Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Fenral]

Or here's a horrifying thought: this three-man army is all that stands between us and... total RMT bot domination of the entire server farm.

These STF members are true heroes in our time. Maybe.

[slml320]

lets get something clear here obviously SE eu/na have no power nothing they may as well be poorly trained monkeys.. the buck starts and stops in japan.. if they what to do something they will if not bah its not going to happen.. clearly this is the case you want proof biddy yarrrr on brynhildr has been standing near the limsa lominsa aetheryte spamming rmt messages in general chat for 3 days solid .. doing everything they can my arse!!! there has been so many great ideas in thread after thread on these forums bigger blacklist no tells for low lvl characters easier reporting systems to name a small few.. this has not been days or weeks or months of these ideas these have been nearly a year and a half plus not long after there drag millions and millions gil out of players accounts disaster..i can't help but wonder if they care more for there subs being as at least 500k plus must be rmt than actually fixing this problem.. as every passing week month and year it seems to be getting worse not better.. wait till just before 3.0 wow its going to get much worse!!

[Tiggy]

Please read what I said. I never insinuated they will or won't do anything or how effective or ineffective they've been. Simply pointing out that OBVIOUSLY they are aware of the problem.

Here is a reality for you. They are less than two months from releasing their expansion that has a hard dead line. RMT is a problem, yes, but anyone with expectations of serious change before the 3.0 launch are quite honestly going to remain disappointed. Delaying the expansion pack release just to move resources to the RMT problem would lose them more money than simply waiting until 3.0 to deal with the RMT. Getting the expansion out with as few issues as possible has considerably higher priority and is definitely the wiser business decision. Nothing will change until after 3.0 launches and stabilizes. This thread could get to 500 pages and that reality will not change. There are only but so many developers working on this game.

It's also an unsupportable argument to suggest they've done nothing up until now. Was it ultimately very effective? No, but they HAVE done things to improve it. Specifically off the top of my head I know they've incorporated a degree of text filtering and throttled tell rates. That qualifies as something regardless of how effective it was. You can objectively say they haven't been successful in the long term at curbing RMT (They've had occasional short term successes until RMT adapted), but you can not objectively say they haven't tried. The evidence simply doesn't support such a claim.

At some point you are just mad and being negative regardless of the accuracy of the claim.

[Zabuza]

Please read what I said. I never insinuated they will or won't do anything or how effective or ineffective they've been. Simply pointing out that OBVIOUSLY they are aware of the problem.

Here is a reality for you. They are less than two months from releasing their expansion that has a hard dead line. RMT is a problem, yes, but anyone with expectations of serious change before the 3.0 launch are quite honestly going to remain disappointed. Delaying the expansion pack release just to move resources to the RMT problem would lose them more money than simply waiting until 3.0 to deal with the RMT. Getting the expansion out with as few issues as possible has considerably higher priority and is definitely the wiser business decision. Nothing will change until after 3.0 launches and stabilizes. This thread could get to 500 pages and that reality will not change. There are only but so many developers working on this game.

It's also an unsupportable argument to suggest they've done nothing up until now. Was it ultimately very effective? No, but they HAVE done things to improve it. Specifically off the top of my head I know they've incorporated a degree of text filtering and throttled tell rates. That qualifies as something regardless of how effective it was. You can objectively say they haven't been successful in the long term at curbing RMT (They've had occasional short term successes until RMT adapted), but you can not objectively say they haven't tried. The evidence simply doesn't support such a claim.

At some point you are just mad and being negative regardless of the accuracy of the claim.

At this point I think that is debatable. Think of how many potential subs they will lose from new players who buy Heavensward and quit over the RMT spam. Also, why does being able to implement these QoL features and being able to release HW on time have to be mutually exclusive?

