Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Adire]

Please stop this thread. SE is doing all they can to stop the RMT situation they cannot tell you what they are doing because that would be providing information to the very sellers they are trying to stop. It is the same reason your bank doesn't tell anyone the security they have. Security through obscurity.

In addition to what tocsin said, what do you think would happen if everyone suddenly stopped complaining about RMT?

SE would not feel pressure to fix it, they'd allocate less resources to dealing with it (as if their 3 people are enough to begin with...), and it would get worse.

You should know that if companies don't have to spend money to improve their product, they will most likely not do it. And who can make them have to spend money? Customers.

So long as RMT is a major ongoing issue, customers should use their voices about it in an ongoing way.

[SpiritMuse]

Please stop this thread. SE is doing all they can to stop the RMT situation they cannot tell you what they are doing because that would be providing information to the very sellers they are trying to stop. It is the same reason your bank doesn't tell anyone the security they have. Security through obscurity.

There is a lot they could say about this that doesn't involve the exact details of what they're doing.

"We understand that this problem is particularly bad for some of you and we are working on new ways to combat it," is really all we need, just an indication that we've been heard so that we know we're not shouting into nothingness and being willfully ignored.

[Saseal]

Please stop this thread. SE is doing all they can to stop the RMT situation they cannot tell you what they are doing because that would be providing information to the very sellers they are trying to stop. It is the same reason your bank doesn't tell anyone the security they have. Security through obscurity.

There's a difference between 'stopping' something and 'slowing' something. Having been in the QA/analyst field for a long time - a field where being overwhelmed, abused and under-rated for never being good enough is common... which is kind of whats going on here - I feel for the three people task force that have to do this, I really do. I can only imagine how they must feel if they were to ever see some of the more acidic posts about the work. But the problem is not with the task force since their power is limited. However, with what SE has provided to deal with the RMT (the 3-man task force), it's just a 'slowing' of the RMT in spurts. It's not 'stopping' the problem. This thread is meant as a message that this is a bigger problem than they think it is. Three peeps going through and investigating thousands of accounts and then their work being completely undermined when the bots come back again week after week is insane. It's like forcing a hamster to run in a wheel forever - something the bots have absolutely no problem doing.
SE needs to find a way to cut it off at the head, not just let the wheel keep spinning.
I love this game, I love everything they've done and doing with it. I'm just really hoping there's something in the works that we truthfully aren't to know about (which I understand and respect).

[dejavutwo]

Please stop this thread. SE is doing all they can to stop the RMT situation they cannot tell you what they are doing because that would be providing information to the very sellers they are trying to stop. It is the same reason your bank doesn't tell anyone the security they have. Security through obscurity.

Security through obscurity is the worst type of security - and whatever it is they are doing, it's obviously ineffective.

[Seig345]

Call it a bandaid solution, but I'm still an advocate of having an option to filter tells to only come through from friends and fellow LS/FC members. Throw in an option JUST for ignoring/auto-rejecting friend requests, and you've given some semblance of purpose to /tells back to the game. Call it an adhesive bandage all you want, but I'd take the bandage over fighting for an all-or-nothing solution and getting nothing for it. People going perma-/busy or filtering tells out altogether are already "damaging" the community/communications with new players, a /tell filter isn't going to make that any worse, but it might reduce the chance of RMT spam scaring new players away.

/signed

[Arkann]

If the average player can spot bots just using a simple /sea...



Square has no excuse not to delete them. Yet after 2 months of reports, one FC member who confessed to using bots in the FC chat is still there botting FATES while at work, and a Free Company made of one real "player" and his two gathering bots is still there too. Friend requests and /tell spam didn't stop either.

[Lucke]

I'm surprised they bothered unlocked BLM. I remember seeing a bunch of 50 THMs, like a year or so ago.

[Crescent_Dusk]

BUSY BUSY BUSY ALL DAY ERRR DAY.

[Avin00]

I would also like to point out every feature they implement to combat RMT also affects the legitimate player base, it is the biggest drawback of implementing more security. Furthermore those chat filters do exist but you are unaware of them why do you think the gil sellers spam comes through as such unintelligible garbage. Also any feature you implement will be circumnavigated by someone given enough time and will. The true problem is the market that exists for it in the first place, Phoenix doesn't seem to have anywhere near the problem some of the other servers do, now I don't know if that is down to server population or if its a case that there is no market for them on Phoenix but it is interesting. I agree that SE could implement a few of the requested features but to truly solve this problem the market would need to no longer exist.

[Sicno]

I agree that SE could implement a few of the requested features but to truly solve this problem the market would need to no longer exist.

And that's something that can't be done because for starters we don't even know who are buying. And even if we did... good luck convincing them to stop buying. Your proposed solution is something that can't reasonably be done. On the other hand adding features (that have been already suggested countless times, some of them even fall under common sense) to prevent in some meassure that players abuse the game's communication system is something that CAN be done. And it's among the minimum that I would expect from a subscription based game.