------- Small Intro ------
Note: Please, look at the post-edit and the second idea, because it will maybe be more useful and worth than the main one, and also feel free to critic the brutal one, I already expected that last one to be so.
Note2 : I encourage you to read the entire thread. I'm not the unique person trying to offer ideas here, and many of them are worth to check.
Hi everyone, dear people of the forum!... How many threads do we have already about RMT ruining the game and all those things?... Oh, why do I ask? We know that are almost endlessly... But let's make a new one, one for trying to give solutions to RMT, and here will go my idea, but feel free to also give yours!...
First of all I have to say that I had during two years a private server of one MMORPG even if my programming level was poor... But it worked, why? Because I like to think in the everything with the mind cold, analyze it objectively and search solutions, the bigger troubles often have the cheaper solutions you could never imagine, and they are there.
I'll give my opinion and idea of how Square Enix could vanish, (If they really want it) the RMT of this awesome game, that shouldn't be stained by the cancer of RMT.
------- The Problem we have------
Right now, all RMT have it so easy as make the character and start sending tells, it is too easy and requires almost no time, probably they have them even programated just for doing the first quest and then have available the tell command. So you see a lot of level 1s in the corners spamming around with tells. You ban them? They make more, because it is easy and it's not such a big deal.... What if we change that?...
------- The idea ------
When fighting against bots, we have to have in mind two things, they are not humans, they are bots, they can't rationalize or think, they just follow a patron made by someone. So it is obvious that the best way for stopping a bot is putting some kind of trap, an obstacle, something that only a human can do, something that requires thinking, something similar to a captcha...
How can developers do that? It is easy, do not allow the command /tell from the beginning of the game. Neither /shout or any other channel that could be spammed. In the beginning of the game, a player will normally understand more the concepts with the help that is given by the game support than what others could say, it is not until they reach level 15 or so that they really need to communicate, or level 10...
Make a quest for level 10, that way, bots will first have to level to 10, then... They'll have to complete a quest, this quest will be the key of this idea, the trick, the filter, the captcha. A quest explaining the players how to use the /tell command (Similar to one we already have, thanks to 2.2 patch).
Aside of teaching players how to use tell function, and also small tricks like alt + r and that... The quest would eventually make a question to the player that has to answer, and also give him some kind of secret code that has to write in a /tell. It is easy, the NPC will give in the quest a RANDOM variable (The code) so that way bots doesn't know what's there... Then if the var that the player writes in a tell, or a say command, whatever, is the same than that one the player pass, mission complete, and all communication commands are available.
That's the main idea, the quest and how to do it could be different, have not to be exact, but I hope you catch it... And now let's go to the 'main troubles' of this.
------- Main Troubles or little issues ------
- As you maybe noticed, for completing this quest, the player will need to have unlocked the commands such as say and that... What if someone (especially the bots) pause the quest at that moment and use the commands already for spam, without finish it?... It could happen, yes... And it has a solution. Only allow the command say, and only for a minute or two, if nothing has been typed after that happened (A timer, easy) then the quest fails...
- "Okay, the captcha thing is good but... Bots could just write all kind of random things during hours until hitting the real response... What should we do there?" (Again, easy, make it so if you fail the code, you have to ask again for one, and it will generate another new one... Or that or, after three fails, similar to a password, you fail the quest... And if you fail the quest... You'll need one hour to do it again, a timer, cap, timer.
------- Conclusion ------
Even if the programmers of the bot manage to program their bots for level up to 10 or 15 and then go to take this quest... There always be one rock in their way that will stop them of surpass that, at least without intervention of an human...So this would stop the RMT, or at least delay it, because the programmers would have to manually enter with those characters and realize the quest themselves... Thing that won't happen because it is tedious... Or will happen because they win money with this after all, but at least they won't win it while sleeping, and it will highly delay the bots...
And of course and more important, a ban would actually make something and also be painful for them.
Maybe I'm just too naive and it is really so much difficult as people want to think? Or just that I tend to see easier solutions to bigger problems?... I had to deal with this time ago too, and with trickies like this I highly reduced the spam.
Thanks for reading, sorry for my bad English.
I really hope that Square Enix, if they really want to finish with this issue... Will take this idea in mind, it is something I just came with, but those things you just come with sometimes are the things that increase the quality of your game, I love FFXIV.
Regards.
