Gold Spammers Everywhere

[nekoshka]

1 minute ago, AuraGalaxy said:

2. IF a block name has been blocked by more than 500 players THEN auto-ban for 10 days.

500 players?! You'll have to let the bot sit and spam for an hour, and you'll never get 500 people to block them either. Let's try 20. 20 people will take seconds to achieve, not hours. If 20 random people decide simultaneously someone needs a perma-ban, that's a pretty good indicator they need a perma-ban. Also, why bother letting them become unbanned? perma-ban them then delete the account a week later.

[AuraGalaxy]

1 minute ago, nekoshka said:

500 players?! You'll have to let the bot sit and spam for an hour, and you'll never get 500 people to block them either. Let's try 20. 20 people will take seconds to achieve, not hours. If 20 random people decide simultaneously someone needs a perma-ban, that's a pretty good indicator they need a perma-ban. Also, why bother letting them become unbanned? perma-ban them then delete the account a week later.

 

Yeah, about the details you guys can think about it.(Like how many players blocked him etc) But i guess this algorithm is a good approach don't you think?  impossible to bypass!

 

[FennEXE]

1 minute ago, nekoshka said:

500 players?! You'll have to let the bot sit and spam for an hour, and you'll never get 500 people to block them either. Let's try 20. 20 people will take seconds to achieve, not hours. If 20 random people decide simultaneously someone needs a perma-ban, that's a pretty good indicator they need a perma-ban. Also, why bother letting them become unbanned? perma-ban them then delete the account a week later.

This is sadly a very abusable system, not great to use if people can ban someone just by having a group of friends.

[KrystalHazard]

Ultimately the problem lies with the segment of the player base who are purchasing the "services" of the gold spammers. If there were no demand there would be no gold spammers. Frankly I think they should work on perma-banning players who do so rather than fighting the losing battle of trying to eradicated the bots/spammers. Remove the customers and the business will move on.

 

If you're going to spend money on this game then give it to the devs ffs so they can make it better.

[BigPointyTeeth]

Okay, since railing about it doesn't do anything, let's try a constructive and imaginative brainstorm for solutions.  

 

Clearly a simple chat filter isn't the answer... it's equally simple to get round with a bot.  Humans can't keep up with bulk account creation scripts, so GM man-power doesn't solve it, and account bans do nothing anyways when creating a new account is quick and easy.  IP bans are problematic, partly because of the many providers that operate on dynamic IP's and partly because IP spoofing/masking is a thing, and you end up potentially banning legit users through no fault of their own.

 

I've heard suggestions of a level req to chat... that potentially helps, at the cost of making it harder to get involved in the legit community.  In my opinion, the low level region chat is a lost cause, but exposing the (level-independent) faction chat to the gold sellers is a major problem.  I would say that a requirement of maybe level 10-15 to post in Faction chat might not be a bad idea, especially if you can implement it so that you can read it before that but not post... that way new legit people can start coordinating and see what's up and who's prominent in the faction, but bot accounts are still requiring a nontrivial investment of time per account before they can be a problem.  Not really a solution, but a serviceable band-aid.

[nekoshka]

1 minute ago, FennEXE said:

This is sadly a very abusable system, not great to use if people can ban someone just by having a group of friends.

No one is going to abuse a system that gets them and 19 friends perma-banned for doing so while the person they reported gets unbanned the very next day.

[AuraGalaxy]

Just now, FennEXE said:

This is sadly a very abusable system, not great to use if people can ban someone just by having a group of friends.

 

Not likely to have 500 players blocking the same person.

What's more is, we could also limit the time range. : E.g: X amounts of players block that person within X hours.  
This will significantly reduce the abusing this system.

[GnatB]

12 minutes ago, nekoshka said:

Pointless. It's extremely simple to make your script add a few random characters, or increment some at the end.

 

Agreed, any such "filter" would have to be something like 80% similar or such.

 

And, of course, a filter that does a regex type search for anything that looks like a URL, and filters the message out if it finds one.

 

Seriously, no faction/zone/etc. message with a straight ".com" should *ever* get through into chat.

Heck, anything that gets a hit with a regex "\. *[cC] *[oO0] *[mM]" should be autofiltered.  Modified as they figure out ways around it.  At least make them *work* to get their message through.

[nekoshka]

1 minute ago, GnatB said:

 

Seriously, no faction/zone/etc. message with a straight ".com" should *ever* get through into chat.

Heck, anything that gets a hit with a regex "\. *[cC] *[oO0] *[mM]" should be autofiltered.  Modified as they figure out ways around it.  At least make them *work* to get their message through.

I see no problems with people sharing links, as any gold-selling website name is going to have to be manually added to the filter system. But once that name is added, and the filter ignores spaces, commas, periods and any other special characters, it will be extremely difficult to share that gold site with people in a way they can understand, which will reduce the number of buyers. Fewer buyers=less profits=less spam.