[Tiggy]

Think of how many people will try the game for the first time just because there is a new expansion. You can say it's debatable, but sales of past MMO expansion packs are rather good and do factually bring in many new players. You guys are personally angry so I'm sure you are thinking it is worse than it is, and the lull before the expansion probably is convincing you that it's all due to RMT. I'm on Balmung where we don't get a lot of RMT and the lull is still happening. So please be sure you aren't getting some confirmation bias in your assumptions.

I can't help but think back to the screenshots I saw in the thread just a few pages ago that were used as an example of how bad it is when the user clearly wasn't utilizing the built in blacklist filters at all since it was the same bot spamming over and over. "but my blacklist is full!" you might tell me, and yet I'm sure people aren't actively pruning their black lists. For example, many people mistakenly believe (deleted) on the blacklist means a character was banned when it doesn't. People also mistakenly have the notion that a bot will return. They are used for a day generally and then abandoned. That's a reality I see her. If you are on a server where it's this bad you could probably prune a ton of names off the blacklist each day, if not outright erasing them all, and see no ill effects due to it. There is no reason at all to have a full blacklist meaning the player shown in those screenshots could have taken a more active role in using the built in tools to crub his/her personal spam. There is literally no good reason to have a full blacklist in this game. If you've somehow run into that many actual players you want to blacklist then I'd look more inward at the common denominator, you, but for RMT those accounts are abandoned, regardless of bans, so swiftly that there is no point in maintaining them on the list.

The spam is annoying but the tools already at the players disposal can significantly improve things when used properly and I don't see an emergency for square to handle until 3.0 arrives. Players can make it two more months. I have no doubt in my mind that's exactly what Square is thinking too.

Some of you guys are angry, I get it, but it isn't going to make 3.0 come any sooner, and it isn't going to free up dev resources any faster. Patience is a virtue, and it's time for some of you to find yours.

[Zabuza]

Think of how many people will try the game for the first time just because there is a new expansion. You can say it's debatable, but sales of past MMO expansion packs are rather good and do factually bring in many new players. You guys are personally angry so I'm sure you are thinking it is worse than it is, and the lull before the expansion probably is convincing you that it's all due to RMT. I'm on Balmung where we don't get a lot of RMT and the lull is still happening. So please be sure you aren't getting some confirmation bias in your assumptions.

I can't help but think back to the screenshots I saw in the thread just a few pages ago that were used as an example of how bad it is when the user clearly wasn't utilizing the built in blacklist filters at all since it was the same bot spamming over and over. "but my blacklist is full!" you might tell me, and yet I'm sure people aren't actively pruning their black lists. For example, many people mistakenly believe (deleted) on the blacklist means a character was banned when it doesn't. People also mistakenly have the notion that a bot will return. They are used for a day generally and then abandoned. That's a reality I see her. If you are on a server where it's this bad you could probably prune a ton of names off the blacklist each day, if not outright erasing them all, and see no ill effects due to it. There is no reason at all to have a full blacklist meaning the player shown in those screenshots could have taken a more active role in using the built in tools to crub his/her personal spam. There is literally no good reason to have a full blacklist in this game. If you've somehow run into that many actual players you want to blacklist then I'd look more inward at the common denominator, you, but for RMT those accounts are abandoned, regardless of bans, so swiftly that there is no point in maintaining them on the list.

The spam is annoying but the tools already at the players disposal can significantly improve things when used properly and I don't see an emergency for square to handle until 3.0 arrives. Players can make it two more months. I have no doubt in my mind that's exactly what Square is thinking too.

Some of you guys are angry, I get it, but it isn't going to make 3.0 come any sooner, and it isn't going to free up dev resources any faster. Patience is a virtue, and it's time for some of you to find yours.

Yes exactly, you said it here in bold. Think of how many people will try this game for the first time. First impressions are important. What is going to be the first impression of all these new players when they play? That these are RMT infested waters - highly annoying like a swarm of flies buzzing around their heads. Then some of them will promptly head over to the mogstation to cancel their sub - if they had it in the first place.

Also, it would probably take you a half hour to clear your entire blacklist with the cumbersome and archaic way SE has it set up. Within a few days it will be full again. Do you realize how annoying that in and of itself is?

Just for reference, I passed the point of anger a long time ago. This has gone on too long to feel anger. What I feel is extreme disappointment and apprehension - apprehension of the new players that will quit in droves when they see this come Heavensward.

[Saseal]

Think of how many people will try the game for the first time just because there is a new expansion. You can say it's debatable, but sales of past MMO expansion packs are rather good and do factually bring in many new players. You guys are personally angry so I'm sure you are thinking it is worse than it is, and the lull before the expansion probably is convincing you that it's all due to RMT. I'm on Balmung where we don't get a lot of RMT and the lull is still happening. So please be sure you aren't getting some confirmation bias in your assumptions.

Come to any of the infested servers. It's harassment.

ha·rass·ment
həˈrasmənt,ˈherəsmənt/
noun
aggressive pressure or intimidation.
"they face daily harassment by the police"
synonyms: persecution, intimidation, pressure, force, coercion; informal hassle

Aggressive pressure, hassle, etc.
I've made an alt on Balmung. It's friggin ~Heaven~ to only get one or two tells with super long spaces of time in between. Dem Bentbranch BLM hordes, though... but I'll take the creepy BLMs over the tells.

The spam is so fast, an FC mate and I will get the same spam from the same bot at about the same time if we don't auto-busy the moment we get on (and yes, this happened last night while waiting for T7 to pop. Simultaneous "FFS" occurred). We get tells before our screen has even loaded - and I usually log out/in at the FC house in a silent neighborhood - not somewhere lengthy on the load time like Mor Dhona. It was bad on Couerl, at one point, where we were getting several tells a minute at large chunks of time. Before I learned the 'go busy' strat (a while ago), the only refuge I had were in dungeons/trials/etc. Cutscenes ruined, conversations broken up and hard to follow, etc, Tell convos really difficult to read between the RMT tells, being all the same color... Granted, it's not AS bad as it was, but still not good, either.
'Busy' is not a solution, only adapting an option to be used in a way that probably wasn't it's original intent as a matter of self defense from spam.

I don't know what 'lull' you're referring to, honestly. New player inflow? (Honest question, not sarcasm) On a lesser populated server, nobody really notices if there's a lot of new players or not, because it remains a low population server.

In ref to the expansion sales - yes, it will be a big boost in sales. The goal should be to grab the boost and keep it as long as possible - not just go for a spike and then let it die. You would think they would make tons more money if they created such a sales spike and then letting it (subscriptions) slowly taper as time goes on. Not spike sales and then drop off quickly with new players dropping away soon after release.

I can't help but think back to the screenshots I saw in the thread just a few pages ago that were used as an example of how bad it is when the user clearly wasn't utilizing the built in blacklist filters at all since it was the same bot spamming over and over. "but my blacklist is full!" you might tell me, and yet I'm sure people aren't actively pruning their black lists. For example, many people mistakenly believe (deleted) on the blacklist means a character was banned when it doesn't. People also mistakenly have the notion that a bot will return. They are used for a day generally and then abandoned. That's a reality I see her. If you are on a server where it's this bad you could probably prune a ton of names off the blacklist each day, if not outright erasing them all, and see no ill effects due to it. There is no reason at all to have a full blacklist meaning the player shown in those screenshots could have taken a more active role in using the built in tools to crub his/her personal spam. There is literally no good reason to have a full blacklist in this game. If you've somehow run into that many actual players you want to blacklist then I'd look more inward at the common denominator, you, but for RMT those accounts are abandoned, regardless of bans, so swiftly that there is no point in maintaining them on the list.

