Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[RyuRoots]

Honestly, I do feel for everyone who has this, I get like 2 maybe 3 a week on Pheonix.

However the threads on the forums are becoming just as frequent, and whats strange it's like you all think SE is completely oblivious to the RMT problems. I get it, they are keeping silent and it's annoying as hell, but they won't make any announcements on it until they actually have a workable solution.

I'm also against the whole no /tells from people unless they are on your friends list. As I said, the RMT isnt an issue on my server so it's not something I would want to use, or for other people on the server to use if i wanted to contact them. I realise that sounds selfish but I would prefer an alternative solution.

Not that I have a better one :P

We don't think they're ignorant of it. We think they naively, stupidly believe that simply banning accounts has any effect whatsoever. Frankly, threads like this need to keep happening until SE does anything about it. They DO have workable solutions, and they are presented in every single thread on the topic. Also the /tell filtering would be fine if it were a series of options you could select. No one gets slighted that way.

[Vrankyl]

Honestly I agree the spam is getting out of hand that it would be nice to get some confirmation from SE that they hear us. Especially when having a quicker way to report spam is something that should be added as well as account wide blist. That being said anything beyond that will have to take the Jp servers which is still their main population into consideration and that it has no rmt issues. On every game I have played rmt was always a NA issue and so it will b interesting to see how this gets handled.

[Pterois]

some sorta user controlled filter where we set the words... then just copy and paste the common words they use, i'll play :P don't forget the challenge log block 100 spams and get 10,000 MGP!!! we'll kill the bots for you \^_^/

[Sartori]

I actually sent a formal real life letter to them. I got a letter back saying to report them lol

[Belhi]

Its worth pointing out that a lot of the accounts RMT sellers usually use are hacked accounts. The two things which would have the greatest impact on RMT sellers would be people having tighter security on their accounts such as secondary passwords or for people to stop using RMTs. The first would vastly cut down on the ability of RMTs to access the game affordably and the second would undermine their earnings.

Sadly making the first compulsory would probably be unpopular and SE can do nothing to make the second happen. RMT is almost non existent on the JP servers I play on and I suspect those two things are what makes the difference.

This isn't something that can be magically solved by SE. It really requires the community to actively tighten things up on their end as well. There is only so fast SE can effectively investigate and ban reported accounts.

[Docent]

On Sargatanas (A server that is almost always locked from creating new characters), the amount of tells we receive as gone up tremendously in the last few weeks / months.

It got so bad, I have officially removed tells from my chat logs, gotten rid of the jingle, and have added a jingle to one of my linkshell, which I now use as my private and fake "/tell" channel.

Having to do that despite being an FC Officer should show just how bad the situation is -- I pretty much NEEDS tells for new applications and private communication with FC-mates.

---

On a side note, I played on Masamune recently for a week or two. I have never got a single tell from RMT, no matter the hour. I don't know if it's because they don't tell level 23 marauders, or new players, or if it's simply a situation where the RMT avoid JP servers, or if Square is faster at weeding them out over there, but the situation is CLEARLY different on that server compared to Sarg.

[RiceisNice]

...I've gotten tells from gold sellers who don't even advertise... All their message consisted of was 4 random letters.

[Able]

In full support. On Sargatanas, I think the game is unplayable without /busy. And I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that.

[Meshico]

The RMT come in waves. The actions taken by the Team may seem like nothing, but when you literally have people who's job is to crack the codes and get /tells in. There is no stopping it by SE w/o extreme measures and QoL going way down.

Blacklist report, and wash, rinse, repeat.

These people are being paid a lot of money, by players. If you were to ban the players who get caught...well that would be where their business takes a hit. But buying in game currency is a very very big market.

In other words, I have faith that SE is doing everything they can to get this under control. They have a good business here and they do not want to lose it anytime soon that is for sure.

-Tari

[Zabuza]

The RMT come in waves. The actions taken by the Team may seem like nothing, but when you literally have people who's job is to crack the codes and get /tells in. There is no stopping it by SE w/o extreme measures and QoL going way down.

