Petition for a Realistic Solution to RMT's

[Rendecrow]

I have an idea.

And it's real simple, but it requires everyone's participation: don't buy from RMT'ers. EVER! I mean, it's simple economics of supply and demand: if there's no demand, and no sales, then... だよね

Works on paper, not in real life. With how many people play this game there will always be someone who will try to buy. A real solution would simply be to ban the buyers.

[CheshireKat]

They have to be very careful banning people because they are taking away a service that people are paying for. They can be sued for it. Unfortunately its one of those legal loopholes that people from China and other countries like China (mostly third world or offshore types) can jump through because they are outside of the influence of several types of laws. This is why a certain other large successful MMO literally shut down their operations in China, refused service in their country, and blocked any IP originating from there. The number of gold sellers went to next to nothing overnight. Caused a big stink there too, but they got their own version of the game they could play on eventually. But they could only connect to their own servers.

[Alberel]

I'm hopeful that having 3.0 gated behind the 2.55 MSQ will inhibit the gil farmers to some extent. Presumably the level 50-60 mobs, quests and dungeons will drop more gil than the current content, not to mention all the new gathering nodes will also be gated by extension. If the botters want to keep up with the inflation of the economy resulting from that they will have to do the main story quests which will severely restrict their ability to keep creating new accounts when they get banned.

[Rendecrow]

I'm hopeful that having 3.0 gated behind the 2.55 MSQ will inhibit the gil farmers to some extent. Presumably the level 50-60 mobs, quests and dungeons will drop more gil than the current content, not to mention all the new gathering nodes will also be gated by extension. If the botters want to keep up with the inflation of the economy resulting from that they will have to do the main story quests which will severely restrict their ability to keep creating new accounts when they get banned.

I hate to break it to you, but the chinese gil farmers do not start accounts from scratch. They hack accounts and use them. Gating of content means nothing to those crooks.

[NimlothUndomiel]

Now gil sellers want to become friends. =)
I've noticed a pattern in their names, they try to use their addresses using " 'com " on their names. http://i.imgur.com/UGvePik.jpg
I wouldn't mind blocking them manually if it wasn't so hard to do with friends request. There should be an option to decline and block right away, as well as the already suggested "report seller" option.

I think SQEX should track down these sellers and get some of the $$ they make by lawsuits.

[RaineMagus]

::A very easy solution to the spam problem would be private-message graylisting, or the option thereof to enable such a system. In alot of mail servers, proof that you're not a spammer is done on various heuristics (not just graylisting), yet the concept overall of graylisting is extremely effective (alone). It's essentially to delay messages and refuse their delivery until some proof has been provided that the sender is not a mass-mailer / spammer.



With emails, that's usually done via a backoff / delay where the receiving SMTP server instructs the sender to simply re-transmit the message after a certain delay.. Most mass mailers do not 'keep' messages in order to handle the randomized backoff / re-send, which is what makes this effective. Obviously in XIV that's not really viable implemented in that way, yet the concept could be done with something like Captcha.

**Graylisting is a double edged sword as it delays messages in any means it's done (it's annoying) .... on the flip-side, being bombed by dozens of spam messages per hour is EQUALLY if not more annoying. I would suggest that given such a feature, many would prefer it 'active'.. [it should still be optional though]


In jist:

-You message someone that you've not messaged before and you have a low 'credibility' score. (you haven't proven that you're not a bot in answering Captchas to other players that have this feature enabled recently [within xxx prior PM targets] )

-Then you're now required to prove that you're a human before you can message said player.. By solving the captcha successfully, you gain credibility. If you fail to solve a certain number of captchas in a row, you're private message muted for some minutes. After a period of time your assumed credibility with this player will timeout / be revoked, and proof of being a human again would be needed.

-A player's friendslist would be considered a "whitelist" for such a system.

-As RMT spammers have already resorted to sending friend requests, it would also be wise to apply the same system for sending requests. (eg, solve a captcha in order to friend a player)

-If RMT spammers cannot private message, they will probably step up zone-shouting their ads. Perhaps a captcha to unlock a certain number of shouts is appropriate to combat such abuse, in addition to an account wide message limit. (Alot of games permit say, 5 shouts every 10 minutes for the entire account)



Of course, this won't stop a spammer that's dedicated enough to seat a human at the screen to solve Captchas.... Yet it'd drastically reduce the number of spam messages for sure.



To comment on the main thread's premise and the discussion:
--Yes, something needs to be done. The situation is getting progressively worse by the day in terms of sheer spam volume.

In my mind, I am all for a system that takes more time from RMT advertisers or at least is as annoying to them as their messages are to me. I'm against systems that make it easy to report players, as any system that makes it easy to report people tends to be abused historically in other MMORPG's (such as guilds coordinately reporting players that they dislike).

[Fortified]

Square could implement a WOW Token style system. It would take away the gil sellers' business and give an option for people who don't want to pay for a subscription.