Exactly how obvious do RMT need to be SE?

[Kaedan94]

Why are you using "you" and "your"?
In any case, what they are doing is not enough. Each week they ban maybe 1500 accounts after they have been advertising for days or weeks. They don't care about that. They can plan for that. It is clockwork on their rotational schedule. It is an expected business expense. See what I'm getting at, here?

Take that expected business expense and turn it around. Don't let them advertise for any longer than 10 minutes per account. As soon as they get enough reports, mute their entire account (all characters associated) and investigate. Make this hard to abuse. How likely is it that someone is going to convince 25+ people to report an innocent?

This way they can still do wave bans each week, but at the same time, making new accounts slowly becomes less viable because they can barely advertise anymore.

But you know. Hear no evil see no evil. All these people are just whining and want instant gratification.

And where do you expect the manpower for all this instant monitoring to come from? And no, it can't all be automated. Far too many false positives punish otherwise honest players.


Use the ignore list. If it fills up, delete the accounts that have already been banned.

I'm not siding with RMT or saying it's ok, but I'm able to see the big picture. SE bans accounts constantly, so they are obviously not doing nothing. The problem is they aren't doing it fast enough for some people. The instant gratification people. People who don't like to think critically and find ways to deal with problems.

Would it be nice if they had a huge team dedicated to responding instantly to reports and "silencing" those characters while they invesigate? Sure, it would be nice. But it's not realistic to hire that many people just to deal with it for a month to two (this will all die down once "expansion season" dust has settled). And automation is not an acceptable option because it results in far too many false positives.

Couldn't SE take legal action against RMT websites? I'm fairly certain Nexon has done similar with gold sellers on their games (although I'm not entirely sure of their success).

No, because almost all the websites are based in China. China doesn't recognize most foreign laws and doesn't extradite offenders.

[Airget]

We don't really have any issues on Masamune, do we? Have you logged onto a NA server where you get 3 tells per minute, always a different name? Or worse?

I don't understand your stance on this.

That stance is removing drones does nothing, nothing nothing and more nothing. You remove a drone then what, they make a new one and they keep doing this cause guess what, the drones are expendable. The purpose of the STF(Special Task Force) is to find the RMT leaders holding the gil and hit them where it hurts that's the only way they make headway against RMT. If they just ban the drones obtaining the gil they don't get rid of the true source behind the RMT actions only the people whom are expendable to the RMT cause.

[Shamo_Lomenzo]

That stance is removing drones does nothing, nothing nothing and more nothing. You remove a drone then what, they make a new one and they keep doing this cause guess what, the drones are expendable. The purpose of the STF(Special Task Force) is to find the RMT leaders holding the gil and hit them where it hurts that's the only way they make headway against RMT. If they just ban the drones obtaining the gil they don't get rid of the true source behind the RMT actions only the people whom are expendable to the RMT cause.

Couldn't SE take legal action against RMT websites? I'm fairly certain Nexon has done similar with gold sellers on their games (although I'm not entirely sure of their success).

[Nadirah]

But you know. Hear no evil see no evil. All these people are just whining and want instant gratification.

The hell are you on?

I don't want instant gratification. I want noticeable results.

What good is it if they ban 2k accounts, when 3k more have been made in that time frame?

[RentisB]

And where do you expect the manpower for all this instant monitoring to come from? And no, it can't all be automated. Far too many false positives punish otherwise honest players.

I'm not siding with RMT or saying it's ok, but I'm able to see the big picture. SE bans accounts constantly, so they are obviously not doing nothing. The problem is they aren't doing it fast enough for some people. The instant gratification people. People who don't like to think critically and find ways to deal with problems.

Use the ignore list. If it fills up, delete the accounts that have already been banned.

Would it be nice if they had a huge team dedicated to responding instantly to reports and "silencing" those characters while they invesigate? Sure, it would be nice. But it's not realistic to hire that many people just to deal with it for a month to two (this will all die down once "expansion season" dust has settled). And automation is not an acceptable option because it results in far too many false positives.

You have no idea what you're talking about. It doesn't take an army of people to curb this problem, it takes effort, SE has put in zero effort to curb the problem. They just go for the low hanging fruit. I'm not just guessing here either, if they were fixing it, the problem would get better, it has not.

