Guild Wars 2

I made a topic before about this without any answers or any feedback, so I thought I’d try again. The spam filter is simply out of control. With Mega Server now especially, doing big group events and talking to people outside of my group in /s and /m when suddenly I get the ’I’ve been silenced" message. Positively infuriating especially since it’ll last nearly 75% of the fight sometimes.

I’d just like to know what are the parameters, as in, what exactly triggers it. Is it the number of messages in a given time? Is it the same thing multiple times in a row (as in thanking people when down). Problem is sometimes there’s at least an entire minute between thank yous. I don’t see how that would trigger it. Please explain how this works so when I’m having a great time doing boss events or just chatting up the map it isn’t ruined completely when I suddenly get a gag order. I feel like just turning the game off when it happens. I’ll be the first to admit spam filters are necessary in these games, but I’ve never been silenced like this before.

The spam filter is just awful. I’ve said 3-4 things over the course of several minutes in /s chat (not even /m where spam might be a bigger concern…) and have found myself silenced for what feels like an eternity. It makes trying to coordinate with pugs in the Crown Pavilion rather frustrating since communication is a necessity to get gold. :/

Saying the same thing (such as telling people to “hold [dps]” in the pavilion) even a few times seems to get you silenced, meanwhile the “people” the filter is meant for easily find ways around it. When a spam filter hurts regular players more than those it’s meant to protect them from, you know you have a problem.

You need to be more creative and never use the same words in a message
more than once.
For example.
1.Hold dps
2.Stop damage
3.Don’t hit.
4.Terminate attack
5.Take a walk
6.Quaggan
7.8don77t dP11s(classic gs stuff)
And so on.

Spam filters in this game are completely uncalled for. Beyond the fact they constantly interfere with normal gameplay and non spam, they are 100% ineffective against actual spam.

When the group commander has to take time to ask other people to talk in chat because he thinks he’s near chat suppression, something is not right with your game. I can’t even send 4 mails of items to my sister if I craft her a set of armor and weaps for her alt. I get spam filtered after 2 or 3 mails. Guild leaders can’t use mail to do guild functions because it takes them 6 hours.

The spam filter should only be kicking in for serious offenders, people who are getting reported. There’s ignore for short term offenders. At the very least the suppression should be significantly loosened and put on a progressive timer. Example: in Planetside 2 if you hit team mates too much you get weapon locked. First time, yea maybe it was accidental. The lockout is like 30 seconds to get your attention. Hey, be more careful kinda thing. If you keep doing it the next one is longer and longer. To just flat out lock people out of chat and mail for like 15 minutes for doing benign obviously not spam things is absurd.

The spam filter has been complained about since launch. Everyone realizes that it is a problem for the gameplay, except it seems the developers. I have no idea why it hasn’t been changed yet in all this time.

I wish emotes would trigger the suppression message, too. I despise seeing Kitten Kaos cheers. scroll endlessly across my screen. (Note: That is a fake example name. I do not know anyone named Kitten Kaos, nor do I know if they cheer a lot.)

Yeah, I agree. Makes you feel very restricted. That and the trading post only allowing you to sell a certain amount of items at a time before also restricting you.. But I +1 you. I would like something to be done about this. We can report people for spamming if they are. Perhaps we don’t need a restrictive system like this..

The spam filter is getting annoying. Due to the megafail patch you need to taxi people into maps in order to get them to fill up for big events like Teq.

However after just filling up 2 groups I am blocked from posting on lfg due to “spamming”

The worst part is that if someone joins your group, taxis into the instance and then leaves the group before someone else joins, it cancels my lfg request and uses up 1 of my 2 posts.

Is there a way to bypass this filter or turn it off?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The spam filter is getting annoying. Due to the megafail patch you need to taxi people into maps in order to get them to fill up for big events like Teq.

However after just filling up 2 groups I am blocked from posting on lfg due to “spamming”

The worst part is that if someone joins your group, taxis into the instance and then leaves the group before someone else joins, it cancels my lfg request and uses up 1 of my 2 posts.

Is there a way to bypass this filter or turn it off?

No way to turn it off and “they” don’t care since we have been BEGGING for this to be addressed for a year and half with not a word.

It seems unlikely that there is or will be an endorsed way to bypass or disable the spam filter…because that would pretty well enable spammers to, well, spam.

