DrixHD Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 (edited) Bioware, please put an end to these credit spammers. Ever since I started playing this game 2 years ago, I've seen these credit spammers on fleet spamming away for hours on end. I ignore one and another one pops up. I've ignored so much to the point where I have to unignore a one just to ignore a new one. I'm ignoring at least 1 every single damn day and it's really getting old. Please, don't make me suffer any longer P.S. Today, I decided to unleash 2 years of rage on a credit spammer. Here's how it went http://imgur.com/a/fSziX Edited January 31, 2017 by DrixHD Wording Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Talon_strikes Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 I'm pretty sure the GMs try to trace the money back to its original source before they issue any bans. That way they can wipe these guys off the game more effectively rather than simply banning a spammer that will inevitably be quickly replaced with a new one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrixxieTriss Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 They do a round up every few months, but the spammers pop back up again within hours. It's a no win situation while ever the game has a free to play option and also no way to actually buy credits from Bioware themselves. Blizzard finally got sick of the credit spammers and have added a system where you can by a credit medallion in their story and use it yourself or even list it on the auction house because it's not BOP. I guess that's the next option for Bio. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rankyn Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 They will never EVER be able to completely eliminate credit spammers. They're like roaches. The sooner you come to terms with this, the better off you'll be. Report. Ignore. Forget. Now what they *COULD* do is 1) make reporting and ignoring a single button press and 2) make our ignore lists Legacy-wide. That would be a significant QOL improvement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrixHD Posted January 31, 2017 Author Share Posted January 31, 2017 Sadly, you guys are right. I guess I just have to deal with them. Really hope that one day somebody comes up with a solution for these spammers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Groncho Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 Sadly, you guys are right. I guess I just have to deal with them. Really hope that one day somebody comes up with a solution for these spammers. Maybe adding some RNG? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrixHD Posted January 31, 2017 Author Share Posted January 31, 2017 Ya, legacy-wide ignore lists would be great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AscendingSky Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 (edited) I've stopped reporting credit spammers. Not because I don't want them gone, but because 1) I've reported so many because I keep getting so many emails on all my alts, and 2) EAWare has not dealt with any of those reports I've sent since EARLY DECEMBER 2016, that now my ticket box is full and I can't send in tickets on ANYTHING. It won't let me delete any of the reports to clear the ticket box either, it gives me an error message when I try. Called EAWare support, they can't do anything, told me to sent an email. The email reply I got back said "It's a bug, it'll be fixed someday". Thanks EAWare for giving me another reason to leave. /sarcasm Edited January 31, 2017 by AscendingSky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrixxieTriss Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 I've stopped reporting credit spammers. Not because I don't want them gone, but because 1) I've reported so many because I keep getting so many emails on all my alts, and 2) EAWare has not dealt with any of those reports I've sent since EARLY DECEMBER 2016, that now my ticket box is full and I can't send in tickets on ANYTHING. It won't let me delete any of the reports to clear the ticket box either, it gives me an error message when I try. Called EAWare support, they can't do anything, told me to sent an email. The email reply I got back said "It's a bug, it'll be fixed someday". Thanks EAWare for giving me another reason to leave. /sarcasm Yeah, I ran into the same issue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nightblazer Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 Sadly, you guys are right. I guess I just have to deal with them. Really hope that one day somebody comes up with a solution for these spammers. If there was a solution all MMOs would use it but then the credit spammers would just find another way around it. Unfortunately it won't ever go away, it exists in every MMO, even Wow has to deal with it. The only sure way to stop them is to never use their service. If no one used their service, they wouldn't exist, but since there will always be people who will, it will continue to exist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeneas_Falco Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 (edited) Blizzard finally got sick of the credit spammers and have added a system where you can by a credit medallion in their story and use it yourself or even list it on the auction house because it's not BOP. I guess that's the next option for Bio. That is really