Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[KisaiTenshi]

I think SE is behind a lot of these RMTs, maybe they get a cut from the RMTs which is why nothing is being done about them. One way to avoid having to deal with RMTs is to go /busy, no more tells or annoying friend invites. Its annoying that we should even have to do this but its a way around it for now until SE gets off there butts and does something about it.

At this point i'm starting to suspect SE of RMT and botting to inflate numbers. I witness 3 events in 2 hours one of which i reported and noone ever got back to me. 7 hours later the bot train was still rolling. Then there was the the blm's invisible inside the map. I had to go to battle log to get names of the 2 and later saw them again one dead, i can only assume he wasn't fully submerged in the map to avoid acid sprays.

You guys need to stop smoking weed or go to school or something.

Every time I see a "SE is behind the bots" or "SE is allowing the bots" type of comment, I'll show you someone who fails to understand the MMO business model.

For all intents, the only difference between a subscription model and a premium model is "who pays"

In Freemium MMORPG's, the lack of a subscription or payment results in unchecked ability to create new accounts and player characters. They could easily solve this by forcing players to buy an authenticator, but that removes the "free" component. Hence freemium games require much larger support staff... or willingly ignoring some % of the daily botting activity in favor of mass-data-entry, that just bulk disables accounts that have RMT patterns. Spammers use throw-away accounts, and the only way Freemium games can deal with it is by learning filters.

In Subscription MMORPG's the subscription itself acts as the throttle on the ability to create new accounts and player characters. Again, the lack of requiring an authenticator on every account leaves automated bot creation unchecked. Not re-querying the authenticator when the player comes back from AFK also lets bots run endlessly. Learning filters are used on chat logs to automatically kill spammers after a few minutes (if the spammers aren't doing it themselves) , and the spammers get into the system by either hijacking existing paying players accounts (who likely bought from RMT'ers in the first place,) or by using stolen or disposable credit cards to create the accounts, and the accounts don't get purged until the card is charged back.

It is NOT beneficial to SE to let bots run because that destroys the game economy, and spamming bots make players irate and hostile towards the company. But in the same line of thinking, SE can't respond to every single bot , because there are more bots than staff. So like above with the freemium model, a certain % of bots will just be removed by a MDE(mass data entry) process, and the spam has to be caught by learning chat filters. The filters get updated with every maintenance, and the bots change their spam slightly to evade it.

Now they could make the process super-easy by having a "right-click, report for spam" instead of adding to the blacklist (which is a waste of time since the bots disappear after 5 minutes anyway) or something as simple as this:

right-click: Report Bad Behavior

[ ] I understand that this report process will send a screenshot to Square-Enix, and any information in the screenshot at Square-Enix's sole discretion may be used to take action. I understand that abusing this process is a violation of the terms of service and may be grounds for disciplinary action against myself.
---Provide extra information here---

---Provide extra information here---
Are you sure you wish to report [USERNAME] for [DROPDOWN]?
[ Y E S ] [ N O ]
Make sure that the violation activity is visible before hitting YES.

The DROPDOWN will have a list of frequently reported activities
1) Spam (RMT)
2) Spam (Misusing party finder/Yelling/Shouting (Sellsword activity, FC invites )
3) Harassment (Chat abuse)
3) Botting (Hunting, Gathering)
4) Botting (Powerleveling, Spirit Bonding)
5) Botting (Dungeon instance)

Of course that last option is only available during a dungeon instance. A simple SPAM or BOTTING report would be enough, but because a screenshot often lacks context you usually want to be a little more specific.

Full disclosure: Just because you don't see anything being done, doesn't mean nothing is being done. It means it's not being reported. From experience from one place where I worked where I handled such types of reports, people just don't take the time to report things.

And a lot of that has to do with how much effort is required to report something. In the case of where I used to work, reporting things required logging in, going to the listing, click report, and then being given a series of drop downs to drill down to a specific report, before even a text field was given. I even created such reporting processes myself for websites I operate, and you know how many people use them? 0.000001%. There may be a million people on at once, and only one of them may take the time to report things.

Of course, SE could also just have a bunch of tickboxes in settings to control the problem too:
[ ] Refuse all party invites
[ ] Refuse all friend requests
[ ] Refuse all free company invites
[ ] Ignore all tell's that are not part of the FC/Linkshell/Party/Friend list
[ ] Ignore all tells from outside your current zone

[LandricFrey]

The amount of, "I'm angry cause of stuff that every MMO deals with, so im posting angry posts" in this thread makes me giggle like a schoolgirl. Even better is the fact people still think "Petition" threads do anything.

Facts:
1. RMT sucks and the Devs know this.
2. CM's scan threads/posts for rule breakers, not opportunities to reply to every angry posters demands.
3. "Petition" threads serve only to annoy CM's/Dev's/Everyone involved. They already know its a problem, the fact they haven't done anything about it means they either have more important things to worry about *cough*Heavensward*cough*, or they haven't found a reasonable solution to the issue.
4. This is the internet, and assuming anything you post has any more validity to it than the next person's post is absurd, especially when it comes to how companies should run their business ("SE should do this about the issue")
5. Rainbows

Have a nice day

It's true, every MMO deals with this and every big name MMO has done a better job combating this issue.


