Rampant botting and RMT..nothing being done

[Belhi]

There are two sides to this. SE is stuck in a war which is undermined a lot by the fact its their own players breaking the rules which are allowing the problem to exist in the first place. If people didn't buy gold, no one would be selling it.

I play on a Japanese server and have never seen a single RMT ad. There are still quite a few bots but no spaming RMT. The difference to the NA servers sounds profound. Bots are annoying but RMT is what is really invasive.

The issue SE has is that the best way to stop people breaking the rules is prevention. Account security is part of this. Anyone who doesn't have single use password protection should get it. Hacked accounts are a favoured way of RMT sellers to advertise because it allows them access to the game without paying anything. Reporting people breaking the rules help as well. Automated solutions are problematic. Innocent players almost inevitably get caught. This creates a need to investigate individual cases which can become extremely cost inefficient. The other option is being more restrictive which is what WoW mainly does.

There is no easy solution to this and its an arms war. People mention WoW but seem to forget it took WoW years to get their own RMT problems under control. They literally had new characters spawning, being hacked to fly through the air to Orgrimmar and being laid out on the ground to spell the letters of gold selling websites. That situation continued for ages.

[Riepah]

The issue SE has is that the best way to stop people breaking the rules is prevention. Account security is part of this. Anyone who doesn't have single use password protection should get it. Hacked accounts are a favoured way of RMT sellers to advertise because it allows them access to the game without paying anything.

I'm pretty sure that doesn't apply here. You can't even log in to your own account if you're using a different device than usual, say, a laptop rather than your usual desktop. It won't let you, until you change your password via an e-mail they send. So unless your e-mail account is in the hands of RMT, you could go and TELL them your login information and it wouldn't do jack, they still couldn't steal your account. If they tried to log in with your credentials, you'd get an e-mail about it, change the password to something else, and RMT could twiddle their thumbs.

[Aryalandi]

SE works on the RMT issue, but the bigger problems are the player issue, and lack of manpower to take down multiple companies who are entirely devoted to one single thing, and the lack of communication between players and the task force. Will it get better? Yes.. but it will take a long time unless SE has more people, i wish the community could police things like i used to on XI as a blue mage (fit her rp too <3) but there is just so much more to do in this game, so many more players..

In XI you would /know/ when your report was recieved and dealt with, there was communication between the players and the special task force, i could literally stand in front of an rmt, send a report, wait ten minutes, watch them red ball and disappear as i got the thank you message and moved on to finding more. I miss that /it actually felt like i was making some small difference/

[Elusana_Celah]

I dunno... I've been able to keep busy off now on Behemoth. Except sometimes friends requests come in like yesterday I got 2 back to back from the same gil seller company then I'll just put busy back on but really it ain't anywhere near as bad as it used to be on this server.

But Behemoth player activity has greatly decreased so I'm doubting SE is getting rid of the RMT, just players are quitting the game... very hard to even get farms going anymore here unless it's during the few hours a day of peak player activity lol.

Goes to show you though, when the buyers go away, the gil sellers follow. Attack the buyers, the sellers disappear.

[BunnyChain]

"nothing?"

3 people are doing this:



Give them some credit. :/

[Natsuno]

Reported a 'friend' bot for harassment (same company name so the same 'entity' is making more chars to grief people that have already /blisted them) and had a positive reply within the hour.

Both /tell bots I reported vanished after a day tops too. I haven't seen another fill the space that these two left yet, (also saw a THM bot red ball in the same area) so I am personally seeing results of myself (and more than likely others) reporting them.

If GMs have the power to ban/freeze the accounts of the blatantly obvious offenders (which I assume they do), then that'll help ease the burden on the special task force.

Slightly off topic, but I wonder how many of the complainers (or people in general) actually go through the trouble of reporting them? Just a random thought.

[Solaria_Luna]

Seriously, there's 2-3 new threads about this daily... -.-

I agree with this person...I just answered a thread about this from 2 months ago. (I just checked the Original Post date)

How hard is it to implement a /tell filter that just no holds barred blacklists these types of tells...and allows non RMT tells? (even blocks a copy/paste if they just came off a banned/blacklisted by player new character and they just say the saaaaame thing, also those 'sellgil' characters adding attempting to add people as a friend too)

I would report, but have no way to report with proof since I play on PS3. (screenshot of Blacklist...with all those 'sellgil' accounts that tried to add me.)[I think they all may be the same person -includes /tell spammers-, because how can a different spammer -character name- know what my character's name is]

I'm pretty sure that doesn't apply here. You can't even log in to your own account if you're using a different device than usual, say, a laptop rather than your usual desktop. It won't let you, until you change your password via an e-mail they send. So unless your e-mail account is in the hands of RMT, you could go and TELL them your login information and it wouldn't do jack, they still couldn't steal your account. If they tried to log in with your credentials, you'd get an e-mail about it, change the password to something else, and RMT could twiddle their thumbs.

Oh lawwwd, what happens when I start up AAR:FFXIV on PC, since I started on PS3? Am I going to have to change my password AGAIN? (about that primary password [not One Time Pass] thing)

[Riepah]

Reported a 'friend' bot for harassment (same company name so the same 'entity' is making more chars to grief people that have already /blisted them) and had a positive reply within the hour.

Both /tell bots I reported vanished after a day tops too.

Slightly off topic, but I wonder how many of the complainers (or people in general) actually go through the trouble of reporting them? Just a random thought.

By saying that the same entity is making more characters to spam people who already blacklisted them, you kind of caught the reason as to why those bots vanished after a day tops. Because they go by a different name now to continue spamming.

I for one have reported bots, several times, only to see them still botting the next day, the day after, and months later. And yes, I have provided all the necessary info, every time. And every time I got the same copy&paste message back.

[saber_alter]

*coughs*

Since this will continue to be a thing..

How people want SE to deal with RMT


How SE actually deals with RMT


How RMT respond to near genocide




What people think SE does as a result


What the members of the task force are most likely doing right now

this is the gist of it. SE bans in waves, not one at a time. rmt makes botters in waves , not one at a time, and more than SE can ban in short notice.

[OMEGA_HACK]

I'd like to make a note of a comment some people have said about "Just report them!" first and foremost, no don't "Just report them" especially when it comes to 'botting' I don't bot but I do spend hours at a time harvesting the same trees over and over for materials, like crystals or basic items that are needed frequently in crafts. Sure RMT tells and friend requests, report those immediately. But don't assume, even if people in /shout are saying "Oh yeah I bot all the time" because well the internet has this thing it likes to do called trolling. I know I get the occasional passerby who stops and watches me for a bit, I usually poke them and say something along the lines of "Like what you see?" (because my botanist is shirtless) sometimes I strike a pose, but its none of another players damn business when I am gathering and for how long I decide to gather particular nodes.

Just my 2 cents.