Urgent Question to Trendy !!!

grazyc2 · October 2015

Trendy you are the men to talk too and I bed you speak to the developers or any other inside Cryptic once and awhile....
Could you be the one to talk too, to take care of those damned EC sellers in game ?
Yesterday I was bugged 18 times with friend requests while playing very annoying if it pops up every time and I block them but they might have more then one account. also a lot of Private Messages come in my chat trying to sell me EC. And I have been warned not to respond because you can't trust them but still it's been very annoying the whole time. Could you please look into this matter to prevent this or make a tool to prevent this.... ??? I bed if I ask around I'm not the only one that's being bugged by them !!!

f9thretxc · October 2015

Man, are they not annoying? I know I report spam a lot more the last week than I have in a long time.

To be honest though, At best all she can do is let them know, but I imagine just looking at the spam reports, they already know about it.

That being said, I support ya here. Damn they are annoying.

Unknown · October 2015

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f9thretxc · October 2015

Good info to know Repetitiveepic. Sad thing is, I've offered to help a few people here on the forums, so I never know if it is one of them getting online , or one of the spammers.

I suppose I'll just have to start blocking, and if they want to get ahold of me, then use the mail system.

rosetyler51 · October 2015

I know this is not the best thread for it but it looks a better place than any.

Selling contraband and one of the players that brought it had a name that really looked like a bot or EC seller to me. Not 100% sure but it set off some red flags. What should I do?

seaofsorrows · October 2015

Trendy is the Community Manager, she can't really do anything about this. She does everything she can, but I think this one is out of her hands.

From what I have seen in my years of playing STO, they don't really care much about what is said in game so I wouldn't count on anything being done. STO has absolutely no rules at all, at least none that are enforced so I don't see anything really coming of this.

You should however, bring up your social panel (Default is O) and look at your friends list. If you have a bunch of pending requests, go through and deny all of them so that they can't send you tells anymore. As far as Zone Chat, not much anyone can do. If they block/ban a user they'll just make a new account and do it again.

azurianstar · October 2015

repetitiveepic wrote: »

It's been plaguing the game for about a month now I'd say.

It's especially annoying because it makes a popup window for the friend request.

It's been happening far longer than that, it's just in the last month or so it's become more wide spread. I remember when the system first went in, people used this as a tool for griefing with unsolisted PvP invites. Which resulted in the filter being installed, (also making it a pain for PvE queue invites).

But I'm not confident Trendy or any of the Devs really care about combating goldfarmers anymore. I know of a couple of people who go out of their way to tell the Dev Team about their tactics or loopholes, but nothing has been addressed. Even the simplist ones. And to make matters worse, new goldfarmer "companies" have moved in and adding to the annoyance.

admiralkogar · October 2015

I have a "no ignore" policy. You can say anything to me in chat. You can be a blithering idiot. You can talk endlessly about Gorns. "Gorns should be slow." and " Gorns should be REALLY strong." Even Gorn jokes for four straight hours. I don't care. You could be an actual Gorn spamming EC sales, or Fleet invites, I won't choose to 'ignore' you.

You pull this 'Friend-Unfriend trick, with the sales message? BAMM! you get reported! Your on my ignore list! You make that stupid pop-up appear, and I see your stupid sales pitch, and faster than you can say 'DAH!' I have turned you in.

I support all channels of communication in this community, but this current Unfriend 'thing' should be punished via General Order 24!!! Seriously

Still I don't know how to stop it before that, (stupid pop-up window) but be brave. I'm sure there will turn out to be a way.

Qapla

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irm1963 · October 2015

OP, go into the Social window in-game (one of the buttons on the right side of the minimap) and set the privacy options to "visible to friends only". Seems to keep you off their radar but your friends and fleetmates can still see when you're in-game.

shadowfirefly00 · October 2015

azurianstar wrote: »

But I'm not confident Trendy or any of the Devs really care about combating goldfarmers anymore. I know of a couple of people who go out of their way to tell the Dev Team about their tactics or loopholes, but nothing has been addressed. Even the simplist ones.

