Discussion: A Message from Customer Support
By
Acid_Reign,
Posted on: 2008-02-27 24:25 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
My biggest problem is...my ignore list is already full. And it removes someone from the list each time I add another now.
Why isn't the ignore list bigger?
Sad to the fact, I've used that command several times on Villain side. I personally would not buy infamy, I would not buy someone to level my characters.
I played a few MMOs in my time, and this has been a problem to all of them in my years of experiance. Though this is the first MMO that's taken such drastic steps against it, and I applaud it immensely. The thing is, these people do take away from the game. Part of the fun, part of the experiance is making your way to 50, part of it is earning that infamy, or Influence. I wouldn't have it any other way.
I worked hard for my two lvl 50s, I worked hard for the infamy and influence I earned.
I am a game addict, but the thing is, I'm proud of myself for doing those things, when I love the character creation sooo much I have a hard time settling on what I want to play next.
So for the record, thanks!
I'd have to say you guys are right on the ball, you're already tackling an issue that for most of my friends and I, died after the fix. On Liberty we were constantly getting bombarded with tells, and email, then right after the server upgrades the tell stopped, they vanished, then came the email fix, nothing until two days ago, and so far it's just one company, but the tells are increasing. I think it's awesome that you're already on the ball, and the problem has only just reared it's ugly head again. I am pretty sure you know who it is, I'd just file a lawsuit against them, if it worked for Blizzard, it serves to reason that it'd work for you guys.
"You aren't the sharpest tool in the shed, but you are a tool nonetheless."-American Demon.
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The easiest way to use the /ignore_spammer command is to reply to the tell and then arrow over to replace /tell with /ignore_spammer.
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To add to this, one thing that's also very good to do is when you reply to set up your ignore, decorum suggests intuiting something about the spammer's mother. Some people groan when a spam pops up, but I sort of enjoy the chance to try out some new zingers. Sometimes I'm surprised at the darkness lurking in my soul. But not often. 
Whilst the spam has dropped considerably I still get a little (including E-mail) is it possible to have an address we can forward it to rather than filling out the petition?
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To additionally assist us in swiftly resolving the issue, we appreciate it if you then make use of the in-game /petition command to further alert our Customer Support Team of the activity.
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Ever considering doing what LoTRO does? In game you can right-click on the spammer's name in the chat window and get a context menu that let's you automatically report the spammer. No fuss, no typing, instant notification to a GM.
That's a nice system if you can do it, expecially if we could simply right-click on the names in the email window, too.
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We are always looking at ways we can make things in game better and easier for our customers.
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I think it should be considered to put less weight on the players to report the abusers. One simple command that does it all. No followup petition, nothing more than one command or one click and a confirmation. A followup petition takes too much time out of gameplay and allows the player to dwell on the offer/advert/problem longer than necessary.
Even so, spam is at a minimum and I like the atmosphere of the game. Good job guys!
I have not noticed a reduction of spam-tells; I got two of them this morning, ironically, after the new GMOTD. That was comedic timing in the tragic sense.
-r0y
"Look how many pages of crap are in this thread already!" -r0y to all threads on these forums.
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I have not noticed a reduction of spam-tells; I got two of them this morning, ironically, after the new GMOTD. That was comedic timing in the tragic sense.
-r0y
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That's exactly what happened to me this morning. I read the GMOTD & not 1 minute later I got a /tell which I honestly haven't gotten in a while from someone like itemcoos or something like that. Got it 3 times before I was able to get the /ignore_spammer command activated.
Hopefully they'll fix this. IMHO what they should do is set up something so that if a player notifies a GM of spam, it immediately sets off an alarm to the GM which will allow them to immediately get to this account before the spammer has a chance to log off. I'm not sure how the back end works on this but I personally think that they (GM's) get to them "eventually". By that time the spammer has deleted the name & has logged off. <shrugs>
Rather odd is the fact that they're not using something as simple as an .htaccess entry to restrict those from logging in from that IP range, which would solve the problem rather nicely, since I think they're all in the same little area in China. Another solution would be to ask their ISP there to not allow any of their users to use the specific game port, but, using .htaccess would be a simpler solution, and one that NCsoft would have control over.
Why couldn't NCsoft do something like that, Lighthouse? A lot of us have been doing the same thing for years, now. (.htaccess is also useful for creating secure directories in Web sites. Hee hee hee)
Help others around the world for free!
City of Villains New User Guide and Helpful Tips
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The In-Game Email Spam has been completely obliterated, thanks to the dev's on that one, it was much needed.
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Not entirely- I had spam emails waiting for four of my toons this morning. I wish there was a better way to report the e-mail spam (like a place to forward it to in-game.)
Hiya, I play on Triumph server. Yes the tells were vertually gone last month but, this week omg ... grrrr. I've ignored these spammers global as well as they're name and two minutes later I get spams again from the same global user different toon name. 
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I did WoW for a little bit and the system they have is pretty nice.
If you are on a trial account you CAN NOT sent a /tell to a higher level toon than yourself, UNLESS THEY have you on their friends list as well (and in CoX's case i think Global friend list could/should work as well). This would basically elliminate the /tell spam IMO.
