How would YOU detect RMT players?

[Absolutely Virtue]

Legalize RMT.

Problem solved.

[Kipling]

Waterboarding.

Well played.

[Zosi]

(I had written most of this earlier in the day and was distracted by work before I could post, so I apologize if some/most of it has been said already.)

This is a much harder problem than most people are willing to admit, because it seems like most people's gut reaction is to look for "RMT-like behavior" rather than actual RMT behavior. I generally agree with SE's tactics for tracking actual RMTed gil via their money-tracking program. You hunt down people who are handing out large amounts of gil to people that they have no history of interacting with, and move up the tree to the characters that farmed and transferred the gil. Once you have a bird's eye view of the whole operation, it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out whether it fits the profile of an HNMLS or other player group or whether it's an RMT operation. Actual full-scale RMT operations are fairly small in number - there's probably only a few per server at any given time, so it's worth having a real person look at the data because you might end up shutting down a full operation, and the consequences of banning a whole HNMLS mistakenly are quite severe.

Once you move beyond that kind of system, you start getting into the territory of banning "RMT-like" characters based on a probability of them being RMTs. The advantage of this kind of banning is obvious, it works much more quickly than a long investigation to try to nail the whole group, and it can prevent RMT activity before it happens rather than cleaning up afterwards. It also has the potential to attack smaller groups that wouldn't necessarily be noticed by the large-scale checks. The disadvantages are equally obvious. Particularly when viewed in isolation, players who are trying to earn large amounts of gil often resort to the same methods that RMTs do. Mass gardening with several accounts, taking advantage of advantageous NPC sellback prices on a large scale, making new characters to burn through quests with expensive rewards then throw them away. These are all things that are or were done on *massive* scale by RMTs as well as by some players. When 983 out of 1000 people who NPC more than, say, 100 stacks of Holy Water in a day are RMTs, it's easy to see how they could ban just on that even if you think they should be more careful. Totally made-up numbers, but my point is that the mass bannings are done because the activities in question are done much more heavily by RMTs than players.

As I said in the other thread, the area where I think that the STF is lacking is self-correction via appeals. When you're banning that many people, you're going to have false positives, but it's critical that you be aware when you do. It's an integral part of the process, because the feedback helps you determine whether your criteria are working or not and whether using that criteria is even worth it. I don't doubt that some of this is because the STF is under-manned. It's a ton of work to sort through ban appeals and if there's a public appeals process, you can bet that nearly everyone who gets banned is going to appeal whether they're RMT or not. There's probably a better compromise than the current system, but I'm not sure exactly how you'd go about setting it up.

(End of old stuff)

Some of the ideas presented here are good, particularly the account age, but as with most indicators, you have to look at the whole picture or you risk overgeneralizing. There's definitely a similarity to spam filtering like Deimos said - and the best process might be a similar Bayesian system that assigns weights based on various factors such as account age, jobs leveled, whether there are other accounts billed to the same address, etc. No single factor is enough to condemn or acquit someone, but when you combine enough factors, you can get to be pretty damn sure.

[fndragon]

PunkBuster.

Seriously, the problem we have with RMT isn't that they exist, it's that 99% of the time they're running a bot making the money for them. There's also a reason that RMT people run on the PC platform and not the PS2 or whatever else is cheaper.

I'd be ok with a "Warden" application running in the background, as long as it was kept up-to-date with the latest anti-cheat tools.

[Linktri]

I'd look for credit card numbers that have slanted digits.

[Sonomaa]

this will be an unpopular method but we use it to keep the forums free from a significant amount of spam and ad crap

Ban China
Ban Russia
Ban parts of korea
Done!

What you lose in customers is made up with peace of mind from the rest of them. Then you give china their own servers.

[Xaetica]

No matter how effective an algorithm, you will run into a chance of False Positives. What SE really needed a way to handle people who got hit with this ban and weren't RMT.

As an example, one of my LS mates got flagged for RMT related Activities. The POL staff can't tell him anything because banning is handled by a different department. SE should have had someone dedicated to fielding false positives. For starters, real RMTs don't try to get their level 1 characters unbanned, they create a new one. Characters with Maat's caps and hundreds of hours of playtime should at least be flagged for human review.

As a Software Engineer and someone who has earned a living by automating human tasks, my recommendation is the above.

;tldr
Stop being cheap and get a staff to handle the false positives these shitty algorithms are producing.

[Yugl]

As an example, one of my LS mates got flagged for RMT related Activities. The POL staff can't tell him anything because banning is handled by a different department. SE should have had someone dedicated to fielding false positives. For starters, real RMTs don't try to get their level 1 characters unbanned, they create a new one. Characters with Maat's caps and hundreds of hours of playtime should at least be flagged for human review.

Then RMTs will just use the accounts that never sell to deliver gil. It's as simple as that.

[Korietsu]

this will be an unpopular method but we use it to keep the forums free from a significant amount of spam and ad crap

Ban China
Ban Russia
Ban parts of korea
Done!

What you lose in customers is made up with peace of mind from the rest of them. Then you give china their own servers.

This is the policy most MMO's need to adopt.

[Silenka]

Ban China
Ban Russia
Ban parts of korea
Done!

I like this line of thought.

Just don't ban Singapore, cool people live there.

[LinktheDeme]

Ban people that NPC items to a Bastokan NPC. Didn't know there was any other way

[MaachaQ]

Ban China
Ban Russia
Ban parts of korea
Done!

What you lose in customers is made up with peace of mind from the rest of them. Then you give china their own servers.

