Know what I hate the most about RMT spam?

[Chek]

I don't understand what happened. This game was pretty decent at launch compared to other MMOs and RMT spam, but ever since I came back a few months ago its just the worst.

I checked my chat log earlier to confirm it, and I was literally getting 1 or more spam tells every single minute for 40 minutes straight. Every. Single. Minute. I had to set myself to busy. There's also a shouter in Limsa on my server that has been there for god knows how long. What is going on with SE and this? What changed?

[Havenae]

Apparently a lot of people are. Theres virtually no spam in Japanese servers because theres no market over there. And thats where gil spammers come in. American's always want a quick fix, they dont want to work hard for something. I know I'm generalizing here, but honestly, look at the American market in general.

This is actually true. I was checking out European servers a couple of weeks ago, because I'm considering transfering and I didn't get a single tell there either. it's pretty much only NA servers that are flooded with it.

[Viridiana]

do we get annoyed at most TV shows being interrupted by adverts? Do we get annoyed when we go to the cinema and watch half an hour of adverts? Do we get annoyed when a webpage is full of ads? What about smartphone apps? They show fullscreen ads every time you open them. We just accept it as the norm in a capitalist system where all people care about is the aquisition of wealth. It's just the same spam spam spam and hope people buy.

Yes, especially because it ruins the flow and mood of the show if the show is at all dramatic. What's that? Character you like is in danger? Here, have a cutesy toilet paper commercial with cartoon bears!

In my experience, people ignore adds before movies and just use that time to settle it and wrap up any conversations they were having.

I use noscript to block most adds. The ones that get through are extremely annoying, yes.

If any of my apps started displaying adds every time I opened them, I would stop using them.

[Delsus]

Yeah ok. Think you misunderstand something. We as consumers are only accepting the advertisements we can't do anything about and we seek alternatives to things that annoy us. Do you ever wonder why online youtubing movie watching has rose in popularity? One of the reasons is because for a long time it was 100% commercial free and, in fact, it still feels a lot less intrusive (other reasons include variety of entertainment, convenience and what not). It is known in the advertisement world that there is a thing as going too far with intrusive advertising and companies are warned to be careful of such tactics as it can cause consumers to relate feelings of negativity and hatred towards their brands. Receiving a constant barrage of /tells that are seemingly endless every single time I log on FFXIV is an example of poor advertising as it makes us hate these groups and when we hate them, we will create a riot on the forums until SE is forced to exterminate them. But if they weren't irritating us like this, we may just accept they exist and get on with our lives.

I'm not playing FFXIV cuz I'm all CAPITALISM **** YEAH!!111 I want to get the hell away from all this crap I gotta deal with in my real life and the constant reminder of 'wealth and profiteering' is one of those things I really don't want to be constantly reminded about when I'm sitting in my MMO world.

We can do something about it, companies spend millions, (potentially billions) a year on advertising, why? because it works. An advert that costs thousands on prime time TV ultimately makes a lot of money, if there was no evidence they wouldn't bother. If it really annoyed people so much they would start showing their frustration with their wallets, they would say they would boycott a certain brand, if enough people did that this advertising would start to decline. Rather it has massively increased, just one year ago advertising on Youtube wasn't too bad, but now alot more videos start with an ad.

If it annoys people so much use for example supermarket own brands, but as people are not doing this the mass advertising is widely accepted, we can do something about it if it really bothers us. Same with RMT if people stop buying gil, there will be no market, no market = no advertising, therefore RMT dies. It's all exactly the same.

Also if there is nothing we can do about advertisements, what you are really saying is companies have much much more power than democratic governments, many times people have voiced opposition to government policies, and they have been blocked, yet we can't stop intrusive advertising outside PVRs and adblocks?

[LineageRazor]

What changed?

Gold Saucer is what changed. That single addition brought a FLOOD of players back to the game who'd lost interest. RMT were quick to pick up on that, and they have greatly increased their advertising efforts.

We can expect another boost in RMT once Heavensward rolls around.

[Elusana_Celah]

...