<<<<<<<<<<< Post Edit, A better idea >>>>>>>>>>
Instead of doing a quest at a certain point. Detect if someone does too many tells every 5 minutes, if that happens, activate the verify protocol for fooling the boots, doing some captcha or code, or something that would require human intervention... I think this is even better than the whole idea I just made before because it is not expected... Unlike what happened with the idea before... I realized that the persons behind the bots would just go and activate the tell commands and so, then they forget until the bot is banned, it reduces a little the thing... But this way they'd have to be actively checking bots... And that's really a bothering for them, this one would reduce it even more and it wouldn't suppose such a nuisance for the players.
It is like if you put 7 fishing bots. Maybe some of you noticed it or not, but when you are fishing in the same area too much time, a strange message that I don't remember appears, and it is clearly made for avoiding a bot fishing 5 hours or more nonstop, so someone have to go there and move the bot. With the tells it could be the same.
Every certain tells per minute, send a prompt. The time that it takes to reply this prompt will be the time needed for use tell again... so if a bot takes 5 hour because the person behind noticed it failed, 5 hours will have to wait again for sending a tell... If a player replies in less of a minute to this prompt-captcha-whatever you want to call it... Player will be able to continue replying and a new prompt won't appear until next 24h...
Of course, as I said, this won't exterminate RMT as long as they are winning money with this, but highly, efficiently reduce their activity because the need of having to do manual things all the time.
PS: I put the fishing example because was a good idea by SE, but the 'prompt' they use is not a proper one and could easily be bypassed, idea would be to do something similar to that with the tells, but really requiring of an intelligent response or of rationalize.
Originally Posted by
Amnesia
I don't suggest that SE limit the number of /tells you can send per minute (well, perhaps to something reasonable like 10---that's one every 6 seconds). I think they should limit the number of different players that you can send /tells to per minute. 5, say.
And this person is right, actually the method would be better... We players can certainly send a lot of tells to someone sometimes, but we are rarely sending a lot of tells to many people at time, because we are lazy and it is not so easy after all like sending to one person. And bots do really send the same message to a lot of people, rather than send it thousand times to only one. So please, if someone from the community management finds this post and thinks the idea is good, rather apply this method for sending the prompt.
<<<<<<<<<<< Post Edit, The brutal idea (kill the root) >>>>>>>>>>
I'll add another idea, the brutal idea. This one will receive critics because the method, but... It will work, HAS to work. As someone said, the only way for stop RMT would be try to convince everyone for not use their services... Yes, this would kill RMT from the root, indeed, but... It is utopic, if we could convince people so easy, many of the problems of this world would be solved already...The bigger a group to convince is, the closest it is to impossible.
That said, what does it works nowadays with the people? What does really stop persons, or 'convinces' them without do it? Threatening, yes, that's it, it is how our whole law systems works after all, many people don't commet crimes because they know something bad would happen if they do... Else wouldn't they do whatever they want?... Sure they would. People in this forum that is pissed off express their annoyance to Square Enix, but they don't dare to insult, is it because they are polite? Of course not, because they fear a ban. And I'm totally sure that if insults against Square Enix wouldn't be a ban, we would see many here, am I right? Actually trying to stop the drugs in some countries, they are focusing more in punishing those who buy the drugs, that those who are selling them, this would be the same.
SE could also give a big scale action against RMT just by punishing the players that acquire the services of the gil sellers. And this can be really easy to see and know... Like most of the MMORPG games, I want to suppose that FFXIV has a nice database with fine logs where you can search the transactions between players, check the biggest amounts and weirdest ones and investigate, where did that player obtain the money or how? Was it endlessly grinding in a dungeon with other four of strange names?....
Whatever I want to mean is that.. Actually SE could advise the players that hire those type of services that it is against the terms of service and their accounts will be banned. That way, taking actions against the players that buy RMT, you really make most of them drop the idea to even try it... At least, me, thinking like a player, wouldn't risk my account just for having more gil and probably a big percent wouldn't...
Thins is just... Advise players that you can take actions against them for this, and, also, prove that you have the needed tools for catching doing it... Without customers, RMT would stop with the time, and if you even fuse it with others idea for making RMT a pain because needing to manually do prompts...
Basically, it is a change of focus, instead of having someone checking if someone is RMT and then ban, have someone checking the logs and suspicious transactions. Or just checking who is earning money in an area, farming there constantly, and then investigate the transactions that one make... There are a lot of options once you have everything stored in your sql.
And remember, there are way more bots than players buying gil. So it will always be easier to discover players who buy, than discover all the damn bots and try to ban them all just to achieve nothing.
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