Gold selling out of hand again?
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Keep in mind, as others point out, malicious companies who find they are blocked often just create new names, so containing them can be a bit of a case of “whack-a-mole.” Still, we do take this seriously, and we act on RMT spammers every day. With your help, we can do more!
I’ve got a huge blocklist of RMT spam-bots and I can safely say that you’ve banned them all.
However, while you say that they pick a new name, every single whisper I’ve had since 2012 has been for the SAME WEBSITE. It’s the one that rhymes with GvG Rank. You could have blocked that string of characters ages ago. It’ll cost a heck of a lot more for them to get a new domain name and update all their bots than for you to simply add their domain into your filters. Simply discard any whispers they send and put up a flag (or temporary ban after multiple discarded whispers) on their account. Don’t inform them they’ve used blocked words.
well with the web site name they can sometime with some search find to who the domain is registered, to find the owner. but still it does not prove that the owner is the one doing this. unless they can prove that the ip of the web site and the player account ip match. and if he use 2 different ip how can you prove it?
so taking legal action is long and costy the better way would probably be to use technology to solve the problem at it source. they have the ip of those account they need to block them find a away to filter account with those letter names block the account and check if the next account that send a message is from same ip and block that ip out of the game. if it is the same system that use a program from same ip it will be block for good. unless they are able to change their ip to connect from the same location. the things is no system is perfect but you can always upgrade the system. if it is done by amateur they are usually more easy to block, since they know little and if it get complex they will not know how to continue.. the problem is with people that are more professional and know what they are doing those are more hard to block since they know complex stuff and way to by-pass complex system.
the most simple way is for people to not follow those link so that the web site does not receive revenue or hack your account. if every one did that they would stop trying since their would be nothing to be gain from this. the problem is that people do not know this and they are able to make a revenue out of it.
many of those gold seller use name made only of letter example: xyzcvbbbnnn could you not put a character name needs to have some kind of real name when creating them not just some chaotic letter or number. just doing that would remove a lot of this. since those seams to be generated by a program. since when you block one you receive another you block again you receive another one. seams to be a spam program that send spam and modify is name when it is block to spam it self again under another name. it is very often chaotic letter account. the problem is that each time you block one, another name is created with another set of letter and it spam the message again.
so even if it remove the immediate one another one is sent then another then another.
there must be a way to spot those or to put a filter for name that are not a name.
While I can see where you’re coming from, I’m reminded of a legitimate player who was in a GW1 guild who liked to name his characters things like Asdf Of Zxcv (you can check that IGN on the Hall of Monuments calculator as it happens!) because he couldn’t think of a name at the time and liked the novelty of gibberish names. I knew a few people who named storage/PvP characters that way, and I’m pretty sure I saw someone say on these forums a day or two ago that they deliberately give some of their characters short gibberish names so they’re less visible in PvP, which makes perfect sense to me. Lore-influenced Asuran names could also run into problems with such a system given the unusual letter combinations, likewise those who add extra letters to existing names that’re already taken. That’s before you settle on what actually constitutes a ‘name’, because a lot of people have different ideas (and languages which could look like gold seller/bot names to someone non-English speaking).
“Even if we find a way to save the world from the
dragons, I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever find a way to save us from ourselves.”
dragons, I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever find a way to save us from ourselves.”
(edited by Bellatrixa.3546)
so they say, but w/e algorithm they using ends up giving rates up to 5 times lower than gold sellers
Wow, and the gold sellers steal your cc and account, too, what a bargain!
use paypal, and if your are dumb enough to give out your acct info to a random 3rd party, well maybe living and breathing isnt for you, in case you give out your credit card pin
every other game where theres some sort of premium for ingame currency trading dictated by players, the prices are never far off gold sellers prices, so theres little incentive to go to them, but gw2… i want to buy gold, but the rate comparison is extremely off putting
Should you really be discussing a penchant for perusing gold seller prices here? I mean, I had no idea the rate was so different, because I’d rather take a sledgehammer to my computer than visit a gold seller’s virus-laden site. Nor do I consider it a good idea to buy gold illegitimately at any rate. If I could get enough gold for a permanent hair kit for 5 cents paid to a gold seller, I wouldn’t do it.
It’s like I used to tell my clients charged with shoplifting: “If I see a hundred dollar bill on someone else’s desk, it’s just a green piece of paper to me, because it isn’t mine.”
ive never bought from a gold seller in my life, in other games i look at the rates and laugh it off, in gw2… well the rate difference makes me cringe, most gold sellers give 4 times as much gold, close to 5 if you count the hidden VAT for buying gems
ppl buy from gold sellers simply for the much better rate, if the difference is little no one would risk a 3rd party
and buying from a gold seller is against anet’s rules, not the law
That’s because the market rate is automated, not controlled by Anet. There would be much worse problems in the game if they set the rates.
but it is controlled by anet, w/e algorithm they use gives us these kitten rates
It’s interesting because gold selling has been the same in gw2 as it has always been. Just because the sellers spam more often now doesn’t mean it’s getting out of hand, it’s an underground market so you wouldn’t know how business is going.
Because they seem to be spamming more now, it could be because 1) they moved to a different location or renewed their IP address or changed their ISP, 2) they’re getting lower demand for gold buyers. To be honest, I’ve been looking at the rates they’re selling gold for, and it has skyrocketed from $1/100g to $2.50/100g, which is a major difference. On top of that, the same can be said for precursors, and other items of great value which used to be around $15 are now worth $30 ish dollars. The prices mainly change with respect the how much a gem is worth in gold and dollars, not so much by demand or lack of demand either way.
