Gold Spammers Out Of Hand

Look at the 3 advertising AOEAH in the middle. 3 different posters, same spam. This is what they're doing and nothing is done about it.

Oh, there are banned words. J E S U S for one is banned.

And yet, it’s a fairly common given name in Spanish...

Meanwhile in other F2P games

Do I detect a possible solution? (Must be level 10 to use chat - I like it! And it’s when event content and sub-T1 alerts become available, so perfect!)

It used to be level 65 to be able to use global chat, players 1-64 level had level restricted global chat, now only LFG is level restricted while the rest are available at level 10, but thats because there are no more gold spammers. If they ever make their way to the game again in huge numbers, Im pretty sure they'll restrict global chat again until they deal with them. Restrictions on chat, prompt HWID bans, good censoring and good bot detection removed all gold sellers from the game.

That was suggested a long time ago. They said no. I'm not searching for the response nor will I continue to post in this thread after a warning I got yesterday for something I didn't even do.

Carry on.

No you do not.

All you see is a way to hurt the real players and do nothing to the bots.

Tell me, how did the level restrictions work on being able to enter the HQs?


The real problem we are seeing right now is that there is a new gold seller company and they are really pushing to get business. It is sadly to much to hope that people wont buy from them but the fact that we have bots at all shows there are idiots out there that do buy.

It's possible to auto-ban them (see my signature for a rudimentary implementation). Since that apparently is not going to happen as I posted that 6 months ago, please just give us the option to add our own filter keywords and if something matches don't display the message. Can be implemented in the same way that already exists (instead of processing text and showing ****, just don't show the message at all). Just boggles my mind that this is being ignored as it goes against the TOS of this very game:

5.4. Virtual Items. [SNIP]
However, except as may be expressly permitted by Daybreak in its sole and absolute discretion, selling or otherwise transferring Virtual Items in exchange for real world money or monetary value is not allowed. Virtual Items acquired through the in-game marketplace are nonrefundable, have no cash value and are not redeemable and/or refundable for any sum of money or monetary value from us.

Unless of course Daybreak did give their permission (which I doubt) but then we've got a much bigger issue at hand.

roflmao i remember logging in today trying to find a group for SI and all i saw were cash sellers, Devs won't do anything anytime soon just ignore them all.

Eventually your ignore list hits a max. I'm fast approaching that max.

I'd go even further and make it lvl 30, or make a separate LFG for 30 lvl plus

Yes I know there are other threads on this already (and thx to people who made those).

But there can't be enough talk about this until it's solved.

I don't care what you need to do-- write a script to autoblock certain words, put a level requirement on posting in LFG/ trade/ shout. But something has to change.

It's out. Of. Control.

Please.

these points are very accurate!

1 the cost of not moderating exists too! Ignoring hasn't solved the problem - instead it is getting worse. The gold spammers also drain the devs of money these players could be spending on the indirect cash purchase we already have.
2 THIS is the main problem. It probably takes 10 minutes, with a makro they obviously use only 5 minutes (yes, the tutorial is easy enough that someone could program the input... which would have the spammers use 0 manpower where DBG would have to use 3 people on shifts!) The most common solution is to force the spammers to level much much longer to access large chats. Level 10 or 15 would already hurt them badly...
3 exactly. The devs tried on EU. There is somewhere a thread around with screenshots.
4 the problem is point 2 and if the "preparation" took longer, the moderator would have a chance to win that fight.

From what I have seen in other games, increasing the time to access large chats combined with moderation to get rid of new ones is the only method that I have seen succeed.

I've posted multiple times in multiple threads regarding the gold-spammers, and the devs continue to do nothing about that, but I made a post in here just a little while ago, about why the Assassin TC is even worse than the rest of the TCs (1/3 of the subcapsules are literally a box of rocks), and they jump on that **** immediately. Thread is gone. If they can moderate this board, why the hell can't we get in game mods?

I just reported five spammers to try to reduce the herd (temporarily).

For what it's worth, I'd go for a level 30 minimum to post in LFG. Sure there will be a few ******** lowbies, but for the most part low level people looking for help use shout in the WT/HOD not LFG anyway. I don't really care if shout is flooded with gold sellers personally, I have a separate tab for shout and only turn it on when i'm either very bored or trying to communicate in that area only (like to shout a CC bounty is up or to see if anyone needs a carry if I'm doing a walkin like Trigon or FOS3). Trade maybe set to level 15 or 20...it's realistic that you could be on a low toon and have something to trade, but again, that is an optional chat tab. LFG is a requirement if you want to get raids and missions done for most things, and the gold sellers have taken that channel over. Or make a LFG2 category/Tab for the T1+ crowd. I think you'd find that if that was an option, 90% of the population would be out of LFG quickly and the gold sellers can remain there to shout to each other all day.

Reinheld

Ugh! why you do that for? now I'm going to have ignore 5 new spammers that will replace those.

It might work that way to some extent, but there are already dozens of them to ignore anyway. Who knows? Maybe if we report enough and cause support staff to have a larger volume of spammers to deal with, they might actually start looking into reducing the workload on support and automate the process in some way.

Also, a better way to handle this as players if you are using the ignore list: Add them to ignore as you see them in zones you're in, and then clear your ignore list daily either upon login or before logging out. Since our ignore list has a limit, refreshing it daily prevents it from reaching that limit. Clearing the ignore list is pretty fast if you manage it on a regular basis.

Excellent idea. Let the players deal with it instead of fixing the root cause.