I'm just trying Blade and Soul. Sadly, one of the first things I noticed when I logged in was the chat which was completely full with gold seller spam (and the game is just a few days out!). For some reason, its pretty difficult to block players directly (via clicking their name in chat, it just doesn't seem to work for me), so for every spammer I have to type "/block xyz". Very annoying. A separate issue is that the block list is limited to 50 players. Of course the official word is, "We're working on this problem"...
I hope that Pantheon will have less (or none) of this problem, but as a (semi) solution I wonder if player defined chat filters would be possible. I don't think its technically difficult to allow the player to define a set of text rules. If a chat line matches a rule, it won't be displayed. So, you could define rules like "contains .com", "contains com" (or COM, mmo, MMO, MM0, and variants). Sure the sellers are inventive, but adding a new rule should fix that :)
The good thing would be that such filtering could be done client side, so it wouldn't use up server resources. Of course, some filtering may also be done server side, but the main point is that we as players should be able to extend such our filter list quickly. Because realistically even small changes serverside would take some time to implement...and in the meantime we still have to see the spam.
I can't remember a game that had such player defined filters...is there a reason I'm overlooking why something like this has never been done?
Client side needle/regex filtering sounds like a nice idea I'd love to see in-game as well :-)
I guess a reason other games don't have it is to prevent users from accidentally blocking too much and not understanding why they can't see some chats, so having a decent ui with filter previews on example/recent chats could be nice.
Blade and soul being f2p will have more spam than others, PRF is going to be sub I think so that will cut down on the spam a bit. We need to have a good way to report spammers, have it automatically go to our blocked list, and have it send the IP to the Customer Support team. Then when they detect 10 Users all getting banned by people from the same IP they can go in and block the IP.
One good way to slow down gold farmers will be to just block anyone in China from playing it.
This shouldn't be nearly as much of a problem with Pantheon, as long as they have limitations on communication for the free trial. There is no way a trial player should be able to spam tells or broadcast messages. No access to /trade, /ooc, /shout, /say limited to once a minute, no /tell unless a player sent a message first, or was previously grouped with you. Honestly, if the policy is not extremely strict, they need to allow subscribers to completely ignore trial players, or move trial players to their own trial server that has only 1-10 content.
It will be our own fault if gold selling becomes an issue. If we, the players, don't buy the gold, they will quickly stop selling. They are only there because the market for it exists. Catch the buyers and the sellers will vanish. To accomplish this, VR will need to track and log every single transaction that takes place and create profiles that will tag suspect transaction for further review. And, frankly, they should take the EVE Online approach and suspend all the accounts involved in the transaction immediately upon suspicion keeping them suspended while it is under investigation then either ban or reinstate upon the conclusion.
I have found that game where centralized trading can take place (gamewide auction houses, central trade hubs, etc) where players can just stand there spamming their wares makes gold selling even easier.
Vandraad said:It will be our own fault if gold selling becomes an issue. If we, the players, don't buy the gold, they will quickly stop selling. They are only there because the market for it exists. Catch the buyers and the sellers will vanish. To accomplish this, VR will need to track and log every single transaction that takes place and create profiles that will tag suspect transaction for further review. And, frankly, they should take the EVE Online approach and suspend all the accounts involved in the transaction immediately upon suspicion keeping them suspended while it is under investigation then either ban or reinstate upon the conclusion.
I have found that game where centralized trading can take place (gamewide auction houses, central trade hubs, etc) where players can just stand there spamming their wares makes gold selling even easier.
This is spot on.
Supply and Demand, if the players don't buy it, there is no demand and therefore, the supply will dry up.
We can do as much as possible on our end but without community support to help us by ignoring these people, blocking them, reporting them and not purchasing anything from them we will be fighting a losing battle.
It is quite simple, play the game how it was intended to be played and refrain from buying 3rd party gold and there will not be a gold seller problem, if players ignore that advice and spend up big on 3rd party gold, there will be a big gold seller problem and create a big headache for us to have to deal with!
No offense, but its a pipe dream to think that people won't buy gold. Even moreso in a game like Pantheon where things take more time. There will always be players who have more money than time and are willing to pay their way to experience everything the game has to offer.
The best we can hope for is rules that prevent the abuse of trial accounts, and policies that deter players from risking their payed accounts. At least with players abusing payed accounts, it costs them money every time they get caught. From there its up to both the players and the staff to work together to report and track down those breaking the rules.
Sadly I agree with Dullahan. Even if 90% of the players play by the rules, there's the remaining 10% that will buy gold. So there will be a market for the sellers, which means they will be in the game.
But I see now that its probably more useful if players actually report/block spammers. Filtering the chat would help us, but it would not help VR to track down the spammers. In that case, I really hope that the block list won't be limited, or at least large enough :)
If we are going to go the "block should be good enough" route then please make sure that it is an account wide block. The reason I ask for this is because I have seen block do absolutely nothing before (final fantasy 14) and that game has a paid barrier to entry even (no trial at the time, and I think that when trial was added it got restrictions). You would block 6 gold spammers only to in about a minute have the same 6 gold spammers filling your chat box again with a different character. This should be stopped easy enough by making block affect the entire account of the character you block, it should at least make it manageable.
Sarim said:Sadly I agree with Dullahan. Even if 90% of the players play by the rules, there's the remaining 10% that will buy gold. So there will be a market for the sellers, which means they will be in the game.
But I see now that its probably more useful if players actually report/block spammers. Filtering the chat would help us, but it would not help VR to track down the spammers. In that case, I really hope that the block list won't be limited, or at least large enough :)
So ban them. You advertise selling anything outside of the game, your account is forfeit.
Dullahan said:No offense, but its a pipe dream to think that people won't buy gold. Even moreso in a game like Pantheon where things take more time. There will always be players who have more money than time and are willing to pay their way to experience everything the game has to offer.
The best we can hope for is rules that prevent the abuse of trial accounts, and policies that deter players from risking their payed accounts. At least with players abusing payed accounts, it costs them money every time they get caught. From there its up to both the players and the staff to work together to report and track down those breaking the rules.
No offense taken, it's not a pipe dream or a wish of mine, it is the actual cause of the problem, generally speaking, I did say if players stopped purchasing that gold sellers would go away, do I think that will happen? of course not...but the control is in the players hands and it is a message that needs to be repeated.
We will, as a company, do our best to stop these spammers, farmers, and sellers but we won't be able to catch them all or have any one-click easy solutions, everyone needs to come to the table and help, which is what I was referring to in my post. Players need to take responsibility for their actions too and know that even purchasing a small amount of gold continues the wheels in motion and pays someone to farm more, cutting back on that as much as possible, will limit the demand and make it much harder to operate their business successfully in our game and it is a multi-million dollar business, so they only care about money and sales, so that is where they need to be hit the hardest and that is out of our control.
Just a crazy Idea but why not add in some focus to the gold frmers that sell the gold to the gold sellers? A limit to the amout of gold that can be placed in an account, a limit to the amout of gold that can be transfered to an account, and a limit to the number of times that an account can transfer gold to another player. Alternatively how about a system of "protection" where the transfer is escrowed in game for a short period before a trade can be completed? This would protect newbies from being scammed as well. Just some ideas to chew on
tomarlo said:Just a crazy Idea but why not add in some focus to the gold frmers that sell the gold to the gold sellers? A limit to the amout of gold that can be placed in an account, a limit to the amout of gold that can be transfered to an account, and a limit to the number of times that an account can transfer gold to another player. Alternatively how about a system of "protection" where the transfer is escrowed in game for a short period before a trade can be completed? This would protect newbies from being scammed as well. Just some ideas to chew on
All of that sounds like problems that potentially affect the experience of legitimate players. I would rather a more traditional approach (good investigation and well made detection and flagging systems) over hampering the player experience. This kind of design is relatively common in modern mmos (not necessarily your specific suggestions but many limitations and actual game design being affected by fear of gold sellers) and in my experience it has been a bad thing.
Dont take offense guys tell it how it is. look what happend to Elder scroll online when all these players from china and korea (asia) started doing bots and camping names and selling gold it ruin the game form like the first week.PLz have Bards....:). Alot of people and players start quiting. Maybe that wasn't the only reason that game went free to play but YOU have to have a soultion from the launch of the game or same thing will happend. please don't take offense I just love a good game but all the devs are busy making the game great but they will take care of this issue when its happend and they just fail yes there are ploicies you will agree to them but lets face it ( good luck sueing people from that side of the planet ) when they brake it you will band thier account and they will just buy another and another becuase they are making alot of money and they don't care if you ban the account. sorry I just don't want this game to fail from the first month after all that hard work from Devs and players(good players) go to waste. plz Have Bards >>:) you can Have a reward for reporting gold spamer with out abuseing that system.
Heres an idea to control the chat spam...get rid of server wide channels
They have no value but to provide spammers with an aveanue to promote their wears or drama queens and trolls to have a stage to scream and holler.
Lets take Pantheon old school...all we need is Guild Chat, Zone chat, group chat and say... I mean really what do you need these server wides for?
Have an auction zone that ONLY works in the zone that is designated to be the trade zone (since there is no bazaar or auction house)
If youre LFG either go to a level appropriate zone or have a LFG that list your name class and level so other players can send you a /tell
I have never ever understood the server wide zones, most the people I know turn them
Couple points quickly
1. If the game is good, people will want to try to get an advantage and a secondary market will spring up. This is a compliment, but also diminishes the experience for the players. I agree that allowing serverwide chat channels and mass emails (outside of perhaps a guild-wide mailing list) makes it easy for spammers to coopt the convenience for their own profit.
2. I like the idea of having an auction "zone" because this facilitates an alternative playstyle. The trader.
3. Zero tolerance on both sides - buyers and sellers. Everyone always wants to arrest the hookers and let the johns go free.
4. I remember the launch of Lineage II. "Go away American pig-dog. My Adena. Mine..." I was like what is this?? Some people just shouldnt be allowed to play the game. There's no "human right" to play involved in a subscription mmo. Don't do it by country of origin. Do it by account. If there is robust ingame customer support, people who know the game and have a desire to enhance the game, they will know which accounts need to be closed.
Sevens said:
Heres an idea to control the chat spam...get rid of server wide channels
They have no value but to provide spammers with an aveanue to promote their wears or drama queens and trolls to have a stage to scream and holler.
Lets take Pantheon old school...all we need is Guild Chat, Zone chat, group chat and say... I mean really what do you need these server wides for?
Have an auction zone that ONLY works in the zone that is designated to be the trade zone (since there is no bazaar or auction house)
If youre LFG either go to a level appropriate zone or have a LFG that list your name class and level so other players can send you a /tell
I have never ever understood the server wide zones, most the people I know turn them
I actually agree with this and while there is a good argument for allowing game wide channels for social interaction, and there is generally good interactions, there is equally as much drama, trolling, arguments over religion and politics etc. so removing it may be more beneficial than allowing it in my opinion.
This would force gold sellers to move to more popular zones to advertise and we could place GMs in and around those areas to watch but they can still avoid this by spamming PMs, so that would have to be on the players to report instead of just ignoring them, so we know it's happening and who it is so we can take action.
As I said, we will do everything in our power to stop it but some of the responsibility lies with the players to help us and not purchase it in the first place! ;)
Romulus said:Couple points quickly
1. If the game is good, people will want to try to get an advantage and a secondary market will spring up. This is a compliment, but also diminishes the experience for the players. I agree that allowing serverwide chat channels and mass emails (outside of perhaps a guild-wide mailing list) makes it easy for spammers to coopt the convenience for their own profit.
2. I like the idea of having an auction "zone" because this facilitates an alternative playstyle. The trader.
3. Zero tolerance on both sides - buyers and sellers. Everyone always wants to arrest the hookers and let the johns go free.
4. I remember the launch of Lineage II. "Go away American pig-dog. My Adena. Mine..." I was like what is this?? Some people just shouldnt be allowed to play the game. There's no "human right" to play involved in a subscription mmo. Don't do it by country of origin. Do it by account. If there is robust ingame customer support, people who know the game and have a desire to enhance the game, they will know which accounts need to be closed.
Love the idea of no chat beyond zone except for guild. The isolated, instanced type of game like Diablo has "server" wide chat because otherwise you'd never speak to anyone. Pantheon doesn't need that.
I think if it were very heavily governed by devs, guides, GM's etc from the start and instant banned gold sellers for the first 2 months. These types would give up quickly and go back to WoW.
I won't ever buy gold 3rd party and will report Anyone, don't care who you are, if I know for certain, bought gold from a 3rd party.
I think if you are going to have a server wide chat channel the game should auto block words like Jesus, Christ, God****, allah, buddha, etc.
Keep real world religion out of the game. A game is no place to talk about someone beliefs or non beliefs.
Maybe sprinkly in auto block any Nation leaders names and keywords like Caliphate (someone actually named their guild this on Ragefire. it was changed quickly after people reported it offensive), Benghazi, lybia, isis etc. Hard to have a political debate when you can't type half the words you need.
Block player names like obama, trump, sanders. Not hard to do.
It's way easier to just filter stuff from the start rather than have to address it later. Just stop a lot of crap from the start.
I don't find that kind of policing too rough. it's a game. Keep gold spammers, religion and politics out of it.