Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Sicno]

SE plan for RMT is HW and locking it out till you finish main story. Only to get banned.

That doesn't stop tells and player search in any way. Nor bots farming gil. So yeah, the content lock won't stop RMT in any way.

[SpookRooster]

This has gotten absolutely ridiculous. I've hit the blacklist cap twice now. Even if Square does nothing about RMT, which it seems to be their plan, at least make the list indefinite so I don't have to click through them for a million hours getting rid of these scumbags.

And no, their current method of attacking RMT really isn't doing anything about RMT. Let's be real here. If anything, RMT is getting worse and you've got to end up wondering how many people are cancelling their subscription out of disgust for the RMTers and the company that's sitting on their asses because their home servers aren't being spammed. I've been in Anima and if there was RMT, it was rare. I don't think the reason honest players are being abused so much is because Square would rather have RMT scum buy up lots of accounts - that doesn't even happen. Those accounts are mostly stolen. It's probably because they hate us. A lot. I mean, their servers are fine. Stupid westerners need to stop whining, right?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Considering an rmt character is only used once, deleted, and replaced, using your blacklist like that really doesn't help. they ban the accounts as best they can, and, im sure you've noticed, we dont really have any detrimental effects to the player. They can make the game hell for rmt if they want, but it will make it hell for the player too.

some games have a tell/shout filter on if you say anything more than twice every 10 seconds, you get a 2 minute chat block. So yeah, we could have that. And it would help against rmt. They ban thousands of accounts a week. Its not like they arent doing anything, its that they can't do more without making it hell for everyone who plays legitimately.

[SpookRooster]

No detrimental effects to the player? So constant walls of spam, sometimes multiple times in a row from the same spammer, advertising shady deals to buy or sell in-game currency is not detrimental? The effect is has on the in-game economy? What about the ridiculous prices of housing? The multiple clicks it takes to decline and blacklist a friend request from one? What about the tedium of deleting them from your tiny blacklist when you should be playing the game and not sorting through spam?

Oops, cut off again at a measly 1000 characters. Hope double posting is alright.

[SpookRooster]

A proper solution wouldn't be detrimental to the player. Like people have suggested, add the option to report a message or player as RMT. The way these idiots have their messages written, it should be pretty easy to catch only the ones that are true RMT and immediately fix the issue. The fact most of these accounts are stolen is sort of a non-issue. I imagine players were being idiots and gave these scum their passwords.

Another solution would be to take the battle straight to the sources - get these places like happygolds shut down. Ban all of China or something. What we have is pretty much nothing.

EDIT: Korea illegalized RMT. Just putting that out there.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

stuff

They already block the Chinese IPs, as far as i know, thats why there is a Chinese version of the game only for them. they just use VPN's to connect. Like most things SE does, they find a way around them. They have chat filters in place, they have updated the chat filters numerous times, and guess what, the rmt got around them each time.

And reporting them like that would help yes, BUT it doesnt automatically delete the account, so said rmt can delete that character, make a new one, and send you a new message withing about 2 minutes of you reporting them. I'm just pointing this out.

They cant really outlaw rmt, as they have NO jurisdiction over china. China itself would have to make rmt illegal, and you know they arent going to do that. they cant try to shutdown the websites either, because they are located in CHINA, where they have no jurisdiction.

[SpookRooster]

And yet other large scale MMOs don't have this problem or at least, not the the degree where it harms the quality of the game.

Fact is, Square are not putting nearly as much effort as they should into combating this. Every single RMT I've seen is level 1, stands in one spot, occasionally jumps, and I guess they either walk or teleport. I may have encountered one that teleported while I wasn't looking. They stick around in the city states and spam messages. It should be ridiculously easy to ban for this activity. No real player behaves like this.

Since they won't do anything to fix this, at least give us proper tools to hide these messages. Or even better, so not to make us write down phrases or some crap, allow Guildwork to be installed. I hear it works, but I'd rather not get banned for trying to play the game without being harassed.

[okitaluc]

If they want to be effective they should take action against the practice in game , but it will backfire in the community in some way. Turn gil bound to the character for example (even this can have a way around sadly), restrictions to low lvl character regarding chat use ...

[SpookRooster]

How about more GMs? I saw someone said there's three people in charge of watching 64 servers for RMT. That's like sending Bill and Lance against Red Falcon armed only with super soakers.

There's probably a lot of people in this thread who'd like the opportunity to ban these guys.

[KisaiTenshi]

And yet other large scale MMOs don't have this problem or at least, not the the degree where it harms the quality of the game.

This needs to be repeated every few pages because nobody is going to read 100+ page thread.

EVERY MMO HAS THIS PROBLEM. EVERYONE.

How about more GMs? I saw someone said there's three people in charge of watching 64 servers for RMT. That's like sending Bill and Lance against Red Falcon armed only with super soakers.

There's probably a lot of people in this thread who'd like the opportunity to ban these guys.

That is just speculation based on the credits. There might only be 3 people who actually do the MDE (Mass Data Entry) that removes them or designing filters. For all we know the reason the spammers disappear every 5 minutes is because automated processes from SE are kicking them.

You don't throw more people at a problem that is caused by computers. You throw more computers at a problem that is caused by computers.

Two things have been demanded OVER and OVER and OVER since 2013:

a) Right-click report+blacklist in one step, or one and a half steps where they can at least be flagged by crowd sourcing.
b) The ability to disable friends requests, party invites, FC invites, etc and any other mechanic that RMT spam uses.