How is there no filter for gold sell url's?
An arms race
First you block Kitten
Then you blick K itten, Ki tten, Kit ten.. Etc
Then you block Kitt3n, then Ki77en, etc etc
Its an arms race without end
If they block say google.com, people who want to post a link to google.com will do:
g o o g l e . c o m
Then if that gets filtered:
g.o.o.g.l.e.dot.c.o.m
Then when every possible link is exhausted, they change their url to yahoo.com and the process starts all over again.
They would then get smart and make it words that players use to make it really difficult for ANet to filter them without affecting innocent players.
it has a definite end… Allow players to block anyone not on friends list from whispering. Allow players to make custom chat filters.
There are many ways to deal with this, doing nothing is crazy.
it has a definite end… Allow players to block anyone not on friends list from whispering. Allow players to make custom chat filters.
There are many ways to deal with this, doing nothing is crazy.
Then they use map chat and say chat and any other chat that is available.
The ONLY way gold sellers will stop is if they have no customers.
Well if all their players on this forum are just apologists for the inaction, no wonder they never try anything to stop it.
Well if all their players on this forum are just apologists for the inaction, no wonder they never try anything to stop it.
Maybe you could tell us what games that have successfully gotten rid of gold seller spam and how they did it.
That would be most helpful.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
Well if all their players on this forum are just apologists for the inaction, no wonder they never try anything to stop it.
They’re not being “apologists”; they’re just saying that the idea of filtering the websites and blocking whispers from non-friends won’t work because the gold sellers always find ways around that.
Anet takes the gold seller issues very seriously by reading reports from players and banning the accounts doing the selling. There’s only so much they can do, though, because the sellers will always get more accounts (either by making their own free ones or by stealing accounts that made the mistake of buying gold from them).
Well if all their players on this forum are just apologists for the inaction, no wonder they never try anything to stop it.
No, some of us are just old enough to remember MySpace trying to block URLs on profiles and such. Gave rise to people commonly bypassing with (dot) com and the like.
Blocking people who aren’t friends from whispering – really nice if someone wants to ask a question who’s just met you in map chat or wants to enquire about a guild recruitment ad. It’s like forcing you to be friends with someone in the street instead of idly chatting while waiting for the bus. I just want to say hey, not know their life story, you know? Also like hell am I adding my main guild’s 450+ roster all to my friends list just in case they need to whisper me about something guild-related. What about people who are in 5 guilds with max roster sizes?
I already see some gold sellers using map chat to advertise so no, messing around with whispers isn’t a solution. Every game out there has some form of gold sellers/botters/advertising. It’s like how basically every website now has some form of ads. You block em and move on. Same with gold sellers just with a report thrown in for good measure.
As for ‘doing nothing’, I think you’ll find a lot of the f2p restrictions are there to combat gold sellers so they’re not worse than they are now. Just saying.
“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.”
Maybe players should not advertise the URL on the forums, that might help.
Block and report, as always.
Well if all their players on this forum are just apologists for the inaction, no wonder they never try anything to stop it.
Maybe you could tell us what games that have successfully gotten rid of gold seller spam and how they did it.
That would be most helpful.
This link has a creative solution that Im surprised is not more prevalent:
http://forums.icarus.nexon.net/discussion/6915/custom-chat-filter-suggestion
Well if all their players on this forum are just apologists for the inaction, no wonder they never try anything to stop it.
Maybe you could tell us what games that have successfully gotten rid of gold seller spam and how they did it.
That would be most helpful.
This link has a creative solution that Im surprised is not more prevalent:
http://forums.icarus.nexon.net/discussion/6915/custom-chat-filter-suggestion
Won’t work. They would replace gold with yellow coin or get more ambiguous while still conveying the message. Eventually half your messages would be blocked because as the gold sellers use more ambiguous language to get around common blocked phrases like “buy gold,” you will also be blocking legitimate players trying to message you. It’s the same problem except it’s on your end instead of Anets end. I could see some positive trade off from this I suppose but really those trade offs would not outweigh the development time needed for such a tool. That and I’m sure you can’t have an unlimited vocabulary for your block list. There would have to be a cut off for the words that trigger the block.
If there was a good solution it would be used already. Thankfully gold sell spam is not as bad in gw2 like other games. I played ff14 like 6 months ago and it was awful.
TLDR.
Better than sitting on hands and letting same URL that has been getting spammed for 4 years continue to be whispered. Also having an option to prevent whispers from non friends seems perfectly reasonable to me as well, if not just for spam but for trolls.
Look you guys can write a 50 page dissertation for all I care and you’re not going to convince me that the current solution of doing nothing is effective.
This link has a creative solution that Im surprised is not more prevalent:
http://forums.icarus.nexon.net/discussion/6915/custom-chat-filter-suggestion
It hasn’t actually gotten rid of the spam, though. I imagine gold sellers are talking to all those people who aren’t aware that they can block them and as long as they get some custom, they’ll keep going. Top 11 links on Google when searching for BDO Gold sellers are gold selling sites, some of which are sponsored Google ads seeing as gold selling sites often cover multiple games for maximum profit. That’s before you get into the people buying/selling privately over hacker forums and the like. I see gold sellers on the same level as trolls in map chat – something I roll my eyes over and use the appropriate in game functions to deal with them.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind a personal filter for certain words, however part of life is dealing with people who share opinions you don’t agree on, who irritate you and who try to push things on you that you don’t want.
While on the topic of other MMOs and how they combat gold sellers, I’d just like to share these wise words from someone on another MMO’s forum:
You guys have gone through extreme lengths to try and keep out gold/silver/pearl sellers from BDO. But it hasn’t worked, they’re still here! Chat is filled with them. What you have managed to do:
-Limit player-to-player trading, a huge part of social gaming.
-Made reporting gold spammers cost a whopping 30 energy to do (you don’t even get this back if you report an actual bot, it’s just gone for being a good citizen).
-Force market place pricing (though this does help the economy to a small extent, just needs some serious fine tuning).
-Making players wait a full ten minutes just to interact with trade good vendors after logging in.
-Absurdly high tax rates for anything sold on the marketplace.
Yet none of these have stopped gold sellers from spamming the game. It’s slightly better than BnS at release but that’s mostly because of the buy to play model combined with energy costs for global chat (which I actually don’t mind, keeps chat cleaner).
All you’ve really done is put restrictions and limitations on your paying customers in what is advertised as a “sandbox” MMO.
I love this game and want to see it succeed, but you have to stop being so afraid of gold sellers. Those guys aren’t going to go away, especially when a new MMO launches. Let players report and block them then move on with their day. There’s no need to keep putting restrictions on everyone else just so the few gold sellers that exist can’t do their “business”.
It’s like trying to prevent theft in a retail store by having cops give a cavity search to everyone leaving the store. Sure it works to some extent, but you’re making it worse for the majority of your customers by doing so.
To me, that’s proof you can actually do too much to combat gold sellers sometimes.
“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.”
TLDR.
Better than sitting on hands and letting same URL that has been getting spammed for 4 years continue to be whispered. Also having an option to prevent whispers from non friends seems perfectly reasonable to me as well, if not just for spam but for trolls.
Look you guys can write a 50 page dissertation for all I care and you’re not going to convince me that the current solution of doing nothing is effective.
As has been pointed out in numerous places both here and in other threads, Anet takes this problem seriously. The simple fact that these websites are having to take convoluted measures to get around filters is proof that Anet’s doing more than “nothing”.
Flip your thoughts around for a moment. These websites are stealing money from Anet. Don’t you think they’d work kitten hard to stop them?
G R E E N E R
Look you guys can write a 50 page dissertation for all I care and you’re not going to convince me that the current solution of doing nothing is effective.
Anet IS doing something. Not doing what you suggest != doing nothing.
Do you actually think that the games haven’t tried what you’ve suggested? Of course they have. The suggestions you’ve made aren’t new and aren’t something that hasn’t been tried in different games over the years. The reason that all games have gold sellers is because what you’ve suggested hasn’t worked. There’s ways to get around them and they end up punishing players who are trying to talk and trade with each other to the point where it’s worse than the occasional gold seller whisper.
All games have gold sellers. If you think that the devs haven’t tried the known options and don’t discuss it amongst themselves then I say you’ve misunderstood the situation. If the methods anyone has thought up worked, the Devs in different games would tell each other and all games would be free of gold seller spam without making the games worse for players.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.