[AFrisch]

common kids/ teens , dont offer solutions every anonymous f2p dumbass can use to ban ppl he/she dotn like , this is f2p shit, andit dont work atm :*( at least NC got the money, but not the devs  :/ explore the diffrence between a developper and a publisher noobs ;)

[Trane658]

the ammount of bots is completely ridiculous, I mean you block one,. 20 more appear after 30 seconds, it's unmanageable,. please uncap block list and limit lvl chat

[GnatB]

 

2 minutes ago, nekoshka said:

I see no problems with people sharing links, as any gold-selling website name is going to have to be manually added to the filter system. But once that name is added, and the filter ignores spaces, commas, periods and any other special characters, it will be extremely difficult to share that gold site with people in a way they can understand, which will reduce the number of buyers. Fewer buyers=less profits=less spam.

 

The filter would only be in "broadcast" channels.  In a reply whisper/clan/party you can still share links to your hearts content.

[BigPointyTeeth]

I like the idea of a player-customizable client-side filter.  If I could, for example, filter out anything from the faction chat from players below a specific level (which I could set myself on my end so there's not a specific target for the bot to aim for), that would go a long way.   Or, for that matter, let me put in a regex to filter chat for.  That'd do it.

 

Edit: critical point here is allowing the player to configure it.  There's no way the devs can keep up with the bots, but letting players configure their own chat filters in a useful way would give them the tools to keep their own experience pleasant.

[nekoshka]

1 minute ago, GnatB said:

 

 

The filter would only be in "broadcast" channels.  In a reply whisper/clan/party you can still share links to your hearts content.

The point is that bots are going to find cheap ways around blocking .com anyways. Plus, they will just resort to telling you to google their website. That's why the tools need to be robust enough to block the middle part of the web address or the company name, which will require humans to enter into the system.

[GnatB]

Just now, nekoshka said:

The point is that bots are going to find cheap ways around blocking .com anyways. Plus, they will just resort to telling you to google their website. That's why the tools need to be robust enough to block the middle part of the web address or the company name, which will require humans to enter into the system.

 

Agreed, but a regex for .com is a good starting point,  I sort of find it mind boggling that that wasn't there "by default".  They can then add expressions to their regex filter as needed.

 

(Note:  I'm not a big fan of requiring players to create their own regex filters to hide the problem.  A lot of new players will enter game, see all the spam, block unsuccessfully, and quit.  Never bothering to try and figure out how to use a "do it yourself" regex system)

[BigPointyTeeth]

Just now, GnatB said:

 

(Note:  I'm not a big fan of requiring players to create their own regex filters to hide the problem.  A lot of new players will enter game, see all the spam, block unsuccessfully, and quit.  Never bothering to try and figure out how to use a "do it yourself" regex system)

 

You're not wrong, but given a solution that risks making the learning curve steeper for new players versus giving everyone a better play experience in the long run after the learning curve, I think that's a good trade to make.  (And honestly, given the way they've built their skill system, it's a trade they've already made before.)

 

My point, really, is that I don't think it's possible to win this particular fight with a move purely by NCSoft's end.  As long as the bots are trying to get around a single filter/mechanic/requirement, their reprehensible designers can work to engineer a way for their bots to get around it.  It's an arms race between them and the B&S devs, and considering they've got a game to run, the devs almost certainly can't win that race.  (Especially if, as I've read, the western team doesn't really have the ability to make sweeping changes.) 

 

If everyone can have their own custom filter, though, players can share them and coordinate to make more effective ones, and you enlist the energy of the fan community in the fight.  Also, there's no longer a single, institutionally slow target at which to direct their foul subhuman guile, and there's a real chance we can get some peace and quiet occasionally.

[Frankenstein]

:((((((((( omg they can't be stopped... and we can only block 50 people

[FennEXE]

1 minute ago, BigPointyTeeth said:

 

You're not wrong, but given a solution that risks making the learning curve steeper for new players versus giving everyone a better play experience in the long run after the learning curve, I think that's a good trade to make.  (And honestly, given the way they've built their skill system, it's a trade they've already made before.)

 

My point, really, is that I don't think it's possible to win this particular fight with a move purely by NCSoft's end.  As long as the bots are trying to get around a single filter/mechanic/requirement, their reprehensible designers can work to engineer a way for their bots to get around it.  It's an arms race between them and the B&S devs, and considering they've got a game to run, the devs almost certainly can't win that race.  (Especially if, as I've read, the western team doesn't really have the ability to make sweeping changes.) 

