Guild Wars 2

Dear Anet team,

EotM is a great feature, but as we all now a good lead is essential for wvw to be fun. Since there is no such thing as voice chat in the game and there is no official TS provided for EotM (which would make little sense, since colors change weekly), chat is the only way for a commander to lead. The problem is the spamblock, which makes it almost impossible to lead in open combat. After STACK, MIGHT, 3, 2 there only comes your message was suppressed due to excessive messaging. This means not the quality of the commander, the skill or the discipline of the players is what turns the tide in battle, but only number. This is very sad and makes EotM a dull, stupid farmrun all day long, where 2 of 3 colors won’t have fun, since players get demotivated by the mass of one color, and their zergs shrink.
And yes, it is in fact possible to lead decently, make clever manouvers in battle and win against an enemy that outnumbers you 2 to 1, but only until spamblock strikes the commander.
This issue limits the fun of this game mode and keeps it’s potential at bay. So please dear developers, remove the spamblock for commanders in EotM. Do it at least for the first commander that switches on the commander badge, so poor players won’t be exposed to the terrible “risk” of spammers. I think taking such an outrageous and keen risk in changing your absolutely genious and necessary spamming restrictions for EotM commanders will be worth it because all players who play EotM will benefit from it.

The message suppression is quite draconic, and annoying. It’s not only in wvw, but also in pve. For example, when fighting the marionette, commanders would often update the other lanes on how many people they had. And quite often people would get blocked while trying to sort out their numbers.

It also happens very often when hosting community events. We have to broadcast a lot of information to players, and we often have to repeat things for people (like the TS channel, and the website they can go to, to find information about future events). It’s terribly frustrating to have the event host be blocked from talking for a very long time, while he is playing a quiz with players.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The message suppression is quite draconic, and annoying. It’s not only in wvw, but also in pve. For example, when fighting the marionette, commanders would often update the other lanes on how many people they had. And quite often people would get blocked while trying to sort out their numbers.

It also happens very often when hosting community events. We have to broadcast a lot of information to players, and we often have to repeat things for people (like the TS channel, and the website they can go to, to find information about future events). It’s terribly frustrating to have the event host be blocked from talking for a very long time, while he is playing a quiz with players.

It’s also horrible because 8 messages in 2 minutes can set it off. I had it happen while explaining the Knight boss mechanics in Lion’s Arch.

That’s exactly what I am talking about!!! Anet makes caring for the community, explaining things to others or organising the headless masses a pain in the … oh wait hopefully I’m not getting forum-blocked for using swearwords.
The problem is: I don’t see any reason for these spam restrictions. There has been no excessive spamming or chat abuse ever in this game that would justify such harsh and “draconic” chat restrictions. They have been in place since release. And if you now say, those restrictions justify themselves by having almost no spam in the game, you are making it very, very easy for yourself.
The current anti spam system is in fact very effective, as effective as hunting a mosquito in your own bedroom with a flamethrower. I don’t understand how the programmers have not come up with an “intelligent” way of spamreduction, instead of counting just messages per minute. I could program such a spamblock, seriously…
Can everyone who reads this and agrees please /sign that something has to be changed with the spamblock system?

• Agree and Signed

• Totally agreed, and triple signed.

I’m not signing, because petition threads get deleted. I am however agreeing. We shouldn’t get suppressed in useful communications or mailing gifts to guild mates.

I agree with this, because I think the spamblock is utterly out of any useful control. I’ve often been blocked for ‘excessive messaging’ after only two or three COMPLETELY DIFFERENT comments…occasionally I’ve found I’m blocked when I try to make my very first comment!! Ridiculous. And for commanders to be blocked is just insane. I naively assumed commanders would somehow be exempt from spamblocking. Crazy.

Just say the necessary things

And
Dont
Type
Like
This
Because
supressed

But instead type like this;

Stack up and Buff – Push after Veil infront in 1…2…
NOW

Also,switching from Say to Teamchat alot helps in reducing this,since your not “spamming” one channel.

