The #1 Question Asked For The Letter From The Producer:

[Gunspec]

RMT spammers just create tons of new characters on one account, deleting old characters as they go. On my server, you don't get tells from the same person more than once, so blacklist options do not help. And no, you can't stop RMT in a game of this nature, you can only limit the damage the abusive behavior causes.

The only way to prevent the type of spam we currently experience is to have moderators taking immediate action against accounts that are being reported for spamming. A brief glimpse at the /tells coming from the account, and a gm should immediately lock the account BEFORE an investigation. Accounts cost RMT spammers at least $15-$20, so getting the entire account locked after one wave of spam would make it impossible to profit from randomly targeted spam. That would effectively remove these /tells from the game.

[Kosmos992k]

Again, only 3 people working on this...

Correction, 3 people listed in the credits as part of the task force, there could be more now... You also forgot all the GMs that field the spam reports and filter them up to the task force for additional action.

In a way, combating RMT in a game like this is like combating DDOS attacks in the real world. For every attack thwarted, or attacker found, there are dozens more lined up, waiting for their chance.

[Chibilidawg]

From this interview:

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen..._yoshida_this/


Yoshida Regarding RMT Spam

"We actually have a special task force dedicated to control and get rid of much spam, and control it within the game and not only the incidents that are reported by our players. Internally we have a special group always checking, allways researching, allways going after RMT spam and trying to find them and strike them and make sure to removed this incidents as much as possible. We also are going through with like an undercover investigation where we try to find out larger groups of people who are doing the RMT spam and try to control it from there as well. Also from a daily basis we are banning a few thousands accounts and tens of thousands of accounts per month so on the players inpoint it may not seem that the incidents have reduced but we are doing that best to control it, there is a lot of RMT spam thats happening so we have to be continously vigilant in order to stop them and avoid those incidents."


I don't think he or they know we want solutions to significantly reduce the /shout & /tell spam from gil-sellers...

Which makes me seriously frustrated & has me wondering... do they not understand that the bans mean next-to-nothing if the spam remains roughly the same?

All we see is RMT /tell spam every minute of every hour.


I don't get what's so hard about implementing:

1) a /tell filter for FC Members & Friends Only.

2) an auto-blacklisting, right-click report RMT feature.

3) a /shout & /yell restriction for level 15 & above only.

Among other fantastic ideas...

Speaking of #3, they could make it to where the feature doesn't unlock until after having beaten Sastasha in the MSQ.


Bans won't solve the problem, they'll just keep coming back stronger & multiplying.

We, the players, care most about not having our chat pinged every 30 seconds with a huge wall-of-text gil sale promotion.

[Maero]

I can totally see people buying gold at $8 to get a token to pay for their subscription.

Actually you can now use in game gil to pay for subs in wow according to a co worker of mine

[Teryaani]

I don't think he or they know we want solutions to significantly reduce the /shout & /tell spam from gil-sellers...

Which makes me seriously frustrated & has me wondering... do they not understand that the bans mean next-to-nothing if the spam remains roughly the same?

All we see is RMT /tell spam every minute of every hour.

I don't know if they realize how much of an issue it is because the /tells and /shouts are incredibly uncommon on JP servers for a stack of reasons (RMT ads show up on various websites instead of in-game). I don't think this is the main reason for the lack of response, but it contributes to how slow the response is. The "I do believe in faeries! I do! I do!" part of my brain is hoping that they're keeping quiet on the quality of life changes to keep the gil sellers from being ready for them when they come.

[AreeyaJaidee]

I got an idea. Show of force. Everyone just keep making threads titled stop RMT (or something of that likeness). Fill the whole forum up with them until the devs reply. Even if you're not personally having an issue with it, let's do this as a community, because it is big issue on many servers.

[Spy]

idk what you're talking about, I don't get a single RMT tell on Masamune o.o

[Teryaani]

idk what you're talking about, I don't get a single RMT tell on Masamune o.o

Again, the JP servers (and hyper populated NA/EU servers like Balmung) don't have the same scale of problem. Funny story though, the tells do happen on your server. Someone posted a thread about receiving one a couple of weeks ago. On servers like Siren, it's freaking constant.

[Spy]

Again, the JP servers (and hyper populated NA/EU servers like Balmung) don't have the same scale of problem. Funny story though, the tells do happen on your server. Someone posted a thread about receiving one a couple of weeks ago. On servers like Siren, it's freaking constant.

True.....I think I got one tell a few weeks ago myself now that I think about it. However, I don't think SE's ignoring the issue as much as the OP and a few others seem to think, though. Just like as much as it irks me, I don't think they're ignoring the housing space issue as much as I think they are (I'm sadly still very salty about that whole thing). I don't think the issue should be ignored by the players, but I don't think pitchforks and threats are going to solve the issue any faster. And Gilbuyers aren't helping the matter.

[Slirith]

make gil untradeable *sarcasm..somewhat*