How would you even implement such a workaround without ruining the filter’s function?

Anything reapeated would get in the spam filter.
So either be creative as Aneaos wrote, and/or write in-between. (eg, write other things than TY, if/when revived).
Avoid pinging without writing things around (eg: “[Waypoint]” vs “go [Waypoint]”, changing the “go” for other things.
Change the lenght of the messages – like when giving instructions pre-events, write some 2 lines, some 1 line, etc.

As far as emotes go, you can change your chat settings so you don’t see them.

kaat.8237:

As far as emotes go, you can change your chat settings so you don’t see them.

Well, as an occasional roleplayer, that’s not super helpful to me.

The best way is to vary up what you’re saying. Don’t use the same words but have the same meaning. If you are using the same words then mispell them. Such as:

LFG
looking for group
I would like a party
Invite for taxi please
loking fore groupe
look to find groop

Let’s talk about chat suppression.

I’m a Tequatl organizer. I lead the main zerg. Because it’s impossible to get everyone in the map into TS, I say a lot of stuff in map or say chat. Things like “Fingers up!” or “Cleansing on me.” I have to keep these short and quick and I often have to say them repeatedly throughout the fight (particularly those two.) And, very quickly, I’m suppressed. Lately it’s happened every single time.

This prevents me from doing my job as a commander. Before the fight I tell the map “I will say X when Y needs to happen,” and then come the fight itself I can’t say anything. It’s incredibly frustrating.

This system is not working. It punishes players for trying to coordinate. I can’t get all players in TS. I can’t use squad chat because I’m leading more than 50 people and players don’t know what squads are in the first place. Map and say chat are my only options, and I’m punished for trying to use them.

So please use this thread to provide suggestions as to how to fix it. Personally I think it could be tied to the commander rating/vetting system that’s been proposed for a while. The more +1s a commander gets, the higher their suppression threshold. What do ya’ll think?

Edited for conciseness.

I agree and feel your pain.

I have not lead anything as large as a Teq group, but even in dungeons and open-world it gets frustrating.

I would like to see a a separate chat output all together for leaders of groups. A leader specific font color or on-screen display of said leaders chat.

Out of curiosity, does (Commander) Squad Chat have spam suppression?

I’ve had this happen on dozens of occasions, trying to help organize for boss hunts, give holiday advice (when every 2 seconds someone asks the same question), and deal with similar events where you need to give the same advice as new people arrive on the map with old questions.

I >think<, but have not confirmed, that varying your messages decreases the rate of suppression. It will still happen, but you might be able to get two or three more messages before the anti-spam eats your legitimate posts. It certainly seems to work that way — but there might be other hidden factors distorting what I’m seeing.

I believe commanders get chat suppressed too — I’m not a commander (I’ve got too many alts to be able to spare 100g), but I seem to remember seeing commanders complain about it in game.

Frankly it’s hideously frustrating. I’ve gotten chat suppressed for holding conversations.

Its funny you say its used for short posts yet people can and often troll using /emote commands because they don’t get suppressed for those. I’ve come across the suppression problem alot. In WvW team chat can’t be suppressed so I’ve started using that for wvw commanding. Yet there is no team chat in open world. And as for the squad chat I don’t think I’ve ever bothered using that, and if theres difficulty getting people into a TS channel do you think there wouldn’t be the same difficulty getting people into a squad channel? To be honest I don’t think I’ve seen a single troll using /say or /map. the only trolls I see spamming chat are spamming with /emote.

Quoting myself from the post I made earlier:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Hey there, Anet.

At the moment, we already have enough problems with community coordination due to

• always full and never empty maps in megaserver system,
• people with language chat filters turned on and unaware of its existence,
• lackluster Commander system,
• absence of in-game voice communication (not happening for understandable reasons),
• message suppression.

All other things aside, the last issue is getting more of a problem since you’re delivering us more content which requires coordination, but you’re suppressing us while we’re trying to actually coordinate – thus playing it the way you intended!

This has happened before at Tequatl and Wurm, but you most likely had people on Teamspeak there… now it’s Living Story full of random people from different servers. We need to communicate there if you want us to play it your way, and calling out thing like “Conditions now!” or “Stop conditions, DPS!” or “Turret here!” or “Throw seeds!” or “Do not throw seeds under the boss, #;&!:!!” is part of it.

