GOLD SPAMMING HELL - IMPLEMENT THESE SUGGESTIONS!

[pjcnet]

Does anyone from SE actually read these forums? If so please respond to this and prove it (otherwise it proves that these forums are ignored), I have posted this to technical support as there isn't any other reasonable place to put this (there is a website suggestions - but this is about the game itself):


I am receiving multiple tells and blacklisting no longer works as these users are deleting the characters after the offences are made, then creating new characters to do it all over again repeatedly. The shout channels are still getting spammed too, but now tells are taking over and are getting totally out of hand. I am not here to just complain however, but to suggest effective ways to deal with the problem!

HERE ARE SOME EFFECTIVE SUGGESTIONS TO WIN THE WAR AGAINST GOLD SPAMMERS THAT WE ARE CURRENTLY LOSING:

1.....We need a right click button to block and report characters automatically - the current method to report takes too long. This has been suggested by multiple people including myself for weeks now to no avail.

2.....A VERY EFFECTIVE METHOD: Restrict the amount of gold that can be sent and received between characters (unless they're on the same account). If characters simply cannot send large amounts of gold to other people it will stop gold selling almost completely. Brand new accounts and characters shouldn't be-able to send gold at all to characters on different accounts, perhaps after being a paid member for over a month or perhaps after a character on the account reaches a certain level the restriction could be partly lifted, but there should always be a limit of what can be sent per month of say 100K gil and transfers should be restricted to say a maximum of 3 different characters per account with a maximum of say 10 transfers in total per month. PLEASE TAKE THIS SUGGESTION VERY SERIOUSLY!

3....Since characters are spamming just before deleting their character and then recreating a new one to continuously re-offend (probably using bots), when people report a user you should be-able to track their user account to ban it even after their character has been deleted. Evidence of spamming MUST be kept even after the character is deleted as otherwise they will just keep getting away with this unpunished!!!

4....When a character is blacklisted we should have the option to block the entire user account even if the character is deleted when attempting to blacklist the character so they remain blacklisted when new characters are recreated on this offending account as otherwise the blacklist is useless.

5....To protect users against being hacked from gold spammers people should be made to verify a code sent to their email address when they login from a new IP address (a new location or new PC), if someone tries to access their account and fails to verify, the user should be informed to change their password details urgently, obviously ensuring an emailed code is also used to verify it is them changing it. Even if a gold spammer gets someones account details including their password, perhaps using brute force or a keylogger, it will still prevent them from accessing their account.

6....New characters should have tells and shouts restricted. No-one below level 15 should be-able to send a tell to anyone unless they're in their friend's list or perhaps if they're in their party. Also users below level 15 shouldn't have access to the shout channel. This will help make things much harder for the spammers, although eventually the gold spammers will start introducing bots to auto level them to the required level before sending these spams.

7....Put a restriction on how many times a new character can be created, deleted and recreated in a certain period of time. E.g. If you delete and recreate a charcter more than 3 times per hour you will have to wait a period of time before you can create another one. The user account should also be flagged for investigation by SE (yourselves) if they keep doing it repeatedly. All tells and shouts should be logged on users for a certain amount of time even if they delete their characters as they keep doing so they can be detected and punished (BANNED).

8....We need undercover staff characters playing in worlds so they can actively ban these people almost immediately when they offend, if these people are banned quickly enough they will lose money since FF XIV is a paid service. If they lose money they will soon leave FF XIV alone since their entire goal is to make money. Even 1 person per server that can ban accounts immediately would be very effective, or even just a few people playing on a number of PCs logged into multiple accounts on different servers at the same time, travelling between cities Etc. would be excellent.

9....Auto flag accounts that have multiple gold transfers for investigation by yourselves (this wouldn't be needed if you use option 2 to restrict gold transfers).

