Guild Wars 2

We want to hold an officers meeting and in-game mail a short message to all guild officers with itinerary, date and time. The way things currently work the guild member trying to send the in-game mailer out has to send them one at a time and every 2-3 sends they will be blocked with a “can not send due to excessive sending” message. The is absolutely no reason why the e-mail spam filter can’t make exceptions when it sees the mail is going from guild member to guild member or at least when message is going from a higher privileged guild member to a lower privileged guild member. A have a degree in Computer Science and many years programming. This should be very trivial. Not being able to do this is infuriating and can cause problems (e.g. some officers end up receiving notices much later than others). There is no reason we should be required to rely on third-party software and services for guild communication

Here are some ideas to improve the in game tools for communication

• Make exceptions for all restrictions on guild member to guild member communications. Spam filter should be off. If a guild officer is spamming guild members that is a situation the guild can deal with. The member can choose to leave the guild if the leadership doesn’t take care of the problem. Lifting the spam restriction makes sense for guild member to guild member communication

• Allow guild members to send gold to each other without restriction or fear of being banned. This will allow guild leaders and officers to collect in game gold as contribution to third-party and first party services the guild wants. For example, collecting contributions for private guild tournament entrance fees, custom arenas, etc…

• Events and timers that can be set by guildies. This would give officers the ability to create mini games and to broadcast “An event is about to begin” messages to all guild members..

• This last one is a reach, but would be nice to have. Provide guild website hosting option though ArenaNet (something similar to GuildWork.com but first party). This could be something we could pay for with gems to maintain and another revenue stream.

I get the same frustrations in a party. If I want to send out a potion or whatever to my party I can not do it. After the second one something decides I am spamming. Even going slow I run into it so the limit must be set to something insane.

I also run into it in chat. I was coordinating an event so was obviously using /map. The system has decided sometimes that I am spamming because I was issuing instructions too fast. Anyone who has ever had that happen to them know how incredibly frustrating it is for both sides as suddenly the commander shuts up in mid-whatever and does not say anything for a bit.

The annoying thing is these things are there to stop goldselling bots and such. Which would know the limits and skirt around them.

It’s all there because of gold sellers. If you allow guildies unrestricted mailing then gold sellers could invite gold buyers into their guild and send without restrictions.

It’s very annoying though, I send stuff between my accounts all the time and keep hitting the limits.

Look, I’ve played SWTOR and Neverwinter. I’ve seen what happens when communication restrictions are loosened on F2Ps. YOU DO NOT WANT THAT.

I’ve had exactly one goldspam message sent to me since signing up on the first day of F2P. One. That’s more than worth a lockdown on F2Ps. If they want communication options, they can do like I did and plunk down their cash.

But what the hey, I’ll go through the OP’s suggestions point-by-point.

• What you’re asking for would require more maintenance and new code added to a feature that simply doesn’t warrant it. The in-game mailing system is one of the last things that should require regular maintenance, and it should NEVER require new code. Anything that requires more maintenance without a tangible financial return = bad in the coding world.

• Absolutely not. Allowing indiscriminate transfer of gold between guildmates opens up a prime vector of attack for goldspammers by giving them plausible cover for their actions. By not having an environment ripe for abuse, ANet helps cover our behinds as well as their own.

• Basically, what you’re asking for here is to give some admin powers to regular players. I trust I don’t have to tell you what opening that particular Pandora’s Box means on the security side of things, given your degree and experience. (But I will if you like!)

And finally:

• I’m glad you at least acknowledge it’s a reach, but come on, man. Do you honestly expect ANet to be chomping at the bit to get into yet another business model? That would require either hiring more personnel (and the payroll increases that come with that – by the way, I’d like to mention that us players are the primary source of ANet’s income so that means we’d be seeing passthrough) or taking existing personnel and repurposing them (taking dev time and ability away from the game itself). Enjin, GuildWork, hell, even Facebook/Google+/Whatever Else There Is In Social Media are all in the game and all much more well-established. There’s no point in ANet expending the time or manpower when these options (and many others) already exist, many for free.

