RMT Out of hand

[Risvertasashi]

My Blacklist after a month of playing...

Just as a tip, you might want to avoid showing names there. The mod team might not care as much about RMTs but it's easy to run afoul of that "don't name and shame" rule.

[Kosmos992k]

*sigh*
The solution for this is for fewer people (I am being polite) to be part of the problem. If you're on a server with tons of RMT tells, it's because there are sufficient numbers of idiots (oops, not so polite now) willing to buy gil on your server to make it worth their while advertizing and producing gil.

Frankly, I think the problem is that these RMTs are like cockroaches, and a new one will spring to life to replace any that are removed. Rather than attempting to kill off the roaches (which is norotiously difficult), we should be targetting that which these roaches feed on, in other words the players stupid and annoying enough to buy gil.

I believe that every time they ban a RMT account that has been used to pass gil on to gil buyers, they need to trace back through their transaction logs and identify every account that received a non-trivial amount of gil and do something with those accounts. Personally I favor confiscation of all gil and busting their classes (all of them) back to lvl 10 at the most), I don't think a temporary ban is sufficient deterrent to gil buyers. Also there is no fear of the consequences from buying gil. If you knew one of your friends bought gil, would you be happy about it? Anyone in my FC who ever buys gil will be summarily dismissed with no opportunity to rejoin - ever.

The problem is that buying gil is not seen as socially unacceptable. I see the problem almost like speeding. The thing about speeding is that it's kind of a socially acceptable offense. So much so that if you obey the speed limits, you are generally one of the slowest things on the road, and people deride you for being slow. Until speeding becomes socially unacceptable, it will continue to happen. Once it becomes socially unacceptable, speeding will diminish.

Buying gil needs to be seen as unacceptable by the vast majority of players, and those who do it need to be shunned and punished. A combination of deterrence and social rejection would quickly limit the number of players willing to risk the consequences of buying gil. It's just that no one wishes to hold gil buyer's responsible for their actions. So they continue to give RMTs the incentive to bug the living crap out of the player base. Whether they like it or not, the people buying gil are DIRECTLY to blame for the continued presence of the gil selling cockroaches called RMT. I see gil buyers as no better than the RMT, they're cockroaches, just like the parasites that sold them the gil they bought.
</rant>

p.s. I'm on Behemoth which has a pretty heavy contingent of RMT spammers right now, it is a royal pain in the ass.

P.P.S. I agree with those above suggesting a friends only option for "/tell" or a whitelist of people who you will accept tells from. It's a good idea but has a downside in that it restricts players from communicating with people they are not in the same location as, unless they are already in the same LS or FC.

[Lucke]

*sigh*
The solution for this is for fewer people (I am being polite) to be part of the problem. If you're on a server with tons of RMT tells, it's because there are sufficient numbers of idiots (oops, not so polite now) willing to buy gil on your server to make it worth their while advertizing and producing gil.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think less tells = that server has less business, or more tells = more business. If they have an account, they probably have at least 1 character on each server. So business shouldn't matter, they have a character on every server so they spam every server regardless of the business they get on each server. I think that makes sense. I just confused myself though.

If you aren't getting many tells, it could be that your server has character restrictions so they get banned (hopeful thinking there) but they can't remake their spammer because the character creation is off.

[Kosmos992k]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think less tells = that server has less business, or more tells = more business. If they have an account, they probably have at least 1 character on each server. So business shouldn't matter, they have a character on every server so they spam every server regardless of the business they get on each server. I think that makes sense. I just confused myself though.

If you aren't getting many tells, it could be that your server has character restrictions so they get banned (hopeful thinking there) but they can't remake their spammer because the character creation is off.

That assumes only one RMT account per server.

The reason you'll see more RMT tells on a server where there are more buyers is simple, more gil buyers = a larger market. A larger market encourages multiple RMT efforts that compete with each other. They compete in terms of price and visibility to capture the attention of the gil buyers. Hence more tells.

Unfortunately, it works like real life, the larger a market, the more competition, the more advertizing...

As I said though the best solution is to stop people buying gil in the first place. The less likely gil sellers are to sell their product, the less viable it is for multiple efforts on any given server. So if players wake up and stop buying gil, the RMTs will thin out, and ultimately dwindle.

