Why are they addressing the RMT symptom instead of the deeper causes?

[Geryth]

There are other ways to combat this though. We know gil sellers will continue making accounts. We know people will continue buying gil. What do people complain about though? It's the /tell spam we all get every single hour we're logged in. It's the most horrid in this game as I've ever seen in an MMO. That is something that can be easily fixed by some simple solutions:

1. First, limit the chat capabilities of accounts with no characters over level 5. Take away their ability to /tell anyone unless they are mutual friends and unless someone /tells them first. This should have minimal impact on any real people playing and starting the game, and it will inconvenience the RMT's and make them have to spend more time getting a spam bot set up. And time is money, so that will hurt their pockets.
2. Second, limit the amount of tells someone is able to send out in a small amount of time. If someone sends more than 15 tells within 3 seconds, lock them to a timer so they can't send anymore for a minute or two.
3. Couple the above with a report spam feature as mentioned by Sacred-Oblivion. If their /tells hit a certain percentage that gets reported (say 70% after a total of 15 messages), then ban the account from chatting completely until an investigation concludes.

Congrats, SE, without a whole lot of effort, reduces RMT spam to near nothing, because it will NOT be profitable for the RMT's to spend $15 on a new account just to be able to advertise to a handful of people, and they'll eventually stop completely.

The RMT spam will migrate to other means and you'll probably only ever see lowbies standing in major cities spamming /s, which the report spam should also shut down relatively quickly. But your ignore list will be useful for toxic players and not just an RMT name bank.

[Husband]

There is a really simple solution to RMT.

Remove all references to gil from the game.

Make players farm stuff they want themselves.

Make all gear tradeable.....

... Then change the market board so people can just "list" gear they want to give away for free when they are done with it.

Crafter's can still craft and help their friends. They can't make gil? So what. Do it for fun. Farm materials and craft. You will be needed to help supply your FC giving the jobs meaning.

Gil is a redundant concept. Let's banish it forever.

No cost. No gil. No RMT. No problem.

[Geryth]

There is a really simple solution to RMT.

Remove all references to gil from the game.

Make players farm stuff they want themselves.

Make all gear tradeable.....

... Then change the market board so people can just "list" gear they want to give away for free when they are done with it.

Crafter's can still craft and help their friends. They can't make gil? So what. Do it for fun. Farm materials and craft. You will be needed to help supply your FC giving the jobs meaning.

Gil is a redundant concept. Let's banish it forever.

No cost. No gil. No RMT. No problem.

RMT just shifts into gear in your system. $10 cheap gear! Fast delivery! Lowbie sets, mid-game sets, and best crafted end-game sets! Stock your entire FC for a $500 bulk sale!

[Mladenaught]

I am vigilant at removing any and every one of them Gil sellers that pops up in the chat by blacklisting and reporting, and it takes no more than up to a minute. However, I am not sure if a subcommand 'Report RMT' would do any good without a small team of GMs hunting those characters down to the source and locking them out instantly and permanently.

So the deal would be simple, wear them out swiftly enough where their business couldn't stand perpetual new account purchasing, abusing /tell to the benefit of in-game advertising, while retaining our freedom of communication.

A sound plan?

[Geryth]

I am not sure if a subcommand 'Report RMT' would do any good without a small team of GMs hunting those characters down to the source and locking them out instantly and permanently.

This could do a ton of good without any action needed from a GM. As I said, there's no reason to let someone send 100 tells in 10 seconds. That should be easy to catch and halt. Second, a "report RMT" button could easily record that the tells are coming from said account are illegal advertisement. If 70% of of the messages it sends are reported RMT, the game could shut off that accounts ability to talk completely.

Easy peasy, the problematic RMT spammer is left unable to ruin peoples' day and the time consuming and harder process of banning the account can take it's normal course.

[Niwashi]

First, limit the chat capabilities of accounts with no characters over level 5. Take away their ability to /tell anyone unless they are mutual friends and unless someone /tells them first. This should have minimal impact on any real people playing and starting the game

I don't agree with this part. New players entering the game for the first time very frequently have questions they want to ask and are looking for other players to make friends with. They're among the most likely of anyone in the game to want to have a /tell conversation with someone. I think you're wrong about it being a "minimal impact". The impact could be huge.

Second, limit the amount of tells someone is able to send out in a small amount of time. If someone sends more than 15 tells within 3 seconds, lock them to a timer so they can't send anymore for a minute or two.

I don't think it should allow 15 tells in 3 seconds in the first place. The /tell command should itself have something like a 1 second cooldown. I can't think of any legitimate, non-spam reason for sending multiple tells in the same second.

Couple the above with a report spam feature as mentioned by Sacred-Oblivion. If their /tells hit a certain percentage that gets reported (say 70% after a total of 15 messages), then ban the account from chatting completely until an investigation concludes.

