A proposed solution to end credit spammers once and for all

[Zaina]

I'm sure most of you have seen it by now, but the mass influx of credit farmers and spammers is getting out of hand. At any given moment on the fleet, my chat box looks like a giant advertisement.

 

http://i.imgur.com/Vly8n2k.jpg

 

Obviously I /ignore and report them whenever I can, but that doesn't really solve the problem. They still exist and they still spam everyone with PMs, mails, and of course genchat messages. They plague all MMOs, but I've only ever seen one game implement a solution that was so effective that it drastically cut down on the amount of spam.

 

Star Wars Galaxies, and their Warden program.

 

I propose that SWToR implements a system just like the Warden program.

 

Essentially, members from the community volunteered to be a Warden. What this meant was they were granted access to a command that could silence (edit: restricting chat, mail, PM, etc) anyone that was spamming for credits for six hours at a time. The six hour duration was one of the many checks and balances in place to keep Wardens from having too much power. There were multiple Wardens per server, so that there would be several on during all hours of the day. These people were handpicked by the developers and met a certain criteria in order to be given Warden status. They had to:

 

-Be 18+ years of age

-Be active in both the game AND the forums

-Be in good standing, without any prior infractions

 

Of course, with great power comes great responsibility. Each use of the silencing command was reviewed by a customer service rep, so as to prevent silencing people other than farmers. The Warden could unsilence someone they previously silenced, if they mistakenly got the wrong person. Their privileges only went as far as silencing credit spammers. People breaking other chat-related terms of service had to be reported as normal. This kept them from having too much power, and made it very black and white as to what they could and couldn't use their power on. Abuse of the command led to further investigation which, if found guilty of abuse of the command, could lead to removal of Warden status and possible actions against the account.

 

People could remain a Warden as long as they were active on the forums, in the game, and snuffing out credit spammers. Overall, it worked beautifully. The community was more involved, and credit spammers were cut down significantly. The checks and balances kept the Wardens from having too much power, and the fact they were handpicked from a pool of applicants by the developers ensured that they were generally the right type of people to have a responsibility like that, and so the power was never abused.

 

Any questions, comments, feedback are greatly appreciated. Thanks guys!

 

Here are some links with more information on how SWG went about the Warden system. Obviously, SWToR might take a different approach to it as some variables are different, but the idea is still the same;

 

From the SWG Wiki: http://swg.wikia.com/wiki/Warden_Program

 

A mirror of the original dev post: http://foros.comunidadhispania.com/showthread.php/4177-The-Star-Wars-Galaxies-Warden-Program(1)

Edited January 22, 2015 by Zaina

[Satelle]

It's silly, surely some people would abuse it. No question about that. The only effective solution is active GM's that would be online 24/7. (IMO they should be there from the very beginning of the game launch tho...) Edited January 21, 2015 by Satelle

[Darth_Wicked]

-Be in good standing, without any prior infractions

 

You're funny.

[Zaina]

It's silly, surely some people would abuse it. No question about that. The only effective solution is active GM's that would be online 24/7. (IMO they should be there from the very beginning of game launch tho...)

 

Sure, if they just handed it out to anyone who asked for it. Except, that isn't the idea behind it. It isn't like this is a brand new system. It worked for a few years back in the days of SWG and made credit spam all but extinct.

[Kalarie]

It's silly, surely some people would abuse it. No question about that. The only effective solution is active GM's that would be online 24/7. (IMO they should be there from the very beginning of game launch tho...)

 

Actually the best way to defeat credit spammers is to drive the prices of all items down to the point where everyone can buy them with minimal effort. This makes it so that credit spammers don't make a profit by spamming and getting people to buy their stuff.

 

Real question is, why do we have items in the game that cost tons of credits? Do those items create more gameplay for people, or do they restrict the gameplay of people? The whole economy system in MMOs is just plain flawed.

[DasRoach]

I think this is a great idea and feel that the silencing should also go as far as silencing mail and whispers for 6 hours as well. My only other suggestion would be to also give the wardens the ability to see a suspected gold sellers recent chat / sent mail so that if a gold seller stops spamming general chat and takes things to a more personal level via whispers and mails then they can still be dealt with.

 

Although the potential for abuse is there, as long as the mute'ings are double checked by a CS rep then this has a genuine potential to make things very difficult for the gold sellers.

 

The current status quo is simply not working and if the CS reps cannot be relied upon to deal with the situation then the trusted members of the community should be given the power to do something about it.

 

http://new2.fjcdn.com/comments/I+m+an+italian+and+i+approve+this+message+_a038f0f0444bb7ca496b187b01b1d5c0.jpg

 

-=edit=-

Actually the best way to defeat credit spammers is to drive the prices of all items down to the point where everyone can buy them with minimal effort. This makes it so that credit spammers don't make a profit by spamming and getting people to buy their stuff.

