Persistent "Unstoppable" RMT Spam-Bot

[Nyalia]

The issue with the current "busy" status is that it actually restricts certain aspects of gameplay that have nothing to do with tells. For instance, you automatically respond "no" to all ready checks and you are unable to directly trade with other players while it is up.

The biggest problem with RMT reporting is that, from what I've heard, this is almost exclusively an EN issue. Or, rather, a non-JP issue. It is not a global issue, and it is not an issue on the servers that the developers play on. Because of this, there is less of an incentive for the SE developers to programatically provide us more tools to fight RMT. I'm sure everyone reading this already knows what those tools are:

1. One-click spam reporting, available from the context menu you get when you click on a name, which automatically sends a report and blacklists the offender as well. This would vastly increase the reporting of RMT spam.
   
2. Blacklisting someone blacklists their entire account, not just the one character they are currently using. If they delete the character and create a new one, their new character will still be blacklisted. (This one I really want, and not just for RMTs - there are rude and disruptive players who have made alts and I'm tired of blisting the same player time after time.)
   
3. Allow players to turn tells on/off, or just tells from people not on their friend list. This would be a really nice stop-gap, but SE has incentive not to do this because it does isolate new players, preventing them from communicating with others and thus presenting a more exclusive rather than inclusive experience.
   
4. Allow the blacklisting of someone who sent you a friend request, and have the blacklist function automatically deny the friend request.
   
5. Create a complex series of filters that will detect spam between non-friends and block it, sending a warning back to the user.
   
6. Prevent the sending of tells to people who are not on your friends list if the tell contains a website address.
   
7. Place a limit on the number of people who are not on your friends list that you can send tells to in a given period of time. And/or place a limit on the number of tells you can send in a second. I don't know how rapidly spam-bots send their tells, but I'd expect it to be pretty rapidly. There is no proper use of the tell feature that sends tells to 100 people in a minute.
   
8. Require the completion of a quest to unlock the /tell feature, but rather than making it something simple to code around, you have to answer randomly generated questions? Basically, make it an "in character" capcha, where you are asked stuff like, "could you go ask that at the docks who stares out at the water what his name is? When you know, send me a /tell" or "Could you run down to the markets for me and ask ____ what the cheapest fruit on the market is? Let me know with a /tell when you find out." You have to go and talk to someone else far from the quest giver before you can send the tell and, if you send the wrong response, you have to restart the quest. Since the quest would involve moving around, RMTs couldn't just spam all known possible answers to the NPC. This would at least delay the ability for new bots to send tell spam. Of course it wouldn't eliminate it, but it would increase the time between character creation and spam pretty significantly, giving SE more time to ban their account.

However, I believe SE does not have sufficient incentive to spend the resources to do any of these things because this is a local problem and not a global problem. Instead, the people from SE who would address RMT are the local GMs/sysops/administrators/etc, who do not have the ability or authority to implement solutions that require code changes to the game, and who have limited authority in banning players to ensure only those who are actually breaking the rules are getting banned.

If I remember correctly, even using the ingame form to report RMT is not really supported. I remember reading somewhere that some webpage should be used to report RMT instead. However, to me, leaving the game, finding a website, and then filling out a report is prohibitively time consuming. By the time I get back to game, I'll have two more RMT tells to report. Heck, almost every time I've used the in-game form to report an RMT, by the time I had finished, I already had another RMT tell. I long since gave up reporting them because there are just so many. I get at least 30 tells a day from RMTs, and maintaining my blacklist every week is a real chore. Plus, I keep having to re-blacklist legitimate players who are rude, offensive, and disruptive because I inadvertently un-blacklist them while clearing my list of deleted or banned RMT bots.

At least for me, the problem of RMT spam has escalated recently, and it has gotten worse rather steadily since the day I started playing the game. Or at least, it feels that way. It doesn't matter how many RMT accounts have been banned or how much SE has done to combat this (and I'm sure it's been quite a bit), but it has not caused a noticeable decrease in the amount of spam I've received.

[Eye_Gore]

The issue with the current "busy" status is that it actually restricts certain aspects of gameplay that have nothing to do with tells. For instance, you automatically respond "no" to all ready checks and you are unable to directly trade with other players while it is up.

Could just un-check tells in the chat log filtering menu.

[Nyalia]

Could just un-check tells in the chat log filtering menu.

You could, but that wouldn't let anyone know that you did not receive their tell. Also, does that stop the tell noise?

[Eye_Gore]

You could, but that wouldn't let anyone know that you did not receive their tell. Also, does that stop the tell noise?

It does stop the noise as tells become disabled, or you could shut the noise off if you didn't want to disable tells. If you really need to communicate with someone and they are not within shout distance, you could use the mail system right?

Its not a perfect solution, but it wont disable other aspects.

[Niwashi]

... Of course it wouldn't eliminate it, but it would increase the time between character creation and spam pretty significantly, giving SE more time to ban their account.

A slight delay before their spam begins doesn't decrease the amount of it any. It doesn't give SE any more time to ban the account, because the requests to ban it don't start coming in until after the spam begins.

Also, does that stop the tell noise?

Noises for all types of chat log events (including /tell) are fully configurable. The only difference is that /tell has one of the sounds turned on by default.

[SCUBA_Instr]

Hi Nyalia,

...If I remember correctly, even using the ingame form to report RMT is not really supported.
I remember reading somewhere that some webpage should be used to report RMT instead.

Yes, I've heard about that elusive webpage and searched for it with no success.

So, the question becomes, "Which of the 3 choices is best for reporting spam bots?"
-- Report RMT advert under the information tab
-- Report harassment under the contact us tab
-- Report cheating under the contact us tab

Arguably, RMT Spamming meets the criteria for all 3.

I'm inclined to construe that "Report harassment," gets read by someone,
or it should get read, but I have no way of knowing.

I sincerely wish that a game-master would log in to this message thread
with the best advice.

Thanks

[SCUBA_Instr]

Hi Nyalia,

Blacklisting someone blacklists their entire account

Best suggestion yet. Your suggestion is reinforced by the known fact
that spambot softwares constantly delete and re-create their own
spambots many times per minute.

I read somewhere, on a gaming news website, that the RMT generates over 1000 new
ffxiv bot accounts daily, using cheap stolen credit card accounts.

May I add to your suggestion?

There should be a high capacity global blacklist, whereby the first "victim" to get spammed, has the
option to add the spambot name to a global inter-server blacklist to which we can have
the option to subscribe to. Thus, we all benefit from the actions of the first person
to blacklist the spambot owner's entire 8-player account.

Last year I suggested a global blacklist on the ffxivrealm website and was
immediately shot down by a pseudo expert who argued that it would crash
the ffxiv source-code and all the servers.