I'm wondering if we should introduce a Compensation System for banned players.
I mean, while you are banned, you can't play the game as normal, which will add a delay to whatever goal you might be working towards ingame.
And Cryptic should be obligated to give you whatever you missed out on, since it is their fault you are unable to play.
If I was unfortunate enough to be accidentally banned, I know exactly what my daily tasks are and how much I should be allocated per day of inactivity.
This is what I do each day in STO:
Nukara Reputation.
2000 Nukura Reputation per character.
340 Dilithium per character.
28 Nukara Marks per character.
Fleet Marks.
100 Fleet Marks for my Starfleet character.
And that's what I would be owed for each day of inactivity!
And yes, the silence on this issue I find highly suspicious.
If you can't defend a poor decision (and I sincerely doubt they can defend this one), you just don't say anything at all.
Especially when the company involved is adamant we keep the autobann system, even though it's been proven time and again how flawed it is.
An analogy, what if I sold the Air Force a fighter aircraft that randomly activated the pilot ejection system if the pilot pressed the wrong button?
How quickly do you think I'd be sued and forced to fix the problem in the design?
And as an aside, my opinion of the phrase "working as intended"
Autoban Dev: It's working as intended.
<crunch snap scream>
Irate Banned Player: This baseball bat breaking your legs, also working as intended.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
You're not really entitled to anything if you're a free player however I would argue that if you have been banned for more than a week and had paid for a subscription then you might have grounds for compensation.
I'm not talking about a lifetime sub where it's there indefinitely, we're talking a months subscription whereby you have been denied the use of that unfairly. I would think such players are entitled to being credited the days they missed due to an over zealous ban. I would think a court would certainly say the ToS as applied in this instance were unfair and illegal especially if no compensation was given.
Fortunately I'm not affected so I have no reason to inquire
Yeah, I know Cryptic won't really do anything to compensate players who are banned.
But hypothetically, if there was a penalty system for unjust bans, they'd be more motivated to fix the problem.
They'd also be faster about getting an account unbanned, since every day that goes by is more penalty they have to pay out.
In the real world though, you would not get away with that.
If you make a mistake of this order, there are consequences, usually a court ordered compensation payment to the victim.
But who knows?
If this goes on long enough, Cryptic may indeed discover there are consequences, even if it doesn't result in a legal verdict against them.
Public opinion is a powerful thing and if it turns against Cryptic, they will suffer for it in the long term with reduced players, bad publicity and lost income due to players not purchasing subscriptions, c-points and c-store items.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
(SNIP)
I'm not talking about a lifetime sub where it's there indefinitely, we're talking a months subscription whereby you have been denied the use of that unfairly.
(SNIP)
That's a bit gray area, but it can be argued that in lifetime subscription you pay for 'all the months, for as long as the game is alive', or 'for all the months, as long as I have interest to the game'. You've still paid for any days during which you would have liked to play, but couldn't. As such, it reduces the value of what you paid for.
So quoting someone who was banned is a bannable offense? cause that's what happend to me... :eek::(:mad:
Part of the problem is that nobody actually knows what will get you banned, or even what this system is designed to ban you for, except in very general terms (namely, that it's supposed to cut down or eliminate goldspam). However, despite numerous reports of auto-bans caused by things only very, very loosely connected with goldspam, if it's connected at all, and despite the fact that some (but not all) of these bans have apparently since been lifted, the last official word of this can be summarised as, "This is actually working as intended, but we're considering changing the way the warning is displayed."
In other words, they are considering doing something which might solve one relatively minor part of the problem, but have seemingly indicated that the rest of the problem is a feature, not a bug.
You're not really entitled to anything if you're a free player however I would argue that if you have been banned for more than a week and had paid for a subscription then you might have grounds for compensation
You're entitled to get what you paid for. If for example you were banned for 4 days, you are legally entitled to have those 4 days added to your sub, otherwise cryptic would be violating the service agreement they made when a person signed up for a paid account. The person pays for 30 days, not 26. They are guaranteed by law to get what they paid for.
Just making that clear
Seriously?
A ban for using Gold now?
What about gold membership
Gold pressed latinum
My pips are gold
My combadge is gold
Gold lockboxes, very rare nowadays but still)
Not to mention there's probably countless other times we'd use the word gold in chat, this ban system is getting sillier and sillier as it goes on! Come on Cryptic/PWE, you need a new approach, that much should be clear by now.
