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We are working on the RMT problem, honest Guv.Follow

#1 Oct 10 2013 at 3:47 AM Rating: Good
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Finally a response on the rampant botting and rmt activities in game.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/101090-Bots-are-now-teleporting-from-mob-to-mob.?s=3551c555dab2c53148784e2e1baf9a63&p=1402819#post1402819

Quote:
Hello,

We have a firm understanding of the current RMT (real money traders)/cheating situation, and while we are working to implement countermeasures, it is true that we are sometimes reacting one step behind. While we cannot announce specifics of what we have planned, I do want to let you know that the development team and the Special Task Force (STF) are working closely together to implement measures to catch cheaters. We were able to catch some large scale RMT groups due to this.

Also, because it's the RMT and cheaters who strike first, the operations team can usually be thought of as reacting one step behind. However, as players have been saying, we agree that we should be finding and patching these holes from the start.

However, we will always be investigating, tracking down cheaters, and punishing them.

While we do not respond to your RMT reports, all of the information we receive is reviewed by the development team and STF and everyone on the team is extremely appreciative of your efforts. We apologize for the frustrations and inconveniences caused by the RMT and cheaters, and we will be working hard to catch them.

We appreciate your information about RMT you encounter on the forum, but please make sure not to include the URLs and specific cheating methods in your post. We ask that you please incude them in your reports instead.


I love the "While we do not respond to your RMT reports" line, but I guess the sheer volume probably makes that unrealistic.
#2 Oct 10 2013 at 4:17 AM Rating: Good
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Somethings working. I've noticed a considerably lessened amount of chat spam. However, I've also seen a rise in the /tell spam.

What pisses me off the most is how they can just track online/log in activity and blanket spam accounts with /tell's. At least disable that so they actually have to search/type (or click) on a persons name to /tell spam.
#3 Oct 10 2013 at 6:01 AM Rating: Decent
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1,270 posts
Their chat system in this game is total sh*t.

1) New accounts/under level 10 should not be able to use shout
2) No one should be able to spam shout non stop without it filtering
3) Once someone is on your blist, they shouldnt be able to still send you tells (they do it by zoning, any time you zone you can tell anyone, even if they are on your blist)
4) They shouldn't be able to block you from blisting people that are zoning/in their inn room.

I have over 102 names on my blist and add about 5 a day, and have not noticed any form of decrease in chat spam. In between that and people bot farming mobs/gathering, for 5+ days with no repercussions is very disheartening.

Edited, Oct 10th 2013 8:01am by dustinfoley
#4 Oct 10 2013 at 6:33 AM Rating: Decent
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dustinfoley wrote:
Their chat system in this game is total sh*t.

1) New accounts/under level 10 should not be able to use shout
2) No one should be able to spam shout non stop without it filtering
3) Once someone is on your blist, they shouldnt be able to still send you tells (they do it by zoning, any time you zone you can tell anyone, even if they are on your blist)
4) They shouldn't be able to block you from blisting people that are zoning/in their inn room.

I have over 102 names on my blist and add about 5 a day, and have not noticed any form of decrease in chat spam. In between that and people bot farming mobs/gathering, for 5+ days with no repercussions is very disheartening.

Edited, Oct 10th 2013 8:01am by dustinfoley


In a way it's almost brilliant that they allowed this to happen to the extent they have.... they've gotten so many leads to follow up on from reports from people like us that they are probably tracking down the IP addresses of the RMT's and using the data they get to help ensure that RMT does not have any lasting presence in the game.

Maybe I'm just an optimist, but I'd like to think they are going to fix it soon enough.
#5 Oct 10 2013 at 6:40 AM Rating: Excellent
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589 posts
I just think it's nice they've acknowledged all the complaints, it'll take time for action and solutions sure, but please recognize the depth of the problem and say something!

