31 replies to this topic

[Tleliaxu]

Hay guizzze

 

The recent rash of goldsellers spamming Junon tradechat got me thinking about techniques available to players to block these fools. Since they use mutexes to variate the text their bots pump out, they can spam forever and ever. So far the only thing players can do are

 

- type out the long ridiculous gibberish of a nick they use and block that

-hide tradechat

-wait and pray for mods to take care of it.

 

Since these are passive methods and that's not how I roll I've come up with a tentative way for players to leverage their own botting (naughty) and do more:

 

1. Establish the common maximum level of goldseller characters.

2. Disable the blocking of friend requests, trade requests and ride requests for accounts equal to and lower than that maximum.

3. Allow players to spam these nicks with PMs.

 

This should work thanks to friend-adding being asymmetrical; you can add someone without their consent. Just the Friend request dialog alone should mess them up.

 

This sugg needs some work so remix as needed.

[IAfjiBa]

You could do ( /Ignore [Character Name] ) command, then you wont see them saying anything

[Tleliaxu]

Sorry Bufffffffffffffiiiiiiiiieeeeeees, but that's a work-around, not a solution. Blocking them from spamming helps everyone at low cost, whereas squelching them on an individual basis does nothing towards the greater problem.

Edited by Tleliaxu, 22 September 2015 - 07:30 AM.

[KatsuraKujo]

additionally you can also block trade chat, see that "A" symbol at the right side of your text box? click that, and click trade. It will not show up now. Wonder why it only works for trade chat though, the others aren't exactly working .-.

[Tleliaxu]

I'm not sure you guys are reading this topic... We DON'T WANT THE GOLDSELLERS TO PRESCRIBE OUR ACTIVITIES TO US. WE DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO EXCLUDE OUR OPPORTUNITIES BASED ON THEIR BEHAVIOR.

 

Your suggestions are work-arounds, not solutions. 

[Feuer]

1: Calm down

2: if you PM a MOD or DEV they can log in and boot/mute/ban them [depending on level of 'power' the individual has]. 

[KatsuraKujo]

off topic but, you might want to be a little bit more specific to what goldsellers are. Plus there's only 2 places where i read gold seller, so my interpreted it as those people that spam trade chat a lot to promote their vendor. Not those showing links and crud like that.

Edited by KatsuraKujo, 22 September 2015 - 08:53 AM.

[Tleliaxu]

Where did I lose you guys?

@Miki

... Eh? The commonly understood definition of goldseller is pretty much restricted to those fools advertising their "zuly/zeny for real money" sites. Or am I wrong? Maybe the term's more widely understood than i thought...

 

@Feuer:

It's like you didn't read anything. And yes, if i knew of mods other than Trebor that would be a solution faster and better than this suggestion. However, this proposal gives a bit of power at player-level to stop it instantly until mods get on the case. Surely you can see the difference? Same use-case, different levels.

[IAfjiBa]

@Feuer:

It's like you didn't read anything. And yes, if i knew of mods other than Trebor that would be a solution faster and better than this suggestion. However, this proposal gives a bit of power at player-level to stop it instantly until mods get on the case. Surely you can see the difference? Same use-case, different levels.

 

Am a MOD, feel free to pm me here on the forums or in game! (ING: MyBuffs). If I can't for some reason be online to mute the Zulie Seller, I will pm the other MODs and see if they are abel to do it 

 

(Am not a Forum MOD, just a in game MOD)

Edited by Buffiies, 22 September 2015 - 11:49 AM.

[saravon]

1. Establish the common maximum level of goldseller characters.

I want this to be more clear, do you mean to limit the trade chat to people above a certain level?

Temporary measure but helps a bit. Forces a zulieseller to spend time to reach that requirement each time they have their account banned and there are other ways to add to that time investment such as making a quest/zulie/item requirement. This time investment deters them but wouldn't stop them completely.

 

zuliesellers/spam is common to mmos and with all these mmos with them, a simple solution hasn't been found yet?

mmos with good lexical filter systems probably worked well enough, perhaps Rose doesn't have a current one.

[Tleliaxu]

I want this to be more clear, do you mean to limit the trade chat to people above a certain level?

Temporary measure but helps a bit. Forces a zulieseller to spend time to reach that requirement each time they have their account banned and there are other ways to add to that time investment such as making a quest/zulie/item requirement. This time investment deters them but wouldn't stop them completely.

 

 

 

No, players of all levels should be able to use Trade chat. Many players use superlowbies as their factor factotum in Junon Market (vending, browsing, buying, clan recruitment etc). This is the current situation and I don't feel it's necessary to change that AS YET. That notion bears discussion though. (What about a quest or token receivable from Warren in AP, Cornell in Zant and Eva in Junon to be able to access trade chat? With some travelling involved. Eh.)

 

Simply put, as long as these spammers can block popup dialogs like Trade/Ride request and Message windows they will use these to bot their spamming. Preventing them from doing so allows any player to stop them with one single simple message or request. This empowers players as a stopgap measure until mods can take it further.

Limiting trade chat with a level requirement (and THAT with a quest) is a tricky notion. It's not something I'd want to advocate, considering it forces players along a specific path and is out of line with existing play. I dunno.

 

Anyway, the suggestion has obvious downsides, so the devil will as always be in the details.

[Banrukai]

I liked my ability to boot them from game before, or send them up to eldeon in the middle of nowhere.

But that has been fixed haha

[pdfisher]

No, players of all levels should be able to use Trade chat. Many players use superlowbies as their factor factotum in Junon Market (vending, browsing, buying, clan recruitment etc). This is the current situation and I don't feel it's necessary to change that AS YET. That notion bears discussion though. (What about a quest or token receivable from Warren in AP, Cornell in Zant and Eva in Junon to be able to access trade chat? With some travelling involved. Eh.)

 

Simply put, as long as these spammers can block popup dialogs like Trade/Ride request and Message windows they will use these to bot their spamming. Preventing them from doing so allows any player to stop them with one single simple message or request. This empowers players as a stopgap measure until mods can take it further.

Limiting trade chat with a level requirement (and THAT with a quest) is a tricky notion. It's not something I'd want to advocate, considering it forces players along a specific path and is out of line with existing play. I dunno.

 

Anyway, the suggestion has obvious downsides, so the devil will as always be in the details.

 

And just how would these zulie sellers be told apart from normal players? I don't see how you can prevent them from blocking requests, and not doing it for normal players. I personally feel the current methods work quite well as it is. There were times I when I wished a MOD was on, because one was spamming for a while, but if it gets too bad I just /ignore them. I have never played any MMO where a player had the kind of power you are suggesting.

[Tleliaxu]

And just how would these zulie sellers be told apart from normal players?

If a player is selling zulie for real cash by linking to a website and has a mutex-derived variable text-string tacked on somewhere spammed on Tradechat, that player is BY DEFINITION A GOLDSELLER and IN VIOLATION OF SERVER REGULATIONS and TERMS OF SERVICE. There is no need to 'distinguish' them any further from 'normal players'. You're intelligent so I don't understand why you even said this. There are players and there are goldsellers.

 

I don't see how you can prevent them from blocking requests, and not doing it for normal players.

I don't see how normal lowlevel players can be stopped from using Tradechat since they won't be botting. Or will they? Are you pro-bot, Pam?

 

I personally feel the current methods work quite well as it is.

ORLY? Your standards must be really low for this server then.

 

 

There were times I when I wished a MOD was on, because one was spamming for a while, but if it gets too bad I just hide from them. 

FTFY.

 

 

Rose be crazy now. Cray-cray. The economy relies on bots like previous societies relied on slaves. Hard to break free from that.

 

Concerns voiced above have some validity, even though I can't think of a new player being spamhandled by random anon players to prevent them from using Tradechat (and why would they do that anyway?). Having said all that, I don't like disabling a gameclient feature, especially one that affects your experience.

 

I had an idea about the token thing. How about players getting a free token from Eva that gives them access to Trade chat for t amount of time based on their level? Let's have a look:

 

Players who have not done their first job quest yet have t = (level/50) hours. (Level 9 player would have 11 minutes access to Tradechat)

Players who have their first job and have not done their second job quest yet have t = (level/10) hours.

Players who have completed their second job quest have 24 hours Tradechat access regardless of level.

Max-level players have unrestricted access to Tradechat.

 

Premium players who have their first job have unrestricted acess to tradechat. 

 

Think of it as a parking meter and stall vending fee combined. You have to get up and go put a token in the Eva I thought of monetizing this with IM-purchasable coins that stack (like eg. 50 IM for 24 hours) but it's still  abusable by goldsellers that are actually making money.

Edited by Tleliaxu, 23 September 2015 - 08:43 AM.

[pdfisher]

I don't understand the personal attack on me like that. I certainly didn't attack you. No, I don't support botting, anyone that knows me, knows this. I may be intelligent, but I certainly don't understand coding, and I don't know what made you think I did. I would appreciate it if  you could show me at least a little respect. I have no problems with the way things are done now. There is no need for players to be given such power. The token idea is not a bad one, except a lot of vendors are only level 10. So they would have to constantly close up shop and go get a new token. If you could adjust those times, it would be a really good idea.

[TheRealCaNehDa]

It is not impossible to ban these people... and I still personally find it extremely disappointing that WarpPortal has yet to figure out how to ensure ban for zullie sellers are made :/ 

No one has an unlimited IP address range; Ok... well, I guess everyone kinda does ... BUT... 

The fact that they have to use proprietary software in order to log in, and use trade chat, means that 'spyware' can be used against them... 

[Tleliaxu]

@Canehda: Gravity isn't Sony, UbiSoft, Lenovo or one of those other companies who do exactly the wrong thing and insert malicious code onto their customers' devices. Sure, if you want the server to shut down next month, totally plug that idea. I guess there are other games we can play...

 

 

 

@pdfisher: It took me a while to figure out how you misread me. (A whole 15 minutes, tbh.) If you spend enough time in Junon Polis, you'll notice how the goldseller spam always follows the convention

[website link] [offer cash for zuly] [exchange rate]  [random text to get around the spamfilter].

 

If you've ever spent time trying to get around the spamfilter yourself due to typos or whatever, you'll have known what the purpose of the random text is. No coding required or expected. So, my bad for assuming you've done so at some stage, I apologize.

 

Re: respect - I respect any sober player that's been with Rose for years and has made a contribution to the community or the game itself. Whether you respect me is immaterial but you should know that I respect you. At the same time I need you to take cognizance of the fact that your /ignoring of these spammers is an individual and reactionary workaround instead of a proactive solution.

 

Re: time interval. The entire idea is to prevent goldselling spammers from just setting up and spamming to their little hearts' content, Arua bless their little hearts. Those vendors in Junon Market are botting anyway, by accommodating them we're getting complacent with the system as it is and enabling botting as a whole.  The game could benefit from shaking things up. In fact, we should consider a different (and more efficient) way to vend that could slow down inflation without inhibiting new players from enjoying the game.

 

The token idea has potential but I'm not sure right now how to accommodate superlowbie playervendors, since superlowbies are exactly what goldsellers use for their nefarious schemes.

Edited by Tleliaxu, 23 September 2015 - 03:48 PM.

[TheRealCaNehDa]

@Canehda: Gravity isn't Sony, UbiSoft, Lenovo or one of those other companies who do exactly the wrong thing and insert malicious code onto their customers' devices. Sure, if you want the server to shut down next month, totally plug that idea. I guess there are other games we can play...

"malicious" code, I only consider to be code that harms your computer, not data gathering tools. 
Besides, their User agreement totally protects them from doing as such. 

[Feuer]

This whole thing just seems convoluted. 

[saravon]

These are just annoying words, can't rose simply improve its word/string filtering system?

I was thinking someone probably has created a system/database to filter a large variety of these gold seller spam messages. A good database would be updated when needed like virus software. Perhaps not as much profit. Does it exist? would it be worth the cost?

[Feuer]

Anyone can edit their word filter, it's a file in the folder structure of Rose that can be updated with the proper tools. 

 

[pdfisher]

If Rose can update their word filter to handle a string like the zulie sellers use, I would be all for it. However, whatever tools Rose decides to implement, whether it is a token or updating the word filter, or whatever, it will be gotten around at some point by the zulie sellers, just like they always have. I think these guys do get banned, but I'm not sure. I do know that an IP ban isn't even a sure thing, because then they just use proxys, or they live in an area where the IP address changes each time they log on. I think the MODs do a great job overall. Perhaps we could use a few more, on at different times, but overall, they do ok.

[TheRealCaNehDa]

If Rose can update their word filter to handle a string like the zulie sellers use, I would be all for it. However, whatever tools Rose decides to implement, whether it is a token or updating the word filter, or whatever, it will be gotten around at some point by the zulie sellers, just like they always have. I think these guys do get banned, but I'm not sure. I do know that an IP ban isn't even a sure thing, because then they just use proxys, or they live in an area where the IP address changes each time they log on. I think the MODs do a great job overall. Perhaps we could use a few more, on at different times, but overall, they do ok.

 

I really don't think it'd be too difficult to make the software have code that ensures WarpPortal can trace original IP ... I mean come on,  Netflix is doing it, why can't they? -- their Terms of Agreement recognizes that they are protected from doing data gathering, to ensure a better game. 

The only thing they can't do with the data is share it with outside sources... :/ 
#SpyingIsn'tMalicious 

Edited by TheRealCaNehDa, 24 September 2015 - 07:26 AM.

[Feuer]

Wonna know something funny? Some games actually sell gold officially, at such a cheap rate that gold farmers can't compete ROSE could always just do that periodically. 

[TheRealCaNehDa]

Wonna know something funny? Some games actually sell gold officially, at such a cheap rate that gold farmers can't compete ROSE could always just do that periodically. 

This actually isn't such a bad suggestion.