Simple solution for gold spammers

Sorry but NO. Look at this point I don't think anyone can come up with anything that will totally rid the game of the spammers. The problem hit its peak when 3 different web sites all had spammers trying to out shout one another and it was so bad players were having trouble even trying to use the LFG. The solution to that? The cap on how many posts a free to play account could make in a day. This sounded like a pretty good one because not only would it TOTALLY eliminate the advertising on chat channels like the LFG since the only possible way a spammer could even posy there once would require them to spend at least $5 to go premium... and yet Gee here we are a fairly short time later and getting posts from gold spammers in all channels again. Heck as already stated they even found a way around the 4 posts a day limit for F2P.

So NOW you want to limit the how many characters EVERYONE in game can include in any chat anytime? Gee won't that make trying to hold a conversation with your friends in game just a totally wonderful experience? <-- please tell me you understand this sentence is SARCASM. In addition it means making it harder to try and pass along any sort of retailed instructions on any special mechanics or whatever is required to complete a specific mission.

What the game needs to help even slow down the spammers is this.. A better way to report violators IN GAME and one that would allow the person reporting to copy and paste the specific text into that report so no picture taking was required to PROVE the report was accurate. At this point most of us are aware that /report in game does almost nothing and the ONLY way to actually notify Customer Service is by putting the game on hold and going to the web site to file a ticket. Now I do not like the spammers any more than the next player but if you spend a couple hours a day in game like I do you can see 5, 10 or even more of the spammers. I Subscribe to PLAY the game not to spend half my time running to the web site to fill out multiple reports. We need a good pop up report in game that will allow us to do the same as going to the web site.

At that point we need dame masters round the clock 24/7 every single day of the year to enforce the TOS. Would not hurt a bit is they also has a dedicated person on the tech team that received all those reports I talked about above and then within minutes contacted a GM and sent them to deal with the problem.

Now the down side... I used to play City of Heroes and everything I just described above was in place in that Super hero game. Guess what? Even with that set up we still has spammers so they could make all those changes and those spammers would still find ways around the system. Ad let's be perfectly honest... With the state of the game financially if anyone thinks they are going to run out and hire all those extra people to deal with the problem your dreaming.. it will never happen. And before the next response even arrives in the thread no I do not think we could just give certain players the ability to serve as Game Masters. Way too much of a chance for abuse leading to players being banned because "I didn't like the way he looked or the way he answered my question".

Bottom line.. There really is no perfect solution to the issue. REPORT them when you can. Put them on ignore so you don;t have to deal with them and move on to other issues.

You know how they always seem to multiply when you try to get rid of them? I say we box all of them up, Fed Ex them overnight to Apocalypse, and bug the hell outta Darkseid with them. He'll either be so swamped and distracted, or he'll completely wipe them from existence. Either way, problem solved!

Has anyone actually seen a gold spammer play the game - raids, seasonal, alerts etc or out farming? Where do they get the money and / or goods they're selling?

Ah, ok was wondering about that. Thought you were talking about buying key objects to open containers and selling what's inside.

I never have. I can always tell which ones they are. And its the same for both males and females. Their costumes and styles are default EVERYTHING, including colors. They're level 4. And they're typically standing in a corner near the teleports if they are inside, or just outside the safe houses somewhere, either in front or on the roof. They're just standing there doing nothing. Obviously there is either a live person watching it, or they have something to keep it from going into "away" status and getting disconnected. Some of the times, you can duel with them, other times they decline requests. You can also find them a part of leagues once in a while, usually because a person went to click on "Add to Ignore" and accidentally clicked on "Invite to League" which they usually say yes. And the leagues never notice and remove them.

Yeah Ive seen a few in safe houses a month or two back when the spamming was seriously out of control.

No but in their ads they also say they are MORE than willing to buy GOLD (IE in game cash from anyone). Who knows ? they may have different divisions.. One that JUST advertises and one that actually does play the game and then turns in all that cash to be sold off.. hey if your F2P you can only keep 1500 on hand anyway might as well turn the rest over to be sold right? (JUST A WAG .. but obviously the web site are getting the stuff from some where)

The spammers are just the advertisers, not the dealers.

Before the bad idea of killing Free players chat access, all of the spammers were completely free accounts, now they are Premiums. These accounts can be made in the thousands and are very disposable.

The dealers (those that actually get and distribute the cash) are subscriber accounts (do to the fact that only subs can trade cash). These accounts are fewer and keep their activities as quiet as possible, they look and act like any other player. They play the game and the broker to gain all the cash.

I have a radical solution for this problem. Hire some in-game GMs like we had at the begining who can insta ban them and problem will be more or less semi-solved.

With reporting system like we have now, it takes way to much time to get their accounts banned.

There is one solution which works, in-game cash is between players not tradeable !!!

You can still trade items between players and accumulate cash through broker, thats it !

For that to make it work devs need to make cash accountwide though...

All Daybreak can do is work with the laws and law enforcement of the countries hosting the gold-spammers. Lots of luck getting the police of China, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Russia, Kazakhstan, etc., etc., to all unite to eliminate gold spammers.

It's not exactly a worldwide priority.

They tried that. Gold spammers just substituted letters.

Very simple solution would be to disable say/shout till lvl 10 and LFG/Trade until lvl 30. At least then they would have to level a toon to 10 to spam shout.

Can't say I like either of those solutions.. A brand new player joins the game and has finds himself confused as to what to do and where to go and with that first idea can't even go to SAY inside a safe house to ask for advice? Same guy heads out to run that very first assigned mission and can't use shout to ask for help? NOT saying he'd get any since especially in Metropolis he'd probably have 5 or more players that hang out constantly outside the Little Bohemia Police Station making fun of him and calling him names.. And NEVER actually answering the question

And let's take the same guy , who may have already shelled out cash to be a legendary and was told when he looked it up he'd have access to the "WHOLE GAME" and first thing he discovers is that does NOT apply to the LFG or Trade chat. Now the LFG below 30 is really no big deal.. never once saw anyone forming a team to do the below 30 alerts. But Trade chat? Last i checked anyone could buy a ton of Time Capsules and if some one open one up and gets an aura or whatever they can sell for MILLIONS they an't go to Trade chat because they are not level 30 yet? Don't forget players have alts so just because a "character " is under 30 level does not mean the person at the controls doesn't know what they just got or how much they can make selling it..

Oh and back to the first suggestion. We all thought the limit they placed on F2P daily chat totals would solve the whole problem and to our great surprise not only did they find a way around it on SHOUT they actually did go out and spend $6 so they could keep advertising on LFG.

At this point I really don't think there is a good solution that will completely work. All we can do is keep reporting them and ignoring them. Placing even more restriction on the entire player base is not going to get it done and could cause a few more to actually quit the game completely

Well, they could suspend the ability to trade/mail unlimited cash between players for a set but undisclosed amount of time, cut off those bots' money and they would disappear.



Making the broker the only location millions could be used and then actually monitoring the broker for the "exchange" between members for those using the gold bots and the members dealing with them, then ban both parties.

I doubt either will happen though.

Yep. If there is something that someone is abusing, take it away from the non-abusers instead of finding away to police or punish the abusers. That's the new American way.

No thanks,
Reinheld

Report them. Since the chat changes, the support seems to act faster.

I do think they should monitor the game better but.......

1. It takes about 5 minutes to round up all the screenshots needed to have most removed with one support ticket.

2. It's a team effort. If we as players do not do what is needed to help remove these bots. Then why would you expect that someone else would do what you consider a waste of time and refuse to do?

3. If you consider that doing what is needed to be done a waste of time. Then I guess it's not that big of an issue for you.

I'm not even sure how much of a priority it is in the US aside for the On line Games involved. I was curious after I read your post so I googled GOLD SPAMMERS and saw tons of links to different games where the discussion was how can we get rid of these guys but not a single thing about any of them being sued and / or forced to stop what they were doing. The list of games I saw with links on the subject included Warhammer, Tanks Online, Lord of the Rings online. and on and on and on.

I'm sure some of those have better systems to at least try to limit the spammers but from what i saw a large number have at least some of the same issues we see here now.

Your right in a lot of third world countries the government could care less if some small on line company is basically stealing cash from big on line games.. heck wouldn't surprise me if some government officials in some of those places were part owners of the SPAM site.

Thing is .. Its not on any priority list here in the USA as well. Heck if they did a survey of Congress my guess would be the vast majority would have to have you explain what a gold spammer even was much less give a crap about stopping them.

OMG I can hear the bloody screaming in game and even on hear if they tried that. I think we actually have a group of players that view the broker as the most important part of the game. Not to mention those, like myself, that create alts and then email them in game cash to ease the process of advancing a bit.... Hey I can go to the vendors in station houses and in the Watch Tower and buy up a ton of style pieces and armor sets and grab a number of feats to make my new alt stronger.

The one's that would be screaming the loudest and longest? the guys that actually shell out REAL money to but everything from Time Capsules to Catalysts and detectors for Nth Metal and then turn right around and stick them on the market to increase their in game cash.

Another thing to keep in mind is from what we saw with the message cap TRUST me the Spammers would work around the limits... There is no way without totally ticking off a bunch of players they can completely shut off the ability to email cash or to transfer it via trade. With THAT in mind what makes the difference if the transaction occurs with one email/trade or several? Again all that would really be accomplished is ticking off a portion of the player base and depending on the individual even driving away a few more by putting another limit on their game play.