Holy fleet spam

[DarkSaberMaster]

It has everything to do with F2P, that's not even up for debate.

 

Then explain the multitudes of credit sellers in SWG? A game that was subscription only.

[DarkSaberMaster]

Games have had this problem long before F2P became a business model. Also, plenty of games on the market that have no free component....including this one before the launch of the market/f2p had or have problems with gold sellers.

 

F2P is not the issue, it is one of the contributing factors. But there are many contributing factors.

 

The biggest factor is player greed, something that developers can do little about.

 

So no, getting rid of F2P would only have a temporary damping effect. In the end gold sales would resume in earnest, just like they did in this game in the past.

 

QFE all of this.

[idnewton]

Games have had this problem long before F2P became a business model. Also, plenty of games on the market that have no free component....including this one before the launch of the market/f2p had or have problems with gold sellers.

 

F2P is not the issue, it is one of the contributing factors. But there are many contributing factors.

 

The biggest factor is player greed, something that developers can do little about.

 

So no, getting rid of F2P would only have a temporary damping effect. In the end gold sales would resume in earnest, just like they did in this game in the past.

 

It was almost completely gone from SWTOR until the game went F2P. It just causes it to hurt the companies a lot more to advertise ingame, which takes care of many of the lesser ones. It's gone down a bit, but a few months ago I was seeing a new site advertising every week or so.

 

The "major" sites will continue to spam, I'm sure, but it would lessen the spam considerably. Unfortunately, it isn't a viable option.

[LordArtemis]

It was almost completely gone from SWTOR until the game went F2P. It just causes it to hurt the companies a lot more to advertise ingame, which takes care of many of the lesser ones. It's gone down a bit, but a few months ago I was seeing a new site advertising every week or so.

 

The "major" sites will continue to spam, I'm sure, but it would lessen the spam considerably. Unfortunately, it isn't a viable option.

 

I get what you are saying, and I am not trying to contend that F2P does not contribute...of course it does. And I concede that gold sales dropped dramatically about 1.5 to 2 years ago....but I think that had as much to do with the games slipping relevance at that moment in history in the market as it did with successful efforts to curb sales.

 

I may have the time period wrong, but generally speaking around august of 2012 most servers were very light in population. The server merge had not occurred yet, and when it did gold sales resumed in earnest.

 

RIGHT NOW gold sales are crazy, IMO, due to three factors....

 

New interest based on the expansion.

Ability to level characters quickly using 12XP during the event.

Ability to farm chests on Rishi prior to the regular launch (during early access).

 

During this time I speculate that gold sellers were able to jump in, level up to 55 fairly quick, and farm Rishi chest in anticipation of the open launch of the expansion. So they are overflowing with credits at the moment.

 

I fully expect gold sales will die down in around 60 days to normal levels.

Edited December 19, 2014 by LordArtemis

[Orizuru]

Games have had this problem long before F2P became a business model. Also, plenty of games on the market that have no free component....including this one before the launch of the market/f2p had or have problems with gold sellers.

 

F2P is not the issue, it is one of the contributing factors. But there are many contributing factors.

 

The biggest factor is player greed, something that developers can do little about.

 

So no, getting rid of F2P would only have a temporary damping effect. In the end gold sales would resume in earnest, just like they did in this game in the past.

 

I believe F2P is the root of the problem for the bulk of the spammers. I think WoW is a good example that shows this.

 

In WoW the trial accounts are restricted from using most public chat channels like general chat. They can't send mail and they can't send whispers. So these free accounts are almost worthless for any kind of spamming short of running into a populated area and spamming the /say channel, which is limited to the players within a certain radius of the spammer.

 

If a spammer buys a subscription, they get reported enough times that the account gets suspended fairly quickly. So this leaves them with only one remaining option, stolen and hacked accounts. Since digital keyfobs like authenticators have become more and more popular the security of accounts has improved vastly.

 

In my opinion, if you get rid of free access to the game in ways that allow them to spam, and you foster a belief among players that reporting spammers gets the accounts used for spamming locked-down and follow through with locking those accounts when they are reported, then the problem goes away almost completely because the only avenue left to the spammers is to use stolen and hacked accounts, and those get locked down just as quickly as the ones the spammers pay for as subscribers if both players and moderators remain diligent about locking down accounts that are reported for spamming.

