Everyone complaining about no action on RMT, please read

[Zabuza]

SE has only 3 people on their Special Task Force, to cover 64 servers. Did you know that? It was in the 2.55 credits at the end. The actions they are taking are not having any effect and surely SE knows this. They are just turning a blind eye, and leaving a lot of dissatisfied customers for whatever reason.

[WrenDark]

Well logged in after maint and left myself logged in. 7 hrs later. I had over 68 unique RMT user tells, all in the frequency of 1 to 5 min per advertiser, some were different accounts spamming the same advertisement msg. So no, this didn't fix a thing. RMT know the bans come in waves, and have plans ready to rebuild prior to it, its very predictable now. SE really needs to implement countermeasures to this spam because come heavensward, that number will probably double or triple on the ban waves, and if that happens you know SE lost the fight and will lose customers. Other MMO's have proper filters in place, even some of the crappy f2p ones have something better that what SE has now.

[Ren_Taka]

And still every night, I have RMT tells spamming me before the game even finishes loading...and then at least one tell per 2-3 minutes unless I'm busy or in an instance.

No one is disputing that they are doing something. The problem is that what they're doing is not effective.
Many people have suggested solutions that have worked in other games but they continue with the same ineffective ban waves.
I've played many MMOs...WoW, Everquest 2, RIFT, LOTRO, Guild Wars 2, for example...and the RMT spam on FFXIV is the worst that I've seen on any of them.

[Tsukino]

The problem isn't whether they are doing something versus nothing, it's how effective their methods are. And as long as we're all spammed all day every day in game, forcing us to either go busy or turn off tells completely, they're ineffective.

I wonder if they could seek assistance from another company or even contractors who had assisted with getting rid of spam in other games to implement something in FFXIV.

[TouchandFeel]

As others have stated, we know SE is doing something to combat RMT, but they are focusing their efforts in the wrong areas to provide longterm solutions to combat RMT. Instead of being proactive they are being reactive which requires more time effort and resources to have a lesser effect in the end. It is easier to prevent a mess from happening than trying to clean it up after the fact.

What they need to do is invest the resources into creating tools and enhancements that make it easier to combat RMT, with the two best examples being right-click->report rmt functionality and enhancements to the blacklist such as simply clearing out deleted characters automatically instead of making the players do it.

Creating tools like this makes it much easier for the players to report and fight back against rmt, therefore helping to take some of the effort off SqEnix as well as making sure that RMT bots are actually being reported instead of just being ignored because the current way of reporting is so cumbersome.

Other things could also be put into place such as IP banning after so many offenses from a specific IP and making more visible denouncements of engaging in RMT on the launcher and ingame to let people know that doing so is against the rules and will not be tolerated with emphasis on the punishments if one is caught participating in RMT.

Creating tools to make it easier to combat rmt, restructuring the methods and process of how to combat RMT by the task force and SE support members, and creating proactive and preventative measures to combat RMT is what needs to happen.

Just simply doing ban waves and expecting to make a real dent in the RMT problem is like Sisyphus believing he will finally get that rock to the top of the hill this time, simply meaning a lot of time and effort will be spent and you'll just end up back where you started.

[Krr]

Well logged in after maint and left myself logged in. 7 hrs later. I had over 68 unique RMT user tells, all in the frequency of 1 to 5 min per advertiser, some were different accounts spamming the same advertisement msg.

Yeah, so to refute the OP, let's do some math:
68 accounts with, being generous, 8 unique characters on one server maximum, sending one tell every 5 minutes. That's 96 accounts per hour. To satisfy the amount of unique tells being sent every day on smallpop unlocked servers, 2304 RMT accounts per day, 69,210 unique RMT accounts per month would be created.

11,000 is a drop in the ocean. Their current methods are ineffective and it is a lack of responsibility on corporate's part not to be releasing solutions to this problem and acknowledging that it is a problem in the first place already.

[Dunncan]

All I can see is:

11k accounts banned in a week, means another 11k account sells on the next day. Looks like a very good business model for a game wich is still in it's "first steps". Profit for SE, profit for the gil sellers, no reason to implement real counter measures.

Once the balance breaks, and the players start to really quit or at least piss off more about it, then I guess SE will implement some sort of anti-spamm filters or any other thing that other MMO's have already.

I guess they could even use the profit from all that RMT accounts to pay for this fix, lol.

And please, I don't mean that it's right or cool, don't misunderstand it.

[Zabuza]

All I can see is:

11k accounts banned in a week, means another 11k account sells on the next day. Looks like a very good business model for a game wich is still in it's "first steps". Profit for SE, profit for the gil sellers, no reason to implement real counter measures.

Once the balance breaks, and the players start to really quit or at least piss off more about it, then I guess SE will implement some sort of anti-spamm filters or any other thing that other MMO's have already.

I guess they could even use the profit from all that RMT accounts to pay for this fix, lol.

And please, I don't mean that it's right or cool, don't misunderstand it.

That is the main reason I can think of for their inaction.

[Gralna]

All I can see is:

11k accounts banned in a week, means another 11k account sells on the next day. Looks like a very good business model for a game wich is still in it's "first steps". Profit for SE, profit for the gil sellers, no reason to implement real counter measures.

Once the balance breaks, and the players start to really quit or at least piss off more about it, then I guess SE will implement some sort of anti-spamm filters or any other thing that other MMO's have already.

I guess they could even use the profit from all that RMT accounts to pay for this fix, lol.

And please, I don't mean that it's right or cool, don't misunderstand it.

If you think SE is making a profit from RMT accounts you are sorely mistaken, majority of RMT accounts are either hacked accounts, or the more prevalant, bought with stolen credit card information.

from this article http://nosygamer.blogspot.com/2013/1...m-and-rmt.html

That type of fraud would not stand out as unusual in today's world. Back in January 2008, Sony Online Entertainment CEO John Smedly told Massively that credit card fraud and chargebacks had cost SOE over $1 million over the previous six months. And Scott Hartsman, now the CEO of Trion Worlds, told Gamasutra in July 2011...

[Maero]

TBH while they are doing something, tells every few minutes has got to be a bit much now. Granted it is not all the time but i do not recall it ever being this bad Pre Gold Saucer Patch