But, for that to happen, something has to stop people from buying gil. Asking them nicely doesn't work, as SE and anyone else paying attention should have realized by now. Therefore, more direct actions are required. I'm not suggesting naming and shaming, although I wish there was some way for a player's reputation to be quantified and inspected.... What I am suggesting is that SE can use their database of all transactions in the game to identify customers of gill sellers, and take action against those players for violating the terms of service for FFXIV. Temp bans might help, but ultimately some may see that as a price worth paying. So, I think it needs to go further into gil confiscation, or perhaps some kind of level penalty to force those punished to re-level their classes as a reminder of their offense.

Whatever happens, until buyers are deterred from buying gil, there will be people selling gil. A few really loud permanent bans that everyone hears about might help put the fear of the Twelve into these people, but I thinkk something more practical might be needed.

[Noshpan]

Edited because of character limit raisins.

Early on, they did do something along the lines that you suggested: confiscation of ill-gotten gil and banning-without-warning of RMT-affected accounts. People flipped their shit and the forums were filled with threads complaints about losing gil or being outright banned. Sure, there were (and are) plenty of innocent victims of RMT-related activities, but in those threads you couldn't discern who was legitimately a victim and who bought/sold gil and claimed to have been a victim of account reprimand.

I'm sure every one of us has ill-gotten gil from RMT activities and not even know it. And if they were to resort to the mass RMT gil confiscation that they did early on I would initially be shocked and disappointed but, ultimately, understanding. I'd rather have RMT gil* taken from me than have my account banned.

*RMT gil - my definition is gil that have been acquired via someone whom had purchased gil via RMT and used said gil to purchase services (such as Primal/Coil clears/crafting/melding) and goods off of the market boards.

[Kosmos992k]

**snip**I'm sure every one of us has ill-gotten gil from RMT activities and not even know it. And if they were to resort to the mass RMT gil confiscation that they did early on I would initially be shocked and disappointed but, ultimately, understanding. I'd rather have RMT gil* taken from me than have my account banned.

*RMT gil - my definition is gil that have been acquired via someone whom had purchased gil via RMT and used said gil to purchase services (such as Primal/Coil clears/crafting/melding) and goods off of the market boards.

Like in real life, I am sure that there is gil in circulation that someone originally bought from a gil seller and then spent. I don't think there is any merit in trying to somehow trace that gil and pull it back from every account it has somehow tainted. To me, it is the player who buys the gil who is the problem, not the player/ crafters who through selling something on the market board have received some of that ill-gotten gil. I'm talking about taking action against gil buyers, not people who receive some gil in payment for a legitimately sold item on the MB. once the gil leaves the hands of the buyer, I would consider it 'clean' since to do otherwise negatively affects innocent players.

I'll say it again, not to be a pain, and not in reply to you, but just as a general point in this topic... I don't think this can be stressed enough. Without buyers, gil sellers would have no reason to spam anyone. Therefore the most effective way to combat gil sellers is to stop people buying gil.

[Noshpan]

I'll say it again, not to be a pain, and not in reply to you, but just as a general point in this topic... I don't think this can be stressed enough. Without buyers, gil sellers would have no reason to spam anyone. Therefore the most effective way to combat gil sellers is to stop people buying gil.

Oh, I quite agree. If there were not enough people buying gil to make it profitable for these RMT service providers, there would be far less RMT spam. And I find gil buyers to be just as bad as the RMT service providers, if not worse. I also dislike those people who, while they may not purchase gil, don't care if people do it and use the excuse of "It's not hurting anybody".

[Naliee]

RMTs have gone crazy and yeah, I know that SE has limited /tells somewhat. But I honestly think they should look into limiting /tells more, they're so obvious now! I mean, instead of using www. they use wvvw. etc etc

[Maero]

Yeah it really has been bad lately. It is unfortunate because it had died off to maybe 1 or 2 every few days, now it's several or more in a span of only a few hrs
Also i have found a few characters which i suspected are the ones selling gil and such. Some botanists in the same exact areas that are there like every day and all hours it seems. They are level 50 but still use level 20 gear, and no not spirit binding as the one person i have seen has had the same gear for over a week.
I reported them but alas they are still around

[SalMag]

RMT really hasn't been a problem for me. My blacklist is still less than half full and the only friend requests I've received were during Christmas holidays.

Maybe I'm just lucky. Go figure.