38 replies to this topic

[Oda]

Hello there everyone. We have been working with members of the community over the last few months to adapt and test a new function to Ragnarok that will block out those annoying spammers that you see in town. Certain words or phrases will cause their chat to filter out individual messages so that they no longer show up on your screen. While there is a basic list of prohibited words that was added into our initial release, a guide has been put together to add additional bad verbiage to be filtered out.

There is a detailed guide here: NoSpam Configuration Guide

1. For those like me who are not tech savvy, open up the nospam cfg file and choose to open it using notepad.

2. Go through prontera and if a spammer's chat is still popping up, note it down and add it to the list in the cfg file.

example
addPhrase 1 "badzenysite"
addPhrase 1 "zenV"
etc, etc
Just make sure not too put too vague of terms in to avoid having your friends become suddenly silent when they are talking to you.

Once you are done simply save the file and restart the game client. It should now be considerably quieter. It is easier for us to have players edit this bad word list as it will make it more difficult for spammers to bypass when the list of names is not being updated by us. We appreciate the members of the community who worked on this and for everyone for helping us to test.

• Exercise caution as well in maintaining the addPhase list, adding hundreds of phrases will cause performance issues and possibly crash Ragnarok.
• There is a limit of 64 phrases!

Edited by Inubashiri, 15 November 2011 - 10:22 PM.

[TheUraharaShop]

Ah yes, this seems to be a great idea.

Also for a (future) bump could it be possible for it to update during game play, rather then logging in, then logging back out?

[Inubashiri]

Ah yes, this seems to be a great idea.

Also for a (future) bump could it be possible for it to update during game play, rather then logging in, then logging back out?

Could probably add hotkey support to reload or some type of monitor to reload the phase list upon filesize change.

[shurareki]

so if im reading this correctly it means that if spammers say the same thing 5 times within 10 seconds then they will be ignored?
so even if you do add terms to the file you will still see the message they have but only for 10 seconds before it stops altogether am i right?
-floodCount 5, floodTime 2000 means if 5 messages are sent in 10 seconds the person will be ignored

i just thought i would make that clear before people start saying its not working.

Edited by shurareki, 15 November 2011 - 10:36 PM.

[Inubashiri]

I should have just posted it myself, silly Oda, trix are for kids!

Edited by Inubashiri, 15 November 2011 - 10:23 PM.

[shurareki]

im surprised to see not alot of people posting here this seems like a pretty good update/information i hope the word gets around

[sayoko]

im surprised to see not alot of people posting here this seems like a pretty good update/information i hope the word gets around

becouse isnt pinned, pinned=official VS no pinned= Random troll post

But pinned post are troll to

[Inubashiri]

im surprised to see not alot of people posting here this seems like a pretty good update/information i hope the word gets around

heh, its okay, people only post comments when things are broken or bad.

Edited by Inubashiri, 15 November 2011 - 11:29 PM.

[SisterBelle]

Do you have to do something to activate this program? <very much not tech-savy
I see that this is in the Ragnarok files, but the Valkyrie spam continues as I walk in Prontera.

EDIT: Waaaaaaaait...I added "www" to the phrases to block and... ... I think it worked! (cries tears of utter joy)

Edited by SisterBelle, 16 November 2011 - 09:25 AM.

[Inubashiri]

Do you have to do something to activate this program? <very much not tech-savy
I see that this is in the Ragnarok files, but the Valkyrie spam continues as I walk in Prontera.

EDIT: Waaaaaaaait...I added "www" to the phrases to block and... ... I think it worked! (cries tears of utter joy)

I would be very careful with that, you could end up filtering your friends chat if they use www in anyway.

[shurareki]

i see that some spammers are finding ways to reword their spam. so if you do update your list i don't know if it would be a good idea to post the words you are updating it with.

[Inubashiri]

i see that some spammers are finding ways to reword their spam. so if you do update your list i don't know if it would be a good idea to post the words you are updating it with.

Thats the idea, give the power to the player.

[shurareki]

this is a great idea love it so far.

[Sheckley]

Nice feature

To save performance it would help to add an option how many characters the message must be to get investigated by the spam protection.

[OgreWilde]

It obvious to me that there seems to be a market for whomever is controlling those spambots. If you could find the culprits purchasing their zeny and punish them it would serve as an example, and if EVERYONE who buys the zeny were to stop then so would they, for it would be foolish and a waste of time & resources for the botters to continue beyond that. Though I can imagine with the amount of raw greed on valk server that certain people will NEVER stop buying it because it's easy, those are the people who never played a real RPG in their lives, you can tell!

