Report an RMT directly from Chat Log

[Laraul]

Most RMT spammers disappear pretty rapidly... either they've been forcibly removed or simply logged out themselves to avoid detection, moving on to a new character.

Here are all the SPAM tells I've received over a 12 hour period while I was AFK. There was only one that got it's SPAM to me twice. None of these we're blacklisted by me (I was AFK).

[18:31]Anselmet Ackezkjx >> [100000K Only need 317$]【ＷＷＷ P?????.COM ♥= BA 】 Real 5mins Delivery Guaranteed. Real cheaper than Market. yj_G
[18:47]X'apa Tiafghff >> [100000K Only need 317$]【ＷＷＷ P?????.COM ♥= BA 】 Real 5mins Delivery Guaranteed. Real cheaper than Market. E8Vs
[19:06]Ytre Ytrytrrr >> ＷＷＷ．Ｗ ????．ＣＯＭ 10000K=50$ Promotion: Up To 50% Bonus, You'll get whisper after buying,Delivery in 10minutes--------------------------S> Crystal Items----------------ＷＷＷ．Ｗ ????．ＣＯＭ
[20:13]Iuyt Iuyttttt >> ＷＷＷ．Ｗ ????．ＣＯＭ 10000K=50$ Promotion: Up To 50% Bonus, You'll get whisper after buying,Delivery in 10minutes--------------------------S> Crystal Items----------------ＷＷＷ．Ｗ ????．ＣＯＭ
[20:17]Mordyn Pojsln >> WWW.P????.C0M 20000K GIL+5%Free = 70.69$. Real 5mins Delivery Guaranteed. Real cheaper than Market. Happy Valentine's Day. 9SwH
[23:23]Kennard Claywevpz >> WWW.P????.C0M 20000K GIL+5%Free = 70.69$. Real 5mins Delivery Guaranteed. Real cheaper than Market. Happy Valentine's Day. ieAk
[0:28]Ahrah Reahdd >> ＷＷＷ．Ｗ ????．ＣＯＭ 10000K=50$ Promotion: Up To 50% Bonus, You'll get whisper after buying,Delivery in 10minutes--------------------------S> Crystal Items----------------ＷＷＷ．Ｗ ????．ＣＯＭ
[0:32]Ahrah Reahdd >> ＷＷＷ．Ｗ ????．ＣＯＭ 10000K=50$ Promotion: Up To 50% Bonus, You'll get whisper after buying,Delivery in 10minutes--------------------------S> Crystal Items----------------ＷＷＷ．Ｗ ????．ＣＯＭ
[2:14]Robyner Fulke >> WwW.g???????.Com Today's price:3$/1000k,best price,UP to 10% bonus.fast delivery sn
[5:36]Gfdser Trewee >>ＷＷＷ．Ｗ ????．ＣＯＭ 10000K=50$ Promotion: Up To 50% Bonus, You'll get whisper after buying,Delivery in 10minutes--------------------------S> Crystal Items----------------ＷＷＷ．Ｗ ????．ＣＯＭ
[6:00]Hewrey Auuoh >> [100000K Only need 317$]【ＷＷＷ P?????.COM ♥= BA 】 Real 5mins Delivery Guaranteed. Real cheaper than Market. Gnb4

I think the only way to stop these is to restrict /tell to players above a certain level. Or those who have amassed a certain amount of play time.

[Kyouki]

I don't think reporting them isn't going to help. Most RMT spammers disappear pretty rapidly... either they've been forcibly removed or simply logged out themselves to avoid detection, moving on to a new character.

If thats for 12 hours you're lucky. That is what i get in ~1 hour. Yes, some of the spammers log out pretty fast... But just to be back with a similar name 1 minute later. Thats how life on Goblin is. They are extremely agressive spamming there.

[ArtemisMobiusetti]

... Here are all the SPAM tells I've received over a 12 hour period while I was AFK...

Your results are quite lucky, Hyperion must be cleaner than Goblin.

If thats for 12 hours you're lucky... Thats how life on Goblin is. They are extremely agressive spamming there.

I went ahead and did a 4 hour test sitting AFK, with one chat window set only to display tells. Here are my results (also added this to my OP):


4 Hours, 39 /tell. Winner was Laurensd with 5 tells in 4 hours.


Guys, something isn't right here, and we need to fix this. I can't report 9 players an hour (average /tell rate) with the current reporting system.I'm not looking for a cure to the RMT plague, there is no {Esuna} for it. I just want an easier system for reporting RMTs, easier for players and GMs alike.
Existence is reasonable. Let's make things better.

