Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Zhexos]

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

First off, we would like to thank you very much for reporting these incidents. Your reports have been extremely helpful when cracking down on users that have been performing illegal actions.

We would like to respond to the two following points that we have been receiving from everyone.

• Regarding the suspicious group of players
  

  In regards to the suspicious group of players that has been seen inside towns, we're aware that this group is collecting gil by hunting monsters within instanced dungeons. This collected gil is then used for RMT (Real Money Trade). When we take action against these accounts, we also investigate the flow of the gil and will freeze it accordingly.

• Regarding the handling of RMT
  

  We often see comments such as "I'm reporting these users, but it looks like nothing is being done about it." To make sure we don't falsely punish the wrong player, we first have to investigate before taking any actions, therefore it may require some time depending on the amount of information that has been reported for an incident. Unfortunately, we are not able to simply take action on users just because they seem suspicious. Please understand that the time it takes until any action can be taken will vary from case to case. Actions taken against these users can be found in the General section of the Information sub-forum.

Again, we really appreciate all of the reports you have been sending us as these reports help us fight against RMT. Even if the information is for just one character, it's valuable information to us.

You'll be able to report these in-game through System > Support Desk > Contact Us > Report Cheating, so we ask for your continued support in fighting against the RMT!

[Teryaani]

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

Thanks Zhexos, any chance that we may get a right-click-report feature in the future? It would make it easier for us to report and could, if done right, make the task force's job easier by giving them the metadata they need in the automatic report.

On top of it, making reporting more convenient leads to more reporting.

Most folks I know don't bother because opening a ticket every bloody time is annoying as hell and a waste of time.

Quoted for truth. The reporting system is really cumbersome to use.

[niwaar]

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

All of this is great. But we still have had zero movement in over a year about the RMT advertisement spam in /tell. While we are getting less since Heavensward's release they are slowly getting worse and worse. Can we get a chat filter setting or at least can YOU improve the current text filter to catch more of these.

[EZ5902]

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

What about the free companies named like "asdfds" with somewhere around 5 characters in them, are still rank one after months of been created, are all mostly summoners with ifrit-egi, are all wearing level 45+ bought gear to spirit bond and killing the same things over and over (which usually consist of ornery karakul's)... pretty sure they don't need investigating.

[Sicno]

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

I understand all this, and I totally agree that the investigation of farming bots and potential gil buyers needs to be very carefully made. Now, there needs to be a difference between reporting and investigating farmers/buyers and reporting and investigating chat spammers, since that's something that should be able to be verified very fast. No long investigation needed in this case, just a look at a few messages containing advertisement should be enough to identify a breach to the ToS.

So, as opposed to what some players suggest, I don't think a "right click report player" (that could be abused) is that good an idea. What we really need is a "right click report MESSAGE" feature. Add this to the menu displayed when you right click on a player name next to their message on the chatlog, the same menu that already has the "add to blacklist" feature. I'm guessing one issue with investigating spammers who use /tell is that you can't go reading private messages right away. I'm guessing that you can't openly browse their /tell history, and that's why you need us to copy and paste the spam message in our report so that you can do a search and see if it's there somewhere in their history. But with a "report message" feature you could get a direct link to the message in question and take immediate action.

[Warku]

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

I find the response disappointing. While I understand investigations to prevent false punishment is important, their process is so opaque that it seems like they have an intentionally poor process of dealing not only with RMT but also the major cause of annoyance to most players: the RMT spammer. I don't understand how the investigation for an RMT spammer should take more than 5 seconds.

[aresgodofwar30]

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

Zhexos, it would be greatly helpful if we knew what additional information we can provide to expedite their investigation. Player names such as "alkdfjsj fdskfj" are all too common with bots, and very obvious. These should be banned immediately. Most other times, bots can be spotted by visually watching the gameplay. There is nothing we can do to accurate describe this for the STF Team. What we really need are GMs that walk around invisible, watching the server.