Kitsune Knight

But they weren't just follow a fad, since it was over a year later

Because that's half the fun of those powers!


And at least with SA, it's weak enough that you can use it for cinematic value without hampering performance!

Free is too close to pass up, and, "Preem" is a natural extension

They actually tried this with the email restriction way back when (but level 10), and it really didn't make any impact on all. Level 20 would slow them down a bit more... but, if Freedom actually brings in new people? They probably would think it's more than worth the matter of minutes it'd take to PL a throw away account up to 20 (or 7 at once).


I was actually going through a thread I found from 2007, when Lighthouse made an announcement about the sudden influx of RMTers (this was before /ignorespammer was added!), and I found a post of mine from back then and I suggested that trial accounts be rate limited in how frequently they could send tells... and I think that might be an effective idea still. The rate limit should restrict how frequently they can send a tell, as well as how fast they could send a tell to another person.


The server could keep track of the last person they sent a tell to (which would have a much more relaxed rate limit- 0.5-1 second should be reasonable), along with how many 'switches' they've made recently, and the more they switch, the harder the throttle will kick it. I'd say that after sending a tell to ~5 or so people, it's not very likely it's legitimate (a freem wouldn't be in a SG or anything like that).

The weakness would be that they could just go parallel- instead of one account spamming an entire server, just log on 20, and split the load.

I would like a solution that doesn't restrict Freems, but, allowing RMTers free rein simply isn't acceptable.

No body claims it would be 100% effective, saying so is foolish, nothing can be 100% effective. But, the tell restriction with the email restriction for all intents and purposes killed spam.

I don't think you heard that, let me repeat it:
Tell and Email restrictions effectively killed off all RMT


Have you ever seen a thread complaining about spam? If you did, what was the responses? Back when tell and email were unrestricted, that topic was likely even eclipsed power customization, flash back, and side switching in popularity (likely the three most requested additions to the game). You probably don't appreciate that, again, since you weren't here


People now occasionally see RMTers spamming local.... yeah, that's nothing in comparison to your chat window being flooded by RMT spam. Having private conversations with people became frustratingly difficult. It was so bad many people quit the game. Think about that for a moment before claiming again that it didn't work.

According to the link you posted, it's actually quite a bit slower than Intel's HD 3000, and even slower than the HD 2000! HD 3000's graphics are fairly equivalent to nVidia's 320M (what it replaced in the MacBook Air).

Zacata is also a very low end processor, so low that I'd be concerned about it hindering performance in general. The i5 SandyBridge in the OP's article actually has an extremely beefy processor, along with six gigabytes of RAM... both of which will guarantee they won't be an issue for CoH.

People frequently underestimate SandyBridge's graphics... because Intel's prior graphics sucked so hard. It's really quite decent for the low end.

You seem to be totally misunderstanding. They're not sending tells to people they see, they're recording the names of people they see (and /searching), so they can spam them tells at any time! It doesn't matter if they get banned, they could have just created a new account and send tells from that to all the people they saw on all previous accounts. Paragon has effectively killed them off.

You claimed having one /tell spam in a year shows that the restrictions weren't effective? Are you nuts? Back when they could spam via /tell, logging on for 5 minutes without getting a spam message was impressive! I'm not exaggerating. You seem to be completely failing to comprehend what the situation was like back then.

It's very easy to spam an entire server with a message... back before the RMTers ever came, people would actually do that on Freedom to recruit for Hami raids (when the cap was three hundred people, not 50 as it is now). You seem to think I'm talking in hypotheticals... but no, I'm talking what actually happened. It's a shame ubb.threads was so crappy all the threads from back then had to regularly be deleted (there were a massive number of threads where people were complaining)... but, why do you think the Devs suddenly started placing so much restrictions on trial accounts after them having zero restrictions other than a level cap for around half a decade? It's because the RMTers came, and they came hard.

I play on Freedom. I play on Virtue. The two most populated servers, and the two that would make the best targets. I've had zero spam tells since they blocked tells on trial accounts. I've had zero spam emails since they (finally) fixed email accounts. I've seen so few /local spams that I can count them on one hand.

The Devs succeeded in stopping 99.9999% of all spam (that number actually probably isn't too far off), and you're claiming it never happened because you weren't here.

You might as well just stop trying to argue, because the people that make the decisions were here then, they know why the trial/freem restrictions are in place: to prevent subscribers from being driven away by a flood of spam (they were losing players- it was that bad).

I'd think the best order would be Spring Attack -> then the other two, since that'll let your best attacks benefit from Against All Odd's +damage component.

Fiery Embrace increases the base damage of a power. That increase in base damage is a fixed amount, but, +damage buffs increase your damage by a percentage of the base damage, so it has a multiplicative effect instead of an additive (like Build Up would). It's also a fixed attribute of the powers that are modified (i.e. all your attacks have a 'if Fiery Embrace, do X amount of extra fire damage' comonent).

The +Damage alpha increases the damage of Judgement. I don't believe any other incarante abilities are impacted by Alpha.

Reactive adds proc damage, so it's not impacted by any sort of +damage.

Flat value, like IO procs. It's why procs are wonderful in buzzsaw chains.


