RMTs killed Tell chat channel

[Nutz]

I feel like SE is overly cautious in trying not to restrict players when this shouldn't be the case. Limits on the number of /tells sent should be simple enough. Obviously a real player can't sustain 50+ /tells per minute regardless of how fast they type or how engrossing the conversation is. Naturally they'd just move to /shout and /yell channels more fully if /tell was more seriously blocked for them. Of course, actual monitoring by a GM who can instantly ban accounts would be great. A single GM should be able to monitor several zones easy enough and ban accounts after the first round of /tells.

Obviously there are a ton of options but SE mysteriously acts like this is an insurmountable problem.

EDIT: For the record I don't actually receive very much /tell spam unless I'm crafting in a city or something, but just because it's not a major problem (for me) doesn't mean it doesn't need addressing.

[JemC]

On my server one man took to making a massive linkshell where most of the bloody server is invited. You know, everyone except RMT's. It's not a solution by far but I'm glad for his effort that gives me a giant group of people I can talk to RMT free if I want. So I hang out on one chat tab I made for everything not /tell /shout or /yell.

[whoopeeragon]

Hello, all! This is LGM Enkrateia here. I had posted this in another thread; however, the information does seem relevant.

As time goes on, we are getting more and more RMT reports including the information that the blacklist is already full of RMT, so more cannot be added. Some reports that include a bit more information note that only prior entries that have changed to "Deleted" are being removed to make room for new entries.

I wanted to provide a bit of information and insight to address these concerns, which will hopefully help keep you from filling up your blacklist with RMT names that are never removed.

Once an account is found guilty of RMT solicitation, it is suspended indefinitely. However, the characters on that account are not deleted, since the suspension of the account is sufficient to prevent further solicitation from the account. Deleting the characters is an additional step that is not taken, since it is unnecessary, time consuming, and could result in account damage or loss in the case of a suspension that needs to be lifted, such as in the case of a compromised account used for RMT solicitation.

The blacklist is recommended as a temporary resolution to alleviate the unwanted solicitation, and is not meant to be a permanent state you place these names into. Removing the names periodically should allow us time to complete our investigation, and free up room in your blacklist if another account is used to solicit RMT.

Lead Game Master Enkrateia

Thank you for the response, kidvideo. Hopefully, I can provide some explanation that may help by discussing three countermeasures.

The blacklist is a character-focused resolution, preventing messages and other interactions from that character. Advertisements from another character would require an additional blacklist entry to prevent, and possibly additional reports to the Game Masters, so that we can investigate additional accounts that may be engaging in RMT solicitation.

Suspension, when issued by a Game Master, is an action against a single account. This should remove that account from continued RMT solicitation; however, if a single group is using multiple accounts for RMT solicitation, additional reports would help us find those accounts and issue actions against them for RMT solicitation. Game Master countermeasures against RMT solicitation accounts tend to be more noticeable, since they are reactive in nature. To specifically address your reply, a suspension prevents the account in question from continuing their solicitations, and is a sufficient method of doing so.

Finally, the Special Task Force and Account Admin review these account actions to determine if an account should be terminated and work towards preventing future RMT solicitation. These countermeasures do not tend to be noticed because they are proactive and preventative, mitigating future RMT issues. Relating this to your reply, we are constantly working on improving the speed of resolution and effectiveness of actions against RMT behaviour, so that the experience of our customers is as positive as possible.

There have been many strict or severe suggestions made to prevent all RMT solicitation in the game. These ideas, however, need to be implemented while balancing game mechanics with trying to eliminate this type of harassment, and requires constant work, since changing tactics and methods mean coming up with different countermeasures. These solicitation concerns comprise a lot of the tickets we get from customers, and we treat them seriously since they are the most common concern reported to us.

I hope this provides a bit more insight for you.

Lead Game Master Enkrateia

/10character

[Doo]

/10character

Damm that stuff is from 3-11 and RMT is still terrible if not worst.

[Tiggy]

What do people do that gets them a billion RMT tells?

5 a day is a minor inconvenience at worst....

Exactly. If I have to right click blacklist all of 5 times in a night. Big whoop. It's completely insane to remove your tell channel because you're incapable of right clicking a name and selecting an option. Oh and for those who "have a full list" I guarantee you over 80% of those people on your list are already banned. Clear that out.

[sarehptar]

I wish I was on a server that only got five RMT tells a day... Coeurl is awful. Last night, I blacklisted seven different RMT spammers who were all consistently spamming (you couldn't even read their ads anyway, at the rate they were replacing each other), and there were also at least one account using shout and one using yell. When they're yelling out their sales for everyone to see and they still don't get banned after days and days (a time period in which they would have been reported multiple times by different players), it's not hard for me to feel like far too little is being done about the problem.

[necrosis]

What do people do that gets them a billion RMT tells?

5 a day is a minor inconvenience at worst....

5 a day. Every day. For something that should not be happening.

I should not have to manage my blacklist like I manage my inventory.

[Fynlar]

To be totally honest I don't see that much of a point of tells in this game.

The vast majority of the time you'd want to send a tell to someone, you're in an instance (or THEY'RE in an instance) and you can't.

I'd imagine for most players, the tell channel exists solely to allow and collect RMT spam, because it's not that good for much else.

[Legacy_Wolfwood]

it seems to have gotten so much worse recently...

[Airget]

Yep that's all they ever do, ban characters once in a while. This is nothing but lipstick on a pig. Banning those characters does nothing to help. The RMT are on to different characters and trial accounts before that ban hammer ever comes down.

You are not aware of how they work then, the reason why RMT banning HAS to occur in bulk is because banning people on the spot is like squashing a single cockroach. You kill the cockroach and all that occurs is more cockroaches appear. In order to properly deal with the situation you have to find the nest, take care of them as a whole, and hit them where the mother hive lies. Getting rid of players that send RMT tells does nothing, they don't hold the gil, but those players which send the RMT tells will at one point have a connection to the RMT gil holders and when that occurs that's when SE acts to not only get rid of the peons that are sending tells to sell gil but the gil held by the RMT as well.