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Banned for talking with fleetmates about spam mail.

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  • lazarus51166lazarus51166 Member Posts: 646 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    PWE may at its option issue warnings and temporary suspensions and permanent terminations of Accounts for user violations. We retain the sole discretion as to when and how to impose warnings, penalties and/or disciplinary actions. We consider the severity of the violation and the number of infractions in making our determination; however, any determination shall be under the absolute discretion of PWE. Notwithstanding the foregoing, PWE always retains the right to terminate or suspend your account at any time for any reason, or for no reason, with or without any warnings and with or without notice..

    For the avoidance of doubt, you hereby acknowledge that PWE has sole discretion with respect to termination of your Account, even if there are credits remaining on your Account.
    Funny thing - I always felt that part was just the generic 'cover your TRIBBLE' thing. This is the first time I've actually seen that clause in action.

    For the record, it IS just a generic 'cover our asses' clause. In reality, its not actually enforceable as written. Especially the 'any reason or no reason' part. If anyone ever actually got their account banned under these circumstances and went to court over it, that stuff would never hold up, they would be forced to reinstate the account

    but that aside, i'd be more concerned with the fact that this kind of thing is really unacceptable to begin with. it CAN'T possibly be an intentional setup unless whoever designed and implemented it is an idiot that is trying to get their company and customers in trouble

    the thing that concerns me most (and nobody seems to have noticed this yet) is that the 'fix' that most people were told to use in order to avoid the spam lockbox messages, was to disable system messages -- which in this case disables those warnings as well
  • notorycznynotoryczny Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    "People are naming their toons using keywords and talking in zone chat to make people type their name"

    these people should be banned immediately.

    I think you are looking at the problem from the wrong viewpoint. There should be no possibility for players to trick other players into getting banned. As is, its just a game of hopscotch on a minefield.
    May 2013, automatic permanent ban for mentioning gold-seller sites
    pwebranflakes: this system is currently in place and working the way it should.
    moradum: I got banned for saying "I started my day with cutting off 3 MM off of the bottom of my cabinet"
  • joelleyjoelley Member Posts: 50 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    With a banhammer as flawed as this, I am not surprised certain types pf player are already abusing it to trap others.

    I've been around MMOs long enough to know that a flaw will be exploited within minutes of being discovered.

    This autoban system is not just flawed, it's suicidal for Cryptic's reputation.

    It is already being mentioned on MMO sites, along with Brandon's quote "working as it should".

    That, along with chat about the alleged server stability issues being caused by Never Winter having server priority is not doing Cryptic and PWE any good.

    This should be switched off or fixed immediately.
    [SIGPIC]Patch.jpg[/SIGPIC]
  • bpharmabpharma Member Posts: 2,022
    edited May 2013
    joelley wrote: »
    With a banhammer as flawed as this, I am not surprised certain types pf player are already abusing it to trap others.

    I've been around MMOs long enough to know that a flaw will be exploited within minutes of being discovered.

    This autoban system is not just flawed, it's suicidal for Cryptic's reputation.

    It is already being mentioned on MMO sites, along with Brandon's quote "working as it should".

    That, along with chat about the alleged server stability issues being caused by Never Winter having server priority is not doing Cryptic and PWE any good.

    This should be switched off or fixed immediately.

    This is what I suggested a while ago. If it is having unforeseen side effects then it should be withdrawn immediately. Word of this is spreading not just in the STO community but now MMO websites, time to do the responsible thing and temporarily disable it and look at ways to improve it.
    notoryczny wrote: »
    I think you are looking at the problem from the wrong viewpoint. There should be no possibility for players to trick other players into getting banned. As is, its just a game of hopscotch on a minefield.

    Agreed. If it becomes easy to grief and do severe damage to a players account then despite it being a ToS violation it should not be done. As was mentioned earlier a lot of sellers use proxies which a griefer could also set up with minimal effort.

    You wanna hurt gold sellers?
    Make it so that the time invested isn't worth the money they might make. Force them to play to level 10-20 before they can spread messages and they will pack up and move on.

    Implement temporary chat and mail silences for all but fleet channels, this will hurt those that do wrong and make an account useless to a gold seller but a player will still be able to retain some use. Fleets will remove gold sellers and they will be unable to join new ones due to silence.

    It is through repetition that we learn our weakness.
    A master with a stone is better than a novice with a sword.