Indeed. Cryptic needs to assign a programmer that actually knows how to properly use a parser and regular expressions, if they insist on using this absurd autobanning TRIBBLE
Part of the problem is that nobody actually knows what will get you banned, or even what this system is designed to ban you for, except in very general terms (namely, that it's supposed to cut down or eliminate goldspam). However, despite numerous reports of auto-bans caused by things only very, very loosely connected with goldspam, if it's connected at all, and despite the fact that some (but not all) of these bans have apparently since been lifted, the last official word of this can be summarised as, "This is actually working as intended, but we're considering changing the way the warning is displayed."
In other words, they are considering doing something which might solve one relatively minor part of the problem, but have seemingly indicated that the rest of the problem is a feature, not a bug.
Compounding the problem is that there is no warning per se. You get a automatic response indicating a language filter has been put in place. No warning that you are likely to get banned, and no confirmation e-mail when it has happened. You are left completely in the dark aside from not being able to log into your account. From looking through this thread, it also seems for many it's beyond a reasonable amount of time as well. If they're still charging for services on top of that... it's a very expensive mistake on their part.
They need to fix this somewhat because it's literally a lawsuit waiting to happen. In addition, because they're located in the state of California, many of their disclaimers in their TOS are also null and void. Both SOE and Blizzard have learned this the hard way even when banning accounts for exploits.
To be honest the lack of communication from PWE on this subject coupled with watching this has just kinda turned me off the game. Nice expansion and you've put a lot into Romulans and all but with PWE treating it's customers with contempt and the grind missions not being very engaging I won't be playing the game much or at all. I hope you get unbanned soon sirkoric
I agree completely. Just before I found out about this thread I was beginning to think that there may be a small chance I would play something else associated with either Cryptic or PWE at some point in the future, assuming that there was a period of AT LEAST 3 years good customer service and consideration shown. However the lack of response and apparent utter indifference demonstrated on this matter has convinced me that my previous intentions to avoid both companies was indeed the correct choice. I am a console gamer also and the only reason I never purchased a PS3 was due to SOE's complete shambolic handling of the SWG MMO following the much maligned Combat Upgrade. This likely lost Sony somewhere in the region of ?1000-?1500 from myself alone (I know I wasn't the only one) considering the cost of the console and game purchases over it's life cycle. I have already stated that I now regret buying the LoR expansion, not because I didn't enjoy it but because I'm annoyed at myself for funding such uncaring companies. Foolishly I thought things were changing for the better and decided to once again fund the game (the only reason I'm still playing being that I originally purchased an LTS).
I have just returned from the BigIF rally in Hyde Park London where myself and others demonstrated yesterday to make the leaders at the forthcoming G8 summit take action on world hunger (something unacceptable in the 21st century). One of the points being made there was the issue of company transparency. Whilst I would not group either Cryptic or PWE in the same list of 'EVIL' companies responsible for perpetuating world hunger due to their greed, I would advise them to remember their player base, that is to say, greatly composed of Star Trek fans. The difference being that most of us true trekkers have an innate sense of what is fair and what is not, given the many ethical and hypothetical situations presented throughout the various series. For any employee from either of these companies that considers himself or herself a true trekker I would ask you to ask yourself, "What is fair and what would Star Trek fans think of your handling of the situation?"
what did i do???? i was talking to my dad on the game and i get banned do you know that is messed up? im in california and hes in texas!!!! that makes me mad!!!! who would do that to me? i am one of the most freindly players in the game and i get banned? i showed my friends they are real mad right now, i am fleet commander i have duties to do.
This is why I don't chat with strangers or talk about selling anything, I just put my stuff in the Exchange and in-game chat about in-game stuff only since the system is set to ban quickly anyone who uses an offending word. Free yakmini's account!
Bugger the game. I've had enough of this rubbish. I've been feeling rather unfulfilled by this game as of late. All of the extra "maintenance" periods, the shortage of bugfixes and now this. This has turned me right off this game.
Bugger the game. I've had enough of this rubbish. I've been feeling rather unfulfilled by this game as of late. All of the extra "maintenance" periods, the shortage of bugfixes and now this. This has turned me right off this game.