I tried being a turret caller yesterday at Boom-Boom… and I got suppressed really fast. I then had to spend crucial time to misspell the “trurrat” word each time instead of DPSing… And still got suppressed eventually.

So, what I suggest doing regarding message suppression:

• Raise substantially or lift suppression threshold for areas which require coordination: Teq, Wurm, Marionette, Assault Knights, Hologram, Pavillion etc.
• Raise substantially or lift suppression threshold for players who have a Commander tag acquired regardless of it being active or not, because detagging is often crucial to avoid the lemming effect.

To further facilitate communication you also can:

• Turn off language filter by default. People will tell each other you can turn it on eventually.
• Provide Commanders with more abilities, like assigning sub-commanders (would help in events which require either zero or 5-6 tags – see Mario, Pavillion) for a limited time even being detagged themselves,
• like different colors for commander tag icons,
• like pre-set commander chat commands (“Turret!”, “DPS!”, “Repair!”, “Build!”, “Stack on me!”, “Fire fields! No light fields!”, “Blast water fields!” etc.) which could be assigned to buttons (numpad?) and rapidly delivered to players without having to type them each time, especially if Latin is not your main keyboard layout.
• Think of a system to temporarily demote people who tag up when they shouldn’t (and thus drive away the lemming part of players from correct objectives); it may be a kind of very transparent or bad-colored tag as a semi-measure.
• Think of reworking the squad system.
• Introduce a user-side right-click anti-spam report system which would activate a message suppression algorithm (no, not just suppress everything) to deal with real chat abusing (preferably usable on emotes as well).
• Lift mail restrictions on things like potions in parties and message restrictions in non-local and non-map channels.

Unfortunately, I do not see the situation changing, as there are enough people in the community who at the same are a) used to be carried, to go AFK, to pull mobs while tagging all bosses, to leech and b) aggressively jealous of people who’re spending their in-game money and time to herd cats organise things so that these very players get their Gold runs and Teq chests.

The only real “fix” to the system is guild-spawned instances where everyone knows what to do and is on TS (and is kicked if found leeching or griefing), so you don’t have to type anything in the chat in the first place.

Message suppression seems to be incredibly broken, too, at least for me. Just two days ago I was running in Boss Blitz, we got about a dozen gold runs before I had to go. Now, I was speaking simultaneously in /guild, /party, /map, and /say. For some reason, despite only having called a boss’s health in /map a few minutes ago, then shouted one “hold!” in /say… and ten minutes later, on the next run, I get message suppression when trying to speak in either. This lasted for an hour, right up until the time I had to log off. Couldn’t say a word. I wasn’t on my commander toon (and even if I had been, understandably wouldn’t have had my tag up anyway) but still, this is really odd. It still let me use /p and /g, where I was actively discussing with friends between the boss runs. This has happened before, too – randomly suppressing me for half an hour when I literally only said one, medium-length, correctly punctuated and in no way offensive sentence in /m.

But even when “working as intended”, this is really an issue. Running Teq yesterday, our commander got suppressed and had to speak through their guildie or someone – happily this was during the set-up and didn’t hit during the actual fight.

Revamp the PvE commander tags! Give us features to better organize big zergs!

Also, whats up with the language filter? Why is it enabled by default? That’s the most annoying and organization-breaking thing I’ve ever seen in a game. Thanks…
There are still dozens of people that have no idea about it. Even commanders!
Alot of commanders are complaining that guys around never listen.
Well, if they can’t see what you are writing them..

Edit: added more rants

Spam filter is too poor.

Everyday I receive scam message from “gold sellers”.

When an stranger /w many text to you – it’s 100% scam/spam

endirasae.3015:

Out of curiosity, does (Commander) Squad Chat have spam suppression?

It does not. However, squads can only have a max of 50 players, which isn’t conducive if the commander needs to frequently communicate with an entire map of players (which is what the OP needs to do in order to command Teq).

I don’t even understand the point of message suppression. It doesn’t stop gold sellers from spamming, and if a normal player is abusing chat… → right click → block.

The only purpose of the suppression as far as I can tell is to limit map coordination.

