IMHO, I think much of the goldfarmer spam would go away overnight if Cryptic made it that new accounts had to reach a certain level to unlock Zone and Local Chats, as well as in-game mail (who are new players to e-mail anyhow?) Or unlock it immediately at a cost (would goldfarmers be stupid enough to pay to unlock for their advertisement?)
At the same time, new players are directed to a Newcomer Chat Channel, which is moderated. So if goldfarmers try to advertise in the chat, they would be immediately banned than waiting for CSR to take action.
Limiting chat for low level characters is one solution, a lot of the spammers log in, create a toon, get on the server, spam a bit, then log off and delete the character, so a level limiter would put a wrench in that practice, as for having an optional buy in to get by that limit, that would actually aid a gold spammer, because there are always victims with money, someone who is too stupid or too lazy and looking for an easy way to excel in the game, for the second that part about a moderated channel, that requires a full time staffer, whether paid or volunteer being on hand 24/7, be completely unbiased and able to act promptly and effectively, Cryptic's record with customer support makes that seem somewhat unrealistic.
It's unfortunate that we don't know whether or not the current system is effective since we are given no confirmation that any action was taken, it would be nice in Cryptic would post a thread showing us what actions have been taken against gold vendor sites as a result of player reporting efforts to at least show us that we aren't wasting our time doing this, and it would also serve as an effective deterrent reminding players that they are risking their accounts by having anything to do with the companies listed.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
I don't know how many i have reported but must be at least a dozen or more. i see them in open chat at least every other day anymore. It is getting really crazy. These kind of people are doing nothing but driving up the prices for those who buy from cryptic.
Exactly.... I have a fleet tab with only PM's, team channel, system messages etc, doff calls, and the three fleet channels. I don't think i have looked at the idiots in zone chat in years. I even have DOff Jobs, RedditChat, and TTS sectioned off as well.
join Date: Sep 2009 - I want my changeling lava lamp!
as for having an optional buy in to get by that limit, that would actually aid a gold spammer, because there are always victims with money, someone who is too stupid or too lazy and looking for an easy way to excel in the game
Afraid it won't aid them as much as you think. If they spend money trying to unlock the chat to advertise, they would be losing more money than they are earning. On top of that, because you can't create throwaway bank accounts, confirmed gold sellers could easily be flagged and they would be unable to use that account ever again. So the only option is for them to spend hours leveling up that new throwaway account, which eventually would become a hassle for them.
for the second that part about a moderated channel, that requires a full time staffer, whether paid or volunteer being on hand 24/7, be completely unbiased and able to act promptly and effectively, Cryptic's record with customer support makes that seem somewhat unrealistic.
Eh, they likely have volunteers like the forum moderators. :P
It's unfortunate that we don't know whether or not the current system is effective since we are given no confirmation that any action was taken, it would be nice in Cryptic would post a thread showing us what actions have been taken against gold vendor sites as a result of player reporting efforts to at least show us that we aren't wasting our time doing this, and it would also serve as an effective deterrent reminding players that they are risking their accounts by having anything to do with the companies listed.
No company would ever reveal such a thing, it would like giving away a battleplan to the enemy.
All Cryptic has to do is educate players that buying gold is bad. Like add a blurb in the loading screen.
Saw some gold spammers at Starfleet Academy a few days ago. I was there for about a half hour and had to flag 2 as spammers. Also I've been flagging as spammers about 3 or so a day in ESD. EVERYDAY! I'm getting sick of this TRIBBLE.
Cryptic takes a couple weeks off and what happens? The servers go down the other day (though they were quick to get them back up) and gold spammers are running wild. :mad: I only see the gold spammers at ESD mostly. Sometimes at SF academy, and once in a while at DS9.
They can just create new accounts over and over and over. But also, some of the spammers are using TRIBBLE/stolen player accounts (in other MMOs it's been stated that is the case sometimes, so I assume as much with STO), which means a player coming back from a long break will come to find their account perma banned for something they didn't do. And in other MMOs, from what I've heard all the time, it seems often times the TRIBBLE/stolen accounts used for botting/spamming are accounts that have not been logged into for a while. I always thought that was peculiar.
Edit: I have to agree with the OP: STOP BUYING FROM THEM AND THEY'LL GO AWAY NOOBS!
No matter how many accounts get banned, they will just create and/or steal more accounts to advertise. If all the idiots who buy from them would follow the rules and stop, they would go away.
After playing Guild Wars 1 for several years i had finally got sick of all the bots in PvP. The gold seller spam was almost nothing though since ArenaNet took an aggressive stance against them. I've had lots of months where I reported around 20 or so bots and support said they were botting and banned for it. ArenaNet would do sweeps through the game once in a while banning large amounts of accounts used for botting and gold selling, etc.
