How would YOU detect RMT players?

[Shamaya]

my top 2 personally

Giant train of people on /follow especially if all nude taru

and of course someone who never answer tells and moves, (considering he's not /away and blisted you)

ive done the giant train thing (up to 5 naked chars) b4. but i do answer tells if someone accuses me of being rmt. i do like the idea of a red flag of someone moving and not answer tells, because it is natural for anyone to respond to a random tell even if in another language, but this would be hard to track

[Whaleporn]

Change the play online opening pages to free Tibet/Chinese free speech propaganda for a month.

Tell the Chinese government about it.

See if that fixes things.

[byte]

How would YOU detect RMT players?

I wouldn't.

Frankly, I don't give a shit and I'm not deluded enough to think that we'll ever be rid of them.

Change the play online opening pages to free Tibet/Chinese free speech propaganda for a month.

Tell the Chinese government about it.

See if that fixes things.

Fucking lol'd. Only suggestion in this thread that might actually have some effect.

[TheMysteriousX]

(More preventing a recurrence of the false positives than detecting RMT, but...) With Squeenix Accounts.

Stage 0: Modify POL client so SE Account can be created from the POL client.

Stage 1: Modify the TOS that all accounts controlled by the same person must be registered under the same squeenix account, so that they can be identified as a single entity.

Mr Legitimate Hardcore Gardener will link his main account to his gardening account. When the gardening account is flagged up, it can be seen that they are controlled by the same person, and that the money is not going amiss. This works for LS banks, alts, anything else that on its own could be considered "suspect".

RMT will not do this. They would be absolutely retarded to, because it would identify multiple RMT accounts, should one be flagged up.

Stage 2. No automated bannings (except obvious stuff like POSHacking). Flag accounts only. Increase the number and training of GM's, and make them review automatically flagged accounts by stalking them (in game).

Stage 3: Legitimate appeals process. RMT aren't gonna spend the time to recover most of their characters, when they can create another in the time taken to fill out the appeals form. Make sure the appeals team are paid more than minimum wage, and have a minimum IQ.

[WyldFyre]

You forgot one criteria in the original post.

While idealism rocks, it seldom matches up with reality. The post above mine reflects that.

[Mistress Stowastiq]

my top 2 personally

Giant train of people on /follow especially if all nude taru

and of course someone who never answer tells and moves, (considering he's not /away and blisted you)

Also being level 1 war hume or taru. :D

There was a group of players who were partied /follow from level 1 in gustaberg, all thfs with an anon level 65 PL who sometimes revealed her rank 2. Never using a linkshell, over time they leveled up to 65 rank 6 using the same /follow technique leaving the mission rank of PL and later the war unleveled. Their names were of the auto-name chooser variety.

From the beginning, scores of people all thought they looked suspicious, reporting them to STF repeatedly. Eventually, it earned them the name: "The /follow Club". If you asked someone, they knew about it and or knew some one who had reported it if they had not done so themselves.

They did their subjob quests and missions on /follow. The PL bought multiple items of the same type and name in the AH as they progressed in level, selling armor immediately after leveling. If you happened to see them in party, they would be leveling at the same time.

Though they all started out as thf, as they got their sj, the party sorted out to have DD, Tank and two main healers but subbing thf. They would continue to level all but the war, I assume to exploit the Level Sync.

After getting their sj, all but the warrior started an ah history in jeuno but the main purchases continued with the PL. In their level 40's eventually each would purchase a fetish part for their bastok mission, all at the same time.

All of the above characteristics had numerous players suspicious enough to report them. I just wanted to point out some characteristics that raise a flag when all done together in an assembly of repeated actions. Done separate or even a couple at once, they may not seem so suspicious. It could have been one player leveling a bunch of characters for any reason or a rmt business leveling chars to sell.

In my opinion, it is a method of combining clusters of evidence and suspicious activity that should be effective in determining who is legitimate vs illegitimate.

[arus2001]

SE really should just start selling gil for like $20 per mil. Probably equates to a similar amount of hardcore seed gardeners would yield per month and the money would just wind up in the same place.

[Sho]

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.

All this, but limiting Trial characters only.

[hagun]

SE really should just start selling gil for like $20 per mil. Probably equates to a similar amount of hardcore seed gardeners would yield per month and the money would just wind up in the same place.