[Frybert]

It was almost completely gone from SWTOR until the game went F2P. It just causes it to hurt the companies a lot more to advertise ingame, which takes care of many of the lesser ones. It's gone down a bit, but a few months ago I was seeing a new site advertising every week or so.

 

The "major" sites will continue to spam, I'm sure, but it would lessen the spam considerably. Unfortunately, it isn't a viable option.

 

The game was only about a year old when it went F2P, the credit sellers were just getting set up then.

[Frybert]

Since just about every credit spammer thread eventually devolves into a 'get rid of F2P' I just thought I would leave this here.

 

*Jeff Goldblum voice* The spammers will find a way.

[Andryah]

3) Using some kind of community policing system. This can be very effective if done properly. When players are given the ability to police themselves they can reduce gold sales dramatically. Naturally there is a possibility of abuse, but offering free subscriptions, in addition to the threat of permanent bans for bad behavior can work to diminish this kind of behavior.

IMO the third option is the best one to go with if you intend to stifle gold sales in a game.

 

Not with the modern gaming community we have playing MMOs. Seriously.. this would be a disaster and would cause more problems then it fixes due simply to abuse (which will be of course denied and painted over with "I did not know I could not do that").

 

Sorry LA. There are simply too many ways for players to grief others with this approach. It relies on an honor system and integrity by the player... which it should be obvious from today's internet proliferation of attempts to bully, cheat, intimidate via social media is a significant problem. People by and large do not respect other people on the internet, and MMOs are internet games.

 

It's a good concept... but the community lacks the integrity to do this without significant vetting by the company. Even then.. there will be issues..... OR WORSE... alleged issues by anyone who gets sanctioned by an empowered player.

 

TL;DR: I like my neighbors... but there is no way they are qualified to step in for local law enforcement. The same goes for the MMO playerbase.

Edited December 19, 2014 by Andryah

[Andryah]

You forgot option 4:

 

4) Discontinue F2P/Preferred Models, make game Sub-Only again. **** 'em all. Problem solved.

 

In case you had not noticed... most of the spam is coming from active subscriber accounts. How do I know? They are spamming chat more then a F2P can and they are sending 1 credit in the mail.

 

They are using cheap (5-7 dollars) throw away copies of the game that come with 30 free days of subscriber access.

 

Besides... we had credit spammers before F2P, and we will have them (just like any other MMO that is not on life support) until the day they shut the servers down in the future. The company simply has to continue to manage the issue and adapt to the clever and ever changing nature of the RMT companies.

Edited December 19, 2014 by Andryah

[Edzew]

It was almost completely gone from SWTOR until the game went F2P. It just causes it to hurt the companies a lot more to advertise ingame, which takes care of many of the lesser ones. It's gone down a bit, but a few months ago I was seeing a new site advertising every week or so.

 

The "major" sites will continue to spam, I'm sure, but it would lessen the spam considerably. Unfortunately, it isn't a viable option.

 

umm you forgot that the game was darn near dead before it went free to play thats why you didnt as many B^P why try to sell gold in a game that hardly has any players?? B^P

[RahaylaCora]

I remember when i started to play, when F2P was available. Tython was a planet suffering a lot of spam, but ignoring and reporting was very effective, as you could read soon in your chat something like "you are no longer ignoring xxxxx", clearly meaning that the player name was "deleted" or "banned". I am sure that a quick check of the message when there is a massive reporting and ignoring, looking for key words as those refering to any website, could be erradicated almost in real time, at least account locked until human investigation. Those spam messages are written the same way.

[LordArtemis]

Not with the modern gaming community we have playing MMOs. Seriously.. this would be a disaster and would cause more problems then it fixes due simply to abuse (which will be of course denied and painted over with "I did not know I could not do that").

 

Sorry LA. There are simply too many ways for players to grief others with this approach. It relies on an honor system and integrity by the player... which it should be obvious from today's internet proliferation of attempts to bully, cheat, intimidate via social media is a significant problem. People by and large do not respect other people on the internet, and MMOs are internet games.

