Gold Spammers Everywhere

[Doowie]

The faction chat on Greenhallow has just taken over by gold spammers. They spam the same bot for about 5 to 10 minutes and then rotate in new bots.

 

I've just turned off faction chat for now, until it's resolved.

[TakunDes]

Make a spam filter. if someone spam message too fast in a row they get muted for set amount of time

[Seemslegit]

4 minutes ago, TakunDes said:

Make a spam filter. if someone spam message too fast in a row they get muted for set amount of time

Yeah if anyone posts another thread like this just ban him for 10 days .

[Kipsatee]

I just thought of a possible solution for the fight against the rising problem of goldspammers killing the entire game. 

as it's impossible to fight a script that creates new players every 2 minutes just to start spamming, i've thought of the following:
- allow us to manually add a word filter which filters out the sentences using that word or sequence of words. 

example: if i filter out "goldatm.buycheap.com", g0ldatm., buycheap. etc they can create milions of players, but they won't show up in the list.
And as it's done by the players and not by a patch, it's impossible to counter.
(if it's done by a patch, it's a matter of manually checking if the filter changed and if so, alter the spam message)

edit: if they start using urls like bit.ly etc we can still use words and wordcombinations like "c h e a p g o l d", "cheapg0ld"  etc to block and filter. 
that way our blocklists can stay small.. 

 

[MangoHam]

I timed everything. Every 10 seconds a new group of gold spammers gets added to the chat. Seriously, since the majority of these gold spammers are mostly chinese, just ISP block them. Yes, not IP block, but ISP block. Lock china out of the game. I don't care how racist this sounds. They have their own version of the game, they don't need to enter this one with gold spam.

[BojanS]

I cant believe that NCsoft acts like they dont care...

[Cayman]

I was about to create a new topic about these annoying spam bots but then I saw this. In Starfall Crator (EU) during morning-middday hours the chat is full of spam bots. I can't even block them anymore because JOKE NCSOFT decided to limit block list to 50 so I'm already 50/50.

[Sarah G]

1 minute ago, BojanS said:

I cant believe that NCsoft acts like they dont care...

 

You obviously didn't play aion.

[Boctoona]

It does take time for a proper solution to be implemented, 

 

But i fear it may be too late, lots of people have stopped playing because of this constant and unending spam

 

Just pretend the mobs are the gold sellers, and you're beating them to death.

[ShiroUmi]

The question is, bots isn't something new, bot isn't something they have never experienced... then why they didn't take any action from the very beginning ? With all of their experience and knowledge in handling bots in other games of their, they could have done something, more or less, to lessen this, but why didn't they do anything ? 

[Huan]

3 minutes ago, ShiroUmi said:

The question is, bots isn't something new, bot isn't something they have never experienced... then why they didn't take any action from the very beginning ? With all of their experience and knowledge in handling bots in other games of their, they could have done something, more or less, to lessen this, but why didn't they do anything ? 

bots are evolving. if you see their spams, they change 4 words at the end, like pMqs -> SPed or something like this.... 

more they put countermeasures the bots evolve too..... what I suggest NCsoft do is go DDOS their sites .....

[MagnumDI]

1 hour ago, Antihero1337 said:

i imagine that they will curb these gold sellers asap. i mean its only cutting into their bottom line...

I see you are unfamiliar with NCsoft.

[Kipsatee]

as i mentioned in my post: as long as it's done serverside, the goldsellers see their bots are filtered out and then alter the lines.
if it's done clientside (allow us to set up our own list of filtered words, hiding sentences using them) it's impossible for them to figure out what's hidden

plus we don't have to wait for patches

[DaxFeraal]

this is getting way too out of hand, ive never seen this kind of goldspam in any mmo ive played

[Turtletronic]

This whole discussion is pointless. NCSoft has a long standing history with GoldSpammers in their games, and so far they NEVER found a solution, no matter how many posts and promises came from NCSoft employees or DEVs. Which is pathetic in this day and age, simply because many other games do not have that problem at all as they long introduced a plain and simple solution.

 

A solution which - as far as I know - was never even considered by NCSoft management, based on the typical "we never did that and will never do" chant normally heard from old geezers mentally stuck in the 1990s. So don't hold your breath - this matter is going to stick around as long as this game will be supported. Companies with ineffective countermeasures will always be the primary targets of these spammers and are even listed as default values in certain tools, so go figure.

 

As for all those "change chat settings to hide them" people: spam above a certain amount may cause server lag. I will not get too technical here but it involves how repetitive messages are actually handled by the parser. So you can HIDE spam, but you can not hide the EFFECT is has on game performance. Some spammer tools try to work around this by adding random numbers to the (otherwise same) text. Still, it's dreadfully annoying. And here to stay.