You've got to be kidding.

[The Blackrose]

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.)

I'm actually surprised SE does not do this already.

Wait, am I?

[Corrderio]

All this, but limiting Trial characters only.

I also forgot another thing since I was getting ready for lsepe in that post.

Num-bah 3: Restrict all trades/bazzar/delivery box options for trial accounts.

[Changz]

SE should buy gil, trace back the gil trail from the delivery person... nuke associated accounts, then make a chargeback on whatever they used to buy their own gil in the first place, and repeat.

[ronin sparthos]

SE really should just start selling gil for like $20 per mil. Probably equates to a similar amount of hardcore seed gardeners would yield per month and the money would just wind up in the same place.

Can 'o worms anyone?

[FailureMidgard]

Why is everyone so attached to the gardening aspect of RMT? I know for a fact in WoW there are RMT groups that do nothing but buy gold then resell it. They buy gold from normal players that do nothing different to make gold than any other player out there. In any case, RMT is RMT, it shouldn't matter if someone is buying it or selling it - and it shouldn't matter how they are making the gil. IF there is a serious problem with RMT in regards to gardening, I personally think the problem is in the fact that NPC-gardening is so profitable (and neither RMT nor actual players should really be using it...), not that RMT's picked up on it.

[FailureMidgard]

Can 'o worms anyone?

That's what people with 3 extra accounts with 16 characters a pop are doing anyway...

[Hanyoko]

The most recent problem with RMT is related to the Trial Account system that is in place. The core concept behind them is good, however the implementation for them in FFXI makes it rather difficult.

1) A trial account should be limited to /s /p /l for chat modes. /t should be allowed but under a heavily restricted system that greatly limits frequency of tells, or automatic detection of mass spam. Detection of said spam should make an event for human to review and disable tells for a length of time and/or automatic banning for excessive use during this lockout period.

2) Trial accounts should have a special icon or other distinguishable feature.

3) All gil transactions from trial accounts should be under heavier watch then those of non-trial. For example, if gil trading for an hour period is over 1k or 20k for 24hrs (example figures) then flag for investigation.

Those steps would greatly help RMT abuse of trial accounts and does not hinder non-trial players in any way.

RMT as non-trials is more difficult since player behavior is as random as can be and without even viewing the type of data that is being tracked for players I cannot comment.

[ronin sparthos]

That's what people with 3 extra accounts with 16 characters a pop are doing anyway...

So because less than 1% of XI players do it, SE should consider selling gil in an attempt to stamp out RMT?

The RMT would then just move onto "services" like Salvage, PL'ing, Nyzul and then what would SE do? Cash Shop?

[shaddix]

I would rather just have RMT in the game than get banned on accident

[Yugl]

Why is everyone so attached to the gardening aspect of RMT? I know for a fact in WoW there are RMT groups that do nothing but buy gold then resell it. They buy gold from normal players that do nothing different to make gold than any other player out there. In any case, RMT is RMT, it shouldn't matter if someone is buying it or selling it - and it shouldn't matter how they are making the gil. IF there is a serious problem with RMT in regards to gardening, I personally think the problem is in the fact that NPC-gardening is so profitable (and neither RMT nor actual players should really be using it...), not that RMT's picked up on it.

And thus we have a new NPC nerf! Remedies. Blood from bats. Join the group!

[enoch]

One MMO I read about on massively.com allows users to get "bombs" they can toss at suspected bots, which makes them pass a CAPTCHA or riddle in order to stay connected. Innovative idea, possibly adaptable to RMT.

They need to make it a lot easier to report suspected RMT activity (indeed, ALL ToS violations) in-game. We're helping them do their jobs by reporting this stuff, we shouldn't be punished by having to exit out to POL to report this stuff properly.

This could be construed as a social problem and thus a social solution may be available. Make transactions between characters public and searchable. This is something within SE's power. Suspect someone you know finished their Ares's Cuirass with ingots they got from bought gil? Find out where that gil came from. They could mark in-game items with the method used to get it - did the character get the item from the AH or did they get it from a Nyzul appraisal or from camping a NM? Put flags on items, remove people's ability to lie about the origins of their bling. Moreover, publicly track server transfers and name changes.

SE can do all of this, but they won't.