    Has damage got out of control?
    This is the last thing I will post.
  • artanisenartanisen Member Posts: 431 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    yea there are other ways to go about making things hard for gold sellers.
    but develops always have to add features that get abused by others.

    i want to say alot more harsh words about this. but i will refrain
    from doing so.
    --

    i think branflake needs a pay raise, always looks like hes doing everyone
    else's job and responding on the forums.
  • edited May 2013
    This content has been removed.
  • blafiblafi Member Posts: 68 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    The best way to end the Gold sellers is for Cryptic to sell it themselves. They sell Zen so why not EC? If the Gold sellers can make money with it so can Cryptic. Win Win for all.


    That's already in place. You can sell stuff bought with Zen on the exchange for EC's. i.e. Box Keys, FSM's, and several types of boosts.

    moradum: I got banned for saying "I started my day with cutting off 3 MM off of the bottom of my cabinet"
    http://www.elitedefensestarfleet.com
  • artanisenartanisen Member Posts: 431 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    blafi wrote: »
    That's already in place. You can sell stuff bought with Zen on the exchange for EC's. i.e. Box Keys, FSM's, and several types of boosts.


    he means to literally sell energy credits for real cash
    not to buy ec with zen, but with real cash.
    could do the same with romulan marks, omega marks and nukara marks
    can give people the choice to buy ec, and marks or grind for it.
  • threat21threat21 Member Posts: 300
    edited May 2013
    well the skinny of it is cryptic has allowed the gold sellers to wreak havoc on the player community, first by annoying them with spam mail, 2ndly cryptics extreme ninja response to the situation causing real players to get banned and people now having to be cautious of what is said in chat out of fear of the ban hammer.

    Really is this the environment that you wanna play in? Games are sposed to be fun, this aint fun...
  • aidan2092aidan2092 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Edit: Quote the wrong person xD
    Maybe being anti social has saved my STO life :P LOL


    Yea tell me about it xD, I don't talk much even in groups. I just do what is expected and follow everyone else lol. IN fleet I talk a little but not much, I use to I admit jabber alot in Guild chats in other games cause you know gets lonely just playing mmo's and nothing to talk about. So I start odd conversations on just about anything.

    But no more... I'm a speed typer, because of all the responding to questions and just making a laugh in guildchats. Now I just tend to only ask questions that need answering or if i need help with something is all really.

    As a note, anything pretaining to Gold-Sellers I ignore out of habit. Sorry but thats an area that everyone should know to not talk about it, if someone is talking about it, just keep moving and keep your thoughts to yourself. Saves the hassle of whats going on now. Pretty much treat anything dealing with EC-sales as the plague and go the other way.

    Also I believe also that the warning should be an Admin Level warning, since just about everyone will disable all system messages and the like to clear up chat logs on there main chat box.
    Protecting the Federation since February 2010.
  • aidan2092aidan2092 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    bpharma wrote: »
    You wanna hurt gold sellers?
    Make it so that the time invested isn't worth the money they might make. Force them to play to level 10-20 before they can spread messages and they will pack up and move on.

    Implement temporary chat and mail silences for all but fleet channels, this will hurt those that do wrong and make an account useless to a gold seller but a player will still be able to retain some use. Fleets will remove gold sellers and they will be unable to join new ones due to silence.

    Best way to do it right there. I know in several games you had to get to Level XX before you were allowed to speak in Area/Zone, and than you had to get several more levels to speak in World/Server Chat. They also limited everything to straight "Say" in the immediate vicinity of a few meters of where your at, so anyone outside that range wouldn't see your messages posted.

    Another was the auto-censored every possible way to type URL's with .com... DOT COM, .c.o.m... etc spaces in there extra letters symbols and the like. And auto-chat bans for messages that repeat the same sentence in a 5 second span, meaning you had to change at least one word in your sentence not to get the 1 minute chat-ban.
    Protecting the Federation since February 2010.
  • cuatelacuatela Member Posts: 296 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I don't think they should censor EVERY type of URL. I regularly post links to images, or forum topics (either on my fleet's website, or to STO itself). I'm all for preventing spammers, but they should install a blacklist, not force a blanket censor. It's almost as bad as the auto-ban.

    As for speaking, STO is SUPPOSED to have a 20-hour playtime requirement before an account can speak in zone chat. I don't know if they changed that, or if it's not working, or if the spammers just sit idle for 20 hours until they can speak. Either way, the 20-hour requirement is clearly not working "as intended".

    I'm not opposed to requiring at least one character on the account to be level 10 or higher, in addition to the 20-hour requirement. Additionally, make that level requirement across the board, regardless of subscription status. Most of these gold spammers probably buy $5 in zen and instantly have chat access.


    As for chat-bans, it's really annoying that they apply to private channels and whispers, ESPECIALLY with people on my friends list. I could understand if they applied to random strangers, but private channels are typically self-governing, with operators able to mute or kick anyone who causes an issue. And those on my friends list obviously want to talk to me, so why is Cryptic saying "no you can't talk to your friends"?

  • eatsmarteatsmart Member Posts: 134 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Fix it. Now.

    If i went and put a row of land mines in the street, saying "i'm a hunter, when rabbits walk over them they explode, they're working as intended" will not stop me from being arrested by the police.
  • tilartatilarta Member Posts: 1,801 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    The best way to end the Gold sellers is for Cryptic to sell it themselves. They sell Zen so why not EC? If the Gold sellers can make money with it so can Cryptic. Win Win for all.

    Works in theory.

    Not in practice!

    The gold sellers would begin selling their EC at less then what Cryptic charges, which would motivate their customers to keep using them.



    Still no response?

    Come on Cryptic, throw us a bone!

    Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
    Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad :'(
  • threat21threat21 Member Posts: 300
    edited May 2013
    the bone will be covered in spikes and laced with anthrax. working as intended!
  • shroommageshroommage Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    artanisen wrote: »
    yea there are other ways to go about making things hard for gold sellers.
    but develops always have to add features that get abused by others.

    No, they don't. What they've done is akin to allowing full PvP anywhere in the game, but said, "Now don't go attacking each other! If you do we'll ban you!"

    You could put a big, shiny red button in a central location where everyone can see it. Surrounding the buttons are countless warnings: "If you press this button, you will be permanently banned." Attempting to push the button produces another warning that asks you to confirm that you actually want to press it.

    Guess what. People will press the button, and those people will complain to CS that they were unfairly banned. You can argue all day and night that it's their fault for being stupid, but at the end of the day, no matter which way you look at it, you have some unhappy customers on your hands. I shouldn't have to explain why that's a bad thing.
  • alarikunalarikun Member Posts: 3 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Just sent out a warning to my entire fleet not to discuss Gold Selling, EC Selling or any sites thereof. This is just ridiculous.
    Original Join Date: January 2010
    Original Name: -Gen-Alaris
    Days Subscribed: 1211 (As of May 26, 2013)
  • vorga113vorga113 Member Posts: 192 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    CRYPTIC/PWE please read!

    I really cannot believe that there is still no apology over this. I put down the silence to the holiday weekend but now...VERY bad form indeed!

    There has already been at least one person that has posted stating that this had put them off subbing altogether and whilst we cannot force you to apologize here to those involved I can tell you that no more of my money will be spent on your company until you do. It's simple manners and if you cannot manage that then all my purchases will be with in game currency from this point on.

    PLEASE do the right thing and apologize!

    Remember all the player rage over the changes to dilithium and a certain Dan Stahl going on about how it's important for people to be polite?

    So here's a prefect opportunity for Dan show that he really believes what he says by publicly apologising for the steaming TRIBBLE that is his companies auto-ban feature.
  • vorga113vorga113 Member Posts: 192 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    cuatela wrote: »
    As for speaking, STO is SUPPOSED to have a 20-hour playtime requirement before an account can speak in zone chat.

    Most of these gold spammers probably buy $5 in zen and instantly have chat access.

    20 hours? It's closer to 20 minutes and it doesn't cost them a cent
  • stargazerjmbstargazerjmb Member Posts: 19 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    <Dev> Brandon@PWE_BranFlakes: I hear some PMs coming in, but I have that channel turned off as there are too many coming to to respond to :) Sorry!

    Whilst I wouldn't begrudge Brandon the chance to play the game same as everyone else I would have thought that a proper response to this length of thread would have been a wiser choice of his time in this instance.
  • pwebranflakespwebranflakes Member Posts: 7,741
    edited May 2013
    <Dev> Brandon@PWE_BranFlakes: I hear some PMs coming in, but I have that channel turned off as there are too many coming to to respond to :) Sorry!

    Whilst I wouldn't begrudge Brandon the chance to play the game same as everyone else I would have thought that a proper response to this length of thread would have been a wiser choice of his time in this instance.

    This comment was made because I was running a community event, and answering PMs at that time would have taken away from my coordination efforts: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=720531 -- If you've attended any of my past community events, I always post something similar so those who are PMing me do not think I am ignoring them.

    As I responded earlier in this thread, I have passed along your feedback so it can be considered, and commit to continue doing so. That is what I can do and will do :)

    Some good news I just learned about, though! We are considering adjusting the way the warning is displayed. I don't have exact details on this yet, but we we are hoping to be able to make it display even more clearer than it already does.

    Cheers,

    Brandon =/\=
  • smidgysmidgy Member Posts: 5 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    shroommage wrote: »
    No, they don't. What they've done is akin to allowing full PvP anywhere in the game, but said, "Now don't go attacking each other! If you do we'll ban you!"

    Not quite. What they've actually done is like allowing full-world PvP, but made certain areas 'safe' zones where attacking players isn't allowed, even though you are physically able to do so. However, they aren't actually going to list these areas anywhere, but instead leave you to try to work out and/or guess what they're going to be, and, if you guess wrong once, you are given a single warning that is very easy to inadvertently mute or bypass, and a second incorrect guess is met with an automatic account ban. Oh, and sometimes the system glitches, and thinks you're engaging in PvP in a 'safe' zone because a few letters of the name of the zone you're actually PvPing in is similar to a few letters of the name of one of the 'safe' zones.
  • polie05polie05 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    shroommage wrote: »
    No, they don't. What they've done is akin to allowing full PvP anywhere in the game, but said, "Now don't go attacking each other! If you do we'll ban you!"

    You could put a big, shiny red button in a central location where everyone can see it. Surrounding the buttons are countless warnings: "If you press this button, you will be permanently banned." Attempting to push the button produces another warning that asks you to confirm that you actually want to press it.

    Guess what. People will press the button, and those people will complain to CS that they were unfairly banned. You can argue all day and night that it's their fault for being stupid, but at the end of the day, no matter which way you look at it, you have some unhappy customers on your hands. I shouldn't have to explain why that's a bad thing.
    Honestly, I would probably be the first to mash said button. Lol
  • hfmuddhfmudd Member Posts: 881 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    So the auto-banning tool is working as intended, and those who bump into it by accident once are auto-warned before they're banned by it ...

    I'd have a lot more confidence in this system if I wasn't on my ____th day of being unable to delete Exchange mail from my in-box. Just one obvious example of things that can and do go wrong.

    We have one section of the code handing out bans without human intervention, and we just have to hope and trust that it's working better than, say, the section of code that handles in-game email. :p
    Join Date: January 2011
  • voxinvictusvoxinvictus Member Posts: 261
    edited May 2013
    Brandon: a member of my fleet who has contributed literally 10s of millions of fleet credit has had his account banned with a small fortune in refined dilithium, because of this absurd policy. his help ticket is now on its 6th day pending without a human response.

    We're eagerly awaiting some kind of sanity on this subject, but it is starting to look like the message is pretty clear: cryptic has taken enough of our money and doesnt want any more.

    If some one of this stature can be disregarded so arbitrarily, then I think we all know that we too are of little importance. Sad that some one who spends 5 dollars at s fast food restaurant can get more response than some one who has spent a thousand dollars or more on your product.

    I feel so stupid for having purchased a legacy pack, but I'm glad this came to light before I made the mistake of buying a LTS.
  • shroommageshroommage Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Some good news I just learned about, though! We are considering adjusting the way the warning is displayed. I don't have exact details on this yet, but we we are hoping to be able to make it display even more clearer than it already does.

    Cheers,

    Brandon =/\=

    That's very good news, but even with such a warning I'm sure you'll still have to deal with players who didn't heed it for one reason or another.

    Back in TF2 when they first added the inventory system, before they even had hats, items could only be unlocked through achievements. There was no drop system and no trading. You could only get one copy of each available item. However, the first thing they added with backpacks, before drops and before trading, was deletion. You were able to delete your items with absolutely no way to replace them. The delete button gave you a big warning with a confirmation dialogue when you pressed it, and it was clear what was going to happen.

    People were deleting their weapons left and right. Eventually Valve restored all the deleted items to keep their customers happy in spite of the fact that deleting their own items was a very poor decision on the customers' part.
  • manileraimanilerai Member Posts: 28 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Some good news I just learned about, though! We are considering adjusting the way the warning is displayed. I don't have exact details on this yet, but we we are hoping to be able to make it display even more clearer than it already does.

    Cheers,

    Brandon =/\=
    Well, thanks for the update Brandon - knowing the devs are aware that there's a hitch in their plan that may be getting innocent people banned is considerably more comforting than the "working as intended, deal with it" that we've been sitting on for a week. A comfort blunted somewhat after reading that some upstanding members of our community are still dealing with the fallout of this script several days after lodging their complaints.

    ...

    Please don't let the fix be disabling our ability to hide all the useless lockbox spam that we get in the system channel... I need to find some wood to knock on now - I think I just jinxed it.

    That said, while altering the warning message to the admin channel and having some kind of popup window that must be manually closed would certainly be a step in the right direction (I'm going to be positive and assume "considering" in this case means 'considering which actions to take' rather than 'considering taking any actions at all')...

    I seriously think this automated banning process needs to be 'reconsidered' in its entirety, and disabled (if it hasn't been already) while the devs go back to the drawing board and design a better mouse trap. Because the spammers you're hoping to catch with this one have always been, and will continue to always be, far more agile and clever than any detection program you could hope to write. Because you are writing the program in reaction to their current tactics -

    I'm willing to bet that any genuine spam you've caught with the current one were the complacent ones, and now you've started the spam arms race - how fast can you adapt to their ever-changing wording and spam-filter dodging? fly-by-night domain names you have to account for, and block? Link shorteners, redirection services... How long can you continue to adapt the filter before the blocked words list becomes large and unwieldy enough that casual conversation becomes next to impossible?!

    It may be 'working as intended', if the scope of the intent was limited to "if anyone says 'X' ban them". But I'd humbly suggest that the scope of the intent be expanded to "Ban the actual gold-spammers, without innocents being caught in the crossfire" - which judging by the mere existence of this thread, the script has utterly failed to do.
  • artanisenartanisen Member Posts: 431 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    in my opinion i think that security measure is a bit excessive.
    they should just put in some sorta new measure in place to have
    a like permanent chat ban and ban from the mail system.

    allow them to still play but have them banned from any type of
    communication in game....
  • htingramhtingram Member Posts: 13 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I must say this is one of the reasons I block almost all chat in the game. Yes I use channel chat very minimally but if I want to talk to someone on my team I use our private password secured teamspeak server. And since I dont play with others unless they are online in that way its no great loss that this filter is nailing people. though I do feel for those that are innocently targeted by a botnet filter... I would ask that they put such targeted words in the language filter so they are not showed at all to those like myself that make use of the language filters for what little text chat I participate with in game. IMHO its something that was needed but its been pushed into overkill. Anything that takes these hacking illegal gold resellers out of any game is well worth the price of loosing chat. personally I would rather the full removal of person to person trade entirely. Just my opinion...

    Hope those that were banned for this text indiscretion and nothing more are able to get their accounts back... if anything I think this will discourage more people from using chat at all in game... Certainly reinforces my choice not to use it much at all....
  • pezjrpezjr Member Posts: 9 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    mancom wrote: »
    So if you don't like someone, you could just trick them into writing that web address and they get their account banned? What kind of madness is this?

    And why is the answer only a "mail support and hope for the best" and not a "This is really disturbing news, our engineers are going to investigate immediately and ensure that no legitimate player loses their account."?

    Ok, this JUST happened to me a moment ago also. This TOTALLY unacceptable that there is nothing anywhere on the site that lists or mentions bannable chat words except for swearing and such. I have spent over $700 with Cryptic on STO since Oct 2012 and feel an instant ban for typing that company's name in chat when they have sent my account at least 2 different spam emails in-game recently is just insane.

    So, if you folks are going to have a outrageously harsh policy then you need the freakn' POST that somewhere please. I am and VERY unhappy camper!

    BTW Brandon, I received no in-game warning at all sir. Just ban, your done.

    -Pez
This discussion has been closed.