Motivate Square Enix to deal with bots & spammers ?

[DeceptionsWrath]

While i disagree with some people that the spamming has decreased, i do agree with a few others that the buyers are the real problem. Ban the buyers and the RMT threat will deminish. If there was no market for people to sell gil then they certainly wouldn't be selling it. Buyers should be a main focus this time around. When i played FFXI like 4 years ago, the RMT issue was still bad. And i knew of alot of buyers that never once got even a temp. ban for such an act. Most will not want to start over if they're banned, and if they do, they'll be less likely to buy gil again in the future.

[Twoswords]

Seriously they have the STF (Special Task Force) on the job. They've already banned some people. You are asking for them to do something that they are already doing.

Then either they aren't doing a good job or their resources are severly limited, Ninja ***** along with several others on my server have been spamming Ul'dah for the past week without any action being taken.

I'm very close to simply removing the channel from my chat bar, which I really don't want to do, but having to constantly add the same people on two different characters is annoying, not sure why the blacklist isn't account wide.

[Azurein]

What...? Motivate a company to do it's job? I don't even... what???

[Rizon]

In the last week to ten days the number of /shout have decreased dramatically when compared to this time 1 month ago. In this area SE has had an effect. As a result the RMTs have moved to /tells that contact players in a certain area with automatic tells. Enforcement here is more problematic for SE as they want to try to maintain the privacy of /tells while still combating RMTs. It may take them a while to come up with an acceptable compromise.

As for Bots and teleport hacks it will be a constant war of point/counterpoint as SE will find ways to combat the current programs in use and the hackers develop new programs. That neverending cycle plagues most MMOs.

The only true way to combat RMTs is to eliminate the demand for their product. SE must aggressively pursue the people who utilize these services and come down hard on them with temp/perma bans and they must publicize these actions in the loudest voice available. Only then will you see a noticeable decrease in RMT activity.

[Phogg]

In the last week to ten days the number of /shout have decreased dramatically when compared to this time 1 month ago. In this area SE has had an effect.

Not on Cactuar, I set a personal record of 19 RMT blist additions just yesterday alone and only three of them were from /tells, the rest shout spam. I just posted a picture of what it looks like when I log in and exit the Inn every single day here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...72#post1332572

Whatever SE is supposedly doing is not working in the slightest. I also reported a teleport hack last night and have yet to get a response from the help desk. They are clearly understaffed on the GM side at an embarrassing level.

Also "Special Task Force" has been known for years as STFU to XI players so don't hang your hopes on that rack.

[Steeled]

There i$ only one thing that motivate$ $quare Enix to do anything.

It'$ the $ame with all companie$.

Like it or not, they earn a lot of money from RMT.

I'm something of a programmer. I realize that "regular expressions" (programming tool) are used to parse out the spam and that's why the RMT messages went from clear as day to "myg11u r1.com, replace the first 1 with i and the second, third 1s with l" (made up example).

However, it would not be very difficult at all to limit how much characters under certain level points can shout, like not being able to shout more than once per minute below level 10, twice per minute below level 30, and 3 times per minute below level 50.

They could even, so as not to harm the leading single shout made, add a command for /shoutraise that didn't go against this count and shout for "{Raise} {Can I have it?} <pos>"

The clear and rampant use of third-party tools in XI for years and the limited action they took against them was proof enough.

As matter of fact, the only major ban that occurred in XI's history was Salvage bans with basically amounted to players were duping which caused them to complete a content arc much faster than the grueling pace that was intended.

[Ticks]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kx5H9ziXiI

Probably wont work for a sub based game like ARR but we can see the frustration and almost futile efforts to ban RMT's throughout the whole gaming industry

[normalforce]

Simplest stopgap measure: limit players to 1 shout or yell a minute until they come up with something better.

Tells will increase as a result, unfortunately.

[Geldt]

I agree that the problem is still out of control. It is getting slightly better.

To those who don't know already, in FFXI the bots were handled relatively well (a 90% decrease). However, relatively nothing was ever done about people buying gil. I couldn't count the number of people who openly admitted to buying tens of millions of gil and I don't think (in 5 years of playing FFXI) I ever once heard of a single one of those buyers suffering the slightest consequence for their part in the cycle.

Square Enix always said that they could track the gil from the farmers to the distributors, but they seemed to stop there. Small wonder that they didn't want to ban paying subscribers who bought the gil. But for a STF who could track and ban so "well" they sure left a glaring flaw open in their system, the BUYERS. Same was true for FFXIV 1.0 and anecdotal experiences I read/heard say not much has changed in this regard.

[Xceriis]

Is there anything we can do to motivate Square Enix to deal with spammers and bots ?

Not a curative approach, but a preventive method. Actually blocking spam and detecting teleport hacks.

Right now they're telling us everything will be ok, but that isn't happening.

So is there anything we can do as customer that enjoys FFXIV but is tired of the rampant spamming and botting ?

I just feel completely at the mercy of bots and spammers in this war against them, and it also feels like Square Enix isn't even fighting back.

SUGGESTIONS IN THE NEXT POST (1000charlimit)

You kidding? This is a huge market for SE, they're making a killing off unknowing players. How else was SE going to make their ROI?