i was in various dungeons, and i have setting to friends/guild only.
for somehow, i am aware that they are using 3rd party tool to overwrite NWO's code to find and search players, and been bugging me all night as i was doing quests, they keep sending "friend invites", which we shouldnt see that in any dungeons except in group or with guildmates.
i consider that is "invasion" and they overwrite setting security and to exploit.
my character hadnt been in Protector's Enclave for over 3 weeks, and i am surprised to get spam suddenly all night, hounded, targeted ruthlessly.
and You, Cryptic Studio has done nothing to hunt them when they are using 3rd party programs. that is volaition of EULA and Code of conducts, and sign agreement with Studio by not breaking any rules or altered with 3rd party. now many of us are aware of your security has many flaws and not able to protect clients.
longer they exploit with 3rd party and they are making profits which is supposely owned by Cryptic, and these sellers are illegal and dont have liscense to sell Cryptic's properties, longer time while they are making newer 3rd party code for many reasons to exploit.
i am tired adding them to ignore list all night long, kept getting spammed in every 5 mins, nonstop by several new names.
they will drive out many players who just want to play without having spammed, many will not like to get spamming every night non-stop.
ENOUGH!!!
please, those who work as web programmers, what were your thoughts and concerns. any fix soon?
this is bad as 4th-5th week after Star trek launched, with all the spam flooded with chats and mailbox made me quit and left for about 6 month haitus, came back when i heard they sorted fix and took them awhile.
now they using 3rd party tool to hunt for names that are in dungeons where the friend invites were almost non-exist for almost 2 1/2 years til they crack the codes.
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i checked my alts, and set them as invisible, and they still find me, setting to invisible will have big issue when looking for group/or not able to be invite to guild party for dungeon runs.
this need to be Cryptic foremost and top priority to fix and need 3rd party hunter to eliminate and ban permately, no 3 days or 7 days warnings, but boot them for life. need to be harsh, since they are the ones who breaking agreements.
if not taken care of this problem very soon, many players will move on to other games, disgusted with spams and cryptic will suffer income from zen market when there is no buyers on and allowing crackers to control for so long.
only way to stop them from making multiple accounts and throw aways with several "names", is by lock on emails, CCs accounts, more info data, and some form IP address register for "Wall Checkpoint" if that idenified and broken agreements, and then it will block making new accounts, new username, etc.
if persist, then web programmers would had no choice but to inform local law authorities and arrest or sieze if they are on ban for life list.
man, i need some sleep, and it hard to sleep when upset and fed up.
+ upgrade the existing profanity filter to a real spam filter, and let the players feed it with keywords on their own. messages that tricker the filter are being directed to a new spam channel. every player can check that channel once in a while by themself, to make sure, that no usefull messages have been moved there.
+ friend invites can only come from level 60+ characters, and both persons involved have to be in PE and in the same party. no more random friend invites.
and yes, when there're more and more reports against one and the same IP, they should block that IP until the support is being contacted... that will only slow them down a bit, but it would be better then doing nothing.
and whatever was done here
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1209027/further-tuning-of-the-chat-system
it didn't help at all. in fact, the goldseller spam has even increased.
i did a few rounds of gifting today in PE, and it was getting so bad, that i had to turn of zone chat at all.
edit: and please add a button to clear the ignore list in one go. i have thousands upon thousands of entries, and i'm not going to remove then one at the time... and yes, it looks like a growing ignore list can slow down the client too.
unless if they deny or confirm, i find them as being silent is disturbing. i dont like conspiracy. if they are interested with sellers and to expose clients, then it is wrong business for them, congress will force Hasbro to pull the liscense rights from Cryptic since they are voliating the law.
ar least some moderator better that this note to someone in studio, it is very dangerous and way too much expose in that flaw.
Being able to use the "O" (social) search feature to find people to spam is just way too easy and I would also suggest access to the Social "find a person", "find a party" feature also be turned off for very low level players.
All of these things are such a quick and easy fix, I would be amazed to discover no one had previously suggested these little tweaks...
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
They could have Guild chat but earn "general chat later
Even in other mmos, you never sit around in starter city, and yes other mmos have this level of spam.. you just dont see it , because most of it is in the starter zones (take bree in lotro.. it was totally decked out with spammers) .. Move to IWD.. it has everything you need, even if your not vip.
You wont get half of this HAMSTER you see.
Frankly its time they give another hub.. they shouldve done it for underdark.. since also no one will go there until you at least open up the quest line once.
5 levels? that too easy and can be done in 20 mins, make that as 20 levels. it will give devs some time to find and fight them.
another way to combat them, whenever they spammed and get ignore, and they delete to make newer spammers, make them wait 2-3 hours cooldown to have that old spammer delete and must wait to create a new alts.
asheron's call had timer to allow you to rethink if delete or to recover until timer cleared.
only way they find you is 3rd party "search program", and then they delete current spammer and get new replacement within minutes.
i think it is the tag "LFG" in setting that allow them to see you.
And stronghold has no salvage spot, and the game inconsistently returns you there (join a dugeon from SH? when you exit you're not returning to your SH!), making it effectively worse than IWD.
PE remains the only place where you can do all essential management functions, so you have no choice but to either go there on a regular basis or to suffer through bouncing between the inadequacies of SH and IWD.
The low level bots are blocked from using PMs (general limit at low level), because of that they try to circumvent it by sending friend invites,
when invites sent, they get added to the list with "pending" status and can PM.
Disable the PM on pending status and the bots have no reason to send friend invites!
today it seem quieter. i think with all those "spam reports" i send.
it is purely harassment, not approved by Code of Conduct law.