[Boctoona]

4 minutes ago, Kipsatee said:

as i mentioned in my post: as long as it's done serverside, the goldsellers see their bots are filtered out and then alter the lines.
f it's done clientside (allow us to set up our own list of filtered words, hiding sentences using them) it's impossible for them to figure out what's hidden)

 

 

yeah but that still doesn't solve the problem and even then they can get around that by just changing what they say, you'll still be sitting there blocking loads of bots when you first log in because they'll change their messages daily. 

 

[MagnumDI]

It's not getting out of hand, it's already completely out of hand.


If NCsoft doesn't want this game to play second fiddle to everything like the rest of their games do in the west they will fix this problem today and by any means necessary. No new player is going to look at that chat and think this is a game worth spending their time on.

[Kipsatee]

9 minutes ago, Kipsatee said:

as i mentioned in my post: as long as it's done serverside, the goldsellers see their bots are filtered out and then alter the lines.
if it's done clientside (allow us to set up our own list of filtered words, hiding sentences using them) it's impossible for them to figure out what's hidden

plus we don't have to wait for patches

 

3 minutes ago, Boctoona said:

 

yeah but that still doesn't solve the problem and even then they can get around that by just changing what they say, you'll still be sitting there blocking loads of bots when you first log in because they'll change their messages daily. 

 

actually they won't be able to get around it as they don't know what words make sentences hidden.
(small note, they have to get hidden, not just **** like profanity filters)

[MangoHam]

It was literally fixed for 10seconds and they started changing their sentences. Seriously, I just can't handle this shit. Just bring in the spam filter. Spam the same 2-3 sentences a lot intime span of 10-20 seconds and let them be blocked out of the chat. ISP ban china. Blow up their pc's or something. Just do something already...

[Boctoona]

It's still on the player to block those bots, and the gold sellers will know that is an option in the game and will try to not reuse words knowing some people may be blocking them, 

 

so you'll still have to re add words to your block list day after day, 

 

I agree it'll cut down on the spam, but there is still going to be dozens of these bots and you're still going to be putting in new words in that block list over and over, not to mention for new players blocking out hundreds of words a.nd random gibberish just to clear your chat is going to be a major turn off. 

 

It's a short term solution to a long term problem. 

 

[Wellman029]

It wouldnt be unheard of for NCsoft to actually own or have a stake in some of these gold sellers , its happened before , which would Explain the lack of any attempt to block these spammers. it's not difficult to add a line of code to prevent anyone from speaking in world type chats until level 20 , or to add an auto mute to spammers , but apparently NCsoft cant figure this out ??? what gives eh , Unless of course they Have a vested interest in the gold sellers , something to think about anyways

[Boctoona]

1 minute ago, Wellman029 said:

It wouldnt be unheard of for NCsoft to actually own or have a stake in some of these gold sellers , its happened before , which would Explain the lack of any attempt to block these spammers. it's not difficult to add a line of code to prevent anyone from speaking in world type chats until level 20 , or to add an auto mute to spammers , but apparently NCsoft cant figure this out ??? what gives eh , Unless of course they Have a vested interest in the gold sellers , something to think about anyways

 

I don't think that is the case, why take a fraction of the money from these gold sellers, rather then just sell the gold yourself in your own store? 

 

It's not going to make them more money by letting these gold sellers destroy their games with spam. 

[Random]

49 minutes ago, Kipsatee said:

I just thought of a possible solution for the fight against the rising problem of goldspammers killing the entire game. 

as it's impossible to fight a script that creates new players every 2 minutes just to start spamming, i've thought of the following:
- allow us to manually add a word filter which filters out the sentences using that word or sequence of words. 

example: if i filter out "goldatm.buycheap.com", g0ldatm., buycheap. etc they can create milions of players, but they won't show up in the list.
And as it's done by the players and not by a patch, it's impossible to counter.
(if it's done by a patch, it's a matter of manually checking if the filter changed and if so, alter the spam message)

edit: if they start using urls like bit.ly etc we can still use words and wordcombinations like "c h e a p g o l d", "cheapg0ld"  etc to block and filter. 
that way our blocklists can stay small.. 

 

this wouldnt be such a bad idea but I feel as if theres a lotttttt of combinations , but over time I'm sure we can handle it just prob could never be able to type in gold dot or com 

[BourneEndeavour]

7 minutes ago, Wellman029 said:

It wouldnt be unheard of for NCsoft to actually own or have a stake in some of these gold sellers , its happened before , which would Explain the lack of any attempt to block these spammers. it's not difficult to add a line of code to prevent anyone from speaking in world type chats until level 20 , or to add an auto mute to spammers , but apparently NCsoft cant figure this out ??? what gives eh , Unless of course they Have a vested interest in the gold sellers , something to think about anyways

 

It's not a viable option for them. Right now, certain chat tabs are basically unusable. That much spam will push players away, thus losing them money. The reason for influx is BnS' enormous hype and there being no gate. Bots don't care about waiting in five hour queues because they're, well, bots. Someone can just create twenty of them, queue up and go to work. By the time they get back, they'll be in and ready to spam.

[Sadistiquë]

WOW All the gold spammers suddenly disappeared. xD