You're entitled to get what you paid for. If for example you were banned for 4 days, you are legally entitled to have those 4 days added to your sub, otherwise cryptic would be violating the service agreement they made when a person signed up for a paid account. The person pays for 30 days, not 26. They are guaranteed by law to get what they paid for.
Just making that clear
Indeed. Cryptic needs to assign a programmer that actually knows how to properly use a parser and regular expressions, if they insist on using this absurd autobanning TRIBBLE
excuse me though i put in zen close to every month now but im not a gold or a lifetime do u know that is illeagal to not get your money back if you do not get what you paid for AKA i paid and got banned//// way to go you banned a paying coustumer who else are you going to ban lifetime members gold members? well heres a tip fix this problem right away take the shard for emergency matenance and fix if i acnt play i will have to call someone that will make you put all others that were banned online!! this is just wrong ive been playing scince december and i have already put in 200$ worth of zen and now i cant play any startrek and waisted my money................ WHOS WITH ME HERE???!!!
Who is brave enough to go and kill the bugg in the game that bannes anyone who talks in zone can you put a human incharge instead of a computer? we need this problem fixed otherwise you are effecting loyal costumers i was reading one and on just said i will never probably never play this game. That hurts Me personally i like all who play star trek because of these reasons
its a game
have fun
be polite
respect all peoples decision
but who is not willing to have fun will just sit there doing nothing
my friend sayed a couple days ago that there are people in stfs that report you just because you dont listen to him in fact he told the whole team to report them but only one did not the one that knew that was wrong. i fly an oddessey that cost zen i am a valuable player i was about to buy my next ship the Atrox the problem is I AM BANNED
hear me out please i am calm now but if you want to keep cosumers dont beleive one person start an investigation i am telling you all because i am very sad right now all i did was talk in zone aat Earth space dock then i got banned i was also talking to my dad who is in texas and im in california i was happy yesterday but today i can talk to my familiy in texas the game was my way to talk. perfect word if you are reading this please help we are getting banned and no reason at all. PLEASE HELP us
When the eg's friend started the spam up in emails a few weeks before LOR launched there was a thread about it and several people made a suggestion to auto ban anyone saying the eg's friend name. I strongly advised against it because of what is now happening and almost happened to me too. My being against a word filter auto ban for this problem was because fleet mates will warn other to not use the eg's friend because it is a scam and they will not recieve EC but instead lose real money. Having the ability to warn each other is far better than an instant ban.
Now an issue with this ban system does the eg's friend spam in the chat or email? Serious question there. CHAT OR MAIL??? Oh mail!! not in chat? OK why is the filter set to ban for chat? Because someone at Cryptic is an idiot. Dense as a brick. Stupid as a post. Auto ban's are the absolute last resort that should be taken, and banning in the wrong system altogether is the msot idiotic stupid thing one can do because we cannot warn people not to use the "service" to buy credits.
Now from prior experiance and what my suggestion was... DO NOT BAN THE SPAM BOT! just silence it. Have the spam bots message simply not be seen by anyone and not warn or ban the bot. The bot will continue spamming nothing and nobody until a human checks on it to restart it which could take forever as the bot's are completely automated to create a new account to spamming the game. Ban them and they start the create process again. Mute them without any warning and they will spam nobody. Ban them and fresh account and spam happens.
Now the reason i didn get banned and why i typed the eg's friend name was because i recieved MAIL spam from Eg's friend in my inbox, having 2 new to MMO players in our fleet i thought it would be good to warn them to not use it or even be tempted. So typed "F*$&ing eg's friend spam, do not use them. it's a scam" and the message didnt show ofcourse. So sincce I was in our fleet private channel in a tab i created with only that and private messages showing I swapped over to the default chat tab thinking did that go to zone somehow? and saw the warning there because that tab was left at default settings. i imediatly fired off a ticket requesting the warning be removed from my account and the reasons why with the quote warning to the new fleet members. No word on if its lifted but I will not be saying the Eg's friend again in chat even in a private chat that SHOULD NOT BE FILTERED!
Join Date: Nobody cares.
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
As of today ii am on day 13 of being banned and no response from PWI/Cryptics support.
Ironically humorous how they have time to delete a duplicate ticket but not respond to the issues. Probably have a person that's that is all they do, Delete duplicate tickets.
