Easy solution for gold spammers problem.

[Fidelicatessen]

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.

 

Excellent idea! You can't take away the demand, so meet the demand and compete with the sellers.

 

The sellers aren't going away, at least not if your game is successful. But undercutting them and making it unprofitable *would* make them go away!

 

To the folks who cry "Pay2win!" I say this: you can already get credits for real money, simply by buying gambling packs and selling them. This would simply make it more naked; it would not be adding a new thing.

[Fidelicatessen]

Lots of really good suggestions here, sadly been mentioned thousand of times even before and during beta.

 

The first and easiest move would certainly to automatically ignore, legacy wide, gold spammers.

 

Now reporting them is even a hassle as you also have to close the popup and then you have to ignore them too.

Fact is it's less tedious for the spammer to spam than us to get rid of them.

 

Kinda crazy situation.

 

I agree that it is a big fat hassle to report spammers. EAWare seems to have made it that way (what's up with that useless window that pops up that you have to click OK on whenever you report a spammer, anyway? and why don't I automatically ignore a spammer as soon as I report them?).

 

Unfortunately, your solution is useless. Ignore the spammers, then they make new toons that you have to ignore. Ignore those toons, then they simply make more etc.

 

Redirect the demand rather than trying the (obviously futile) strategy of stopping the flow of supply.

[Kantaso]

And that is also why I mentioned a filter system, if we can filter a set of parameters for foul language why we cannot create a filtering system that could include words and symbols such as $, w.w.w., w-w-w, etc etc

[Santay]

That "Other" (SWG) Star Wars game had what were called wardens and they did a good job, same restrictions as you laid out. They had to remain secret and could not revel that they had that access or they would be flooded with requests and never got to play the game.

Im sure you would have a large number of volunteers coming forth if they added a program like that here.

 

They could ban a player from typing in chat until a gm could review what went on and either keep the ban, or un-ban them, or un-ban and take action against the warden for mis-use of power.

 

Would not be a bad thing if added, it would lighten the load on the gms and customer service reps. there really is no downside to EA / BW , --> free labor <-- is Still FREE.

 

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.

[DarthTHC]

Excellent idea! You can't take away the demand, so meet the demand and compete with the sellers.

 

The sellers aren't going away, at least not if your game is successful. But undercutting them and making it unprofitable *would* make them go away!

 

To the folks who cry "Pay2win!" I say this: you can already get credits for real money, simply by buying gambling packs and selling them. This would simply make it more naked; it would not be adding a new thing.

 

The part you might have missed further on up the thread is this would create a new credit faucet which is not accounted for in the economic model of the game. Creating a potentially infinite number of new credits at the players' will, virtually immediately, won't be a good thing for the game.

[psandak]

Excellent idea! You can't take away the demand, so meet the demand and compete with the sellers.

 

The sellers aren't going away, at least not if your game is successful. But undercutting them and making it unprofitable *would* make them go away!

 

To the folks who cry "Pay2win!" I say this: you can already get credits for real money, simply by buying gambling packs and selling them. This would simply make it more naked; it would not be adding a new thing.

 

The part you might have missed further on up the thread is this would create a new credit faucet which is not accounted for in the economic model of the game. Creating a potentially infinite number of new credits at the players' will, virtually immediately, won't be a good thing for the game.

This. And to add...

 

Right now most players do not partake of what "gold spammers" offer because there is a risk of being banned; like any other rule or law, just the threat/fear of being punished is enough to prevent it from happening. Competing with them would not only open the faucet, but it would give tacit approval to gold spammers. What if those spammers undercut EA/BW's prices?

 

I'll say it until it sinks in: I have proof positive that simply ignoring the spammers works. There's only a handful on either faction. Put them on your ignore list and problem solved. I know it solves the problem because I did exactly that three days ago now, and I have not seen another name spamming.

[HelinCarnate]

Calling someone dumb is similar to calling someone stupid, maybe you need to recheck what you post. And any how last reply to you, you are trolling this topic to promote your opinion.

 

My initial post.

 

This is the dumbest IDEA I have ever heard. Fix a gold spammer problem and create a massive inflation problem at the same time.