I actually saw no chat spam at all yesterday on Excalibur for the first time, and I only had one /tell.
#6 Oct 10 2013 at 7:18 AM Rating: Good
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108 posts
maybe I'm a noob to rmt. But ****. SE has to making a lot of money from all the accounts and copies of the game bought by rmt to spam in the first place especially if they are banned and have to buy new. Do rmt buy their games / accounts? I know some accounts are stolen, but holy ****. A LOT of people would have to pay for gil and/or get hacked just for them to break even with paying their manpower + copies + accounts.

Hard for me to believe rmt is this profitable, but it must be.

My conspiracy theory.... which probably isn't true. If I were making an mmo for profit.... I would keep rmt activity in my game seemingly profitable enough to aspiring rmts to keep the rmt buying copies of my game while taking enough "action" against them to keep my legit players from quitting the game and to keep the rmt buying new accounts. If I ban all the rmt and make it rmt proof, I lose a lot of sales from rmt businessmen. If I let rmt run rampant, I lose all my legit subscribers and my rmt subs since they will have little to sell to. A delicate balance. /end evil corporate conspiracy theory

again, not saying this is happening, but it's been interesting to see mmos have rmt more or less and in varying degrees ALL THE TIME.
#7 Oct 10 2013 at 7:19 AM Rating: Excellent
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Just saw this one Reddit... maybe a good idea to implement for reporting cheaters from now on:

LINK TO REDDIT

Quote:
I just got done speaking with a Game master on Leviathan, he wanted to know more information on a mining bot i reported earlier in the week.

When you go to report a bot, whether its a mining bot or spam bot, you'll want to submit a brief ticket to both "Report cheating" and "report harassment"

Report cheating tickets are seen by the "Special Task Force" (they deal with bots/gilbots,etc" and "report harassment" is seen by GMs.

The GM i talked to said, "The more people (GM or STF) that see the report, the sooner the bot will be taken out of the game.

TL;DR: Fill out "report harassment" and "Report Cheating" if you have time, gets bots outa here faster. ty
#8 Oct 10 2013 at 8:03 AM Rating: Excellent
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klooste8 wrote:
maybe I'm a noob to rmt. But sh*t. SE has to making a lot of money from all the accounts and copies of the game bought by rmt to spam in the first place especially if they are banned and have to buy new. Do rmt buy their games / accounts? I know some accounts are stolen, but holy sh*t. A LOT of people would have to pay for gil and/or get hacked just for them to break even with paying their manpower + copies + accounts.

Hard for me to believe rmt is this profitable, but it must be.

My conspiracy theory.... which probably isn't true. If I were making an mmo for profit.... I would keep rmt activity in my game seemingly profitable enough to aspiring rmts to keep the rmt buying copies of my game while taking enough "action" against them to keep my legit players from quitting the game and to keep the rmt buying new accounts. If I ban all the rmt and make it rmt proof, I lose a lot of sales from rmt businessmen. If I let rmt run rampant, I lose all my legit subscribers and my rmt subs since they will have little to sell to. A delicate balance. /end evil corporate conspiracy theory

again, not saying this is happening, but it's been interesting to see mmos have rmt more or less and in varying degrees ALL THE TIME.

While they may buy the occasional account, you can bet a lot of the spammers are people they've hacked. Either they stupidly visited the sites linked or one of those people that use the same email/account and password for everything and it compromised elsewhere. Basically, the shouters are throwaways. The bank characters you'll likely never notice.
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#9 Oct 10 2013 at 9:30 PM Rating: Good
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klooste8 wrote:
maybe I'm a noob to rmt. But sh*t. SE has to making a lot of money from all the accounts and copies of the game bought by rmt to spam in the first place especially if they are banned and have to buy new. Do rmt buy their games / accounts? I know some accounts are stolen, but holy sh*t. A LOT of people would have to pay for gil and/or get hacked just for them to break even with paying their manpower + copies + accounts.

Hard for me to believe rmt is this profitable, but it must be.