(SNIP)
I swapped over to the default chat tab thinking did that go to zone somehow? and saw the warning there because that tab was left at default settings. i imediatly fired off a ticket requesting the warning be removed from my account and the reasons why with the quote warning to the new fleet members. No word on if its lifted but I will not be saying the Eg's friend again in chat even in a private chat that SHOULD NOT BE FILTERED!
With no response to your ticket, I presume you can be pretty sure you're now treading on eggshells. Problem is the word you refer to, is by far not the only word that can trigger the system - so at that point any of the unknown number of undisclosed 'banned' words could get triggered from any kind of in-game communication whatsoever.. so any line you type in-game could be your last.
Of course there is no way I can be sure whether I (or anyone else) am in same position - I'd disabled the system channel long time ago due to all the lockbox spam, and I know there's plenty of times when a line I typed never went through. I'm sure many are aware of the bug with team chat - where team channel becomes invalid, and you have to swap to zone, or some other channel.. and then back to team channel for it to work. There is no way I could know if one of those times had actually resulted from this retarted autoban triggering on whatever unrelated message I tried to say on team chat, like "Do you have any use for these dual cannona [item link]". Or whatever else.
As such, without knowing if I might possibly be on the list too, I just figured it's best to keep your mouth shut. I don't use in-game chat for anything anymore, and just use Steam chat on the side when I need to chat with friends. I can recommend something similar to everyone else - that way you can feel reasonably secure that your account won't be randomly banned someday.
That, and if at all possible, spread the word of this system to anyone you can - like your fleet for example. Point them to this thread if you can.
I've mentioned this issue a few times on zone chat just to make people aware of it. A couple times got thanks for the heads up - so I hope it's helped at least a few people to be more safe with their accounts. I did have a funny incident some days ago though. I mentioned the autoban system, and the potential griefers who may try to trick people to use the bannable words.. and posted a link to this thread. I got a reasponse on zone chat by someone: "Or I could just put you on ignore, seems safer that way *click*".
Makes me wonder a bit, but I guess there's all types.
What doesn't sit right with me is that the first official response we get from them isn't "Oh wow, we didn't mean for that to happen, we'll look into it right away." In fact it was pretty much the opposite - "Yeah, it's doing exactly what we want it to"
I don't personally know anyone who has been affected by this, but it should be obvious that they are going about it the wrong way. Wouldn't be surprised to find out that more innocent people have been banned than actual spammers. And here's the thing: the spammers don't care. They'll just make more accounts or find other ways around it. Not saying nothing should be done to try and stop it, but this isn't the answer.
Yep, pretty much my thoughts.
The sad part is that people who engage in 'illegal' activities are usually much more cautious than the ones who don't.
So chances are that the ones typing this forbidden word are the ones just talking about it, and the ones who should be banned just don't type it, or at least less often.
And yes, spammers don't care. They'll find a way around. Do they care that their disposable spam account gets banned after sending those mails? Not at all.
Dear Cryptic, dear Branflakes, this is bad business practice!
Massive collateral damage actually puts it mildly..
Maybe its past time this was brought to the gaming media's attention?
I definitely think its time they got some bad press on this. They have shown they couldn't care less about the damn near unanimous condemnation of this practice by the player base, maybe they will care when Brandon and Dstahl go and do there interviews and keep getting asked just wtf they are thinking.
Fortunately, nothing bad has happened to me (yet!) as a result of this conversation, but it could have so.
So, for a hypothethical scenario, I'll present what I said today:
Someone came into a chat channel and started talking about solid gold coins being illegal in America.
Since I'd never heard of this, I started typing responses to him asking for more info.
During the course of our discussion, it dawned on me that I was saying the word gold way too much! :eek:
Gold coins, gold bars, weight of gold.
That's when I ended the conversation via text and asked him to step into a teamspeak server so we could talk freely without worrying about being account banned.
And that's what I think most players should be concerned about, how an innocent topic can
accidentally get you banned.
Yes, I am also suspicious that none of the major review sites have covered this yet.
On Steam, when a game company stuffs up like this, there's usually a linked review within two days saying how badly they stuffed up.
But so far, nothing.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Comments
I mean, while you are banned, you can't play the game as normal, which will add a delay to whatever goal you might be working towards ingame.
And Cryptic should be obligated to give you whatever you missed out on, since it is their fault you are unable to play.