Gil buying is against terms of service. The advertisement spam from gil sellers is beyond tolerable limits and has reached harassment levels. I am sorry but I fail to see how this can be relative to real life advertising practices. We also have no control over who is buying the gil and you should understand that. It could be like 5% of my server is buying gil and that's enough to bring in a legion of bot spammers to our /tells and the other 95% of us can't do a damn thing about it.

Consumers will move away from products or services that they find annoying and annoying/intrusive advertisements will trigger this consumer reaction. We stay in FFXIV cuz we know gil buying is against terms of service and hold faith that SE will do something about it. So we complain about it here rather than just dealing with it until we've had enough and we uninstall the game and cancel our subscriptions.

Never forget the basics of advertisement: Do not annoy the consumer. Mobile apps that have an ad that pops up when you open it is fine cuz once it's open there's either no adds anymore or the adds are out of the way and we can still use the app while ignoring them. TV commercials DO annoy people and people are moving towards other forms of entertainment such as internet videos where they can avoid commercials... it's a slow transition but the transition is definitely happening. I haven't watched TV in 13 years... I used to be all into TV too but I got sick of commercials all the time. Now I only watch what I can watch without being bothered by advertisements I don't care about.

Skype added some advertisements to it but they are out of the way and I can still enjoy my chat without it bothering me. Now what if Skype advertisements were like FFXIV gil sellers? What if every 1 minute 3-5 advertisements were thrown into your conversation with the people you are talking to? And it happened all day? How long do you think that will last before people move on to a new chat service all together?

This isn't about people hating advertisement or about the effectiveness of advertising, this is about understanding good and bad forms of advertising so people can accept the advertisements as being there without feeling like the advertisement is ruining their activities and invading their lives.

[MiniTofu]

What I hate about RMT, they are constantly knocking your door or ringing your doorbell every 30 seconds.

That is how annoying and harassing it is.

[Viridiana]

If it annoys people so much use for example supermarket own brands, but as people are not doing this the mass advertising is widely accepted, we can do something about it if it really bothers us.

Except, unfortunately, it's not as binary as "Do they advertise? Yes/No." There are a good deal of other factors to consider, such as quality of product. Often those supermarket brands are inferior, which takes you back to buying from people who are advertising.

Personally, though, I don't get annoyed at individual advertisers. I get annoyed that there is advertising at all. Everyone in this thread is annoyed by RMT spam, but how many of us are actually reading the spam? I don't know about the rest of you, but I just see gibberish and /blist. At no point could I tell you what they're saying, what site they're from, or what rates they're offering. Same with commercials in other media. I blank it out until I can skip it, for the most part.

[Airget]

haha They are just doing what their bosses are telling them - be more "friendly" and "approachable."

That's not why they do it though. The words they used are purposely used to bypass filters, I've read through RMT tells and i've asked myself, "what is it in these messages that SE could trigger as an RMT tell and filter it?" And honestly it's becoming harder and harder because a majority of the message has turned into a "legit" looking message with only certain words coming off as "RMT" in nature.

It's like "Hello (your name here) my friend!. -message buying gil here-, nonsensical useage of #^$&% with a .com, have a nice day! (then a random 4 letter/number combo at the end)"

When you look at the message you can't really discern how do you filter it because all that's left is the use of $, money, cash, a .com site so it's like ok then what do we filter, we can't filter a single word because then what if a player in game is talking about money or cash or trying to show a friend a website? They can't do that anymore so they can't make an inconvenience to players because of the way RMT have continued to slip through the cracks of bypassing the filter.

The reason why RMT tells have increased though could be two reasons both of which are the result of SE's actions.

1.As more RMT are removed an RMT could use more drastic methods to sell gil and become more aggressive hoping to dispose of the rest of their inventory before they are inevitably banned.

2.Because the RMT filter doesn't notify the person sending the tell whether it went through or not they don't know if their message is being filtered or not. Because they don't know if their message went through or not they now have to send 3-5 messages in a barrage and hope that one goes through. That's a reason why RMT tells have increased because even though you see 3-4 of them they might of sent 20 for all you know and only those 3-4 went through.

[Kyarra]

I thought it was funny when someone named sdjskj sdjsdj, level 1 tried to friend me. Mmmhmmm...Gil spammers were bad at launch, and they are bad now, I just came back from a year break from the game and see nothing has been fixed about hacks and spamming. Pretty sad.