 

Real question is, why do we have items in the game that cost tons of credits? Do those items create more gameplay for people, or do they restrict the gameplay of people? The whole economy system in MMOs is just plain flawed.

 

good luck trying to change peoples natural greedy behavior.

considering the QQ about the changes to the slot machine, can you imagine the QQ of the cartel fatcats and GTN trade junkies if a genuine attempt was made to reduce the cost of items.

Edited January 21, 2015 by DasRoach

[Zaina]

Actually the best way to defeat credit spammers is to drive the prices of all items down to the point where everyone can buy them with minimal effort. This makes it so that credit spammers don't make a profit by spamming and getting people to buy their stuff.

 

Real question is, why do we have items in the game that cost tons of credits? Do those items create more gameplay for people, or do they restrict the gameplay of people? The whole economy system in MMOs is just plain flawed.

 

Having everything cost very little would solve nothing. It would diminish the non-monetary value of things. People have the expensive things for a myriad of reasons. If everything costed nothing, what would be the point? Everyone would be in the "best" look. Crafting wouldn't exist at all. Why bother putting in the time and effort to have little in return? Learning the new schematics and gearing up? The entire point of Operations is progression and gear. Having everything cost nothing would mean that people would just buy all the BiS 192 rating gear (providing any crafters even bothered to make the stuff), and half the fun of raiding would be gone.

[Zaina]

I think this is a great idea and feel that the silencing should also go as far as silencing mail and whispers for 6 hours as well. My only other suggestion would be to also give the wardens the ability to see a suspected gold sellers recent chat / sent mail so that if a gold seller stops spamming general chat and takes things to a more personal level via whispers and mails then they can still be dealt with.

 

Although the potential for abuse is there, as long as the mute'ings are double checked by a CS rep then this has a genuine potential to make things very difficult for the gold sellers.

 

The current status quo is simply not working and if the CS reps cannot be relied upon to deal with the situation then the trusted members of the community should be given the power to do something about it.

 

http://new2.fjcdn.com/comments/I+m+an+italian+and+i+approve+this+message+_a038f0f0444bb7ca496b187b01b1d5c0.jpg

 

Yes, I think in one of the links I provided, in the original implementation it restricted ALL forms of communication. Thought I'd put that in there, but I must have missed doing so.

[Kalarie]

Having everything cost very little would solve nothing. It would diminish the non-monetary value of things. People have the expensive things for a myriad of reasons. If everything costed nothing, what would be the point? Everyone would be in the "best" look. Crafting wouldn't exist at all. Why bother putting in the time and effort to have little in return? Learning the new schematics and gearing up? The entire point of Operations is progression and gear. Having everything cost nothing would mean that people would just buy all the BiS 192 rating gear (providing any crafters even bothered to make the stuff), and half the fun of raiding would be gone.

 

The problem having everything cost little solves is the credit spammers. It doesn't destroy progression if the only way to obtain the BiS items is from running the ops, or WZs, wich have lockouts and comms. to control the progression of gear.

 

It does 'hurt' crefting in that you don't make tons a credits from crafting, but then, why do you need tons of credits? Crafting should be focused on the adaptive shells, and other fun items without inherent stats. Stats should come from game drops (armorings, mods, etc.). Repairs/durability is pointless. Costs to travel are pointsless (hence the teleport terminals to all major locations nows). Costs to train are pointless (and now gone). The only cost to gearing should be the time put in to get the right stat drops. They very fact that you can craft stat items is what causes credit spamming. It's an outdated part of the MMO, and it needs to go.

[Zaina]

The problem having everything cost little solves is the credit spammers. It doesn't destroy progression if the only way to obtain the BiS items is from running the ops, or WZs, wich have lockouts and comms. to control the progression of gear.

 

It does 'hurt' crefting in that you don't make tons a credits from crafting, but then, why do you need tons of credits? Crafting should be focused on the adaptive shells, and other fun items without inherent stats. Stats should come from game drops (armorings, mods, etc.). Repairs/durability is pointless. Costs to travel are pointsless (hence the teleport terminals to all major locations nows). Costs to train are pointless (and now gone). The only cost to gearing should be the time put in to get the right stat drops. They very fact that you can craft stat items is what causes credit spamming. It's an outdated part of the MMO, and it needs to go.

 

But progression isn't the whole point of raiding, its also the gear too. But that aside, crafting is a huge part of this game. 1/4 of the fleet is dedicated to it. You have to remember, when the slot machines came out and the mats became so easy to get it killed the economy for a little bit and everyone went to the forums with torches and pitchforks. This solution eliminates credit spammers, without harming anything else in the process.

 

Stats DO come from game drops, but those drops can be taken by crafters, reverse engineered for a % chance to learn the schematic. That isn't always easy to do unless you've got a guild running simply to farm pieces to RE, and so to have all that time and effort (as well as the time and effort into gaining the mats) yield little return is a slap to the face.

 

Your proposal removes crafting and the economy entirely, almost. You're wanting everything, but giving nothing in return. That isn't how anything works. If that were the case, people would log in just to raid and PvP, and the moment they were done they'd log off and the game would be a ghost town.

 

But we're getting off track here. My point is, if there are select people that have the ability to silence credit spammers, then according to history (as this worked beautifully in SWG) there will no longer be credit spammers.

[LtBombshell]

They could probably start by banning the people that get reported for spam. There have been multiple instances where I log on to an Imperial character, ignore/report 2 gold spammers on fleet. Next day, log on to a different Imperial character and ignore/report the same spammers. Repeat the cycle for the rest of my Imperial characters, and Republic characters.

 

Maybe they could institute something where if the same character gets reported, say, 50 times within one day (by 50 different people), their account automatically gets perma'd.

[Zaina]

They could probably start by banning the people that get reported for spam. There have been multiple instances where I log on to an Imperial character, ignore/report 2 gold spammers on fleet. Next day, log on to a different Imperial character and ignore/report the same spammers. Repeat the cycle for the rest of my Imperial characters, and Republic characters.

 

Maybe they could institute something where if the same character gets reported, say, 50 times within one day (by 50 different people), their account automatically gets perma'd.

 

But for whatever reason, they don't. The Warden system would be your ticket to having that happen, though. They don't get banned instantly? It sucks, but at least they're not clogging up chat anymore. And given that all Warden-related activities would be reviewed, the spammer would then get banned. It worked wonders years ago, I see no reason it won't work wonders for SWToR.

[-Wes-]

An excellent idea! Devs, implement this already!

 

I don't even activate general chat any longer due to the spamming. It's out of control!

[BoboHut]

It's silly, surely some people would abuse it. No question about that. The only effective solution is active GM's that would be online 24/7. (IMO they should be there from the very beginning of the game launch tho...)

 

Being a GM means nothing inn regards to the right person to do this job. There are some good ones, but they are just as able to abuse it as anyone else. The thing I like about this program is that it doesn't even matter if it gets abused. The abuse would never last that long and even a potential silent fleet day would be worth getting rid of the gold sellers. The important requirement for this program IMO is that there needs to be someone at Bioware at least getting notifications when the silence feature is used so they could see abuse in the form of 1000 silences in 10 minutes or something crazy like that. Unfortunately, not only do I not believe Bioware would pay attention, I don't even think they have 24 hour support yet, which blows my mind considering the amount of money and people involved in this game. I still think this program would work though.

[Zaina]

Being a GM means nothing inn regards to the right person to do this job. There are some good ones, but they are just as able to abuse it as anyone else. The thing I like about this program is that it doesn't even matter if it gets abused. The abuse would never last that long and even a potential silent fleet day would be worth getting rid of the gold sellers. The important requirement for this program IMO is that there needs to be someone at Bioware at least getting notifications when the silence feature is used so they could see abuse in the form of 1000 silences in 10 minutes or something crazy like that. Unfortunately, not only do I not believe Bioware would pay attention, I don't even think they have 24 hour support yet, which blows my mind considering the amount of money and people involved in this game. I still think this program would work though.

 

It would certainly ease the workload at Bioware. Someone got silenced? Check their chat. Okay it's literally all credit spam, slam the ban button and move on. Thirty seconds is all that took.

[BoboHut]

It would certainly ease the workload at Bioware. Someone got silenced? Check their chat. Okay it's literally all credit spam, slam the ban button and move on. Thirty seconds is all that took.

 

If the only way for them to pick these volunteers is by picking from GM's, I agree it would still be better than what we have now. I'm not worried about abuse because it is easy to figure out. I just don't think it has to be GM's. Just because someone is a GM of a guild, doesn't make them special. Its rather easy to be a GM. The OP's suggestions on how they pick the volunteers are a more reliable way to find the right people for this job.

[Kalfear]

Easy way to remove credit farmers is

 

1) Monitor cash out trades (paterns will quickly develop that showcase who the credit farmer accounts are) and ban those accounts out right (along with obvious feeder accounts sending the credits in)

 

2) Check spam reports daily and ban accounts who send out spam emails and spam whispers advertising credit sales.

 

3) Same as number 2 but monitor fleets and starter planets for yell/general/trade/pvp/ect adevertising over chat and ban accounts

 

4) remove email sending/whisper sending privilages to F2P or Pref accounts until level 25 per character is achieved (this will slow down the new spam accounts being made to send advertisements and spam. Subscribers obviously get to keep the privileges but fall under perm ban status if they send out the spam mails/yells/whispers/ect)

 

5) Put in a special report option for players to report names of obvious credit farmers for EA to watch ingame and track and monitor and eventually ban.

