Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Giruvegan]

I'm a fairly new player but even I can see the serious problem this has been.
It's more than just an annoyance, it's affecting the in-game economy and it seems
like the plethora of cheaters in this game go unpunished.

I love this title. I play nearly every day but it's becoming frustrating when I realize
my legitimate ways of trying to earn profit are being hampered by bots and buyers.

There's no way that this huge thread along with all the others are being ignored.
That's too baffling of an outcome for me to accept.

I will say though, that if this continues for much longer, as much as I adore this game, my sub will not.
I'm tired of seeing cheaters reap rewards without any visible means of punishment.
Just imagine when housing becomes available and all the buyers and bots snatch up eagerly awaited plots.

The RMT problem is by far, the largest canker on this game and for the sake of SE,
as well as the playerbase, I hope it's worked out before the fatigue of being honest becomes unbearable.

/signed

[Solarra]

Hope nobody minds me reviving this thread. I'm very lucky that there seem to be very few RMT traders on Zodiark. Even so, they are very disruptive at times.

The reporting system is too cumbersome. It requires a lot of effort on the part of the player and having to type out the name leaves a wide margin for error. A lot of names seem to have been chosen to maximise the chances of mistyping; they are very long with weird letter combinations.

Surely it would be possible to have a right click and report function that automatically records the name, the world and the message?

The RMT problem is by far, the largest canker on this game

Agreed.

[Terribad]

Hope nobody minds me reviving this thread. I'm very lucky that there seem to be very few RMT traders on Zodiark. Even so, they are very disruptive at times.

The reporting system is too cumbersome.

Right click>Add to blacklist.

[Solarra]

Right click>Add to blacklist.

Well, doesn't that just hide them from me and allow them to continue? Or am I missing something?

[Terribad]

Well, doesn't that just hide them from me and allow them to continue? Or am I missing something?

Well your complaint was that it requires a lot of effort and the player can misspell the name. With the method above that eliminates both of those problems.

I don't know if you've ever played an mmo before but RMT will ALWAYS be a problem. SE is very well aware of the fact that RMT is in game. They've gone through a lot of measures to hinder/prevent RMT (even though it mainly effects the players)
It's not an over night process. It's like a place that's heavily infested with roaches. For every 1 roach you see there's hundreds more behind the wall.

[Mwynn]

Stoping RMT is hard, yet who says you couldn't make it harder for Bots?

Changing Opcodes
Packets Changing (I'm pretty sure the one who developed these Programs sniffed Packets and uses them)
Anti-Bot Monster (Spawns when you're 1-2 Hours in the same Area / Place (If you haven't moved at all, like Gathering Bots) as a Legit Player you are given a Notice to move or else the Monster kills you or teleports you into a Jail. (Automatic Process for Reviewing Bots / Punishing them)

There is hundreds of Ways and yet, I haven't seen anything and the fact is, the Game Client is vulnerable, if they decided to add a Anti-Cheat Guard to it, it would mostly also prevent 3rd Party Tools such as Parsers, Radars or whatever exists out there.

[Magistrella]

No RMT tell on Moogle for a week.

Even in the late nights not a single one - thats when they usually hit me when i craft in the mist or lavender beds.

Guess it worked against RMT that you cant buy a physical copy of the game on the mog station with credit card anymore. And stopping trial players from sending out friend requests helped tremendously as well.

So far im happy - but we will see what time brings and if they come back like the cockroaches they are

[Zhexos]

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

First off, we would like to thank you very much for reporting these incidents. Your reports have been extremely helpful when cracking down on users that have been performing illegal actions.

We would like to respond to the two following points that we have been receiving from everyone.

• Regarding the suspicious group of players
  

  In regards to the suspicious group of players that has been seen inside towns, we're aware that this group is collecting gil by hunting monsters within instanced dungeons. This collected gil is then used for RMT (Real Money Trade). When we take action against these accounts, we also investigate the flow of the gil and will freeze it accordingly.

• Regarding the handling of RMT
  

  We often see comments such as "I'm reporting these users, but it looks like nothing is being done about it." To make sure we don't falsely punish the wrong player, we first have to investigate before taking any actions, therefore it may require some time depending on the amount of information that has been reported for an incident. Unfortunately, we are not able to simply take action on users just because they seem suspicious. Please understand that the time it takes until any action can be taken will vary from case to case. Actions taken against these users can be found in the General section of the Information sub-forum.

Again, we really appreciate all of the reports you have been sending us as these reports help us fight against RMT. Even if the information is for just one character, it's valuable information to us.

You'll be able to report these in-game through System > Support Desk > Contact Us > Report Cheating, so we ask for your continued support in fighting against the RMT!

[Teryaani]

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

Thanks Zhexos, any chance that we may get a right-click-report feature in the future? It would make it easier for us to report and could, if done right, make the task force's job easier by giving them the metadata they need in the automatic report.

On top of it, making reporting more convenient leads to more reporting.

Most folks I know don't bother because opening a ticket every bloody time is annoying as hell and a waste of time.

Quoted for truth. The reporting system is really cumbersome to use.

[niwaar]

Greetings,

We would like to share a comment we received from the Special Task Force (STF).

All of this is great. But we still have had zero movement in over a year about the RMT advertisement spam in /tell. While we are getting less since Heavensward's release they are slowly getting worse and worse. Can we get a chat filter setting or at least can YOU improve the current text filter to catch more of these.