RMT Enforcement - Something Interesting is happeneing

[Kosmos992k]

Here's the fresh ban hammer report:
**snip**
Anyways, the point I'm looking at this week is.....HOW could they only find 8 bots the entire week among all the servers? Pretty sure I could stand in 1 place on any given server for 2 hours and come up with better results than that.

I agree, I wish they would be consistent with how they list the numbers, so we can track it more easily. If those numbers are correct it seems that they are still working more on removing the advertising than the farm bots.

The number that interested me was the seeming up-tick in temp bans which are usually associated with players caught in RMT transactions and/or cheating of some other kind. 394 is more than I can remember being listed that way for many, many months.

[St0rmchild]

Unrelated but interesting: I noticed bots are forming their own closed FC's to farm in ... and these do show up on weekly rankings!
Did report this to the STF, not sure if they are aware of this or not (since they do not reply to these issues) but might help to peruse these rankings to weed out bot FC's (they're pretty easy to spot too)

[Texa]

I haven't been able to get much done today because I've had a bad headache, so I've had the game tabbed out while I watch stuff to try and see how long it takes RMT bots stationed at the major city aetherytes to come back after you block and report them.

So about 7 hours in Gridania.

[Gumbercules]

Unrelated but interesting: I noticed bots are forming their own closed FC's to farm in ... and these do show up on weekly rankings!
Did report this to the STF, not sure if they are aware of this or not (since they do not reply to these issues) but might help to peruse these rankings to weed out bot FC's (they're pretty easy to spot too)

Yeah sometimes it gets harder for them to investigate them, specially when they start to "mimic" player behaviors more. Even after they are convinced they are RMT/Bots think they also have to track the gil made and sold as best as they can too.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

I've noticed "bot fc's" some time ago, just doing searches for sprouts to invite to the NN. If the name is questionable, I'll check their FC (if any). If no FC, and a questionable name, I won't invite to the NN. Regardless of the name, if the FC is an actual player run FC, I'll toss them a NN invite.

Yes, I'm one of the people who just invites to the NN without making contact first. It can make for some interesting conversations, but overall, more people than not are happy to get in.

[Mature]

Overall the tells say pm yell shouts are gone forever.

Thanks team fantastic idea of giving us the power to report this vermins

[St0rmchild]

Yeah sometimes it gets harder for them to investigate them, specially when they start to "mimic" player behaviors more. Even after they are convinced they are RMT/Bots think they also have to track the gil made and sold as best as they can too.

(Un)fortunately they're not very good at imitating 'real players' and a quick eyeball search/inspection will quickly confirm what's going on.
(Not going into details, don't want to give the botmasters any good ideas to get better at hiding!!)

[NDubbaYa]

Using the community to help was a great idea. Haven't seen a bot tell for a while.

When I get private messages they're from ACTUAL people now lol

[BunnyChain]

What I'd like to know if the reported numbers are correct since there have been now two severe discrepancies.

I've been writing down the reports into an excel sheet since the first one and getting neat graphs like these...

The graph data contains my "corrected" entries.

the numbers did never deviate from the usual pattern of "RMT/illicit activity" being the highest, "RMT advertising" being far lower than the first and "temporarily suspended" being a few and hundred at most.

Pattern: RMT/illicit activity >> RMT advertising >> temporarily suspended

The two reports in question are the 1. Dec and the 22. Dec.

RMT advertising of November follow the usual pattern:
946 2368 1005 129 25682 453 1,029
RMT/illicit activity of November do the same:
19,980 23,299 28,080 9,701 293 36046 24,685

The 1. Dec numbers in bold as they were reported don't quite add up. Now it could be that they ran out of bots to ban but if you take a look at the next report from the 8. Dec you will notice that the report form has been changed to 1st "RMT/illicit activity" and then "RMT advertising" which was reported the other way around since the beginning, iirc.

If you flip them they fit the usual pattern as described above and are also much closer to the following 8. Dec numbers.

The format was then changed again for the 15. Dec but those numbers fit the usual pattern. .-.

Here comes the 22. Dec report and the format has been changed again! The numbers deviate heavily from the usual pattern (again). If you check the last format from 15. Dec (blue, green, orange) and add the numbers in the same order (17594, 8, 394) they will now match up perfectly with the usual pattern.

[Khalithar]

It's been a great change and I can actually use the Tell system now. There's a reason why players have been asking for this instant report feature for so long, it's damn effective. Now we just need that option extended to anyone's name we right click so we can start reporting the party invite bots that have suddenly popped up.