advertisements, fewer (new) players will know where to go to buy gil in the first place, leading to a decreased customer base over time and ultimately decreasing the overall profit from gil selling. This method would never be able to fully stop gil sellers, but to say it would have no effect is ridiculous.

I also agree that the possibility of abuse for new reporting systems is being exaggerated. There are already plenty of ways to harass other players in this game. If Square was so frightened of adding anything that might result in possible abuse against other players, we wouldn't have the vote kick feature at all. Automatically linking/reporting text with no option to edit it before doing so is far less likely to result in abuse than many of the other systems already in place.

I am definitely for this. It's not just a matter of being annoying. The RMT are so bad on some worlds that you can't even use the chat because your text is pushed off the screen by five or six incoming tells a minute. One or two tells every once in a while is one thing, but when it makes an integral feature of the game difficult to use, something needs to be done about it.

[Kyuuen]

Not a bad idea, but I'm encouraging suggestions that won't affect new players. Sometimes somebody will want to ask you for help/advice, and I think they should be able to.

Well as I suggested, have an on/off option in the settings. For new players it can be set to off by default, until they wish to turn it on. If you mean they should be able to ask anyone a question at any time, then we're back where we started trying to combat RMT adverts. People could always learn to say/shout/yell in cities for help/advice, cities aren't just for random gatherings, market boards, and the few that run casinos and other silly nonsense.

Then there's peoples FC's they could rely on, if they're in one.

[Gramul]

I think the best long term solution would be to make it where it's no longer profitable for them to keep it up. How about a lengthy character creation cool down (24 hours per character for example).

[LandricFrey]

All of my likes.

For being so firm on your stance that nothing can be done, you've made one of my favorite suggestions thus far in your previous post!

[LandricFrey]

Well as I suggested, have an on/off option in the settings. For new players it can be set to off by default, until they wish to turn it on. If you mean they should be able to ask anyone a question at any time, then we're back where we started trying to combat RMT adverts. People could always learn to say/shout/yell in cities for help/advice, cities aren't just for random gatherings, market boards, and the few that run casinos and other silly nonsense.

Then there's peoples FC's they could rely on, if they're in one.

Fair enough. Added.

[SarcasmMisser]

I think a lot of people suggesting that stopping the spam will have zero effect on the RMT are pretty short-sighted. Demand has a serious effect on sales, and if you can curb demand by limiting awareness of the product, you can indeed curb sales. Imagine if a major company with an aggressive marketing campaign was suddenly outlawed from advertising and could only advertise briefly and furtively before being caught. Would that company get as much business as it did before its advertisements were stopped?

Like cigarette companies? They are still a plague, they whine about losses but any obituary about their industry would be incredibly optimistic to say the least (or in your own words, "short sighted").

Let's use the drug dealer example--yes, major busts on large amounts of drugs are great because they take the product off the market. But imagine if no drug dealers were allowed to hang out on the street corners in the first place or could only do a single sale before being caught (this is not feasible IRL, but it is much more feasible in-game). The accessibility of drugs would dramatically decrease. Suppliers would have fewer people to peddle their supply out to because far fewer people would know where to buy in the first place.

Let's use the worse example you could possibly conjure, the war on drugs is a misguided failure. You can't artificially strangle supply from any end other than demand in a market economy.

Are players who buy gil always going to buy gil? Yes. The truly dedicated gil buyers will always be there. But with fewer advertisements, fewer (new) players will know where to go to buy gil in the first place.

This is naive to the extreme, people who want to buy will find out where to buy. I don't recommend revisiting your war on drugs analogy for this point because it is an even worst example than the last time it was tried. The advertisements are an exercise in competition; to make the choice for the buyer. The answer is not how we can roadblock them from getting what they desire because that is an arms race you can't win, but why they desire it, and if these reasons can change.

I also agree that the possibility of abuse for new reporting systems is being exaggerated. There are already plenty of ways to harass other players in this game. If Square was so frightened of adding anything that might result in possible abuse against other players, we wouldn't have the vote kick feature at all.

There are thousands of accounts banned every week what on earth makes people think that the problem is that they're not playing whack a mole fast enough? How do they reconcile the fact that an automated reporting system as suggested is a reactive system which means absolutely nothing is done to stop tells from happening in the first place? If this much banning does not stem the tide it is obvious that a ban is not an effective countermeasure, because that is a cost of business and it clearly isn't steep enough to crush the margin.

Obviously the biggest grievance isn't the existence of RMT, which exists in every online game, but the visibility of it. The easy fix is to introduce filtering options which 3rd party apps are already providing into the UI (or you know just get that addon API out as the community proves it can fix issues faster than SE). The impossible fix is to target the RMT itself, and the only way to stop them is to make sure there is no money to be made in the game. If you are to be serious about addressing RMT you have to address the factors in both ends of the transaction; why are players motivated to buy gil, why is it profitable for those who want to sell gil. It requires changing the design of the game fundamentally to reduce the avenues of making money and reduce the need to buy gil, and if this cannot be reconciled with other considerations of game design then it is not a solvable problem.

[Avenger]

Hopefully OP can add some of the other suggestions that people have noted to the original post, if they haven't already been added:

1. Communications preferences/whitelist

Permit /tell from: √ (friend list, linkshell(s), free company, people in party) x (people in other zones, spammers)
Permit /invite from: √ (friend list, linkshell(s), free company, people in zone) x (people in other zones, spammers)
etc.

Hopefully this will help avoid:

"Friend request from Spam Bot."
"Spam Bot has invited you to a party."
"You have been invited to join the linkshell Spammers R'Us."

This would also probably end up moving all random chat (in addition to spam) into say/yell/shout, for better or for worse.

2. Anti-spam filters/add-ons

Hopefully this would make it easier to block spammy URL patterns and/or the messages that contain them.

"100% Handwork Guaranteed. You'll get whisper." :-P

[Avenger]

It's amazing that you still can't immediately blacklist spammers who sent you a friend request!
You have to decline the request first, which is a multi-button process on PS4 at least.
This mechanism has been abused by spammers for a long time and it's still an issue.
At least I have an FC so spammers can't invite me to theirs.

[Aerowaffle]

It's been suggested that RMT spam would be lessened by some sort of character creation restriction in the form of limiting how many characters you can create in X time. The disadvantage to this would be, any new character wanting to create a new character because they didn't like how their character looks after viewing it in game, wouldn't be able to.

But what about using a Captcha system? I mean, it's used to prevent automated account creation in the internet browser, why not use it to prevent automated character creation?