I appreciate that you’re having a hard time communicating with some F2Pers, but honestly? That’s on the F2Pers for not paying in. (And no, I’m not going to feel sorry for any poor people playing. I was poor too. Get paid if you wanna chat, F2Pers.) -Sid

Sidenti.6035:

Look, I’ve played SWTOR and Neverwinter. I’ve seen what happens when communication restrictions are loosened on F2Ps. YOU DO NOT WANT THAT.

I’ve had exactly one goldspam message sent to me since signing up on the first day of F2P. One. That’s more than worth a lockdown on F2Ps. If they want communication options, they can do like I did and plunk down their cash.

This has nothing to do with F2Ps and nothing I suggest would enable gold spammers. I am suggesting a tool to enable guild officers to send out mass mails to guild members. Bearing in mind ArenaNet logs every mail transaction and can query those transactions (e.g. “show me table of all transactions where WarriorJohn.2352 sent duplicate message where recipient was not a guild member”) Technically this is very trivial task with relational databases systems. Trivial to sniff out abuses and trivial to ban them though automated scripts.

But what the hey, I’ll go through the OP’s suggestions point-by-point.

• What you’re asking for would require more maintenance and new code added to a feature that simply doesn’t warrant it. The in-game mailing system is one of the last things that should require regular maintenance, and it should NEVER require new code. Anything that requires more maintenance without a tangible financial return = bad in the coding world.

With all due respect, if the in game mail system can not facilitate the player base then it should absolutely be given attention just as any other feature in the game. Your opinion on it is noted and perhaps shared by others, but you are not considering the position of someone trying to communicate with their guild and the utility of such a feature (especially given the importance of guilds in HoT). You also lack the technical knowledge to consider how trivial of a task this would be. So you’re not even coming into the discussion from a position of understanding the real impact in terms of resource effort it would be. I am in a position to generalize that given my experience and background in Computer Science and Software Engineering. What are you bringing to the discussion other than a brash opinion that is apparently founded in ignorance of the technical nuance and you are relating everything to some experience with gold spamming in another game (which is off point… again guild officers having additional features to mass mail only guild members does not facilitate gold spammers in any significant rational way). It appears you are simply replying to this thread to be argumentative, even competitive with a misunderstanding of some of the core request and ignorance of implementation effort.

• Absolutely not. Allowing indiscriminate transfer of gold between guildmates opens up a prime vector of attack for goldspammers by giving them plausible cover for their actions. By not having an environment ripe for abuse, ANet helps cover our behinds as well as their own.

Again, this is an easy nightly report audit done through automated scripting. Total effort required to implement less than a week or two to go from zero code to fully tested and ready to be patched by a competent developer. I am generalizing but I have dealt with similar systems and can infer a ballpark estimate on this. How would this work? Nightly the script could make this query “show me all accounts that have gold transfer transactions where the majority of those transactions are from users new to gold sellers guild, where gold seller and and guild buyer are in the same guild”. This is rough pseudo code for standard query syntax used against relational databases systems. Since I’ve been polling ArenaNet’s job posting for the last several years I can tell you they are using some standard storage that would make this a trivial task. I could go on but I don’t think you’re coming at this from a point to have to technical discussion on it because you are ignorant in this area.

• Basically, what you’re asking for here is to give some admin powers to regular players. I trust I don’t have to tell you what opening that particular Pandora’s Box means on the security side of things, given your degree and experience. (But I will if you like!)

With this bullet point you actually prove that you don’t even grasp that I am asking for. When it comes to mass mailing, I am asking for officers in the guild to have a sort of CC capability to send a single message to all members of the guild that hold a certain guild rank.

And finally:

• I’m glad you at least acknowledge it’s a reach, but come on, man. Do you honestly expect ANet to be chomping at the bit to get into yet another business model? That would require either hiring more personnel (and the payroll increases that come with that – by the way, I’d like to mention that us players are the primary source of ANet’s income so that means we’d be seeing passthrough) or taking existing personnel and repurposing them (taking dev time and ability away from the game itself). Enjin, GuildWork, hell, even Facebook/Google+/Whatever Else There Is In Social Media are all in the game and all much more well-established. There’s no point in ANet expending the time or manpower when these options (and many others) already exist, many for free.

I appreciate that you’re having a hard time communicating with some F2Pers, but honestly? That’s on the F2Pers for not paying in. (And no, I’m not going to feel sorry for any poor people playing. I was poor too. Get paid if you wanna chat, F2Pers.) -Sid

Actually with all the money coming in from the Heart of Thorns expansion it would make sense for ArenaNet to consider additional revenue streams. Your response on this shows you clearly are clueless of the value of expanding to new but related markets when the time is right. We are near a product release (HoT) meaning the product is going to go into maintenance which means in the very near future resources will likely be freed up work on other things. The website is largely the same it was at launch. I don’t know the size of the web team, but offering a guild site hosting services could be a great way to spend some of the HoT profits and invest them into a new revenue stream. Your F2pers comments were entirely off base, you have no technical knowledge on the subject at hand so you’ve made some grossly exaggerated assumptions on effort required to implement what I’m asking for. What’s more, you’ve proven through several comments that you didn’t even have a good grasp on what I was requesting (well, not the more points anyway) before you responded.

I imagine you’ll post some rebuttal, that’s fine. You’re free to but I won’t be wasting any more time on a response. There’s just not enough to work with.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Sidenti.6035:

Look, I’ve played SWTOR and Neverwinter. I’ve seen what happens when communication restrictions are loosened on F2Ps. YOU DO NOT WANT THAT.

I’ve had exactly one goldspam message sent to me since signing up on the first day of F2P. One. That’s more than worth a lockdown on F2Ps. If they want communication options, they can do like I did and plunk down their cash.

This has nothing to do with F2Ps and nothing I suggest would enable gold spammers. I am suggesting a tool to enable guild officers to send out mass mails to guild members. Bearing in mind ArenaNet logs every mail transaction and can query those transactions (e.g. “show me table of all transactions where WarriorJohn.2352 sent duplicate message where recipient was not a guild member”) Technically this is very trivial task with relational databases systems. Trivial to sniff out abuses and trivial to ban them though automated scripts.

But what the hey, I’ll go through the OP’s suggestions point-by-point.

• What you’re asking for would require more maintenance and new code added to a feature that simply doesn’t warrant it. The in-game mailing system is one of the last things that should require regular maintenance, and it should NEVER require new code. Anything that requires more maintenance without a tangible financial return = bad in the coding world.

With all due respect, if the in game mail system can not facilitate the player base then it should absolutely be given attention just as any other feature in the game. Your opinion on it is noted and perhaps shared by others, but you are not considering the position of someone trying to communicate with their guild and the utility of such a feature (especially given the importance of guilds in HoT). You also lack the technical knowledge to consider how trivial of a task this would be. So you’re not even coming into the discussion from a position of understanding the real impact in terms of resource effort it would be. I am in a position to generalize that given my experience and background in Computer Science and Software Engineering. What are you bringing to the discussion other than a brash opinion that is apparently founded in ignorance of the technical nuance and you are relating everything to some experience with gold spamming in another game (which is off point… again guild officers having additional features to mass mail only guild members does not facilitate gold spammers in any significant rational way). It appears you are simply replying to this thread to be argumentative, even competitive with a misunderstanding of some of the core request and ignorance of implementation effort.

• Absolutely not. Allowing indiscriminate transfer of gold between guildmates opens up a prime vector of attack for goldspammers by giving them plausible cover for their actions. By not having an environment ripe for abuse, ANet helps cover our behinds as well as their own.

Again, this is an easy nightly report audit done through automated scripting. Total effort required to implement less than a week or two to go from zero code to fully tested and ready to be patched by a competent developer. I am generalizing but I have dealt with similar systems and can infer a ballpark estimate on this. How would this work? Nightly the script could make this query “show me all accounts that have gold transfer transactions where the majority of those transactions are from users new to gold sellers guild, where gold seller and and guild buyer are in the same guild”. This is rough pseudo code for standard query syntax used against relational databases systems. Since I’ve been polling ArenaNet’s job posting for the last several years I can tell you they are using some standard storage that would make this a trivial task. I could go on but I don’t think you’re coming at this from a point to have to technical discussion on it because you are ignorant in this area.

