If I were to SPAM these forums...

[Welsper59]

Which they are doing poorly about. Once I got reported in an instance due to my raise macro. It was a joke, written like an RMT tell, and yet someone seriously thought I was selling my raises for x amount of money. It took them 5 minutes to respond, pull me away, and send me to goal. The reason I know it was within 5 minutes is because the GM forgot to filter out the name of the person I had raised. I was then accused of selling in game "clears" (i.e; my raises mid battle lol) for real life money, and I had no way of fighting it no matter how much I tried to explain it to them.

Yet when I was sitting in Limsa, there was a particular boy (this was a couple days later) that I decided to report. It was a spamming bot sitting in a corner, jumping at time intervals, with that RMT type name. I had reported this bot and I'm sure I wasn't the only one. It was there for days after, still spamming, and this was on the weekday. So I agree with OP, I feel like not enough is being done. Thankfully I transferred to balmung and now I'm free of RMT spams and tells, but when I was on Hyperion, I lived in /busy.

What's actually intriguing about that is how RMT is looked at by the GMs and SE themselves. What likely happened is that they found "reason" to get to you, as you were probably an easily marked legit player but posing as an RMT (even in jest), meaning you were within their power to be taught a (wrongful) lesson. In other words, it was just a GM having a bad day. Normal RMT notices are seemingly ignored or sent to the STF, which are also ignored, at least by individual character... at most, they simply take the name then just monitor the account itself.

SE is absolutely terrible when it comes to QoL and quality customer service. This can be referred to with both in-game and out of it, as many many people can attest to, and across many aspects of their games/company. Their horrendous track record goes back, at least, to the beginnings of the popularity of the internet, so well over a decade ago. Very little has unfortunately improved since then lol. Mind you, this isn't a dig at our CMs here, as they're pretty awesome, but a few good ones here and there don't outweigh years of the bad that continue to exist.

[Melondra]

One of the many thing I loved about FFXI they did not put up with RMT period. They were literly banning 15-20,000 players a week and had practically eliminated RMT from that game. They had a great RMT Taskforce back in those days and had Zero tolerance for RMT sales.

[Teryaani]

A blacklist by, say, 30 people in 10 minutes probably means you did something wrong. And anyway, it's not a guillotine, it would just lock the account for review, and could easily be undone. If it turns out, after review, that the mass reporting was just users working in concert to be jerks to one player, then they themselves could face the banning that RMT would get after a conclusive investigation.

Hold on though, I can blacklist a person for any reason. It just means that I don't want to see things that person types. You'd be changing what the blacklist is intended to be used for. Your next point is where I want to see things go.

By the way, such investigations would be greatly facilitated by the automatic report/blacklist button that has been suggested by countless users. It would be hard to abuse an RMT report button that copypastes text automatically. Frankly, I don't think most people who just want to be mean to another player would even bother using such a system for such an inevitably failed endeavor.

Yeah, the community has been asking for a right click report feature pretty much since the game started. If the report included all the relevant metadata (location, player, text of reported /tell or /shout) it should make enforcement easier.

To that point, is there any evidence of people using the existing system to do that to people?

Trolls find ways to troll. If you give someone that power, someone will use it badly.

[Pence]

One of the many thing I loved about FFXI they did not put up with RMT period. They were literly banning 15-20,000 players a week and had practically eliminated RMT from that game. They had a great RMT Taskforce back in those days and had Zero tolerance for RMT sales.

15-20,000 players a week? 100,000 players banned in 5 weeks. Someone tell him he's dreamin'! XI also has a Special Task Force, and even had worse periods than XIV (I once brought an item for 4m at Christmas, and sold for 140m a few weeks later. You want the XI experience (RMT wise)? Play on a JP datacenter server. You'll never see one.

[Canadane]

It's generally not the same character that's giving you the RMT messages each time. So comparing it to you annoying the rest of us all on your lonesome isn't a very valid juxtaposition. Yeah it's the same message, and they usually have a gibberish name, but if you look, it's not the same garbled mess of letters! It's also their way of getting around your blacklists.

Crafty wenches, them...

[Pence]

It's generally not the same character that's giving you the RMT messages each time. So comparing it to you annoying the rest of us all on your lonesome isn't a very valid juxtaposition. Yeah it's the same message, and they usually have a gibberish name, but if you look, it's not the same garbled mess of letters! It's also their way of getting around your blacklists.

Crafty wenches, them...

