Endless spam messages in chat

[LordSodos]

Greetings,

lately, credit selling websites are spamming chat to the point, where it is hard to communicate with each other.

 

Deactivating general and/or trading should not be the way to go.

 

Does BioWare plan to do anything about that? How hard can it be to put in some Regex expression to check for urls and known platforms.

[ElZaguero]

Greetings,

lately, credit selling websites are spamming chat to the point, where it is hard to communicate with each other.

 

Deactivating general and/or trading should not be the way to go.

 

Does BioWare plan to do anything about that? How hard can it be to put in some Regex expression to check for urls and known platforms.

 

I haven't seen this except on starting planets. Overall, I feel your pain, but if BW tries what you suggest and mucks it up, then we'll have innocent users being banned because some algorithm farted.

[LordSodos]

I haven't seen this except on starting planets. Overall, I feel your pain, but if BW tries what you suggest and mucks it up, then we'll have innocent users being banned because some algorithm farted.

 

I do not suggest bans, but simply not sending messages - or sending suspicious messages to manual revision to decide on bans.

[Lhancelot]

Greetings,

lately, credit selling websites are spamming chat to the point, where it is hard to communicate with each other.

 

Deactivating general and/or trading should not be the way to go.

 

Does BioWare plan to do anything about that? How hard can it be to put in some Regex expression to check for urls and known platforms.

 

The platform in place to discourage or stop spammers has been the same one in place since I can remember. I think most players automatically ignore and report the spammer. There’s no escaping it.

[JediQuaker]

Deactivating general and/or trading should not be the way to go.

 

Does BioWare plan to do anything about that? How hard can it be to put in some Regex expression to check for urls and known platforms.

Other than adding the messengers to your ignore list, which could fill up really quickly, there's not much you can do except turn off chat.

 

As far as BW blocking things goes - how hard can it be to change a URL and/or website?

[Lhancelot]

Other than adding the messengers to your ignore list, which could fill up really quickly, there's not much you can do except turn off chat.

 

As far as BW blocking things goes - how hard can it be to change a URL and/or website?

 

They don’t care. Not a matter of difficulty you know this as a long time vet of SWTOR lol.

[Phazonfreak]

They don’t care. Not a matter of difficulty you know this as a long time vet of SWTOR lol.

 

It's not true that they don't care. There have been several ban waves of credit sellers and buyers over the years. It simply is a neverending story and particularly futile for a downsized game studio that basically runs on life support and for as long as there are people around that actually buy credits from them.

Edited February 26, 2020 by Phazonfreak

[JediQuaker]

They don’t care. Not a matter of difficulty you know this as a long time vet of SWTOR lol.

Yes, it is a matter of difficulty. When they ban URLs, websites, and characters, the spammers use new URLs (which could go through proxies) new websites and new characters.

 

I'm sure that BW would rather you buy stuff from the CM and sell it on the GTN to get credits.

[inCelesphere]

It has been exceptionally bad lately on starter planets. The second you load in, there's a credit spammer. I hadn't been on a starter world for at least a year, but i was shocked. Also, I don't believe they don't care, because they have often said in the past that it does help them when we click report. I reckon they are just overwhelmed to be honest. Hopefully there's something they can do.

[DreadtechSavant]

This again?

yes BW do do things like a sweep of clearing out and nuking spammers, removing credits from them Then these same players just start again with new accounts.

 

Yes it's annoying, yes BW could do better, but at the same time I never see why so many get eat up about it. It really is no more annoying the players constantly selling items in chat rather than using the GNT or....well could write an entire book on it. So much of it is far worse the gold sellers. It's not that big an issue.

[robertthebard]

They don’t care. Not a matter of difficulty you know this as a long time vet of SWTOR lol.

 

As a long time veteran of multiple MMOs, I can tell you, it's a matter of difficulty, not a desire not to deal with it. Let's take a look at some suggestions from other games that were "easy":

 

IP banning. There are several sites out now that let you use a proxy IP, so are they going to have to ban every IP? Will be kind of hard to play then, wouldn't it? Then there's the "well, what about the legit players from those IP addresses"?

 

They could implement some chat filters to filter out URLs, right? Sure, and I've seen it done, but it's amazing how you don't actually need to use 3 w's for a website, when 6 v's work just as well, right? How long until they have to filter out any letter combinations that might even get you close?

 

The really ironic part to this, for me, is reading all the doom, and how this game is dead, and/dying, or "in maintenance mode" threads/posts, and yet, we're having an issue with gold spammers? I'll let you in on a little secret I've discovered over the years: when a game is truly dead, or on maintenance mode, gold spammers don't bother with it, there's no profit in it. That they are spamming, while a pita to deal with, it means that they're making money, so the game's not is as bad a condition as the forums might lead you to believe.

