The Plane of Spammerwrath

[greystone306]

Today when I logged on (anon alt), within a few minutes I got to tell,

Bing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spam Report # 1,568,679

Congrats to me...

I wonder if this is my own 1,568,679 Report Plat Spam tell, or perhaps only a conglomeration of all my characters reported Plat Spam Tell's...

Makes me wonder if this is actually, all the Plat Spam Tell's "Reported" on...
(Khyber Only ?!?!?!?!?!?!)....



Yours Truely

D.

/RANT OFF

I beleive the number is of the tech support report and is of all servers aand all reports for support I dont beleive it is isolated to spam alone

[The_Phenx]

So why can't Turbine do "stings" to find the plat farmers "holding characters - the ones with the plat and the items"? You know... go to each of the platforcash websites and buy a small amount of cash and an item for a dev character. Then record who gave you the loot... and if a temp character... who gave them the loot. Follow the money and such.

Heh... or would we lose half our subscriber base?

Id imagine they do not do the dealings from thier main holding characters.

If a gm can't track a lost email you sent. Id imagine they cant track the plat farmers trades.

And for all those who thin turbine likes plat farmers? <chuckle>

What company have you ever seen who has been happy about another group making money for free off thier product.

[Aranticus]

As for reporting a farmer (not a spammer mind you, a farmer), remember that those incidents have to go through an investigation process. The team needs to be able to show harder evidence than "he said" - this is for our customer's protection.

so what are the evidence that you need besides a screenshot of a chat in which he said he is a farmer? i'd like to suggest that turbine to actually have real people observing the happenings in and around stormreach. i lost count the number of times me and others observing weirdly named players (6 of them) all unguilded, grouped together, all with the exact same builds (ie a 15sor/1brd, a 15wiz/1rog) running the exact same quests

no this just happen with one group. when that group goes missing, you'll a lowbie group with the exact same make up leveling up real fast in exactly the same areas. now they grow a little smarter. they learn to use the annon function and is almost virtually undetectable. in fact a few players have also had trade windows opened up, a w/p rapier put inside and the farmer just type in $400 in private tell

We don't want to mistakenly ban a real player who wasn't doing anything wrong, and it would indeed be a bad situation if all someone had to do was have a conversation in chat and someone could report them/get them banned in one fell swoop. If you're in a situation where you're strongly suspicious that someone is a farmer, do send in a report on them (using the full reporting system, not just the one-click report) - where there's smoke, there could be fire, and it's always worth having a "lead" for our investigators.

i do understand the griefing portion but the problem still lies, what kind of investigation you do, what is the end result. even for DEA, FBI they do report the result of stings ie "multimillion drug ring broken". a "we are dealing with the situation" is simply not enough as we continue to recieve that many tells which links back to the question "is turbine really doing anything?"

[Riggs]

I have to completely disagree with this suggestion since it will really stifle new players. I am actually a new player that hooked up after being impressed by the Trial, as well as getting extremely nice tells (and replying from me) in terms of communication and help. If you are wondering, I only started playing this game 1 week ago, and I am having so much fun due to the nice crew of Stormreach Thief Guild in Khyber (yes, shameless love for thieves is my weakness). On the other hand, if the new mod comes in where new players can get their level 2 in their newbie island (through the solo quests), I think that will be an absolutely great idea. I didn't get my first level in the newbie solo island, and was almost stranded if not for the help of others.

As a new player, I felt that spammers did not really hit me too hard. Maybe they do not like my name, but I surely prefer them to continue doing so.

I think that the most viable way of approaching this problem has been mentioned by various people in the forum. It's to restrict tells on trial accounts to 30 seconds per tell, and to immediately flag anything with a "http" link. As a new player, I find the user interface quite hard to send tells quickly, and a new player with less than 10 days of experience generally needs some time to reply to messages. Hence, I do not see how it will lessen the user experience at all. It will clearly indicate a spammer if they try to keep spamming to everyone.

I mean, how many of us actually type out links in a freaking tell? Maybe some of you do, but I find it almost silly to do that when you can just use the party/guild if you are offering links to anyone on a tell. That's how I feel about it.

There is always a question of balance when trying to police something, so it doesnt make the first experience of an actual new player a negative one (as opposed to an existing player just making a new character).

Filtering ALL tells for website links would involve a search engine added on to the ddo game, that would then be recording, searching, and ultimately filtering ALL tells from all players across the entire server. That would involve a whole new pregram added on, and would very likely impact server speeds.

The issues with spam, as ooposed to the high level characters who are doing the actual farming, are that a level 1 character is created, logs in, and blasts the who list with spam, sometimes 2-3 times (the new company is a lot more agressive than the older ones now), in the space of 1 min or so, then they log off and delete that character, create a new one, and a couple minutes later you get another spam blast. I am guessing at the process, but since most of the time if you try to reply to a spam "Hey please stop spamming me", you get an error about that character not being available/valid. So they have already logged off by the time they blast is done it seems.

And spam seems to come in gaps of several minutes. Sometimes you can get 10-15 tells in under an hour. If your in a party, and have tells in party chat, and say are actually trying to WATCH party chat since not everyone has voice - having the screen filled up with spam tells is a really annoying inturrupt, forcing you to stop and scroll back to see what someone was saying.

Spam is crazy annoying, and most players with high level characters get a plat spam before they have fully loaded in when logging on. So it is regular, ongoing, and constant unless you are anonymous, and since the friends list has been completely broken for months (nothing like a social game with no way to track friends), being anon means less spam, but also not being able to track your friends down.

Restricting a level 1 character either to the amount of tells they can send in a minute say, or some other way, would force spammers to spend 20 minutes each time they wanted to spam rather than under 5 minutes.

If a player is having trouble getting to level 2, either by not knowing the controls, or who to get into and out of quests - then hopeully the new tutorial coming will help, because the game should be providing enough instructions on how to do the basics right at the start. A player who is trying to level wont take very long, and then any restrictions in sending tells will quickly fall away.

But a player/character that is level 1, really should not be able to blast the entire who list twice over then log, create a new character, and do it all over again in the space of 3 minutes. That is intrusive and annoying. Kind of like if someone was delivering flyers to your area, but instead of dropping them off 1 by 1, they were able to dump them on every house/apartment from the air, AND it rang your doorbell at the same time. AND your doorbell rang every couple minutes every time there was new flayers/spam.

Some people just shrug and ignore it. Many people however find it really, really irritating to get spammed constantly, and are not able to go anon because Turbine hasnt fixed the broken friends list yet.

Maybe totally restricting level 1s to no tells, or just replies, or even being able to send tells to lfm posts would be too much. Someone suggested so many per minute, and if the game shut it down after a certain amount, or put a 30 second timer on after every tell (for level 1 characters or also maybe trial accounts too), that would drastically slow down spam. And many people would be very happy to get less spam.

[Lady_Draconus]

There is always a question of balance when trying to police something, so it doesnt make the first experience of an actual new player a negative one (as opposed to an existing player just making a new character).

Filtering ALL tells for website links would involve a search engine added on to the ddo game, that would then be recording, searching, and ultimately filtering ALL tells from all players across the entire server. That would involve a whole new pregram added on, and would very likely impact server speeds.

The issues with spam, as ooposed to the high level characters who are doing the actual farming, are that a level 1 character is created, logs in, and blasts the who list with spam, sometimes 2-3 times (the new company is a lot more agressive than the older ones now), in the space of 1 min or so, then they log off and delete that character, create a new one, and a couple minutes later you get another spam blast. I am guessing at the process, but since most of the time if you try to reply to a spam "Hey please stop spamming me", you get an error about that character not being available/valid. So they have already logged off by the time they blast is done it seems.

And spam seems to come in gaps of several minutes. Sometimes you can get 10-15 tells in under an hour. If your in a party, and have tells in party chat, and say are actually trying to WATCH party chat since not everyone has voice - having the screen filled up with spam tells is a really annoying inturrupt, forcing you to stop and scroll back to see what someone was saying.

Spam is crazy annoying, and most players with high level characters get a plat spam before they have fully loaded in when logging on. So it is regular, ongoing, and constant unless you are anonymous, and since the friends list has been completely broken for months (nothing like a social game with no way to track friends), being anon means less spam, but also not being able to track your friends down.

Restricting a level 1 character either to the amount of tells they can send in a minute say, or some other way, would force spammers to spend 20 minutes each time they wanted to spam rather than under 5 minutes.

If a player is having trouble getting to level 2, either by not knowing the controls, or who to get into and out of quests - then hopeully the new tutorial coming will help, because the game should be providing enough instructions on how to do the basics right at the start. A player who is trying to level wont take very long, and then any restrictions in sending tells will quickly fall away.

But a player/character that is level 1, really should not be able to blast the entire who list twice over then log, create a new character, and do it all over again in the space of 3 minutes. That is intrusive and annoying. Kind of like if someone was delivering flyers to your area, but instead of dropping them off 1 by 1, they were able to dump them on every house/apartment from the air, AND it rang your doorbell at the same time. AND your doorbell rang every couple minutes every time there was new flayers/spam.

Some people just shrug and ignore it. Many people however find it really, really irritating to get spammed constantly, and are not able to go anon because Turbine hasnt fixed the broken friends list yet.

Maybe totally restricting level 1s to no tells, or just replies, or even being able to send tells to lfm posts would be too much. Someone suggested so many per minute, and if the game shut it down after a certain amount, or put a 30 second timer on after every tell (for level 1 characters or also maybe trial accounts too), that would drastically slow down spam. And many people would be very happy to get less spam.

1) Remove the delete button on trial accounts.
2) I would limit tells to say 10 words or less (ie. I need help or how do I get to <name of quest> ? ect) consider the longest basic question a new person would/might ask and limit tells to that many words on trial accounts. (anything more in depth can be discussed in party chat style)
3) Put in an option for regular paying players to accept or decline trial account tells.

I think between these three it would reduce a lot of unwanted spam.

[dmondave1]

We're trying something this weekend to see if it helps, and if it's successful, continue on with operation anti-spam (or whatever nick name I'm in the mood to call it).

/cheer

Thanks for the info tolero. I applaud the efforts & appreciate the response. I too wish you could spend time working on ddo instead of working on ddo spam issues.

[alcmaeon]

Please take care of the spammers. You could just not allow a char to send a tell to anyone until they are level 2 or 3 unless they are in a guild with that person.

[Tin_Dragon]

take tells away from Trial accounts


Take the mailbox out of the harbor.

Go back to not allowing ANY one into the Market place till they have completed WW, 20 gp, pfft. no one will group with ghfghgkshkghh, so make em work for the mail box in the market!


I dont need to mail stuff to new toons to complete WW. No one else does either, be like Nike, JUST EFFING DO IT!

[Angelus_dead]

take tells away from Trial accounts

Instead, give players the option to disable incoming tells from characters less than X level or less than Y hours old. (Members of friend list or guild list automatically exempt)

Go back to not allowing ANY one into the Market place till they have completed WW, 20 gp, pfft. no one will group with ghfghgkshkghh, so make em work for the mail box in the market!

Tough to do that given the existence of Greater Teleport spells, and it's not important anyway. Their business doesn't much depend on sending mail from new chars.

[ThrasherGT]

/Agreed (something should be done)

Reality: Thread number 250 or so on this subject and 0 action from Turbine.

Feel free to bring every idea up again in this thread, although I am dubious as to the effectiveness of these threads.

Have a nice day!

[Tresha_D'Artet]

Instead, give players the option to disable incoming tells from characters less than X level or less than Y hours old. (Members of friend list or guild list automatically exempt)


Tough to do that given the existence of Greater Teleport spells, and it's not important anyway. Their business doesn't much depend on sending mail from new chars.

i agree with the give players the option to disable incoming tells from characters less than X level or less than Y hours old. (Members of friend list or guild list automatically exempt)
i still believe that if folks stop buying, the plat farmers would go away.

[FoxOne]

It's a good thing to keep this a hot topic so to not make them think we forgot.Had they done what the players are asking 6 months ago,they would have probably had 5 months of peace to do the 4 quests for next mod.And we wouldn't be getting killed by spam every session.Side note,has anyone else noticed that when the spam is at it's peak the lag is also atrocious?

[aldan]

I agree, take out the mail from trial accounts.

Remove the mailbox from the harbor.


Enough already. It almost suggests Turbine benefits from it somehow.


Why cant we get a DEVS response.

[FoxOne]

In the plane of spammerwrath.But it doesn't hurt to keep at it either to really show the extent of this problem.

[WestiesMA]

The spam tells are driving me crazy. My friends have had to talk me down from flat out screaming into the mike and/or replying with nasty obscenities. Can we please go back to letting them spam the in-game mail? MAKE THEM STOP!!!!!!!!

This is seriously what will make me leave the game. I hate it that much.

[Giselle]

It is a HUGE pain in the posterior! Every two minutes I'm getting spam tells....sometimes I get them before I'm even fully loaded in. Again, not to whine (ok, I'm whining) but doesn't LOTR have a mechanic where you can only send tells to people on friend's list or something? Once again, DDO is the red haired step child.....

[Lorien_the_First_One]

In the plane of spammerwrath..

Exactly...so why doesn't everyone stop whining until you find out what their planned action is in the new mod...

[cdemeritt]

Yes, I think this thread being another one out of thousands, will likely not be looked at, but at least give me the option to turn off the ding! of incoming tells. This is what annoys me the most. I'll be focused on what I'm doing in a dungeon, when DING! platspammer, which is especially loud for some reason over headphones. It is the DING! more than the message that annoys me. I can turn off the DM's Voice, Most Sound Effects are turned down to minimum, and I can shut the music off, as well as turn up incoming voice chat... So why can't I simply make the DING! go away? The Spammers themselves, while annoying, are much easier to Ignore without the DING!

[The_Mighty_Cube]

3. Forum guidelines still apply

Remember, the Cube is watching! Keep those discussions within the rules

If you're going to riddle your posts with personal attacks and insults at each other, they're going to end up in my belly.

[Lady_Draconus]

I agree, take out the mail from trial accounts.

Remove the mailbox from the harbor.


Enough already. It almost suggests Turbine benefits from it somehow.


Why cant we get a DEVS response.

For those who aren't really reading and focusing on the mail system. There hasn't been any mail from spammers in months. There is no point in removing the mail box from the harbor unless you want to irritate all the people who pay to play and mail lobie stuff to their rerolls.

There has been replies from Tolero or maybe people are over looking those posts.

I posted these earlier that are options that could be considered.

The mail issue has already been addressed (ingame mail is not the problem)
so.....

1) Remove the delete button on trial accounts.

2) I would limit tells to say 10 words or less (ie. I need help or how do I get to <name of quest> ? ect) consider the longest basic question a new person would/might ask and limit tells to that many words on trial accounts. (anything more in depth can be discussed in party chat style)

3) Put in an option for regular paying players to accept or decline trial account tells.

I think between these three it would reduce a lot of unwanted spam.


Remember the Cube is watching this thread.