SE, you can do better than this (Regarding Spam)

[MaeIsMean]

Look, I get it. Combating spammers is a full-time job. But it feels like you, Square, aren't even putting in an hour a week at fixing this glaring problem. Here's an example of my morning on Excalibur.in your game.



I logged in at 10:29am local time.
First spam message at 10:44am.
Second also at 10:44am. Same player, same message.
Third at 10:45am. Different player and web site.
Spam messages received by spammer #1: 11:09, 11:29, 11:48, 12:07
Spam message from same web site as #2, but different player at 11:09.
Spam message from same web site as #2, but yet another different player at 11:19.
Spam message from a third web site at 11:30.

I turned busy on at 12:07 after the last message. That means in an hour and a half-ish, I received 10 spam messages from 3 separate web sites and 5 different players. Obviously, spammer #1 should never have made it as far as he has, but we, as a player group, have stopped reporting spammers because it seems you don't even care.

Let's talk about spammer #1. Not only did he hit me 6 times with essentially the same message, but he lasted longer than the other spammers. The message he sent was exactly 123 characters each time. All but 3 of those characters were IDENTICAL. That means that 97.5% of his message was identical, and sent probably over a hundred times in the 90ish minutes that I received 6 messages. HOW IS THIS NOT CAUGHT BY AN AUTOMATIC FILTER?! Is all it takes is 3 unique characters at the end of a message to skip your filter? If that's all it takes, I'm sorry, but your filter is absolute garbage. That's the filter of the 80's when spammers were stupid. There's absolutely no way that a message that is 97.5% identical repeated hundreds of times over a 90 minute spam should not be caught automatically. It should not take reports from players. This is BASIC spammer control. And it's badly lacking.

You need to make it harder for spammers to get around your automatic spam catchers. You need to make it harder than 97.5% identical. You need to make it so they have to retype each message, so that it becomes WORK to avoid detection. Eventually, the work gets to be too much and the smaller websites will fade away. They stick around now, because it's easy, because they have stolen credit cards to register accounts from stupid players who actually buy from them, it costs them nothing, and it's easy to avoid detection, and players are so apathetic to it at this point, they don't even bother to report anymore.

I should not have to endure a spam message every 10 minutes (and really, that's a slow day) from THE SAME PLAYER with THE SAME MESSAGE for 90 minutes. Come ON, SE, you are better than this. You have got to step up your game, to act like you actually care about hands-down the most detrimental part of gameplay

[Welsper59]

They can... but they won't. Meaningful QoL improvements of any kind (especially RMT related) are so rare that you'd likely manage to never fail a minimum of 100 overmelds in a row before you see them. They basically want to ignore the bad, but simpler fixes, so that they can focus on developing new content. This isn't unusual to MMOs, as improvements to the existing functions/features don't happen much until they can no longer provide content (i.e. the game is dying).

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

So, SE has changed their chat filters at least half a dozen times. It took the RMT bots all of 1 day to bypass them each time.

[MaeIsMean]

So, SE has changed their chat filters at least half a dozen times. It took the RMT bots all of 1 day to bypass them each time.

Other games manage to create a spam-catching algorithm that can recognize repeated messages even if there are changed characters at the end, which apply a filter or mute said player after a certain number of repetitions. I mean.... I'm no programmer, but there has to be a way to recognize messages that are 97.5% identical being sent hundreds of times and say "Hey, that guy probably isn't just being chatty" and slap a filter on it. Even if that guy is being chatty, maybe he'll learn to not spam the same message hundreds of times to hundreds of players.

[Noshpan]

I stopped reporting NOT because I don't care, I stopped reporting because it takes too goddamned long to do it.

[cammi]

When free to play games block RMT better to the point I never saw them it makes me wonder what I'm paying for here. Tera is one of those games where I NEVER saw them. There was a time they got in.. but since they fixed it I haven't seen one. And Tera is thought to be a failure by most mmo players. IF Tera can do it.. SE has NO excuse what so ever.

[Millen1]

The spam needs to stop. I am tried of having to go on busy when it gets bad in an online game where we would like to chat with other players, this makes me feel more shut off from the game. I get that their are cultural differences Between JP players and NA players. I have made characters on JP servers to see what it is like over there. Basically, no rmt. My only guess is that NA severs buy a lot of gil and spammers have a group to serve. There is no really punishment I have ever seen. In my time on my server in many different voice chats, I have heard players talk about best places to buy gil, how much it costs, how fast it is. I never said anything for 2 reasons, 1) SE should be taking care of this, not me, 2) It is a he said/ she said report to SE when heard on voice chat. Even if SE fixes their filters, everyone knows where to go to buy gil anyway or even where the best addons are for PC players. I play on a PS4 and craft a fair about, it is not hard to figure out which players are cheating when spending any real amount of time going though the MB every day.

Slightly off the spam topic, addons, as a PS4 player I get tried of hearing about my dps or over heals from PC players with a parser in roulettes. Honestly I would like to know what my dps or my over heals are but No love for PS4. That does make an imbalance in the game along with other addons for PC. More often I find myself sprinting to keep up with the tank or dps. How is it that they move faster than I can when I am sprinting and they aren't? Every time I look, it is always a PC player moving far faster than myself or other PS4 players in the group. Never seen another PS4 player move faster than I can. There are a bunch of other PC hacks in this game I am getting tried of, such as letting your main character bot fates for days at a time until they come back to play. Seen more than a few do it to finish the Yo Kai event with out effort.

The really sore spot is I have been playing and enjoying the game since PS3 beta was open in June 2013. I have played most every day. Things I have seen, the cheating feels more aggressive between ARR 2.0 and HW 3.0. The grind does feel harder in 3.0 content and to that end, the amount of gil needed, the way in which we gather mats, craft and run dungeons, end game has all had a new or easier to spot cheat in it. SE, you need to fix this and clean up cheating. Start light, small penalties for cheating so players know you will do it, after that step it up to more aggressive punishments or bans for cheating. While it may be only a very few number of players that are cheating, it is ruining the game for the rest of us. As a loyal customer I have grown tried in the last few months of the things I see that are NEVER FIXED. I know you have a business to run and to ban or lose players is bad business, to continue letting players cheat is also bad business. I am committed to staying with the game because I love Final Fantasy series and the games that have come from it. I have enjoyed this game, though even I will draw a line, I don't have plans to get 4.0 if cheating in FFXIV is the expected norm and continues. I am just one player, though I can tell you when I hit end game with my friends in HW 3.0, a decent number of my friends from ARR 2.0 beta quit the game by mid august. Almost all are gone now.

Ok, I got a little off topic, though I do feel one thing leads to another in this game.

[Dmc]

LOL you folks are funny! There are steps you can take like customize your chat filters so you can't see tell's or hear them, they made it 100 times easier to b-list folks as well. And if you really wanted, run up to a RMT and commence trade with them a few times! Its funny to see folks cry about spam tells when they are easily avoidable vs crying about rage quiting in duties because there was a screw up, lmfao 1st world problems i guess!

[Slappah]

LOL you folks are funny! There are steps you can take like customize your chat filters so you can't see tell's or hear them, they made it 100 times easier to b-list folks as well. And if you really wanted, run up to a RMT and commence trade with them a few times! Its funny to see folks cry about spam tells when they are easily avoidable vs crying about rage quiting in duties because there was a screw up, lmfao 1st world problems i guess!

The problem with removing tells from your chat tabs is that you're also removing your ability to get tells from your friends and / or random players who might need or want something you could help with

[Dmc]

The problem with removing tells from your chat tabs is that you're also removing your ability to get tells from your friends and / or random players who might need or want something you could help with

Yes true BUT every now and then take a minute to scroll threw the tells, its a bit of a pain but so much better than hearing the ping 1000 times. There are ways to handle/deal with it other than relying on others to fix it for you is what i am getting at.