I agree with the Report Spam option and with automatically blocking chat when several such reports come in, but I think it should be a set number of reports rather than a percentage. These RMT guys are good at figuring out what rules are being used and finding ways of getting around them. If it's a percentage of messages they send, then they'd just need to send some other messages that don't clearly look like spam and serve no purpose but to dilute that percentage.

I am not sure if a subcommand 'Report RMT' would do any good without a small team of GMs hunting those characters down to the source and locking them out instantly and permanently.

They already have such a team. It would be the GMs that are already getting reports when players take the time to fill one out. This tool would mean a greater number of reports, but at the same time make handling those reports much easier/quicker for the GM team to deal with. We're basically just asking for that team to be given better tools so they can be more effective.

They're already doing a really good job on keeping RMT out of the shared channels like /shout and /yell where it used to show up. They apparently just don't have good enough visibility to when it shows up in private /tell messages (which of course is the reason why the RMT spam moved to /tell). So this tool would be giving that GM team the visibility into where the spam is appearing now.

[Husband]

RMT just shifts into gear in your system. $10 cheap gear! Fast delivery! Lowbie sets, mid-game sets, and best crafted end-game sets! Stock your entire FC for a $500 bulk sale!

Ouch. I didn't think of that. Guess we will have to do away with market board and trading too.....

.... Unless we keep trading to FC only.. When you have been a FC member for 10 days or more.... For example

Trying here....

[Naberrie]

No, ending the demand for gil means to not have an economy. As long as there is an economy, there will be a demand for gil. The BEST way to end RMT is for SE to sell gil themselves (a la Eve Online).

That's like saying the best way for the police to fight drug lords is to sell drugs themselves. The best way to fight drug lords is for people to stop buying drugs.

I'm not saying kill the economy. SE's already done that. I'm saying people need to stop being idiots and buying gil.

If SE started to sell gil, RMT still wouldn't go anywhere. They'd simply undercut SE's own prices, and become even more ruthless in their hacking, botting and spamming. All you'd do is create an even more fierce and proactive enemy.

[Geryth]

I don't agree with this part. New players entering the game for the first time very frequently have questions they want to ask and are looking for other players to make friends with. They're among the most likely of anyone in the game to want to have a /tell conversation with someone. I think you're wrong about it being a "minimal impact". The impact could be huge.

I JUST went through as a green-faced new player. Heck, I didn't even know how to /tell probably until after level 5. If I really needed help, I could stick around the major city inn area and use /say. Level 5 is really quick to get too, like an 1-2 hours of play and a good chunk of that is cinematics. I really do believe the impact of this on legitimately new players would be hardly felt at all. Remember, I didn't say to limit all forms of chat, just personal tells.

I don't think it should allow 15 tells in 3 seconds in the first place. The /tell command should itself have something like a 1 second cooldown. I can't think of any legitimate, non-spam reason for sending multiple tells in the same second.

Well it depends on how they plan on us using AddOns in the future. Let's say some FC wants to use a DKP system to hand out gear (I don't know how end game looting here works so I don't know if this scenario is valid but the concept illustrates my point). Someone might have an addon that spits out someone's DKP as a /tell if they ask for it through a /tell. For example, I might type something like /tell PlayerA mydkp and PlayerA will send /tell [Me] Your DKP is 0.. Well, what's to stop 10 people from typing /tell PlayerA mydkp at the same time? PlayerA would then send out 10 tells simultaneously. Or, what about future implementation of damage meters? Someone might code a damage meter addon to /tell each member individually their damage report. This would require an instant spit of a bunch of different /tells.

I understand there's a practical need for a quick succession of tells. But more than 15? Not likely. Plus it's easy to differentiate scripted /tells versus human-typed /tells. Humans are capable of 1 tell per second. Not 15 per 3, unless they spammed something like <enter> a <enter> a etc. as rapidly as possible. The difference is differentiating RMT versus a useful AddOn. That comes with the report RMT feature. But I'd rather have the /tell limitations on AddOns (that we don't even have yet) than the RMT advertisements I currently get. Also, Macros can be used to send /tells too, which we DO have, I just can't see any reason for a macro to spit /tell to that many people though.

I agree with the Report Spam option and with automatically blocking chat when several such reports come in, but I think it should be a set number of reports rather than a percentage. These RMT guys are good at figuring out what rules are being used and finding ways of getting around them. If it's a percentage of messages they send, then they'd just need to send some other messages that don't clearly look like spam and serve no purpose but to dilute that percentage.

Good points. Yeah, it would probably be better to have stop it at a certain number rather than a percentage, but if you do that then the number needs to reset at some point. People make mistakes, it probably wouldn't be uncommon for someone to receive 30 accidental spam reports over a year of playing or something if they talk a lot. 30 reports in 1 day = RMT. 30 reports over 12 months, probably not.