Which raises an obvious question: why is this the case? Why hasn't the stance Mark Jacobs took for Warhammer: Age of Reckoning become the norm in the MMO space?

Unknown · October 2015

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tinyfisted · October 2015

Just FYI, you can reduce/eliminate instances of this happening by going into Social Menu -> Privacy button, and switching your list visibility to 'friends only' or 'anonymous'. The bots can't spam you if they can't see you.

thunderfoot · October 2015

My Ignore list is full of these...beings. STO is the 1st and so far only MMO I play. Unfortunately, since there are people playing this game who want to take the quicker and easier path, there will always be a market for gold spmmers apparently. If it were possible to eliminate the market for them, the gold spammers would probably go away.

I cannot begin to imagine how something like that could be accomplished.

I have not been accosted by a gold spammer in a long time though. I'd like to think there are things going on out of sight of the players which are doing this. I'd also like to think these methods or techniques will remain obscured. Since this makes it harder for the gold spammers to get in.

tinyfisted · October 2015

irm1963 wrote: »

OP, go into the Social window in-game (one of the buttons on the right side of the minimap) and set the privacy options to "visible to friends only". Seems to keep them off their radar but your friends and fleetmates can still see when you're in-game.

Heh, you beat me to it, but it does bear repeating.

kyrrok · October 2015

repetitiveepic wrote: »

At one point they had a very strict chat filter, but it ended up causing a lot of trouble for some people when it auto banned them for saying innocuous things.

It took a guy in doffjobs a month to get unbanned and I think he quit anyway since it was such a hassle. It never eliminated the spam anyway though. They wisely seem to have toned it down.

Why don't they "do anything?" I image that they actually do. But it's a very difficult issue to deal with. Too strict, you do substantially more harm than good.

Exactly, exactly, exactly! Too heavy handed and they throw out the innocent with the guilty, or mostly since the new players don't realize what not to do as well as the spammers/scammers, just throwing out more innocent even than the guilty.

kjwashington · October 2015

Honestly, I'm not even getting the /tell messages after they send the friend request. I think it's just people trolling at this point. (Not that there aren't people also trying to sell whatever also, I'm sure.)

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Unknown · October 2015

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warpangel · October 2015

repetitiveepic wrote: »

At one point they had a very strict chat filter, but it ended up causing a lot of trouble for some people when it auto banned them for saying innocuous things.

It took a guy in doffjobs a month to get unbanned and I think he quit anyway since it was such a hassle. It never eliminated the spam anyway though. They wisely seem to have toned it down.

Why don't they "do anything?" I image that they actually do. But it's a very difficult issue to deal with. Too strict, you do substantially more harm than good.

Changing the system so that you'd have to actually accept a friend invite before being treated as friends would be a good start and wouldn't do anyone any harm.

Unknown · October 2015

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grazyc2 · October 2015

seaofsorrows wrote: »

Trendy is the Community Manager, she can't really do anything about this. She does everything she can, but I think this one is out of her hands.

From what I have seen in my years of playing STO, they don't really care much about what is said in game so I wouldn't count on anything being done. STO has absolutely no rules at all, at least none that are enforced so I don't see anything really coming of this.

You should however, bring up your social panel (Default is O) and look at your friends list. If you have a bunch of pending requests, go through and deny all of them so that they can't send you tells anymore. As far as Zone Chat, not much anyone can do. If they block/ban a user they'll just make a new account and do it again.

Exactly she is comunity leader she read the forums the Developers do not very often thats why I ask Trendy to patch it thru to them to let them know.... It's mostly if you start a new char or come as a new player they start bugging you because higher then captain they don't trouble you so much so there is an auto system out there keeping tabs !!!
But you realy think people would be so stupid to believe this TRIBBLE they are selling. Also this post can be seen as a warning to those not to go for these PM's

seaofsorrows · October 2015

kirk2390 wrote: »

But you realy think people would be so stupid to believe this TRIBBLE they are selling.