 

Notice that the idea is the thing that is dumb. I have seen some pretty bad and foolish ideas from some otherwise smart people and have also seen pure genius ideas come from people that I am shocked can put together a complete sentence. I never said anything about the person who had the idea. Once again, reading comprehension is your friend.

 

And the nerve of someone trying to promote their opinion. Its like I thought this was a forum for SWTOR or something.

Edited June 26, 2014 by HelinCarnate

[Fidelicatessen]

The part you might have missed further on up the thread is this would create a new credit faucet which is not accounted for in the economic model of the game. Creating a potentially infinite number of new credits at the players' will, virtually immediately, won't be a good thing for the game.

 

Good point, THC. It would require a re-jiggering of the entire economy. My idea is maybe not so good, now that you mention it. Unless/until they re-jigger the economy to take that into account.

 

Read Neal Stephenson's REAMDE for a look at an MMO that was designed from the ground up to accomodate gold spammers--you can both buy and sell gold as part of game mechanics.

 

Should I apologize for the shameless promotion of one of my favorite authors? Nah.

[mungozen]

There is a way to make an unattended anti-spam service in game, although the idea would need tweaking to get it right.

 

- If someone is reported for spamming, they receive a 'spam report' token on their account

- If the person receives say, 100 spam reports against them within the last 7 days, they receive an automatic suspension

- Spam reports would be account to account (not character to character), preventing/reducing players (or guilds) from rolling alts to report spam and get someone suspended maliciously.

- Spam tokens on an account would have a decay, to prevent non gold sellers from being suspended for the occasional poor choice of words in chat. Say a decay of 7 days.

- As this would be account based, the spam reports could come from multiple servers and lead to a suspension.

 

While this wouldn't necessarily crush gold sellers, it would create a requirements of many accounts doing a little bit of spamming each, which could prove to be to costly to maintain for those companies. Businesses do this to each other all the time, they make the cost of business prohibitive for other companies. Gold Spammers are a parasitic business, and Bioware should have all the tools to make it difficult to do business for them.

[DarthTHC]

There is a way to make an unattended anti-spam service in game, although the idea would need tweaking to get it right.

 

- If someone is reported for spamming, they receive a 'spam report' token on their account

- If the person receives say, 100 spam reports against them within the last 7 days, they receive an automatic suspension

- Spam reports would be account to account (not character to character), preventing/reducing players (or guilds) from rolling alts to report spam and get someone suspended maliciously.

- Spam tokens on an account would have a decay, to prevent non gold sellers from being suspended for the occasional poor choice of words in chat. Say a decay of 7 days.

- As this would be account based, the spam reports could come from multiple servers and lead to a suspension.

 

While this wouldn't necessarily crush gold sellers, it would create a requirements of many accounts doing a little bit of spamming each, which could prove to be to costly to maintain for those companies. Businesses do this to each other all the time, they make the cost of business prohibitive for other companies. Gold Spammers are a parasitic business, and Bioware should have all the tools to make it difficult to do business for them.

 

Your metrics for chat-ban are off. It should be something more like 60 in 5 minutes. That's 1/3 of a full instance of Fleet reporting within 5 minutes. Seems likely for credit spammers and will silence them virtually instantly.

 

Make the bans auto-lift but automatically increase in duration each time they occur. First one is an hour. Second, 12 hours. Third, 7 days. Fourth, permanently lose access to all chat channels except Guild, Party, and Operations.

 

Only auto chat ban F2P (not preferred, not subscriber) accounts.

[Thoronmir]

I am far more likely to /ignore someone littering General with unseemly chatter about race, religion, politics, or sex than some poor guy simply hawking his hard-earned in-game currency. I find Gold Spammers no greater annoyance than players who tout their Guild's current recruitment drive. It doesn't matter to me that the Guild-shills at least hold a legitimate position in our little virtual society. Spam is spam to me.

 

It's like how I find no difference with a telemarketer calling to sell me tickets to some concert in support of an established and worthwhile charity and the bozo from AT&T asking me to change my internet service. One may serve a more valid purpose according to my personal ethos, but neither is welcome. Both get "ignored" (i.e., I hang up).