[Oda]

It obvious to me that there seems to be a market for whomever is controlling those spambots. If you could find the culprits purchasing their zeny and punish them it would serve as an example, and if EVERYONE who buys the zeny were to stop then so would they, for it would be foolish and a waste of time & resources for the botters to continue beyond that. Though I can imagine with the amount of raw greed on valk server that certain people will NEVER stop buying it because it's easy, those are the people who never played a real RPG in their lives, you can tell!

We block zeny buyers by the dozens weekly. The problem is that people who get caught for this aren't exactly going to be telling their friends that they got suspended and encourage them not to do it.

[rivermans]

Hello there everyone. We have been working with members of the community over the last few months to adapt and test a new function to Ragnarok that will block out those annoying spammers that you see in town. Certain words or phrases will cause their chat to filter out individual messages so that they no longer show up on your screen. While there is a basic list of prohibited words that was added into our initial release, a guide has been put together to add additional bad verbiage to be filtered out.

There is a detailed guide here: NoSpam Configuration Guide

1. For those like me who are not tech savvy, open up the nospam cfg file and choose to open it using notepad.

2. Go through prontera and if a spammer's chat is still popping up, note it down and add it to the list in the cfg file.

example
addPhrase 1 "badzenysite"
addPhrase 1 "zenV"
etc, etc
Just make sure not too put too vague of terms in to avoid having your friends become suddenly silent when they are talking to you.

Once you are done simply save the file and restart the game client. It should now be considerably quieter. It is easier for us to have players edit this bad word list as it will make it more difficult for spammers to bypass when the list of names is not being updated by us. We appreciate the members of the community who worked on this and for everyone for helping us to test.

• Exercise caution as well in maintaining the addPhase list, adding hundreds of phrases will cause performance issues and possibly crash Ragnarok.
• There is a limit of 64 phrases!

I'm sorry but as a paying VIP member this is the GM's responsibility not the player's responsibility to do this. This is just an example of how little the GM Team actually cares about the spam bots and community's request to remove them. If the GM Team was less worried about doing constant sales and events and more focused on fixing the problems that exist then players wouldn't complain so much about the bugs/problems that exist. Also how the hell are we supposed to tell as players who actually buys zeny, since several friends have recently been banned for selling stuff to zeny buyers yet there is no way to tell who is buying botted zeny. Before you go asking players to fix the spam issue and putting something in that can cause us to potentially crash for trying to enjoy a game fix the issue. This fix is unacceptable.

[Oda]

I'm sorry but as a paying VIP member this is the GM's responsibility not the player's responsibility to do this. This is just an example of how little the GM Team actually cares about the spam bots and community's request to remove them. If the GM Team was less worried about doing constant sales and events and more focused on fixing the problems that exist then players wouldn't complain so much about the bugs/problems that exist. Also how the hell are we supposed to tell as players who actually buys zeny, since several friends have recently been banned for selling stuff to zeny buyers yet there is no way to tell who is buying botted zeny. Before you go asking players to fix the spam issue and putting something in that can cause us to potentially crash for trying to enjoy a game fix the issue. This fix is unacceptable.

I am sorry you feel that way, but a few things.

-The reason we want the community to add in the additional terms is that it will make it considerably more difficult for zeny sellers to figure out which terms are being blocked when we aren't putting the updated terms in our patch updates.

-We don't suspend users for selling things to zeny buyers (normal players who buy zeny), if you feel that friends have been wrongly suspended please have them get in contact with me.

-The GM/Customer service team =/= the production team. They have different priorities. The production team is here to earn money for the game, the CS Team works to answer tickets and respond to customer issues.

I added just a few terms to the list and have seen 0 spam from bots for the past month after less than 1 minute of work.

[robrod]

Wow. I am truly amazed. But not exactly in a good way. I will tell you later why.

But first of all, I think it's still a bit early there in the US, that's why theres not much excitement about this whole thing.
Also, I though over an hour what my statement (not like my opinion is something you have to care about) is for your idea, and what and how to actually post it trying not to be too offensive to you Oda. Here it goes.

-The reason we want the community to add in the additional terms is that it will make it considerably more difficult for zeny sellers to figure out which terms are being blocked

I don't understand this at all. Ok I can see your point by NOT auto-implementing this patch. You don't want the spammers to know the words they shouldn't use! But how exactly should the spammers recognize what each individual player configures in their file anyway? If each player suppress the spam, the spammers can't know actually who is blocking them, and who is not. In this case your idea actually success, but I still don't say it's the holy grail. Spammers might change from static spam-messages to a larger pool of messages to bypass every ones config list.

I appreciate your effort in developing that idea ideas. But it might be doomed to fail as soon you posted it, rivermans already stated why is that (it shouldn't be the user that handles the spam). For now your whole idea is only a tool/workaround to virtually block spam. I know you didn't yet, but don't think of advertising it as it helps to reduce the actual amount of goldspammers. It doesn't reduce anything, nor the spammers will even figure they are getting blocked. Even more, if your successfully applied this patch and the spammers are getting blocked (and blocked only to each single player), they will lose customers and will start to spam (=lag) even more.

At the moment, only the ones that read this thread might apply your patch. 99 % of that people run with /nm on through Prontera already which is fine actually, so why would we use it? To hear some nonsense chatting in the middle of venders? To re-implement "S> this and that" texting merchants rushing through Pront? The only effective way would be to patch it automatically, so new players won't even know goldspammers exist. But you can't do that for the mentioned reasons above (don't feed the bad-words-list to the spammers).

Ok I'm lose the thread already. Long story short, I can not understand why you put so much effort into a half-assed idea. Please don't take it personally, but you are either A.) not the right person to resolve the problem (theres no need for a workaround currently) sorry fixed, really sounds offensive, what I mean is your strenghts might be in other areas like designing quests, doing support etc., but not resolve such an issue, or B.) you and/or gravity have weird reasons to NOT get rid of the spammers at all (reasons we as the "legit" customers don't have to know of course...).

Everyone that has been digging just a BIT further how everything is related, how the game works, how ragial/ropd works, that includes me, you of course, and probably the majority of the people that take this thread serious, everyone of that KNOW there are ways to solve the spammer problem (and even other problems we may not discuss here and now), heck you could basicly run your own "little brother" program to counter them. Everyone with a bit of "INT" in real life can figure that (don't even have to be a software developer for years like me). I could even tell now how to do it (save public chat to a text file, count the names of the players how often they appear in X seconds, instant mute/ban them), but I won't do that now (no wait, I did already!). Please don't come with some weird invalid arguments why this (or something similar) isn't done yet, better don't reply at all doing so. We both know you (or... again... the person that could actually solve the spammer problem) could do it. Even more, time wise, by using (or better ABusing) the "little brother" program this could be done in a fraction of the time you probably took for doing this config file thing.

I didn't bother to give a statment yet because it looks rather dilletante what has been done so far, dilletante enough to think you do not really bother at all. Maybe it's time to rethink over that, depends on how fast (and if...) you work out your idea.

I don't want to highjack your thread with my own stupid ideas or anything, but I thought, and wrote, about 2 hours now for this one posting, and since I don't know if your reading every single whining thread about problem X and problem Z on the forums, I'm sure your checking your own threads at least, so I took my chance.

Again, please don't take anything personal, we all know your here to help (at least I think thats what your getting paid for), but the ways how GMs do so is sometimes questionable. But that's what my customers think about my company too, actually so I know I know... We all have reasons.

With your effort showing here you gave me hope again that you basicly do want, but don't know how.

Edited by robrod, 23 November 2011 - 02:15 PM.

[robrod]

Sorry for double post, but this has really to go into a new one because it's related to the tool, not general chit chat.

I just looked at the "Default Config File" for the first time now (yeah...). What is "messageAmount" and "messageDuration"? Looks like you keep changing the names of your variables/declarations (floodCount = messageAmount?). And how is "floodTime 2000" 10 seconds? 1 Second is "200" of what measure?

Actually, why have that addPhrase at all? Just need floodCount and floodTime for a running block plugin. Nothing more. I can not figure why you are working with filtering messages. It's already there. If you'r really into a client-side solution, just block a player when Player X messaged Y times in a Z duration... Done. It's late and it might be just me, but why bother WHAT is being spammed at all??? It only depends of who and how often. It's not like in a real chat your getting like 50 lines in 3 seconds like a single goldspammer does.

However, without trying out the whole thing sadly (promise), basicly my idea on this is:

floodCount 50
floodTime 3 (seconds)
ignoreDuration 9999

addPhrase 1 "a"
addPhrase 1 "b"
addPhrase 1 "c"
addPhrase 1 "d"
addPhrase 1 "e"
addPhrase 1 "f"
addPhrase 1 "g"
addPhrase 1 "h"
addPhrase 1 "i"
addPhrase 1 "j"
... you get the idea I guess

Edited by robrod, 23 November 2011 - 02:41 PM.

[FalboII]

Finally a way to shut up these guys!
I see you guys are now working to ban these bots...

[EvilLoynis]

I'm sorry but as a paying VIP member this is the GM's responsibility not the player's responsibility to do this. This is just an example of how little the GM Team actually cares about the spam bots and community's request to remove them. If the GM Team was less worried about doing constant sales and events and more focused on fixing the problems that exist then players wouldn't complain so much about the bugs/problems that exist. Also how the hell are we supposed to tell as players who actually buys zeny, since several friends have recently been banned for selling stuff to zeny buyers yet there is no way to tell who is buying botted zeny. Before you go asking players to fix the spam issue and putting something in that can cause us to potentially crash for trying to enjoy a game fix the issue. This fix is unacceptable.

I have to tell you, I am also a paying VIP member and I actually see this as a better option.

The main reason it works better when WE make our own list is that there is now no "Master" list of words for the botters to get ahold of to work around.

I mean theres no way they can tell that I am not seeing there garbage anymore and thus they probably won't alter it as much.

Thanks Gravity

Pront has never seamed so peacful

[Xellie]

Think of it as a customizable autoblock list? Otherwise you'd just have to wait for a patch for it to update each time.

surely better?

[Inubashiri]

I'm sorry but as a paying VIP member this is the GM's responsibility not the player's responsibility to do this. This is just an example of how little the GM Team actually cares about the spam bots and community's request to remove them. If the GM Team was less worried about doing constant sales and events and more focused on fixing the problems that exist then players wouldn't complain so much about the bugs/problems that exist. Also how the hell are we supposed to tell as players who actually buys zeny, since several friends have recently been banned for selling stuff to zeny buyers yet there is no way to tell who is buying botted zeny. Before you go asking players to fix the spam issue and putting something in that can cause us to potentially crash for trying to enjoy a game fix the issue. This fix is unacceptable.

Then don't use it, continue to get spam. If there is a game breaking issue it might be more prudent to report it then to make a statement like that which pisses off the community people who worked on it.

Wow. I am truly amazed. But not exactly in a good way. I will tell you later why.

But first of all, I think it's still a bit early there in the US, that's why theres not much excitement about this whole thing.
Also, I though over an hour what my statement (not like my opinion is something you have to care about) is for your idea, and what and how to actually post it trying not to be too offensive to you Oda. Here it goes.



I don't understand this at all. Ok I can see your point by NOT auto-implementing this patch. You don't want the spammers to know the words they shouldn't use! But how exactly should the spammers recognize what each individual player configures in their file anyway? If each player suppress the spam, the spammers can't know actually who is blocking them, and who is not. In this case your idea actually success, but I still don't say it's the holy grail. Spammers might change from static spam-messages to a larger pool of messages to bypass every ones config list.

I appreciate your effort in developing that idea ideas. But it might be doomed to fail as soon you posted it, rivermans already stated why is that (it shouldn't be the user that handles the spam). For now your whole idea is only a tool/workaround to virtually block spam. I know you didn't yet, but don't think of advertising it as it helps to reduce the actual amount of goldspammers. It doesn't reduce anything, nor the spammers will even figure they are getting blocked. Even more, if your successfully applied this patch and the spammers are getting blocked (and blocked only to each single player), they will lose customers and will start to spam (=lag) even more.

At the moment, only the ones that read this thread might apply your patch. 99 % of that people run with /nm on through Prontera already which is fine actually, so why would we use it? To hear some nonsense chatting in the middle of venders? To re-implement "S> this and that" texting merchants rushing through Pront? The only effective way would be to patch it automatically, so new players won't even know goldspammers exist. But you can't do that for the mentioned reasons above (don't feed the bad-words-list to the spammers).

Ok I'm lose the thread already. Long story short, I can not understand why you put so much effort into a half-assed idea. Please don't take it personally, but you are either A.) not the right person to resolve the problem (theres no need for a workaround currently) sorry fixed, really sounds offensive, what I mean is your strenghts might be in other areas like designing quests, doing support etc., but not resolve such an issue, or B.) you and/or gravity have weird reasons to NOT get rid of the spammers at all (reasons we as the "legit" customers don't have to know of course...).

Everyone that has been digging just a BIT further how everything is related, how the game works, how ragial/ropd works, that includes me, you of course, and probably the majority of the people that take this thread serious, everyone of that KNOW there are ways to solve the spammer problem (and even other problems we may not discuss here and now), heck you could basicly run your own "little brother" program to counter them. Everyone with a bit of "INT" in real life can figure that (don't even have to be a software developer for years like me). I could even tell now how to do it (save public chat to a text file, count the names of the players how often they appear in X seconds, instant mute/ban them), but I won't do that now (no wait, I did already!). Please don't come with some weird invalid arguments why this (or something similar) isn't done yet, better don't reply at all doing so. We both know you (or... again... the person that could actually solve the spammer problem) could do it. Even more, time wise, by using (or better ABusing) the "little brother" program this could be done in a fraction of the time you probably took for doing this config file thing.

I didn't bother to give a statment yet because it looks rather dilletante what has been done so far, dilletante enough to think you do not really bother at all. Maybe it's time to rethink over that, depends on how fast (and if...) you work out your idea.

I don't want to highjack your thread with my own stupid ideas or anything, but I thought, and wrote, about 2 hours now for this one posting, and since I don't know if your reading every single whining thread about problem X and problem Z on the forums, I'm sure your checking your own threads at least, so I took my chance.

Again, please don't take anything personal, we all know your here to help (at least I think thats what your getting paid for), but the ways how GMs do so is sometimes questionable. But that's what my customers think about my company too, actually so I know I know... We all have reasons.

With your effort showing here you gave me hope again that you basicly do want, but don't know how.

I really take offense to most of that. You really don't know what you're talking about. If the spammer issue could have been solved by iRO it would have been solved years go but as it is iRO can NOT modify the client or server directly, only kRO can do that.

Sorry for double post, but this has really to go into a new one because it's related to the tool, not general chit chat.

I just looked at the "Default Config File" for the first time now (yeah...). What is "messageAmount" and "messageDuration"? Looks like you keep changing the names of your variables/declarations (floodCount = messageAmount?). And how is "floodTime 2000" 10 seconds? 1 Second is "200" of what measure?

Actually, why have that addPhrase at all? Just need floodCount and floodTime for a running block plugin. Nothing more. I can not figure why you are working with filtering messages. It's already there. If you'r really into a client-side solution, just block a player when Player X messaged Y times in a Z duration... Done. It's late and it might be just me, but why bother WHAT is being spammed at all??? It only depends of who and how often. It's not like in a real chat your getting like 50 lines in 3 seconds like a single goldspammer does.

However, without trying out the whole thing sadly (promise), basicly my idea on this is:

That is a terrible idea and would never work, you would be filtering every message in the game if you did that. Did you even take the time to read the guide I typed up, if you did you would realize the importance of everything in the config file.

[Sheckley]

Sorry for double post, but this has really to go into a new one because it's related to the tool, not general chit chat.

I just looked at the "Default Config File" for the first time now (yeah...). What is "messageAmount" and "messageDuration"? Looks like you keep changing the names of your variables/declarations (floodCount = messageAmount?). And how is "floodTime 2000" 10 seconds? 1 Second is "200" of what measure?

Actually, why have that addPhrase at all? Just need floodCount and floodTime for a running block plugin. Nothing more. I can not figure why you are working with filtering messages. It's already there. If you'r really into a client-side solution, just block a player when Player X messaged Y times in a Z duration... Done. It's late and it might be just me, but why bother WHAT is being spammed at all??? It only depends of who and how often. It's not like in a real chat your getting like 50 lines in 3 seconds like a single goldspammer does.

However, without trying out the whole thing sadly (promise), basicly my idea on this is:

Your basic idea is not really good

With the basic solution everything is blocked, if the sentence is equal or more than 3.

Just an example:

addPhrase 1 "zeny"
addPhrase 1 "asap"
addPhrase 1 "24/7"
addPhrase 1 "bonus"
addPhrase 1 "bouns"
addPhrase 1 "cheapest"
addPhrase 1 "delivery"
addPhrase 1 "gold"
addPhrase 1 "goId"
addPhrase 1 "$="
addPhrase 1 "safe"
addPhrase 1 "power"
addPhrase 1 "stock"

addPhrase 2 "v."
addPhrase 2 "w."
addPhrase 2 "7/24"
addPhrase 2 ".co"
addPhrase 2 ".org"
addPhrase 2 ".net"
addPhrase 2 ".us"

First of all we need a sentence which will get checked: "Offer 100m zeny, 24/7, fast deliver, at www.evilsite.org"

First the spam checker remove all blanks, so: "Offer100mzeny,24/7,fastdeliver,atwww.evilsite.org"

At the beginig the value of the sentence is zero.
First the programm will find "zeny", so the new value of the sentence is 1.
Second phrase: "24/7", so the new value of the sentence is 2.
Next phrase would be "w.", value is 4 now, so the sentence would get blocked.
Last phrase would be ".org", so at the end the value would be 6.

I will not tell you now which phrase with which weight you have to add to get no spam and get everything else still

With the original spam protection I don't like the fact: "www.irowiki.org" would get blocked also, so if you want to promote irowiki just write "irowiki.org".