 

If everyone can have their own custom filter, though, players can share them and coordinate to make more effective ones, and you enlist the energy of the fan community in the fight.  Also, there's no longer a single, institutionally slow target at which to direct their foul subhuman guile, and there's a real chance we can get some peace and quiet occasionally.

Hence why I would say both a levelcap and a RANDOMIZED quest to be the prerequisite for faction/region/global chat.

[nekoshka]

1 minute ago, BigPointyTeeth said:

It's an arms race between them and the B&S devs,

It's not an arms race, and thinking about it that way will lead to failure. In an arms race, both sides are motivated to outdo the other side, and there is no end goal or victory.
This is not an arms race: Make gold spamming unprofitable and they will leave of their own volition, even if they could still bypass everything.

[MrNiN]

This is ridiculous. So many complaints about bots, and half of the posts in the thread are complaints about  things each individual player can correct on there own. "To many bots...bots everywhere, how can I even play if I can't communicate with other players?" Well try learning how to use the UI. I know it isn't dumbed down as far as WoW's UI, but its still easy enough to figure out that my 12 year old made the adjustments needed, in order to not be bothered by gold adds/bots.

 Then the conspiracy garbage. How NCsoft "must be in league with the farmers". Ok I know  frustration can lead to having some wacky idea's, but still, come on that's just dumb. First off, the game has been live for what, a week or two if you include the early access time. You have any idea how much effort and time it takes to keep a game rolling and not crashing when it first goes live? Even if its been active in other regions, its a new server system, new bugs. and so on. You need to except and realize the NC Team is busy with important, (keep the game and servers running) issues. So please forgive them if within the first 9 days or so things are a bit out of order. Botters and Farmers always use the beginning chaos and rush, to hit every MMO with gold adds. So come on peeps, lighten up a bit, the western region is beginning to sound like a bunch of self entitled snobs. I know it isn't the case, and we are just all used to large name titles that have the bot thing under control for the most part. But all of those games have all had massive farming and gold add issues in the past, especially at launch.

I think we all need to focus on that we have a new MMO that is very different from what we have been used to, I don't know about all of you but I love this game. I also think you all do to, and your just frustrated with the smaller annoying factors. The whole " you can't pull the wool over our eye's ncsoft", attitude won't really help anything. Especially since it will only make the NC team anxious about weather or not their player base is going to run off, over issues, they really have no control over in the long run. Only thing that gets rid of farmers and adds is if people stop buying the currency in that particular game, and even then it will still be there just not as rampant. So blame the buyers for the farmers even being there, not the ncsoft team.
 

[BigPointyTeeth]

1 minute ago, FennEXE said:

Hence why I would say both a levelcap and a RANDOMIZED quest to be the prerequisite for faction/region/global chat.

 

It would help, certainly.  A level req would at least be a decent band-aid, though it would also negatively impact lowbies and alts.

 

I'm just not sure what one could randomize that a bot couldn't script around.  I mean, if it's one of several quests, a decent script could parse the quest text.

 

Are you talking about a literal captcha in the game?  Because if it's an image stored client-side that's not really an impediment, and having the quest interact with art assets fetched dynamically online (like an actual captcha) might require some rejiggering with the way the game handles data.

[nekoshka]

3 minutes ago, MrNiN said:

 So blame the buyers for the farmers even being there, not the ncsoft team.
 

Blame the criminals, not the police that sit by and do nothing? The problem is, there's always criminals, and that's why we have police. People are going to buy gold, and those people ruin it for the rest of us. You sound like those people that say "Let's teach men not to *cricket*", "Let's teach strangers not to danger", or "Let's teach mountain lions not to maul people". Yes, we blame the buyers. Yes, we demand buyers be banned. But not for one second do those buyers let NCSOFT off the hook.

[00039]

If they want to put an end to this fast all they need to do is ban the people who buy the gold.  If they make people too afraid to buy the gold then the spammers won't be getting money.

[BigPointyTeeth]

Just now, 00039 said:

If they want to put an end to this fast all they need to do is ban the people who buy the gold.  If they make people too afraid to buy the gold then the spammers won't be getting money.

 

Out of curiosity, how do you differentiate between people giving stuff to a friend or a RMT transaction?  I mean, presumably the transaction takes place on the gold-seller's site, and the transfer is by way of an expendable one-off account, who's been botted to 15 (to get around the trade restriction) and has no history of malfeasance.  How do you detect that?

[00039]

2 minutes ago, BigPointyTeeth said:

 

Out of curiosity, how do you differentiate between people giving stuff to a friend or a RMT transaction?  I mean, presumably the transaction takes place on the gold-seller's site, and the transfer is by way of an expendable one-off account, who's been botted to 15 (to get around the trade restriction) and has no history of malfeasance.  How do you detect that?

All they gotta do is look at the trade history and they'd be able to trace it right back to a farm bot