If I was unfortunate enough to be accidentally banned, I know exactly what my daily tasks are and how much I should be allocated per day of inactivity.
This is what I do each day in STO:
Nukara Reputation.
2000 Nukura Reputation per character.
340 Dilithium per character.
28 Nukara Marks per character.
Fleet Marks.
100 Fleet Marks for my Starfleet character.
And that's what I would be owed for each day of inactivity!
And yes, the silence on this issue I find highly suspicious.
If you can't defend a poor decision (and I sincerely doubt they can defend this one), you just don't say anything at all.
Especially when the company involved is adamant we keep the autobann system, even though it's been proven time and again how flawed it is.
An analogy, what if I sold the Air Force a fighter aircraft that randomly activated the pilot ejection system if the pilot pressed the wrong button?
How quickly do you think I'd be sued and forced to fix the problem in the design?
And as an aside, my opinion of the phrase "working as intended"
Autoban Dev: It's working as intended.
<crunch snap scream>
Irate Banned Player: This baseball bat breaking your legs, also working as intended.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
You're not really entitled to anything if you're a free player however I would argue that if you have been banned for more than a week and had paid for a subscription then you might have grounds for compensation.
I'm not talking about a lifetime sub where it's there indefinitely, we're talking a months subscription whereby you have been denied the use of that unfairly. I would think such players are entitled to being credited the days they missed due to an over zealous ban. I would think a court would certainly say the ToS as applied in this instance were unfair and illegal especially if no compensation was given.
Fortunately I'm not affected so I have no reason to inquire
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.
But hypothetically, if there was a penalty system for unjust bans, they'd be more motivated to fix the problem.
They'd also be faster about getting an account unbanned, since every day that goes by is more penalty they have to pay out.
In the real world though, you would not get away with that.
If you make a mistake of this order, there are consequences, usually a court ordered compensation payment to the victim.
But who knows?
If this goes on long enough, Cryptic may indeed discover there are consequences, even if it doesn't result in a legal verdict against them.
Public opinion is a powerful thing and if it turns against Cryptic, they will suffer for it in the long term with reduced players, bad publicity and lost income due to players not purchasing subscriptions, c-points and c-store items.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
That's a bit gray area, but it can be argued that in lifetime subscription you pay for 'all the months, for as long as the game is alive', or 'for all the months, as long as I have interest to the game'. You've still paid for any days during which you would have liked to play, but couldn't. As such, it reduces the value of what you paid for.
Part of the problem is that nobody actually knows what will get you banned, or even what this system is designed to ban you for, except in very general terms (namely, that it's supposed to cut down or eliminate goldspam). However, despite numerous reports of auto-bans caused by things only very, very loosely connected with goldspam, if it's connected at all, and despite the fact that some (but not all) of these bans have apparently since been lifted, the last official word of this can be summarised as, "This is actually working as intended, but we're considering changing the way the warning is displayed."
In other words, they are considering doing something which might solve one relatively minor part of the problem, but have seemingly indicated that the rest of the problem is a feature, not a bug.
You're entitled to get what you paid for. If for example you were banned for 4 days, you are legally entitled to have those 4 days added to your sub, otherwise cryptic would be violating the service agreement they made when a person signed up for a paid account. The person pays for 30 days, not 26. They are guaranteed by law to get what they paid for.
Just making that clear
Indeed. Cryptic needs to assign a programmer that actually knows how to properly use a parser and regular expressions, if they insist on using this absurd autobanning TRIBBLE
Compounding the problem is that there is no warning per se. You get a automatic response indicating a language filter has been put in place. No warning that you are likely to get banned, and no confirmation e-mail when it has happened. You are left completely in the dark aside from not being able to log into your account. From looking through this thread, it also seems for many it's beyond a reasonable amount of time as well. If they're still charging for services on top of that... it's a very expensive mistake on their part.
They need to fix this somewhat because it's literally a lawsuit waiting to happen. In addition, because they're located in the state of California, many of their disclaimers in their TOS are also null and void. Both SOE and Blizzard have learned this the hard way even when banning accounts for exploits.