10....Punish the people who have bought gold as well as the gold spammers themselves. If no-one bought gold the gold spammers wouldn't exist so they're just as bad and they're also cheating. When you ban an account that has been transferring large amounts of gold from a gold selling website, you should be-able to get a list of accounts they've transferred to in order to punish them too. A suspension should be made, if not a ban even to the receivers. An announcement should be made beforehand to warn people of this zero tolerance policy so there can be no arguments. This will also make people think twice before risking buying gold which will also in turn hurt the gold spammers.

11....If someone is banned for gold spamming SE should act and investigate quickly and efficiently if the person claims that their account has been hacked or if there is a mistake, plus an appeal method should be quick and easy, E.g. they can click on a link to fill out a form. I've read of possible victims struggling to get any response from SE after being banned when they claim they haven't done any gold spamming, this is very unfair. It's great that gold spammers should be banned, but it's also very important that innocent victims aren't punished too and any mistakes are quickly rectified.

12....Let people know with an announcement that gold spamming is being addressed as players currently have no confidence in SE dealing with the problem. PLEASE ACT - DON'T IGNORE IT, READ AND IMPLEMENT SOME OR ALL OF THESE SUGGESTIONS AND WE WILL WIN THE WAR AGAINST GOLD SPAMMERS!!! Ignore it and the problem will continue to get worse, eventually we will be receiving tells literally every few seconds from multiple characters created using automated bots.


FINALLY - THANKS FOR A GREAT GAME - WELL DONE!!

[mindful]

The sad part is on ffxi they had a good system in place for shouts and tells and contacting a gm. They used to have the gm's just run in to a city be like i am here and Send them gil sellers to jail really fast and deal with them later. I think they ran out of money an unable to run that program anymore. , this version of the game it has went backwards. It is going kill them on the subscription on the amount of money they could have made , not the money they had plan on making.

[KisaiTenshi]

HERE ARE SOME EFFECTIVE SUGGESTIONS TO WIN THE WAR AGAINST GOLD SPAMMERS THAT WE ARE CURRENTLY LOSING:

1.....We need a right click button to block and report characters automatically - the current method to report takes too long. This has been suggested by multiple people including myself for weeks now to no avail.

Yes, everyone keeps saying this, no it's unlikely to happen this way because people will accidently block people. It needs a double-confirmation at least ("Are you sure you want to block X?", "Blocking the user will send a screenshot to Square Enix".)

2.....A VERY EFFECTIVE METHOD: Restrict the amount of gold that can be sent and received between characters (unless they're on the same account). If characters simply cannot send large amounts of gold to other people it will stop gold selling almost completely. Brand new accounts and characters shouldn't be-able to send gold at all to characters on different accounts, perhaps after being a paid member for over a month or perhaps after a character on the account reaches a certain level the restriction could be partly lifted, but there should always be a limit of what can be sent per month of say 100K gil and transfers should be restricted to say a maximum of 3 different characters per account with a maximum of say 10 transfers in total per month. PLEASE TAKE THIS SUGGESTION VERY SERIOUSLY!

Agree but, restrict on the same account as well, since this is a known way for people to launder their goldbuying/selling. The amount of gil that can be transfered/prices-set (in the market) should be reflective of the highest level obtained by their combat role.

3....Since characters are spamming just before deleting their character and then recreating a new one to continuously re-offend (probably using bots), when people report a user you should be-able to track their user account to ban it even after their character has been deleted. Evidence of spamming MUST be kept even after the character is deleted as otherwise they will just keep getting away with this unpunished!!!

The spammers aren't usually the same ones that actually have the gold. One solution to this would be to apply the blacklist at the account level, and have a time-out before being able to create a new character on the same server.

4....When a character is blacklisted we should have the option to block the entire user account even if the character is deleted when attempting to blacklist the character so they remain blacklisted when new characters are recreated on this offending account as otherwise the blacklist is useless.

This won't happen, since all of the accounts doing the spamming are hacked accounts. They'll just use more.

5....To protect users against being hacked from gold spammers people should be made to verify a code sent to their email address when they login from a new IP address (a new location or new PC), if someone tries to access their account and fails to verify, the user should be informed to change their password details urgently, obviously ensuring an emailed code is also used to verify it is them changing it. Even if a gold spammer gets someones account details including their password, perhaps using brute force or a keylogger, it will still prevent them from accessing their account.

True, but this should be sent to a cell phone via SMS, or via the smartphone authenticator. Most of the time "hacked" accounts are a result of someones email being hacked and searched for account information.

6....New characters should have tells and shouts restricted. No-one below level 15 should be-able to send a tell to anyone unless they're in their friend's list or perhaps if they're in their party. Also users below level 15 shouldn't have access to the shout channel. This will help make things much harder for the spammers, although eventually the gold spammers will start introducing bots to auto level them to the required level before sending these spams.

Tera Online did this, it makes communication difficult. It should be something like this:
a) Force auto-translate for all options unless the user is in their friends list, or they are in a DF
and
b) Throttle message rate to 20wpm until level 15 is achieved in a combat role.

7....Put a restriction on how many times a new character can be created, deleted and recreated in a certain period of time. E.g. If you delete and recreate a charcter more than 3 times per hour you will have to wait a period of time before you can create another one. The user account should also be flagged for investigation by SE (yourselves) if they keep doing it repeatedly. All tells and shouts should be logged on users for a certain amount of time even if they delete their characters as they keep doing so they can be detected and punished (BANNED).

Nah, just don't allow more than one "level 1" character to exist.

8....We need undercover staff characters playing in worlds so they can actively ban these people almost immediately when they offend, if these people are banned quickly enough they will lose money since FF XIV is a paid service. If they lose money they will soon leave FF XIV alone since their entire goal is to make money. Even 1 person per server that can ban accounts immediately would be very effective, or even just a few people playing on a number of PCs logged into multiple accounts on different servers at the same time, travelling between cities Etc. would be excellent.

They are understaffed. An no, not 1 person per server, 1 person per zone is required to monitor things. Since there are 40 zones that becomes unweildly.

9....Auto flag accounts that have multiple gold transfers for investigation by yourselves (this wouldn't be needed if you use option 2 to restrict gold transfers).

That won't work. They are just throw-away accounts as well. The way you prevent RMT is by going after the buyers and have zero tolerance for uneven and one-way trades.

10....Punish the people who have bought gold as well as the gold spammers themselves. If no-one bought gold the gold spammers wouldn't exist so they're just as bad and they're also cheating. When you ban an account that has been transferring large amounts of gold from a gold selling website, you should be-able to get a list of accounts they've transferred to in order to punish them too. A suspension should be made, if not a ban even to the receivers. An announcement should be made beforehand to warn people of this zero tolerance policy so there can be no arguments. This will also make people think twice before risking buying gold which will also in turn hurt the gold spammers.

Nah, ban them for 90 days. RMT's are desparate since they're not making enough money from freemium games, they're instead hacking accounts of subscription games since we have money.

11....If someone is banned for gold spamming SE should act and investigate quickly and efficiently if the person claims that their account has been hacked or if there is a mistake, plus an appeal method should be quick and easy, E.g. they can click on a link to fill out a form. I've read of possible victims struggling to get any response from SE after being banned when they claim they haven't done any gold spamming, this is very unfair. It's great that gold spammers should be banned, but it's also very important that innocent victims aren't punished too and any mistakes are quickly rectified.

They need some automated process, like a "Lock this account to my current IP" and "I do not wish to create any new characters, please prevent adding or deleting existing characters"

12....Let people know with an announcement that gold spamming is being addressed as players currently have no confidence in SE dealing with the problem. PLEASE ACT - DON'T IGNORE IT, READ AND IMPLEMENT SOME OR ALL OF THESE SUGGESTIONS AND WE WILL WIN THE WAR AGAINST GOLD SPAMMERS!!! Ignore it and the problem will continue to get worse, eventually we will be receiving tells literally every few seconds from multiple characters created using automated bots.


FINALLY - THANKS FOR A GREAT GAME - WELL DONE!!