This is true. I feel being able to filter who we receive /t from would help (Friends only etc). But at the same time i'm 100% positive they broke something with /t and covered it with "/t in dungeons would be distracting, but /l and /fc is totally fine". We all know the game had a strict deadline, and shortcuts were taken. I think the chat system was one of said shortcuts.

[Canadane]

This is true. I feel being able to filter who we receive /t from would help (Friends only etc). But at the same time i'm 100% positive they broke something with /t and covered it with "/t in dungeons would be distracting, but /l and /fc is totally fine". We all know the game had a strict deadline, and shortcuts were taken. I think the chat system was one of said shortcuts.

I would appreciate an incoming tell filter. Basically we have that enforced on mogmail and I remember RMT sending friend requests in order to send you mogmail adverts. Those were dark times, though thankfully they have stopped. My one fear is that the friend requesting RMT will come back to haunt us if we get filters.

[MugenMugetsu]

I've always thought that a team of 8 people at SE could quell the amount of RMT spam tremendously by having these 8 individuals dedicate at least one 8 hour work shift a week, one hour per server, logged in as regular player characters. The RMT would not know that these are SE employees and would send their RMT spam per usual. This would give these individuals the ability to immediately ban the RMT violating the ToS by simply offering to sell gil, and not only would these individuals be able to ban the RMT who are sending the /tells but they would also see any /say or /shout RMT advertisements.

Why only 8 people? To my knowledge there are 64 different worlds so 8 people could observe 8 servers each, for one hour per server, and they will have been able to observe activity on each world within an 8 hour workday. Sounds simple enough, if you ask me.

My ultimate suggestion/plea is for Yoshi P himself to log on and attempt to enjoy playing the game on worlds heavily affected by RMT spam. By the time he's ready to pull his hair out due to the annoyance of all the RMT spam maybe then we could see some real action taken against RMT.

However, in my honest opinion, we will most likely never see any more action taken against RMT other than what SE and their Special Task Force are currently doing. As has been stated before, the STF are banning RMT by the thousands rather frequently, so I feel that they will continue to stick with their current methods rather than taking any further, or new, actions to combat RMT.

Edit:

I started a thread about the RMT plague on 3.25.2015 and this is the image I posted:



That was about 10 minutes of hanging out in Limsa.


A year later and the RMT spam hasn't gotten any better.....if that doesn't speak volumes then I don't know what else there is to say.

[Jijifli]

I've always thought that a team of 8 people at SE could quell the amount of RMT spam tremendously by having these 8 individuals dedicate at least one 8 hour work shift a week, one hour per server, logged in as regular player characters. The RMT would not know that these are SE employees and would send their RMT spam per usual. This would give these individuals the ability to immediately ban the RMT violating the ToS by simply offering to sell gil, and not only would these individuals be able to ban the RMT who are sending the /tells but they would also see any /say or /shout RMT advertisements.

Why only 8 people? To my knowledge there are 64 different worlds so 8 people could observe 8 servers each, for one hour per server, and they will have been able to observe activity on each world within an 8 hour workday. Sounds simple enough, if you ask me.

My ultimate suggestion/plea is for Yoshi P himself to log on and attempt to enjoy playing the game on worlds heavily affected by RMT spam. By the time he's ready to pull his hair out due to the annoyance of all the RMT spam maybe then we could see some real action taken against RMT.

However, in my honest opinion, we will most likely never see any more action taken against RMT other than what SE and their Special Task Force are currently doing. As has been stated before, the STF are banning RMT by the thousands rather frequently, so I feel that they will continue to stick with their current methods rather than taking any further, or new, actions to combat RMT.

Edit:

I started a thread about the RMT plague on 3.25.2015 and this is the image I posted:



That was about 10 minutes of hanging out in Limsa.


A year later and the RMT spam hasn't gotten any better.....if that doesn't speak volumes then I don't know what else there is to say.

Problem is that then the RMT people notice a pattern and them work around it, forcing SE to change the pattern. When they do, the RMT can just change it again. It's much easier for the RMT to do it since they don't need to hire people, just use a program.

[GordonLiu]

Problem is that then the RMT people notice a pattern and them work around it, forcing SE to change the pattern. When they do, the RMT can just change it again. It's much easier for the RMT to do it since they don't need to hire people, just use a program.

That's what I don't understand though, couldn't SE use a program? Fishing for RMT should be a simple as leaving a dummy PC in each zone, and waiting for all the RMT SPAM to come in. Anyone going through such a list of /tells on a daily basis would really be plucking out the random /tell that is not an RMT. And how much of an investigation needs to take place when there is such clear and indisputable evidence. I really don't see the need for all the filters and such. There is a lot I don't understand about this whole dynamic haha.