My conspiracy theory.... which probably isn't true. If I were making an mmo for profit.... I would keep rmt activity in my game seemingly profitable enough to aspiring rmts to keep the rmt buying copies of my game while taking enough "action" against them to keep my legit players from quitting the game and to keep the rmt buying new accounts. If I ban all the rmt and make it rmt proof, I lose a lot of sales from rmt businessmen. If I let rmt run rampant, I lose all my legit subscribers and my rmt subs since they will have little to sell to. A delicate balance. /end evil corporate conspiracy theory

again, not saying this is happening, but it's been interesting to see mmos have rmt more or less and in varying degrees ALL THE TIME.


30 bucks to play the game for a month. 1 Million gil is selling for about 26$ now. Out of tens of thousands of people on a server, you just have to sell to 2 people atm to make a profit. There's lots of real money to be made, but I wouldn't quit my day job for this gig.
#10 Oct 10 2013 at 9:47 PM Rating: Decent
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ASpaceman wrote:
30 bucks to play the game for a month. 1 Million gil is selling for about 26$ now. Out of tens of thousands of people on a server, you just have to sell to 2 people atm to make a profit. There's lots of real money to be made, but I wouldn't quit my day job for this gig.

Relic accounts on FFXI used to sell(and sell they did) for thousands back in the day. There were quite a few people who made quite a bit of money doing this. Hell, XI accounts still sell for over a thousand bucks.
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HaibaneRenmei wrote:
30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:
Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
#11 Oct 10 2013 at 10:13 PM Rating: Decent
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Spam spam spam spam spam spam SPAMITY SPAM LOVELY SPAM!
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#12 Oct 11 2013 at 1:53 PM Rating: Decent
I'm not happy with SE's handling of RMT. All they do is have to block someone from spamming all day and night in shouts and that will solve 99% of the problem...IE set a limit to number of shouts per hour.


Now we all know we'll just get more /tells then right so again, do the same thing. You can only send /tells to 20 different people per hour. This will solve the problem and only inconvenience players slightly.
#13 Oct 15 2013 at 10:58 AM Rating: Good
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Personally I'm not seeing enough "Deleted" accounts on my blacklist. One a week out of the 50 I add is definitely not enough. I've heard how you can remove ones that were spamming weeks ago and not have them spamming but i don't keep a note of who was added on what day. I want to see more deleted/removed in my blacklist. Especially since i take the time to report every one of them.
#14 Oct 15 2013 at 12:08 PM Rating: Good
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Right now their focus appears to be on RMT not on botters, hackers, and cheaters. I would guess (like on Hyperion), the most noticable people are actually peoples mules that are gathering for them (One of them I tracked down to a Free Company that had apparently had one person either dual boxing, or just running a character as a bot for gil).

While everyone in my free company knows this person who is teleporting killing sheep, and we all have pretty much reported this person, they are still there every time I have been out.

But, since they are not selling their gil or gear, they are a lot lower on SE's radar.
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#15 Oct 15 2013 at 12:28 PM Rating: Good
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FilthMcNasty wrote:
ASpaceman wrote:
30 bucks to play the game for a month. 1 Million gil is selling for about 26$ now. Out of tens of thousands of people on a server, you just have to sell to 2 people atm to make a profit. There's lots of real money to be made, but I wouldn't quit my day job for this gig.

Relic accounts on FFXI used to sell(and sell they did) for thousands back in the day. There were quite a few people who made quite a bit of money doing this. Hell, XI accounts still sell for over a thousand bucks.


"Thousands" (probably one or two thousand) for an account with 100 days /played time, is NOT good profit!
#16 Oct 15 2013 at 12:36 PM Rating: Good
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Others have said this, but SE should have taken a lot of these steps a long time ago. It's a "2.0" after all, not a new game.

It's not a new thing. Aside from game-specific exploits, the business model is well known. I can think of a few things Blizzard implemented in WoW that helped. Here are some key ones:

- Right-click --> Report Spam. .. I know that right-click blacklist is coming in 2.1, but why do I want to have to maintain a black list? I have to actually delete them later? I don't want to keep a list of spammers - I want to report them and never see them again in one swift click.
- Limits on how often someone can post in a public channel (or in this case, /shout)... You can talk twice in the trade chat, and then you're on cooldown for 30 seconds. I'm made to feel almost anxious by bots that literally spam endlessly, making it hard to even click on their names!
- New/free accounts can not post in public channel, post auctions, etc. - SE did a good job on this one by making the Retainer so far into the story. One point for SE on this one.

#17 Oct 15 2013 at 1:17 PM Rating: Good
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129 posts
Regarding the right click and report spam, there should be a threshold there where it's escalated to a temporary global mute pending investigation by SE. But I think, if possible, it should work in such a way that the gold spammers can keep spamming (and think the message is getting across) but really nobody but them sees the shouts. I know that's cruel but w/e.
#18 Oct 15 2013 at 1:50 PM Rating: Default
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70 posts
Blizzard may have implemented those measures but the fail terribly at security. Every account login, email, password was stolen from SE. All accounts without an authenticator was hacked. Big deal I had an authenticator, not so much for the common gamer. Most people use the same account name, alot of them even use the same password. So now every game that comes out has an extensive list already created of login names and passwords to attempt hacks on. Blizzard flat out denied the leak of data however when D3 came out if you didnt have an authenticator you logged in and found your account stripped. Even if you had never had a blizzard account or used that account before.

I know SE had been hacked but they came out and admitted it. They kept everyone updated and brought in a company (Sophos) to assist in blocking the holes. Blizzard just denied it, possibly fixed the one hole and accounts are still hacked on a mass basis. Not sure if they just don't care or thought people would buy a new box and start over but not acceptable. I lost all respect I have for blizzard and will never purchase another game from them, ever.

Sadly if it wasn't for "good" business that is done by the RMT, buying accounts everytime they are banned, paying monthly fees and so on they wouldn't exist. The game manufactures could stop them, but they don't. SE from what I seen in XI may be slow but do a pretty good job at discouraging them. I think that is why gil is so easy to obtain in this game, gear don't come from gil for the most part and anyone with some patience can get high end gear easily enough. I say hire some assassins to take care of business.
#19 Oct 15 2013 at 2:56 PM Rating: Decent
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Shiener wrote:
Blizzard flat out denied the leak of data however when D3 came out if you didnt have an authenticator you logged in and found your account stripped.


I have never had an authenticator for Blizz and none of my game accounts were hacked or stripped. I think if every account that was without an authenticator was hacked, we'd hear more about it. Please stop making **** up.
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Rinsui wrote:
Only hips + boobs all day and hips + boobs all over my icecream

HaibaneRenmei wrote:
30 bucks is almost free

cocodojo wrote:
Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
#20 Oct 15 2013 at 3:06 PM Rating: Good
But you're smart, and don't use the same password for years on end for every account you've ever had, Filthy.
#21 Oct 16 2013 at 5:54 AM Rating: Good
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Catwho wrote:
But you're smart, and don't use the same password for years on end for every account you've ever had, Filthy.

I'm so naughty. I do this. But also never hacked.
#22 Oct 16 2013 at 6:22 AM Rating: Default
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Quote:
I have never had an authenticator for Blizz and none of my game accounts were hacked or stripped. I think if every account that was without an authenticator was hacked, we'd hear more about it. Please stop making sh*t up.


I wasn't making anything up. Don't make assumptions without research. I do network security for a living and had to do patches on some software that resulted from this. In the critical upgrade notification it specifically stated this information and company, I'm trying to see if I still have the notification in my work email. I also played Diablo 3 at release and remember the fiasco quit well. I had an authenticator. Go check the Diablo 3 boards, look for about 1-2 weeks after the PC release. Obviously the RMT aren't going to sit and hack 10 million accounts either, they would still be trying to clear accounts. Someone did hack them and every account name, email address, and password was stolen. SE was also hacked, that was very public, and even though it did happen they deserve a lot of credit by being straight forward about it. How many others have also been hacked? Lets just say some of these other popular ones were, RIFT, Star Wars, and EQ. RMT would have a pretty extensive list to use for hacking accounts. Especially with how many people don't use authenticators and use the same email, same account name and in a lot of cases same password.

I'm not going to sit and argue over a company that i've grown to despise from their security practices and not being up front with people. People just need to be reminded to not use the same account info for every game. Not use an authenticator. Not keep their computer safe and expect Not to get hacked. Until lazy people stop buying gil they aren't going away and they will do whatever they have to in order find ways around security and bans.
#23 Oct 16 2013 at 12:05 PM Rating: Excellent
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Guys Square Enix outsources their customer service, most likely to the lowest bidder, and I have a strong feeling these are the guys who handles GM requests, harassment, and cheating reports. Remember for FFXI they had one (1) guy handling community events like weddings for ALL SERVERS.

Someone needs to send SE Corporate a book on the disadvantages of outsourcing. Maybe it would help them figure out whats holding down their bottom line and why their PR sucks ***.
#24 Oct 16 2013 at 12:50 PM Rating: Decent
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reptiletim wrote:
Guys Square Enix outsources their customer service, most likely to the lowest bidder, and I have a strong feeling these are the guys who handles GM requests, harassment, and cheating reports. Remember for FFXI they had one (1) guy handling community events like weddings for ALL SERVERS.

Someone needs to send SE Corporate a book on the disadvantages of outsourcing. Maybe it would help them figure out whats holding down their bottom line and why their PR sucks ***.

So the only people more incompetent than SE are the people SE outsources work to? With as much SE bashing I read around here, I would think people would be all for them outsourcing stuff.
#25 Oct 16 2013 at 3:24 PM Rating: Good
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Shiener wrote:
Quote:
I have never had an authenticator for Blizz and none of my game accounts were hacked or stripped. I think if every account that was without an authenticator was hacked, we'd hear more about it. Please stop making sh*t up.


snipped for you, because I care


I'm almost POSTIVE that posting this information, and especially posting the e-mail you received, isn't breaching any confidentiality agreements that may be in force, or cannot in any way, shape, or form come back to bite you in your bunghole. [:endsarcasm:] (WHY has that not been added yet?)

If I were you, I'd make vague comments about "a" major company that has security leaks that keeps them hidden, and recommend people get authenticators when they can long with keep different e-mail/password combinations together, basing all this on your background in network security.

I would think someone with a background in network security would know posting what you did is just not a good idea.
#26 Oct 16 2013 at 5:34 PM Rating: Excellent
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I think there's downsides to outsourcing. One of the pitfalls I've seen is quality control. When you outsource you don't really know what you're going to get quality wise.

For example, say you're a financial company and you outsource work to develop a program that's supposed to save you money. You don't always know what kind of processes these guys have in place to maintain an acceptable level of quality. So time comes for you to get your product and it's late and full of bugs that cost you a lot in support call handling and further development costs to patch up the program.

When you're looking to save costs, cheap outsourcing can look very attractive to save on the bottom line but in the process you might be getting crap in return. If your goal is only to save money I guess you can say you've met it, but I feel like there's always hidden costs that don't show up on paper right away.

Not saying SE is actually doing this but after speaking with a rep who did tell me he did not work directly with SE, I can assume this is what is happening. He wouldn't tell me much more than that.

EDIT: I want to point out that it's possible to do homework on a company and it still turns out to be a bad investment, either by doctored reviews or the contractor just isn't equipped to handle what they're tasked with but took the job anyway to make a buck.

Edited, Oct 16th 2013 7:36pm by reptiletim
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