 

This isn't an exclusively swtor problem, I've only played one MMO where it wasn't a thing, well, two, GW and DDO. In DDO, there's no point to buying gold, because most of the most desirable stuff is bound to account, or character, on pick up. That would work, to some extent, but there's a percentage of the player base that would have a fit if their profits were undercut so bad. Short of having a person logged in 24/7, 365 to ban them when they pop up, there's no way to effectively combat them. In WoW, I saw a video of them using bodies to spell it out on the ground, and didn't Blizzard once take one of these companies to court?

 

As an aside, ignore and report as you will. You can remove the older names from your block list, since those names have been banned, or simply deleted, because the spammers know the legit players are going to be ignoring and reporting, and the customers will have other information to get their stuff.

[Xerkrosis]

It's become really bad recently, especially on starter planets. And how does it look for newcomers who get their cutscenes spammed with ads.

 

Disabling general chat for f2p characters under level 10 (lvl to unlock fleet) might be a method. Not sure if it's worth it to make a preferred/premium account every time one gets locked/banned for RMT-spam. Probably locking alongside /w, but with the exception for characters you've been whispered from.

 

I'd also love to have the reported characters auto-ignored without filling our own ignore-list. Maybe adding another report-option for RMT that does the trick. To not make it waste too much memory for each character, it could auto-remove the oldest auto-ignore. Until then the spam-character should be already gone or served the purpose to not be spammed anymore on that day (or week).

 

Of course a filter for that spam would be even more appreciated, but I doubt its effectivness especially when it comes to overblocking, since the address just changes and takes an even more creative form. It's a damn pandemic in every properly visited MMO.

 

But there's yet one thing that I'd very much hope to have: Hide chat during cutscenes and keep it hidden, until it's been called by player (e.g. hitting enter) + an option to hide it again (in case you've accidentally called it). There's already something similar in the game: Disabling it manually by clicking on that "show/hide chat"-button in top left corner. It only needs to be additionally tied to if there's a cutscene or not.

Entering/during cutscene: hide.

Leaving/exiting cutscene: (restore) user's choice.

It is already possible to call the chat-window when it's hidden. So it's (from my ignorant pov) almost done!

Getting the chat spammed when you're doing stuff in the world isn't as bad as it breaking immersion when you're invested in a cutscene's story, dialogue etc. And tbh, SWTOR's greatest advantage is probably the full-voiced cutscenes.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Xerkrosis

[Lhancelot]

It's not true that they don't care. There have been several ban waves of credit sellers and buyers over the years. It simply is a neverending story and particularly futile for a downsized game studio that basically runs on life support and for as long as there are people around that actually buy credits from them.

 

Ohreally?

 

I remember reading how credit sellers sometimes work in cahoots with the game they selling on. I mean, I know that couldn't be happening here, but just saying sometimes things aren't as we see them.

 

You presented a nice statement btw, I highlighted the part in green. Did you mean the credit sellers, or the CM of BW when you said that?

Edited February 27, 2020 by Lhancelot

[Lhancelot]

The really ironic part to this, for me, is reading all the doom, and how this game is dead, and/dying, or "in maintenance mode" threads/posts, and yet, we're having an issue with gold spammers? I'll let you in on a little secret I've discovered over the years: when a game is truly dead, or on maintenance mode, gold spammers don't bother with it, there's no profit in it. That they are spamming, while a pita to deal with, it means that they're making money, so the game's not is as bad a condition as the forums might lead you to believe.

 

Some good points. Except like I pointed out to the other guy, I wonder how many of those older games you seen gold sellers on really were thriving versus the game itself being involved in the market of gold themselves?

 

Things are much more complex than players like to admit, or know about. Maybe just naive I dunno.

[LeMage]

WoW cut into gold sellers profits when they came up with that coin you buy for RL money from Blizzard and then sell on the AH and you get your gold. IDK if that would/could work here, but it seems preferable to the gold sellers.

[robertthebard]

Some good points. Except like I pointed out to the other guy, I wonder how many of those older games you seen gold sellers on really were thriving versus the game itself being involved in the market of gold themselves?

 

Things are much more complex than players like to admit, or know about. Maybe just naive I dunno.

 

The actual cynic in me always looks at this argument the same way, every time I see it: The devs/publishers aren't banning spammers fast enough, they must be in cahoots. You'd be surprised how many times I've seen it posted in game forums, and maybe one of 10 I had to wonder... For the most part, I'm going to have to go with "nope, not likely in xx". Is it possible? Anything's possible. Is it likely, I'd say no. No dev wants to make themselves work that hard trying to control a game's economy.

[Equeliber]

Hmm, last weekend I was doing quests on Hutta on my new alt - ignoring 3 gold spammers was enough for me to not see any more gold spam messages for the few hours that I spent on the planet. I don't know, may be on the US servers it's worse but it really isn't that big of a deal to ignore 3 people. Edited February 28, 2020 by Equeliber

[Shinian]

Hmm, last weekend I was doing quests on Hutta on my new alt - ignoring 3 gold spammers was enough for me to not see any more gold spam messages for the few hours that I spent on the planet. I don't know, may be on the US servers it's worse but it really isn't that big of a deal to ignore 3 people.