The demand for gw2 gold hasn’t been great either way, simply because the player base is too afraid to buy any, the significant lack of content worth paying gold for, and the new gold cap restriction forcing sellers to sell a minimum amount of base gold otherwise money is lost. I’m not advocating for selling/buying gold, I am simply speculating logical reasons to the phenomena of gold seller spams coming back.
many of those gold seller use name made only of letter example: xyzcvbbbnnn could you not put a character name needs to have some kind of real name when creating them not just some chaotic letter or number.
…
there must be a way to spot those or to put a filter for name that are not a name.
This is an impossible task in automation. Computers don’t see words like we do.
Without going into proving it, let’s just say, if you did manage to implement something that worked, the gold sellers would start using name generators that polled randomly from dictionaries, so that they got legitimate names every time.
many of those gold seller use name made only of letter example: xyzcvbbbnnn could you not put a character name needs to have some kind of real name when creating them not just some chaotic letter or number.
…
there must be a way to spot those or to put a filter for name that are not a name.This is an impossible task in automation. Computers don’t see words like we do.
Without going into proving it, let’s just say, if you did manage to implement something that worked, the gold sellers would start using name generators that polled randomly from dictionaries, so that they got legitimate names every time.
And since names don’t have to be unique, they wouldn’t ever run out of names. They could use the word dictionary over and over and over again.
Wouldn’t the easiest way to look at this be … tracking quantities of whispers per period of time? I’m pretty sure the automation of whispers exceeds the speed at which normal players can type, even if i were to type solely in whispers to each player i by passed during game play.
These guys whisper upwards of huge % of a given map and there message contents are almost identical (likely 90% identical – pre programmed) with some fluff to make it slightly different. Whereas you won’t find players whispering every other player on a map… they instead use … map chat. or Say chat. Even if i tried to whisper each person in my map… it would take a regular player much longer to type get the whispered target, and type out messages.
I know I’m very green to say it like so, but I was just thinking about human vs automation and easy ways to differentiate.
I always respond with: “Do I look like I want to buy gold? Anything else I would want requires time, and effort. Not gold!”
or
“If I want gold, I’ll buy it in a way that doesn’t get me banned.”
Although A-net you should convert for region, USD is to rich for my blood for what I would hypothetically get. This could be exploited sure, but the effort needed from the cheaters, and effort from the devs to keep it in check, is invaluable to the potential revenue from foreign players holding off due to the exchange rate.
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“Maybe I was the illusion all along!”
“Maybe I was the illusion all along!”
(edited by Daishi.6027)
Somebody once mentioned that all the gold sellers have the same number of achievement points. Was it 17 as mentioned in this thread? What if it was changed so that you need a certain amount of AP before you can whisper?
I was also considering being a certain level but anyone with HoT has a free level 80 boost. If the gold sellers are using paid for accounts.
Or maybe if you can’t whisper until you have completed your level 10 personal story with at least one character then you can whisper with any character on your account? Or both, I mean, it wouldn’t be too hard for a new player to reach level 10, do their personal story for it and gain say, 100 AP? That early in their time playing I don’t imagine they will be desperate to whisper anyway. On the other hand it makes gold sellers work every time they want to create a new account that they know is going to get banned and they’ll need to start again.
Maybe could have it that new players can whisper to people who they have on their contact list and are on the contact list of, or are in a guild with them.
Might cause a bit of trouble if they want to join a guild that somebody advertises on map chat but they could always say explain their position on map chat.
They could just make it so you cant whisper till lvl 30 except to people who have you on their friends list and only use the /say chat until20. that forces you to spend alot of time in the game and allows you communication with those within a small area of you at least.
Do you really want that in the general game client? Is reporting and blocking them so inconvenient to you that you are willing to make the game inconvenient to every legitimate player cause that’s what you’re suggesting.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
Do you really want that in the general game client? Is reporting and blocking them so inconvenient to you that you are willing to make the game inconvenient to every legitimate player cause that’s what you’re suggesting.
yes i am, its not just a matter of MY convenience. It hurts the overall economy of the game… so much so, that Anet bans for its use. new players don’t typically just whisper random passerby’s ( not saying a relatively smaller few do tho), they ask questions in general chat. restricting that to say may not give them the instant immediate response that a map chat might, 9 times of 10 there are players close by willing to answer a question or two. Thus prompting for an interaction that may result in friending…
Of course RMT can hurt a game’s economy. That’s why there’s the gem to gold section of the exchange, to provide a legit way to purchase gold with cash. That’s why there is a gold seller category on the report function. That’s why the P4F version of the core game has the various chat and trade restrictions.
Eliminating whispers will just mean they will spam /map or /say. Remember it’s not the F2P accounts that are doing this but fully paid ones. So what then? Restrict /map and /say? If you put a level or play time then these accounts will first be leveled, used to farm gold and then end their live as a short lived billboard. Anyway you can think of to try to prevent RMT spam by preemptively restricting accounts will be worked around by RMT quickly and all you will be hurting are legitimate players.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
Players who buy gold from gold sellers dont need whispers to tell them that gold can be bought.
All thats needed is to google GW2 gold and you will get pages of hits of gold selling sites.
All the ingame advertising is just to get existing gold buyers to switch companies.
Players will still buy gold if the ingame advertising stops.
The only way to stop gold selling is to break the economic model of gold sellers so they cant compete with Anets gem price.
I dont think so, theres no getting around the lvl restriction without dedicated time. doing it this way forces the old paid for accounts to be the ones having to make the advert and subject to ban. thus forcing them to create new accounts with said restrictions. Overall making it thousands of times more time consuming and less profitable for them to operate. Restricting them to /say keeps it all local and easily trackable. Also preventing them from contacting you all over tyria. How do you propose they will quickly get around this?