There’s a million threads about the spam filter already and not a single reply from the devs, as far as I can see. The feature is beyond annoying and unnecessary. Even trying to vary your messages doesn’t always help if you get silenced for 10 minutes straight after posting three different messages within 5 minutes in an event area.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I don’t even understand the point of message suppression. It doesn’t stop gold sellers from spamming, and if a normal player is abusing chat… -> right click -> block.

The only purpose of the suppression as far as I can tell is to limit map coordination.

The right click block thing doesn’t work on guys spamming /emotes. You can’t right click on a name from a /emote entry. As for the gold sellers, well anyone in their right mind already block-reports them. The concept behind suppression got lost a long time ago. Now its just there to annoy and harass normal players trying to coordinate the player community.

unverified.9608:

I >think<, but have not confirmed, that varying your messages decreases the rate of suppression. It will still happen, but you might be able to get two or three more messages before the anti-spam eats your legitimate posts. It certainly seems to work that way — but there might be other hidden factors distorting what I’m seeing.

Pretty sure you’re correct. The suppression of my messages during Teq fight appear to have less to do with their length and more to do with the fact that I’m saying the same couple of things over and over.

As far as squads…I’ve already been through that nonsense with Marionette. I’m a PvE commander. Most people don’t even know what a squad is, much less have any desire or incentive to join one. My dedicated guildies will join, sure. But getting the randoms in is like herding cats. They’d rather not hear me than take two seconds to right click my icon.

And yes, squads are limited to 50. I have more people than that in the main zerg alone, never mind including all of the defense teams.

As far as emotes, well, let’s just say that there’s a reason I disabled that chat a long, long time ago.

Manoa.5897:

endirasae.3015:

Out of curiosity, does (Commander) Squad Chat have spam suppression?

It does not. However, squads can only have a max of 50 players, which isn’t conducive if the commander needs to frequently communicate with an entire map of players (which is what the OP needs to do in order to command Teq).

Gotcha, thanks.

I wonder if Anet shouldn’t just revise that 50-to-a-squad cap then…

Raising the cap on the # of players per squad is a start but it wouldn’t fix the fact that squads appear to be a foreign concept to a majority of players, particularly in PvE. They are not introduced or explained to players at all; even purchasing a comm tag gives you zero instruction on how the things work.

And like I said before: herding cats. The people I can get into my squad are the ones that I can get into TS. I don’t need them in the squad; I need the ones who aren’t in TS. The ones I have to use map/say chat to (fail to) talk to.

As well, it doesn’t really fix the core issue. As others noted, message suppression happens across the game, to commanders and non-commanders alike. Even if it were a commander-only problem, often these events require multiple commanders, and joining the squad of one prevents you from hearing squad chat (or seeing the tags) of any others. So those other commanders have to use map/say to reach you…and we’re back to the original issue.

Has it gotten worse? It seems like it has

yeah its very annoying.. can’t mail more than 2 ppl at once (have to wait like 5mins to send to another one) and sometimes i wont be able to repost on LFG, it bugs out and even if i wait 20min it doesnt go away, and it just wont let me post its weird… any1 else get this?

Yeah my post today was about the lfg suppression actually. Inspired me to make this as I can’t advertise my party.

It is defenitely worse.

Kalarchis.8635:

Raising the cap on the # of players per squad is a start but it wouldn’t fix the fact that squads appear to be a foreign concept to a majority of players, particularly in PvE. They are not introduced or explained to players at all; even purchasing a comm tag gives you zero instruction on how the things work.

That’s true enough. I remember having to use the wiki to figure out how to use my tag — the game doesn’t even tell you how to turn it on!

As well, it doesn’t really fix the core issue. As others noted, message suppression happens across the game, to commanders and non-commanders alike. Even if it were a commander-only problem, often these events require multiple commanders, and joining the squad of one prevents you from hearing squad chat (or seeing the tags) of any others. So those other commanders have to use map/say to reach you…and we’re back to the original issue.

Also true enough.

I don’t know how anet would fix this without removing the spam stuff completely. As with so many things, the mentality appears to be a case of “In order to stop people from doing this, non-offenders must also suffer.” :/

I hate how there’s a certain key combination (either alt + click or ctrl + click) that automatically broadcasts an action in chat, instead of just putting it in the chat bar. I cant count how many times I’ve tried to use a block, only to die and discover that I’m now silence from map chat because I said “Flanking Strike!” inadvertently 5 times in a row.

