Devs, Why Are You Ignoring The Gold Spammer Problem?

This really sums it up perfectly right here, glad to hear that you are at least looking into it.

I must confess that I've only used regex once in my entire life and it was to validate that an e-mail address was using a correct format (any characters, then an @ symbol, then any characters, then a full stop, then any letters). So my knowledge is very limited/beginner level at best and I don't know the ins and outs of it.

From your example, I couldn't figure out if you could work around things like:

• Using \ and / to create \/\/
• Using V to create VV
• Using ( and ) to create ()

I'm assuming that you probably can. But my next question would be if you used regex to filter the chat, can you guarantee that it won't create problems for innocent people, too?

I'm sure it's probably easy to do what your example laid out above, to prevent a bot (at least until they figure out a way around it) but can it be done without suddenly censoring or flagging innocent people who just happen to use things which regex doesn't like? In every language, too.

For example: If you filtered "vv", you'd prevent people from using the word "savvy", as you'd flag their message as spam.

Maybe if you manage to completely eradicate "torigold" from the game, I'd simply create a new URL which forwards you to my torigold website. Maybe I use an address such as "www.dcuo.cash" which uses common terms that members of the community are likely to say. It become more difficult to filter out spam from genuine, non-spammy messages.

Let's say then that regex is the King. It can absolutely obliterate gold spammers and prevent them from posting URLs. What if they then go on to get themselves ranked high on Google and simply start talking casually? Just "get cheap dcuo cash 10m for $5, search dcuo cash". I imagine it's probably very simple to censor that phrase. But they'll just come up with another. All the while puffing out the blocked words list and making it more difficult for players to communicate in game.

I’ve put ToriGold on my bookmarks for the future

I've seen a few people on the forums admit that they've used those services....and others SWEAR up and down that those services get used a lot. Take that and how they've exploded like cockroaches ever since the second time capsule hit...i'd say there's a pretty damn good chance people are rolling the dice with their credit cards (unless they were smart enough to use pre-paids...still stupid though).

Here's some simple code; adapt it and be done with this.
If an account is ignored on Chat by 10 different players within 1 day; then the account loses chat ability for X days.

Would be nice if I could press enter, then click on the offenders' name in the chat box, and choose Ignore (or report spam) - rather than try to navigate some cascading menu thingie or type out /ignore ffagsffsgsdafsafasf

I see you finaly realise that what i was saying is possible. If the goldspammers decide to invent alot, like replacing () for o's and stuff, at some point it will cost compreenshion. In other words it would make them unsuccessfull at spamming on LFG.

However it's good to take in considerations address like www.dcuo.cash. To solve this type of address dcuo could easly sue this kind of websites to premantely deleted them.

Oh there's no doubt in my mind you could probably silence one gold spammer if the only goal was to prevent them from posting spam in public chat and based purely on every message they've posted up to that point. However, that isn't the goal in this case. The goal is to silence every gold seller, without affecting the wider community and without having to spend lots of money, time and resources to not only implementing, but consistently modifying the system so that it can adapt to the every changing actions of the gold sellers.

To bypass the lawsuit, how about "controller.cash"? Now no lawsuit is possible for breach of copyright and you've got a fairly distinct name which doesn't have any competition on Google. Took me less than 1 minute to come up with that name, check it's competition on Google and check it's availability on GoDaddy.com.

The money the gold spammer would have to pay to change from domain every monday ins't worth the cost xd.
Not every single person has its own site to sell cash. If we say 10 sites are selling dcuo virtal cash thats already exagerating.

Plus there is a chat restriction on the already on the chat, words like lust for some reason are blocked. Its just a update a update and a few new words to the blacklist filter.

It's a relatively severe quality of life issues as a player who keeps local chat on their screen. FWIW. These days the frequency has gone up to almost non-stop, so one HAS to ignore them, which when you have to repeat it so frequently is pretty annoying.

Plus the larger problem of the difficulty of reporting player chat abuse really really needs to be made far easier for players to use. I realize that the potential for abuse of that is huge and that it then becomes a matter of limited support staff, but still, from the player POV, despite the number of players who don't mind, this too is a major quality of life issue for some of us. Just noting again.

Go and play Age of Conan. In the 5 years or so I've been playing that game I can count on 1 hand how many spam bots I've come across at least when it comes to in game currency. 99% of the bots there are for guilds looking for new members. This is probably because in game currency is of little significance there. But this is one example where gold spammers are near non-existent.

Well it's not exactly pricey to purchase a new URL. That "controller.cash" URL is £3.70+ for 2 years. I wouldn't have to change anything about my "ToriGold" site, either. Just simply set up forwarding on the controller.cash URL and it'll send everyone who visits it to ToriGold.com. Takes no more than 5 minutes to do this.

I've reviewed the chat restriction list you're talking about ("tallywhacker" is on it XD) and it's not a purely server based list. It's actually in your game files. It's stored in an XML file and at the top of the XML file, it says in a comment that both the server and client should be updated at the same time. That means they'll only ever be able to update the list whenever there's a client update, which is about once per month. So a few hours after they figure out a new advert for public chat, we'll have to wait until the next game update until the new advert is c e nsored.

I'd also like to point out that you can't say "c ensored" on the forums. It changes it to "maturified", which is a perfect place to demonstrate how people not using the term in the same manner that got it added to the censor list in the first place can be affected by a censor list.

I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree here.

For starters, thank you for responding in this thread. This isn't the first gold spammer thread I've created but this is the first time a green colored name I've seen respond. But my point, Mepps, is that you wouldn't tolerate this for 1 NY second on these forums. The minute a spam thread is created you would delete it in short order and ban the offending poster. Hell, you've put me in timeout for far, far less. But for some reason this is an issue in game that I feel is being ignored. Back when Sony still ran the show, I would report players with racist names or who were foul mouthed to the point of ridiculousness and when I would report them, I would always get a response. Now, my reports go ignored. But thank you for acknowledging there is a problem and you guys at least want to try to do something. I seriously appreciate this response.

Oh, and while it's not game breaking, it's still a pain in the rear. Not door blocking pain in the rear(which the GM's at the time would correct immediately) but a pain nonetheless. And to be honest, requiring level advancement to take part in shout and LFG wouldn't take much effort at all and would seriously impede their progress.

Oh, one last thing. If you really want this to stop, put ingame currency in the marketplace and sell it at a slightly cheaper rate than they do. This is the concept behind Stubhub and other online ticket broker services that essentially made ticket scalping legal.

I do not like the gold spammers.. but are we all seriously discussing the idea that shout & lfg be level 30+ only?

Guess wanting new players to actually communicate is secondary..

"she swallowed a fly.. so she swallowed a spider to catch the fly..."

I had no ideia how dcuo implemented their filter, kind of nice to know. Thanks.

I know a few guy who use these services and one who did the math and has saved a ton by buying money instead of stabilizes. I don't use them for the simple facts I don't want to lose my account or get my bank account hacked.

Yeah and 11 people that don´t like you report ya.... and than? You write a ticket to DB, they proof it and find out that you´re right and have to unlock your account.... or what? Don´t you think that would afflict DB-Support even more than necessary ... yeah I realy want to see your face if this would happen to you^^

Give us a filter to block certain words, along with wild card characters like * so lets say for example i type *.com in filter any thing written in the chat with xyz.com in it will be filtered out.

As somebody else have already said, just set a requirement on LFG to be accessible only for who has the level 30.

They'd just invade Shout.. then what ? Do the same with all chats ?

The game needs new players to be able to communicate!