I agree completely. Just before I found out about this thread I was beginning to think that there may be a small chance I would play something else associated with either Cryptic or PWE at some point in the future, assuming that there was a period of AT LEAST 3 years good customer service and consideration shown. However the lack of response and apparent utter indifference demonstrated on this matter has convinced me that my previous intentions to avoid both companies was indeed the correct choice. I am a console gamer also and the only reason I never purchased a PS3 was due to SOE's complete shambolic handling of the SWG MMO following the much maligned Combat Upgrade. This likely lost Sony somewhere in the region of ?1000-?1500 from myself alone (I know I wasn't the only one) considering the cost of the console and game purchases over it's life cycle. I have already stated that I now regret buying the LoR expansion, not because I didn't enjoy it but because I'm annoyed at myself for funding such uncaring companies. Foolishly I thought things were changing for the better and decided to once again fund the game (the only reason I'm still playing being that I originally purchased an LTS).
I have just returned from the BigIF rally in Hyde Park London where myself and others demonstrated yesterday to make the leaders at the forthcoming G8 summit take action on world hunger (something unacceptable in the 21st century). One of the points being made there was the issue of company transparency. Whilst I would not group either Cryptic or PWE in the same list of 'EVIL' companies responsible for perpetuating world hunger due to their greed, I would advise them to remember their player base, that is to say, greatly composed of Star Trek fans. The difference being that most of us true trekkers have an innate sense of what is fair and what is not, given the many ethical and hypothetical situations presented throughout the various series. For any employee from either of these companies that considers himself or herself a true trekker I would ask you to ask yourself, "What is fair and what would Star Trek fans think of your handling of the situation?"
what did i do???? i was talking to my dad on the game and i get banned do you know that is messed up? im in california and hes in texas!!!! that makes me mad!!!! who would do that to me? i am one of the most freindly players in the game and i get banned? i showed my friends they are real mad right now, i am fleet commander i have duties to do.
www.captainschannel.webs.com visit my site to talk to people with the same problem im having
[sarcasm]Well played.[/sarcasm]
excuse me though i put in zen close to every month now but im not a gold or a lifetime do u know that is illeagal to not get your money back if you do not get what you paid for AKA i paid and got banned//// way to go you banned a paying coustumer who else are you going to ban lifetime members gold members? well heres a tip fix this problem right away take the shard for emergency matenance and fix if i acnt play i will have to call someone that will make you put all others that were banned online!! this is just wrong ive been playing scince december and i have already put in 200$ worth of zen and now i cant play any startrek and waisted my money................ WHOS WITH ME HERE???!!!
its a game
have fun
be polite
respect all peoples decision
but who is not willing to have fun will just sit there doing nothing
my friend sayed a couple days ago that there are people in stfs that report you just because you dont listen to him in fact he told the whole team to report them but only one did not the one that knew that was wrong. i fly an oddessey that cost zen i am a valuable player i was about to buy my next ship the Atrox the problem is I AM BANNED
hear me out please i am calm now but if you want to keep cosumers dont beleive one person start an investigation i am telling you all because i am very sad right now all i did was talk in zone aat Earth space dock then i got banned i was also talking to my dad who is in texas and im in california i was happy yesterday but today i can talk to my familiy in texas the game was my way to talk. perfect word if you are reading this please help we are getting banned and no reason at all. PLEASE HELP us
Now an issue with this ban system does the eg's friend spam in the chat or email? Serious question there. CHAT OR MAIL??? Oh mail!! not in chat? OK why is the filter set to ban for chat? Because someone at Cryptic is an idiot. Dense as a brick. Stupid as a post. Auto ban's are the absolute last resort that should be taken, and banning in the wrong system altogether is the msot idiotic stupid thing one can do because we cannot warn people not to use the "service" to buy credits.
Now from prior experiance and what my suggestion was... DO NOT BAN THE SPAM BOT! just silence it. Have the spam bots message simply not be seen by anyone and not warn or ban the bot. The bot will continue spamming nothing and nobody until a human checks on it to restart it which could take forever as the bot's are completely automated to create a new account to spamming the game. Ban them and they start the create process again. Mute them without any warning and they will spam nobody. Ban them and fresh account and spam happens.
Now the reason i didn get banned and why i typed the eg's friend name was because i recieved MAIL spam from Eg's friend in my inbox, having 2 new to MMO players in our fleet i thought it would be good to warn them to not use it or even be tempted. So typed "F*$&ing eg's friend spam, do not use them. it's a scam" and the message didnt show ofcourse. So sincce I was in our fleet private channel in a tab i created with only that and private messages showing I swapped over to the default chat tab thinking did that go to zone somehow? and saw the warning there because that tab was left at default settings. i imediatly fired off a ticket requesting the warning be removed from my account and the reasons why with the quote warning to the new fleet members. No word on if its lifted but I will not be saying the Eg's friend again in chat even in a private chat that SHOULD NOT BE FILTERED!
