Why can't they auto-block RMT posts?

[Malzian]

Problems with automatic pattern recognition (Disclaimer - all domains are examples and not sites that I am aware of, any actual site that is included is purely coincidental):

www.buymygil.com
vvvvvv.buymygil.com
www.buymygil.(0/\/\
vvvvvv.buy/\/\¥gil.¢0/\/\

How do you plan to pattern match that? Those are just a few possible examples off of an iPad keyboard. Once you're in a PC and have access to the full ASCII set... yeah, you're not going to pattern match anything. Relying on players to report strings being used so you can block them? There's so many possible variations that no one is going to spend time reporting more than one and your average player is just going to ignore it.

The only way to stop RMT is to make it not profitable and that's a very difficult thing to do without becoming the RMT yourself.

[Kaedan]

since most rmts are china just ban all chinise mac address and no more rmts in game
proplem solved

That is a common misconception. While the sites that people SELL the gil to are Chinese sites (and thus the accounts that trade the gil bought), the actual bots are run most commonly from American and Canadian accounts, usually the west coast.

[Spratchet]

the thing is without harsh choice it doesn't matter ban 1 bot 50 more spawn this is never ending and it can't be stopped by taking 1 or even 50 down will never go any were.

taking down the country that has the bots spawning non stop might seem harsh but it needs 2 be done

No. Just no. It does not NEED to be done. Nor will it be. There are already well known American botters. Should we ban the entirety of the U.S. too? Don't be silly

[manamoppet]

The players would do the pattern recognition. After many RMT reports from different accounts, the only thing would have to do is find matching strings in, say, 100 of the reports, then start blocking anything that contains that string. Such as: "[Ultrafast Deleviryin 10 Mins]". If they change a few characters, players will report the new ones, and they get blocked again, along with the old ones.

That's true, but can take a while (10 hotbars with different macros on them pr. bot), and after a while uses more storage than necessary when new string variations are added. Think of how many combinations words can be altered in a Twitter message, and that's only 140 characters. With machine pattern recognition you don't need exact matching strings, just be close enough when calculating e.g. cross-entropy for loss equations, and the number of parameters to learn is mostly unchanging (the values of each parameter will change). I meant that initially one would need to manually label that many chat messages, but of course after the initial training one would augment the training by adding the players new RMT reports (players doing the pattern recognition).

[NessaWyvern]

Seems that my main activity is reporting RMT spam when in main cities, and I constantly see the SAME text in them all the time, like "Gil & Eukera level & Gear 390"

Seems to me that Sq Enix could write software to monitor player reports, and once ten reports have been submitted on ads that contain the same text, start blocking all that contain that text.
Yes, the spammers will just change the text by one character, but they'll have to identify what part is triggering the block to change it, and eventually, they may run out of ways to get their message across.

Considering how some RMT spam is garbled and saying stuff like |3uy G1L, I think maybe they do have some kind of auto-block or ban in place and do this to not get detected.

That being said, gil would only be sold if someone bought it. If nobody was buying gil, then the bots would eventually go away to a different game for money. Maybe we need big warnings when someone creates an account saying "Do not participate in RMT or get banned instantly!" (considering if buyers get banned after they buy gil, the gil sellers still make the money, you have to discourage people from buying in the first place), try to fight the problem on both sides.

[Dustytome]

At this point I'd just like the ability to add client side chat filters so I can block the messages myself without having to blacklist hundreds of gibberish names or wait on the devs to make a move.

[KageTokage]

I'm not sure why they can't just make the server auto-DC bots for moving too quickly using their hacks.

It's been suspected that they already have some kind of countermeasure in place in PvP zones and PotD as using movement skills like Shoulder Tackle and Onslaught can randomly DC you there, but not anywhere else.

The truth is that there are a lot of things they could be doing to lower if not stop the gil farming that's being done, but they seem convinced that repeatedly banning the bots when they instantly create replacements is actually working.

[Sandoria]

I report the spammers so much, Squeenix should cut me a paycheck for it.

[Canadane]

Remember when third party programs did a better job filtering out RMT in FFXI than SE could, to the effect that SE just simply allowed it to exist because it did their job better then they ever could?
Nothing's changed since XI. SE is just as bad at handling RMT.

[grinkdaboy]

im more concerned by the fact that they go after innocent people who provide a service like the guy who runs mogboard and not these RMT jerks