Five RMT messages in 20 seconds.... :(

[writeraeria]

what really annoys me are these friend requests. why do i have to delete every bot by hand from my friendlist? why is he added to my friendlist before i was saying "yes"?

This drives me crazy. It shouldn't be more difficult to not accept a friend request. If I select "No" then the individual should no longer be on my list or waiting for me to approve. Somehow "No" means "Wait" here. If they're so worried about people hitting the wrong button too quickly because they're doing something else, why not do what they did to DF and give us the options "Yes" "Wait," and "No." It's really frustrating to stop what I'm doing, pull up the friend's list, reject the friend request, then blacklist them so I don't get it again.

[ShaneDawn]

Pretty sure its impossible to stop RMT without causing some sort of freedom taken away from players.

Impossible to stop it, very possible to fight it.

What is the biggest cause of RMT? People that want the gil to buy BiS crafted gear/relic materias (critdet) or extreme/coil runs. How to fight it? Never make crafted/buyable gear the best option out there. It always feeds to the RMT market. If the best gear is locked behinf content, raid teams have little reason to sell runs aside vanity purposes.

Also SE needs to take more active role into banning these gold selling bots. Even constant friendlisting is RMT. They also need to add QoL options, not accepting someone's friend request should remove that request from your friendslist. The blacklist/report option should also be shown on the list of options when you click a persons name.

[Magusrex]

Those of you tired of people making threads about this...TOO BAD. It is awful, I have removed tells from my main window, it's crappy that I have to do it, but they somehow realize I am doing this and send me friend request non stop .....The name always begins with GMAT..then an bunch of characters. I should not have to log on and /busy. I have been playing these games since UO, this is the worst I have ever seen. My conclusion is that SE is profiting in some way. Give me an option to turn off friends requests, and option to receive tell only from friends and the problem is solved. I know when I want to be friends with someone and I can toggle the option back then turn it back off once the request is processed. There should be an option to turn off free company requests for the unaffiliated as well. This is simple stuff and would shut this down.

[Orspeth]

....Give me an option to turn off friends requests, and option to receive tell only from friends and the problem is solved. I know when I want to be friends with someone and I can toggle the option back then turn it back off once the request is processed. There should be an option to turn off free company requests for the unaffiliated as well. This is simple stuff and would shut this down.

This, PLEASE!! I'm not ever going to accept friend requests from someone I have never seen or spoken to anyway, so let me turn them off.

[Riepah]

On a related note, the same mining bot I and two of my friends reported over the course of approximately 9 months is at work in his usual spot right now.

[DoctorPepper]

I agree that the issue needs to be addressed.. but I don't think your solutions are good solutions.

The reason I think that is because it is well known there is a non-intrusive 3rd party tool provided by guildworks that provides a user defined chat filter. People with the filter have confirmed that they see next to no RMT shouts/tells when properly configured.

SE will not eliminate RMT, it's not possible, otherwise countless other MMORPGs would have already done it. Banning the buyers will only add animosity to the community because a lot of people who buy will complain and claim to be legit. We already saw this happen once at launch when a digit was removed from every bodies gil if they went over a certain threshold. The bottom line is that SE would have to hire a significantly large amount of people to investigate the number of cases that exist and they're not going to do that because money.

Something they can do though is actively monitor RMT shouts/tells and adjust chat filters accordingly. Currently the chat filter they have in place only filters duplicate messages that are sent in high frequency. That's why you see RMT shouts/tells changing a few letters in their repeated advertisements every 2 or 3 messages.

In the end, if a 3rd party, user defined chat filter is able to handle RMT shouts/tells then why can't SE monitor/update their own chat filters to do the exact same thing. Yes, it will require somebody on their end who actually monitors and adjusts the filter but I bet people wouldn't care about RMT that much if they weren't forced to look at shouts/tells from them.

[Anneliese]

I agree that the issue needs to be addressed.. but I don't think your solutions are good solutions.

The reason I think that is because it is well known there is a non-intrusive 3rd party tool provided by guildworks that provides a user defined chat filter. People with the filter have confirmed that they see next to no RMT shouts/tells when properly configured.

Guildworks is nice and all, but it doesn't stop the most annoying spam: friend requests. I shouldn't have to ask 200 people if I can add them to my friends list to stop those.

[DoctorPepper]

Guildworks is nice and all, but it doesn't stop the most annoying spam: friend requests. I shouldn't have to ask 200 people if I can add them to my friends list to stop those.

I agree, there should be options for friend requests. I think you should have the ability to toggle an auto-decline friend request option. People generally know when they want to accept a request before it's even sent and the toggle could just be a button on the friends list that remembers your setting, quick and easy to toggle on and off.

You have to admit, if SE had a chat filter they updated frequently and you could also auto-decline friend requests as needed, RMT shouts/tells would not be an issue.

[Teryaani]

I agree that the issue needs to be addressed.. but I don't think your solutions are good solutions.

Why are a blacklist account or right-click-report that suspends at a certain reported threshold not good, at least interim, solutions to the spam problem?

The reason I think that is because it is well known there is a non-intrusive 3rd party tool provided by guildworks that provides a user defined chat filter. People with the filter have confirmed that they see next to no RMT shouts/tells when properly configured.

Which requires us use a 3rd party tool which SE has told us not to do. I'm down for add-ins. I used them all the time in WoW, but there isn't currently any "blessed" way of doing it and I'm leery of dealing with 3rd party. Also worth noting that they change up their spam periodically to mess with the filters now. So that's a temporary solution or a high maintenance one.

SE will not eliminate RMT, it's not possible, otherwise countless other MMORPGs would have already done it. Banning the buyers will only add animosity to the community because a lot of people who buy will complain and claim to be legit. We already saw this happen once at launch when a digit was removed from every bodies gil if they went over a certain threshold. The bottom line is that SE would have to hire a significantly large amount of people to investigate the number of cases that exist and they're not going to do that because money.

People keep saying this, and I will keep responding. WE AREN'T ASKING FOR THEM TO ELIMINATE RMT! We want the spammers dealt with. Most of us understand that RMT isn't going away, I don't want to be bothered with the spam. Two different issues.

[DoctorPepper]

Which requires us use a 3rd party tool which SE has told us not to do. I'm down for add-ins. I used them all the time in WoW, but there isn't currently any "blessed" way of doing it and I'm leery of dealing with 3rd party. Also worth noting that they change up their spam periodically to mess with the filters now. So that's a temporary solution or a high maintenance one.

People keep saying this, and I will keep responding. WE AREN'T ASKING FOR THEM TO ELIMINATE RMT! We want the spammers dealt with. Most of us understand that RMT isn't going away, I don't want to be bothered with the spam. Two different issues.

Did you miss the point of my reply or not read the last paragraph? What I'm saying it that it would be easier and more effective for them to create a chat filter (that actually works, and doesn't just filter duplicates) and update it regularly than the OPs proposed solutions. The friend request issue that remains is easily solved by giving people an option to auto-decline friend requests (just requests, not tells and numerous other things at the same time like busy status).

Not sure how else to respond because you simply took points out of my reply and turned them into something they're not. I was simply giving examples of why I didn't think some of the OPs suggestions would be good solutions. I'm not defining what you, or anybody else, is asking for. It's clear that the issue is chat and friend request spam and that can be solved a lot easier than trying to do things like ban buyers.

Whether you like it or not, the 3rd party guildworks option works and is very easy to use. I don't endorse it either myself, but I wish SE would look at that solution and put something similar in place of their current filter, which is 100% useless. The guildworks option also doesn't work for PS3 or PS4 players, which is another reason I'd like an official filter that actually works rather than some 3rd party tool.