AbsolutGrndZero Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 Easy to fix. F2p or preferred are no longer allowed access to general chat or tells. Easy. What? That makes those players angry? Too bad. Sub up or shut up. You still have access to /say and guild chat. You will live. Actually I sort of agree, although I would say make it so you cannot initiate a tell. You can reply however. I forget what game I played that did that, but it was cool. Free players couldn't send a tell to a subscriber unless the subscriber sent them a tell first. That would easily fix it without hurting the subscribers too (another annoyance is the F2P players inability to trade hurts me as a subscriber because if they accidentally 'ninja" something I want, they can't give it to me even if they are willing) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
denavin Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 Here is a sugestion on how to get rid of RMT ( Real Money Transfer ) sellers. You start by monitoring players income, any player that suddenly gets a huge amout of credits that is not transfered from a character on their own account is buying credits from a RMT seller. Then you delete all the credits in that players account for all toons on that account including the the items purchased with the credits putting them into a negative ballance making the character nearly unplayable. After doing this enough times then the players will no longer want to deal with RMT sellers thus removing the RMT sellers and the players that buy credits from them (not to worry these people are not worth keeping in the game anyway). This has been done quite sucessfully in another game, EvE Online and it works very well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdrianDmitruk Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 Here is a sugestion on how to get rid of RMT ( Real Money Transfer ) sellers. You start by monitoring players income, any player that suddenly gets a huge amout of credits that is not transfered from a character on their own account is buying credits from a RMT seller. Then you delete all the credits in that players account for all toons on that account including the the items purchased with the credits putting them into a negative ballance making the character nearly unplayable. After doing this enough times then the players will no longer want to deal with RMT sellers thus removing the RMT sellers and the players that buy credits from them (not to worry these people are not worth keeping in the game anyway). This has been done quite sucessfully in another game, EvE Online and it works very well. This would completely kill the Cartel Market. It's not gonna happen. Credit spammers sell in blocks of 1 million. This last week I sold Satele Shan's Tunic for 15M. OMG I'm a credit buyer! Naw, what really happened was that I bought a bunch of the stronghold packs to get into the new decorations and such as it was the first Cartel Market content I'd ever been interested in, and I vaulted everything else until it became worth selling. Not every large transaction ingame is RMT. It's one thing to monitor large credit transfers, it's quite another to blanket ban anyone who is active on GTN or has a big sale of in-game items because OMG they made credits too quickly. (And yes, I'd expect Bioware can tell the difference.) And it's not like Bioware couldn't throw some QoL improvements into reporting spam our way. They just don't care. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSeventhJedi Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 Hey - I got one of the whispers finally! They really are there! I laughed, ignored, went about my business. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TUXs Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 Hey - I got one of the whispers finally! They really are there! I laughed, ignored, went about my business. Wait...what are you saying? Are you trying to tell me that you actually just "ignored" the whisper? HOW? How was that even possible? You mean it didn't distract you so much that it ruined your perfect HM run? Or destroy your immersion? Or aggravate you so much that you needed to log out, take a nap, eat some comfort food and come here to post?? I call BS...nobody is that strong willed... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caid_Baraka Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 They really just need a robust filter. Every string of text that's entered into the chat line should be parsed for non text/numerics, such as , . / ` \ ect, and have them counted and then removed as well as spaces. Any accented or diacritical characters, such as ñ Á ê ect, should be converted to a standard English equivalent. The remaining text can then be parsed for website names as well as key words such as credits, delivered, knowngoldseller.com ect. What you're left with is an inability by the spammer to hide their sale through obfuscation. Excessive use of nonstandard characters plus keyword hits should produce good filter results. Auto silence the account, don't pass the message on to the chat system to display and flag the account for review by CS for possible ban. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dbohrius Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 Well, the Rishi chests are giving substancially less credits now. I suppose this will hurt the gold spammers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anaesha Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 Well, the Rishi chests are giving substancially less credits now. I suppose this will hurt the gold spammers. No it won't chest farming is just ONE way they get credits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSeventhJedi Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 I'm just shocked that there are enough people buying credits that they're still in business. I mean, making credits in this game is a CAKEWALK. Earning CC by having your referral link in your sig and then posting on the forums is almost as easy. Considering you could turn those CC into credits without breaking a single game rule, and if that still wasn't enough you could funnel money into the CM and do the same thing - I just can't fathom why people are going to these freakin' credit farmers. What's worse, as soon as they have your email address and credit card information, you can be sure you're on their target list for hacking so they can bust in, sell a bunch of your stuff, and then sell to the next sap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghisallo Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 Credit sellers/spammers are like Hydras, you cut off one head and two more grow in it's place. It is a never ending battle for most major online games these days. This problem is not exclusive to Bioware/SWTOR. Even subscription games have a major issue. The difference is in a f2p game the spammer need not invest money in their characters and as such a ban does little to slow them down. Imagine Crime irl if criminals had "get out of jail free" cards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Transcendent Posted May 27, 2015 Share Posted May 27, 2015 Here is a sugestion on how to get rid of RMT ( Real Money Transfer ) sellers. You start by monitoring players income, any player that suddenly gets a huge amout of credits that