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
Ironically humorous how they have time to delete a duplicate ticket but not respond to the issues. Probably have a person that's that is all they do, Delete duplicate tickets.
With no response to your ticket, I presume you can be pretty sure you're now treading on eggshells. Problem is the word you refer to, is by far not the only word that can trigger the system - so at that point any of the unknown number of undisclosed 'banned' words could get triggered from any kind of in-game communication whatsoever.. so any line you type in-game could be your last.
Of course there is no way I can be sure whether I (or anyone else) am in same position - I'd disabled the system channel long time ago due to all the lockbox spam, and I know there's plenty of times when a line I typed never went through. I'm sure many are aware of the bug with team chat - where team channel becomes invalid, and you have to swap to zone, or some other channel.. and then back to team channel for it to work. There is no way I could know if one of those times had actually resulted from this retarted autoban triggering on whatever unrelated message I tried to say on team chat, like "Do you have any use for these dual cannona [item link]". Or whatever else.
As such, without knowing if I might possibly be on the list too, I just figured it's best to keep your mouth shut. I don't use in-game chat for anything anymore, and just use Steam chat on the side when I need to chat with friends. I can recommend something similar to everyone else - that way you can feel reasonably secure that your account won't be randomly banned someday.
That, and if at all possible, spread the word of this system to anyone you can - like your fleet for example. Point them to this thread if you can.
I've mentioned this issue a few times on zone chat just to make people aware of it. A couple times got thanks for the heads up - so I hope it's helped at least a few people to be more safe with their accounts. I did have a funny incident some days ago though. I mentioned the autoban system, and the potential griefers who may try to trick people to use the bannable words.. and posted a link to this thread. I got a reasponse on zone chat by someone: "Or I could just put you on ignore, seems safer that way *click*".
Makes me wonder a bit, but I guess there's all types.
That's pretty much the only thing I consistently say ingame now:
Use Steam Chat, my handle is <not telling>.
Also looking for a text chat client that doesn't go through Cryptic's chat system, like Pidgin does.
And of course, there's voice servers!
So you see, if you stuff up ingame chat enough, people will find alternatives and just ignore the ingame text tool.
And that's when STO becomes a ghost town for chat.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Something simple that can installed without registering an account with some company.
Like Teamspeak, but for text.
Welcome back to the game sirkoric!
13 days? really?
Lame.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Yep, pretty much my thoughts.
The sad part is that people who engage in 'illegal' activities are usually much more cautious than the ones who don't.
So chances are that the ones typing this forbidden word are the ones just talking about it, and the ones who should be banned just don't type it, or at least less often.
And yes, spammers don't care. They'll find a way around. Do they care that their disposable spam account gets banned after sending those mails? Not at all.
Dear Cryptic, dear Branflakes,
this is bad business practice!
Massive collateral damage actually puts it mildly..
i know of one chat but probably need to add it to a site.
chatango.com
its one place i know that you can make a chat room and allow
to join with out making an account.
probably not what your looking for but i thought i mention it anyway.
I definitely think its time they got some bad press on this. They have shown they couldn't care less about the damn near unanimous condemnation of this practice by the player base, maybe they will care when Brandon and Dstahl go and do there interviews and keep getting asked just wtf they are thinking.
So, for a hypothethical scenario, I'll present what I said today:
Someone came into a chat channel and started talking about solid gold coins being illegal in America.
Since I'd never heard of this, I started typing responses to him asking for more info.
During the course of our discussion, it dawned on me that I was saying the word gold way too much! :eek:
Gold coins, gold bars, weight of gold.
That's when I ended the conversation via text and asked him to step into a teamspeak server so we could talk freely without worrying about being account banned.
And that's what I think most players should be concerned about, how an innocent topic can
accidentally get you banned.
Yes, I am also suspicious that none of the major review sites have covered this yet.
On Steam, when a game company stuffs up like this, there's usually a linked review within two days saying how badly they stuffed up.
But so far, nothing.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad