RMT Advertisers are ruining the game for me and many others.

[tocsin]

Sometimes I think they just don't do anything about it because those accounts are paying a subscription fee. What percentage of "active accounts" would go up in smoke if every gil-seller simultaneously vanished? 1%? 3%? That's lost revenue. /tinfoilhat

Try 20%-30%. That's the reality of it.

Its gotten to a point where SE doesn't want to significantly damage the RMT market, because they are significant contributors to their account numbers. of those "4 million registered accounts", it is estimated that over 40% of them are RMT based. out of the 750k actual subscribers that this game currently has, how many of them do you think are current RMT bots? 200k? 300k? that's a big chunk.

I don't like spam bots either. but im used to them, and they don't bother me anymore.

SE needs to fix this by the expansion or I will begin to suspect that they are actually in league with gold selling sites to turn a profit.

It's absolutely ridiculous how obvious of a problem it is and how SE has done nothing about it.

its not that SE hasn't done anything, its that they cant do anything else to damage them specifically without damaging others. as it is, the filters really suck. I have up to 10% of my messages never go through, because it gets filtered out without my consent.

[Elmeron]

its not that SE hasn't done anything, its that they cant do anything else to damage them specifically without damaging others. as it is, the filters really suck. I have up to 10% of my messages never go through, because it gets filtered out without my consent.

Sorry, but I don't believe that they can't do anything about it, I believe that they just aren't willing to do anything about it. Someone should really bring this up at PAX since it's going on now. I'd love to hear the slimeball excuse they come up with.

[SCUBA_Instr]

The RMT /Tell harassment on Adamantoise is increasing exponentially. More and more players use the /busy all the time. A friend's character went AFK while he took a shower. Upon returning he counted 114 /tell spambot messages.

Player search, filtered to level-1, reveals the spammers, typically (nonsense named) level 1 GLD's. Usually there are about 3 static level-1 Moogle Mail bots, followed by about 3 spambots which cycle in and out about every 3 seconds. Lately the RMT spambot owners have increased this to about 14 spam bots. Every day the situation gets worse.

On Limsa, the spambots and Moogle-Mail real money transfer bots, are no longer hiding down under the floor - they're in plain sight with nothing being done to stop them.

More and more players, myself included, have written off the /Tell, we play the game with /busy always on. If I briefly take it down to join party, a spam flood immediately fills the chat box. Hard to believe, isn't it? Login to Adamantoise and take a look.

Upon login, I have about 2 seconds to type in /busy, otherwise a spam flood fills the chat box.

I respectfully disagree with those who argue that we should ignore the problem and endure the abuse. Acquiescing, to spambot owners' demands, will not stop their vindictive harassment.

Decent players have made heroic efforts to describe the [harassment] problem to the Square Enix staff. Brilliant, workable, solutions have been submitted by paying players, all of which have been ignored (implied disapproval). In light of all this, may I request the easiest "fix" of all? Kindly change the "angry fish head" icon for the /busy, to a more pleasant or neutral icon.

Thank you.

[Set-Abominae]

It only ruins the game for people who let it ruin it, i removed tells from my chat 11 months ago and haven't thought about rmt since. I get the occasional friend request once or twice a month but /r deny and out of sight out of mind half a sec later. Complaining that SE isn't fixing a problem you could have solved months ago wont get you anywhere especially since the problem isn't going anywhere. MMO's will always have rmt deal with it or cry about it.

[dejavutwo]

You know RMT is bad when players are turning off tells to avoid it. The 3 options I like the most are:

1. Gil Spammer Blacklist - Give everybody secondary blacklist is that very small, but if you add a new name to it when full, the oldest name automatically falls off. SE does ban the bots fairly quickly, but if you don't blacklist a bot, they do keep spamming you. The primary blacklist is now freeded up for its intended purpose, and can be used for real players instead of being full of banned bots.