[Niwashi]

Here are all the SPAM tells I've received over a 12 hour period while I was AFK.

Didn't there used to be a rule that you couldn't get tells while AFK? I wonder what ever happened to that.

I think the only way to stop these is to restrict /tell to players above a certain level. Or those who have amassed a certain amount of play time.

Neither of those would have any effect on it. The spam bots will be whatever level they need to be to send their spam. It doesn't matter to them in the slightest what level that is. Currently, that level happens to be 1, so currently the spam bots are level 1. If the level to unlock full chat access were 10 or 15 or even 50 for that matter, then the spam bots would all go to that level. It wouldn't make there be any less of them. The same goes for play time. If they need to be online for a certain amount of time before they can start their spam, then they'd simply log in that much in advance. Again, that wouldn't have any affect on their numbers.

I've seen this and numerous similar ideas suggested often. People need to give up on the notion that making the game harder for newcomers would help stop spam. It wouldn't. All making it harder for newcomers does is make it harder for genuine newcomers, with characters being directly controlled by real players who are trying to learn the game. Bots don't care what it is they have to do, as it'll all be just part of their script.


The only thing that will stop the RMT spam is making it unprofitable. There are costs in setting up new accounts. (Even if they're stealing accounts, it costs them the effort of stealing them, as they can only manage that for so many.) They're only going to continue doing it as long as those accounts are making them more money than they cost. Given that only a very tiny fraction of players getting these annoying tells will respond by going to their website and buying gil from them (and that in most cases they only make a small amount of money from each of the ones who do), an account has to be able to send out lots and lots of advertising spam messages before it gets banned — enough for even that tiny fraction resulting in sales to bring in more money than the account cost.

The only reason RMT spam is so bad in this game is because SE isn't doing anything to stop it. Sure, they do a sweep once a month or so and ban a bunch of accounts, but a month is plenty of time for the RMT companies to make money from them, so these occasional sweeps are nearly meaningless. The bans have to come immediately in order to have any real effect. If we got that "Report RMT" option and, most importantly, SE had GMs monitoring them real-time to ban them real-time, then the spam bots wouldn't be able to get more than a handful of messages out before their whole account is blocked. With their low sale to ad message ratio, most spam accounts wouldn't bring even a single customer to their site. As soon as that happens, all the RMT companies would quit trying to advertise in-game and move their whole advertising budget into ads on third-party sites, simply because the in-game spam would be losing them money. Now, by itself, that wouldn't stop the actual RMT, but it would immediately and completely eliminate RMT spam.

(Stopping the RMT itself is a different issue because the farming bots are far harder to identify than the spam bots. Real players farm stuff in pretty much the same ways that bots farm stuff, and SE has to do a thorough enough check of a character's background to determine which it is before banning them. The one second glance to say "yes, that's RMT" only works for the spam messages.)

Of course, implementing a "Report RMT spam" option and needing to respond immediately to all the reports that come in from it would create a flood of work for the GMs the first few days after it comes out. Even if the reports only take them a second or two to process, there would initially be a lot of them. But as soon as the RMT companies figure out that this is no longer profitable and they quit trying to send in-game spam, the corresponding reports would dry up as well, letting the GMs get back to all the rest of the stuff they need to be doing. So if that initial rush is too much for their regular GM staff to handle, SE could just hire a few temps or temporarily reassign a few people from other areas to providing the GMs with some backup during maybe that first week or two. It's not like it would continue to be a ton of work on an ongoing basis.

[Kyouki]

I dont agree that its hard to say who's a real farmer and who's a bot...

If i find a group of warping ppl underground (only names showing up above the earth) with names like Aiaoa Aiaoa, Aiaob Aiaob, Aiaoc Aiaoc etc its pretty sure they are bots... If you examine them they all wear the same equip (mostly low lvl), none of them is in a FC...

Unfortenately it is not allowed to post videos of them doing this on the forums, neither is real namecalling (the names above are not the ones i found, they are just similar).

