Gold spammers - IT'S TIME TO FIX THEM

[Brazdon]

I need an actual solution. I'm tried of giving up my ability to be messaged with /busy, I'm tired of people I don't know and have never encountered, messaging me about gold. The fact that all facets of the game have been improved upon (pvp,pve,teleporting menus,ect.), OTHER THAN GOLD SPAMMERS, I believe it could be time to FINALLY address this.

I'm not going to spend additional MONTHS discussing solutions in game with other players. I've already been speaking with players about the legitimacy of efforts by anyone on the game staff to rid us of a CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT of messages, we all agree that LITTLE OR NOTHING has been done to fix this issue. More than anything that infuriates me about this situation, is the extra Spam messages I receive after communicating my issues with your team(GM) in game. It's almost as if these gold spammers are being allowed to effect my game-play, and are monitoring it enough to know if I have been in contact with GM's. I BELIEVE NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE TO REMOVE GOLD SPAMMERS FROM OUR GAMING EXPERIENCE.

If I continue to see no signs of effort by GM's, (or any game staff) or any reduction in the amount of messages i receive, I can ONLY assume that the game staff is knowingly allowing this abuse. (As I have said many things have been improved in this game, but gold spammers have remained a daily issue) Providing a platform for abuse with no way to remove yourself from said abuse is the POOREST of customer service, I'd even say you are paying the customer a large DISSERVICE by only providing hallow cookie cutter responses ie: the ridiculously long message you send in response to gold spamming issues. Ya know, the one where it goes on to say "just deal with it, we are working on it". Players are even suggesting that SE is gaining a percentage of profits from the gold spammers. So YEAAAAAAAAH, it's time to address this.

Here are VERY SIMPLE solutions!


1. Make a /friends option so we can at LEAST still communicate easily with friends and party with them without having to go through the "Are you busy? or am I? no it was you? let me try? no? try now!" that we go through now.

2. Make the first time someone messages you a "yes or no" choice to receive messages from that person from here on: Since gold spammers are removed so slowly and if at all, this would help us with the constant repeat spammers like: Ghfgh Ghfyrt, Ehgh Hreshss, Powleolo Fisher, Safdsf Dsfdsf, Deitrich Brlley, Gustonxa Weild, Erahha Hresh, Jhfgjhg Jhghh, Gfdsrew Gdddd, Dfsag Htrhss ect. BTW, can you do anything about those names? Ive been dealing some of those names for nearly 6 months.

3. Make messaging someone for the first time a face to face experience: If they cant click you, they cant message you, at least that way the lvl50 BLM's that sit in Uldah on Zalera aren't just spamming down the list of local people.

4. level 10 /tell requirement: Most of the offenders are not lvl 50 BLM they are lvl 1 newly created characters. We cant even help each other in the game really until after that point anyways, so this would at least make the goldspammer play the game and work for it each time they make a character, building a slow-building frustration for them, INSTEAD OF US!

Want more options? This isn't difficult to deal with AT ALL, it's just NOT being dealt with.

I'm very sorry for the tone of this post, but I'm sick of the constant harassment, and I know everyone else is too. Your team is letting the creation of a wonderfully immersive game be dismantled and distorted by !!!!BLING!!! WANNA BUY GOLD?!?!?!?! SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.....

::Passes the ball::

THE BALL IS IN YOUR COURT!

[Amnesia]

I'm not sure #3 is quite right---take for example the case of someone shouting out for a crafter. That message goes out over the whole zone, but there would be no way for anyone to respond (except for cluttering up the shout channel). I think perhaps that instead, you must be either on someone's friends list or be in the same zone in order to send them a /tell

[Dillia]

Here are VERY SIMPLE solutions!

No solution is simple in RMT. I will reply to your ideas explaining why it is not valid.

1. Make a /friends option so we can at LEAST still communicate easily with friends.

You can already do this. It is called a Linkshell. Inivte your friends to a linkshell and you have your own private chatroom where you can be /busy and still talk to each other.

2. Make the first time someone messages you a "yes or no" choice to receive messages from that person

This would discourage communication from legitimate players. Sure, you could filter out Adssg Dfffe, but it would be so easy to also decline messages from other actual players, damaging the community of the game and pushing it even more towards a Single Player game.

3. Make messaging someone for the first time a face to face experience: If they cant click you, they cant message you.

This is the best suggestion so far, but still missing the mark. How easy would it be for the spammers to just place their bots at high population areas like Mor Dhona, or around the GC NPCs and spam who ever came near. And yes, a level 1 can run to Mor Dhona, my compay created a bunch of alts and ran the gauntlet from Ul'dah to Rev Toll.

4. level 10 /tell requirement: Most of the offenders are not lvl 50 BLM they are lvl 1 newly created characters.

True, but that would not stop them, just slow them down a little. You can easily make it to lvl 10 without purchasing anything, just using the starter gear, by running low level fates. All you would see is a hoard of identical THM leveling up to 10 (just like they do to farm WP) and then they would start spamming.

What SE is doing may not be in your face, like the spammers are, but they are doing the best thing they can to deter RMT. They track the farming bots, they track the gil flow and then they ban the characters holding the millions and millions of gil. This destroys the product they are trying to sell, driving the cost of the product up. A higher cost per mill means fewer customers willing to pay, which means less profit for the RMT. If people stopped buying gill, there would be no spam in the first place.

If every player stopped buying gil today. I guarentee you that within two weeks, RMT would leave FFXIV.

Think of it like drugs. When the police find someone with a gram of weed, they offer a deal to let them go if they rat out their dealer. Then they find the dealer, and give them a deal to get off the hook by ratting out their supplier. It goes up the chain till they have the info for a big enough bust. Take 1 dealer of the street, another will take his place tomorrow, but if you seize a few tons of narcotics, that actually hurts the cartells distributing the drugs. Sure, you still see the dealers in your neighborhood, that doesn't mean the cops don't care.

[Brazdon]

You can already do this. It is called a Linkshell. Inivte your friends to a linkshell and you have your own private chatroom where you can be /busy and still talk to each other.

- most people have their allotted amount of linkshells already and shouldn't be forced to choose between LS's just to avoid goldspammers.

This would discourage communication from legitimate players. Sure, you could filter out Adssg Dfffe, but it would be so easy to also decline messages from other actual players, damaging the community of the game and pushing it even more towards a Single Player game.

- I don't know what server you play on, but you cant play this game alone. I don't agree that the community would suffer at all, and goldspammers would be detoured

This is the best suggestion so far, but still missing the mark. How easy would it be for the spammers to just place their bots at high population areas like Mor Dhona, or around the GC NPCs and spam who ever came near. And yes, a level 1 can run to Mor Dhona, my compay created a bunch of alts and ran the gauntlet from Ul'dah to Rev Toll.

- Sure they can run around, but then we see them, we can call GM's point them out, and have them banned more easily. Plus it takes time to do that, which time is untaxed, untraceable some poor person's money, in these people's eyes.

True, but that would not stop them, just slow them down a little. You can easily make it to lvl 10 without purchasing anything, just using the starter gear, by running low level fates. All you would see is a hoard of identical THM leveling up to 10 (just like they do to farm WP) and then they would start spamming.

- That sounds like a pretty easy ban to me.


I believe that if you don't enforce the small rules, the large rules aren't taken very seriously either. It doesn't matter if you agree with me, people are being mislead and taken advantage of. You do know goldselling is generally a scam with no gil involved right? A paypal account is where the money goes, they don't have to do anything for you. In most cases it ends there. I don't think any of your counterpoints rung truer than general harassment on a daily basis, so I'm gonna keep fighting the good fight. Thanks for the input though.

[YuuhiX]

#4 is the only thing that can effectively work. I've seen something like this in Aion, where we can block whispers from people under Lvl 10. I never get PMs from spambots that way and the only place where they can annoy us is in one of the two major cities (Or sometimes in a global chat channel). Restricting shout won't do much, since most of them are not using that (At least not in Malboro). But this should still be implemented and forbid ppl from using Yell/Shout if they don't have anything Lvl 10, in case the bots are going to resort to that next time.

But I came up with something that can slow them down even further. Most spambot likely use the Player Search to find and spam ppl to death. Let's make Player Search something you need to unlock before you can start using it. When do we unlock it? I guess the best option would be at the Main Story part where you use the Airship for the first time or when you unlock the first dungeon, Sastasha.

Now I know this is not going to completely stop the spambots, but it will severely slow them down and we won't be annoyed by spambots every few damn minutes. Heck, some of the bots won't even bother with that. This might not be that much of an improvement, but any improvement at this points will be a good one. Right now, I can get 5-7 spambots within 1 minute (!!!) bugging the living moogle out of me. With something like this implemented, that case will be more rarely to occur.

[monochromicorn]

There's no way to actually get rid of rmt. Nothing truly slows it down either. And if you go by name, my alt would be banned already. I made dgdggdg hghghghg as a joke, she's a lv 25ish arcanist, fc (not sure why soneine let me in) and all. they do give options around blocking tells, linkshell/fc being the best options. While not optimal, it is completely your choice to not accept/form an ls for friends, and should not have other things, such as restrictions for low-leveled players just because you refuse to give one of your ls spots up. Nobody needs 6 hunt ls's anyways(considering that's the majority of players main ls concerns). I have helped many legit players through tells, and forcing us to be next to each other is stupid, as I would not willing waste 3 hours walking someone through the beginning of the game, even just pre-15. At least with the current set-up, I can be grinding fates in cch to level while responding to tells from that lv 7 person who wants to know where to get items and the best ways to level are.

[KisaiTenshi]

Here are VERY SIMPLE solutions!

*deepbreath* IF IT WAS SO SIMPLE, THERE WOULD BE NO RMT IN ANY MMORPG, EVERY MMORPG HAS THIS PROBLEM, EVERYONE THINKS IT'S SO SIMPLE BY THROWING MORE STAFF AT IT, YOU CAN ONLY FIGHT BOTS WITH MORE BOTS *exhale*

1. Make a /friends option so we can at LEAST still communicate easily with friends and party with them without having to go through the "Are you busy? or am I? no it was you? let me try? no? try now!" that we go through now.

That's called a linkshell. Defect: Being busy screws up readycheck.

2. Make the first time someone messages you a "yes or no" choice to receive messages from that person from here on: Since gold spammers are removed so slowly and if at all, this would help us with the constant repeat spammers like: Ghfgh Ghfyrt, Ehgh Hreshss, Powleolo Fisher, Safdsf Dsfdsf, Deitrich Brlley, Gustonxa Weild, Erahha Hresh, Jhfgjhg Jhghh, Gfdsrew Gdddd, Dfsag Htrhss ect. BTW, can you do anything about those names? Ive been dealing some of those names for nearly 6 months.

Would not work. There's a lot of Roegadyn names that look like keyboard facemashes. SE could apply the simplest of logic at name creation, that if a custom name is picked that it contain monophthongs and diphthongs. That would remove a lot of names that have more than two consecutive consonants and make it harder to "buttonmash" a name. In particular, had the game started with a bit more "enforced" name roleplaying, no bot would ever be able to roll anything and be stuck with defaults, thus making it slightly harder to identify.

3. Make messaging someone for the first time a face to face experience: If they cant click you, they cant message you, at least that way the lvl50 BLM's that sit in Uldah on Zalera aren't just spamming down the list of local people.

That would make more sense, but bots are generally using memory or packet hacking to bypass client-side enforcement. So they would just send a packet that says they are telling you from right beside you or something like that. A slight improvement on this would be "client rejection" where a tell would be rejected in the same distance as a "say" unless also on the friendlist. This would also apply to Guild Invites (as one guild incessantly spams invites every day)

4. level 10 /tell requirement: Most of the offenders are not lvl 50 BLM they are lvl 1 newly created characters. We cant even help each other in the game really until after that point anyways, so this would at least make the goldspammer play the game and work for it each time they make a character, building a slow-building frustration for them, INSTEAD OF US!

So you're gonna make it so no player can ever ask for help? Nope. TERA did that with free trial accounts before they went premium and it was infuriating to say the least. This would also just make the bots clutter up the newbie zones, preventing new players from ever getting out.

SE might have all of 4 people monitoring reports, and reporting RMT spam is probably the most irritating thing to do manually. There really needs to be a "right-click" report that sends a screenshot for a GM or some mentor system to validate and take action on. That would get rid of the RMT spam faster, but it would do nothing to prevent them from continuing.

[Brazdon]

The cowardice of failing is all I hear in your voices! What if it doesn't work? AT LEAST WE DID SOMETHING. Stand up, take action, and TRY! If you don't like the solution, FINE! Make a better suggestion. I don't care about being the person to get his idea involved. I just want this addressed properly, and it hasn't been. If your comments have anything to do with "Just deal with it" attitudes, you are in the wrong thread. This thread is intended to promote ideas for removing goldspammers from our daily experiences in game. Things can be better, and the people slowing down that process obviously aren't just goldspammers. Just post some usable solutions PLEASE!

[Brazdon]

*deepbreath* IF IT WAS SO SIMPLE, THERE WOULD BE NO RMT IN ANY MMORPG, EVERY MMORPG HAS THIS PROBLEM, EVERYONE THINKS IT'S SO SIMPLE BY THROWING MORE STAFF AT IT, YOU CAN ONLY FIGHT BOTS WITH MORE BOTS *exhale*

Sorry everyone, but I'm gonna keep calling this wrong. I've played many games without this issue. Runes of Magic for example is a free to play, money involved, and farming very valuable. NEVER.ONCE.GOT.GOLD.SPAMMED. Farming bots were quickly and effectively removed. Never worried about it in Ultima Online, just played a wonderfully immersive game.

Again this thread is for ideas, not a pissing contest about who's idea is the best.

That's called a linkshell. Defect: Being busy screws up readycheck.

- Many of my friends have 3 hunt LS's because we play at different times, and meet different people. What if you could only be communicated with by friends. that would effectively avoid an issue and provide a solution. That's the whole point. To not have to be busy as a solution, cause it's not. You could be in /friend mode and party up, no issue.


Would not work. There's a lot of Roegadyn names that look like keyboard facemashes. SE could apply the simplest of logic at name creation, that if a custom name is picked that it contain monophthongs and diphthongs. That would remove a lot of names that have more than two consecutive consonants and make it harder to "buttonmash" a name. In particular, had the game started with a bit more "enforced" name roleplaying, no bot would ever be able to roll anything and be stuck with defaults, thus making it slightly harder to identify.

- No... it would totally work in combination with the level 10 tell requirement.

That would make more sense, but bots are generally using memory or packet hacking to bypass client-side enforcement. So they would just send a packet that says they are telling you from right beside you or something like that. A slight improvement on this would be "client rejection" where a tell would be rejected in the same distance as a "say" unless also on the friendlist. This would also apply to Guild Invites (as one guild incessantly spams invites every day)

- check it out an idea, cool. You also ALMOST agreed with me. You guys are funny lol. "It was a good idea once I fixed it." lol!!

So you're gonna make it so no player can ever ask for help? Nope. TERA did that with free trial accounts before they went premium and it was infuriating to say the least. This would also just make the bots clutter up the newbie zones, preventing new players from ever getting out.

- the help blasts in your face when you start playing, and then beyond that, there is a site called the Lodestone to further help, and beyond THAT, there are forums, and guides, and videos online. I don't think that argument is valid :/

[OddOne]

Actualiy, there is a simple solution to the RMT spamvertising, and it would be pretty trivial to implement:

Add an option for user-configurable regexp filtering to incoming chat text.

Leave it blank for no filtering, or add a few lines of regular expressions to screen out anything you'd prefer to not see. Anything that matches never shows on your end. Have all incoming chat text to the client go through the filter unless the person speaking is already on your friends list - friend chat would be unchecked. Assuming FFXIV is coded in C++ or C#, it'd take more code to provide an interface for the user than it would to add a regexp-based chat filter. (The filter itself wouldn't take but a handful of lines of code.)

It would be trivial to implement since regexp handling is standard to practically every programming language in use on the planet, and since it's entirely client-side it would require zero horsepower on SE's end. Players could also easily share their favorite regexp strings and could even selectively screen out other chat traffic they don't find interesting or useful (example: people advertising primal or coil clear carries in Mor Dhona).

This would allow almost instant removal of RMT spam with very little (read: practically zero) cost to SE, and could be slipstreamed into Heavensward.