A lot of gold spammers have gibberish names, like “wdtfxyz.” If there was a way for Anet to prevent names like that from communicating it would help combat spam. There are legitimate players with names like that, but Anet can always flag them for a rename if a ticket is filed. This way Anet can view the logs of messages sent by that name and determine whether or not it’s a spammer or a real player. Those instances would be low in number so manpower wouldn’t be a real issue.
I dont think so, theres no getting around the lvl restriction without dedicated time. doing it this way forces the old paid for accounts to be the ones having to make the advert and subject to ban. thus forcing them to create new accounts with said restrictions. Overall making it thousands of times more time consuming and less profitable for them to operate. Restricting them to /say keeps it all local and easily trackable. Also preventing them from contacting you all over tyria. How do you propose they will quickly get around this?
The amount of posts/ticket queries about compromised accounts has surely seemed to go down since P4F has been on offer.
I would hate to think something would be implemented to cause the nefarious practice of compromising accounts to rise again.
Since all messages pass through ANet’s chat server, doesn’t make whispers harder to track than say.
And again, they don’t use F2P accounts even to advertise and they never will because of the restrictions. Much easier to buy new accounts with stolen credit card info or player’s legit accounts that got compromised to do their work. Any “you must be this tall to ride” restrictions isn’t going to slow them down one bit.
That’s one reason ANet now go after their customers by following the gold which means not showing how ANet is detecting them to early because it will be worked around as soon as the RMT shops realize it but instead ban hammer the RMT accounts en masse and take gold and items purchased by players through those accounts away.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
I dont think so, theres no getting around the lvl restriction without dedicated time. doing it this way forces the old paid for accounts to be the ones having to make the advert and subject to ban. thus forcing them to create new accounts with said restrictions. Overall making it thousands of times more time consuming and less profitable for them to operate. Restricting them to /say keeps it all local and easily trackable. Also preventing them from contacting you all over tyria. How do you propose they will quickly get around this?
The amount of posts/ticket queries about compromised accounts has surely seemed to go down since P4F has been on offer.
I would hate to think something would be implemented to cause the nefarious practice of compromising accounts to rise again.
Thats like saying “here, take my son so you wont take my daughter…” That mentality yields a win to the RMT companies everytime.
Since all messages pass through ANet’s chat server, doesn’t make whispers harder to track than say.
And again, they don’t use F2P accounts even to advertise and they never will because of the restrictions. Much easier to buy new accounts with stolen credit card info or player’s legit accounts that got compromised to do their work. Any “you must be this tall to ride” restrictions isn’t going to slow them down one bit.
That’s one reason ANet now go after their customers by following the gold which means not showing how ANet is detecting them to early because it will be worked around as soon as the RMT shops realize it but instead ban hammer the RMT accounts en masse and take gold and items purchased by players through those accounts away.
But it does narrow down the chat options to have to sift thru thus making man power used to police it very minimal. its the same with stolen accounts, eliminating and narrowing it down, steering their direction makes eventual outcomes predictable and easier to combat. And yes it will slow them down. Im not sayin dont go after the buyers, by all means, continue that, but there are soooo many other ways to begin to combat this in addition to it.
I dont think so, theres no getting around the lvl restriction without dedicated time. doing it this way forces the old paid for accounts to be the ones having to make the advert and subject to ban. thus forcing them to create new accounts with said restrictions. Overall making it thousands of times more time consuming and less profitable for them to operate. Restricting them to /say keeps it all local and easily trackable. Also preventing them from contacting you all over tyria. How do you propose they will quickly get around this?
If they have Heart of Thorns there is a free boost for one character to get to level 80. Judging by the fact they are able to whisper to people who aren’t mutual contacts I doubt they are f2p. That was why I thought there should be a some of the story completed with one character, just the level 10 part, and maybe a minimum Achievement Points.
/Say and /Map and any other chat would be fine, they only ever whisper. I didn’t think it would make it that bad for new players. They join, their friends add them to contacts so they can communicate. They hit level 10(Or do the level 10 part of the story at 80.) Earn the number achievements they need and they can whisper to anyone they see. They only need to do that once. Every time a gold selling account is banned they need to go through it again.
I dont think so, theres no getting around the lvl restriction without dedicated time. doing it this way forces the old paid for accounts to be the ones having to make the advert and subject to ban. thus forcing them to create new accounts with said restrictions. Overall making it thousands of times more time consuming and less profitable for them to operate. Restricting them to /say keeps it all local and easily trackable. Also preventing them from contacting you all over tyria. How do you propose they will quickly get around this?
If they have Heart of Thorns there is a free boost for one character to get to level 80. Judging by the fact they are able to whisper to people who aren’t mutual contacts I doubt they are f2p. That was why I thought there should be a some of the story completed with one character, just the level 10 part, and maybe a minimum Achievement Points.
/Say and /Map and any other chat would be fine, they only ever whisper. I didn’t think it would make it that bad for new players. They join, their friends add them to contacts so they can communicate. They hit level 10(Or do the level 10 part of the story at 80.) Earn the number achievements they need and they can whisper to anyone they see. They only need to do that once. Every time a gold selling account is banned they need to go through it again.
Then they’ll level up, do the story, and get enough achievement points while farming mats before ending life as a billboard for the gold selling website. It honestly doesn’t take that long as ANet would not be able to make the limits prohibitively high to not inconvenience actual players too much.
I dont think so, theres no getting around the lvl restriction without dedicated time. doing it this way forces the old paid for accounts to be the ones having to make the advert and subject to ban. thus forcing them to create new accounts with said restrictions. Overall making it thousands of times more time consuming and less profitable for them to operate. Restricting them to /say keeps it all local and easily trackable. Also preventing them from contacting you all over tyria. How do you propose they will quickly get around this?
If they have Heart of Thorns there is a free boost for one character to get to level 80. Judging by the fact they are able to whisper to people who aren’t mutual contacts I doubt they are f2p. That was why I thought there should be a some of the story completed with one character, just the level 10 part, and maybe a minimum Achievement Points.
/Say and /Map and any other chat would be fine, they only ever whisper. I didn’t think it would make it that bad for new players. They join, their friends add them to contacts so they can communicate. They hit level 10(Or do the level 10 part of the story at 80.) Earn the number achievements they need and they can whisper to anyone they see. They only need to do that once. Every time a gold selling account is banned they need to go through it again.Then they’ll level up, do the story, and get enough achievement points while farming mats before ending life as a billboard for the gold selling website. It honestly doesn’t take that long as ANet would not be able to make the limits prohibitively high to not inconvenience actual players too much.
It would probably do a bit to reduce how often we get whispered to. Right now they can start an account, choose a race/class, press skip to end, hit a few random keys to make a name, do the tutorial mission and after that they can whisper to as many players as possible before they get banned. The more put between them and the ability to whisper the slower they will be to be able to advertise their site. Each new account it could be the difference between minutes and hours to achieve the goal of whispering.
A low required level and minimum AP wouldn’t be too bad for new actual players, they don’t start playing just to be able to whisper to other players(They can’t get hero points before level 11 but after one character in the account has they can with any character. I don’t know the reason for that, that type of barrier on whispering though would be pretty understandable) but for gold sellers who only log in to whisper needing to go through a bit of work each time they make a new account. I think it would slow them down a bit.
Report them in the game. I guarantee that many are addressed every day, and I’ll talk with CS on Monday to see if there are ways we could improve the filters.
If only this worked on GW1… I’ve been reporting numerous bots there, and they’re still there now spamming away WEEKS later.
I dont think so, theres no getting around the lvl restriction without dedicated time. doing it this way forces the old paid for accounts to be the ones having to make the advert and subject to ban. thus forcing them to create new accounts with said restrictions. Overall making it thousands of times more time consuming and less profitable for them to operate. Restricting them to /say keeps it all local and easily trackable. Also preventing them from contacting you all over tyria. How do you propose they will quickly get around this?
If they have Heart of Thorns there is a free boost for one character to get to level 80. Judging by the fact they are able to whisper to people who aren’t mutual contacts I doubt they are f2p. That was why I thought there should be a some of the story completed with one character, just the level 10 part, and maybe a minimum Achievement Points.
/Say and /Map and any other chat would be fine, they only ever whisper. I didn’t think it would make it that bad for new players. They join, their friends add them to contacts so they can communicate. They hit level 10(Or do the level 10 part of the story at 80.) Earn the number achievements they need and they can whisper to anyone they see. They only need to do that once. Every time a gold selling account is banned they need to go through it again.Then they’ll level up, do the story, and get enough achievement points while farming mats before ending life as a billboard for the gold selling website. It honestly doesn’t take that long as ANet would not be able to make the limits prohibitively high to not inconvenience actual players too much.
It would probably do a bit to reduce how often we get whispered to. Right now they can start an account, choose a race/class, press skip to end, hit a few random keys to make a name, do the tutorial mission and after that they can whisper to as many players as possible before they get banned. The more put between them and the ability to whisper the slower they will be to be able to advertise their site. Each new account it could be the difference between minutes and hours to achieve the goal of whispering.
A low required level and minimum AP wouldn’t be too bad for new actual players, they don’t start playing just to be able to whisper to other players(They can’t get hero points before level 11 but after one character in the account has they can with any character. I don’t know the reason for that, that type of barrier on whispering though would be pretty understandable) but for gold sellers who only log in to whisper needing to go through a bit of work each time they make a new account. I think it would slow them down a bit.
The increased slowness would hurt new players more than gold sellers.
Many guilds ask that you whisper for an invite. A new player may feel uncomfortable asking a question in say or map chat.
Gold sellers are inconvenienced for a short time as they will find the quickest way to gain the required level and AP.
The simplest fixes of all are the ones that always get ignored.
Charge for whispers.
Of course this wont happen because of the mega outrage from all the player base, who want gold sellers eliminated from the game , but in a way that doesnt affect them.
The simplest fixes of all are the ones that always get ignored.
Charge for whispers.
Of course this wont happen because of the mega outrage from all the player base, who want gold sellers eliminated from the game , but in a way that doesnt affect them.
They would just make it /m chat then and not /w. And regular players are being charged to communicate, for no reason, it would literally do nothing.
My bet is they pretty much only spam right before they are going to delete an account, so it won’t matter to them if it gets actioned immediately since they were planning on deleting it anyway, not to mention it was free to begin with. Either that, or the account was created solely to spam.
I think that /w would result in even more reports going in because its more annoying to be ‘on their list’ than them spamming /m chat.
The simplest fixes of all are the ones that always get ignored.
Charge for whispers.
Of course this wont happen because of the mega outrage from all the player base, who want gold sellers eliminated from the game , but in a way that doesnt affect them.
Most gold seller accounts are either hacked accounts or bought with stolen credit cards. In the case of hacked accounts, the gold seller can use that person’s gold to pay for whispers. Either way, the gold seller can write off the cost of whispering by increasing the price that they charge gold buyers. Charging for whispers won’t hurt gold sellers because they’ll make sure the costs are passed on to someone else, but it will impact regular players.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
I just logged in and immediately I received gold sellers spam (less than 1 minute after login in).
