Petition for a Realistic Solution to RMT's

[Edeline]

Like I posted on other threads:

You can't stop gilsellers. The only thing you can do is restrict their actions, making it harder for them to the point it's not profitable. Now it comes to the part where you have to carefully choose those in order not to hurt your legit community. One suggestion taken from other games was the options to block incoming tells from certain levels range. Spammers are lv1 chars that get deleted every few mins and remade after, even reporting them is useless because they'll no longer exist. Give people the option to block them directly at Lv1. This would force spammer bots to either give up or level up. Leveling up means time lost for them, and then getting banned after spending time in leveling up, not profitable.



Some say this is very newbie unfriendly. But truth is, the way it is going right now, we have the Busy status, which basically works the same but it punishes us, not being able to be traded, tells from friends, invited to parties or whatever. So far I've never got a tell from a newbie asking stuff, they usually ask on Shout. Also in the hypothetical case I don't want to be whispered or "bothered" I would ignore those newbie tells anyway, so this wouldn't really hurt them, but it would help the rest as we're not obliged to reply.

-- Also --

Adding a right click "RMT report" button. If a spammer gets reported via this button a certain amount of times, said reported player gets a pop up with a captcha to enter something to verify it's not a bot. If captcha isn't entered correctly within 1 minute, that player or account gets suspended. If a legit players is abused through this, ticket verification would work for this, with GMs checking logs from the reported/suspended character.

[kyuven]

There is a single reason why SE will never do something permanently about RMT. Money.

Not really. A LOT of these accounts are compromised, or purchased with stolen credit cards.
Ever had to deal with doing a chargeback? Yeah, SE has to do one of those whenever someone reports their card stolen. They not only have to refund the money paid for the account, but they have to pay a penalty many times.
And in the case of stolen accounts, they don't gain money but have to expend resources when the person attempts to reclaim their account.
Basically, SE doesn't actually make money off RMT accounts. The only thing they "gain" is padding their account...counts. That's it.

[giantslayer]

I'm getting a little tired of people saying that nothing can be done and the solution is for people to stop buying. Yes, that is the ideal solution. It also happens to be the same ideal solution to every problem in society, such as theft, murder, rape, drug use, etc: "If people stop doing bad things, then the bad things won't happen!" For those of us in the real world, this is not referred to as a "solution," but as "wishful thinking."

Furthermore, this is not a discussion on how to eliminate RMT altogether. It is just about how to reduce or eliminate the annoyance of RMT advertising in-game. That is a whole different ballgame and this is an achievable goal.

I am also tired of hearing people say that SE won't do anything because they get money from RMT a account subscriptions. Just because you are frustrated does not give you the right to assume the worst motivations. SE has taken steps to combat RMT. It is one thing to say it has not been enough. It is another to ascribe a foul motive to them.


People who ask for restrictions on various forms of communication mean well, but do not realize such restrictions would put the game on a slippery slope towards eliminating communication in general. Say we restrict tells. Now the spammers use shouts and yells. We ban those. Now they use say. We ban that too. Now they use custom emotes. We ban those. They use friend requests. We ban friend requests. They start spamming applications to FCs in hopes of spamming on FC chat. Players don't let them in. Then they start using real names on their characters. Meanwhile, new players are left out in the cold. When you propose a solution to RMT, you have to think it through to the end.

The idea put forth by the OP is one that will actually shut up the spammers as the community flags them, rather than restricting everyone's communications and forcing spammers into alternate channels. It will be extremely effective. As long as the process is dependent on SE employees manually flagging accounts or filtering certain words like it is today, they will not be able to keep up with the RMT. By contrast, how long do you think it would take for 100 players to hit "report RMT" on one gil spammer? Probably less than one minute. Leveraging the player base for manpower to fight RMT advertising is the smartest move they can make.

[MrPliskin0]

Well I think everyone agree's that SE needs to do something, even if it means stopping ALL work on everything else to fix this issue first and foremost.

I'd like a Mod to chime in on this, is the right click/Square button idea of marking RMT something SE would consider doing?

Reality is, if they don't do something soon, I'm going to cancel my pre-order of Heavensward, and not renew in June; it's just not worth my time to MacGyver ways to talk with people in the game when we're being hit so hard and fast, by RMT.

Nate.

[sarehptar]

I know it's hard for Americans but think outside of America for once, maybe even assume that someone isn't talking about your country by default. There are places where cigarette advertising is totally illegal and it doesn't stop people.

And did my post say anywhere that completely limiting advertisement would completely end RMT? No. In fact, the very end of my original post says that it won't. So I fully recognized in my original post that stopping advertisement wouldn't stop sales completely; please read the posts you are attempting to respond to. And anyway, you are still conflating the real world with the game world. In the real world, even in places where advertising might be banned, many countries still have cigarettes legally on shelves and they can still be legally sold. Gil sellers are not doing "anything" legally, and their product is not on display for passer-by to see in-game. They have to advertise their sites for a majority of people to know they even exist. Your comparison just doesn't work. (Also, oops, pardon me for preferring to use an example I know of instead of trying to speak for others' countries. I'll make sure that I start speaking for others' country from now on, as well as my own! Bah, it doesn't matter what country you use anyway, the results still hold--less advertising, less usage. The end. My point. Tada!)

Because it's not up to you or the OP to limit the scope of the topic, if I believe the premise is flawed I'm going to say so and there is nothing you can do about it. If you are serious about the issue you wouldn't limit the topic to only ideas you are comfortable with.

Dude, all I can hear is a toddler screaming "Wahhh, I can say what I want to say whenever I want and there's nothing you can do about it!" If you actually have something concrete, useful, and practical to say about solving this issue in a way that is different from anyone else has suggested, go make your own thread and magically solve the problem with your incredibly vast knowledge. Until then, all you are doing is naysaying someone else's ideas using poor logic without contributing in any meaningful way to finding solutions to stopping the problem yourself. If you don't like the OP's suggestion, you'd do yourself a lot more favors by not bumping it with your posts.

[FudoMyoo]

Realistic Solution to RMT's

1) Stop buying gils.
2) Migrate to JP servers (0 RMT /tells /shout here)
3) Stop buying gils.

[Thayos]

Make the "Report RMT" option available only when you RECEIVE a tell or shout. Suspend players who try to abuse it.

No more player abuse. It's that easy.

[Aerowaffle]

Realistic Solution to RMT's

1) Stop buying gils.
2) Migrate to JP servers (0 RMT /tells /shout here)
3) Stop buying gils.

Congratulations, that's not a solution to the problem.
I don't buy gil, nor do many people.
Telling someone to server transfer doesn't actually solve the problem. RMT would continue to exist on the server you transferred from.

[SevenHeavens]

make it so you can't spam /tell

there you go

[LandricFrey]

The Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XX has been announced recently in which any type of questions on FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn may be asked and possibly addressed. Please visit the thread here and "Like!" Canadane's post at the bottom of Page 1 regarding RMT. And why not go to the heavensward letter and "like!" Zephanoa's post about it as well? Who knows, the silence on the issue may be broken if we get enough people on that. Thanks!