If people didn't use these 'services' then I have to think they would have given up a long time ago. The fact that these spammers are still here in full force as they have been for years leads me to believe that they're getting someone to bite on their 'offers.'

I have also heard plenty of stories about people getting their Credit Card numbers stolen, people getting their account hijacked, any number of different horror stories. I don't know how much of it's true, but personally, I'll never bother to find out.

The prices they offer are significantly lower then going through Cryptic, so yes.. I think some people probably use them. To me, it's just too big of a risk.

ilithyn · October 2015

Personally I find random fleet invite spam both more obnoxious and in social zones such as ESD, First City and New Romulus for more ubiquitous than the gold seller. At least I can understand the gold sellers motivation, they're doing it for money pure and simple, annoying as hell yes, but understandable. But what in the name of all that is sacred do people who spam random fleet invites repeatedly think they're accomplishing. Apart from annoying the TRIBBLE out of people? Not so much as a 'hello', just that invite pop up and not just once either normally, they're quite happy to continue to do it until put on ignore.

lianthelia · October 2015

This happens in every MMO...even big names like WoW and ToR have spammers every day...is nothing they can do to eliminate them except not buy from them...like it has been said, players are obviously buying from them or they wouldn't even bother.

dareau · October 2015

lianthelia wrote: »

This happens in every MMO...even big names like WoW and ToR have spammers every day...is nothing they can do to eliminate them except not buy from them...like it has been said, players are obviously buying from them or they wouldn't even bother.

Which then leads, logically if not controversially, to the other method of closing down the system - deprive the sellers of their market.

Since the purchase of in-game goods for RL cash outside of Cryptic-approved channels is prohibited via ToS, highly publicized and "harsh" penalties against the purchasers of these "services" would eventually dry up the "black" market to the point that they don't advertise anymore.

By "harsh" penalty I'm starting with the complete and utter removal of all ill-gotten gains, whether through selective inventory/asset deletion or hitting the account with a rollback to the "most recent savepoint" prior to the consummation of the trade. Repeat offenders can be visited with complete inventory wipes, loss of ships, maybe even character/account suspensions / bans... Things that get the playerbase's attention to the point that even the most insulated of players will "rethink" any purchase from a "gold seller", no matter how much the deal is skewed in the player's favor (I'm thinking the inevitable $5 for an Annorax price they'll fall to as the market dries up...)

And, it's not like they'll need a highly labor intensive system to perpetrate this - if the system's not already logging every trade transaction into a filterable database that can then be scanned for one-way trades / "trade-backs" (ie, give item X, then trade item X back to originator so that the actual item purchase gets past the filter) / "improbable value" trades (white common vendortrash for 1 mil?) / any trade that messes with an "advertised special's" values (right now, popular deal I keep seeing is 100 mil EC + 10% "bonus", so any 110 / 220 / 330 ballpark EC trade or series of trades would immediately be flagged as questionable) etc. The "labor intensive" part then comes as they "track" the series of events that led to the acquisition of said good - was some fleet running a channel promo, then the recipient of the prize according to chat logs is off the hook. It a fleetie to fleetie "twink" / father helping son? Okay. Player X suddenly has an Annorax, and said ship came from a character that perpetrates numerous trades and/or had the Annorax in question passed through an account with tremendously high trade activity (aka "the seller's warehouse")? Time to break out the hammer...

storules · October 2015

Whats the urgency about this matter? Unless they ban the whole STO don't see how it can be fixed. It happens here as well other MMOs...nature of interacting with other players. You said you use the ignore button and thats a much better solution. Use it and don't agree to spam invites.