the route Bioware should go. Credit sellers will continue to exist so long as players are willing to exchange real world money for pretend currency in a video game. Considering credit sellers are a problem in MMOs in general, and not just SWTOR, obviously a lot of players do go that route. Credit sellers wouldn't exist if there wasn't a lot of demand for the services they're offering. There is nothing Bioware can do to stop credit sellers. Any they ban will be back up and running in hours because there is real world money to be made from selling credits, and no shortage of players willing to pay them. The best way to deal with the the credit sellers is for Bioware to get in on the act themselves, undercut the RMTs, and offer a safer alternative. (Some people who purchase credits from RMTs end up with hacked accounts, stolen credit card info, ect. Not all are on the up-and-up) It also gives Bioware additional revenue. Right now potential revenue is being squandered. Edited January 31, 2017 by Aeneas_Falco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zasszz Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 (edited) I'm pretty sure the GMs try to trace the money back to its original source before they issue any bans. That way they can wipe these guys off the game more effectively rather than simply banning a spammer that will inevitably be quickly replaced with a new one. No, that method NEVER worked. Imagine the police just watchs a gang plundering and selling the goods for months. You would think thats stupid, wouldnt you? Thats what happens here and in all the other MMOs with such a philosophy. The idea that this is about money from those accounts with the farmchars is also nonsense. If the devs dont care about the money when they initiate a banwave then they shouldnt care about the money when they could ban every farmchar the moment they discover one. Every banned farmchar leaves a hole in the supply chain and with enough holes the network suffers. So removing 1bil credits every few months is pointless because by the time the banwave happens the damage is already done. The whole network just starts again instead of trying to fill the holes. And the refusal to remove mailboxes from starter planets shows they dont want to prevent spam. Also all the reported and ignored chars dont get deleted. Just prevented from logging in. So our list just grows and grows and we never find out if they are actually gone for good because they are still there. Credit sellers wouldn't exist if there wasn't a lot of demand for the services they're offering.. People wouldnt need to buy credits if the best looking items werent so damn expensive, sold by people having the luck in the CM lottery. There is nothing Bioware can do to stop credit sellers. Any they ban will be back up and running in hours because there is real world money to be made from selling credits, and no shortage of players willing to pay them. . Every banned farmchar takes his farmed credits with him. THATS the thing the devs dont get. The best way to deal with the the credit sellers is for Bioware to get in on the act themselves, undercut the RMTs, and offer a safer alternative. (Some people who purchase credits from RMTs end up with hacked accounts, stolen credit card info, ect. Not all are on the up-and-up). The good old fairy tales about stolen accounts and credit cards... Because stolen accounts require new characters with wordsalad as names to farm instead of the chars left behind from the former owner... Riiiiight. Stop spreading the same lies as the devs do. It gets not just boring after 15 years its also dishonest and silly. The methods of the devs dont work. They are not effective at all. Its just a bandaid under the pretence to fight the spammers and sellers. Edited January 31, 2017 by Zasszz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeneas_Falco Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 (edited) People wouldnt need to buy credits if the best looking items werent so damn expensive, sold by people having the luck in the CM lottery. Get used to it, because that isn't going to change. The Cartel Market has kept SWTOR plugging along for the last three years, and some items being rare encourages players with excess cash and/or a gambling addiction, to keep buying packs to chase that one rare thing they want. Bioware doesn't have an incentive to reduce the rarity of say, Senya's lightsaber pike. The unfortunate truth is that the rarity of some items generates revenue through repeat buying. It is also why those items can't be purchased directly, and are instead locked behind RNG. Because those items are both very rare and obtainable only by the blessings of the fickle RNG gods, anyone who prefers to sell on the GTN instead (or was lucky enough to get a duplicate) is going to charge an arm and a leg for it. They do so both because they spent real world money chasing it, and because there are players who will trade the credit equivalent of both arms and both legs just to get it. Why should they charge any less than what they know they can get for that item? I don't like staring at cool items listed on the GTN that my character can't afford either, but I know that isn't going to change. Suggesting Bioware reduce the rarity of platinum items to undercut credit sellers is just not a realistic solution. The good old fairy tales about stolen accounts