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Suggestion: Pirate Bot and Spammer Control
refracted0dawn
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 894 Arc User
:mad:
This thread is not about players behaving badly in-game. This thread is about Pirate Bots and Spammers and Pirate Bots and Spammers only.
Pirate Bots and Spammers are NOT Players - they are Pirate Bots and Spammers. They are controlled by automated programmes written by AD Farmers and other Pirates. They do not "behave badly" as they have no emotions and do not "behave" at all - they cannot become frustrated or stressed and start bad-mouthing people, which is some of the actual bad behaviour exhibited by human beings. Pirate Bots and Spammers exist simply to Farm and Spam. And they must be destroyed.
So please do not contaminate this thread with any references to behaviour exhibited by any genuine players under stress or frustration. This thread is not the place for it, and neither is the forum.
This thread is not about players behaving badly in-game. This thread is about Pirate Bots and Spammers and Pirate Bots and Spammers only.
I am absolutely sick to death of reporting thousands of individual pirate bots and spammers over the last eight months for spamming the SAY, LFG and ZONE Chat Channels and Spamming me with E-mails but seeing almost zero effect on their prevalence in the game.
I am even more sick of getting PMs on the TELL channel when I am fighting a dungeon Boss, in the middle of PvP and absolutely every other time they PM me, either with TELLS or Fake Friend Requests.
Reporting Pirate Bots for spam can have only one realistic consequence - the deletion of that account.
But this is like individually squashing one ant at a time when you see them crawling across your kitchen work surface. What you need to do is pour petrol into the nest and burn the buggers out, destroying the egg-laying Queen at the same time.
But what can be done?
Turn Chat OFF?
Why should I?
I normally have only GUILD, SAY and TELL on at the same time. Of course, I only turn on LFG, ZONE and PARTY when I need to, so most of the time they are OFF. Mercifully, I don't get any Spam from Pirate Bots in PARTY Chat. So suggesting that I turn them off would be rather futile and unproductive. When I switch them ON, I want these messages filtered out. That is the point of this post.
Legit_Channel?
Sorry, they are not truly fully Legit in my view, due to the unofficial "Loot Rules non-Policy" they force on people. This is NOT about the Legit_Channel, anyway, so no response on this is required. You join if you like, and enjoy yourself. In any event, I reserve the absolute right to use any channel I dam well please, at any time I dam well please, whether I join Legit_Channel or not. I also reserve the right to be free of harassment by Spam and Bots from Pirate companies.
Limiting the use of Chat to level 15?
As I reported at the time, I was getting Spam TELLS from level 15 TRs in PE a month BEFORE this measure was even announced, much less implemented. And what effect did it have? NONE. Except to inconvenience genuine, legitimate players who had only just rolled their first character. That is not just inefficient and a wasteful use of resources, it is quite sad for the new players to be met with hostility from the GAME, rather than the Pirate Bots and Spammers.
And now there are level 60 TR Bots everywhere, mindlessly going through their combat moves for hours upon hours.
So, having some sort of Account-Wide Chat Filter System where I can block key words in all incoming messages would be a start.
It would be impossible for the Pirate Bots and Spammers to detect, and would therefore be very difficult for them to circumvent.
Fewer such Pirate Spam and Bot messages getting through would also mean fewer genuine but naive players will elect to behave badly by being stupid enough to get suckered in to buying Pirate materials from 3rd party Pirate sites. This will also help protect the rights of the copyright owners. The players might then have less punitive measures in the name of "Security", which only really serves to inconvenience the legitimate customer, including the paying customer.
This is a fake address, but serves to demonstrate what I mean:
<<\/\/_\/\/_\/\/_PirateCrap.C_O_/\/\ >>1.1M AD $8.23!! Black Opals $3!! (Recycle Cash Items&AD)!!
So, if I set the Account-Wide Filter to block all messages that have \/\/ and /\/\ in them, they can spam away forever more and I will never see it.
I can also add any other key words I like at any time.
In addition, a new function similar to "Report Spam" called "Add to Filter" would add the handle of that Bot to the filter, and I could add any additional key words which might be required.
And how can anyone roll a character called something like Free_AD@PirateAD.c o m anyway? Again, this is a fake name so I am not naming and shaming an actual Pirate Bot.
But such a filter could only be good for the game, the players, Cryptic, PW and PWE. I cannot see any down side to it at all.
It would only hurt the Pirates, Bots and Spammers.
Cheers!
This thread is not about players behaving badly in-game. This thread is about Pirate Bots and Spammers and Pirate Bots and Spammers only.
Pirate Bots and Spammers are NOT Players - they are Pirate Bots and Spammers. They are controlled by automated programmes written by AD Farmers and other Pirates. They do not "behave badly" as they have no emotions and do not "behave" at all - they cannot become frustrated or stressed and start bad-mouthing people, which is some of the actual bad behaviour exhibited by human beings. Pirate Bots and Spammers exist simply to Farm and Spam. And they must be destroyed.
So please do not contaminate this thread with any references to behaviour exhibited by any genuine players under stress or frustration. This thread is not the place for it, and neither is the forum.
This thread is not about players behaving badly in-game. This thread is about Pirate Bots and Spammers and Pirate Bots and Spammers only.
I am absolutely sick to death of reporting thousands of individual pirate bots and spammers over the last eight months for spamming the SAY, LFG and ZONE Chat Channels and Spamming me with E-mails but seeing almost zero effect on their prevalence in the game.
I am even more sick of getting PMs on the TELL channel when I am fighting a dungeon Boss, in the middle of PvP and absolutely every other time they PM me, either with TELLS or Fake Friend Requests.
Reporting Pirate Bots for spam can have only one realistic consequence - the deletion of that account.
But this is like individually squashing one ant at a time when you see them crawling across your kitchen work surface. What you need to do is pour petrol into the nest and burn the buggers out, destroying the egg-laying Queen at the same time.
But what can be done?
Turn Chat OFF?
Why should I?
I normally have only GUILD, SAY and TELL on at the same time. Of course, I only turn on LFG, ZONE and PARTY when I need to, so most of the time they are OFF. Mercifully, I don't get any Spam from Pirate Bots in PARTY Chat. So suggesting that I turn them off would be rather futile and unproductive. When I switch them ON, I want these messages filtered out. That is the point of this post.
Legit_Channel?
Sorry, they are not truly fully Legit in my view, due to the unofficial "Loot Rules non-Policy" they force on people. This is NOT about the Legit_Channel, anyway, so no response on this is required. You join if you like, and enjoy yourself. In any event, I reserve the absolute right to use any channel I dam well please, at any time I dam well please, whether I join Legit_Channel or not. I also reserve the right to be free of harassment by Spam and Bots from Pirate companies.
Limiting the use of Chat to level 15?
As I reported at the time, I was getting Spam TELLS from level 15 TRs in PE a month BEFORE this measure was even announced, much less implemented. And what effect did it have? NONE. Except to inconvenience genuine, legitimate players who had only just rolled their first character. That is not just inefficient and a wasteful use of resources, it is quite sad for the new players to be met with hostility from the GAME, rather than the Pirate Bots and Spammers.
And now there are level 60 TR Bots everywhere, mindlessly going through their combat moves for hours upon hours.
So, having some sort of Account-Wide Chat Filter System where I can block key words in all incoming messages would be a start.
It would be impossible for the Pirate Bots and Spammers to detect, and would therefore be very difficult for them to circumvent.
Fewer such Pirate Spam and Bot messages getting through would also mean fewer genuine but naive players will elect to behave badly by being stupid enough to get suckered in to buying Pirate materials from 3rd party Pirate sites. This will also help protect the rights of the copyright owners. The players might then have less punitive measures in the name of "Security", which only really serves to inconvenience the legitimate customer, including the paying customer.
This is a fake address, but serves to demonstrate what I mean:
<<\/\/_\/\/_\/\/_PirateCrap.C_O_/\/\ >>1.1M AD $8.23!! Black Opals $3!! (Recycle Cash Items&AD)!!
So, if I set the Account-Wide Filter to block all messages that have \/\/ and /\/\ in them, they can spam away forever more and I will never see it.
I can also add any other key words I like at any time.
In addition, a new function similar to "Report Spam" called "Add to Filter" would add the handle of that Bot to the filter, and I could add any additional key words which might be required.
And how can anyone roll a character called something like Free_AD@PirateAD.c o m anyway? Again, this is a fake name so I am not naming and shaming an actual Pirate Bot.
But such a filter could only be good for the game, the players, Cryptic, PW and PWE. I cannot see any down side to it at all.
It would only hurt the Pirates, Bots and Spammers.
Cheers!
Post edited by refracted0dawn on
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
This is a quote from the CO forums:
Originally Posted by: StormShade
Hey gang,
So a couple of quick things:
1) The following Regions will not be able to access Champions once the account merger is fully completed:
•China
•Hong Kong
•The Republic of Korea
•Macao
•Russia
•Taiwan
•Vietnam
The region block is permanent. These regions are blocked by PWE due to a large amount of fraud attempts that we see from these areas.[...]
Neverwinter could use the same "update". My wife suggested to implement this region - block when the game went live and we first saw the botters going crazy ingame.
That seems a bit harsh - seems like a type of "nationality profiling" (group them all together under the assumption that most of them are exploiters, bots, etc.). This is the "easy" solution that excludes legitimate players from those areas!
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
..also, unlikely to go down well with Perfect World, owner of Cryptic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_World_%28company%29
IIRC Russia has its own server and China is due to get one as well. Would not be shocked if they eventually region-locked players to a nearby server. Many other games do this. Avoiding the issue of "nationality profiling".
Unfortunately I'm not sure this is really a fix. While I don't know how complicated they are, there are ways around region locks. And similar blocks. In another game I played with European players that were region locked from it. If regular players can find away around such things, I'm sure spammers/bots can. Maybe we'll find out.
Though the OP suggestion wouldn't do much for curbing the spam/pirate issue as a whole, it WILL do something for the individual player. ANY solution is better than NO solution. So we can just bish about it and keep taking it on the chin or we can do something (anything) about it. Having a player-based chat filter is a step in the right direction, even if there is still a mile to go.
So we can just stand here and complain or we can take the first step.
No, we can't. We can't take any step. This game does not have an addon API. Stirring rhetoric, though.
I know you said you don't want a response and you are free to use any channel you wish, but...
The NW_Legit_Community Channel has no official loot rules and has never forced any on anyone. The PEOPLE in the channel who make the groups are free to set any loot rules they like. The only thing even close to a guideline is, agree with your party on loot rules before you start and abide by them (or leave the party, your call). If you don't like that, well, that honestly says a bit about your true intentions when in a party.
To the topic, the BEST solution to getting rid of the spammers? Get a few interns to simply sit in game and watch for them. Bots and spammers are NOT hard to find for a human, but are impossible to stop with filters and programming. Get a few trusted folks to sit in the popular bot spots (Blacklake, Sharandar, PE) and just start banning people. Once they start losing their accounts in rapid succession, it will no longer be profitable for them to keep making them.
In-game moderators - been discussed - great idea I have seen work well in other games, but there are detractors here that want to point out the small imperfections in the system. . .
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
What, like the fact that the channel moderation tools have been broken for literally years, across all of Crytic's games, and have been reported endlessly, but still haven't been fixed? Piffling small stuff
Well according to this article not gonna happen.
From the article:
PWE CEO Robert Xiao attributed the company's financial success to Swordsman's release, Dota2's launch in China, and several new mobile titles. Xiao said that the company was looking forward to releasingLegend of the Condor Heroes, as well as pushing Neverwinter into the Chinese market.
Lets try pushing our game into the chinese market and then block'em. That would be the greatest troll in internet history.
Again, they are suppose to be getting their own server. Which is probably what that was referring to. Many (not all) companies block areas from other servers once they have their own. So its not beyond the realm of what is reasonable, or trollish. Still not sure how effective it would be though.
I think the OP idea is a plausible and workable one. It's not the solution as a whole, but at least it's something that can work for some people. So why not implement such an idea? You've only proclaimed flaws in the idea, not any actual reason to not try it, much less any idea of your own that might work in its place.
The only plausible reason to not try something is when it will affect others in a detrimental way. How would this idea do that? Serious question: answer, please.
Whatever is causing your apparent angst in these forums is a personal issue (as it is for anyone, myself included, but at least I recognize it). You may want to have that checked.
I'm genuinely hopeful that whatever your reply to this is you'll make it count.
Well, I am very sorry to apparently upset you by being slightly better than completely uninformed. If there were a simple solution to the spam problem, do you not think that Cryptic, whose livelihood depends upon these games, would do anything but implement it right away? For the love of tiny mice, man, think for a moment. Arguments from ignorance are unhelpful.
Meh, you don't seem to understand what they are saying.
If Neverwinter gets a Chinese server, nobody except Chinese people will be able to play it, since most asian mmorpgs require a passport ID. The bots will stay on the American servers, because the Chinese version will have: Faster lvl ups (especially boon campaign dailies, i bet) to prevent online addiction (they even have rules about how long a child may play an mmo, per day), No lockboxes because, gambling in China is strictly forbidden and much more, as a result, the goldsellers cannot make as much $$$ over there.
Well, the point is that if there were 20 million Bots spamming about pirate sites and all players had the filter on, they'd be preaching to an empty Church and no one would care.
The spam/pirate issue that concerns me for the purposes of this thread is that I am constantly having my fun ruined when I am playing - whether I am cycling through Professions, transferring gear via my Shared Bank Vaults, e-mailing assets and resources to different characters, playing PvP, running a dungeon or skirmish or just chatting in game with Guild members and friends.
That "TING!" announcing yet-another fake friend request or some garbage about buying AD or Refining Stones for cash money from some pirate site kind of starts to ruin my day. And channels generally getting filled with that stuff even without a personal PM to me is just as bad.
Having to interrupt what I am doing to right-click and "Report Spam" is an annoyance and clearly does not work at all as it is still happening even after eight months.
The more general Bot-related issue of of possibly Bot-Farmed goods appearing on the AH is a different issue entirely and something all MMO companies have to tolerate to an extent, while periodically purging those accounts after gathering information. I really have to say that personally I am not concerned about large stacks of enchants and refining stones being on the AH for a very reasonable price - that has to be good for everyone. But I do not want this Chat <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> about 3rd party sites as I have never used them and I never would. They might as well ask me for my password and credit card number as they will get the same response.
So a filter that will stop me seeing these messages and receiving these PMs and e-mails is certainly a start. Then one day there may be a central system on the server to block this stuff for everyone.
And, eventually, if no one is buying AD from pirate sites because no one is seeing their spam, the Bots will stop farming enchants, as they must be selling them to get AD they can sell via the pirate sites?
Ultimately, this game has been built around bot farmers being in the game, so I have a feeling there is not going to be much more than token efforts to get rid of them.
Look no further than artifact weapons. Without bots, the cost of getting an item to legendary would be astronomical. I have actually been trying to do it through casual gameplay (using loot drops and hoard gem drops), and was almost to level 19. I used 1 stack of lesser resonance stones off the AH, and got 11 levels....and you can almost bet that AD went straight to a pirate site. Without the pirates, I can not even imagine how much effort and AD it would take.
They built the game to almost cater to bots it seems. I've never seen a game where bots were so blatantly there and not dealt with. Its almost as though they need them now.
Cheating is the getting of reward for ability by dishonest means.
Why buy stuff would be cheating?.
So, you are saying ban anyone with multiple stacks of 99 enchants or refining stones on the AH? Something tells me that won't work out real well.
Welcome to the day and age of bots and very little to be done about them without affecting regular players negatively. Its like DVD security. Usually the only people affected by DVD security are legitimate people trying to use it properly - the people who rip them and make copies already know how to get around it before the first DVD is made.
Let's try and keep some semblance of intellectual coherence. Buying 99 Enchants is no more "cheating" than buying Zen and then trading for AD; or buying the new Black Ice booster and choosing your Gear drop; or buying a Companion that gives you +10% Critical Severity.
"Anyone playing longer than me is cheating because they have a huge advantage." - Elminster of Shadowdale; 1479, Dale Reckoning
If you had the AD, you'd buy them as well. You'd be stupid not to. I have bought a few stacks of Rank 4 and 5, but never Rank 6 as I have never had enough AD, even with 12 level 60 characters and playing almost all my spare time.
When I started 8 months ago, I never had any AD for anything except Identification Scrolls. Now, I cycle through buying enchants, refining stones, Marks or Professional Staff, depending on what I need. I only have one Mark of Potency left, so I will have to start saving AD for them as I will be ready to upgrade several enchants from Rank 6 to 7 soon. I have been meaning to respec my MI's Feats for over a week, but whenever I get enough AD I've been buying more Blue staff for Professions.
But I think the days of 99 Rank 6 for 150k AD are long gone. But most of those were due to an exploit that players found with certain Loot Chests, not Bots.
Anyway, we are getting way off topic - the thread is about a player-configurable filter to block spam from Pirates and Bots, not about the wider issues of Bots and Pirates in an MMO game.
~
https://support.arcgames.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1635/p/2/c/47
Perfect World maintains a separate administrative system for China, which is not linked to the NA or EU systems. Chinese players have their own system and game servers and cannot sign up for PWE accounts. Therefore, the Chinese playerbase will be separated from the NA/EU playerbase, as the RU players are separate.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
And frankly I don't mind bots. They don't bother me. If I have to ignore a couple of guys every day that's definitely not an issue to me. Bots also keep peridots cheap on the auction house, so they're providing a great service to us, players, like it or not. So bots are an issue for cryptic? Well, stop nerfing stuff because of bots, it's cryptic's problem, not mine, and all they're doing is slowly making the game not rewarding at all because of that.
LOL! I feel that . . .
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
Me, too - leaving character in PE to have a place to log in, invoke, and use mail is so painful. First 3-5 minutes involves trying to block as many zone spammers as fast as possible before they can send me a tell and mail.
I agree - could be a start. Even better if it were an account-wide chat AND mail filter, just to prevent the circumvention by mailing you.
I can't speak to whether this would be 'easy' or 'difficult' to program; certainly anything that effects change in a major communication system is not a fast implementation (hopefully! to avoid conflicts and bugs), due to the various interactions for the code. But certainly worth serious consideration as a step.
I also agree that having 'real humans' monitor certain areas would be a big help. Although I'm a new NW player, there may be other considerations and I don't want to hijack the thread away from the OP, so I'll just end by saying:
I agree - some type of player-side filtering system and/or monitoring system is desperately needed to cut down on the pirate and spammer bots. The OP's proposed filtering system seems like a good idea to me, although I would prefer it also extended to mail system as well.
The bots cause a massive deflation on almost all goods. Said goods, namely enchantments would be priced way higher due to a lesser supply if there were no bots. Getting an artifact weapon/belt to legendary or even a regular artifact would be way harder, the way it is intended by the way. People are not supposed to get their items to legendary quality within a day, only botters ill gotten goods make it possible and this is a disadvantage for those who choose to NOT hop onto the exploiter-bandwagon. Not to mention, that farming and selling enchantments (which used to be a great source to get AD), is now pointless, because the bots are not humans and can farm 24/7, so their supply will outweigh the legit-farmer's by tons, but that is a different story, for another lovely evening.
I hope, i explained it well enough.