Gold Spammers Everywhere

[kyuven]

20 minutes ago, enem said:

 

hang on..

 

how long has NCSoft been in the MMO business?

 

how come after all these years do you not have strategies and systems in place today to deal with it? I mean yes this is the NA/EU release of BnS but the game has been out in other regions for years, so why are we seeing day-one first-mmo type problems? It's truly bizarre

 

 

Because this is apparently an NA/EU problem.

Foreign companies don't see the need to address a problem that doesn't affect their "core" players. FFXIV has a similar problem with gold spammers, but on the Japanese servers it's a lot lower while the NA servers are flooded every 5 minutes, and this is with a ridiculous number of restrictions in place.

 

The best solution, though, is to track the sellers and ban the BUYERS. Goldspammers won't come to games where there's no market. If a company is harsh on buyers, then there's no reason to use the frankly absurd amount of restrictions and monitoring required to police something that won't go away and will always find ways to circumvent anything you throw at them.

 

There also needs to be PSAs on this sort of thing. They're not a cancer, they're an STD.

[Vigopl]

3 minutes ago, CosmicGlitter said:

Banning the IP won't do much since they can just use a VPN, or like you said, reset the router. That is a minor inconvenience for the bots, but won't keep them out.

 

Putting a level lock on the zone chat can help,  but also  hinders new players. But, it has worked in other games and I would not be opposed to it.

I wonder if they can block the computer by putting some kind of tag on it.  Making them reinstall the game unless it gets unlocked by a gm with a certain code.  Sorta like how the newer games have tried to stop piracy.  IDK how exactly that would work but it can definitely work and idk how much coding it would require.  So basically whenever someone tries to log into the game from a recently banned IP it immediately runs an update that locks the program and prevents it from being run unless an unlock code from a GM is given.  OH crap I should be getting paid for this.

[enem]

1 minute ago, kyuven said:

The best solution, though, is to track the sellers and ban the BUYERS. Goldspammers won't come to games where there's no market.

 

Agree to this for the most part. 

 

There are many stoopid people out there though that don't realise (or care) about the negative effect their gold buying is having on the rest of the game population. So there will always be potential buyers, and that's what the spammers are targeting.  

 

While they don't advertise the number of people they banned for gold selling or spamming (which is a shame as i'd find that counter very entertaining), perhaps they should make examples out of some of those that purchased gold and were banned :)

[kyuven]

11 minutes ago, CosmicGlitter said:

Banning the IP won't do much since they can just use a VPN, or like you said, reset the router. That is a minor inconvenience for the bots, but won't keep them out.

 

Putting a level lock on the zone chat can help,  but also  hinders new players. But, it has worked in other games and I would not be opposed to it.

All it really does is slow them down. The only real way to stop spammers is to go after the buyers.

[Grimmreaper]

8 minutes ago, Rafilskis said:

More than 5 hours waiting in the queue and I'm still in position 745.

R.I.P

Blade and Soul  2015-2016

 NO PREMIUM NO PLAY - Ncsoft, 2016.

[kyuven]

1 minute ago, enem said:

 

Agree to this for the most part. 

 

There are many stoopid people out there though that don't realise (or care) about the negative effect their gold buying is having on the rest of the game population. So there will always be potential buyers, and that's what the spammers are targeting.  

 

While they don't advertise the number of people they banned for gold selling or spamming (which is a shame as i'd find that counter very entertaining), perhaps they should make examples out of some of those that purchased gold and were banned :)

If I were running a game, every month I'd publish the list of gold buyers with the following message, after being very sure to say I'm doing this in the EULA:

"The following people did not read the EULA and decided to pay for gold:"

[Vigopl]

A friend connected with gaming industry said there are a lot of gold sellers who don't even use the game clients to send messages into game chat.  I hope this game doesn't have that problem but I guess anything is possible when it comes to software.

[CosmicGlitter]

11 minutes ago, Vigopl said:

I wonder if they can block the computer by putting some kind of tag on it.  Making them reinstall the game unless it gets unlocked by a gm with a certain code.  Sorta like how the newer games have tried to stop piracy.  IDK how exactly that would work but it can definitely work and idk how much coding it would require.  So basically whenever someone tries to log into the game from a recently banned IP it immediately runs an update that locks the program and prevents it from being run unless an unlock code from a GM is given.  OH crap I should be getting paid for this.

I think something similar to what you are talking about would be a MAC address ban, but I'm not sure. I'm no expert, but even that type of ban can be worked around. There isn't much they can do to 100% remove them. Just things they could do to slow them down, make it more difficult for them to spam and farm.

[PrepH]

I heard the report button is locked until you are level 20. If so, thanks for making it easy for the bots.

[Elvenmad]

 Activate the "CURRENCY EXCHANGE"  job DONE !  problem fixed, any players with cash to spend will be giving it to NCsoft, were it should be going, its WIN WIN WIN how easy was that! 