1. Mhm
2. They are also able to bring subjects of discussion to devs and have done so before.
3. A petition thread is better than nothing. Nothing says everything is alright to SE. Though I think the only way to get through to them is a drop in subs, which will happen if the problem is left unchecked long enough.
4. Exactly why there is the petition. It's not just one voice, it's hundreds, and that's from the forum dwellers; a fraction of the FF14 player base. If there was an in-game RMT bitch button, it would be tens to hundreds of thousands.
5. Unicorns.

That is all.

[Zabuza]

The amount of, "I'm angry cause of stuff that every MMO deals with, so im posting angry posts" in this thread makes me giggle like a schoolgirl. Even better is the fact people still think "Petition" threads do anything.

Facts:
1. RMT sucks and the Devs know this.
2. CM's scan threads/posts for rule breakers, not opportunities to reply to every angry posters demands.
3. "Petition" threads serve only to annoy CM's/Dev's/Everyone involved. They already know its a problem, the fact they haven't done anything about it means they either have more important things to worry about *cough*Heavensward*cough*, or they haven't found a reasonable solution to the issue.
4. This is the internet, and assuming anything you post has any more validity to it than the next person's post is absurd, especially when it comes to how companies should run their business ("SE should do this about the issue")
5. Rainbows

Have a nice day

1. But they've done nothing.
2. How about a large collective of poster's angry demands united in one megathread?
3. Good, RMTs spamming us with /tells annoys us. Do you want us to praise them or just sit back and say nothing? No change will ever occur that way. Yeah, they can worry about Heavensward and then lose a lot of the new players subs on release because the first thing they see is RMT spam.
4. I think people are pretty united in the fact that we've had enough of the RMT plague. We've all made suggestions. Does SE have to take them? Of course not. Are some of them sensible? Absolutely. I think SE is running a great business as far as this game goes, however I feel they dropped the ball on how they handle RMT and how they handle PvP. This game will be fine if they leave PvP unaddressed, but leaving the RMT issue unaddressed is seriously going to cut into their Heavensward profits. It doesn't take a business major to realize this. It amazes me that you would suggest for us to just sit back and take it and never even suggest anything that might help the issue. What do you think a forum is for?
5. Darkness and despair.

[Magusrex]

The amount of, "I'm angry cause of stuff that every MMO deals with, so im posting angry posts" in this thread makes me giggle like a schoolgirl. Even better is the fact people still think "Petition" threads do anything.

Facts:
1. RMT sucks and the Devs know this.
2. CM's scan threads/posts for rule breakers, not opportunities to reply to every angry posters demands.
3. "Petition" threads serve only to annoy CM's/Dev's/Everyone involved. They already know its a problem, the fact they haven't done anything about it means they either have more important things to worry about *cough*Heavensward*cough*, or they haven't found a reasonable solution to the issue.
4. This is the internet, and assuming anything you post has any more validity to it than the next person's post is absurd, especially when it comes to how companies should run their business ("SE should do this about the issue")
5. Rainbows

Have a nice day

It's the silence that I find the most damning.Everyone hates this and they can't take a few moment of their time to address this and have a little transparency shows contempt and disrespect to a paying and loyal customer base that REALLY puts me off.

[Niwashi]

The amount of, "I'm angry cause of stuff that every MMO deals with, so im posting angry posts" in this thread ...

Make that "cause of stuff every other MMO except this one deals with". We're not angry because people are trying to sell gil. (That's annoying, but too expected for anger.) What people are angry about is that SE has, for the better part of two years now, refused to do anything about it. They're allowing the RMT to just run rampant, wrecking their otherwise fantastic game.

There are plenty of tools for combating RMT, and they're widely known throughout the industry. Even as players, those of us who have played other MMOs before know of many of them. But SE has persistently refused to incorporate any of them into FFXIV. That's what has people both angry and worried for the future of this game we love.

[Wigett]

I agree, I get these often, someone told me to do /busy so they cant send me tells, however this causes other issues when someone wants to trade with u like a FC buddy. anyway
I hope they find a better way to keep them from spamming and then jumping back on so quickly.

[Matriqona]

Perma IP Ban and be done with it.

[Niwashi]

Perma IP Ban and be done with it.

They're unlikely to have static IP addresses, so banning by address wouldn't accomplish anything. Some games have had some success with banning whole ranges of addresses that originate in parts of the world that are notorious for a lot of this type of abuse. But banning entire countries like that means they can't allow any legitimate players from those countries either, so it's a pretty drastic measure for an internationally marketed game to take.

[Tigra]

new characters can now only /tell others once they hit level 15-30 somewhere around there >_> make it a part of the tutorial later in the game

[Warlyx]

new characters can now only /tell others once they hit level 15-30 somewhere around there >_> make it a part of the tutorial later in the game

yeah something like that can alleviate somehow the issue , lvl 15 until u can send friend requests, limiting TELL is a no-no in a supposed friendly mmorpg for new players to this genre..

but yeah they run away scared of all that spam, because is annoying as hell.