The blacklist does nothing. You blacklist someone, 15 minutes later that bot has made a new character and is spamming you again. Congratulations, you wasted a blacklist spot for 10~ minutes of peace FROM THAT PARTICULAR BOT. Now multiply that by 5-10 and you see why people are mad. Why are tells not restricted to one every 10-15 seconds? That's not a restriction that seriously hurts legitimate players, but apparently -any- restriction on legit people is too much. It sucks but there are certain things I'm sure most of us would be willing to accept if it fixed the problem.

Auto flagging an account could easily be done without human intervention until necessary. If someone sends out a mass spam tell to say a hundred people and all of them report it as such, it could instantly be restricted from sending tells until investigated. If you think that system is abusable you're insane. Do you have 50-100 friends who can all report someone at the same time? Yeah didn't think so. It's damn near foolproof, and WoW is proof that it worked amazingly well. And if by some miracle you manage to get a false-positive, well at that stage the account would be under review anyway and it could be let go. If SE insists we police our own game that we're paying them for, they need to give us the tools to do it effectively.

[KisaiTenshi]

Couldn't SE take legal action against RMT websites? I'm fairly certain Nexon has done similar with gold sellers on their games (although I'm not entirely sure of their success).

Wow, what drugs did you take... hahahahaha... Nexon is if anything worse. So are all operators of Freemium games. The cash shop is what makes RMT so desirable on freemium games, because gachapon makes it easy to just buy a few thousand dollars worth of stuff using stolen credit cards/proceeds of crime, fence it in the game and then cash out via RMT.

Gachapon and RM is essentially gambling, which it's against federal law for banks to handle online gambling transactions in the US. So a lot of online games are treading on thin ice if they allow people to "cash out" of the game. The illegal RMT operations are illegal, both under copyright law and under federal banking regulations. To say nothing about hacking.

That's why they go to such extremes, like stealing players accounts and stripping+spamming from them.

Look no further than Blizzard learning that the hard way
http://www.wired.com/2013/09/diablo-auction-house/

Blizzard will shut down the in-game Auction House in its popular RPG Diablo III on March 18, 2014, it said this week.

The Auction House “undermines Diablo’s core game play,” said Blizzard production director John Hight in an official statement. As such, both auction houses — the one that lets players use their in-game play money to buy more weapons and armor, and the one that allows them to trade the loot they’ve farmed for actual real-world cash — will be shuttered, he said.

The only way RMT ends is by making games invite-only and making the penalty for inviting RMT's in, the loss of the account forever. You'd think that people would learn by now, not to do stupid and illegal things.

[Issac]

The hell are you on?

I don't want instant gratification. I want noticeable results.

What good is it if they ban 2k accounts, when 3k more have been made in that time frame?

Oh gosh, it was sarcasm. Didn't you read the post?

And where do you expect the manpower for all this instant monitoring to come from? And no, it can't all be automated. Far too many false positives punish otherwise honest players.

Again, I will repeat, players out to troll someone would be hard pressed to find 24-29+ other people to all report an innocent within the threshold time limit. Yes, automation is possible, but it seems your mind is closed.

And even in the rare circumstances it DOES happen, it's not a ban but a mute. The investigation team can clear it up 1-2 days later. One upset player against a sea of RMT, I think the end justifies the means.

That stance is removing drones does nothing, nothing nothing and more nothing. You remove a drone then what, they make a new one and they keep doing this cause guess what, the drones are expendable. The purpose of the STF(Special Task Force) is to find the RMT leaders holding the gil and hit them where it hurts that's the only way they make headway against RMT. If they just ban the drones obtaining the gil they don't get rid of the true source behind the RMT actions only the people whom are expendable to the RMT cause.

They can remove drones at the same time. They don't need to be harassing players. How is it that this is the only MMO I have ever played with this sheer level of advertising? It's not simply popularity, don't even try to say that.

There is simply no excuse for it.

[KisaiTenshi]

They can remove drones at the same time. They don't need to be harassing players. How is it that this is the only MMO I have ever played with this sheer level of advertising? It's not simply popularity, don't even try to say that.

There is simply no excuse for it.

Every MMO is worse. I don't know about WoW, but -every- MMO I've ever played has been worse. From Archeage with the never-ending-parade-of-bots that they-end-up-comprising-half-the-server, to Mabinogi's Uldah town center that is jam packed with spamming bots, and RMT's sitting out to trade all day, to Wizardry Online doing the same thing, to Tera, SWTOR, Star trek Online, Aion, ... it's all the same trash, and the same websites. The spammers and the RMT'ers two different groups, but they all work for the same crime syndicates.