Blacklist report, and wash, rinse, repeat.

These people are being paid a lot of money, by players. If you were to ban the players who get caught...well that would be where their business takes a hit. But buying in game currency is a very very big market.

In other words, I have faith that SE is doing everything they can to get this under control. They have a good business here and they do not want to lose it anytime soon that is for sure.

-Tari

The spam is constant over here. Sometimes I can go a whole 5 minutes without receiving /tells *gasp. But then I get spammed by 3 RMTs at once. It literally does average to 1 constant /tell a minute over here, and that is absolutely insane. I've played MMOs for 10 years now, and never have I seen it this bad in any game. No, they are not doing everything they can. If they were, they'd at least so much as reply to one of the threads people make about this issue. Some kind of assurance they are actually doing something, maybe even considering some of the suggested solutions. But instead we hear absolutely nothing.

The blacklist option is actually completely pointless for me at this point. Not only did it fill a long time ago, it is completely not worth it to remove entries and add new ones, as the 3 accounts who just whispered me will be replaced with 3 new ones within 5 minutes. I'd spend more time blacklisting and reporting than actually playing if I did this, for no reason at all, since not nearly enough is being done to combat this situation.

I know of a handful of players whom just recently started the game due to the last free weekend event. The only thing I ever hear these new customers mutter is the astonishment of the sheer amount of /tell and /shout spam and dismay as to why nothing is being done about it. They bring up instances wherein other MMOs they play have been able to axe the problem completely. They report to me that it is something really distracting from their enjoyment of the game. I'm afraid these new friends of mine may discontinue play with the spam as one of the major deciding factors of that. It's sad that the reputation that people are walking away with when they try this game isn't the beauty of the graphics, the gameplay, the good storylines, or anything that has made 14 successful up until this point - it's the gilseller spam and the lack of response that they'll remember and share with others whom ask them about their experience here.

1,000 times this. This makes me sad, as I want the game to succeed even more, and I know it has the potential for that. However, I can imagine a lot of new NA players will be driven away with this. If THIS is the first thing they see from the game, why would they want to continue to endure that?

Also, for all those who say they disagree with the friends list /tell filtering. It would be optional, not mandatory, just to give some of these players a safe haven. I recommend a small tutorial window when you first receive a /tell that informs you about /busy, blacklisting, how to add someone to friends, and the like. That way new players know right away a way to protect themselves from this harassment.

And yes, it astonishes me that SE is not giving us a single dev response to this matter. ESPECIALLY considering how vocal their devs are. They see us suffering and are turning a complete blind eye to the situation. I have a few reasons as to why they might be, but am not going to list them as I don't want this thread deleted.

I actually sent a formal real life letter to them. I got a letter back saying to report them lol

That is indeed depressing. It shows that they are either out of touch with the severity of the situation, or simply don't care. Reporting is no longer a viable option with the way the reporting system is set up, combined with the frequency of the /tells received. I cannot report them when I get one of them every minute, it's just not an option.

Honestly, I do feel for everyone who has this, I get like 2 maybe 3 a week on Pheonix. However the threads on the forums are becoming just as frequent, and whats strange it's like you all think SE is completely oblivious to the RMT problems. I get it, they are keeping silent and it's annoying as hell, but they won't make any announcements on it until they actually have a workable solution.

If a thread was made every minute about this, then it would approach the level of RMT spam that I receive on my server. I don't think SE is oblivious to the RMT problem, I think, that for whatever reason, they are deliberately ignoring it, which is infuriating. If they remain silent, eventually some players are going to have enough and leave. New players certainly will not want to continue to try the game when they are harassed like this.

I made my thread even though there are other RMTs threads so that people from other servers could SEE what my RMT spam is like over here, so they can stop saying "I only get 1 /tell a day I don't see what the big deal is."

Also so that SE themselves could see the screenshot so they can see for themselves just how unacceptable it is. Something has to give here. They cannot afford to keep sitting idly by. Before Heavensward comes out for sure, they need to find a workable solution. Their current plan is NOT it.