Report an RMT directly from Chat Log

[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.