 

Five very EASY and LOW COST steps to almost completely eliminate credit farmers and spam sellers

 

And EA will do not a one (I still have spam reports unopened in my reported list from Nov 2014) because it would require a higher cost then absolutely free to do so.

 

Getting rid of credit farmers and spammers and what not really is not that hard to accomplish.

If you wish to do it

[Zaina]

If the only way for them to pick these volunteers is by picking from GM's, I agree it would still be better than what we have now. I'm not worried about abuse because it is easy to figure out. I just don't think it has to be GM's. Just because someone is a GM of a guild, doesn't make them special. Its rather easy to be a GM. The OP's suggestions on how they pick the volunteers are a more reliable way to find the right people for this job.

 

Oh I completely agree, having to be a GM is a terrible idea for a requirement. I think the only requirements that should exist are the ones I listed. Those are, in itself, a system of checks and balances. Sure, you can totally go on and mute the entire fleet for six hours. But you'll probably get yourself banned in doing so, and all your hard work is down the tubes. The incentive to NOT abuse the power is to not lose all your accumulated effort. But also needing them to be a GM? Too much. You end up narrowing the pool of eligible people and making it too small.

[Exosasa]

/ignore

 

That's the secret trick!

 

 

But in seriousness, I think if you report them for spam, they'll get enough "votes" to be looked into.

[Kalfear]

If the only way for them to pick these volunteers is by picking from GM's, I agree it would still be better than what we have now. I'm not worried about abuse because it is easy to figure out. I just don't think it has to be GM's. Just because someone is a GM of a guild, doesn't make them special. Its rather easy to be a GM. The OP's suggestions on how they pick the volunteers are a more reliable way to find the right people for this job.

 

you can not use volunteers in game in the role of a GM/moderator/ representative of Game/company because of law suit filed many years ago (gasp, pre WOW) that basically eliminated the using of free volunteers as in game moderators/GMs/what ever.

 

They now have to be paid a wage and be hired and everything.

 

But lets be honest, its a minimum wage job at best and would not be a huge expense for EA (or any developer) to put in.

 

But they will not be cause min wage > free.

[The_Anf]

Do people actually buy credits????? I've never seen an mmo that it is easier to get money then this game

[Kalarie]

Do people actually buy credits????? I've never seen an mmo that it is easier to get money then this game

 

Wouldn't have people spending so much time to spam websites for creds if they didn't have buyers. Some people buy from sites designed to steal their info, a couple of sites actually try to make money by profiting on sales. Non of those sites would exist if credits were super easy to obtain. It's past time to completely rethink 'crafting' in MMOs. Crafting should be about aesthetics, not credits. If you want a particular look you should have to spend game time to go collect it. Fill it with the stats dropped from mobs/ops/wz items.

[BoboHut]

you can not use volunteers in game in the role of a GM/moderator/ representative of Game/company because of law suit filed many years ago (gasp, pre WOW) that basically eliminated the using of free volunteers as in game moderators/GMs/what ever.

 

They now have to be paid a wage and be hired and everything.

 

But lets be honest, its a minimum wage job at best and would not be a huge expense for EA (or any developer) to put in.

 

But they will not be cause min wage > free.

 

I'd have to see some proof here. I mean its totally possible, but only a few years back I was able to be a volunteer for a crappy Facebook game and I didn't get paid or expect to. Maybe the rules are different for smaller games like that. IDK. If they do need to pay the volunteers, I'm sure they would start with offering cartel coins if that's allowed.

[Zaina]

I'd have to see some proof here. I mean its totally possible, but only a few years back I was able to be a volunteer for a crappy Facebook game and I didn't get paid or expect to. Maybe the rules are different for smaller games like that. IDK. If they do need to pay the volunteers, I'm sure they would start with offering cartel coins if that's allowed.

 

I'm not entirely sure, honestly. SWG did it just a few years ago and didn't need to pay anyone. If they did, it was never spoken about publicly, but again I doubt it as they specifically say volunteer.

[Mithros]

Why not just have an automated function tied into spam reporting?

 

If <however many> people report a person for spam then that person is silenced for a period of time. GMs can review these reports to make sure that there aren't any guilds out there conspiring to silence innocent players, and take actions against any such people that abuse the system. If they find that the reports were valid they can take the final step of banning the account if it still exists.

 

No individuals given the power, but the community as a whole can play it's part.

 

Has to be a decently large number, though. Spamming might still be viable on low population planets, but those are low population planets... Spammers aren't going to get a lot of business advertising to the 12 people on Voss or whatever.

 

=============

 

The best way to get rid of them is to not do any business with them, but I can't control what other people do.

 

Heck, if the players that give these clowns money would invest that cash into cartel packs and products and re-sell them to other players they might find that they can get many of the credits with very little of the identity theft and account security risk.

Edited January 22, 2015 by Mithros