Limiting the communication between players in a mmo by chat suppression doesn’t prevent advertisers-worth-to-report from using the chat. It’s the opposite: Thanks to chat suppression the map chats in general where no world event has to be coordinated are nearly empty, outdated messages are viewable over a very long time because either no one posts or cannot post anymore. Goldseller advertisings should be moved away as fast as possible but this cannot happen. The ingame chat doesn’t feel like a chat, it’s more like a forum (and now with chat filter enabled it’s even worse), where an answer to a question from 30 min earlier is possible and there are no other posts (visible) between question and answer. oO

never encountered similar problems

The gold spam was getting worse, everyone complained about how bad the spamming has gotten.

They took extreme measures to remove it, now we are complaining some more.

endirasae.3015:

Manoa.5897:

endirasae.3015:

Out of curiosity, does (Commander) Squad Chat have spam suppression?

It does not. However, squads can only have a max of 50 players, which isn’t conducive if the commander needs to frequently communicate with an entire map of players (which is what the OP needs to do in order to command Teq).

Gotcha, thanks.

I wonder if Anet shouldn’t just revise that 50-to-a-squad cap then…

They’ve increased squad capacity once already. It used to max out at 30 players. Maybe they’ll consider increasing the cap again.

Though it does beg the question…if everyone (or the vast majority of players) on the map is there for a mega world event that requires a high level of coordination, why should we force everyone to join a squad when ANet could just lighten up the message suppression for /map and /say instead? (it’s easier and more efficient for commanders to use /map or /say in those instances instead of herding a whole map of cats to join their squad)

You have to vary your wording. One and two word posts are pretty much guaranteed to get you suppressed. But even if you vary your wording, there’s still a time factor. If post too many messages to /s or /m chat in a given period of time, you’ll get suppressed. Even if you haven’t repeated your exact words.
Maybe “complex” events should spawn their own, temporary chat channel. Which would close down once the event is over. Most people would just listen, but you could type “/E” or something to post to the event channel. People with the event channel turned off would not get credit for the event.
Or they need to enhance commander functionality, and make squad membership mandatory for “complex” events.
Anet has made events that require coordination, but they don’t allow for that level of communication without voice chat.(And there is no bundled, or even official GW voice chat.)

Spam filter is a bit harsh. I accidentally linked a WP 3 times in a row the other day because my finger was on the wrong key. I ended up suppressed from saying anything for as long as I was in that map.

Two Left Hands? Who cares!

I foresee a new thread appearing on these forums the same week they decide to remove the spam filter from chat.

OMG the SPAM!
Pleeeeaaaaasssseeeee do something about this, ANET!

Draknar.5748:

The gold spam was getting worse, everyone complained about how bad the spamming has gotten.

They took extreme measures to remove it, now we are complaining some more.

Extreme measures indeed. Too extreme obviously.

Draknar.5748:

The gold spam was getting worse, everyone complained about how bad the spamming has gotten.

They took extreme measures to remove it, now we are complaining some more.

I didn’t ever see anything stating that they’ve taken new measures to stop gold spammers. The suppression thing has been like this since I started playing.

Guhracie.3419:

Draknar.5748:

The gold spam was getting worse, everyone complained about how bad the spamming has gotten.

They took extreme measures to remove it, now we are complaining some more.

I didn’t ever see anything stating that they’ve taken new measures to stop gold spammers. The suppression thing has been like this since I started playing.

It is at least 10X worse now than it was in the beginning.

Asgaeroth.6427:

Spam filters in this game are completely uncalled for. Beyond the fact they constantly interfere with normal gameplay and non spam, they are 100% ineffective against actual spam. .

Spam filters work great for the gold sellers. No spam to little spam filters would be like gw1. Where local chat would be flooded with spammers. If you feel its bad now, you haven’t seen what flooding is capable of with no spam filters.

i aggree i got a black mark for calling someone neurotic….they are real wimps here on the forums =( i dont understand why they are so strict its not doing them any favors

Duke Nukem.6783:

i aggree i got a black mark for calling someone neurotic….they are real wimps here on the forums =( i dont understand why they are so strict its not doing them any favors

It’s the nature of the beast.