Well, i could suggest, that we players start "befriending" all those other "players" in Ghost Stories...
But i doubt, that any real player could be so effective and annoying to a point, where these goldsellers might start to change their strategy and leave real players in peace.
An option to enable/disable friends request might do it.
How about an option (checkboxes) for "Allow friend requests from people in my guild" and "Allow friend requests from people in my party/I've partied with recently." The latter would allow friend requests from other current players within a PUG'd skirmish/dungeon run, and some grace period, i.e. up to 60 minutes later.
The problem is, more options require more time to develop and patch... and i think, the Devs have probably a lot on their plate with getting Underdark ready this year.
The best way to fix the "friend spam" problem is rather straight forward. No friend request allowed without proximity achieved. I got 3 spammers try and friend me while I was doing the siege tutorial. If they weren't standing next to me they shouldn't be able to "friend" me. Since I was in a solo content instance, how could they be next to me?
So you are in ebon downs and tard spammer wants to market you? Let him troll his sorry butt to ebon downs, run to were ever you are, THEN friend you! Barring that, don't allow friend requests and you have made it impossible for them to abuse the system.
IMO you can push off under dark for 2 yrs. if it meant they were going to fix what is currently wrong, rather than add another layer of wrong on current wrong.
There're many goldseller spam bots in PE during the day, they will have no problem with running a programmed route through PE and "befriend" any- and everyone on their way.
And then add the occasional bot in instances to it... not really stopping the spam in the end.
Next time you see a bot send them a few friend requests and also try to trade with them or invite them into your group. There is a decent chance you will be able to disrupt their (relatively dumb) preprogrammed sequences by sticking pop-ups on their screen that they do not expect. Of course, it's a drop in the ocean but at least you'd feel like you are doing something to slow them down.
Maybe we need to make some stalker bots that just follow other bots and bombard them with pop-up requests. It might even be more interesting than playing the game XD
Well, there're over 2k instances of Ghost Stories showing up a search, but i wouldn't be surprised, if there were botters running with invisibility on too, and are therefore not even showing up in a search...
Well, there're over 2k instances of Ghost Stories showing up a search
And that really freaks me out. It's so bleedin' obvious yet it continues to happen. Those bots must be abandoning the instance before they have completed it so they can continually re-enter it to farm whatever they farm. That is not normal player behaviour. A real player might abandon once or twice but that would be it. So why has no-one addressed it? It's like they've given up on that stuff.
Well, there're over 2k instances of Ghost Stories showing up a search
And that really freaks me out. It's so bleedin' obvious yet it continues to happen. Those bots must be abandoning the instance before they have completed it so they can continually re-enter it to farm whatever they farm. That is not normal player behaviour. A real player might abandon once or twice but that would be it. So why has no-one addressed it? It's like they've given up on that stuff.
friend request spam. ignored. pe zone chat spam. ignored. ghost stories bots. ignored. iwd heroic farming bots. ignored. in-game mail spam. ignored
i posted my idea/suggestion few weeks ago. i dont know how they seem "timed" spam with friend invites while fighting zone bosses, always at same timings, they hit healers and tanks just to be annoyed, even they can find you with "friend only/invisible", seem they have 3rd party tool to locate rather than Social options. okay, my idea was to Turn off messages while we are in dungeons/adventure zones, so it should only works in PE.
reason they send messages, they are probing for names, our names and "Handler" tags for future nefarious purposes. that is dangerous and it made our accounts feel unsafe.
Few years ago, Congress of united states did punish Sony with very heavy fines for having accounts and CCs exposed, they can order federals to shut down online game servers if it is not protected. Cryptic should be worry, not just this company, but several other game firms too. Blizzards and Nsoft made lot of changes to protect clients. Criminals are getting savy and smarter, and they seem to have lot of time exploring for exploits and to make money.
Atari made mistake with most unpopular "DRA" tool, and they lost tons of money to combat hackers just to prevent copyrights piracy. i am sure Cryptic are doing those for long time and very frustrated since they are on limited team resources and facing "army of hackers" in many different ways. Cryptic only want to make games to entertian us and to make money for better games, but hackers cost them alot.
Well, there're over 2k instances of Ghost Stories showing up a search
And that really freaks me out. It's so bleedin' obvious yet it continues to happen. Those bots must be abandoning the instance before they have completed it so they can continually re-enter it to farm whatever they farm. That is not normal player behaviour. A real player might abandon once or twice but that would be it. So why has no-one addressed it? It's like they've given up on that stuff.
There's something in the new patch notes, but i doubt that this will stop the professional botters... someone even allready pointed out, that they moved their bots to Reclamation Rock to continue their work there.
reason they send messages, they are probing for names, our names and "Handler" tags for future nefarious purposes. that is dangerous and it made our accounts feel unsafe.
Um, no.
Sorry but you're adding 1+1 and coming up with 3.
The friend requests are in no way compromising account security. All the info that shows up on the screen while sending the friends request can be seen on the social UI. Even if you only mean they are using your Display Name and Character Name to collect marketing data (such as what Google and Microsoft do quite legally) all that is easily gained without sending a friend request.
The comparison to losing secure information is not comparable to this in the slightest. I'm willing to say it is annoying but to say it is compromising security is way too much tinfoil.
The internet just doesn't work that way in general. Knowing your Display Name will not grant access to your username. Knowing your username will not grant access to your password (though it is a nice added level of security mainly against friends and family who might guess your password). And even at that point the credit card information is going to be stored on a completely separate server from basically anything else related to the game and even then it does not necessarily store the correct CV2 data if it even does store it at all.
reason they send messages, they are probing for names, our names and "Handler" tags for future nefarious purposes. that is dangerous and it made our accounts feel unsafe.
Um, no.
Sorry but you're adding 1+1 and coming up with 3.
The friend requests are in no way compromising account security. All the info that shows up on the screen while sending the friends request can be seen on the social UI. Even if you only mean they are using your Display Name and Character Name to collect marketing data (such as what Google and Microsoft do quite legally) all that is easily gained without sending a friend request.
The comparison to losing secure information is not comparable to this in the slightest. I'm willing to say it is annoying but to say it is compromising security is way too much tinfoil.
The internet just doesn't work that way in general. Knowing your Display Name will not grant access to your username. Knowing your username will not grant access to your password (though it is a nice added level of security mainly against friends and family who might guess your password). And even at that point the credit card information is going to be stored on a completely separate server from basically anything else related to the game and even then it does not necessarily store the correct CV2 data if it even does store it at all.
and yet sony which is bigger than cryptic and pwe was storing passwords in plain text. just saying. so make your own decisions if cryptic's servers are safe(r).
Comments
it would help a lot-
Friend Request [disable]
Any friend spam is pretty annoying though in general, not just from gold spammers.
But i doubt, that any real player could be so effective and annoying to a point, where these goldsellers might start to change their strategy and leave real players in peace.
An option to enable/disable friends request might do it.
So you are in ebon downs and tard spammer wants to market you? Let him troll his sorry butt to ebon downs, run to were ever you are, THEN friend you! Barring that, don't allow friend requests and you have made it impossible for them to abuse the system.
IMO you can push off under dark for 2 yrs. if it meant they were going to fix what is currently wrong, rather than add another layer of wrong on current wrong.
And then add the occasional bot in instances to it... not really stopping the spam in the end.
Maybe we need to make some stalker bots that just follow other bots and bombard them with pop-up requests. It might even be more interesting than playing the game XD
Anyway, we could really use some Dev help here.
pe zone chat spam. ignored.
ghost stories bots. ignored.
iwd heroic farming bots. ignored.
in-game mail spam. ignored
theres only 1 logical conclusion to come to.
i dont know how they seem "timed" spam with friend invites while fighting zone bosses, always at same timings, they hit healers and tanks just to be annoyed, even they can find you with "friend only/invisible", seem they have 3rd party tool to locate rather than Social options.
okay, my idea was to Turn off messages while we are in dungeons/adventure zones, so it should only works in PE.
reason they send messages, they are probing for names, our names and "Handler" tags for future nefarious purposes. that is dangerous and it made our accounts feel unsafe.
Few years ago, Congress of united states did punish Sony with very heavy fines for having accounts and CCs exposed, they can order federals to shut down online game servers if it is not protected. Cryptic should be worry, not just this company, but several other game firms too. Blizzards and Nsoft made lot of changes to protect clients.
Criminals are getting savy and smarter, and they seem to have lot of time exploring for exploits and to make money.
Atari made mistake with most unpopular "DRA" tool, and they lost tons of money to combat hackers just to prevent copyrights piracy. i am sure Cryptic are doing those for long time and very frustrated since they are on limited team resources and facing "army of hackers" in many different ways.
Cryptic only want to make games to entertian us and to make money for better games, but hackers cost them alot.
Sorry but you're adding 1+1 and coming up with 3.
The friend requests are in no way compromising account security. All the info that shows up on the screen while sending the friends request can be seen on the social UI. Even if you only mean they are using your Display Name and Character Name to collect marketing data (such as what Google and Microsoft do quite legally) all that is easily gained without sending a friend request.
The comparison to losing secure information is not comparable to this in the slightest.
I'm willing to say it is annoying but to say it is compromising security is way too much tinfoil.
The internet just doesn't work that way in general. Knowing your Display Name will not grant access to your username. Knowing your username will not grant access to your password (though it is a nice added level of security mainly against friends and family who might guess your password). And even at that point the credit card information is going to be stored on a completely separate server from basically anything else related to the game and even then it does not necessarily store the correct CV2 data if it even does store it at all.