Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Negafox]

Personally I loathe the RMT messages, but ar they not a necessary evil? Personally I believe we kinda need them like the US needs illegal immigrant workers; they farm the mats we're too busy/lazy to farm. [SNIP] The RMT will keep trying to farm/sell their wares, and hopefully enough gil buyers get nailed so the RMT are unable to sell the gil, but they'll still try and we still get cheap mats we really don't want to farm/pay exuberant prices for.

No -- they are NOT a necessary evil. I should not be constantly bombarded with unwanted private messages. I should not see /say spam when standing near a marketboard. The gil spammers use bots for farming mats and artificially manipulating marketboard prices -- flooding the economy with gil to those with cash and making players staying within the rules poor. It makes it difficult to legitimately farm mats to earn gil because they use bots to farm and sell insanely cheap (little to no manpower required).

[Laraul]

No -- they are NOT a necessary evil. I should not be constantly bombarded with unwanted private messages.

I think they meant RMT, not the the /tells. RMT itself isn't bad unless done in excess.

The gil spammers use bots for farming mats and artificially manipulating marketboard prices -- flooding the economy with gil to those with cash and making players staying within the rules poor.

This is just stupid. RMT don't have the power to manipulate prices. Even if they we're able to, it would be counterproductive to drive the prices down on materials. They want prices to be HIGH, making it more likely players will turn to them for gil. People I suspect whom are most likely to buy gil are the ones who don't want to spend the time doing mat farming to begin w/.

And I doubt RMT use bots to earn gil. Most likely they get it from buying gil from players willing to sell it them for real money in return. A google search will show that there are plenty of places willing to exchange your gil for cash! It's these type of players who probably are the ones who use bots.

[Risvertasashi]

One way to help speed things up would be an auto fill, I.E. the time, the world your in, your name etc, and before people say that wouldn't work because you're not always where the incident happened I say this, you have to edit it anyway so you may as well start with all the fields that can be filled in filled in and edit the rest.

Even when you do all that, it can still take days for a spammer to be banned. Not even a suspected bot, actual several-tell-a-minute spammers... which I would think would be pretty open and shut.

I think they meant RMT, not the the /tells. RMT itself isn't bad unless done in excess.



This is just stupid. RMT don't have the power to manipulate prices. Even if they we're able to, it would be counterproductive to drive the prices down on materials. They want prices to be HIGH, making it more likely players will turn to them for gil. People I suspect whom are most likely to buy gil are the ones who don't want to spend the time doing mat farming to begin w/.

And I doubt RMT use bots to earn gil. Most likely they get it from buying gil from players willing to sell it them for real money in return. A google search will show that there are plenty of places willing to exchange your gil for cash! It's these type of players who probably are the ones who use bots.

As you seem to have noticed, RMT tend to be the bogeymen for all a game's ills, especially economic ills.

That doesn't mean they have no effect, however. Also, their sources are varied. Lowly paid chinese workers is common (but the pay is good for them). In some worst cases, prisoners have been made to do it. Some also do run bot farms. The taboo and witch hunt-inciting nature of the subject makes it difficult to do any kind of meaningful breakdown and analysis, however.