[Shinjakku]

1 minute ago, Elvenmad said:

 Activate the "CURRENCY EXCHANGE"  job DONE !  problem fixed, any players with cash to spend will be giving it to NCsoft, were it should be going, its WIN WIN WIN how easy was that! 

 

But I would have to charge NCoin at least once to unlock it no?

[enem]

3 minutes ago, Elvenmad said:

 Activate the "CURRENCY EXCHANGE"  job DONE !  problem fixed, any players with cash to spend will be giving it to NCsoft, were it should be going, its WIN WIN WIN how easy was that! 

 

can you explain how this solves it?

 

[Poeticintellect]

saw the same exact thing happening in master hong server in northern everdusk dungeon.

[capncronic365]

pro tip: disable region chat - not perfect but seriously reduces the spam - the server im on chats mainly kept to faction anyway lol so disabling region and blocking the other 10 or so that are using other chat systems isnt nearly as annoying as trying to block out region spam

 

seriously people tend to avoid region/global chats when the spams this thick anyway lol

[Appletree]

The gold spammers are seriously ruining my gameplay. I want to see party chat so i can see what my friends are saying but cannot because of the flood of spam. For those of you geniuses who suggest to "just block them", i have reached my maximum blocking of 50 people. All spammers. 

[Shinjakku]

1 minute ago, capncronic365 said:

pro tip: disable region chat - not perfect but seriously reduces the spam - the server im on chats mainly kept to faction anyway lol so disabling region and blocking the other 10 or so that are using other chat systems isnt nearly as annoying as trying to block out region spam

 

 

Until this is fixed then that seems to be the way to go. Let me check my options!

[capncronic365]

alt +rightclick on the tab your changing the option for> chat options - or was it chat settings , meh either way you get my point

[IntX]

7 minutes ago, enem said:

 

can you explain how this solves it?

 

How is it possible not to understand this?

[enem]

Just now, IntX said:

How is it possible not to understand this?

 

Yes it provides a legitimate method for those of us that see it as the 'proper' and safe way to obtain gold, but you really think that covers everyone?   

all it does is puts a base value on gold as set by NCSoft in relation to NCoin. Goldsellers will almost always be able to undercut this price as it translates to real money.

 

so I don't see this as a solution. 

 

[Doublelift]

cant ncsoft sue the gold sites?

[Doublelift]

10 minutes ago, Appletree said:

The gold spammers are seriously ruining my gameplay. I want to see party chat so i can see what my friends are saying but cannot because of the flood of spam. For those of you geniuses who suggest to "just block them", i have reached my maximum blocking of 50 people. All spammers. 

delete the spammers because some of the spammers are perma banned

[BourneEndeavour]

51 minutes ago, Rukkirii said:

 

Me tooooo! xD Even all of us in the office are reporting RMT as we see them. Trust me, we despise them as much as everyone else!

 

I'm not certain if this could be easily implemented, but what about making it so players have to acquire a specific item and use it before being able to unlock the chat feature? This could be fairly easy to accomplish in terms of difficulty (say level 5) while forcing a few hours progression on each individual character, thus making it impossible for someone to run a program to mas create characters to spam chat with. Even if some dedicated RMTs did push through, it would help quell the spam and make it easier to ban them.

[Elvenmad]

8 minutes ago, enem said:

 

can you explain how this solves it?

 

 

 Because looking at the prices i see in chat these sellers are asking, currently BnS gold selling is very highly lucrative and considering the amount of 'whales' that play MMO's and the insane prices they spend at the moment BnS is making alot of gold sellers very rich and main thing is they have no competitors only other sellers.

 

 Having a in game Currency Exchange vastly changes the value of game currency's and has been proved to  cure gold sellers spam problems in many other games, This is nothing new and I am very surprised this current issue seems to have been overlooked by NC who are by no means new to this gaming business.

 

 Having a in game currency exchange keeps everything in game, value and exchange rates are set by the players themselves and the only people who really profit is the games publisher themselves. Why would you even look at some possible dodgy online site to buy gold when you can obtain it safely in game ? and as for the sllers they would have no choice but to price their gold to compete with the prices in game, most would not, most would move on it would not be profitable for them anymore, it is a very easy sollution

[Raiya]

Probably gonna take introducing some restrictions to stop this its getting really bad.

 

Restricting non premium members access to the region/faction/party channels below lvl20 at least might help at least for the moment.

[IntX]

6 minutes ago, enem said:

 

Yes it provides a legitimate method for those of us that see it as the 'proper' and safe way to obtain gold, but you really think that covers everyone?   

all it does is puts a base value on gold as set by NCSoft in relation to NCoin. Goldsellers will almost always be able to undercut this price as it translates to real money.

 

so I don't see this as a solution. 

 

Two examples where this works flawlessly:
- Archeage

- Devilian