Unceasing, relentless daily harassment [RMT]

[Tidbits]

Have sent multiple petitions on the issue, *still* not resolved... (in fact dare say is worse!) all I get are hollow boilerplate copy/paste replies from staff.

Game nearly unplayable being constantly harassed like this...

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Everyday, from the moment I log on, I average 2 tells a minute, a minute, and oh so long! not one 'lil niblet of a line, but pages of Engrish and emotes!

Have chat windows set up best I can so the constant automated harassment only clutters a small part of an MMO; trying to talk to other people...

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• Turning off tells is silly, then ppl ask why don't talk to them...
• Blacklist (like GM's say!) was full in less than a week!
• Beating dead horse prolly
• Just go to one of the sites, buy all my gil/items, wont need to talk to other ppl! yeah, that's the ticket!...

This is dumb folks, this is harassment, we should not accept this.

[Igziabeher]

agreed. if a real person did even half the spamming these bots do, they'd be banned, probably permanently. not sure how these companies are making hundreds of accounts that don't get banned every single day...i smell fish.

[Gilraen]

If you mean the RMT spam... yes, it is excessive but Square is doing the best they can given how fast these RMT keep making new account after new account. You said it yourself, you filled your blacklist in less than a week yet still it's an incessant issue. The problem isn't that Square isn't doing anything, they have a team dedicated to just RMT, the problem is that the RMT even has a customer base to make all the efforts they're going to worth it. It's these gil buyers that are to blame. My solution to the RMT spam was to devote my fourth chat tab to only /tell. I can still see if I've received any /tells but it's not clogging any of my more active tabs.

[kingatlas]

Some people are saying SE is making so much off their subscriptions they don't do anything.
That is only reasonable if they have a large amount of subscriptions.
Ill Do two examples to show what I mean

EX1) <100 being the amount of subscriptions> <15 being the subscription fee> <the assumed price is 2 dollars per million gil>

100*15=1500 (1500 is the amount they would pay per month)
1500/2 *1 000 000= 750 million

To cover the cost of the 100 subscriptions they would have to sell 750 million in gil per month per server.
1500 a month is a lot, and if they are paying that then I can see how SE might be looking at the bottom line when it comes to this.
But that means that at least 750 million Gil is being sold in each server with 100 subscriptions, which isn't impossible but also it has to be higher to cover other overhead and make a profit.


EX2) <10 being the amount of subscriptions> <15 being the subscription fee> <the assumed price is 2 dollars per million gil>

10*15=150 (150 is the amount they would pay per month)
150/2 *1 000 000= 75 000 000

In this model they are only paying 150 per month per server. And is also assuming that they are using each subscription, and making as many characters as possible with each.
At 150 dollars per server, SE can easily write this off and dismiss the small loss for the support of the community.
With this model you can see how profitable they could actually be. If you only have to sell 150 dollars worth of gold per month, then once overhead is covered. they could be clearing quite a bit.
The second model is also a lot scarier, because when you think of the potential profits could be in the tens to hundreds of thousands per month.

*At that rate not only could they afford to keep getting more subscriptions, but they could also theoretically Pay SE a fee to remain in the game. Even say tell them which bots to kick.
If that were brought before SE corp and shown to be a potential new revenue source, idk what they would do. But that is theoretical.

[Igziabeher]

very insightful, kingatlas. i had vague thoughts along same line but was too lazy to do the math :P the only thing is, if these characters are actually banned, or handled in whatever way, i dont think the other characters on the account would be usable, so they are (theoretically) limited to one character per account. just seems like there would be a way to track which characters are being blacklisted, then SE could gather data from that and actually ban accounts. If they are assertive enough with it, these gil-sellers won't be making enough money to cover the cost of having to buy a new account every few hours. There's also IP bans...i know there are ways around this too, but its at least some form of effort. Also, what method are these gil-sellers paying SE through? there's got to be some way of discerning which accounts are potentially gonna be used for RMT, and which are genuine people?

its all just pointless theorycraft either way. fact of matter is, i think people would be fully supportive of SE taking an extra month to release next patch if they spent that month just doing something about RMT instead...really, can add all the content you want but when 90% of population is being harassed, its kind of moot ><

[Tidbits]

If you mean the RMT spam... yes, it is excessive but Square is doing the best they can given how fast these RMT keep making new account after new account. You said it yourself, you filled your blacklist in less than a week yet still it's an incessant issue. The problem isn't that Square isn't doing anything, they have a team dedicated to just RMT, the problem is that the RMT even has a customer base to make all the efforts they're going to worth it.

Then get a new team, simple; The current ones are woefully unfit for the job by any measure of performance, they have utterly failed daily to even stem tide.

We should not accept this as "Oh just how it is"

[kingatlas]

This is just another theory of how they work, but I have an inkling it may be close to the truth.

They take one character Account For in town shouts and advertisement
(this would be their burner character, this could also be used as the character name gatherer have him doing shouts while searching player index)

They have another account for rmt tells
(this account you would make as many characters as possible, Log in shoot off a bunch of tells, log out before you are banned, switch characters repeat)

Then you have your delivery account
(Safest account only goes out to deliver gold, the only way to catch these one would be to set up a sting I guess)

Although, to be completely honest I am not sure if I am totally against Gil sellers, Obviously RMT spam tells I am against. For some people who just want to enjoy their game, buying gil instead of grinding seems a lot better. I am sure the people buying Gil aren't evil or anything. Most are probably people who work a lot but still want to have cool stuff in game.
I don't think Gil sellers are the problem, more like a symptom.
The whole design is flawed on the premise of having to have gil to get stuff.
Feeds into peoples worst parts, fear, jealousy, greed, impatience, envy, hate, sadness.

I hope in future MMO's they find a more elegant solution.

[Igziabeher]

if paid 15 bucks a month to join a gym, but there were people there who catcalled you, shoved advertisements in your face, and generally made your experience unpleasant, wouldn't you expect management to do something about the people harassing you in THEIR establishment? mean they're the ones who let them in...


and no, kingatlas, gil isn't really required for any gear in this game, its all pretty much handed to you or earned via untradeable raid tokens. sure some people dont have much time to play, but if you don't have much time to practice guitar, you aren't going to be on Jimi Hendrix's level.

[AnaviAnael]

Unfortunately, the best you can do right now is to keep busy status up. I know you mentioned, "turning off tells is silly, then people ask why I don't talk to them," but you can always form a party with them. Is it inconvenient? Absolutely, but this is what we have to work with until SE does something.

[Caitlinzulu]

if paid 15 bucks a month to join a gym, but there were people there who catcalled you, shoved advertisements in your face, and generally made your experience unpleasant, wouldn't you expect management to do something about the people harassing you in THEIR establishment? mean they're the ones who let them in...

The comparison is somewhat flawed.
Shure the management could show the advertisers the door and they would be right in doing so; But to make an accurate comparison you'd have to imagine the advertiser to have an infinite number of "brothers" who would come in as soon as the old one is shown the door to continue the advertisement.

And replacing the team that handles the bans wont help. RMT have to advertise to be able to catch them so you will always get at least one tell/shout from them anyway before they can even be targeted for a ban.

What would make it easier to deal with is a simple right click report/temp blacklist option. That way rmt tell bots could be targeted a lot quicker.
Second it could help to have user configurable tell filters, filtering server side isnt quick enough unless SE can make alterations to the filter without general updates.
What would certainly help is an option to limit tells to only people on your friend list.