Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Zabuza]

So, today has been by far the worst day for me in regards to RMT. I logged in (had a 16 person queue) and when I finally get to load screen, I hear the /tell sound effect ding 5 times. that's 5 RMT tells before I even fully loaded in. Been on for a couple hours now, and it's yet to stop. putting myself to busy status isn't very viable because I have a lot of things going on that I need to be able to /tell and party up for. I think if they got rid of this crap, balmung wouldn't be locked nearly as much as it is right now. Buyers, sellers, they all need to just gtfo.

Sorry to hear that. Balmung was one of the few "safe" worlds left that I knew of(Besides JP servers.) And now even their walls are crumbling to the RMTs...

[Felghanna]

Lol, wat?
Organize on such a scale for what? A petition that will do nothing to actually change SE's policies with how they handle the RMT? A petition will do nothing. They already know it's an issue for the NA side of things.
SE will do what it pleases concerning the RMT when they have the time and the whim to do so.

You could think outside of the box here... If we get enough signs against these websites and explain our situation, something will happen. I mean... I don't know what is blocking you from think AGAINST the fact that bots are an illness in this game or every game.
Either way I think we can change this situation with our own hands, at least there are people here willing for this change.

Anyway... If there is no business laws that these websites are breaking, then with enough people against one deed a new law arise.

And for the last don't underestimate what people can do together.

[KisaiTenshi]

If we get enough signs against these websites and explain our situation, something will happen

Keep dreaming.

These sites are all in mainland china. The people doing the spamming and drive-by-third-party-ads-on-youtube (when looking at FFXIV videos) are also in mainland china. They lie through their teeth about safety and legality.

The RMT problem seems to be hugely dependant on the server/data center. On Excalibur, there's a tiny window of opportunity for the RMT bots to delete/re-create their bots, so as such I'm blocking maybe 10 a day and that will be fine until about 2AM when they come out of the woodwork.

Most recently however they've started "adding you" as a friend, which is even more irritating, since I turned the sound effects off for Tell, now you get an obnoxious message in the middle of the screen that sdfsdfsdfsd sdfsdfsdf wants to add you as a friend. No. forget that nonsense.

Here's what I want:
1 or 2 click right-click "report". eg click report and then you get a little drop down and text box that sends a screenshot to SE.
Change the friends/tells mechanics so that you can only add friends if they are in your party, and can only send tells if you are mutually on each others friend list. Alternatively a straight up "decline all party, friend, and FC invites" tick-boxes would go a long way to culling the harassment in the game. For whatever reason the same person "invites" me to their FC every day that they're now at the top of the blacklist. As soon as I switch to a class that isn't level 50 I get FC invites every hour or so, not nearly as bad as the tell spam, but because it puts a message across the screen that I have to dismiss manually, it's far more irritating.

And if it were in my power to do so, I'd have all these RMT sites treated the same as piracy and childporn, have ISP's legally required to filter the DNS entries so that casually curious people can't access them.

[Felghanna]

Well... Imagine if your "wish" comes true...

How about people who actually want to ask for help via /tell?

I mean... Why change the game itself because of one threat? Is this because of how hard a dream may become true?

You say about power as if you are powerless, alone indeed. However... United, we are stronger.

These sites are treated as the same because people don't fight against it, mostly because some might find some utility for them and the others don't care.

[Syrehn]

Blacklist is sitting at 200/200 with 0 of those names marked as (deleted). Each time I get a new RMT /tell, which is like 1 every few minutes, I delete a name on the top of the list to add the new spammer. Seriously SE implement additional options to help fix the situation or band-aid it by increasing our blacklist caps. It's really starting to grind my gears. FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIIIIIIX IIIIIIT!

[hanscrolo]

can't they just give us an option to be invisible to character "/who" searches? kinda like being unlisted in the phone book. i'm assuming that's how they're identifying who's available to spam in the zone... right? seems like the most simple solution to me.

idk i'm new here, sorry if that's already been shot down long ago

[Ophie-Mio]

You could think outside of the box here... If we get enough signs against these websites and explain our situation, something will happen.

I'm all for the hippy, conbiya stuff if it actually had a game plan in your world. Zabuza actually has measures that he's proposed. But you... Saying "think outside the box, bro" and "we can do this if we stand together, man!" may work on some other children but where's the action behind the ideals?
Putting names on a petition doesn't do anything without actually offering a workable solution to SE. Go back to Tumblr if you wanna sing how together you'll change the world.

I mean... I don't know what is blocking you from think AGAINST the fact that bots are an illness in this game or every game.