Caedmon.6798:

Just say the necessary things

And
Dont
Type
Like
This
Because
supressed

But instead type like this;

Stack up and Buff – Push after Veil infront in 1…2…
NOW

Also,switching from Say to Teamchat alot helps in reducing this,since your not “spamming” one channel.

That is indeed a good tip, but believe me I tried everything to avoid spamblock and you won’t work your way around, no matter how. Of course I can reduce communication to an absolute minimum, but then again, this makes my role obsolete, we are back at the stupid, brainless farmtrain, who behaves like a flock of hysteric chicken in battle and not like a raid.
The biggest problem is the blacklist feature of spamblock. If you got spamblocked once, you will much more easily be spamblocked in the following hour or so.

I remember trying to lead the Lyssa event -

[Seal of Union] next
[Spark of Ilya] next
[Song of Lyss] needs defense
[Seal of Union] needs defense
surpressed
surpressed
surpressed
event chains failed

Not the best way to promote cooperation in an MMO.

Krumbotor.9064:

Caedmon.6798:

Just say the necessary things

And
Dont
Type
Like
This
Because
supressed

But instead type like this;

Stack up and Buff – Push after Veil infront in 1…2…
NOW

Also,switching from Say to Teamchat alot helps in reducing this,since your not “spamming” one channel.

That is indeed a good tip, but believe me I tried everything to avoid spamblock and you won’t work your way around, no matter how. Of course I can reduce communication to an absolute minimum, but then again, this makes my role obsolete, we are back at the stupid, brainless farmtrain, who behaves like a flock of hysteric chicken in battle and not like a raid.
The biggest problem is the blacklist feature of spamblock. If you got spamblocked once, you will much more easily be spamblocked in the following hour or so.

Ya i know,it’s incredbily annoying and usually pops in at the Worst possible times,im not disagreeing with you at all on this point.But anet is anet ,and this has been proposed Many times before…so untill they fix this, ( Just allow people with a tag up to type 5 – 10 more sentances before the supress kicks in,or reset the timer on it sooner,however it works ) there rlly isn’t anything else to do besides the things i mentioned,or use TS,but not all pugs will join anyway so youre prob stuck with having to type anyways…

I’ve been blocked for over 10 minutes for saying “Thanks” twice.
Yeah, I think this system needs to be improved.

Yes, I see how it can make things hard for commanders. As it was said before, the system works pretty well indeed (see the very low spam rate in game). However, the threshold for it seems be too low.

Some days ago I was trying to test some chat link codes from http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chat_link_format/0x03_codes just to confirm if the info on wiki was right. I pasted 2 (one per once) of those codes successfully but when testing the 3rd I got the “suppressed” warning. How could only 3 different messages be considered spamming? From what I understand, spamming is repetitive and annoying message (stressing on “repetitive”) and I would take as repetitive if it happens 5, 10 or more times and if the exact same message or similar.

Indeed the devs deserve some compliments for this system as it’s working more than expected. But it’s clear it needs some tweaking.

I was being outright sarcastic, when I was praising the effectiveness of this system. It is absolutely over the top and exaggerated. I don’t see any reason for it.
I see even a major design failure in the whole structure of the game, with such a spamblock system: This is a MULTIPLAYER game, multiplayer means that people have to communicate. Anet does not offer any other mean of communication than chat, but the chat… I think we have discussed this issue thoroughly.
Here a suggestion for a better system: If someone spams, you can report them. Too many reports, in relation to the number of users on this map, and spamblock strikes. That would be an effective system. But having a simple algorithm decide what is spamming and what is not, that is not effective. I mean: spam is spam, when the majority of users feels that it is spam. So the users should be the ones to decide what is spam. A commander giving commands in EotM, that is for sure not spam.
Anet would not even have to go as far as changing the system, the idea of just slightly raising the spamblock threshold for commanders would be a good solution and would not mess with their anti-spam policies, in my opinion.
I have two pleas to the readers of this thread:
*To players: post any occasion where spamblock hindered gameplay or communication in the game. I’m going to make a list.
*To the developers (if you even bother to read this): Can we please have an official statement on this issue? Have there been similar forum threads? Is it maybe NCsoft policy that is the reason for this unnecessary mutilation of cooperation and communication?