is not transfered from a character on their own account is buying credits from a RMT seller. So what happens if your guild has a competition and the prizes also include credits? Does this mean they're buying credits? No? There is a flaw there in your logic. Also, I wholeheartedly approve of some of the changes we've seen in patch 3.2.1 with the alterations to chests on some planets (seen changes on 2 so far). I've definitely noticed that there have been some positive reinforcement changes made by BioWare on this, good work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crossjeromy Posted May 29, 2015 Share Posted May 29, 2015 Is there a chance that ignore can be legacy wide? Or how about not letting people post in chat or whisper until lv 20? not sure how most would fill about that but it is food for thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Legolose Posted May 29, 2015 Share Posted May 29, 2015 (edited) Is there a chance that ignore can be legacy wide? Or how about not letting people post in chat or whisper until lv 20? not sure how most would fill about that but it is food for thought. This is a really good ideal just make it so they cant chat till at least level 20 .. *Thumps up* Well today I turned my whisper & general chat on all 10 of my guys and didn't get hit with not one whisper or general chat spam today and I was on fleet a lot too today so maybe they finally got them,,, lets hope ... *fingers crossed* Edited May 29, 2015 by Legolose Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meroveus Posted May 29, 2015 Share Posted May 29, 2015 Well, the Rishi chests are giving substancially less credits now. I suppose this will hurt the gold spammers. The change has had an effect on Makeb gold farmers. There was a guy who farmed those chests 24/7 on my main server. I first noticed him about two months ago. He never logged out for days at a time, never left that planet..... just ran the circuit of security chests on Makeb. Have not seen him once online or on Makeb since the change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GavinRuneblade Posted May 29, 2015 Share Posted May 29, 2015 Is there a chance that ignore can be legacy wide? Or how about not letting people post in chat or whisper until lv 20? not sure how most would fill about that but it is food for thought. Account wide, not just legacy. If I swap servers to play with a different friend, they should still be muted if their spam account has characters everywhere (which is a pretty safe assumption). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dbohrius Posted May 29, 2015 Share Posted May 29, 2015 The change has had an effect on Makeb gold farmers. There was a guy who farmed those chests 24/7 on my main server. I first noticed him about two months ago. He never logged out for days at a time, never left that planet..... just ran the circuit of security chests on Makeb. Have not seen him once online or on Makeb since the change. Before the nerf, there would be 20 or more people on Rishi doing dailies and waiting for the chests to spawn at 1 pm (GMT). Now it's mostly empty. Now Yavin, with all those juicy slicing nodes... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Papazmurf Posted May 30, 2015 Author Share Posted May 30, 2015 Before the nerf, there would be 20 or more people on Rishi doing dailies and waiting for the chests to spawn at 1 pm (GMT). Now it's mostly empty. Now Yavin, with all those juicy slicing nodes... Apparently they've just moved to Belsavis. It's a pretty much a dead planet with good loot opportunities and less players to report any suspicious activities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nbkan Posted May 30, 2015 Share Posted May 30, 2015 Credit sellers/spammers are like Hydras, you cut off one head and two more grow in it's place. It is a never ending battle for most major online games these days. This problem is not exclusive to Bioware/SWTOR. Hail Hydra! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdrianDmitruk Posted June 1, 2015 Share Posted June 1, 2015 Well I did find it encouraging to find a gold spammer "selling hypercrates cheaper than GTN," and yes, they disclosed their website in the same message so that's how I knew it wasn't legit trade chat. That means they need credits to buy, not to sell...that 9B loss hurt, spammers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Falonarion Posted July 1, 2015 Share Posted July 1, 2015 Since returning to SWTOR been hit every day be it on the starter planets or fleet but mostly via ingame mail by credit/gold sellers. Noticing the pattern that they use the same website address. <-- this is one of the main reasons I unsubscribe and quit playing SWTOR a few ago and it appears Bioware has not done anything to make them go away. BTW bioware your ingame report spam is not working, they keeping coming back after a reporting them for spam... Getting hit by these mailbox spammers as much as 1-3 per every 1-5 hours. Really annoying.... If it was not for the fact that bioware is having a new storyline expansion, I be unsubbing again... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nightblazer Posted July 1, 2015 Share Posted July 1, 2015 Welcome to the world of MMOs, You think this is bad, go play wow. In game whispers, mail and the infamous creating 30 characters, then having them go to a capital city and just laying down on the ground and spell out a website for gold, ah the good ol days. Anywho your just gonna have to deal with it, it's never going to go away, and the more BW stops them or Blizzard or whoever, the more aggressive their tactics get because they know they are on borrowed time. If your going to let something like this ruin your game play, well sounds like there is a bigger issue here. I avoid the fleet unless I have to buy mods from the vendor or another vendor that is on the fleet and when on the fleet I turn off my General chat. I use Teamspeak for guild chat, and I get an in game mail like once a week, I just report and move on with my game play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GalacticKegger Posted July 1, 2015 Share Posted July 1, 2015 (edited) The only way to stop spam is to be a subscription model game. F2P is credit/gold spammers bread and butter. People want to play a game without investing in the game through subscription, well the result is having to deal with credit spam. I dont know of any F2P game that doesnt have credit spam.+10. Would support going back to sub-only in a heartbeat while charging $4.99 (i.e a Starbucks frappucino) a month for an upgraded preferred status that would include Operation, Warzone/GSF, Flashpoint & Space Mission access caps. Maybe even bump the credit cap to 500k or 1M. If they want more than a cap allows, there is always the Cartel Shop ... an inexpensive proposition for those who are happy with limited access to advanced gameplay. http://www.swtor.com/free/features Credit sellers would all but disappear. [edit] Would be interesting to learn what percentage of F2P players actually play the game as intended, what percentage of them have gone preferred through the $4.99 Cartel Market purchase plan; and what percentage of the CM revenue pie they are responsible for. Edited July 1, 2015 by GalacticKegger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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