 

I ignored about 10, gave up and turned off Gen chat.

[SteveTheCynic]

It's become really bad recently, especially on starter planets. And how does it look for newcomers who get their cutscenes spammed with ads.

Like any other MMORPG, except for the point that it affects cutscenes (it shouldn't, but *ordinary*chat* shouldn't be visible during cutscenes either).

Disabling general chat for f2p characters under level 10 (lvl to unlock fleet)

Fleet unlocks at level 7, or maybe 8. That's why there are vendors on Fleet that sell BoP gear for level 8+.

might be a method. Not sure if it's worth it to make a preferred/premium account every time one gets locked/banned for RMT-spam. Probably locking alongside /w, but with the exception for characters you've been whispered from.

Do you think the goldsellers spend their *own* money on accounts? The fraction of goldseller accounts bought on stolen credit card info must be pretty high.

I'd also love to have the reported characters auto-ignored without filling our own ignore-list.

Good idea.

Maybe adding another report-option for RMT that does the trick. To not make it waste too much memory for each character, it could auto-remove the oldest auto-ignore. Until then the spam-character should be already gone or served the purpose to not be spammed anymore on that day (or week).

Better, perhaps, to clean the RMT-report-autoignore list whenever a spammer account is banned.

But there's yet one thing that I'd very much hope to have: Hide chat during cutscenes and keep it hidden, until it's been called by player (e.g. hitting enter) + an option to hide it again (in case you've accidentally called it).

This. Even ordinary chat can be annoying, especially if you're classified as being on Fleet or a capital world during a cutscene.

And tbh, SWTOR's greatest advantage is probably the full-voiced cutscenes.

There's no doubt about that. GW2 has some actual animated cutscenes with voiceovers (it's mostly "talking heads" or in-world stuff like the tour you can give Darth PBSwithoutKnobs in the latest bit of Impside story), and ESO has some KOTOR-style ones where only the NPCs talk.

 

The weirdest that I've seen is STO, where your character's voice is never heard, even in fully-animated cutscenes (there aren't huge numbers of those) where your character is shown to be speaking. Everyone else can be seen-and-heard speaking, and then your character has something to say and there's subtitles and your character's mouth is flapping, but no voice.

[JediQuaker]

Yes it's annoying, yes BW could do better, but at the same time I never see why so many get eat up about it. It really is no more annoying the players constantly selling items in chat rather than using the GNT or....well could write an entire book on it. So much of it is far worse the gold sellers. It's not that big an issue.

Good point. I'd just as soon see credit spammers as some idiots arguing about Trump or whatever.

[Khaleijo]

Do people /report spam those messages or just start to rant in gen chat and use their own /ignore?

With that squelch system if enough people report the spammer that account should get a 24 hours chat ban. Of course they could just change to/create another account and go on, but from what I've seen on starter planets, people rant and throw insults towards the spammers but apparently don't actually report them or they quickly would be squelched with 50 to 100 players on planet. Otherwise I can't explain to myself how the very same name spams up to an hour or more, while the chat consists of nothing but credit spam and people annoyed by it.

Use the tools we already have, if they are muted quickly the effort of creating new accounts might become too bothersome. Although that might just cause them to find other who knows how annoying ways to advertise. As long as players buy credits to make it worthwhile, there will be credit spammers of some sort.

 

On the other hand, at least for me the advertisements via in game mail seem to have gotten less lately, but then, that could be just luck and not standing where those spammers scan for the character names.

[Sinhammer]

Do people /report spam those messages or just start to rant in gen chat and use their own /ignore?

 

I know as late as 2018 that reporting spammers in chat wasn't wise, for one main reason--every time you reported a name it stealthily opened up a CS ticket in your name. I remember I ignored/reported every spammer I saw for nearly a year after returning to game in 2017. When the time came for me to actually NEED support for an in-game problem I received the message I had too many pending tickets. Turned out it was all those pesky spam bot name reports. And you couldn't close those tickets either; the system was just straight up broken. Whether they fixed all that garbage I have no idea, but to this day I try to report as little as possible in case it's still that badly implemented

[KendraP]

What, credit spammers in 6.0? Nobody ever said that would be a thing. Nobody said the only benefit from the credit sinks would be to the credit spammers.

 

Oh wait. I did.

[Phazonfreak]

What, credit spammers in 6.0? Nobody ever said that would be a thing. Nobody said the only benefit from the credit sinks would be to the credit spammers.

 

Oh wait. I did.

 

Credit spammers have always been a thing, nothing new with 6.0

Edited March 1, 2020 by Phazonfreak

[KendraP]

Credit spammers have always been a thing, nothing new with 6.0

 

i never said they were new; i implied heavily they would be worse due to the credit sinks.