How to eliminate RMT ads set through tells.

[Obreck]

Notice: I am fully aware of the "/blist add <r>" macro. I wish to eliminate the problem not waste toolbar space on workaround hotkeys.

Its come to my attention that RMT ads through tells have skyrocketed in the last week. But I believe I have a non-invasive method that should completely shut this problem down.

EDIT: Bumped the suggested cap to 100 to give honest players absurd amounts of wiggle room while still being something a bot sending tells would hit within a few minutes.

Basically I believe players should be capped to only being to send Tells to 100 separate players within 24 hours.

Its inconceivable that a player not involved with spamming would need to send Tells to 100 different players in one day. A spam bot on the other hand would hit this cap literally within the first 5-10 minutes, rendering it completely impractical to ad spam in this manner. They'd either have to create a new bot almost as fast as they got through the game's intro or have to spam far to slow and ineffective for their message to reach the 1000s of players on a server at any given time.

I'm aware this won't remove the RMT spammers totally from the game, but it will at least push them back to spamming in single zones, rather than having one bot able to spout its garbage across an entire server. And it will get rid of those annoying Tells completely.

Party Invite abuse prevention: My guess if my idea is put in place the RMTers will attempt to move to blanket party invites. This can be prevented by imposing a similar lockout to any player that has had 50 of attempted party invites declined. As with the other lockout a spam bot will hit this cap at warp speed, where as a legit player should never have to worry about 50 of their attempts to invite others to party rejected in one day.

[Nanga]

[B]
Its inconceivable that a player not involved with spamming would need to send Tells to 50 different players in one day.

I think I've sent that many different people a tell when trying to form a group for Hydra or Chimera.

It's not inconceivable.

[Hobo]

snip

Every time someone thinks they've come up with a brilliant solution to solve RMT I come to debunk it... so here we go.

RMT becomes aware of 50 tell threshold... they program a bot to send 49 tells... delete itself and recreate under a new name.

Got any more new ideas? .... This isn't an "easy fix" type of deal... when there is a will there is a way...

Just look at anti virus software vs. malware in general. It's the same type of situation... an arms race in a sense

[Obreck]

Every time someone thinks they've come up with a brilliant solution to solve RMT I come to debunk it... so here we go.

RMT becomes aware of 50 tell threshold... they program a bot to send 49 tells... delete itself and recreate under a new name.

Got any more new ideas? .... This isn't an "easy fix" type of deal... when there is a will there is a way...

Just look at anti virus software vs. malware in general. It's the same type of situation... an arms race in a sense

They hit the 50 cap within minutes of the bot being put into action, as there are 1000s of players on one server at a time. In order to be able to spread the message across that many players they will need to send a tell every few seconds, meaning they hit 50 in about 5-10 minutes tops. Unless a botter creator wishes to crank out bots almost as fast as it takes to watch the intro cutscene they will have to abandon using Tells and move to a different method. All part of the arms race you brought up.

[Gaddes]

This is one of those instances where I wish GMs had more of an online presence the way they did in FFXI. There really should be a way to call a GM like in FFXI where you can tell them, right there and then, that someone is spamming gillselling messages. If a GM is watching that server, then they can visit that zone and see clearly for themselves that Ul'Dah is indeed being inundated with spam shouts. I mean heaven forbid you have to hire a couple extra people to actually be some tangible GM force on these servers...

[Heather]

[QUOTE=Obreck;1426165]Notice: I am fully aware of the "/blist add <r>" macro. I wish to eliminate the problem not waste toolbar space on workaround hotkeys.

Its come to my attention that RMT ads through tells have skyrocketed in the last week. But I believe I have a non-invasive method that should completely shut this problem down.




or better yet right click report spam and have it auto Blist the player and send it to SE for review. right now My Blist is full of Gill Spammers. they need to get more pro active with gil sellers

[Obreck]

or better yet right click report spam and have it auto Blist the player and send it to SE for review. right now My Blist is full of Gill Spammers. they need to get more pro active with gil sellers

It would be wonderful if Square stepped up banning reported bots, but some automated systems that shut botting down would help a lot too. As well as take some pressure off their team's shoulders so they can concentrate their efforts better. They are battling an automated threat after all, fight fire with fire.

[Valcro]

An easy way to deal with it is to take volunteers, several hundred+ per server, to police the game. Give them instant ban ability so they can banish RMT on the spot. Sort of Jr. GMs, so to speak. They design a new BAN RMT option in menu or command > only volunteers are given links to download and install special BAN power update to their games(or disc in the mail or whatever to ensure security) > etc. If anyone abuses that power to ban innocent players because they had words or some dumb reason then after that person files their appeal and the ban is overturned(or real GMs police the 'policers' to ensure no abuse occurs), said abuser is banished themselves. This is the easiest and best way to do it. It's a thousand times easier than whatever it is they are doing right now to combat RMT.

But it's not ever going to happen. The day SE allows us gamers to help run their MMOs is the day I fall over dead from a heart attack as a result of seeing them do it. Also I have a funny feeling that it's not really an option or the fault of SE because it involves legal shit, like we'd have to be paid to do it because it's not a free MMO, or whatever. In any case, I don't know why they are having such a hard time with this. They stopped rmt tells in XI like a pro so maybe it's just sheer RMT numbers that are beating them here.

[Demeos]

If you eliminate the demand, the rest takes care of itself. Now while this approach is unrealistic in the real world, it's simple to implement within FFXIV's economy as the creators are quite literally the Gods of that world.

Active Greed Prevention:
- Square makes all the npc vendor armor/weapons quested-only (and repeatable) and removes armor/weapon vendor npcs. (Additional Rule: Can't quest for a particular item if you already have it).

- Square sets an exact price for every item that can be placed on the market or traded. This exact price should be more than you'd get selling to an npc.

- Square disables the gifting of Gil and/or Items.
(I don't know if it's even possible to gift these in the first place but if they can be, then it should be disabled).


The way I see it, people are only as greedy as they feel they can get away with being. Doesn't mean all their actions will automatically be greedy but when they are, they'll pretty much follow that philosophy.

[zenmetsu]

Every time someone thinks they've come up with a brilliant solution to solve RMT I come to debunk it... so here we go.

RMT becomes aware of 50 tell threshold... they program a bot to send 49 tells... delete itself and recreate under a new name.

Got any more new ideas? .... This isn't an "easy fix" type of deal... when there is a will there is a way...

Just look at anti virus software vs. malware in general. It's the same type of situation... an arms race in a sense

DING! Someone that gets it. The only solution is for S-E to get off their asses and start dropping the ban hammer. I've blacklisted 170 players. I've reported each and every one of them. Since the game went live, i've seen 3 (DELETED) show up in my blacklist. SE has banned 1.76% of the players that I have reported, players that were very obviously botting or advertising RMT.


The problem will not go away until it becomes worthwhile for the player to report RMT. Right now, it is a colossal waste of time. I've stopped reporting, and in my eyes, that means that RMT is winning.

SE: 0 RMT: 10000 and counting


That said, a good solution would be to block all Chinese subnets; there is no need for them to be playing, doing so is against the law in their country anyways. Second, engineer the game so that you cannot play it through a proxy or anonymizing service like Tor. Ultimately, S-E could verify the owner of each account by sending a voucher code via post every month instead of just having automatic electronic renewal. Sure, this would cost money, but once they ban someone, they ban the billing/mailing address and it becomes very hard for RMT to operate. Draconian, and not impossible to circumvent, but still vastly better than a lot of the bird-brained ideas that I've seen people pass around.