and credit cards... Because stolen accounts require new characters with wordsalad as names to farm instead of the chars left behind from the former owner... Riiiiight. Stop spreading the same lies as the devs do. It gets not just boring after 15 years its also dishonest and silly. While not all credit sellers are scam artists, some most definitely are. It isn't a myth that some people have ended up screwed over by the people they purchased credits from. If you want to believe they're all honest and trustworthy people however, you go right on ahead. It's your account, not mine. Edited January 31, 2017 by Aeneas_Falco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Talon_strikes Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 (edited) The methods of the devs dont work. They are not effective at all. Its just a bandaid under the pretence to fight the spammers and sellers. Well they've posted about this a couple of times on the forums and they believe they work so apparently the system is Working as Intended™. That isn't to say the system can't be improved. Mailboxes should've been removed from starter planets a long time ago. Edited January 31, 2017 by Talon_strikes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zasszz Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 Get used to it, because that isn't going to change. The Cartel Market has kept SWTOR plugging along for the last three years, and some items being rare encourages players with excess cash and/or a gambling addiction, to keep buying packs to chase that one rare thing they want. Bioware doesn't have an incentive to reduce the rarity of say, Senya's lightsaber pike. The unfortunate truth is that the rarity of some items generates revenue through repeat buying. It is also why those items can't be purchased directly, and are instead locked behind RNG. Are you making a case to support BWs policy to support gambling addiction instead of opposing it??? They might aswell sell the items directly and remove the gambling and people would gladly spend the money on the desired items instead of gambling! While not all credit sellers are scam artists, some most definitely are. It isn't a myth that some people have ended up screwed over by the people they purchased credits from. Im very aware that SOME accounts are from stolen credit cards and SOME are from stolen accounts yet the devs claim those two are the only methods the farmers use. Infact the farmers actually buy accounts with legit credit cards and bank accounts too. Yet those are never being mentioned. Farming without fear of getting banhammered any second doesnt seem to be an option for farmers for some unknown reason... Because they could do that for months until a banwave hits, right?? If you want to believe they're all honest and trustworthy people however, you go right on ahead. It's your account, not mine. Dont twist my words. I never did and never would advertise anything remotely like that! Also lets not forget that BW does NOTHING to prevent CC scams. They could only allow the use of CCs after an account paid with a regular bank account for some time. No, I dont mean buying several months at he start but rather wait actual time until the option can be used. But hey, they rather love to work down those chargebacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forren-Midosea Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 Why they wont sue them. This would quickly remove them from game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zasszz Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 Why they wont sue them. This would quickly remove them from game. I doubt they can locate the scammers. They can only work with the CC companies to send the money back to the victims but certain costs already happened and the companies bill BW for chargebacks. Again, thats all avoidable but BW, like most other companies, see those costs acceptable because the farmers money for regular accounts might make up for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_mike Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 That isn't to say the system can't be improved. There is no method of solving this. Spam has been going on since back in 1994. I run a webhost and we reject at least 6 million every day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zasszz Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 (edited) There is no method of solving this. Spam has been going on since back in 1994. I run a webhost and we reject at least 6 million every day. There are methods to SIGNIFICANTLY reduce it yet none of them are being used in most MMOs and those really take only minutes to install. One of the easiest is a word filter. Kills most links and names of websites. The rest only takes abit ovservation how the spammers adapt and adaptation of the filter. When I read the same website name for over a year, nobody can claim the devs are fighting spam. They are lying because they dont install ANY method and my ignore list is growing rather than shrinking. Edited January 31, 2017 by Zasszz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_mike Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 One of the easiest is a word filter. Word filters don't work. That's why we can't say Saturday in chat. It also takes time and processor effort to run a filter against each and every message, be it chat or in