banhammer

[ZohnoReecho]

nice numbers
http://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...9978b69ed8bb5d

[nasomi]

That's good to hear. I don't understand why they can't just have someone listening in towns and have them ban the users. It really wouldn't take that much effort.

[Rivienne]

That's good to hear. I don't understand why they can't just have someone listening in towns and have them ban the users. It really wouldn't take that much effort.

I think everyone who complains they aren't doing anything fast enough are overlooking a few key things.

Quantity is part of it. They have over 50 worlds now with 30 servers in each world. I have seen the spam in every part of the world on two of the worlds I am on now, so monitoring just the towns isn't enough. Though at this point I suspect they are doing some of that, because I have literally seen shouters stop mid-shout and disappear.

Research is another. Part of clamping down on this sort of thing is also following the money. So you have
1) find the dealers(RMT spammers) easy for the shouters, harder for the whisperers
2) find the consumer (RMT buyers)
3) find the source (bots)
4) find the exploits (teleport etc)

If you want to stop the problem, you need all four. If they just clamped down on dealers without waiting, you couldn't monitor transactions to find out where the money is going and coming from and how they are bypassing the system.

So you let the shouters go for longer than you have to, and monitor tells based on that and reports. Then you follow the trail.

That is how I would handle it. First I would setup an infrastructure to feed shouts into a Bayesian rule based filter system. Then I would have reports tied to the filter system and have real people feeding the filter real spam to improve the filter quality. Then messages auto-marked as spam would feed into a database for automatic review. Then I would follow who responds to said tells to look for things more than just the usual "I am reporting you", and also monitor the gil pool . I would monitor general currency to look for abnormally high gil amounts, and for abnormally disproportionate gil/item transactions, both direct and through the market. Then I would trace where the gil is coming from, and begin monitoring the behavior.

Once I determined any exploits, I would patch them. Then I would banhammer the lot of those directly involved, and temp suspend the suspicious accounts, which could be RMT that were missed, or could be legitimate players who are outside the norm. Those would have to go through a manual review to determine if they should be restored. Unfortunate, but necessary if you want to make sure you didn't leave a seed in place. Same reason people sometimes get real e-mail marked as spam.

Just my two gil.

[Zer0]

In other games that trail is hard to find and follow. I however have personally found nearly the entire chain minus buyers. It's fairly easy to be honest. I don't see why it's taking this long. Go after the Mine botters, and botanist botters and fishing botters and you'll neuter the entire chain of events.

Sure it'll be nice to get rid of them for good, I'd be happy enough to get rid of those god forsaken shouters and whisperers and the bots ruining the economy. Players who buy gil usually just spend it back on the economy, which doesn't really bother me.

[kollwitz]

I think everyone who complains they aren't doing anything fast enough are overlooking a few key things.

Quantity is part of it. They have over 50 worlds now with 30 servers in each world. I have seen the spam in every part of the world on two of the worlds I am on now, so monitoring just the towns isn't enough. Though at this point I suspect they are doing some of that, because I have literally seen shouters stop mid-shout and disappear.

Research is another. Part of clamping down on this sort of thing is also following the money. So you have
1) find the dealers(RMT spammers) easy for the shouters, harder for the whisperers
2) find the consumer (RMT buyers)
3) find the source (bots)
4) find the exploits (teleport etc)

If you want to stop the problem, you need all four. If they just clamped down on dealers without waiting, you couldn't monitor transactions to find out where the money is going and coming from and how they are bypassing the system.

So you let the shouters go for longer than you have to, and monitor tells based on that and reports. Then you follow the trail.

That is how I would handle it. First I would setup an infrastructure to feed shouts into a Bayesian rule based filter system. Then I would have reports tied to the filter system and have real people feeding the filter real spam to improve the filter quality. Then messages auto-marked as spam would feed into a database for automatic review. Then I would follow who responds to said tells to look for things more than just the usual "I am reporting you", and also monitor the gil pool . I would monitor general currency to look for abnormally high gil amounts, and for abnormally disproportionate gil/item transactions, both direct and through the market. Then I would trace where the gil is coming from, and begin monitoring the behavior.

Once I determined any exploits, I would patch them. Then I would banhammer the lot of those directly involved, and temp suspend the suspicious accounts, which could be RMT that were missed, or could be legitimate players who are outside the norm. Those would have to go through a manual review to determine if they should be restored. Unfortunate, but necessary if you want to make sure you didn't leave a seed in place. Same reason people sometimes get real e-mail marked as spam.

Just my two gil.

undercover STF agent!