Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[Intaki]

Yes, let's have SE divulge in explicit detail all of their current methods for combating RMT and bots. That will only end well, and certainly won't give those very people exactly the information they need to circumvent the system and prosper even more than they already do.

[Naliee]

But still you would think SE is able to track on how the person got the gil.

It's not THAT simple, I get it. I didn't mean to say that if you get huge amount of money from a friend(generousity, crafting services, etc), you're buying it. For FC funds people can just put it in the chest, no need for 3rd hand really.

But if you receive gil from player that doesn't have any crafting/gathering job lvl'd and no DoM/DoW 50, it's fishy. That's why I said track on. One would think SE is even able to track on our retainers too what they're selling.

[Thayos]

It would be so easy to cripple RMT's abilities to advertise in game. You can't stop RMT that happens through third-party sites, but SE could absolutely end the annoying /tell and /shout spam.

Step 1: Make a "flag RMT" option that only appears when you receive a /tell or a /shout. Add a double-confirmation window to prevent mistaken flags.

Step 2: Make "flag RMT" option disappear after 3 minutes; this would reduce chances for player abuse and make investigating flags much easier.

Step 3: Automatically suspend accounts (pending more in-depth review) of accounts that receive 20 RMT flags in one day.

Step 4: Implement harsh penalties against players found to be attempting player abuse through the "report RMT" function. This would be easy to investigate, as SE would just have to look at player logs from when flags are made (and SE could even automate logs being attached to flag reports to make investigations super easy). If the flag option is only available for 3 minutes, then SE will easily be able to check a small enough communication log to verify whether the communication was clearly an RMT message.

Step 5: Clear our black lists of accounts that remain suspended beyond one week.

Done. Spam over, and really no realistic way for players to abuse the system or for RMT to retaliate.

[Niwashi]

This is a pay to play MMO. The gil sellers have costs for every account they set up (regardless of whether they're legitimately bought accounts or stolen, there are still costs for doing either one). SE only has to slow down the gil spam far enough that the gil sellers are unable to recoup that cost and make a profit. Once the gil sellers stop making a profit from these spam accounts, then the spam will stop.

SE has the means to slow down the spam far enough that it would end up stopping altogether. They know perfectly well how to do it. Yet for some some inexplicable reason have deliberately chosen not to, at least not for their NA/EU customers. Much as I appreciate SE's skill at producing fun and engaging games, this blatant disregard for their customers is rather appalling.

And yes, no matter how fun the game is otherwise, being constantly harassed the whole time you're playing it can ruin the whole experience. Nobody will ever know exactly how many customers SE has lost over this issue, but I'm sure it's a lot, and they'll continue to lose more the longer they allow the problem to persist.

[Zabuza]

This is a pay to play MMO. The gil sellers have costs for every account they set up (regardless of whether they're legitimately bought accounts or stolen, there are still costs for doing either one). SE only has to slow down the gil spam far enough that the gil sellers are unable to recoup that cost and make a profit. Once the gil sellers stop making a profit from these spam accounts, then the spam will stop.

SE has the means to slow down the spam far enough that it would end up stopping altogether. They know perfectly well how to do it. Yet for some some inexplicable reason have deliberately chosen not to, at least not for their NA/EU customers. Much as I appreciate SE's skill at producing fun and engaging games, this blatant disregard for their customers is rather appalling.

And yes, no matter how fun the game is otherwise, being constantly harassed the whole time you're playing it can ruin the whole experience. Nobody will ever know exactly how many customers SE has lost over this issue, but I'm sure it's a lot, and they'll continue to lose more the longer they allow the problem to persist.

Which is why this makes no sense to me whatsoever. Why, as a business, would you willingly choose to lose customers? Is that not a loss of profit? Seeing as how they've already had a pretty long time to do something about this, I can only surmise that yeah, this has to be a choice on their part. The true reason for this eludes me.

[Animarelic]

Because this seems to be a major problem on small to medium servers, not large/full servers, SE doesn't see an immediate need to fix the problem. They don't realize more people are actually leaving these smaller servers not just because of the inactivity but the rampant spam. By dealing with the problem slowly they are ruining their own servers from growing or finding balance.

SE the stance you are portraying to players on minority servers is "it's your fault for choosing the server and if you don't like it pay for a transfer because our only goal is profits."

Until the Devs actually remedy the issue these servers will remain stagnant ghost towns.

[Twivana]

I agree something needs to be done about the gil spamming. Especially since some of the gil sellers are coming from WoW. Only reason I know this is because my bfs parents play WoW (still) plus one of my fc members use to play it. It is really irritating when I am trying to do my shouts for recruitment for my fc and getting blowin up by the bleeps from gil sellers and sometimes I am unable to catch when a person sends me a tell to join my fc! The only moments of silence I get with out the bleeps/ringing whatever you wanna call it is when I go into an instance. Then once I come out it starts all over again -.-

[ZettaB]

The whisper spam should be the least of your problems if you realized their operations in gil making, they literally have 30+ blackmages teleporting underground killing things, then teleports to a crafting bot sitting in ul'dah turning things into materia. This guy has been doing laps converting materia for 20+ days 24/7 on leviathan and reporting him apparently does nothing. How is this not considered suspicious?



It's insane that the blatant cheating isn't resolved first and foremost. Here's one of the underground blackmage.

[Niwashi]

The whisper spam should be the least of your problems if you realized their operations in gil making, they literally have 30+ blackmages teleporting underground killing things, then teleports to a crafting bot sitting in ul'dah turning things into materia.

Nobody is claiming that the spam is the only problem from gil-sellers, but it is the biggest problem. The spam is the part that's constantly interrupting the gameplay of all the legitimate players. Certainly the gil farming bots are just as much a part of it, but they don't have the same sort of in-your-face harassment going on as the spam bots do. SE really should do a better job of taking care of both parts of the problem, but the spam should be the higher priority piece of the issue. It's the part that's driving customers away.

[KarmaCha]

A few days ago on Ultros there was a level 1 CNJ standing outside the markets in Gridania shouting over and over again. This was about 1pm. I reported him. I came back a few hours later. He was still there. I left and came back at midnight. He was still there. Why don't GMs do random sweeps of the city states and ban these accounts? It just looks like pure laziness on their part to have a character standing in one spot for 12 hours shouting RMT spam and having nothing happen.