game email. We have enough of a lag problem around here. I seriously doubt players are going to want to trade even more lag against checking for spam. I moved our SpamAssassin install off of the individual servers about a decade ago. It's now up to 3 servers dedicated only to anti spam and I'm seriously considering a forth shortly. And that's with blocks at the routers. Some of us have been dealing with spam since we got on the net back in the mid 90's with our Wildcat BBSes. I sit here for an hour nearly every day with what spam gets through and checking the logs and the blocked IP ranges. Have (Checking the iPod Touch) 5,363 outstanding reports since I just deleted the report folder on the 1st. It's not a simple solution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RudeDog Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 The good old fairy tales about stolen accounts and credit cards... Because stolen accounts require new characters with wordsalad as names to farm instead of the chars left behind from the former owner... Riiiiight. Stop spreading the same lies as the devs do. It gets not just boring after 15 years its also dishonest and silly. The methods of the devs dont work. They are not effective at all. Its just a bandaid under the pretence to fight the spammers and sellers. True story - I had an account for WoW when it first started. I played maybe a day or two, but didn't like the cartoon graphics, so stopped playing. I forgot to unsubscribe, so I was paying monthly with a CC. It was re-upped every month and I continued to pay for it without realizing it. Then I got an email that I was selling credits and my account was banned. Accounts do get stolen. Thankfully they banned me or I would still be paying for that game and not knowing it.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stellarcrusade Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 Subscription MMOs will always have credit spammers. Because subscription MMOs try to slow progression down too much to squeeze money out of you. In the case of WOW they squeezed very hard. Really, its this squeeze that creates credit spammers because people do the math in their heads and to some people it is worth it. When I was on Wow pre-expansion I remember I got my character to the level I could finally get my first mount so I didn't have to walk everywhere, and I went to the mount vendor and was shocked how high the cost was. I did the math in my head that it would take me 4 months of grinding gold to get my mount. So my choice was to pay for 4 months of boring grind, or buy gold and actually play the fun parts of the game for those 4 months. In the end I did the right thing and just did the grind, but I can see how the game is at fault for the gold farmers, not the player. To this day I would never pay a credit/gold farmer, because I would feel like I would be supporting the spam business...;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dev Post EricMusco Posted January 31, 2017 Dev Post Share Posted January 31, 2017 This is a topic we have certainly talked about quite a bit in the past. Our fight against credit spammers is always on-going and something that will be tricky to ever resolve 100%. Sometimes we wait to take action to take down entire "rings" of sellers at one time, other times we take more direct frequent action, typically against compromised accounts. We know it can be frustrating and it is something we are constantly looking to address. Always report them when you see them, it helps us immensely in taking them down. -eric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImmortalLowlife Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 Blizzard finally got sick of the credit spammers and have added a system where you can by a credit medallion in their story and use it yourself or even list it on the auction house because it's not BOP. I guess that's the next option for Bio. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the "B2W" issue everyone's always worried about? I mean... if I can buy a token for rl $$$ on the GTN that gives me say..... $10mil in game credits for $5, then suddenly for about $50 I could buy pretty much ANYTHING in the game available on the GTN. Including the top tier armor mods, hilts, barrels, etc. Aside from armor with set bonuses that is... While I'd personally LOVE to be able to do that, I can only imagine the RAGE it'd cause others. Lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Talon_strikes Posted January 31, 2017 Share Posted January 31, 2017 (edited) This is a topic we have certainly talked about quite a bit in the past. Our fight against credit spammers is always on-going and something that will be tricky to ever resolve 100%. Sometimes we wait to take action to take down entire "rings" of sellers at one time, other times we take more direct frequent action, typically against compromised accounts. We know it can be frustrating and it is something we are constantly looking to address. Always report them when you see them, it helps us immensely in taking them down. -eric If you can pass it on to the appropriate channels please tell them to have mailboxes removed on the starter planets. It's been asked for a long time now and I think it would severely impede on the credit spammers. Thanks! Edited January 31, 2017 by Talon_strikes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts