I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
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I've never even heard of this honestly. So I don't get where people are saying this is a lifer perk being taken away.
you ever peeked into your friends list and seen me logged in as Emergency Werewolf Hologram and showing an unknown location? that was me being logged into pidgin, one of the chat clients that supports XMPP
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!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
it wasn't cleaned up, it cleaned itself up - goldspam is a good indication of MMO health; when the game is healthy, activity is high and when a game is dying, activity is low, because goldspammers won't waste time with a dying game
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 :-(
Spamming has been dealt with a number of ways. The volume of spam you receive in-game or by email is only a measure of the success in dealing with it.
Your reasoning of "we are doing this to combat gold sellers" is hilariously dumb, considering you can't even reach Local or Zone through XMPP, nor do I believe anyone in their right mind would spend hundreds of dollars on an account that is at risk of getting banned couple of minutes later.
But oh well, yet another reason to suggest everyone to never spend their money on LTS - way to go with your "smart" business decisions Cryptic.
This completely destroys a feature the Reddit Fleet Officers have relied on for years now, using XMPP(assuming the officer had LTS) to setup notifications to ping us so we could get invites without being in game 24/7. I don't see this stopping gold spammers in the slightest, they aren't buying LTS accounts so they can spam via XMPP and the notion that they would drop 300 USD on one just to spam gold selling messages frankly seems absurd when they're just going to get banned anyways.
Agree with Callen, this is the main feature of LTS for me. I have keywords that let me know if someone needs something like an invite, or if someone is causing trouble for chat, and if necessary I log in. This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and taking something I specifically paid money for away from me with no compensation.
The community isn't paying to maintain it, so there is nothing to discuss really. Actually, the article linked in the OP is your discussion - Cryptic does not want to spend the time and resources to maintain it and they are closing it down.
What features are the community paying to maintain?
As someone who both uses this feature and occasionally spends money on STO, *I* consider this feature to be one of the things I'm giving them $$$ for. It's a line item in the Lifetime Subscriber perks, if they haven't scrubbed that already.
As a user since closed beta, and a member of a very large group of fans of STO (SubSpace Radio), I'm very disapointed in this decision. We've long since broadcasted with fans both in game, and in IRC / Discord via a relay into the SSR channel ingame. This has allowed folks who aren't able to be ingame at the moment to continue to enjoy the conversation and fun whereever they, be it at work or home through our IRC channel or our Discord server which is also linked.
If there is any chance to change this decision, I would strongly urge it.
Sorry not too informed about all the tech jargon. As I stated earlier I, might, get an in-game mail from 1 of them spammers a week nowadays, but a couple of years ago I do remember it was more frequent & occasionally might get the unsolicited in-game /tell about the same service. I know a few players that stated they used it when not in game for communication so it seems/seemed a nice accessory to have, but if Cryptic is in a cutting-cost initiative they maybe decided not worth the cost. It sure can be difficult to believe STO has a bright future when all these cuts keeps going on but I'm sure Cryptic has to be as efficient as possible with resources too.
I've never even heard of this honestly. So I don't get where people are saying this is a lifer perk being taken away.
you ever peeked into your friends list and seen me logged in as Emergency Werewolf Hologram and showing an unknown location? that was me being logged into pidgin, one of the chat clients that supports XMPP
Oh wow, thanks for that detailed description, I have seen that before, & now I know what all that means. Bummer for those that use/used this service.
it wasn't cleaned up, it cleaned itself up - goldspam is a good indication of MMO health; when the game is healthy, activity is high and when a game is dying, activity is low, because goldspammers won't waste time with a dying game
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 :-(
Spamming has been dealt with a number of ways. The volume of spam you receive in-game or by email is only a measure of the success in dealing with it.
Excellent point too, I'm sure Cryptic doesn't like it like many of us so it shouldn't be forgot that they fight against the spammers, thanks for the reminder of another possible reason.
It's too bad the XMPP system is being shut down. I never used it even though I have an LTS. I saw no need to since the only time I'd need to chat with people in game would be when I'm already in game. I have seen some folks chatting at work or whatnot, but that seems so odd to me. They seemed to enjoy it so I'm disheartened for those who will be losing the system.
As far as the newer apparently more popular alternatives go, I do see many people saying they use Discord to get the same functionality. I don't use Discord all that much, just to look for server updates or announcements for a couple other games but I certainly don't chat using it. That seems so convoluted to me, having to switch between the game and a browser, back to game.
I've even seen some players in other games saying you need to have Discord in order to join their team or for bigger events. Why not just have it all in game? I just don't get it, but then again, I'm not that serious a gamer either.
And if this is (was) a selling point to LTS, then I suppose some could say it's yet another thing removed and "devalues" the LTS. I personally don't see it that way as I never used it and 99% of the time forgot it even existed. But, those that do use it regularly and consider it a perk of the LTS, again, I'm sorry for their loss.
Hello. My name is iamynaught and I am an altaholic.
Thanks, we used to use this for relay for Discord -> ingame chat and back. Also was very convienent talking outside the game.
How is this even working for gold sellers? Unless Im mistaken, you can only connect to private rooms not zone chats etc, or we would see way more spam than this.
What's the real reason, maintenance costs? It is mind boggling how Cryptic every time manages to scare more people away. No wonder their user base keeps dropping.
That's off. Since I came back to the game in December, I haven't had any gold farmers contact me in chat. However, I have had over 20 in-game mails from gold farmers. And 6 of those all came from the exact same toon, and @handle. So, is removing a feature that a lot of players use going to stop the mail spam also?
I really don't see how this is going to stop so many gold farmers advertising in the game. If gold farmers were ever actually using this feature, then they were paying Cryptic $300 ($200 when on sale) to advertise. But, they are able to advertise for free in this game anyway.
Whether they spent the money to get LTS, or not, it takes the same amount of time to start a new account. And since the game is free to play, they can start advertising without spending any money. Why would they spend hundreds of $$ to do that they have been doing for almost 10 years for free?
I think it is really because they don't want to take the time to keep this feature updated, so they are just kicking it to the curb like they did the foundry. I just wonder how many other features of the game will get kicked to the curb, just because they don't want to take the time to work on them. (Makes me wonder how much longer Klingons/Romulans have, before getting kicked out too. lol.).
Razar.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
> @razar2380 said:
> That's off. Since I came back to the game in December, I haven't had any gold farmers contact me in chat. However, I have had over 20 in-game mails from gold farmers. And 6 of those all came from the exact same toon, and @handle. So, is removing a feature that a lot of players use going to stop the mail spam also?
>
> I really don't see how this is going to stop so many gold farmers advertising in the game. If gold farmers were ever actually using this feature, then they were paying Cryptic $300 ($200 when on sale) to advertise. But, they are able to advertise for free in this game anyway.
>
> Whether they spent the money to get LTS, or not, it takes the same amount of time to start a new account. And since the game is free to play, they can start advertising without spending any money. Why would they spend hundreds of $$ to do that they have been doing for almost 10 years for free?
>
> I think it is really because they don't want to take the time to keep this feature updated, so they are just kicking it to the curb like they did the foundry. I just wonder how many other features of the game will get kicked to the curb, just because they don't want to take the time to work on them. (Makes me wonder how much longer Klingons/Romulans have, before getting kicked out too. lol.).
>
> Razar.
Foundry was removed because nobody still at Cryptic knew how to fix it anymore, not because they didn't want to. So much hystrionic TRIBBLE on these forums.
That is exactly my point. They didn't want to take the time to learn how to fix it so that they can keep it. Instead, they would rather remove the feature that so many players use. Same thing here. You might not like what people are saying. But insulting people by saying, "So much hystrionic TRIBBLE on these forums." doesn't add to the conversation in any way. It is just an attempt to attack others.
Razar.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
I can make serveral guesses I'd imagine the source code for it could have been used or maybe the gold spammers with livetime accounts were not using those accounts on Sto maybe like Neverwinter. I mean the system could be broken into. Or if those that do have lifetime accounts the botters get ahold of. Could use the system to maybe find out how it works and how they can bypass things. Or use the accounts still maybe using the xmpp service to mask themselves maybe. Or find out coding weaknesses or maybe even get access to their game servers themselves.
Mmos I think are more of an internal networking system much harder to hack or get access too. External sources much easier to hack like Websites they could possibly bot a lot easier that way.
Just like Gateway botting was one of the reason why they closed it. Because you can farm ad refine it have easier time of doing things without having to log into the game itself. Plus external sources might be easier to bot.
So because its an extenal service for an enclosed network. Botters can in fact get access to it. And possible hack into the external source. For example websites and passwords could maybe be compromised. Along with other factors.
Also These botters, don't just do it to Sto, Neverwinter and CO.
They do it to other games these are the types of people that have a lot of computers a lot of softerware avaiable to them to run these massive goldspamming, goldfarming operations. So Cryptics mmos would only be a small part in these operations and these operations could net them millions of dollars. Possibly even more then 100 million just guessing alone by these operations. So life time accounts are not really hard at all for them to acquire. In fact it would be pocket change for these types of people.
For example say a gold spammer wanted to buy up 2100 dollars worth of subcriptions. Price I think is 299 not including tax so rough estimate is 300 dollors. So that means they can get up to 7 accounts with that type of money if they spend 4200 they can get 14 lifetime accounts with that. Now when they do the sells. with 200 dollors worth they can get up to ten for 2000 and 20 for 4000. Now if a botter wanted to buy 1000 live time accounts with the price of 300. They would have to pay at least 300,000 dollars. Now if its a discount and its 200 dollars, a thousand accounts would be 200k. Since thse type of operations if they make over a hundred million or even half that from this type of thing. Thats still pocket change. And pocket change well spent too because of this. The 500 monthly zen. That is 6000 zen per year and if you had a thousand accounts. That would be 6,000000 zen that could be used for anything. like keys or other valuable stuff on the zen store. They could use the monthy zen to great effect. Of course they want to keep prices up so I imagine they spend it wisey and not as often. Also if a life time account can allow you to avoid chat restrictions put into place in other mmos. Or bypass them all together not sure if that is possible. but could happen. Then those life time accounts would still be of great benfit to them and might be worth using even if risking a ban they can still make more and pay more money for the livetime accounts. This is just an example I imagine they don't spend as much money. But another thing they could do and possibly do to is use stolen credit card information since they are not afraid to steal account information and use TRIBBLE accounts for their botting so these people live dangerously close to breaking the law if they are not already breaking it so them doing identy theft isn't out of the question. But there is security measures that make it harder for them to use fraudulent credit card information so I imagine they don't use that as often. So they might not be able to get as many lifetime accounts because of the security measures but does not really matter. They still get possibly enough to do what they need to do. As good as the monthly zen can be for the players. It is another problem that can be exploited by these people.
So if you think they don't buy the lifetime subscriptions think again they may actually do so and Cryptic has caught onto the use for those accounts. If this is the reason then I think its very possible. They might make other changes to make it harder. Hopefully fo them to exploit the system.
So if its benficial enough to hinder them to make the accounts less useful to them then I think its worth shutting this system down. But I know a friend uses it and well I think its sad they have to do this. But I can understand why they are doing it. It makes the system more secure makes it harder for the bots to get access to the chating system possibly.Whether or not it will hinder them will remain to be seen. Its possible it won't do anything to stop them. They will always find a way around it. Also cryptic shouldn't make it where it hurts innocent players or make it harder for newbe players. Like they did with Neverwinter. Could have found another way. But I will admit it did stop the bot spam a lot of it. But didn't stop it all together. I'm glad it was reduced but finding ways to find these accounts is important. FInding and dealing with the gold buyers if it can be proven. Get rid of them and give a stern warning about buying from these sellers would be another good deterrent. Perm ban and not temp banning is key here. even adding the warning in a sperate tab away from the rules saying stern warning about buying from gold sellers. Get peoples attention have them read that and if it says you will be perma banned if caught buying. I think it will drive down the buyers enough to make the bots less of an issue.
it isn't limiting spam at all...the only way to access the chat server via XMPP was by being a lifetime subscriber...NO goldspammer in their right mind would spend that kind of money for an account that's getting banned in less than two minutes
Depends on how much they are getting from people who buy into the goldspammers' offers.
Comments
No spammers are using XMPP to send spam.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
you ever peeked into your friends list and seen me logged in as Emergency Werewolf Hologram and showing an unknown location? that was me being logged into pidgin, one of the chat clients that supports XMPP
#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!"
Spamming has been dealt with a number of ways. The volume of spam you receive in-game or by email is only a measure of the success in dealing with it.
But oh well, yet another reason to suggest everyone to never spend their money on LTS - way to go with your "smart" business decisions Cryptic.
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My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Agree with Callen, this is the main feature of LTS for me. I have keywords that let me know if someone needs something like an invite, or if someone is causing trouble for chat, and if necessary I log in. This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and taking something I specifically paid money for away from me with no compensation.
Read the (possibly old now, if they've already updated it) LTS perks. XMPP is (was) one of them.
What features are the community paying to maintain?
As someone who both uses this feature and occasionally spends money on STO, *I* consider this feature to be one of the things I'm giving them $$$ for. It's a line item in the Lifetime Subscriber perks, if they haven't scrubbed that already.
If there is any chance to change this decision, I would strongly urge it.
Sorry not too informed about all the tech jargon. As I stated earlier I, might, get an in-game mail from 1 of them spammers a week nowadays, but a couple of years ago I do remember it was more frequent & occasionally might get the unsolicited in-game /tell about the same service. I know a few players that stated they used it when not in game for communication so it seems/seemed a nice accessory to have, but if Cryptic is in a cutting-cost initiative they maybe decided not worth the cost. It sure can be difficult to believe STO has a bright future when all these cuts keeps going on but I'm sure Cryptic has to be as efficient as possible with resources too.
Oh wow, thanks for that detailed description, I have seen that before, & now I know what all that means. Bummer for those that use/used this service.
Excellent point too, I'm sure Cryptic doesn't like it like many of us so it shouldn't be forgot that they fight against the spammers, thanks for the reminder of another possible reason.
As far as the newer apparently more popular alternatives go, I do see many people saying they use Discord to get the same functionality. I don't use Discord all that much, just to look for server updates or announcements for a couple other games but I certainly don't chat using it. That seems so convoluted to me, having to switch between the game and a browser, back to game.
I've even seen some players in other games saying you need to have Discord in order to join their team or for bigger events. Why not just have it all in game? I just don't get it, but then again, I'm not that serious a gamer either.
And if this is (was) a selling point to LTS, then I suppose some could say it's yet another thing removed and "devalues" the LTS. I personally don't see it that way as I never used it and 99% of the time forgot it even existed. But, those that do use it regularly and consider it a perk of the LTS, again, I'm sorry for their loss.
Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.
How is this even working for gold sellers? Unless Im mistaken, you can only connect to private rooms not zone chats etc, or we would see way more spam than this.
What's the real reason, maintenance costs? It is mind boggling how Cryptic every time manages to scare more people away. No wonder their user base keeps dropping.
Then TRIBBLE the decision as far as I'm concerned.
I really don't see how this is going to stop so many gold farmers advertising in the game. If gold farmers were ever actually using this feature, then they were paying Cryptic $300 ($200 when on sale) to advertise. But, they are able to advertise for free in this game anyway.
Whether they spent the money to get LTS, or not, it takes the same amount of time to start a new account. And since the game is free to play, they can start advertising without spending any money. Why would they spend hundreds of $$ to do that they have been doing for almost 10 years for free?
I think it is really because they don't want to take the time to keep this feature updated, so they are just kicking it to the curb like they did the foundry. I just wonder how many other features of the game will get kicked to the curb, just because they don't want to take the time to work on them. (Makes me wonder how much longer Klingons/Romulans have, before getting kicked out too. lol.).
Razar.
That is exactly my point. They didn't want to take the time to learn how to fix it so that they can keep it. Instead, they would rather remove the feature that so many players use. Same thing here. You might not like what people are saying. But insulting people by saying, "So much hystrionic TRIBBLE on these forums." doesn't add to the conversation in any way. It is just an attempt to attack others.
Razar.
personally i'm using it a lot to answer peoples questions in the dps channels so yea... guess it will be reduced greatly in the near future
ingame: @Felisean
Mmos I think are more of an internal networking system much harder to hack or get access too. External sources much easier to hack like Websites they could possibly bot a lot easier that way.
Just like Gateway botting was one of the reason why they closed it. Because you can farm ad refine it have easier time of doing things without having to log into the game itself. Plus external sources might be easier to bot.
So because its an extenal service for an enclosed network. Botters can in fact get access to it. And possible hack into the external source. For example websites and passwords could maybe be compromised. Along with other factors.
Also These botters, don't just do it to Sto, Neverwinter and CO.
They do it to other games these are the types of people that have a lot of computers a lot of softerware avaiable to them to run these massive goldspamming, goldfarming operations. So Cryptics mmos would only be a small part in these operations and these operations could net them millions of dollars. Possibly even more then 100 million just guessing alone by these operations. So life time accounts are not really hard at all for them to acquire. In fact it would be pocket change for these types of people.
For example say a gold spammer wanted to buy up 2100 dollars worth of subcriptions. Price I think is 299 not including tax so rough estimate is 300 dollors. So that means they can get up to 7 accounts with that type of money if they spend 4200 they can get 14 lifetime accounts with that. Now when they do the sells. with 200 dollors worth they can get up to ten for 2000 and 20 for 4000. Now if a botter wanted to buy 1000 live time accounts with the price of 300. They would have to pay at least 300,000 dollars. Now if its a discount and its 200 dollars, a thousand accounts would be 200k. Since thse type of operations if they make over a hundred million or even half that from this type of thing. Thats still pocket change. And pocket change well spent too because of this. The 500 monthly zen. That is 6000 zen per year and if you had a thousand accounts. That would be 6,000000 zen that could be used for anything. like keys or other valuable stuff on the zen store. They could use the monthy zen to great effect. Of course they want to keep prices up so I imagine they spend it wisey and not as often. Also if a life time account can allow you to avoid chat restrictions put into place in other mmos. Or bypass them all together not sure if that is possible. but could happen. Then those life time accounts would still be of great benfit to them and might be worth using even if risking a ban they can still make more and pay more money for the livetime accounts. This is just an example I imagine they don't spend as much money. But another thing they could do and possibly do to is use stolen credit card information since they are not afraid to steal account information and use TRIBBLE accounts for their botting so these people live dangerously close to breaking the law if they are not already breaking it so them doing identy theft isn't out of the question. But there is security measures that make it harder for them to use fraudulent credit card information so I imagine they don't use that as often. So they might not be able to get as many lifetime accounts because of the security measures but does not really matter. They still get possibly enough to do what they need to do. As good as the monthly zen can be for the players. It is another problem that can be exploited by these people.
So if you think they don't buy the lifetime subscriptions think again they may actually do so and Cryptic has caught onto the use for those accounts. If this is the reason then I think its very possible. They might make other changes to make it harder. Hopefully fo them to exploit the system.
So if its benficial enough to hinder them to make the accounts less useful to them then I think its worth shutting this system down. But I know a friend uses it and well I think its sad they have to do this. But I can understand why they are doing it. It makes the system more secure makes it harder for the bots to get access to the chating system possibly.Whether or not it will hinder them will remain to be seen. Its possible it won't do anything to stop them. They will always find a way around it. Also cryptic shouldn't make it where it hurts innocent players or make it harder for newbe players. Like they did with Neverwinter. Could have found another way. But I will admit it did stop the bot spam a lot of it. But didn't stop it all together. I'm glad it was reduced but finding ways to find these accounts is important. FInding and dealing with the gold buyers if it can be proven. Get rid of them and give a stern warning about buying from these sellers would be another good deterrent. Perm ban and not temp banning is key here. even adding the warning in a sperate tab away from the rules saying stern warning about buying from gold sellers. Get peoples attention have them read that and if it says you will be perma banned if caught buying. I think it will drive down the buyers enough to make the bots less of an issue.
Depends on how much they are getting from people who buy into the goldspammers' offers.