Easy solution for gold spammers problem.

[Kantaso]

Right now the epidemic of gold spammers is out of hand, the easiest solution is to beat them at their own game.

 

Right now they advertise from anywhere around $7.99 to $9.99 for 1 million credits, the solution could be for EA to sell 1 million credits to subscribers and preferred members for $4.99, the gold spammers cannot afford to go that low.

[Khalvarik]

Actually the best solution is to have live chat mods....

This would eliminate two problems in one go ,

a)instantly removes gold spammers from chat

b)gets rid of conversations in chat that get out of hand i.e. religion and political topics that can get very bad.

[Kantaso]

Actually the best solution is to have live chat mods....

This would eliminate two problems in one go ,

a)instantly removes gold spammers from chat

b)gets rid of conversations in chat that get out of hand i.e. religion and political topics that can get very bad.

 

That could be the best solution but sadly is not going to happen and the gold spammers are getting worse.

[Ergos]

Or as i posted on some other thread, the lazy solution, make it legacy lv10 to post on fleet, that way they wont just be able to make a new account, it will waste their time to get new legacys to lv10

 

And as soon as one is spoted, ban it, making that legacy useless

 

 

 

Another idea is to have a "spam - gold seller" option that has higher priority for the custom care service to check, sending them the last 10-20 spams with a high priority ticket, and give custom care the option to easily click "ban" if needed.

 

Its all about backbone systems that bioware has or dont have, this problem shouldnt exist as it does right now, doesnt take a rocket science to make it go away.

 

 

And before people say "doesnt help to ban them", well not banning them or just ignoring the problem is worste.

 

And seing the same spammers hours even at times days after you repported them, is just very anoying

[Lotharofxev]

Or as i posted on some other thread, the lazy solution, make it legacy lv10

 

+1

 

Too bad it will never happen.

[psandak]

I have been doing some investigating into this recently. There are only a handful of names gold spamming on both sides (on The Harbinger). Simply put them on ignore, problem solved. Yes, you have to do this on ALL your characters, but it only takes 5 seconds per name.

[Kirazy]

I have been doing some investigating into this recently. There are only a handful of names gold spamming on both sides (on The Harbinger). Simply put them on ignore, problem solved. Yes, you have to do this on ALL your characters, but it only takes 5 seconds per name.

 

It's only worth it to ignore them as you see them, as you play a character. The accounts doing the spamming are throw away.

 

Any measure, such as making a level 10 legacy requirement to say anything in Fleet chat, would be far, far more negatively impactful to the actual paying/F2P playerbase. It is unfortunate, but the game is healthier if they are left alone. There is not a lot that can be done to deal with a spammer like this that would not make the game hell for the rest of us.

 

For what its worth, they don't clog up fleet chat to the exclusion of all else, ignoring them is easy, and they don't refresh their accounts very often. On other games I've seen it to the point it is impossible to hold conversations its so bad. It's really not terrible here.

[ninjonxb]

I think the idea of buying credits for money is a bit of a slippery slope.

 

While it is obvious that there is a demand for it and Bioware could probably make a significant amount of money on it,

The first thing we would hear about on the forums is Pay 2 Win.

 

In some ways I agree with it however at the same time with a bit of work and patience you can already convert cartel coins to credits by selling cartel items on the GTN. This also keeps players in control of the conversion and not Bioware.

 

The one major side affect this would have though is to drastically alter the current marketplace. With this there is the possibility of a very large quantity of credits "appearing out of thin air" in very short periods of time (I know it all comes out of thin air when we are taking about drops but its not at the same speed).

Edited June 23, 2014 by ninjonxb

[BuriDogshin]

How would people feel about BW giving a limited number of volunteer players who meet certain criteria the power to moderate Fleet chat by temporarily imposing, say, a 4-hour ban on posting on anyone violating the TOS? Misuse of the power would lead to revocation of the authority and possible suspension/banning.

 

Qualifications could include any or all of:

 

• long term subscriber
  
• Legacy level 50
  
• Officer of a guild
  
• No outstanding ToS violations
  
• High level of activity
  
• A bond of some number of credits (a million maybe) that would be seized on abuse of the power
  

 

 

And player-mods would be forbidden from advertising their status.

Obstacles to this system would include the need to write code to accomplish it.

 

Personally I know a lot of players that meet all the above criteria (which I do not BTW) and that have demonstrated the maturity and integrity you would want to see in a chat moderator. Whether they would volunteer for this, I cannot say.

[Kantaso]

The problem with having players with that kind of power is that could become a liability where they could ban people just because they dont like them or just for fun.

 

Right now you can buy items in the Store and sell them for credits, so why not just allow players to buy the credits straight from the Store, there are a lot of gold sinks in the game already that can balance the credit market, there is only so much you can buy with credits. As an example of a gold sink keep the casino open all year around, create a finance market where players could buy and sell real state etc etc.

[BuriDogshin]

The problem with having players with that kind of power is that could become a liability where they could ban people just because they dont like them or just for fun.

And risk having their Legacy 50 account banned? I think it will be a rare occurrence. Plus being temporarily banned from posting to fleet chat isn't much of a disaster.

[Rankyn]

The Easy Solution to CREDIT Spammers™ ,,, Report, Ignore, Forget.

 

BioWare will NEVER stop these guys no matter what they do.

They could devote 100% of developer resources to the problem for the next 6 months and what would you get?

Six months with nothing added to the game and credit spammers still spamming.

 

However, there are two relatively minor things they could do that would enhance the systems already in place for dealing with them:

1) Make the report function automatically ignore them, or at least give separate "report" and "report & ignore" options.

2) Make the ignore list Legacy-wide so you only have to ignore them once. This has additional benefits beyond just ignoring spammers.

 

Sure, they could get close to eliminating them by introducing draconian chat restrictions but imposing severe limitations on legitimate players just to combat what, in the grand scheme of things, is nothing more than a minor annoyance is just a stupid idea.

[CyberneticDucks]

Or as i posted on some other thread, the lazy solution, make it legacy lv10 to post on fleet, that way they wont just be able to make a new account, it will waste their time to get new legacys to lv10

 

And as soon as one is spoted, ban it, making that legacy useless

 

 

 

Another idea is to have a "spam - gold seller" option that has higher priority for the custom care service to check, sending them the last 10-20 spams with a high priority ticket, and give custom care the option to easily click "ban" if needed.

 

Its all about backbone systems that bioware has or dont have, this problem shouldnt exist as it does right now, doesnt take a rocket science to make it go away.

 

 

And before people say "doesnt help to ban them", well not banning them or just ignoring the problem is worste.

 

And seing the same spammers hours even at times days after you repported them, is just very anoying

 

i like your thinking, having a gold spammer report option would be great. mods take money and volunteers of any kind would become corrupt and IP addresses are easy to obtain. we should put in minor chat restrictions a human being would have no trouble with. this problem needs more thought than just the obvious solutions. by no way is a problem this big going to be easy. the following are my ideas:

 

1. keep the same exact message from being sent twice in a row.

 

spammers simply spam the same exact message over and over, guild advertisers do the same. most human beings would rarely state the same message over again in any kind of conversation.

 

2. posting a comment puts it on cooldown.

 

chances are the gold spammers will start alternating between spam comment 1 and spam comment 2 to avoid the previous chat restriction. i say that posting a comment should put that exact message on a 5 minute cooldown.

 

3. repeating the same comment 10 times in a row notifies a moderator.

 

chances are saying the same exact comment 10 times in, say, half an hour means someone is up to no good. it may not be a spammer but whoever it is they are spamming something for some reason. a silent report is then sent to a moderator.

4. getting a silent report sent to a mod for spamming 3-5 times gets your account chat-silenced.

 

if someone is doing that much spamming, bot or not, behavior like that must not be tolerated. they are then silenced from using all forms of chat, other than group and whispers.

whispers are directed at a particular person, and spammers don't target particular people. spambots cannot accept group invites, either, nor would anyone want to. any player can also ignore whispers from a particular person if they aren't a spammer. the chat silencer is permanent until you are investigated by Customer Support. the CS person may also ban an account if they find it is designed for spamming purposes.

 

 

a must is a limitless ignore list that ignores a whole account. there is no way in hell that someone would be any less of a problem just because they are playing as another character. the person behind the controls is always the same, and all they have to do is make another toon to keep bugging you.

the same goes with spammers. if you ignore a whole account, the people making the bots must make a whole new account, which would only slow them down, but that is still an advantage.

 

i like your idea of legacy requirements for using the chat. perhaps players are restricted to basic commands like "yes" or "no" could be a compromise. whispers and group chat, discussed previously, should be unaffected so new players can still communicate without having access to large amounts of people. that way they can coordinate with others and talk 1 to 1 with other players. guild chat should also be unaffected since spammers cannot accept guild invites, nor would anyone want to invite them. legacy level 10 is a good choice.

 

another is simply to block things like (com), (www), (http), and the like. sure, they surely will encrypt it, but with my 4-step system spammers will have pretty few options.

Edited June 23, 2014 by CyberneticDucks

[OddballEasyEight]

Well, seeing as ~69 bucks gives you ~10 million in-game that's 6.90 for 1 million...

 

I'm talking about hypercrates of course.

Buy one for ~6900cc and sell it for 10 millon (or the individual crates for ~450k each) and you've got your own "buy gold for real money" scheme.

[Kourage]

When EA sells credits, I cancel my sub and play something else.

[DomiSotto]

I just try not to spend time on the Fleet. I also switch to Other when Chat is getting out of hand. It is probably harder when people are looking for ninja group invites

 

Ideally, the chat from Friends and Group would go under the Other window.

[ATAMIANM]

The gold spammers are pretty bad, but the inane General Chat discussion topics are insanely mind-numbing. Last few nights looking for a pickup group for ops, had to endure endless barrages directed against a well known player on the Harbinger, and his responses, various political and social rants. Ignore button was my favorite that evening.

 

It would be nice if there was a dedicated LFG chat. Maybe something where you subscribe to what ops you want and are interested in, so people can add you directly without your advertising. Or if you are organizing a raid, select the people you want.

[Andryah]

Right now the epidemic of gold spammers is out of hand, the easiest solution is to beat them at their own game.

 

Right now they advertise from anywhere around $7.99 to $9.99 for 1 million credits, the solution could be for EA to sell 1 million credits to subscribers and preferred members for $4.99, the gold spammers cannot afford to go that low.

 

Credit sellers, as evil as they are, are not inflating the credit supply... just moving it around from player to player for real life money. They cannot print credits.. they have to obtain them. Most credit sellers these days are simply buying from players at one price, adding a markup, and reselling to other players. No additional credits enter the game from this.

 

Your approach would actually inject new credits into the credit supply and accelerate inflation in the economy. The economy runs really well 2.5 years into the game. Let's not muck it up by printing and selling credits to players.

[Andryah]

The gold spammers are pretty bad, but the inane General Chat discussion topics are insanely mind-numbing.

 

I agree. While I generally just ignore the general chat channel when in Fleet..... the times I do see it... the credit spammers are not the problem with general chat. It's all the monkey poop being tossed back and forth, hateful rhetoric, Mom-bashing, etc.

[DarthTHC]

Right now the epidemic of gold spammers is out of hand, the easiest solution is to beat them at their own game.

 

Right now they advertise from anywhere around $7.99 to $9.99 for 1 million credits, the solution could be for EA to sell 1 million credits to subscribers and preferred members for $4.99, the gold spammers cannot afford to go that low.

 

That's a horrible solution.

 

Credit sellers sell credits created through the game naturally. Those credits are already accounted for in the economic math behind the game's economy.

 

If BioWare did what you are suggesting, they would be creating another credit faucet - more credits pouring into the economy every time someone spent $5.

 

Credit sellers can afford to go as low as they need to go. They don't have a sweatshop worth of illegals manning computers 24x7 to grind credits. That's 1990's. They look a whole lot more like brokers now, and the people who will sell their excess credits are going to sell them for whatever they can get for them.

 

The solutions are actually:

 

1) Put an auto chat ban on any F2P account once it is reported for spam more than X times in Y minutes. Suggest X=60 and Y=3.

 

2) Implement a smarter chat filiter similar to what Blizzard did with WoW, even if that means F2P accounts are limited to Party, Guild, and Operations channels. (Pay $5, get chat.)

[VinceTam]

How would people feel about BW giving a limited number of volunteer players who meet certain criteria the power to moderate Fleet chat by temporarily imposing, say, a 4-hour ban on posting on anyone violating the TOS? Misuse of the power would lead to revocation of the authority and possible suspension/banning.

 

Qualifications could include any or all of:

• long term subscriber
  
• Legacy level 50
  
• Officer of a guild
  
• No outstanding ToS violations
  
• High level of activity
  
• A bond of some number of credits (a million maybe) that would be seized on abuse of the power
  

 

And player-mods would be forbidden from advertising their status.

Obstacles to this system would include the need to write code to accomplish it.

 

Personally I know a lot of players that meet all the above criteria (which I do not BTW) and that have demonstrated the maturity and integrity you would want to see in a chat moderator. Whether they would volunteer for this, I cannot say.

 

Sounds somewhat like the Warden program in SWG....and it worked tremendously well!!!

[DarthTHC]

How would people feel about BW giving a limited number of volunteer players who meet certain criteria the power to moderate Fleet chat by temporarily imposing, say, a 4-hour ban on posting on anyone violating the TOS? Misuse of the power would lead to revocation of the authority and possible suspension/banning.

 

Qualifications could include any or all of:

• long term subscriber
  
• Legacy level 50
  
• Officer of a guild
  
• No outstanding ToS violations
  
• High level of activity
  
• A bond of some number of credits (a million maybe) that would be seized on abuse of the power
  

 

And player-mods would be forbidden from advertising their status.

Obstacles to this system would include the need to write code to accomplish it.

 

Personally I know a lot of players that meet all the above criteria (which I do not BTW) and that have demonstrated the maturity and integrity you would want to see in a chat moderator. Whether they would volunteer for this, I cannot say.

 

I meet all those criteria. If it only costed me a million credits to chat-ban and idiot spewing polit-relig-tard in general, I'd chat-ban hundreds of them.

[BuriDogshin]

I meet all those criteria. If it only costed me a million credits to chat-ban and idiot spewing polit-relig-tard in general, I'd chat-ban hundreds of them.

Did you miss this:

Misuse of the power would lead to revocation of the authority and possible suspension/banning.

The million credit bond is just to give BW a minor sanction to impose for minor transgressions.

The ban hammer is also contemplated as being available.

[DarthTHC]

Did you miss this:

 

The million credit bond is just to give BW a minor sanction to impose for minor transgressions.

The ban hammer is also contemplated as being available.

 

The People would rally behind me.

[Prototypemind]

Active mods would be great, but as is pointed out every time these threads come up, gold spam in this game is nothing compared to others, even games like ESO and Wildstar that are new and require a sub to play. There are better solutions than what we have now, but I doubt they'll be implemented anytime soon.