Greetings Captains,
As of September 19th, 2019, Star Trek Online will no longer be supporting connection to our internal chat system via an XMPP client. While this feature was interesting and often convenient, it also unfortunately makes it easier for gold spammers and others to reach our chat system. Allowing access via an XMPP client also creates several technical challenges that make it difficult to keep our in-game chat safe and smooth. At this time, we don’t have any plans to replace this with a different service.
Please feel free to discuss this change in this thread, and let us know any further questions. We will be updating this thread with any additional notices or clarifications as needed.
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"Dreams are born in the deepest of minds, and destroyed in the shallowest of ones."
The use of gold spammers as the reason to drop it seems pretty weak, to be honest. I've barely ever seen a gold spammer in even the wreck that is Zone Chat.
More to the point: This is just the removal of one more valuable LTS perk, for a package that already has greatly diminished in value. One more reason to not suggest people buy it, I suppose.
And I admit I have a hard time believing gold spammers spend hundreds of dollars on accounts for spamming -- and if they do, why aren't those accounts being banned instead?
I have an LTS, and do use XMPP from time to time to keep tabs on various channels when I'm not in game.
It was already a gold subscriber requirement, which is more or less LTS now.
So that excuse doesn't make sense.
Maybe change how it's accessed, so you need an account of XX days to use it, and/or require a purchase of some sort on the C-store?
First we lost the gateway, now this.
What does make sense is the need to shut down more services to reduce load on servers.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Yeah right, because the spammers have LTS...
"Technical challenges" = "We've lost the people who bother/know how, to maintain things like this and the foundry, but we're scared to admit it".
People do use Discord, but not "most". You absolutely do not have any metrics to back that up. Also, those that do use Discord are using Discord bots to link in-game fleet chat. You're going to annoy yet more of the playerbase with this.
I'm not angry; just disappointed.
XMPP Chat Protocol is text, not voice. IIRC STO's voice chat is based off Ventrillo.
Don't remove XMPP. Take it out of beta and monetize it instead. Charge $10 or $25 for access if you have to.
Honestly this sounds like the actual reason.
I have to agree with alot of people, I seriously doubt goldspammers are buying LTS to use XMPP. If there's some sort of security exploit that's letting them use it without LTS, maybe try patching that instead?
I don't get this decision. A lot of large fleets and player groups use this functionality.
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
RedditChat(a channel with anywhere between 200-500 online or more depending on releases and a total channel pop above 10k), and the associated Reddit Fleets(REDdit Alert, Reddit Star Empire, House of Snoo, etc) all use it. Several XMPP Clients allow the user to setup keyword notifications to notify us, extremely useful for grabbing fleet invites without being in game 24/7, something that is essential for us. I'm sure there are several other fleets that also use it similarly.
Edit: another amazing feature is logging, it allows us to log our channel, so if an incident occurs when no officers are actually in game, w/e officers are connected via XMPP will have a log so we can go back and view the incident. All in all XMPP access has been an invaluable tool for us running our fleets, and it's removal and the extremely weak excuse of Gold Sellers, is honestly just pathetic.
Then you don't know any fleets. There's no hyperbole in what I typed.
Spot on.
I'm not trying to be a jerk, but your single anecdotal experience has already been shown as a universal non-truth considering several people have already mentioned using it in this thread. Yes, the decision has been made. Since there was no attempt to converse with the community about this before they decided, all that we can do now is give them the feedback on their decision. Logically I understand them not checking first, but quit acting as if people don't have the right to state their displeasure about it.
Secondly and worst of all: you are willing to "punish" the hundreds of users that are not violating anything by keeping in touch with their players. To me, the is a huge step backwards. Cryptic is almost treating its players like little kids saying "Ooo… We will give you this new shiny toy; but, take away three that you already enjoy using." Cryptic seriously needs to be in better communication with what the players want and not what they think is best on paper. I know 5 of the fleets I am in are furious over this decision with one saying " this is just another nail in STO's coffin."
This is a sad day for STO players and one I am not pleased with at all. For the records, I am a LTS and have NEVER bothered setting up a STO relay. Therefore, Cryptic's reasoning for doing this is completely illogical to say the least.
This.
I'm a developer and I would love to work there to keep these old systems running, but I feel I would not be allowed to work on it.
Chancellor Seven Leader House of Beautiful Orions
I never see it in chat (including ESD zone), and only receive a spam email once every several months.
I remember when it was really bad during the early F2P days, but it was cleaned up very well over the years IMO.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
I agree with this sentiment. I would support monetizing (if necessary).
I might get 1 in-game mail from some spammer a week. I just delete it nowadays. I do remember a lot more spamming used to happen so your equation about the spamming & STO's health doesn't give me good vibes for STO's future :-(