• Basically, what you’re asking for here is to give some admin powers to regular players. I trust I don’t have to tell you what opening that particular Pandora’s Box means on the security side of things, given your degree and experience. (But I will if you like!)

With this bullet point you actually prove that you don’t even grasp that I am asking for. When it comes to mass mailing, I am asking for officers in the guild to have a sort of CC capability to send a single message to all members of the guild that hold a certain guild rank.

And finally:

• I’m glad you at least acknowledge it’s a reach, but come on, man. Do you honestly expect ANet to be chomping at the bit to get into yet another business model? That would require either hiring more personnel (and the payroll increases that come with that – by the way, I’d like to mention that us players are the primary source of ANet’s income so that means we’d be seeing passthrough) or taking existing personnel and repurposing them (taking dev time and ability away from the game itself). Enjin, GuildWork, hell, even Facebook/Google+/Whatever Else There Is In Social Media are all in the game and all much more well-established. There’s no point in ANet expending the time or manpower when these options (and many others) already exist, many for free.

I appreciate that you’re having a hard time communicating with some F2Pers, but honestly? That’s on the F2Pers for not paying in. (And no, I’m not going to feel sorry for any poor people playing. I was poor too. Get paid if you wanna chat, F2Pers.) -Sid

Actually with all the money coming in from the Heart of Thorns expansion it would make sense for ArenaNet to consider additional revenue streams. Your response on this shows you clearly are clueless of the value of expanding to new but related markets when the time is right. We are near a product release (HoT) meaning the product is going to go into maintenance which means in the very near future resources will likely be freed up work on other things. The website is largely the same it was at launch. I don’t know the size of the web team, but offering a guild site hosting services could be a great way to spend some of the HoT profits and invest them into a new revenue stream. Your F2pers comments were entirely off base, you have no technical knowledge on the subject at hand so you’ve made some grossly exaggerated assumptions on effort required to implement what I’m asking for. What’s more, you’ve proven through several comments that you didn’t even have a good grasp on what I was requesting (well, not the more points anyway) before you responded.

I imagine you’ll post some rebuttal, that’s fine. You’re free to but I won’t be wasting any more time on a response. There’s just not enough to work with.

Holy crap, you like to type. In order, by bullet point (but what’s the point since you’d rather just walltext and leave, eh?):

• Yeah, Neverwinter had automated scripts like that too. You know what happened? People figured out how to abuse them. Go figure, right? I mean, who would have seen THAT coming?

• Look, it’s becoming pretty clear pretty fast that you don’t understand how abusable an automated script can be. “Automated”, to a gold spammer, means “unmonitored, predictable and easily circumvented”. But perhaps you have zero experience on how gold spammers operate and are therefore ignorant of these risks. (The other possibility is just too cynical to consider.)

• Ah ah ah. You’re trying to assign my words to something completely different. When I said you were wanting to open Pandora’s Box, it was in regard to your quote here: “Events and timers that can be set by guildies. This would give officers the ability to create mini games and to broadcast “An event is about to begin” messages to all guild members..” If you have the background you claim in programming, you know what I said is correct. Giving players that ability is giving them at least some abilities that are currently reserved for admins. Your lack of computer security knowledge is APPALLING.

• Yeah, ANet’s already got their eggs in the esports basket. Maybe you haven’t heard (or don’t read Forbes): http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardprocter/2015/10/14/guild-wars-2-arenanet-pro-league/ So, yeah. There’s where they went in that direction. But I’m sure that, with them sinking money into this new endeavor, that they totally have time and manpower to get into something that, as I pointed out (but perhaps not well enough to get through to someone like you), is already saturated with other, more-established companies offering what you’re asking – and for free, no less.

Oh, right. You did the walltext thing and bailed. Forget I spoke. ;-) -Sid