So it does no good unless we all work together. Cryptic needs to take an aggressive stance against them and really enforce the rules, and players who buy from them just need to stop buying from them.
So, I get bashed for asking for something to be changed with the disco ball trolling, but its ok to start up 8 threads in a week about people just trying to sell stuff? I don't see what the big deal is. Are they chasing you around PMing you for hours? Are they sending you messages all day long? Are they interfering with your ability to play the game? No, no, no, and, uh, no.
Actually, yes to the last one. A gold seller spam will either scroll the zone chat box up quicker than normal, are indelible, and seen multiple times as I attempt to use the chat box scrollbar to see the conversation (humorous drivel?) that I missed because of their spamming. Note the indelible effect, a disco ball (your apples/oranges comparison) does nothing but add colored sprays as you attempt to run through the area, and if it's placed in a "common" area such as a mailbox/bank/exchange, odds are your interaction window is blocking the antics of the disco ball anyway...
You aren't being forced to buy anything, and they aren't in the way, so who cares? They're actually quite helpful to people like me who work all day and don't have time to grind out hundreds of millions of ec to get certain items on the exchange.
See above to them being in the way of my enjoyment of the chat box. And yes, while I am not being forced to buy from them, the sheer existence of an illegal activity in my chat box should have something done about it. Note the bolded word, illegal. I do not find this particularly annoying, in that I don't really care about the spam in zone chat 99.5% of the time. This is not a "legal but annoying" disco ball we're talking about here.
To provide an analogy, lets talk front yards. I erect a gaudy holiday scene for a religion you particularly don't care for. Annoying, yes. Illegal, no. I hold nightly block parties with drug lords and prostitutes, making sure to adhere to all noise ordinances, etc. Annoying, probably not. Illegal, quite.
Of course, I would expect action taken against the block parties, and not the holiday scene (unless it was summer, but that's a different story...) Why? The legality of the actions.
That is what we have here. Illegal activities, activities both you, as a player, and them, as the "potential sellers", have agreed to not engage in in-game both by creating the accounts and pressing the "accept ToS" button, and implicitly every time you log in.
I don't see what you even expect pwe to do about it. You can't ban someone for typing a word in chat, nor can you disable them. People are gonna buy from them and you can't do anything about it. And I'll continue to buy from the treasury because its convenient and it makes my life easier.
I expect PWE to do what I expect the Police to do with an illegal activity. Investigate and take appropriate actions - undercover buys then deletion of accounts, track the logs of where the EC are coming from and deletion of the mule accounts holding the massive amounts of EC the sellers accumulate, deletion of the accounts that are supplying the mules, etc. etc.
And, perhaps, if you were to support PWE instead of this "treasury" group by using the Cryptic (PWE) provided means of converting RL $$$ into EC, specifically the C-store, dilithium market, and exchange, they might actually have enough $$$ to hire an investigator or two that could be used to "undo" these transactions and wipe the ill-begotten gains from the face of the game...
I don't know about you, but I'd be quite mad and deterred from dealing with third parties after a couple of my transactions were undone by the investigators, and enough of these "undoings" would not only dry up the market, but lead to "positive" word of mouth as people regale their "unfortunate" losses via chat that the deal they are about to engage in would cause a loss of money with nothing to show for it. That would further dry up the market, eventually causing them to move on to "greener pastures"...
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Gold sellers aren't as bad as when STO first came out. For awhile I didn't see a single one. Wonder why they've come back.
Christmas Vacation of course. Seek out stupid kids off from school or adults who want to catch up and buy stuff off the exchange, but lack EC. In short, they are like roaches who come out after the light is turned off.
And you can tell these are roaches, because the goldspammers in Starfleet Academy are spamming a different website than the ones in ESD. And best to my knowledge, this is the first time they really invaded Qo'nos and gold spammed there as well. Then of course the spam emails (which would be nice the "Friend / Fleet" setting worked on the entire account and didn't prevent you from getting into groups).
Comments
It's unfortunate that we don't know whether or not the current system is effective since we are given no confirmation that any action was taken, it would be nice in Cryptic would post a thread showing us what actions have been taken against gold vendor sites as a result of player reporting efforts to at least show us that we aren't wasting our time doing this, and it would also serve as an effective deterrent reminding players that they are risking their accounts by having anything to do with the companies listed.
Exactly.... I have a fleet tab with only PM's, team channel, system messages etc, doff calls, and the three fleet channels. I don't think i have looked at the idiots in zone chat in years. I even have DOff Jobs, RedditChat, and TTS sectioned off as well.
Afraid it won't aid them as much as you think. If they spend money trying to unlock the chat to advertise, they would be losing more money than they are earning. On top of that, because you can't create throwaway bank accounts, confirmed gold sellers could easily be flagged and they would be unable to use that account ever again. So the only option is for them to spend hours leveling up that new throwaway account, which eventually would become a hassle for them.