I really wish there would be an option to call a GM to these places to let them check that out while they do that. I know, its not possible but i still wish i could... Cause i am spending way too much time to blacklist and report these days. It really starts to steal my actual playtime <.<

[Shadow_life]

if we give them the website names that are on there cant they have them shut down? cause i started to write some down incase this will actually help because the spamming on my server is so terrible i get at least 10-20 spams in the time span of an hour. maybe put an option in the settings that you can have only friends send you tells or players within a certain distance? i mean i love this game but the spamming is just as bad as diablo 2. what they are doing is considered soliciting money right? if that is the case i will gladly write down every website address and give them to square enix.

[Shadow_life]

just a thought but what if square enix paired up with the makers of sword art online and make a mmorpg? im not gonna lie i think that would be thee most epic game of all time besides this game of course. just my opinion.

[Laraul]

Neither of those would have any effect on it. The spam bots will be whatever level they need to be to send their spam.

As of now, if a character is banned for spamming after ten minutes, they just turn around creating a new one. One that's instantly capable of starting where the other left off. Obviously this is overwhelming the staff responsible for keeping the servers clean of this stuff. So, putting a time wall up to slow down the flood of new RMT SPAM-Ready characters will help!

People need to give up on the notion that making the game harder for newcomers would help stop spam.

No one wants to make the game harder newcomers. But newcomers and long time players alike shouldn't subjected to this garbage we see now. Yes it's unfortunate. But I simply do not know what else they can do to stop this other than this.

The only thing that will stop the RMT spam is making it unprofitable.

RMT is a major business, and it's not going away. These RMT outfits operate their services within just about every MMO available! You can't just stop people from wanting a quick way to get some gold/gil? People are going to take shortcuts, people are going to cheat.

Personally, I could care less if people actually use these services. It's their money, and if they want to take the risk of losing their account, they can go right ahead. I, and everyone else, is sick of seeing all the RMT SPAM /tells we see now. The priority should be to stop those first!

The only reason RMT spam is so bad in this game is because SE isn't doing anything to stop it.

They are doing something about it! And you screaming any different isn't HELPPING. I'm offering a possible solution! You're just screaming "SQUARE-ENIX! DO MORE!"

[Avenger]

They are doing something about it! And you screaming any different isn't HELPPING. I'm offering a possible solution! You're just screaming "SQUARE-ENIX! DO MORE!"

Since the current approach is not working and the problem seems to be getting worse, I agree that the Report&Blacklist button is a band-aid which would at least speed up the apparently ineffective and futile process of RMT spam reporting in FFXIV.

While they are at it they could also accelerate the apparently pointless process of re-reporting botters who have been there for months.

Restricting /tell has the obvious downside of making it harder for new players to communicate. Besides that, I expect the main effect it would have would be that spambots would bot for 10 hours (or up to level 10 or whatever the requirement is) before converting to spam mode.

Spammers might end up having to make their assembly line longer, but you can bet that they will still manufacture the same number of new spambots per hour.

[Niwashi]

As of now, if a character is banned for spamming after ten minutes, they just turn around creating a new one. One that's instantly capable of starting where the other left off. Obviously this is overwhelming the staff responsible for keeping the servers clean of this stuff. So, putting a time wall up to slow down the flood of new RMT SPAM-Ready characters will help!

The time between bot-character creation and that bot beginning it's spam would increase, but the rate at which new bot-characters are created wouldn't change. The bots just beginning to spam people might be ones created a couple hours ago and the ones being created now wouldn't start their spam for another couple hours, but if the same number are being created at the same rate, then the overall amount of spam stays the same. The time they spend online before beginning their spam wouldn't be an offence they could be banned for, nor would it get them on anyone's blacklists, so that extra time simply doesn't count towards the time needed to eliminate them.

They are doing something about it! And you screaming any different isn't HELPPING. I'm offering a possible solution! You're just screaming "SQUARE-ENIX! DO MORE!"

What they're doing is what I directly referred to, in the very next sentence after the one you quoted. Those bans occur far too late to prevent the spam from reaching RMT customers. As long as that remains the case, they're not going to work. Bans have to come immediately, so that the spam doesn't make the RMT companies enough money to be worth continuing. Only when it becomes unprofitable will it stop.

And as to your solutions and mine, I did offer a real solution. (Or actually, as far as this thread goes, the OP offered it and then I elaborated a bit on it.) They just need the proper tools. It's a solution that we've been asking for since the game came out, because it's the one (and probably only) solution that would actually work. If SE would implement it, then there would be no more RMT spam. There spam exists because SE hasn't given us or the GMs the tools needed to stop it.