2. Right-click reporting - Give a right-click report RMT option that automatically generates the appropriate report, and adds the player to the blacklist mentioned in 1.

3. Whitelist tells - Give us a mode like busy mode in which only players that are on our friends list, FC, or a Linkshell can send tells. That way the Tell channel isn't useless anymore.

[Aerowaffle]

Try 20%-30%. That's the reality of it.

Its gotten to a point where SE doesn't want to significantly damage the RMT market, because they are significant contributors to their account numbers. of those "4 million registered accounts", it is estimated that over 40% of them are RMT based. out of the 750k actual subscribers that this game currently has, how many of them do you think are current RMT bots? 200k? 300k? that's a big chunk..

Whoa now, I don't think SE is that bad yet.

Is there a lot of bots? Yes, but I severely doubt that the number of bots have reached a point that SE is receiving a significant profit from bot accounts. All the tells can be done with one or two accounts so long as they can continue to create more characters. And although I see farm bots and when I do I get supremely annoyed, I don't think they make up even 5% of the characters that I see.

What I believe is happening is just SE not placing as much of a priority as they should to handle the RMT issue. They need to stop only dealing with the issue manually, and start giving the players more powers to deal with the tell spam, as well as make it easier for the players to report the bots.

If we could report easier, more people would bother doing it, making it easier for SE to spot the accounts that need to be taken care of. If we could filter our own tells and friend invites, the accounts that haven't been banned yet can be easily ignored.

[tocsin]

Whoa now, I don't think SE is that bad yet.

Is there a lot of bots? Yes, but I severely doubt that the number of bots have reached a point that SE is receiving a significant profit from bot accounts. All the tells can be done with one or two accounts so long as they can continue to create more characters. And although I see farm bots and when I do I get supremely annoyed, I don't think they make up even 5% of the characters that I see.

Keep in mind, every time you see a screenshot, like the one on the last page, that is 20-30 paid accounts, right on that server, at that time. think of one batch of 30 getting banned, per week, per server. that's almost 2000 paid accounts, per week. not counting shard bots. not counting mat bots. not counting spam bots. not counting mailbots.

I could easily see 200k bot accounts subbed, or more.

Remember, when you see 50 black mages afk in ul'dah, that's 50 subbed accounts. and those are different accounts for every server.

[SpiritMuse]

I've only been playing for a few days and I don't get nearly as much spam as some people here, but I do get at least one every time I log on. Even that is annoying because their spam fills up the entire chat window, pushing out stuff I may actually want to read. I've tried to report them but I'm not sure if I should report them under "harassment" or "cheating", really.

[Dererk]

I have I think a great idea to combat this that SE should really take in to consideration then they could just let bots be and bleed them dry.

Restrict tells. Unless there's the following reasons as in only way to get tells.

1 they are in the same free company as you.
2 are in the same link shell you are in.
3 friends list.
4 and may be a bit flawed because then you leave your self open to spam. You are the leader in a party that is looking for others in party finder.
5 they are in the same party as you.

Yes a few may be flawed but taking away the ability to just send tells to random people would be the biggest step in combating this kind of abuse. And its something that should be taken into consideration and put into play as fast as possible.

[tocsin]

a great idea to combat this that SE should really take in to consideration then they could just let bots be and bleed them dry.

Restrict tells. Unless there's the following reasons as in only way to get tells.

1 they are in the same free company as you.
2 are in the same link shell you are in.
3 friends list.
4 and may be a bit flawed because then you leave your self open to spam. You are the leader in a party that is looking for others in party finder.
5 they are in the same party as you.

Yes a few may be flawed but taking away the ability to just send tells to random people would be the biggest step in combating this kind of abuse. And its something that should be taken into consideration and put into play as fast as possible.

What if im afk and a crafter and am waiting for tells from strangers scheduling me for crafting appointments? I do this sometimes.
if you can find a good #6 for that, then im 100% down with your solution!