I dont think so, theres no getting around the lvl restriction without dedicated time. doing it this way forces the old paid for accounts to be the ones having to make the advert and subject to ban. thus forcing them to create new accounts with said restrictions. Overall making it thousands of times more time consuming and less profitable for them to operate. Restricting them to /say keeps it all local and easily trackable. Also preventing them from contacting you all over tyria. How do you propose they will quickly get around this?
If they have Heart of Thorns there is a free boost for one character to get to level 80. Judging by the fact they are able to whisper to people who aren’t mutual contacts I doubt they are f2p. That was why I thought there should be a some of the story completed with one character, just the level 10 part, and maybe a minimum Achievement Points.
/Say and /Map and any other chat would be fine, they only ever whisper. I didn’t think it would make it that bad for new players. They join, their friends add them to contacts so they can communicate. They hit level 10(Or do the level 10 part of the story at 80.) Earn the number achievements they need and they can whisper to anyone they see. They only need to do that once. Every time a gold selling account is banned they need to go through it again.Then they’ll level up, do the story, and get enough achievement points while farming mats before ending life as a billboard for the gold selling website. It honestly doesn’t take that long as ANet would not be able to make the limits prohibitively high to not inconvenience actual players too much.
It would probably do a bit to reduce how often we get whispered to. Right now they can start an account, choose a race/class, press skip to end, hit a few random keys to make a name, do the tutorial mission and after that they can whisper to as many players as possible before they get banned. The more put between them and the ability to whisper the slower they will be to be able to advertise their site. Each new account it could be the difference between minutes and hours to achieve the goal of whispering.
A low required level and minimum AP wouldn’t be too bad for new actual players, they don’t start playing just to be able to whisper to other players(They can’t get hero points before level 11 but after one character in the account has they can with any character. I don’t know the reason for that, that type of barrier on whispering though would be pretty understandable) but for gold sellers who only log in to whisper needing to go through a bit of work each time they make a new account. I think it would slow them down a bit.The increased slowness would hurt new players more than gold sellers.
Many guilds ask that you whisper for an invite. A new player may feel uncomfortable asking a question in say or map chat.
Gold sellers are inconvenienced for a short time as they will find the quickest way to gain the required level and AP.
Okay I guess I could suggest one more solution to the idea of minimum AP/Level/Story progress on one character idea.
I suppose we have all seen people advertising their guild on map chat and saying to whisper for more info. It was one of the things I had against putting the limitation on new accounts s it would slow down new players joining a guild and annoy guild recruiters.
How about a new chat option. /say is for players nearby, /map is for the whole map. How about an option like /open map? Work just like /map in that it speaks to every player on the map but after chatting on /open map you are open to be whispered to by anyone, regardless of AP, level or progression for say, 1 hour? Time resets every time they chat in it. Recruiters can advertise, new players can whisper to them. Gold sellers would need to go through everything before they can whisper to anybody who hasn’t chatted on /open map within an hour. Could do the same with /say, I’ve seen commanders standing at the spawn points after tutorial mission, I was just creating a new character but they were welcoming new players to the game with the green /say. Maybe would be nice to let the player whisper back.
So to summarize new players would be able to whisper to mutual contacts and guild recruiters or anyone who has just chatted on /open map. Gold sellers would be slowed down. Hoping that idea wouldn’t be too damaging for genuine new players.
Not fond of the idea of having to pay to whisper.
I dont think so, theres no getting around the lvl restriction without dedicated time. doing it this way forces the old paid for accounts to be the ones having to make the advert and subject to ban. thus forcing them to create new accounts with said restrictions. Overall making it thousands of times more time consuming and less profitable for them to operate. Restricting them to /say keeps it all local and easily trackable. Also preventing them from contacting you all over tyria. How do you propose they will quickly get around this?
If they have Heart of Thorns there is a free boost for one character to get to level 80. Judging by the fact they are able to whisper to people who aren’t mutual contacts I doubt they are f2p. That was why I thought there should be a some of the story completed with one character, just the level 10 part, and maybe a minimum Achievement Points.
/Say and /Map and any other chat would be fine, they only ever whisper. I didn’t think it would make it that bad for new players. They join, their friends add them to contacts so they can communicate. They hit level 10(Or do the level 10 part of the story at 80.) Earn the number achievements they need and they can whisper to anyone they see. They only need to do that once. Every time a gold selling account is banned they need to go through it again.Then they’ll level up, do the story, and get enough achievement points while farming mats before ending life as a billboard for the gold selling website. It honestly doesn’t take that long as ANet would not be able to make the limits prohibitively high to not inconvenience actual players too much.
It would probably do a bit to reduce how often we get whispered to. Right now they can start an account, choose a race/class, press skip to end, hit a few random keys to make a name, do the tutorial mission and after that they can whisper to as many players as possible before they get banned. The more put between them and the ability to whisper the slower they will be to be able to advertise their site. Each new account it could be the difference between minutes and hours to achieve the goal of whispering.
A low required level and minimum AP wouldn’t be too bad for new actual players, they don’t start playing just to be able to whisper to other players(They can’t get hero points before level 11 but after one character in the account has they can with any character. I don’t know the reason for that, that type of barrier on whispering though would be pretty understandable) but for gold sellers who only log in to whisper needing to go through a bit of work each time they make a new account. I think it would slow them down a bit.The increased slowness would hurt new players more than gold sellers.
Many guilds ask that you whisper for an invite. A new player may feel uncomfortable asking a question in say or map chat.
Gold sellers are inconvenienced for a short time as they will find the quickest way to gain the required level and AP.
Okay I guess I could suggest one more solution to the idea of minimum AP/Level/Story progress on one character idea.
I suppose we have all seen people advertising their guild on map chat and saying to whisper for more info. It was one of the things I had against putting the limitation on new accounts s it would slow down new players joining a guild and annoy guild recruiters.
How about a new chat option. /say is for players nearby, /map is for the whole map. How about an option like /open map? Work just like /map in that it speaks to every player on the map but after chatting on /open map you are open to be whispered to by anyone, regardless of AP, level or progression for say, 1 hour? Time resets every time they chat in it. Recruiters can advertise, new players can whisper to them. Gold sellers would need to go through everything before they can whisper to anybody who hasn’t chatted on /open map within an hour. Could do the same with /say, I’ve seen commanders standing at the spawn points after tutorial mission, I was just creating a new character but they were welcoming new players to the game with the green /say. Maybe would be nice to let the player whisper back.So to summarize new players would be able to whisper to mutual contacts and guild recruiters or anyone who has just chatted on /open map. Gold sellers would be slowed down. Hoping that idea wouldn’t be too damaging for genuine new players.
Not fond of the idea of having to pay to whisper.
Since people can change chat channels, that won’t work. They may have chatted on /open map 1 minute ago, but 30 seconds ago they started a friendly back and forth with a guildie in guild chat.
The guild recruiter may post their message and then immediately switch back to guild chat to say they’ve posted the message and then continue discussion in guild chat on whatever they were discussing before he switched to /open map to post the guild message.
And gold sellers would just move to map or say chat.
I was thinking more once they have written a message on it they are open to be whispered to by any player for the next hour regardless of where else they chat.
Moving to map chat for gold sellers, well even that would be a small defeat for them. They always could map chat but choose to whisper. Must be a reason, more personal, it shows on your screen in purple, somebody has something to say to you. Maybe not wanting to get caught but then they know they’ll get reported when they whisper and they want people to read it, once on the map, everyone sees, seems easier than whispering to everyone.
I was thinking more once they have written a message on it they are open to be whispered to by any player for the next hour regardless of where else they chat.
Moving to map chat for gold sellers, well even that would be a small defeat for them. They always could map chat but choose to whisper. Must be a reason, more personal, it shows on your screen in purple, somebody has something to say to you. Maybe not wanting to get caught but then they know they’ll get reported when they whisper and they want people to read it, once on the map, everyone sees, seems easier than whispering to everyone.
They use whisper so they can save all the account names to a list and then just spam them all which is why you get targeted so often, its the same group doing it.
Then they don’t even need to be in the map, they can just spam the 100,000 names on the list whenever they are going to delete an account.
What is really needed is a gibberish filter for names, since all these characters are just, gibberish, it would really restrict them in making new accounts and characters.
(edited by Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582)
I was thinking more once they have written a message on it they are open to be whispered to by any player for the next hour regardless of where else they chat.
Moving to map chat for gold sellers, well even that would be a small defeat for them. They always could map chat but choose to whisper. Must be a reason, more personal, it shows on your screen in purple, somebody has something to say to you. Maybe not wanting to get caught but then they know they’ll get reported when they whisper and they want people to read it, once on the map, everyone sees, seems easier than whispering to everyone.
They use whisper so they can save all the account names to a list and then just spam them all which is why you get targeted so often, its the same group doing it.
Then they don’t even need to be in the map, they can just spam the 100,000 names on the list whenever they are going to delete an account.What is really needed is a gibberish filter for names, since all these characters are just, gibberish, it would really restrict them in making new accounts and characters.
How do you define gibberish? How do you make sure what’s gibberish for us isn’t a real word in another language? Or worse, a real name?
And banning gibberish won’t stop gold sellers. They’ll just find a short legit word or two that bypasses the gibberish filter and use that over and over and over and over and over again. Since usernames do not have to be unique due to the numbers after our name.
I was thinking more once they have written a message on it they are open to be whispered to by any player for the next hour regardless of where else they chat.
Moving to map chat for gold sellers, well even that would be a small defeat for them. They always could map chat but choose to whisper. Must be a reason, more personal, it shows on your screen in purple, somebody has something to say to you. Maybe not wanting to get caught but then they know they’ll get reported when they whisper and they want people to read it, once on the map, everyone sees, seems easier than whispering to everyone.
They use whisper so they can save all the account names to a list and then just spam them all which is why you get targeted so often, its the same group doing it.
Then they don’t even need to be in the map, they can just spam the 100,000 names on the list whenever they are going to delete an account.What is really needed is a gibberish filter for names, since all these characters are just, gibberish, it would really restrict them in making new accounts and characters.
That explains the ones whispering in Sparkfly Fen. I thought it might have been a person smart enough to know that there will be a lot of people in SFF at the time of Tequatl spawning.
I was thinking more once they have written a message on it they are open to be whispered to by any player for the next hour regardless of where else they chat.
Moving to map chat for gold sellers, well even that would be a small defeat for them. They always could map chat but choose to whisper. Must be a reason, more personal, it shows on your screen in purple, somebody has something to say to you. Maybe not wanting to get caught but then they know they’ll get reported when they whisper and they want people to read it, once on the map, everyone sees, seems easier than whispering to everyone.
They use whisper so they can save all the account names to a list and then just spam them all which is why you get targeted so often, its the same group doing it.
Then they don’t even need to be in the map, they can just spam the 100,000 names on the list whenever they are going to delete an account.What is really needed is a gibberish filter for names, since all these characters are just, gibberish, it would really restrict them in making new accounts and characters.
How do you define gibberish? How do you make sure what’s gibberish for us isn’t a real word in another language? Or worse, a real name?
And banning gibberish won’t stop gold sellers. They’ll just find a short legit word or two that bypasses the gibberish filter and use that over and over and over and over and over again. Since usernames do not have to be unique due to the numbers after our name.
Those questions would need to be addressed before you could make a filter, but for instance, preventing three consonants in a row would rule out majority of the gold seller names possible. If someone wants a name that is considered gibberish by the filter, they can appeal to CS and get the name once their credibility is determined.
ofc it will not stop them, but it will waste their time having to bypass the filter with actual words that are not already in use. Time is money to these people and restricting the way in which names are made will really restrict their character creation.
I’m not talking about usernames, I’m talking about character names.
They cannot really use the same legit one over and over as it could easily be added to a list of known GSeller names or botters and checked later on.
It’s just another small step added to the others that make GSelling less profitable for them to continue doing.
I was thinking more once they have written a message on it they are open to be whispered to by any player for the next hour regardless of where else they chat.
Moving to map chat for gold sellers, well even that would be a small defeat for them. They always could map chat but choose to whisper. Must be a reason, more personal, it shows on your screen in purple, somebody has something to say to you. Maybe not wanting to get caught but then they know they’ll get reported when they whisper and they want people to read it, once on the map, everyone sees, seems easier than whispering to everyone.
They use whisper so they can save all the account names to a list and then just spam them all which is why you get targeted so often, its the same group doing it.
Then they don’t even need to be in the map, they can just spam the 100,000 names on the list whenever they are going to delete an account.What is really needed is a gibberish filter for names, since all these characters are just, gibberish, it would really restrict them in making new accounts and characters.
How do you define gibberish? How do you make sure what’s gibberish for us isn’t a real word in another language? Or worse, a real name?
And banning gibberish won’t stop gold sellers. They’ll just find a short legit word or two that bypasses the gibberish filter and use that over and over and over and over and over again. Since usernames do not have to be unique due to the numbers after our name.
Those questions would need to be addressed before you could make a filter, but for instance, preventing three consonants in a row would rule out majority of the gold seller names possible. If someone wants a name that is considered gibberish by the filter, they can appeal to CS and get the name once their credibility is determined.
ofc it will not stop them, but it will waste their time having to bypass the filter with actual words that are not already in use. Time is money to these people and restricting the way in which names are made will really restrict their character creation.
I’m not talking about usernames, I’m talking about character names.
They cannot really use the same legit one over and over as it could easily be added to a list of known GSeller names or botters and checked later on.
It’s just another small step added to the others that make GSelling less profitable for them to continue doing.
Since ANet doesn’t free up characters on banned accounts, I would rather the gold sellers be able to use gibberish for their character names.
Too many real life names have 3 consonants in them, especially for players who choose to give their character a last name.
4 of my 6 characters have 3+ consonants in a row: Chymea, Sollemnis Pyrestorm, Frea Tyrdottir, and Mistseer Xinna.
I don’t want to have to go through support every time I wish to make a character with a legit name that’s not gibberish that has more than 2 consonants in a row.
I was thinking more once they have written a message on it they are open to be whispered to by any player for the next hour regardless of where else they chat.
Moving to map chat for gold sellers, well even that would be a small defeat for them. They always could map chat but choose to whisper. Must be a reason, more personal, it shows on your screen in purple, somebody has something to say to you. Maybe not wanting to get caught but then they know they’ll get reported when they whisper and they want people to read it, once on the map, everyone sees, seems easier than whispering to everyone.
They use whisper so they can save all the account names to a list and then just spam them all which is why you get targeted so often, its the same group doing it.
Then they don’t even need to be in the map, they can just spam the 100,000 names on the list whenever they are going to delete an account.What is really needed is a gibberish filter for names, since all these characters are just, gibberish, it would really restrict them in making new accounts and characters.
How do you define gibberish? How do you make sure what’s gibberish for us isn’t a real word in another language? Or worse, a real name?
And banning gibberish won’t stop gold sellers. They’ll just find a short legit word or two that bypasses the gibberish filter and use that over and over and over and over and over again. Since usernames do not have to be unique due to the numbers after our name.
Those questions would need to be addressed before you could make a filter, but for instance, preventing three consonants in a row would rule out majority of the gold seller names possible. If someone wants a name that is considered gibberish by the filter, they can appeal to CS and get the name once their credibility is determined.
ofc it will not stop them, but it will waste their time having to bypass the filter with actual words that are not already in use. Time is money to these people and restricting the way in which names are made will really restrict their character creation.
I’m not talking about usernames, I’m talking about character names.
They cannot really use the same legit one over and over as it could easily be added to a list of known GSeller names or botters and checked later on.
It’s just another small step added to the others that make GSelling less profitable for them to continue doing.
Since ANet doesn’t free up characters on banned accounts, I would rather the gold sellers be able to use gibberish for their character names.
Too many real life names have 3 consonants in them, especially for players who choose to give their character a last name.
4 of my 6 characters have 3+ consonants in a row: Chymea, Sollemnis Pyrestorm, Frea Tyrdottir, and Mistseer Xinna.
I don’t want to have to go through support every time I wish to make a character with a legit name that’s not gibberish that has more than 2 consonants in a row.
So, do nothing then, in case it inconveniences you when you make a new character?
That was just an example anyway, one you would have worked around when you made the characters, if it were in place. I don’t know how to make a filter for character names.
If one were implemented, it would be a minor inconvenience to legit players and a seriously major inconvenience to gold sellers who are making thousands of accounts and characters that now they cannot just face roll a name on the keyboard.
Then they’ll start to bypass the filter. Instead of Google.com, they’ll put G00gle.com. then just Google. Then G00gle. Then G00g1e. Then G o o g l e.
Filters will never be perfect.
The only way gold sellers will stop is if they run out of customers.
Except that you can add all those alternatives to the filter as well. Then when its reported in some other way, you add that to the filter. After a while, there will be no possible way they can advertise their website.
You won’t stop them by doing nothing or just blocking/banning the accounts the get/use unless you also make it harder for them to use those accounts and to advertise their site. If that means I have to think about a character name for 5 minutes longer, so be it.
I was thinking more once they have written a message on it they are open to be whispered to by any player for the next hour regardless of where else they chat.
Moving to map chat for gold sellers, well even that would be a small defeat for them. They always could map chat but choose to whisper. Must be a reason, more personal, it shows on your screen in purple, somebody has something to say to you. Maybe not wanting to get caught but then they know they’ll get reported when they whisper and they want people to read it, once on the map, everyone sees, seems easier than whispering to everyone.
They use whisper so they can save all the account names to a list and then just spam them all which is why you get targeted so often, its the same group doing it.
Then they don’t even need to be in the map, they can just spam the 100,000 names on the list whenever they are going to delete an account.What is really needed is a gibberish filter for names, since all these characters are just, gibberish, it would really restrict them in making new accounts and characters.
How do you define gibberish? How do you make sure what’s gibberish for us isn’t a real word in another language? Or worse, a real name?
And banning gibberish won’t stop gold sellers. They’ll just find a short legit word or two that bypasses the gibberish filter and use that over and over and over and over and over again. Since usernames do not have to be unique due to the numbers after our name.
Those questions would need to be addressed before you could make a filter, but for instance, preventing three consonants in a row would rule out majority of the gold seller names possible. If someone wants a name that is considered gibberish by the filter, they can appeal to CS and get the name once their credibility is determined.
ofc it will not stop them, but it will waste their time having to bypass the filter with actual words that are not already in use. Time is money to these people and restricting the way in which names are made will really restrict their character creation.
I’m not talking about usernames, I’m talking about character names.
They cannot really use the same legit one over and over as it could easily be added to a list of known GSeller names or botters and checked later on.
It’s just another small step added to the others that make GSelling less profitable for them to continue doing.
Since ANet doesn’t free up characters on banned accounts, I would rather the gold sellers be able to use gibberish for their character names.
Too many real life names have 3 consonants in them, especially for players who choose to give their character a last name.
4 of my 6 characters have 3+ consonants in a row: Chymea, Sollemnis Pyrestorm, Frea Tyrdottir, and Mistseer Xinna.
I don’t want to have to go through support every time I wish to make a character with a legit name that’s not gibberish that has more than 2 consonants in a row.
So, do nothing then, in case it inconveniences you when you make a new character?
That was just an example anyway, one you would have worked around when you made the characters, if it were in place. I don’t know how to make a filter for character names.
If one were implemented, it would be a minor inconvenience to legit players and a seriously major inconvenience to gold sellers who are making thousands of accounts and characters that now they cannot just face roll a name on the keyboard.
Then they’ll start to bypass the filter. Instead of Google.com, they’ll put G00gle.com. then just Google. Then G00gle. Then G00g1e. Then G o o g l e.
Filters will never be perfect.
The only way gold sellers will stop is if they run out of customers.
Except that you can add all those alternatives to the filter as well. Then when its reported in some other way, you add that to the filter. After a while, there will be no possible way they can advertise their website.
You won’t stop them by doing nothing or just blocking/banning the accounts the get/use unless you also make it harder for them to use those accounts and to advertise their site. If that means I have to think about a character name for 5 minutes longer, so be it.
I think they currently have a good handle on reducing the effectiveness of gold sellers.
I would also have gotten incredibly angry at the game and likely would have stopped playing with a name filter like the one you suggested. Chymea was my first character I ever made in the game, including the beta. If I had been told that my name was rejected because it was possible that it was gibberish and that I might be a gold seller on character #1 before I established myself as not a gold seller, I think I might have asked for a refund instead.
I’d also be really mad because legit names are being held hostage by banned gold sellers.
As for the filter, they’d move to sites like tinyurl. And legit players use tinyurl to post links to long url sites in the game since there are no hyperlinked sites (a tool used to reduce the effectiveness of gold sellers), so it would be too harsh to ban tinyurl directly or indirectly through filters. And then the cycle of filtering things gets started again. And they’d just generate a new tinyurl every time one got too cumbersome to bypass the censor with.
That’s not to say that there isn’t something else that can be done to reduce the effectiveness of gold sellers. I just haven’t seen any in here that would either be easily bypassed by the gold sellers and/or be too harsh on legit players. Nor can I think of anything that wouldn’t do either of those.
A gibberish filter that 3 consonants in a row would flag up wouldn’t work, just thinking my main character is Sinmir Stormcloak. That has 4 consonants in a row(And I’ve seen a few other players with using last name Stormcloak.)
Anyway that would hurt all players who want to use a name that has 3 or more consonants in a row and wouldn’t do much to the gold sellers. just means when they are hitting random keys every third one or more needs to be a, e, i, o, or u.
Gee, another suggestion that’ll do more harm to the broader player base because the suggester finds “report and block” too inconvenient to them.
We are heroes. This is what we do!
RIP City of Heroes
RIP City of Heroes
Filtering out names would just be silly.
A solution has already been proposed and discussed by both players and devs. A simple solution that just might work!
That being block out all whispers from people unless they are on your friends list. This of course would be optional so people can still get whispered by random people if they feel like it. However for those of us that are spammed often because we may very well be on these people’s “lists” this would suit us as well by choosing to activate the block.
It’s such a simple system and it works in other games. The only question is why has it not been implemented yet?
For more info:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Privacy-Discussion-merged/first
Keep in mind that post has merged various similar topics. The post I am mainly referring to is the 7th one by Miss Lana.5276 and then my replies as well.
Since when did this business of being a hero become being a business?
(edited by Paulytnz.7619)
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