[PC] Combating Gold Spammers

strumslinger

Well met, adventurers,

Similar to our efforts to hinder the spammers on PlayStation®4, we’ll be implementing a few rules to PC that will make it more difficult for them to function and harass legitimate players. While we can’t share the specifics of these changes, new characters will be subject to the following restrictions until you have progressed a certain amount in the main quests:

- No ability to use the AD Exchange
- No ability to perform in-person trades
- No ability to send a mail message that contains items
- No ability to post a message to Say, Trade, Zone, and LFG chat
- No ability to use “Say” in static zones
- No ability to post on the Auction House

We’d like to note that these barriers of entry are quite low, meaning you’ll only need to play for a few hours before being able to perform the functions stated above. This is to ensure legitimate players are affected as little as possible with these changes.

We’re also currently in the process of evaluating the rules we set - whether by tweaking, adding, or removing - in order to provide a smoother experience for new players while blocking gold spammers. We’ll monitor the results of these new changes in the coming days to judge whether they need adjusting.

Characters that were created before 8/25 at 8AM PT will not be affected by these rules in order to avoid any confusion.

Lastly, if you see these spammers in-game at any time, do NOT contact or purchase from them. Doing so puts your account security at risk in addition to other players. Astral Diamonds sold by these sites are often acquired by compromising another player’s account, or even yours! These sites are not condoned by any member of the Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment team.

We thank you for continuing to support Neverwinter and wish for your future adventures to stray clear from any evil magic.

- The Neverwinter team


Moderator Update:

To unlock trading, auction house, and other social functions, one must have completed any five of the following quest chains on any one character on the account. Once unlocked on any one character, all characters will be unrestricted.

Chain: Return of the Crown
Quests to complete:
The Trail of the Crown
Cornering Karzov

Chain: The Tower District
Quests to complete:
Returning the Pain
Fists of the Warband
Into the Cloak Tower

Chain: The Plague Tower
Quests to complete:
Troubled Times
The Plague Tower

Chain: Blackdagger Ruins
Quests to complete:
The Sea Caves
Bloodying the Bandits
Grimstorm Keep

Chain: Neverdeath
Quests to complete:
Dragon Attack
Opening the Way
The Clockwork Tomb

Chain: Helm's Hold
Quests to complete:
The Underscar
The Being from Beyond
The Sanatorium

One can in game these required quests as they are all be displayed in the new Campaign Layout screens and menus.

two30

Lock the Gateway for characters that haven't met these game-play requirements and bring it back up for the rest of us, please.

ilag1337

When will these changes hit Xbox? Or as usual, Xbox gonna get left behind again?

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viperwitch23

90% of those spammers hit us from preview server
When I inspect them it always says ''invalidEntryName''
This is what happens when trying to inspect char that are on preview

About 90% of them are from preview and other 10% from PE
Are those rules valid from preview as well?

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galopikus

Hmm I know these rules won't effect me for now since I've had my characters for a while, but some characters created more recently have reached level 70 without doing any of the main quests. Although, I eventually go back and do Blacklake District for the Adventurer's Knapsack. So hopefully that is where the restriction is set to.

I'm guessing they won't have any trouble receiving/claiming items from the mailbox, right? Cause that's the only way to send over profession items.

viperwitch23

metalldjt said:

null

I am not so sure about them being on preview, since you dont have a search player on preview for live server, i am pretty sure al bots are on LIVE, reason why u cant view them is either they deleted their char and created another one, or u hav to inspec multiple times.

They sent me a spam pm i inspect them
Only 1 second or halve a second and they already deleted at that time?
I am telling you you go and test it
Ask someone to go on preview then pm you and inspect them you get such message
I would not be saying it here if I haven't tested it

diogene0

I'm afraid you took the wrong path. Now spammer are sending plain text mails using the character search in all adventure zones. What you should do is disabling the search functions for new accounts until they reach that threshold. However, disabling zone is a bit silly IMO because zone has always been useful to form a group for dungeons in levelling areas. I do remember looking for a group for cloak tower on my cleric when I started playing the game, and zone was the way to go. It's not as annoying as private messages and text mail. These are the things you should focus on.

weaver936

metalldjt said:

Make an auto profession and auto invoking feature , u can monotize the leadership/profession , you will not b the first to let features work on auto pilot, there are other games aswell tht to combat boting they had to accept these as features , and i dont see anythin about it goin wrong.

This or something similar to it is another way that the Gold Sellers have AD to sell... AND also the reason there's been a stupid amount of free ad in game that makes the AH's prices so high. In short, you don't know what you are talking about if you think auto would be good.

morrowind69

Sorry Andy but we hear a lot about war against bots but nothing change !!
you can see the bots accounts from the normal one its easy (ex. @handle {@kjsdnjcs}or {@87368734} that's mean bot for sure).
about the spammers if the @handle get over 500 report or ignore ban it .
active GM join the game 3 times a week in game to ban spammers in PE.

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sharleenaa

Why so complicated???

Identify some sort of "trusted members", let's say like 50+ in each +8 h time zone, with the right to instantly block spammers in zone chat.

Assure some sort of transparency by copying the questionable chat sentences somewhere.

yuhbumbuh

I agree with all those measures except limiting say and zone posts. With this new players will be unable to ask questions "for a few hours".

ansuz4221

two30 said:

Lock the Gateway for characters that haven't met these game-play requirements and bring it back up for the rest of us, please.

