RMT Solution?

[Saccharin]

So I know some of them are either hacked, stolen or sold accounts but the ones that aren't maybe there is a small fix? I'm thinking that at the account screen when naming your character that SE make the system flag to watch or kick back names as being unacceptable when they are something like Asdffg Fdsas. Make them have to put thought and work into coming up with real and unique names, not just a Bunche of letters they slide their fingers across. Just my two cent on the matter.

What's to stop them creating other names. All you need for a random name generator is for it to put a couple of groups of letters together. This will not do anything to stop RMT.

[AarinEphemera]

Now they're using shout and yell function while spamming random players around.

[DSN]

when naming your character that SE make the system flag to watch or kick back names as being unacceptable when they are something like Asdffg Fdsas. Make them have to put thought and work into coming up with real and unique names, not just a Bunche of letters they slide their fingers across

It is much easier to track asdfasdfasd as RMT then "Bob the Adventurer", I for one welcome their (RMTs) laziness as it makes them stand out like a sore thumb

[peaches]

Get rid of shards. Its the easiest way for an RMT to make cash.

[Pandastirfry]

Get rid of shards. Its the easiest way for an RMT to make cash.

Then what? Get rid of crystals? After that clusters? Then low teir crafting mats? Though the "slippery slope" argument is a logical fallacy, in this case they'll always find something they can exploit to make their money.

The only real solution is to ban them when you can, they're kinda like cockroaches, sure you can call in the exterminator, but it's going to be awhile before you finally get them all...if you ever do.

[nindrocreto]

I think a good idea would be an option where you can turn off all incomming PM or only people on your friends list can PM you. Facebook has this option aswell as most chat programs, its an easy fix the only downside I see is gil sellers might start spam shout. It might not be an end to it all but i believe it will help. Iv just blacklisted 8 gil sellers in 30 minutes, today has by far been the worst experience iv had with them and it takes me out of the game and makes me not want to play. I hope you all agree and hope the developers do also.

[peaches]

Then what? Get rid of crystals? After that clusters? Then low teir crafting mats? Though the "slippery slope" argument is a logical fallacy, in this case they'll always find something they can exploit to make their money.

The only real solution is to ban them when you can, they're kinda like cockroaches, sure you can call in the exterminator, but it's going to be awhile before you finally get them all...if you ever do.

I dunno it seems pretty simple to me. It appears shards exist solely as a method that level one characters can make money off of. There are no passives that make them easier to get at higher (or max) of any gathering levels, and the ability you do get, you can only use for an extra measly 8 shards once every 5 minutes or so. Obviously RMT is going to abuse this. It takes no dedication. Clusters could still exist being a level 50 item, and possibly crystals, I think you need to be about level 30 to get them. If you needed to be level 50 (for clusters) or even 30 (for crystals) there is a greater chance SE would catch a bot leveling before it has a chance to farm the shards/crystals/clusters.

Shards are fluff anyways. They don't add anything to the crafting experience, they're simply an added expense and time sink. They could effectively achieve the same thing by making everything require 1 more of each material it already requires. Shard usage goes up exponentially at about level 30 or 40, and even more so for a weaver, but there is never a faster way to get them (and no, the ability for 8 extra every 5 minutes barely counts). If you're leveling a character and not trying to make a ton of money, or can't because of market saturation, you're probably stuck mining your own shards, which takes around 2 hours for 1500 shards. You can easily go through 1500 shards simply leveling normally (not abusing levequests) in a couple levels, forcing you to either come up with the cash (often without crafting if the market is cornered) and paying bots for the shards, or mining them yourself.

Honestly, the only way to prevent or discourage bots and RMT (other than improving their detection system, if they have one at all) is to make the things they go after either extremely easy for every player to get in the quantities they need, or make it unreachable without a somewhat significant time investment by leveling a class.

[Sove92]

snip

IP bans have been quite worthless for like 10 years and can lead to innocents being locked out (most private customer IPs change based on ISP's DHCP settings), not to mention the practically endless amount of proxies there are. The search invisibility feature could work for a while, after that, they'll simply send their bots in crowded areas and start reading up player names from RAM. Either way, when you put in a countermeasure, the spammers will find another way. For the first month or so, they were spamming shouts, but then, presumably due to STF presence in zones and many players disabling shout channel in cities, they started using /tells and have been doing so ever since, no more shouts.

The best and least headache inducing solution is a /tell filter, where you can restrict who can send you messages (FC, party, linkshells, friends, no one, everyone, same zone). This is pretty much the only countermeasure that cannot be bypassed. This will, however, most likely cause them to spam in shouts and yells again, but that simply means the STF has to patrol the zones and players can easily thwart that method, with the inconvenience of not seeing other shouts and yells either (you're not missing much).

[Marael]

The only real way to get rid of RMT is to get rid of the players that buy gil. But since that will never happen, RMT will continue to stockpile, spam, and sell their gil. I don't blame the people selling the gil, I blame the ones that buy it. They're the ones that enable the sellers, by making it worth their while. The RMT wouldn't be so rabid in this game if they didn't have so many buyers.

[Doo]

I don't even care about getting rid of rmt anymore. Just give me some options to filter out who I don't want to send me tells.

RMT tells has not improve since launch and feels like it has gotten worst at times. I'm beginning to think there's some conspiracy going on with Gil sellers and S.E.