So I don't get how you don't understand that obviously people getting together and signing petitions and offering ideas and doing whatever they can together actually make a difference? The company has to be able to do something. Every game has RMT, every game has this issue and yet you're sitting here telling me that if I sign this petition and come together with all my MMO bros and brodettes that suddenly we'll fix the RMT problem!
.... >_>
Pulease.

Anyway... If there is no business laws that these websites are breaking, then with enough people against one deed a new law arise.

>__________>
Wat?
Please, return to Tumblr. Please. Laws about the practices of businesses that can profit from MMOs will never happen. Ever. Let me repeat. REAL LIFE laws will never be made that prevent the RMT business from even existing in the first place.

And for the last don't underestimate what people can do together.

Yes, and when you've rid the RMT from every other MMO that have players inside it that have banded together to rid themselves of the RMT plague, feel free to let me know. People can do great things together...but they have real ideas behind their hippy circles. They have companies with a huge RMT task force to help the players. Not the three people on our STF.

[Niwashi]

Change the friends/tells mechanics so that you can only add friends if they are in your party

So if one of my FC mates offers to send me some gear he crafted, or if I want to contribute some gil to my FC's housing fund, or for whatever reason I have a reason to send or receive something from someone, but I'm in a DF queue at the time, or maybe they are, then we can't complete the transaction because we can't create a party together? (The examples are both from quite a while ago, as I haven't added anyone to my Friends List recently. The FC housing fund, for instance, was from before we could do that through the company chest so an officer was collecting the money. But while the specifics may no longer make sense, the basic fact that there was someone I wanted to Friend so we could swap something should still hold true. That shouldn't depend on your availability to join a Party.)

and can only send tells if you are mutually on each others friend list.

I don't agree with this one either. I want to be able to have /tell conversations with random strangers. I see someone on a chocobo that I think is the perfect shade of blue to coordinate beautifully with it's rare plumed barding, and I want to be able to /tell them so. Or I was standing near the NIN headquarters dressed in black with a facemask (Mythril Mesail) and headscarf (Snow's hairstyle from the Lightning event) and another Ninja came by and asked how I got that look. Or a while back when I died far from my Home point so asked in shout if anyone could Raise me, the CNJ who answered asked in /tell for directions on how to reach my location (there was a cliff in his way, and the path around wasn't obvious from the /loc).

Sure, if we couldn't do any of that stuff in /tell there would be workarounds for some of it. The directions could have continued in /shout with the only downside being cluttering the screens of everyone else in the area who didn't really need to see the whole conversation. The more social conversations theoretically could have as well, though more likely they just wouldn't have taken place at all. These are pretty much the same as workarounds we have now if we resort to using /busy to keep the RMT away.

But that's part of why we want to get rid of the RMT spammers, so that people don't have to resort to using /busy and don't need workarounds just in order to talk to someone. We want the /tell channel freed up for its intended purpose, to be able to talk with each other, making the game more open and social. Limits on things like the rate at which you can send /tells could be set at a point that interferes with RMT spam but doesn't interfere with actual conversation. When it gets into things like who you're allowed to talk to, though, that's going to block too much of the legitimate traffic we're trying to clear the way for.

Alternatively a straight up "decline all party, friend, and FC invites" tick-boxes would go a long way to culling the harassment in the game.

This could be useful. The FC invites because people aren't generally going to join an FC who invites them unless they're actually looking for an FC. The Friend invites because anyone genuinely trying to set up a Friend connection is going to talk to the person first, so it could easily be allowed only when needed but blocked from these RMT bots the rest of the time. And the party invites just because otherwise they'd likely become the RMT's next haven once Friend requests can be blocked.

[Orspeth]

Well... Imagine if your "wish" comes true...

How about people who actually want to ask for help via /tell?

I mean... Why change the game itself because of one threat? Is this because of how hard a dream may become true?

You say about power as if you are powerless, alone indeed. However... United, we are stronger.

These sites are treated as the same because people don't fight against it, mostly because some might find some utility for them and the others don't care.

People CAN'T ask me for help via tell as I have to be /BUSY all the time to block the RMT's.

[Felghanna]

Putting names on a petition doesn't do anything without actually offering a workable solution to SE. Go back to Tumblr if you wanna sing how together you'll change the world.

First: Do you realize how many players are online on your server right now? (a hint: it's more than your friend list can tell)


Second: Did you played every MMO to say this information is accurate?


Third: Let's say for a moment that most of players from every server signs a petition against RMT sites. Do you think no one will notice about it? Or only you won't notice, because I'm still not caring about how difficult this may be, I'm want to do something.

Fourth: Return to the first thing I said. I know, you are saying your prayers for a god that doesn't listen for one year. We all want the same thing, why don't we just fight for it?