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Some ideas to get tough about botters, RMT, and goldfarmers.
alannanorthstar
Member Posts: 17 Arc User
First off, when RMT is caught, both buyers and sellers need to be punished. As I understand, sellers already lose their accounts, but buyers are getting a slap on the wrist. Buyers should get at least suspension and confiscation of ilicit items on a first offense, a longer suspension and loss of ALL items on a second offense, and loss of account by third offense. If the buyer no longer has the items, they should still be confiscated if possible wherever they ended up. Make buying from the scumbags spamming chat so toxic that nobody will be willing to risk it, and communicate that aggressively.
Second, looking at the new player restrictions, they need to be better focused at limiting throwaway accounts, by forcing players to be invested in their accounts in order to use the functions that botters, mules, and AD sellers need to operate. This means higher play time before an account's useful to them, and therefore, more hours of work they throw away every time they get an account banned.
Some possible restrictions that would accomplish this goal without overly punishing legitimate players.
- A flag on easily convertible items that restricts trade in those items to accounts that have met a level threshold on at least one character. For example, not being able to trade/auction greater marks of potency without one level 60+ character on the account. Basically, don't let players trade with "easily convertible" items until they've gotten one character to a level where they could reasonable use and obtain those items.
= AD balance caps based on the highest level character on the account, which disappear entirely with a level 70 character. Maybe 20000 for every 10 levels? This aggressively targets mules, and would need to be coupled with monitoring of the zen/ad exchange for unusual behavior (basically, pay more attention if they appear to be using it as currency storage).
- A hidden, account wide "risk score" that affects reporting/spam detection thresholds. Risk score starts out high at the threshold where players first get access to chat. Total character level across all accounts, being in an established guild, or having friends with well-established accounts lowers the risk score. Having an IP recently shared with a spammer should also raise the score. This allows more aggressive filters.
- A more aggressive URL blacklist. Strip out everything but the letters before comparing to the blacklist. If the player;s risk score is high enough and they match a known RMT site url, muting should be instant. and no one should ever see the message. Banning should follow shortly thereafter once the message gets reviewed.
- Heavy use of punctuation is a common obsfucation technique for spammers. Detect this and mute them based on their "risk score".
- Some of these limits could be waived for players who've obtained Zen/Items through Arc/Steam at least once.
Second, looking at the new player restrictions, they need to be better focused at limiting throwaway accounts, by forcing players to be invested in their accounts in order to use the functions that botters, mules, and AD sellers need to operate. This means higher play time before an account's useful to them, and therefore, more hours of work they throw away every time they get an account banned.
Some possible restrictions that would accomplish this goal without overly punishing legitimate players.
- A flag on easily convertible items that restricts trade in those items to accounts that have met a level threshold on at least one character. For example, not being able to trade/auction greater marks of potency without one level 60+ character on the account. Basically, don't let players trade with "easily convertible" items until they've gotten one character to a level where they could reasonable use and obtain those items.
= AD balance caps based on the highest level character on the account, which disappear entirely with a level 70 character. Maybe 20000 for every 10 levels? This aggressively targets mules, and would need to be coupled with monitoring of the zen/ad exchange for unusual behavior (basically, pay more attention if they appear to be using it as currency storage).
- A hidden, account wide "risk score" that affects reporting/spam detection thresholds. Risk score starts out high at the threshold where players first get access to chat. Total character level across all accounts, being in an established guild, or having friends with well-established accounts lowers the risk score. Having an IP recently shared with a spammer should also raise the score. This allows more aggressive filters.
- A more aggressive URL blacklist. Strip out everything but the letters before comparing to the blacklist. If the player;s risk score is high enough and they match a known RMT site url, muting should be instant. and no one should ever see the message. Banning should follow shortly thereafter once the message gets reviewed.
- Heavy use of punctuation is a common obsfucation technique for spammers. Detect this and mute them based on their "risk score".
- Some of these limits could be waived for players who've obtained Zen/Items through Arc/Steam at least once.
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Comments
If cryptic limited the AD on new accounts to 20k per 10 levels then there would definitely things that new players couldn't buy. Do you have any idea how much RL money new people drop into the game? I knew a guy who played for a month before quitting and spent over $200, and one of the reasons he quit was because all the stuff he won from keys was BoA because of restrictions like the ones you are advocating.
And waiving limits just for people who spend RL money? that means you are preventing a lot of people from free movement if they play this game F2P.
We are searching for slave labor, will pay with food from our farm!
- they know they are going to get banned anyway, so they invest as little into the accounts as possible (in terms of time)
- they likely have few if any real friends
- they likely aren't in a real guild
Because this is a F2P game, the effective only weapon against them is to take up more and more of their time. Keep increasing the effort to be able to spam successfully while decreasing the effort to catch them, and there will be a massive decrease in the number of spammers - but you have to make the loss of their accounts meaningful for them to succeed. If it were being done, we'd be hearing about it from players that got banned for it.
You have a low post count meaning you are probably a relatively new player, or someone who just found this forum. Here is a idea. How about you play a bit more or read a bit more in the forum before you start fancying yourself a genius and start posting inane suggestions.
Improving the matchmaking system could make LFG all but obsolete as well,, but that's another topic entirely.
Players would still be able to interact with others with say, party chat, and whispers, and they could still turn on the zone-wide chats if they so desired. These chats would likely become much less spammy as a result, improving the quality of communication for those who choose to participate there.