Customer service fail

[Luxea]

Find a way to curve the lazy people in NA/Eu who fund them. The reason JP servers see virtually no bot activity is because that player base won't purchase from them.

There really are very few people who rat out their gil-buying friends. xD At least on the EU servers...

[raelgun]

There really are very few people who rat out their gil-buying friends. xD At least on the EU servers...

Not what the point of that post, no one is asking to rat out other people, we are saying, the best method is to out compete the RMT sellers, dwindle the market for the RMT sellers to the point where they can't make a profit anymore and will leave the game as a whole, it is better to cure the root of the problem here and its the only fix right now.

[Luxea]

Dude...it's a comment. Sheesh...

[Moonleg]

Not what the point of that post, no one is asking to rat out other people, we are saying, the best method is to out compete the RMT sellers, dwindle the market for the RMT sellers to the point where they can't make a profit anymore and will leave the game as a whole, it is better to cure the root of the problem here and its the only fix right now.

I recommend you start farming tons of gil right now and give it away to anyone in need of gil ever.

That is the only way you'll ever out-compete the gil sellers.

[Ovenmitts]

Blade and Soul is F2P though. That's always a breeding ground of RMT. SE not doing anything about this on a paid sub is only due to the part RMT has to buy a copy of the game each time they get banned. Banned account = new game purchased = more money for SE.

Can't say I've seen that much rmt in pso2. Bots sure but they usually keep to themselves in private rooms. My blacklist is pretty empty.

[Lemuria]

Okay, so just to be clear you decided to fight spam, by spamming the support desk? Look, I get it. It's annoying as all heck to be inundated by tells from random RMT asking you to 'plz buys gils', but reporting each and every one is counter-intuitive. A number of these will be linked to the same accounts, or will at least give SE a base on which to investigate further RMT you have received because they can read your tells.

So, report once and let their investigations team do their job of investigating. Spamming is not doing anyone any favours, least of all you.

[Lusavari]

For the longest time SE actually was taking RMT sites to court, especially back in FFXI. It's a problem that's hard to deal with. The advertisers are a low cost thing for RMT. They make a new character that used to never leave the opening instance, now I think they have to at least get them to a certain level. You're better off blacklisting or going on busy status because at any given moment there's at least 10 RMT sites advertising, each one with several bots. In the time it takes to ban one, they can make 10 more bots to take its place. It's a hydra. Instead of banning them as they pop up, it's more effective to pursue other methods. The problem is, you just can't eliminate the issue. There's a 1 tell per second limit in place to slow them down. There's the tell level limit. They have a chat filter set to catch spam, which is why RMT advertisements constantly get more convoluted. It's a problem more complex that it seems on the surface level.

[Welsper59]

For the longest time SE actually was taking RMT sites to court, especially back in FFXI. It's a problem that's hard to deal with. The advertisers are a low cost thing for RMT. They make a new character that used to never leave the opening instance, now I think they have to at least get them to a certain level. You're better off blacklisting or going on busy status because at any given moment there's at least 10 RMT sites advertising, each one with several bots. In the time it takes to ban one, they can make 10 more bots to take its place. It's a hydra. Instead of banning them as they pop up, it's more effective to pursue other methods. The problem is, you just can't eliminate the issue. There's a 1 tell per second limit in place to slow them down. There's the tell level limit. They have a chat filter set to catch spam, which is why RMT advertisements constantly get more convoluted. It's a problem more complex that it seems on the surface level.

That's why a lot of people aren't looking to "stop" them, but rather to give us (that means them too) a way to filter manually filter out things. Even if it meant to block all incoming /tell from non-Friend's List/LS/FC type of filtering, it'd be something and it'd be optional. Allowing us a far larger Blacklist would also help, and is also a very simple QoL change... while we're at it, maybe add in an option to delete all Blacklist names at once if we want to. Again, SIMPLE fixes that give us the power to mitigate these unstoppable annoyances if we choose to do so. Hell, those suggestions are likely easier to do than having a right-click report system lol. Yet here we are, without them.

Only by not supporting RMT and not buying gil will this problem ever go away permanently. Sadly, all too many people want a quick-fix of cash because they're too lazy to earn it.

RMT activity has become an established (corrupt) business. Even with little to no customers from said game, they'll still be here because it doesn't cost them a thing to be on these games (stolen credit cards, hacked accounts, etc). Their presence is no different than a "legit" player misbehaving or cheating. Similarly, the people who buy from them is not something you can just stop. Telling people to stop doing something bad, is like telling murderers, rapists, thieves, etc to stop doing what they do. Wanting devs to find a way to prevent those people from doing it, is like telling the cops to prevent the person from committing said crime. We know that things would be better without the bad, but it's here and it's not going anywhere.

[Lemuria]

they'll still be here because it doesn't cost them a thing to be on these games (stolen credit cards, hacked accounts, etc).

This is a stereotypical and gross misrepresentation of the industry. If they had so many stolen credit cards they wouldn't even need to sell gil. There may be some RMT companies hijacking accounts and stealing bank credentials, but if we assume that as the norm then there is literally no reason for their RMT presence in the first place, and hijacking accounts is contrary to their purpose of selling gil to those players. It makes no sense as a business model, so for arguments sake let's assume that's the exception rather than the rule.

Telling people to stop doing something bad, is like telling murderers, rapists, thieves, etc to stop doing what they do. Wanting devs to find a way to prevent those people from doing it, is like telling the cops to prevent the person from committing said crime. We know that things would be better without the bad, but it's here and it's not going anywhere.

Firstly, it seems kind of harsh to compare gil-buyers to thieves, murderers and rapists. It's against the ToS, but that's about it. Secondly, these businesses can't exist without a web presence, and certainly not without someone being able to log onto said site and buy their wares.

Taking down an RMT account is like cutting the head of a hydra; two more will appear in its place. Take down the body of the beast, and the whole thing comes tumbling down. Of course, no one said the beast would be easy to kill otherwise it would have been done already.

[Welsper59]

This is a stereotypical and gross misrepresentation of the industry. If they had so many stolen credit cards they wouldn't even need to sell gil. There may be some RMT companies hijacking accounts and stealing bank credentials, but if we assume that as the norm then there is literally no reason for their RMT presence in the first place, and hijacking accounts is contrary to their purpose of selling gil to those players. It makes no sense as a business model, so for arguments sake let's assume that's the exception rather than the rule.

Petty theft to the degree of applying someones credit card to a video game is hardly cause for action anywhere in the world. Plus, in no way am I implying that is solely the primary means of them being around.

Think about it for a second though. Of the amount of accounts banned in the last report, ignoring the advertising accounts since those are generally going to be trial accounts, of the 4550 accounts banned for activity, let's be conservative with your argument and assume 1000 of those are paid accounts by RMT so they can reach higher levels (as they clearly do). No stolen accounts or anything bad attached to it. That's $13,000 to $15,000 from one month of those 1000 accounts. And this happens every month. Which makes more sense in the grand scheme of things? That they're paying that much money out of their pocket? Or that they're going about things in a shady way?

Firstly, it seems kind of harsh to compare gil-buyers to thieves, murderers and rapists. It's against the ToS, but that's about it. Secondly, these businesses can't exist without a web presence, and certainly not without someone being able to log onto said site and buy their wares.

Taking down an RMT account is like cutting the head of a hydra; two more will appear in its place. Take down the body of the beast, and the whole thing comes tumbling down. Of course, no one said the beast would be easy to kill otherwise it would have been done already.

The point is behavior. You're not going to stop someones behavior and choice to act on it. I could have very much chosen something less harsh, such as some random player botting. Either way, it doesn't matter. People are going to be bad no matter what you or anyone tries to do.