Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Zabuza]

Giving this a much needed bump.

[DreadRabbit]

I will sign, most certainly. Though, why not just gate the player search function by a level lock or something? Because that's how these RMT bots are finding people to send them tells and friend requests (or at least I imagine). They find you in player search, send you and massive amounts of others two to three quick ads, character deletes itself, rinse and repeat. If you make it so that fresh level ones can't use the player search feature that might drastically reduce the use of this tactic. Granted, they'll then resort to shout ads, but those seem to get caught a lot quicker than the /tell kinds.

[Zabuza]

I will sign, most certainly. Though, why not just gate the player search function by a level lock or something? Because that's how these RMT bots are finding people to send them tells and friend requests (or at least I imagine). They find you in player search, send you and massive amounts of others two to three quick ads, character deletes itself, rinse and repeat. If you make it so that fresh level ones can't use the player search feature that might drastically reduce the use of this tactic. Granted, they'll then resort to shout ads, but those seem to get caught a lot quicker than the /tell kinds.

Tbh, level gating is the idea I am most in favor of. Not just for player search, but for /tells I would also not have a problem with. If you are below level 10 for example, you cannot whisper anyone unless they whisper you first. It would definitely deter them at least a little bit if they had to level to 10 each time just to get banned and have to do it over.

[Radkat]

People like to think the right click > report idea is a great idea, but I believe it's just a waste of time. SE can already detect the ad spammers without people reporting them. It's not hard to put mechanisms in place to auto-detect spammers. The problem is that they keep coming back as new accounts. Right click>report does nothing to fix that. If every player right click> reports, there will be enough reports to DDOS the server, much less have anyone read through them.

[RichardButte]

/signed

I'm sick of having to /busy in order to not be spammed.

I seriously don't understand how and why we don't have a "Report Spammer" feature built into the game via right clicking. If an account whispers 5 people and even 3 of them flag it as spam, then remove the account's ability to whisper for 24 hours, minimum.

[Niwashi]

Tbh, level gating is the idea I am most in favor of. Not just for player search, but for /tells I would also not have a problem with. If you are below level 10 for example, you cannot whisper anyone unless they whisper you first. It would definitely deter them at least a little bit if they had to level to 10 each time just to get banned and have to do it over.

It wouldn't deter spam bots nearly as much as it would deter genuine players, though, simply because the spam bots could adjust to it. Once the rule is in place, the spam bots' scripts would be updated to level to wherever the requirement is and then start their spam. Sure, it might stop it for the first day or two, until the gil sellers get those scripts updated, but after that it wouldn't really have any effect, at least not on them.

It would, however, continue to affect all actual new players who joined to meet up with their friends but are now excluded from being able to find them or talk to them. Now, admittedly, not all new players will care. Those who don't have friends already here or joining at the same time probably wouldn't have much reason to use player search during their first few levels anyway. But I'd rather avoid solutions that would drive away those who do.

[Zabuza]

I guess if two new players who were friends got into the game at the same time they could not whisper each other. Truth be told, ruling everything out then, custom chat filters and banning the gilbuyers are probably the only effective measures.

To be honest, right click report function will make it more convenient for sure, but you guys forget these RMT can just make account after account. That very same fact is the reason increased blacklist capacity won't do too much either. I merely suggest those things because they are easy to implement and will ease the player's minds a bit. Not to mention they should be the standard for MMOs nowadays. But it's really a band-aid and not a cure.

[spardamaddhatter]

/sign Sparda MaddHatter (goblin)

[Tincuptaru]

I guess if two new players who were friends got into the game at the same time they could not whisper each other. Truth be told, ruling everything out then, custom chat filters and banning the gilbuyers are probably the only effective measures.

Most of the time when I am playing with a friend in a new game we use Teamspeak or Skype. We hardly use the chat function at all. If I am meeting new people naturally I will want to text with them over Skype as I don't know them. I have been in MMOs with a tell gate of at least level 10 I've seen some with a tell gate of level 20 to combat the RMT spam. Often times in order to get rid of a disease you need a cure with some side effects.

[illu45]

As a new player, I agree that the gill selling spam seems pretty out of control. Unless I set myself to /busy, I get at least 10 tells every half hour of gameplay. There's also lots of gill selling spam in Gridania etc. I've been adding players to my blocklist and reporting them when I have the time, but the number of tells I get doesn't seem to decrease. Has there been any official response to this by Square Enix?

Personally, I think that levelgating the player list (and possibly the /tell command, which is already disabled on free trial accounts regardless of level) would be a good way to go. I don't know much about bot scripting, but it strikes me that it is much harder to write a script that would level a character to level 10 than it is to make a script that creates a new character and spams people.

/petition signed as Ramor Fang (Lumia)