But it pales in comparison to the lack of rewarding content in game. thats the bigger issue.
There is nothing to play for.. everything is bound and nothing we can sale , nothing to requeue for over and over.
Farming hes is the most boring design content ever..
Ive done 100 for fire motes.
Ive done hundreds and hundreds to get 3 alts to full boons and for ichor.
Now will do 2-3 more to 3rd boon and call it quits.
So all and all I will have done somewhere between 1-2k HEs this mod.
Arg.. to this.
boring, zerg fest is boring. one he is semi not a zerg fest.. but then its also the longest and of course the most boring.
Edemo was a bit was fun, but Ive done 2 twisty weapons and might eke out a third, but hard to get my excitement up about it. So much easier if they WOULD allows us ten player queues all at once.
So we dont have to go out of out way to force the timer for ourselves and we can just get through it faster. Then I might force myself to at least get a 4th set.
Also, I think its a BAD overall core concept, as when this mod is over everyone will abandon HEs and move on.. making new players and other alts.. never be able to easily get boons. Some might eke it out soloing them. But it will be much harder.
Spammer sell 1000 AD for $10.00, Offer 1500 AD for $10.00 via Zen Conversion. Maybe even sell AD directly.
It cheaper solution to undercut the Gold Sellers! Plus, you will get more people spending $$$.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday is a great example of undercutting Spammers.
Every time something similar has been done there is always backlash. One such example is that you can not use the AH until you have at least one character with level 60 to prevent bots abusing the system. At least I think that is the feature that requires it...it really is a non-issue to me and I always forget what it is specifically. Yet every once in a while some person will come on the forums and throw a fit that they want their money back because they wanted to buy something now instead of tomorrow when they get to level 60.
Personally I agree, some features new players don't need. Frankly I am not a fan of zone chat and think it should be removed entirely but the level 15-20 limit on it probably is too low...then again the simple solution is to turn it off and forget it exists like every player I know.
But at the end of the day the end result is the same: it tends to impede players more than bots. The bots can and have overcome every single level and time based boundary stoically. I am sure such limits annoy them but it really does not cripple them.
As long as there are people willing to buy from third party sellers there will be bots trying to make AD and spam bots to get people to buy it.
Tedium is one of the biggest incentives for botting. It's one of the major niches of computers in general: doing the long, repetitive, unenjoyable tasks that humans want done but don't want to do. Granted, there's not much that doesn't incentivize botting. But adding tedium as an "anti-bot" measure is self-defeating. It instead increases the use of bots, both by making existing botters add even more automation to deal with the annoyances, and by driving new people into using them.
Bots are basically a fact of online life, and gaming in particular.
I used to play a game called Kingdom of Loathing a lot, and they took an interesting approach of basically endorsing botting and actively working with the bot coders to make things go over more smoothly (advanced warnings of interface changes, implementing interface features that were essentially only relevant to bots, etc.). They still didn't want spam bots, or bots doing things that effectively attacked the server. But bots for grinding through content and other repetitive tasks, or for playing the market (as long as they're not spamming requests to the server too often), were largely okay. The game, much like this one honestly, had ultimately been designed in a way which made the attrition from tedium very high--before I started botting in KoL I was developing significant carpal tunnel issues solely from the amount of clicking that was involved! So to retain players without having to completely rewrite everything and basically develop an entirely new game, they embraced the bots. Of course it is a much different style of game, so I'm not saying this idea would definitely work for NWO or anything vaguely like it. I'm still not sure exactly what things they did that were effective against the type of spam bots this thread is more specifically about--maybe the community was just the right composition and size to make it a smaller issue. I just mention it as an example of how sometimes it may be a better idea for a company to invert the usual "bots are evil" paradigm and instead embrace them. They're sure as heck not going away!
I swear these guys have a way of noticing when you're in a boss fight, specifically. It feels like 90% of these invites occur strictly in the middle of a non-trivial boss fight. If they were randomly spaced during a dungeon I would just think they're able to see me *because* I'm in the dungeon, but how do they seem so good at doing this only during the boss fight? Agreed with everything here.
And for a lot of players, the demonic HEs are also the most efficient way to fill out their daily rAD allotments.
As for friend invites - delay friend invitation window til you finish fight. If you are in dungeon/skirmish, you must exit it first to receive the invitation.
It doesn't matter how a game is designed. Sure more tedious games get botted more but that is only half of the equation.
There are always going to be players who do not want to invest time and effort to achieve the same results regardless of the game. Even in games which have no grinding mechanics you will find bots who sell currency. Sorry but there is quite seriously no bottom line to laziness in the I want it Now Generation. Some people are simply not happy unless they become the top tier player in a time period of time not befitting of the time investment.
There will always be people who are willing to pay to CHEAT their way passed others who invested their time and effort. There's no avoiding it with gameplay mechanics. Lessening but never avoiding it.
Beyond that let me point out the most obvious logical fallacy: Neverwinter offers their own equal services in the Zen Exchange. If people wanted to pay to avoid the grind the option is there without paying for bots (and their spam). The problem is that bots do not value time like people do so they will always undercut the price legitimate players place on their time and effort. There is no defense in NW to justify people paying bots instead of players.
The blame remains, as always, on the players who buy from third party vendors at the expense of the experience of legitimate playerbases. This game is nothing compared to other games as far as a grind, albeit I agree the grinds they incorporated lack decent options to navigate the grind such as farming methods or reliable sources of income. No matter the game there will always be people willing to whine they don't want to invest the time to climb the ladder...and without a time investment to climb the ladder there is no achievements or progression, ergo there is no incentive to play.