All of Korea is already IP-banned, and I'm pretty sure China is too. Little program called a VPN now reroutes my internet to the US and back with a new IP that allows me to connect from South Korea, what's to stop RMT from any other country from doing the same thing?

[The Blackrose]

Some of the ideas presented here are good, particularly the account age, but as with most indicators, you have to look at the whole picture or you risk overgeneralizing. There's definitely a similarity to spam filtering like Deimos said - and the best process might be a similar Bayesian system that assigns weights based on various factors such as account age, jobs leveled, whether there are other accounts billed to the same address, etc. No single factor is enough to condemn or acquit someone, but when you combine enough factors, you can get to be pretty damn sure.

This is probably the best response I have seen so far. I also have a sort of aside. It should be official policy in accordance to all this data mining and analysis that no automated process bans a user for RMT practices. The final result should always be a human doling out the bans. The tool should be designed to at best aid the user in the decision making process, but it should not have the final call.

this will be an unpopular method but we use it to keep the forums free from a significant amount of spam and ad crap

Ban China
Ban Russia
Ban parts of korea
Done!

What you lose in customers is made up with peace of mind from the rest of them. Then you give china their own servers.

http://i674.photobucket.com/albums/v..._7_Proxies.jpg

[Mojo]

Those trial accounts were banned because trail accounts are often used to launder large amounts of gil. Whatever processes they use to detect RMT activities likely place priority on them. I have a bit of trouble believing that those receiving the random bans are completely innocent (RMT is actually not that uncommon,) although that's not to say personal review wouldn't improve their method. The volume of accounts that are banned is massive though, nearly ten thousand a month, so it's understandable as to why the process is automated.

[Yugl]

This is probably the best response I have seen so far. I also have a sort of aside. It should be official policy in accordance to all this data mining and analysis that no automated process bans a user for RMT practices. The final result should always be a human doling out the bans. The tool should be designed to at best aid the user in the decision making process, but it should not have the final call.

Sure, I'll sit there and review over 9000 accounts up for ban only to have 8000 of them return using a different name.

[barber2006]

Get rid of the free trial. Make RMT throw down $19.99 + 12.95 for the first month's service. See if they can sell 33 bucks worth of gil before they get banned. Yeah, we read the interview that many legit players started with the free trial. But not lately. It's hard enough to find a copy of FFXI around here, let alone the free trial. A ton of RMT problems stem from the fact they can just make character after character without fear of ban because it costs them nothing.


Will it suck for the 3 new legit people that will join this game for the first time in 2009? Maybe. Sucks for them, benefits for thousands of current players though.

[The Blackrose]

Sure, I'll sit there and review over 9000 accounts up for ban only to have 8000 of them return using a different name.

The exercise called for reducing, if not eliminating the possibility of a false positive. You could automate the process up to a particular threshold, in which there's a shiny red button waiting to say "Ban x accounts." If the person who gets the report wants to hash over the details, be my guest. But once you start crossing certain thresholds, personal review needs to be required. The logic behind a programmed process can only go so far.

[Mojo]

A simpler solution would be to add some restrictions to trial accounts (how much gil they are allowed to trade, auction house and bazaar privileges, etc.) Also, a very large portion of RMT occurs at the player to player level. 90% of these transactions could be tracked in a very easy way (if they sought to ban these players, that is.)

[tymora]

I remember getting laughed at in the crafting thread for warning about gardening on multiple mules and people saying how impossible it is to get banned for it. I suppose they are no longer snickering about it.

Anyway, on topic, SE obviously doesn't have the resources to do something like forensic accounting to detect RMT. SE also doesn't have the resources to pore through every teeny bit of detail in all their logs. Resources here mean both human and computing. Maintaining a specialized crew or systems isn't cheap.

They are a big company, but do consider the number of products they are currently working on and how many they need to support. They posted pictures about their offices and mentioned the sizes of their teams. E.g. 2-3 people to do all the effects that FFXI has to offer now and has to offer in the future. Definitely not a lot.

If you have a heuristic that can detect X RMTs with Y false positives, then it could be acceptable to them if Y is low enough to handle on a case by case basis. -> It seems their current policy is to "prefer to kill the wrong guy rather than to let criminals go free". Just like virus scans aren't perfect, they won't be able to catch all, and will likely false positives once in a while.

If I were tasked with the same project, I would probably come up with a similar RMT Pwner. The methods behind catching RMT are probably just like virus scans attempting to keep up with new viruses, an endless cat and mouse game. Imperfect as it is, it would reduce the workload of their GMs by quite a bit.

But the problem now is that SE isn't even considering appeals for wrongfully banned people to reclaim their accounts? Now that is just bad planning on their part...

----------

...90% of these transactions...

And 60% of statistics are pulled out from someone's ass. Also define your "easy way". There won't be an "easy" way if bank mules or leaders utilize similar methods to distribute their weekly/monthly payments...

[Corrderio]

Since this seems to be mostly about gardening I see two ways of at least slowing down the RMT progress.

1. Level requirement for Gardening. Something like level 15 required to garden. It'd piss off a few gardening mules since while 15 is easy. Getting 15 on that many characters would really add up fast.

2. Similar to fishing, you can't garden anything worth a damn until you're been a paid POL member for 2+ weeks. Even if you did everything right and you're still under 2 weeks of playing you'd only farm up worms.

As for detection, I just say monitor the sales of people who sold stuff to Proud Beard or the items you grow with gardening and NPC.