I get them but not to the point of being annoyed. ESD and Drozana are like the slums of a third world country. I don't even use zone chat for anything in there. You can also tweak your "social" settings to make you "anynomous" or invisible to others so they dont spam you. Better yte there are other social settings you can tewak in there to not receive invites/tells from other people but friends. Those are better tools than anything Devs can create or re-invent the wheel.

lianthelia · October 2015

dareau wrote: »

lianthelia wrote: »

This happens in every MMO...even big names like WoW and ToR have spammers every day...is nothing they can do to eliminate them except not buy from them...like it has been said, players are obviously buying from them or they wouldn't even bother.

Which then leads, logically if not controversially, to the other method of closing down the system - deprive the sellers of their market.

Since the purchase of in-game goods for RL cash outside of Cryptic-approved channels is prohibited via ToS, highly publicized and "harsh" penalties against the purchasers of these "services" would eventually dry up the "black" market to the point that they don't advertise anymore.

By "harsh" penalty I'm starting with the complete and utter removal of all ill-gotten gains, whether through selective inventory/asset deletion or hitting the account with a rollback to the "most recent savepoint" prior to the consummation of the trade. Repeat offenders can be visited with complete inventory wipes, loss of ships, maybe even character/account suspensions / bans... Things that get the playerbase's attention to the point that even the most insulated of players will "rethink" any purchase from a "gold seller", no matter how much the deal is skewed in the player's favor (I'm thinking the inevitable $5 for an Annorax price they'll fall to as the market dries up...)

And, it's not like they'll need a highly labor intensive system to perpetrate this - if the system's not already logging every trade transaction into a filterable database that can then be scanned for one-way trades / "trade-backs" (ie, give item X, then trade item X back to originator so that the actual item purchase gets past the filter) / "improbable value" trades (white common vendortrash for 1 mil?) / any trade that messes with an "advertised special's" values (right now, popular deal I keep seeing is 100 mil EC + 10% "bonus", so any 110 / 220 / 330 ballpark EC trade or series of trades would immediately be flagged as questionable) etc. The "labor intensive" part then comes as they "track" the series of events that led to the acquisition of said good - was some fleet running a channel promo, then the recipient of the prize according to chat logs is off the hook. It a fleetie to fleetie "twink" / father helping son? Okay. Player X suddenly has an Annorax, and said ship came from a character that perpetrates numerous trades and/or had the Annorax in question passed through an account with tremendously high trade activity (aka "the seller's warehouse")? Time to break out the hammer...

How do you track that though? In a game where the Doff/R&D ships can go for more than the maximum limit of what the exchange allows...if bigger games like WoW and ToR can't work like that how do you think STO is gonna fair?

It would be labor intensive though...because they'd need to get devs to design the system, test it, and get it in working order...which we all know is a hard task in this game

Then they'd need to hire personnel to man the system...to monitor these questionable transactions.

If one of the best (Not best in quality per se, but one of the biggest money makers) MMO in the business can't pull that off what makes you think that Cryptic can do it?

grazyc2 · October 2015

I think it would solve nothing to dry them out you might succeed maybe 45% all the way and then those gold diggers as you refer too will find another way to harass players with there good stories, I think and maybe this sounds harsh you have to punish the buyer with it, if you punish this group people will not buy from them because off the punishment. if noticed people suddenly have succeeded in obtaining large amounts of Dilithium or EC there accounts will be wiped all ships and gear will disappear from there account. Believe if that would happen to me I certainly wouldn't try it once more. And I know what you thinking aren't they already punished enough if there RC is been hijacked, I think not !! People mostly learn from the fact to make mistakes and lose it all.

Second I read was about unwanted fleet invites, annoying yes can you block it yes you can !! There is in the game a system that can block unwanted fleet invites, couple years back it was even more annoying then it is now. People asked the Developers to make a system to block unwanted fleet invites, This way they can't send you unwanted Fleet Invites.

nikephorus · October 2015

I thought I was just popular and that everyone wanted to be my friend. What a disappointing development.

grazyc2 · October 2015

nikephorus wrote: »

I thought I was just popular and that everyone wanted to be my friend. What a disappointing development.

Lolzzz

Urgent Question to Trendy !!!

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