 

My personal perspective is likely colored by the fact that I spend almost no time observing the General channel. I intentionally placed General in its own chatbox so I have to choose to pay attention to it (which I rarely do). I can often go weeks without ever seeing a word in General. But when I am monitoring General, I haven't found a great need for EA/BW intervention to block the torrent of gold spammers whose enticing claims of offering piles of credits at the lowest prices pose such a threat to the fabric of a game in which I pretend to have mystical Jedi powers.

 

But then, I like to RP. So when I see gold-seller spam, I simply wave my hand and intone, "I am not the gold-buying sucker you're looking for."* Granted, I do that in real life ... in person ... sitting at my computer. My computer always seems nonplussed by my behavior. In-game, I just use the /ignore feature and soldier on.

 

*For the record, I've never been comfortable with Obi-Wan's poor grammar. A true Jedi Master would have said, "These aren't the droids for which you're looking."

[mungozen]

Your metrics for chat-ban are off. It should be something more like 60 in 5 minutes. That's 1/3 of a full instance of Fleet reporting within 5 minutes. Seems likely for credit spammers and will silence them virtually instantly.

 

Make the bans auto-lift but automatically increase in duration each time they occur. First one is an hour. Second, 12 hours. Third, 7 days. Fourth, permanently lose access to all chat channels except Guild, Party, and Operations.

 

Only auto chat ban F2P (not preferred, not subscriber) accounts.

 

You get the idea tho, the numbers would need some testing of course, but it could be a viable solution which provides minimal interaction from the SWTOR staff.

[TravelersWay]

I am far more likely to /ignore someone littering General with unseemly chatter about race, religion, politics, or sex than some poor guy simply hawking his hard-earned in-game currency. I find Gold Spammers no greater annoyance than players who tout their Guild's current recruitment drive. It doesn't matter to me that the Guild-shills at least hold a legitimate position in our little virtual society. Spam is spam to me.

 

I had to stop reading right there because no truer words have ever been spoken. In every MMO I have ever played, the amount of Gold Farmer spam that comprised the general chat channel was but very small percentage of all the other guild/trade/LFG spam (among all the others) that goes on. I do find the Gold Farmers annoying because they are a detriment to the industry, but for anyone to complain about their spam had better look in the mirror first to see if they are part of the larger spam problem before casting the first stone.

 

Want to chat ban Gold Farmers. I'm fine with that, so long as all the other spammers are chat banned in kind.

Edited June 26, 2014 by TravelersWay

[Vinak]

I am in favor of the "do nothing" strategy when it comes to gold spammers.

 

The game already has easy tools to report and ignore gold spammers. Once everybody places a spammer on ignore, they don't bother anybody.

 

But once a gm or some auto ban system kicks in and bans the spammer, the game starts over and forces everybody to repeat the process. It ends up being one giant game of whac-a-mole.

 

I would instead make some kind of hidden banning system.

 

Once an account is identified as a spammer, do nothing. Once the owner of that account realizes the vast majority of players have them on ignore and attempts to make a new character, ban the account.

 

 

As for those who foolishly wish they could ban people for having conversations on a topic they dislike....Grow up? Censoring people like that could get ugly really fast in unpredictable ways.

Edited June 27, 2014 by Vinak

[Andryah]

I had to stop reading right there because no truer words have ever been spoken. In every MMO I have ever played, the amount of Gold Farmer spam that comprised the general chat channel was but very small percentage of all the other guild/trade/LFG spam (among all the others) that goes on. I do find the Gold Farmers annoying because they are a detriment to the industry, but for anyone to complain about their spam had better look in the mirror first to see if they are part of the larger spam problem before casting the first stone.

 

Want to chat ban Gold Farmers. I'm fine with that, so long as all the other spammers are chat banned in kind.

 

^^

[Liquor]

So how would we fix the problem as you see it? Price caps? Those create shortages and black markets. In game terms it means prices would gravitate to the cap and if the cap was set too low, then people would be spamming chat in fleet even more for WTB/WTS. That does not fix the problem

 

 

Credit limit. 10 mil per character. Frack 'em