+1

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fastrean1

"following restrictions until you have progressed a certain amount in the main quests:"

can you set this barrier randomly? you know those third party will still finally figure out the certain amount.

and for the mails, how about make a contact list that only allow to mail accepted friends & guild mates?

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silence1x

How will this affect new pre-made Zen characters? If I spend 5000 zen to purchase a new pre-made character, will I not be able to post to the AH or use the chat channels?

Not judging, just curious.

kvet

Typically, the requirements are that X progression or bought zen for cash. If you have ever bought zen for cash (Not AD) then you are exempt from these rules.

virsalus

So you give people 50 char slots and now you think it's a good idea that any of those slots used by legit players to store items or AD on for example become useless once again because they can't exchange them between their chars anymore. Of course this is only true for newer characters but as always the change mainly puts legit players at a disadvantage and mainly newer ones. Do you really think people want to play their mule characters for hours just to be able to use them? That was not part of the deal. You guys keep making things worse..

mynaam

virsalus#4183 said:

So you give people 50 char slots and now you think it's a good idea that any of those slots used by legit players to store items or AD on for example become useless once again because they can't exchange them between their chars anymore. Of course this is only true for newer characters but as always the change mainly puts legit players at a disadvantage and mainly newer ones. Do you really think people want to play their mule characters for hours just to be able to use them? That was not part of the deal. You guys keep making things worse..

Well all you have to do is play a day or two on your new char and you can do all these things. I really don't see this as an attack on players with many alts.

Granted i only have 11 toons but they are all level 70 with most of them having an IL of 2.5k +. So if i do decide to add a few more toons in the furure(maybe from a new class ... hint hint) then i wil anyway play it to 70 and gear it up so these limitations will not hurt me. This seems to be a good move. I am hesitant though cause obviously they can't tell us what they are doing and under this blanket they can easily put up a ninja nerf or some other change without telling us(and they do have a reputation of ninja nerfs).

virsalus

Not everyone has the time to play 10 characters up to the point where these restrictions don't hold for them anymore. Hell, my main character doesn't even have an ilvl of 2.5k and I have been playing for months.

rinat114

Bots vs. Cryptic - as always, 1:0 to the bots. -10 to legitimate players.

nameexpired

strumslinger said:

While we can’t share the specifics of these changes, new characters will be subject to the following restrictions until you have progressed a certain amount in the main quests

May I ask why it is a character unlock (removing the restriction) and not an account unlock?
If I have played through the requirements I should have proven that the account is not driven by a bot.
I really do hope that if you "ban" someone you don't only ban one character but the whole account.

silverkelt

Other mmos Ive played did something akin to this, however, ONCE you hit level cap + ran 1 epic or something like that, you usually are "unlocked" from this feature and so all new characters are validated and you can do all features in game , even with a lvl 1.

I think that would be a better approach.

The other way Ive seen games do it, once you give the company some actual money, it would unlock all of this stuff as well.

It seems they should broaden how they approach this.

izwor

I see Cryptic (again) want to nerf something (blocked Gateway), but their Anti-bot hammer is pointed in wrong direction.
Why don't you collect data from AH sales? There is aplication made by players that allows you to check AH prices and sales. I'm sure Cryptic have access to it as well. You may detect botters very easy! If a player sells over 1000 stacks of RP items every week, he can't do it manually.
Why don't you limit VIP abuse? Botters buy VIP accounts because it's cheaper than keys. Limit Enchanted Key collection to be available after completing dungeon/skirmish/daily campaign quest etc.

When it comes to mail/chat spammers, why don't you limit it all?
Create good guides for new players for leveling character until lvl 60 on your website, then they do not need to use AH/PMs/Mail/Invocation/etc. Everything they need can be obtained as in-game rewards or with gold.
I do not see why any1 would need any of listed in this topic activities until level 60 (or 58 because of Sharandar). Leave only option for zone chat and only for campaign zones and that is all new players need.

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theycallmetomu

Will new characters still have accounting banking? Because otherwise it looks like there's no way to send your own characters account bound gear, like the invoking weapons that grow with you.

tagnusironsord

What's next, a pop-up in-game on a random interval (such as every 5-25 mins) saying "Enter Capcha code or be disconnected in 15 seconds...."?

Problem there is it would always be happening in mid-battle, or other inconvenient times. Maybe one when you're about to appear in game (so you select char, enter game, load zone, enter code, load screen fades and you're in) would work.

There are also sites that use Capchas that are images, instead of text. You'll get a 2x3 or 2x4 grid of thumbnails, with the instruction "Click on all the pictures with ______ in them". It would slow players down a little on initial entry, but it might be harder for a bot to pick the three pics of Orcs or all the pics with Weapons to get around.

virsalus

nameexpired said:

strumslinger said:

While we can’t share the specifics of these changes, new characters will be subject to the following restrictions until you have progressed a certain amount in the main quests

May I ask why it is a character unlock (removing the restriction) and not an account unlock?
If I have played through the requirements I should have proven that the account is not driven by a bot.
I really do hope that if you "ban" someone you don't only ban one character but the whole account.

THIS. Every legit account will have at least one character that has a lot of time put into. It would make so much more sense to impose HIGHER restrictions but only on ONE char to lift restrictions for the entire account.