Bio, Please Act Quickly And Aggressively Against Credit Selling Spammers

[finelinebob]

I can't take credit for this entirely, since I saw someone say something about it on Republic Fleet for my server, but I'd like to present the math for all y'all.

 

The proposal? Instead of buying 1 million credits in game for $30 in the real world, why not buy Cartel Coins, use those to buy Crime Lord's Cartel Packs, and sell those packs for the credits you need? There are some compelling reasons to do this!

 

If you buy credits from the credit farmers at current rates, every dollar you spend gets you roughly 33k in-game credits. Keep that number in mind.

 

If, on the other hand, you buy 5500 CC for roughly $40, you:

1. put real money into BioWare's hands, and have a shot at supporting further growth and development of the game;
   
2. get virtual goods for other players, from possibly Masks of Nihilus to possibly Minor Exploration XP Boosts
   
3. give other players that short but meaningful thrill as they open their pack, get the little asteroid-storage bin to land at their feet and anticipate the chance of netting a Mask of Nihilus rather than a Minor Exploration XP Boost; and
   
4. get yourself a big chunk of credits.
   

How many? Well, 5500 CC will get you 15 Crime Lord's Cartel Packs and leave some change. At current market values of 375k credits per CLCP, that means over 5.6 million credits, or roughly 140k credits per dollar you spend.

 

So, add it up. You folks desperate for in-game credits: do you want a return of 33k credits per dollar with an end result of sending money and jobs overseas, or would you rather have a return of 140k credits per dollar with an end result of possibly supporting more developers for the game and giving your fellow SWTORians a chance at some phat lewt?

[finelinebob]

Of course, this will not work. As soon as a few people try it, other people will start undercutting their prices on the GTN or in Trade/General/PVP Chat at fleet and the value of Cartel Packs will plummet.

[Fleurdelis]

Of course, this will not work. As soon as a few people try it, other people will start undercutting their prices on the GTN or in Trade/General/PVP Chat at fleet and the value of Cartel Packs will plummet.

 

And thats when ill buy them from the gtn.

[SyphonLord]

And thats when ill buy them from the gtn.

 

What he said ^^^^

[finelinebob]

And thats when ill buy them from the gtn.

 

And that's why the credit sellers will win.

[Ameepa]

What the.. 1 mil creds for 30$? Really? That's the most insane rate I've ever seen in any game and people are actually paying that?

[Devlonir]

And that's why the credit sellers will win.

 

No they won't, because in such market situations people with big pockets and lots of patience will just, literally, buy out the market and restock it then with newer, higher, prices that they define.

 

That's how MMO markets have always worked. People get rich over the back of silly undercutters.

[finelinebob]

No they won't, because in such market situations people with big pockets and lots of patience will just, literally, buy out the market and restock it then with newer, higher, prices that they define.

 

That's how MMO markets have always worked. People get rich over the back of silly undercutters.

 

Really?

 

I guess that is why crafters of item mod 27's have gone from charging hundreds of thousands of credits if you provided the mats, millions if you didn't. to "I'll craft any 27 item, your mats, no tip needed, half mats if I crit". I've seen that "undercut the undercutters until they start losing money, then raise the prices back up" many, many times in this game and it never has happened.

[patchew]

well, gold buyers are against EA/BIO rules you agree to when creating an account to play the game. If you buy credits, and considering some of the replys to this post it seems to be rife, then your account should be deleted and your IP blocked.

There are many charitys investigating the addictiveness of gambling through online computer games (st vincent de pauls has already lodged many papers with the european courts about the destructive and gambling-promoting nature of CC and other in-game real money exchange tools. Some governments are even looking in to prosecution for tax avoidance within their borders. Dont i recall one country banning a certain elves/walking cows online game a while back.

 

EA/BIO would get in to a lot of hot water if they were seen to be flat out encouraging online gambling ... lets remember, this is not an 18s certified game. Gambling under the age of 18 is illegal in many countrys worldwide.

What EA/BIO have done is to make money relatively valueless in this game ... really, what do you actually need it for. Once you put in some work to your alts and get your own production line formed, you dont really need to buy anything from GTN.

Repairs/cosmetics/legacy unlocks (you can buy them all after you get your first or second 50, lets be honest) is all, really.

I've never bought a single thing off GTN, nor have i bought any money in exchange for real lfie cash, and i do 8man heroic ops a lot.

 

Long may it live.

i think its fantastic that EA/BIO have made money fairly inessential to do endgame and i really hope that never changes. They can keep my sub as long as it stays that way.

[Devlonir]

Really?

 

I guess that is why crafters of item mod 27's have gone from charging hundreds of thousands of credits if you provided the mats, millions if you didn't. to "I'll craft any 27 item, your mats, no tip needed, half mats if I crit". I've seen that "undercut the undercutters until they start losing money, then raise the prices back up" many, many times in this game and it never has happened.

 

Do you even know why crafters of those mods do that?

1) There is so much competition now with people that can craft those things that they have to work on their price

2) Because when they crit, they still give 1 mod back to whoever gave the mats and can sell the other mods for tons of credits on the GTN.

3) The market started realising this and basicly said: You should be happy I give you the chance to get that crit, I could go to someone else.

 

They still get their profit one way or the other.

[CelCawdro]

I was expecting satire...

[finelinebob]

I was expecting satire...

 

Yeah, I know. I doubt most people have ever read "A Modest Proposal" or slept through it when they had to. Even taking a slap at undercutting ... but some people take undercutting others as their God-given right, no, duty. That probably killed any chance at entertainment. Sry.

[FourTwent]

how about EA just moderate the game Edited November 30, 2012 by FourTwent

[ForceFossil]

Last night on The Shadowlands Server you could hardly read general chat due to the massive amount of credit sellers spamming advertisements for their scummy websites. Lots of people, myself included, reported them, but seemingly no one is reading or acting on those reports because it went on all night.

 

Please do something.

[Vandicus]

This is something that should be addressed. Here's hoping for IP blocks.

[Calsetes]

Right-click, hit Report Spam, enough people do it they'll take action against them. Unfortunately, that's the only suggestion I have. There was a bit of a bout of credit-spammers when the game launched, but they got taken care of relatively quickly.

[Andryah]

I doubt that the ban-stick team works after normal business hours, since it's not mission critical to server play. So it's unrealistic to expect insta-bans. Besides, they need to review a report before taking action.... since players could grief other playes with spam reports. They will see the reports in the morning when they come in to work and take appropriate action after they review what actually happened.

 

This MMO has been better then just about every other in terms of dealing with currency spammers. So report them and move on. Lots of people reporting a particular character speeds the resolution process I am sure.

 

Personally, I think the credit sellers are testing limits again to see what they can get away with post F2P launch. If history is any indication.... they are going to get beaten down hard by Bioware.

Edited November 30, 2012 by Andryah

[calleverybody]

i seen one last night on the P of the five. 100k for $29 is what he keep saying and a website to go to.

[Kelha]

i seen one last night on the P of the five. 100k for $29 is what he keep saying and a website to go to.

 

Just curious- was he/she spamming for 100k, as in 100,000 credits for $29? Or 1,000,000? Either way, that's an incredibly stupid amount of real money for credit gain- which would give legitimacy to the above poster's note about testing their limits. But surely they should know that $29 of cartel coins spent in items to trade (i.e. armor sets) would rack even a miserly user far more than even a million in game credits. Then again, there's credit farmers for you.

[Triality]

The two times this has happened since launch, BW took the right approach (from my perspective). They accumulated data from us, the players, and their own sniffers to localize the source. Once they had them pinpointed, splat, all were wiped out within a matter of hours, never to be seen again.

 

It does little good to ban characters, they are too easy to create. Banning IPs, however, is a very effective tool, but care must be taken to avoid impact to legitimate players. I imagine if there are a mix of credit sellers and spammers in one location, they notified the ISP prior to action. Valid internet providers take their own action also.

 

Keep reporting, place the character on ignore, and one day you will get the message..

 

You are no longer ignoring <x> (repeatedly)

 

They are dead.

[sstanks]

The two times this has happened since launch, BW took the right approach (from my perspective). They accumulated data from us, the players, and their own sniffers to localize the source. Once they had them pinpointed, splat, all were wiped out within a matter of hours, never to be seen again.

 

It does little good to ban characters, they are too easy to create. Banning IPs, however, is a very effective tool, but care must be taken to avoid impact to legitimate players. I imagine if there are a mix of credit sellers and spammers in one location, they notified the ISP prior to action. Valid internet providers take their own action also.

 

Keep reporting, place the character on ignore, and one day you will get the message..

 

You are no longer ignoring <x> (repeatedly)

 

They are dead.

 

 

This. Bioware has been pretty good at taking care of the gold farmers. Just hit the report button then put them on your block list and you will be fine.

 

 

But really this is a good thing. More gold sellers means the game is doing better.

[Vandicus]

Wow. Just wow. Have you ever in your entire forum history failed to defend or even *gasp* criticised anything about this game?

 

So an investigation into this would take all of 30 seconds to see the player spammed a gold selling message. The resulting account ban should take a minute, tops.

 

Better than just about every other? How about the game in which they figured out how to block the vast majority of spam messages so nobody ever sees them?

 

Lacking ingame support during any playing time is inexcusable. EA knew they were getting into a 24x365 operation when they launched this MMO. They should be staffed.

 

Guess you missed the first round of gold seller bannings? They happened en masse before, presumably with IP blocking. Andryah is correct in that they came down very hard on them last time, just took a while.

[DarthTHC]

This. Bioware has been pretty good at taking care of the gold farmers. Just hit the report button then put them on your block list and you will be fine.

 

 

But really this is a good thing. More gold sellers means the game is doing better.

 

Actually that's not what it means.

 

It's not really more gold sellers. It's more gold spammers.

 

More gold spammers means that the barrier of entry for them to get into the game to advertise has been eliminated or reduced to the point that it's worth it to them. That is to say, F2P.

 

More aggressive gold spamming means they have inventory sitting around that isn't selling. Probably that they're seeing a downswing in sales. So they're advertising more aggressively because that's their next step.

 

This makes sense because players can now turn cash into credits simply by buying cartel coins, using those to buy cartel shop items, and posting those items on the GTN. They no longer need the questionable, shady gold sellers to do that.

[Zem_]

Seems like they could implement an auto-silence system if they do it right. It wouldn't ban someone... just revoke their chat privileges for a few hours or a day or something. If it only worked by collecting enough spam reports from subscribers against a single F2P account (fewer if it's a free account, more if it's preferred), that would do most of the job. Not because subscribers are all such angels, but because the spammers are usually going to be using F2P accounts and the subscribers would have the most to lose being banned for griefing if they abused the system.

 

I wouldn't mind also seeing the server do some spam filtering of its own. All the spam I saw last night would have been easily machine-detectable. Does any MMO do this? Seems like it wouldn't be that big a deal.

[DarthTHC]

Seems like they could implement an auto-silence system if they do it right. It wouldn't ban someone... just revoke their chat privileges for a few hours or a day or something. If it only worked by collecting enough spam reports from subscribers against a single F2P account (fewer if it's a free account, more if it's preferred), that would do most of the job. Not because subscribers are all such angels, but because the spammers are usually going to be using F2P accounts and the subscribers would have the most to lose being banned for griefing if they abused the system.

 

I wouldn't mind also seeing the server do some spam filtering of its own. All the spam I saw last night would have been easily machine-detectable. Does any MMO do this? Seems like it wouldn't be that big a deal.

 

WoW seemed to be pretty good at it when I played. Spammers had to get really, really creative to get their messages across.