 

It's a good concept... but the community lacks the integrity to do this without significant vetting by the company. Even then.. there will be issues..... OR WORSE... alleged issues by anyone who gets sanctioned by an empowered player.

 

TL;DR: I like my neighbors... but there is no way they are qualified to step in for local law enforcement. The same goes for the MMO playerbase.

 

I would like to argue against your point Andryah...unfortunately you make too much sense.

 

STOP THAT lol.

 

Ok, I have to concede on this one. Though I still think there is some way to make it work, I have to concede that there are many problems that could arise from such a system.

Edited December 20, 2014 by LordArtemis

[Max_Killjoy]

Back when I played it, WoW had a ton of gold spam without F2P.

[Kourage]

Back when I played it, WoW had a ton of gold spam without F2P.

 

At least WoW allowed addons that I could custom filter chat with. No messages with those websites would ever appear for me, or any message containing murloc, dirge, or their other favorite A word spam.

[Karkais]

I'm still leveling my first character, so I spend almost no time at Fleet. I can't imagine it being any more annoying than the spam ads that players in EVE have to endure in the safer parts of highsec.

 

Actually, its only in the trade hub systems, and in those you can just temporarily ignore chat. There is also a certain entertainment value since large number of that spam is straight up hoaxes visible to anyone who has played the game some time..

 

In SWTOR I'd say that Kaas general chat is probably worse than fleet due to high amount of stupid ravings. At least SWTOR has utilized the easy report spam-option.

[Kaedusz]

You wouldn't believe the ''WoW was the first mmo'' spam in ToFN along with all the political ,religious ,racial and other troll ''discussions''.It's popcorn worthy though,while waiting for queue. Edited December 20, 2014 by Kaedusz

[LyraineAlei]

 

In SWTOR I'd say that Kaas general chat is probably worse than fleet due to high amount of stupid ravings. At least SWTOR has utilized the easy report spam-option.

In my experience, Kaas GenChat isn't too bad. It can actually get really interesting and philosophical, depending on who's on. Though that is usually when I'm on Shadowlands and it is extremely late Server Time (evening for me). And not usually the weekends.

[TheSeventhJedi]

I'm getting the mail again! Thanks for that one credit, whoever you are!

[idnewton]

In my experience, Kaas GenChat isn't too bad. It can actually get really interesting and philosophical, depending on who's on. Though that is usually when I'm on Shadowlands and it is extremely late Server Time (evening for me). And not usually the weekends.

 

Yeah... it's pretty clear you don't play on Harbinger.

[LyraineAlei]

Yeah... it's pretty clear you don't play on Harbinger.

 

Ten alts, but the lag leads to me not sitting there often. That and it crashes very, very often.

[FourPawnBenoni]

4 whispers today so far selling me gold

[DarthKurt]

The Spam is OUT OF CONTROL !!!

 

WALL OF SPAM in general chat, Spam Whispers, Spam Email...

 

I am a paying sub, I EXPECT BETTER !

 

If I was F2P, I would not complain.

[FourPawnBenoni]

I don't think EA is very serious about cracking down on this stuff. If anything, it is only getting worse and the website is listed in plain text; as in http://www.spamexample.com and not |/\/\/\/\/. spam example . coom

 

why not just mute anything posted with that website?

 

I put people on ignore and then a couple days later I'll log in with an alt and that same person is spamming and I'll have to ignore it again (plz give us legacy ignore)

 

I don't see how there is any deterrence?

[enigmacypher]

I don't think they were even monitoring their game over the "holidays" which seem to have started on the 15th of December for them..

 

Mail chat whispers .. none stop .. reports are all 2 weeks behind even being closed

 

There is no point of course it seems reporting spammers since the take so long to actually look into things ..

 

just ignore ignore ingnore ... into infinity...

 

this game has worse online service than even WoW and EQ did at their worst which REALLY is say a lot.

[TYBERzan]

Ya it is bad, but the solutions don't work. Blocking a bot that will simply create a new character is a waste. General also has very useful conversations for grouping, etc. I think the best solution would be a "spam" channel that we don't have to read for spammers. Hopefully then it would cut down on the # of spammers in general.