[Issac]

Every MMO is worse. I don't know about WoW, but -every- MMO I've ever played has been worse. From Archeage with the never-ending-parade-of-bots that they-end-up-comprising-half-the-server, to Mabinogi's Uldah town center that is jam packed with spamming bots, and RMT's sitting out to trade all day, to Wizardry Online doing the same thing, to Tera, SWTOR, Star trek Online, Aion, ... it's all the same trash, and the same websites. The spammers and the RMT'ers two different groups, but they all work for the same crime syndicates.

Never saw all that many in TERA, Aion, or Mabi, though granted I tried Mabi out in its twilight age. Yes, they were there. No one was getting multiple tells each minute.

I don't see your point.

[BreathlessTao]

I have to chime in again. In literally not a whole 10 minutes' time, I received three different tells from three characters. 3rd one while I was trying to report the first two, with the Support Desk being slow and clunky and faulty as hell, as always.

I think everyone knows that these ... scourges can't completely be wiped out from any such game. That's not a realistic goal, neither is it something we say should happen right now, or else. (...well, we can wish, i guess, but that's a different thing.)

1) The problem is the fact that these (bi?)weekly bans don't amount to anything whatsoever. No, don't try to convince me otherwise, there's no use. Another report was posted just yesterday, and today - from my own personal experience, the RMT activity is actually bigger than it was yesterday. And if not bigger, it's never any less either, every time they post about another mass-ban. There is literally no noticeable change.

2) The problem is the fact that we have no tools to battle them with at all. Because, quite frankly, /busy is not meant to be (ab)used as it is, against RMT tells. Same goes for turning off shout/say channels, or even just moving them to an unused tab of the chat window - it's literally blocking means of communication, which should be one of the cores of a multiplayer game. The rightclick-blacklist feature? Yeah, it's nice, but it doesn't help much when you have to manually highlight-copy their garbage and then go through a clunky Support Desk to report them. And let's not even mention reporting bot suspicion certainty upon seeing, time and time again, those BLM clone armies all around Eorzea, and being sent to a generic website (outside the game!) to report it to a team consisting of a whopping three people.

3) The problem is the fact that so many suggestions have been made so many times, it boggles the mind to even try to keep up with - either of the numbers of those.
- private/invisible mode to hide from /search
- limit receiving tells from LS/FC/friendlist members only
- limit sending tells either by account or character age
- word filters, word filters, word filters - the amount of times I myself have seen the same character strings over and over again, I can't believe they can't instate any sort of filter to prevent such messages (not to even mention character names!) from being sent
- actually remove the characters (heck, the accounts) from the game, I can't believe I don't see the reported names turning into "(Deleted)" on my BL - I know they block them, but they are still somehow there, and yeah I understand they want to prevent the same names to be used again, but gods, build a database for it instead of actually keeping dead characters on any server?
- automatically clear the deleted ones from our blacklists, or at least give us a batch-delete feature?
...and these are just the ones I remember off the top of my head.

4) The problem is the fact that there has not been any comment on or acknowledgement or any mention of any of this, as far as I'm aware. Yes, once they mentioned it somewhere in a live letter, and since then they're reporting regular mass-bans. Go to 1).

5) The problem is the fact that while some of the most ridiculous things can be found and highlighted and replied to and fixed (sometimes all this within days), something as massive and as infuriating and immersion-breaking has seemingly been left as it was ages ago. I gladly "police" the game I'm paying to play (though I'm not entirely sure why that has to be my job), but the fact that I have to apprehend criminals on my own, without as much as - no, not even pistol, but as much as a baton or mace or handcuffs... that is pretty preposterous. And quite frankly, I'm fed up with it.

Instant gratification? Bah. I'd settle with at least one or two proper tools to make our (paying customers!) in-game experience, quality of life so to say, better. For some reason, it's just not happening though. Amidst the cash shop additions, the constant login queues and lagfests and disconnection errors (server and then lobby which completely exits the client, and then being told I'm "still logged in" when trying to get back in), while some ... people can AFK for half days locked in an idle crafting stance or in a conversation with any NPC... yeah.

Oh and apparently there is at least one character on our server who has been a trader for the fourth month now, running casino (now in Idyllshire of course) for who knows how long. Still there, still active, after apparently having been reported numerous times already.


On a sidenote, this is once again a post I have to run an extra lap to get posted. Because this forum is apparently Twitter or some such.