Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[ZettaB]

Nobody is claiming that the spam is the only problem from gil-sellers, but it is the biggest problem. The spam is the part that's constantly interrupting the gameplay of all the legitimate players. Certainly the gil farming bots are just as much a part of it, but they don't have the same sort of in-your-face harassment going on as the spam bots do. SE really should do a better job of taking care of both parts of the problem, but the spam should be the higher priority piece of the issue. It's the part that's driving customers away.

Playing whack-a-mole with spam accounts isn't going to do anything if they have a supply. Cut their supply and they have nothing to sell...

[Zabuza]

Playing whack-a-mole with spam accounts isn't going to do anything if they have a supply. Cut their supply and they have nothing to sell...

I don't care how SE does it, I just want them to reduce the spam. Your method is more effective but also more costly I imagine. I feel like implementing proper chat filters would be easier to do than trying to track down the suppliers. I'll take anything they can give me if it reduces the spam.

If they really wanna end it though, they have to make it so the RMTs lose profit through this cycle. Probably via something like them not being able to send /tells until level 10-20. If they really wanted to, disable them from trading until level 15, and keep a hawk's eye on low level players. However, I realize that would reduce the QoL from players as well.

Also, I think SE's deliberate silence of this matter is even more frustrating to me than the spam itself. Not reassuring in the least when devs who are known to be vocal remain completely silent no matter how much players cry out.

[Niwashi]

Playing whack-a-mole with spam accounts isn't going to do anything if they have a supply. Cut their supply and they have nothing to sell...

It wouldn't be whack-a-mole if SE actually bothered to stop the spam. Gil sellers aren't idiots. They're trying to make a profit. If they lose money from every spam bot rather than earning money from every spam bot, then they're not going to keep creating new spam bot accounts. The only reason they're doing so now is that SE is allowing them to spam long enough to make a profit from it.

The farming bots can't be blocked so fast, so that's where it really does turn into a whack-a-mole issue. From the instant a spam bot sends its very first message, it's obviously a spam bot. That single message is enough that they've broken the ToS and can immediately be banned, rendering the account useless to the gil-seller. Farming bots, on the contrary, need some investigation for SE to see what's going on. That's going to take time enough for them to at least start making some gil. If they make enough gil to be profitable, then they'll be immediately replaced even when SE does manage to ban them.

[Quesse]

The whisper spam should be the least of your problems if you realized their operations in gil making, they literally have 30+ blackmages teleporting underground killing things, then teleports to a crafting bot sitting in ul'dah turning things into materia. This guy has been doing laps converting materia for 20+ days 24/7 on leviathan and reporting him apparently does nothing. How is this not considered suspicious?

This has been going on since Day 1 with little to no response from SE. Yes we get the "notices" infrequently that 100 accounts have been terminated blah blah but I too have seen with my own eyes the unresponsiveness. Almost Day 1 there were bots hanging out all over the Burning Wall. They would stand in one place and roboticly rotate killing any Golden Fleece in sight. At first you could jam them up by trading with them but then the bots got more sophisticated and that no longer worked. Weeks went by and I would observe the same "players" killing Golden Fleece and then back in Gridania turning their equipment into materia -- 100's of Converts one after another. I reported them day after day. Almost every day I would submit a report and nothing was done. Sure something was done maybe 2 months later, but by then its too late. The economy is ruined, inflation occurs. All the gil that needed to be gotten rid of by astronomical housing prices was SE's own doing - letting gilsellers run wild and exploit gil sinks, etc. Miserable >.< Massive /tell spam is just the icing on the cake :P

[Zabuza]

Which makes me worry about what's next. Are RMTs somehow going to find a way to pester us through the busy status as well? Perhaps spamming our moogle delivery mailbox nonstop is next. Maybe months down the line we literally won't be able to whisper our friends because the /tell chat flys by so fast we can't even see what they type. I wouldn't be surprised, seeing as the RMTs continue to gain ground. And still, SE will be silent when that happens.

[Its_Elodie]

I'm pretty sure money and the loss of subs is the cause of the silence, but like others have said, there will be newbies who purchase the game and start fresh with no friends and no ties to hold them back from not subscribing to this when they are on one of the servers where the harassment is 24/7 (like mine) and they don't have anyone to advise them about the busy status. They will get driven off before SE can even start making money off of them. I already warned my friend who wants to pick up the expansion. So what will amount to a greater net loss? Permanently banning all of the botters and making a right click report option? Or the thousands of potential subs that have been lost from the new people who don't have any in game ties and no reason to want to work around the constant spam harassment?

[Thayos]

Nobody is claiming that the spam is the only problem from gil-sellers, but it is the biggest problem.

This, kind of.

I don't think /shout or /tell spam is the BIGGEST problem. But it's the part of the problem that affects the most people on a daily basis, and it's super easy to fix.

Plus, losing the ability to advertise so easily in game would definitely be a kick in the balls to RMT.

[Gunspec]

Playing whack-a-mole with spam accounts isn't going to do anything if they have a supply.

Playing whack-a-mole with spam accounts will cost the RMT $15 per account. That's not enough to get them to close their business, but it WILL make them adjust their business model to be less annoying to common players. Right now, $15 gives the RMT spammers full access to advertise their services for roughly a month between ban waves. If a wave of spam to every player led to an immediate account termination, it would be deemed too expensive a form of advertising.

SE is treating RMT like a drug operation, and they favor long investigation and massive busts once a month. Doing so is allegedly the best way to reduce RMT influence on the economy. The problem with this method is that without constant bans being given out for overt and obvious violations of game RMT rules, the common player has to deal with literally dozens of forceful "pushers" per hour.

[MyKotoShi]

SE has a little over 10 GM's employed to combat this, they're working, but at a limit. Judging this off credits though.

But anyway, turn off tell. Just turn it off. You don't need secret convos to talk trash about ppl behind their backs, just... turn it off.

/blist the shouters, and report where you can, but as much as what more we can do, nothing.

[Zabuza]

SE has a little over 10 GM's employed to combat this, they're working, but at a limit. Judging this off credits though.

But anyway, turn off tell. Just turn it off. You don't need secret convos to talk trash about ppl behind their backs, just... turn it off.

/blist the shouters, and report where you can, but as much as what more we can do, nothing.

Some people would like to use the /tells for trading purposes, or to organize parties. What do you propose in order to get around that? To use /shout instead? Even if we were to do that, my point is why should we have to? An intended function of our game has been blocked off, and that is not okay. You're right, there is absolutely nothing more WE can do, it is up to SE to fix this. So far they don't seem very enthused to do so. That is the most frustrating part. If they only have 10 GMs to combat this, why do they not hire more? I'm quite sure this game is turning a sizable profit at this point, it is not as though they could not afford it. Why do they not implement anti RMT features into the game. I saw a great suggestion in a post somewhere that suggested players under level 10 or 15 could only send someone a /tell if that person sent them a /tell first. Apparently WoW does this and it works very well against the RMT. Games like WoW have features in place which vastly reduce the spam/RMT harassment. FF14 has learned other lessons from western MMOs, why can they not learn this lesson as well?