Again, go to an infested server. Stay there a few weeks. The welcoming committee will see to your stay. Constantly. Forever.
I used to blacklist and prune a lot, just like you said. I've stopped bothering a long time ago. The amount of bots are so numerous - and are probably logging out, deleting and recreated within an hour and so often that there's no point. The blacklist has become pointless in this scenario. People jokingly compared them to roaches, but the similarities between the bugs and the bots are uncanny. Stomp one and a million go skittering from crevices you didn't even know your home had. And that's not counting the ones hidden in the walls and other floors and rooms of your building. Oh, and sometimes they run in circles and tweak out, too.

The spam is annoying but the tools already at the players disposal can significantly improve things when used properly and I don't see an emergency for square to handle until 3.0 arrives.

What tools? A blacklist that's become pointless and the busy status?

Players can make it two more months. I have no doubt in my mind that's exactly what Square is thinking too.

Probably the only thing I can agree with, in this post. If it fixes this shit, then I'll certainly wait for it. But they can't or won't give any indications that they understand the problem, other than mentioning a 3 person team (which is similar to putting a single ant in a desert at this point). People are not sure how to read this - waving a hand of dismissal at anything we're saying, or just not able to make a statement.

Some of you guys are angry, I get it, but it isn't going to make 3.0 come any sooner, and it isn't going to free up dev resources any faster. Patience is a virtue, and it's time for some of you to find yours.

I'm passed the point of anger, too, but doesn't mean I find it acceptable.
Part of me says, "Development takes a long time" since I've been in the field around planning, design, modeling, coding, re-planning from limitation issues and bumps in the road, testing, tweaking, fixes, etcetcetcetc for a long time. But the other part of me says, "this isn't a new thing". They could have handled this as another piece of a release in any of the large patches we've had. Unless they're doing some kind of massive overhaul on the backend in Heavensward that doesn't jive with dealing with RMT in the current backend, I don't see why they couldn't have. I'll take a temp hot fix, at this point.

[Chibilidawg]

I've known personally about 8 people who've quit the game outright because of RMT spoiling the experience from early on.

They won't be coming back because it's caused them to feel SE is careless, sloppy, & unprofessional.

Which, I can't blame them.

[SummerSkye]

I've known personally about 8 people who've quit the game outright because of RMT spoiling the experience from early on.

They won't be coming back because it's caused them to feel SE is careless, sloppy, & unprofessional.

Which, I can't blame them.

And i personally know of 3 brand new players...friends of mine, and very soon to be four that have quit this game SOLELY on the basis that RMT is unbelievably bad in this game. To me, this is the biggest issue this game faces moving forward. The problem is made worse by the fact that in this genre of gaming the competition is not only plentiful, it is legitimate. There are a lot of great games out there, and some even better ones on the way. The other issue here is the complete lack of acknowledgement to a thread at the forums that has this many views/opinions/posts. There is not even a canned response from a community manager here, and to me, that is unacceptable.

[slml320]

they have still had clearly more than enough time than before the work on 3.0 to address rmt better yet still nothing.. thats reality!! we get angry because they sit on there hands and do nothing while the problems keep getting worse also reality !!! we get very little response from devs and alike also reality.. weather a minority leave due to constant spam is obviously not there concern because they seem to make back the subs with more rmt!! also reality..

TIGGY care to inform us all of what they actually doing since you seem to know more than the rest of us? more than a dev that won't comment on!!

in all fairness even in one of your comments was balmung doesnt have much rmt .. have you been to byrnhildr ? or any of the other worlds that get spam tells every 2 minutes friend requests general spam chats ffs biddy yarrr is still standing in limsa spamming rmt in chat near on 4 fucking days now and still nothing has been done.. theres not enough room in balmung for legit players let alone rmt.. so i find myself thinking your comments on this situation rather empty and pointless

there is hardly any rmt spam in wow and if there is it gets shut down real quick..correct me if I'm wrong this is a mmo that i have to turn off tells ( even a gm told me i should do that ) honestly !! i have to keep emptying my small blacklist regularly!! it hardly feels like a mmo when have to turn off most of my communication options!!