Eh, they likely have volunteers like the forum moderators. :P
No company would ever reveal such a thing, it would like giving away a battleplan to the enemy.
All Cryptic has to do is educate players that buying gold is bad. Like add a blurb in the loading screen.
Cryptic takes a couple weeks off and what happens? The servers go down the other day (though they were quick to get them back up) and gold spammers are running wild. :mad: I only see the gold spammers at ESD mostly. Sometimes at SF academy, and once in a while at DS9.
They can just create new accounts over and over and over. But also, some of the spammers are using TRIBBLE/stolen player accounts (in other MMOs it's been stated that is the case sometimes, so I assume as much with STO), which means a player coming back from a long break will come to find their account perma banned for something they didn't do. And in other MMOs, from what I've heard all the time, it seems often times the TRIBBLE/stolen accounts used for botting/spamming are accounts that have not been logged into for a while. I always thought that was peculiar.
Edit: I have to agree with the OP: STOP BUYING FROM THEM AND THEY'LL GO AWAY NOOBS!
No matter how many accounts get banned, they will just create and/or steal more accounts to advertise. If all the idiots who buy from them would follow the rules and stop, they would go away.
After playing Guild Wars 1 for several years i had finally got sick of all the bots in PvP. The gold seller spam was almost nothing though since ArenaNet took an aggressive stance against them. I've had lots of months where I reported around 20 or so bots and support said they were botting and banned for it. ArenaNet would do sweeps through the game once in a while banning large amounts of accounts used for botting and gold selling, etc.
So it does no good unless we all work together. Cryptic needs to take an aggressive stance against them and really enforce the rules, and players who buy from them just need to stop buying from them.
Actually, yes to the last one. A gold seller spam will either scroll the zone chat box up quicker than normal, are indelible, and seen multiple times as I attempt to use the chat box scrollbar to see the conversation (humorous drivel?) that I missed because of their spamming. Note the indelible effect, a disco ball (your apples/oranges comparison) does nothing but add colored sprays as you attempt to run through the area, and if it's placed in a "common" area such as a mailbox/bank/exchange, odds are your interaction window is blocking the antics of the disco ball anyway...
See above to them being in the way of my enjoyment of the chat box. And yes, while I am not being forced to buy from them, the sheer existence of an illegal activity in my chat box should have something done about it. Note the bolded word, illegal. I do not find this particularly annoying, in that I don't really care about the spam in zone chat 99.5% of the time. This is not a "legal but annoying" disco ball we're talking about here.
To provide an analogy, lets talk front yards. I erect a gaudy holiday scene for a religion you particularly don't care for. Annoying, yes. Illegal, no. I hold nightly block parties with drug lords and prostitutes, making sure to adhere to all noise ordinances, etc. Annoying, probably not. Illegal, quite.
Of course, I would expect action taken against the block parties, and not the holiday scene (unless it was summer, but that's a different story...) Why? The legality of the actions.
That is what we have here. Illegal activities, activities both you, as a player, and them, as the "potential sellers", have agreed to not engage in in-game both by creating the accounts and pressing the "accept ToS" button, and implicitly every time you log in.
I expect PWE to do what I expect the Police to do with an illegal activity. Investigate and take appropriate actions - undercover buys then deletion of accounts, track the logs of where the EC are coming from and deletion of the mule accounts holding the massive amounts of EC the sellers accumulate, deletion of the accounts that are supplying the mules, etc. etc.
And, perhaps, if you were to support PWE instead of this "treasury" group by using the Cryptic (PWE) provided means of converting RL $$$ into EC, specifically the C-store, dilithium market, and exchange, they might actually have enough $$$ to hire an investigator or two that could be used to "undo" these transactions and wipe the ill-begotten gains from the face of the game...
I don't know about you, but I'd be quite mad and deterred from dealing with third parties after a couple of my transactions were undone by the investigators, and enough of these "undoings" would not only dry up the market, but lead to "positive" word of mouth as people regale their "unfortunate" losses via chat that the deal they are about to engage in would cause a loss of money with nothing to show for it. That would further dry up the market, eventually causing them to move on to "greener pastures"...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Christmas Vacation of course. Seek out stupid kids off from school or adults who want to catch up and buy stuff off the exchange, but lack EC. In short, they are like roaches who come out after the light is turned off.
And you can tell these are roaches, because the goldspammers in Starfleet Academy are spamming a different website than the ones in ESD. And best to my knowledge, this is the first time they really invaded Qo'nos and gold spammed there as well. Then of course the spam emails (which would be nice the "Friend / Fleet" setting worked on the entire account and didn't prevent you from getting into groups).