Also, the soon-to-be-released Archetype "Origin" Invention (?) sets will have a specific proc for each AT... which will fire at a fixed number of times per minute (so that it's as effective in a slow recharging power as a fast recharging power, since it's usually applies a character-wide effect, like adding Fury for Brutes).

Based on what Badaxe said, no, level doesn't matter. Level didn't matter in the old system wrt the badge... it's just that you couldn't sidekick someone if they weren't 3+ (IIRC) levels under you, so you could never try.

There's no chance in hell the account would survive a month, so both have the same effective duration (one usage). If $15 is too expensive, it's highly unlikely that $5 is suddenly affordable for them (one buy would pull in more than either of those... even if they don't steal the credit card/install malware!).

They'd be fairly hard pressed to get everyone on both Freedom and Virtue before getting banned, I'm fairly certain (the GMs would see a sudden flood of reports about a specific account- that would be easy to take care of, unlike a flood of reports about hundreds of accounts every minute!)... and even if they did? That'd only be a moderate percentage of the players on at one time! These are the people that would send HUNDREDS of emails to the same character, all with the same spam site... you think they'd settle for only a small percentage of the players that are on at a single time? Highly unlikely.

I'm not sure what 'good set of tools' you're talking about, the only new things I know about are /ignorespammer (didn't stop the problem, or really curb it), and setting email to only be received from friends.

Hide (and ghide) predated the spam problem by a long time- it didn't really help (many people tried it, including me). The spammers would use /search to gather lists of players (and now, they'd likely grab the global handles instead of using the local names- make things easier on them), and then spam with later. They can also watch broadcast, local, help, global channels, and just wander around the zones, harvesting names.

And when you get on their list? You won't be getting off, unless you blow a global rename.

Having to use hide/ghide, in addition to being ineffective, will also break search, your friends list, and receiving legitimate global tells! That's not a "good" use of those!


You seem to not believe that we had a serious spam issue... likely, because the restrictions put in place on trials (which are equivalent to the restrictions on freems) worked. Removing those restrictions would just result in a massive rise in spam, back to the levels it was before. The spamming started after the Devs added the invention system and the CH- which made inf something that people actually gave a damn about (instead of being something that you had far more than you'd ever need long before you hit 50).

Talk to anyone that played back then, and they will tell you we were spammed heavily.
(just did a search, and the email change was added back in October of 09... wow, time has flied!)


They will get /ignore_spammer and petitioned like mad. It's that the rate of spamming that occurred back when it was added would cripple the GMs. The GMs couldn't possibly go through that many reports, especially since, IIRC, that was back in the 'freem 15' days, where CoH was basically just operating on a skeleton crew.

A single account likely wouldn't be able to spam more than 1 server, they'll be banned in short order, so they'd only hit a few people... having to pay $5 for a single server will be prohibitively expensive, and is the reason the spammers haven't been buying the full game in the past for $15ish.

Spam only 'works' if you hit a MASSIVE amount of people OFTEN with it... Microsoft recently took down the Kelihos botnet, which would send out an estimated 3.8 billion emails a day. BILLION. And that's tiny in comparison to Rustock, which was estimated to send out 30 billion A DAY. They're operating on astronomically small percentage of (idiots) that read the messages- that's how they make the money (the same holds true for RMT... although I'd imagine the ratio probably isn't as horrible).

Yes, the very same- Intel HD 3000 graphics (the article incorrectly calls it 'GMA HD 3000', despite that not being what they're called) that comes included on mobile SandyBridge processors. This isn't the machine I normally play CoH on, though.

That machine, actually, has a higher clocked processor than what's in my MBA, although that really shouldn't make a bit of difference, as the SandyBridge processors are already so fast.

What makes you say it must not be the same?

And they only spammed us with emails because the Devs blocked /tells on trial accounts. Back when the RMTers first arrived in this game, 30-40 spam tells a play session wasn't unusual, and would have been a light session. It was so bad the Devs had to rush to add /ignorespammer (was that the command? it's been so long since I needed it!), and even then the spam tells were insane, they would just keep creating new alts/accounts. Eventually they put in a 'fix' to block tells from trial accounts.

Then the email flood started. It took the Devs a long time to fix that. Even after they stopped trial accounts from sending out emails! (turns out they only blocked the UI, not the slash command!) Eventually they fixed that, I believe a bit over a year ago (I've still got many characters with inboxes full of spam messages). It made the email system completely unusable (not that it was a huge deal... it predated being able to send items, so few people used it).

Since then, I've seen, maybe 5 RMTers use local to spam (and I play on Freedom/Virtue, the two servers most likely to get the RMTers). And, quite frankly, that's being incredibly generous, I would actually be surprised if it was over 3.

Having people say stuff on /local only when you're not actually paying attention to it due to using the CM, is nothing compared to having /reply/backspace broken by spam tells every minute or so!



I certainly would be happy if the Freems could speak unhindered... but not if it lets the RMTers ruin communication again.

More likely: The Devs* think that people that don't play CoH might PvP. And they want to lure them in by making them think people PvP, even though for all we know, they deleted the entire PvP system 6 months ago (and 3 months before that, one of the devs accidentally made attacking another player delete your crash all servers at once... no one noticed).


* or whoever made that video