Persistent "Unstoppable" RMT Spam-Bot

[Niwashi]

I guess the Japanese people play games for the sake of playing whereas the NA servers would rather pay to reach the top as fast as possible so they can go full epeen on everyone.

From what I've heard, RMT itself is big in Japan as well as here, it's just advertised through third-party sites rather than in-game. At least ad space on fan sites is less disruptive than in game /tell spam. But I think that difference is why SE doesn't take the spam seriously. Of course they have GM teams on this side of the world that see the spam we get, but the devs actually making decisions about how to handle it don't see any /tell spam issues because they're playing on JP servers. They only see the issues RMT causes to the in-game economy, so that's the only part they care about fixing. (And that's the part that's hard to impossible to fix. The spam would be the easy part to get rid of if they'd bother to do so.)

[Elim]

For awhile RMT spam calmed down on Gilgamesh, but the last few weeks I've been bombarded with spam. I have a tab just for /tells and it's normally filled with 20+ RMT tells. :/ I don't understand why it's so hard or wrong to put in a "tells from friends only" feature. A lot of people already put on /busy so it's not going to make that big of a difference to newbies trying to /tell vets.

I want to put on /busy but that's not an option for me. I'm in two raid groups now, and I coordinate one of them. That means I have 14 people(give or take depending on the time of the day) that want to hang out or talk to me about raiding or whatever throughout the time I'm logged on. Also IIRC when you have /busy on people can't invite you to a party, and I can't remember a day that I logged in without someone asking me to do something with them. Sometimes I log on and people simply invite me to a party and q for something without saying a single word. lol

[Nyalia]

Sometimes I log on and people simply invite me to a party and q for something without saying a single word. lol

Do they spam basic moves and get stuck running into walls sometimes? If so, your friends may have been replaced by persistent, unstoppable RMT dungeon bots.

Be careful. It could happen.

Also, are you a bot? Would you even know? Deep stuff dude. Real deep stuff.

[Elim]

Do they spam basic moves and get stuck running into walls sometimes? If so, your friends may have been replaced by persistent, unstoppable RMT dungeon bots.

Be careful. It could happen.

Also, are you a bot? Would you even know? Deep stuff dude. Real deep stuff.

Well some of my friends are pretty dumb(I <3 you guys), but they aren't bots.

As for being a bot and not knowing it... my mind is blown. I just can't handle how deep that was mannnnnn...

[Pterois]

Any level requirement or quest you put into place will not stop them, they already level to 50 going through blm quest. These people are not stupid, almost every single thing you put into place will be circumnavigated and half of these suggestions only burden the people trying to enjoy the game.

[Nyalia]

Stopping bots is hard, but I'd think it would be easy to stop RMT spam though. Limit the size of tells from people not on your friend list. Limit the number of tells you can send per second. Limit the number of people you can send tells to in a day based on level. Allow people to reduce/remove tells from non-friends/fc. Put a play-time requirement on the privilege of sending more than one tell. And so on, and so on, and so on. Sure, they can get around the limitations, but if you put limits on them that take time to circumvent, it reduces the amount of spam they can generate per account.

Also, make blacklisting be per account, not per character. Seriously, why hasn't this been done?

[SCUBA_Instr]

Hi,
Adamantoise continues to be bombarded by spambots.

The particular Level-1 Archer New Gridiana spambot (previously
reported) has been persistent since on or before Jan 8.
All efforts, to persuade the gamemasters to stop and block this bot, have failed.
-- Normal Report RMT Advert - Failed
-- Report harassment - Failed
-- Report Cheating (yes, using a bot is cheating) - Failed
-- Reporting the bot in this very message thread - Failed

Whois and INTERNIC searches reveals this bot belongs to the largest,
most insidious, gold farming criminal organization in the world.

At least one of the persistent Lvl-50 THM battle-bots, uses name
similar to this particular spam-bot.

Any suggestion, on how to persuade the gamemasters to
mitigate this insidious spambot, will be most graciously welcome.

[Nyalia]

Sadly, you've done all you can. The next step is to transcend caring about it and go about your life.

[SCUBA_Instr]

Hi Nyalia,

Sadly, you've done all you can. The next step is to transcend caring about it and go about your life.

Yes, you're exactly right.
To go on with my gaming life, I'm able to report spammers quickly and return to gaming quickly.
More and more gamers, on our server, are just leaving the Busy flag on continuously. When we
change the flag to do trades, or accept party invites, a flood of RMT spam messages quickly
fill the chat box.

I believe that responsible gamers should not acquiesce to the RMT criminal organizations;
those of us who enjoy the game should do all possible to impress upon the
gamemaster staff to protect it from the criminals who seek to destroy it.

Spambot softwares are becoming more nefarious than ever before, with more
sophisticated code injection techniques. Concerned players should impress upon the
Square Enix Company board of directors, the need to mitigate this serious network
security problem.

Thanks

[Nyalia]

Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I just don't think there is anything more you can do beyond what you've already done. Given the number of threads on this forum about the issue, I'm pretty sure SE is quite aware of how we feel about it. The only thing I've gotten out of posting in a thread like this was a warning that I'd be banned from the forums and the game if I didn't change my attitude toward SE regarding their treatment of spam bots. And so, I have changed my attitude - gone from getting angry about it to simply not caring. It's far less likely to get me banned.

While I can suggest the same for you, it's up to you how you want to spend your FFXIV time. If you want to spend it angry and up in arms about something that you honestly are justified being angry about, go right ahead. Just be aware that saying negative or critical things about SE on the forums is literally against the ToS (well, the Forum Guidelines, which are just as enforced if not more so). I don't think anything you've said here so far can get you in trouble (you're a lot less angry than I was), but I still recommend being familiar with the Forum Guidelines if you aren't already: http://support.na.square-enix.com/ru...la=1&tag=forum