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I think this is a great idea since the spamers use the free trial accounts constantly . This should be the next step taken IMO.
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Rather odd is the fact that they're not using something as simple as an .htaccess entry to restrict those from logging in from that IP range, which would solve the problem rather nicely
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.htaccess is a very specific access mechanism. It only blocks web traffic, and only works within the Apache web server. It wouldn't prevent people from playing the game.
If you want to block an IP address from talking to you, you would need to configure it within your firewall, not .htaccess.
Also, you can't just block IP addresses all willy-nilly. A lot of people are using NAT, and blocking one address might be blocking a whole block of machines, some of which might be those of innocent users. Also, most ISPs these days dole out addresses by DHCP, which means that their IP address would likely change with each session. Last, but not least, even if you could do this, the next likely step of the spammers is to log in via a proxy in some other place so you couldn't be detected and blocked based on your physical location.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
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If you are on a trial account you CAN NOT sent a /tell to a higher level toon than yourself, UNLESS THEY have you on their friends list as well (and in CoX's case i think Global friend list could/should work as well). This would basically elliminate the /tell spam IMO.
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I think this is a great idea since the spamers use the free trial accounts constantly . This should be the next step taken IMO.
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I disagree. I think this is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I'd rather have the spam than to block people from sending PMs. I don't know if you know about the Taxibots, but a lot of them actually seek out new players and asks them to add the Taxibot to their friends list so that if they have questions or problems, they can contact them for help, and a lot of them do. Unfortunately, given the limitation of the friends list, they can't add everyone they run across to it.
Plus, this is a social game. People should be highly encouraged to talk to others, even at the earliest levels, even on trial accounts. I'd highly recommend against anything that interferes with that, even if it means putting up with the spam problem a bit longer.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
The only way I see the spammer problem going away is if you eliminate the supply of inf that is being sold for real money.
How do you do this? Sting operation.
Pay them their 10 bucks per 1 mil inf then when you meet with the dealer in game take down their toon names and the names of any other toons who you see working with them and report them. These are the accounts that need to be suspended because these are the accounts that have all the toons who have all the inf. Suspending the spammer accounts will do nothing as long as the supply of inf is still there. Remove the influence and the spammers will eventually go away since the risk of inf dealing will be too high. This should also drop the prices to more reasonable levels in the market.
IMO this is what happens when you get a game economy in place..It promotes power leveling in the highest degree and exchanging real money for game money. City of "was" a good game to play now its just "lets see how fast we can get to 50"...Im actually disappointed really..The ingame cost of salvage is off the charts and should have a cap put in place, This is one reason why your getting the spam because gamers set the price of stuff and now the casuall play has to try and buy infamy/influence to keep up with the hardcore players or the "Farmers" that exist in game..sum it up....To get rid of spam all goods should be at a set price that people can afford, not 10 million for 1 piece of salvage..its insane..just my 2 cents
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These are the accounts that need to be suspended because these are the accounts that have all the toons who have all the inf.
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Actually, the way I understand it to work, this isn't true. The influence comes from a "money mule" to make the actual delivery, not the account that actually farmed the influence to make the transfer. With a little investigation and some poring over log files, it can be found out who gave them their money, but it would be a little needle-in-a-haystackish.
Influence spammers aren't stupid. (Well, for the most part, anyway.) But then, neither is NCsoft. Lighthouse has said repeatedly that more is in the works regarding this problem, I just don't want anyone to get the idea that it would simply be a matter of paying them $10 and *bam,* problem solved.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
I guess there would be a "Middle Man" I was on a Grand Jury for six months and I learned a little about how Drug Busts go down. You have your "Confidential Source" make the buy, when the transaction is complete the police move in to make the bust. I thought something like this might work with Influence Dealers. I didn't mean to suggest that players pay the money, I thought it could be something the Devs could do, or at least organize with player support.
If this wont work for Influence Dealers since all you would catch is the Influence Mule, I don't see why it wouldn't work for websites that offer "Powerleveling Services." These are probably the same people who are farming the influence. They're just killing two birds with one stone.
A handy bit of info to remember, if you do use the 'autoreply' feature and arrow around to change things, be sure to delete the comma after the name. otherwise you'll end up reporting 'name,' instead of 'name'
Just want to reinterate that the email fix that was put in has helped DRAMATICALLY. I know it is late, but I surely appreciate the change. Thx devs!
I have reported this in a bug report but i also want the devs anow about this limitation of the /ignore_spammer command.
This command does not work on names that consist solely of numbers 0123456789. The sysytem will respond with an invalid name.
I suggest of the dissalowment of all future names consiting solely of numbers and special charcters and allowing or forcing a rename for all such chacters.
The Legendary Cosmological Prince Reigar 53rd Illusion Control/Storm Summoning/Primal Forces Mastery/Incarnate
It's a dark and story night. That means something bad is happening out there
I still recieve email spams... but only on one of my toons.
This is but the tip of the iceberg. The names they are using contain too many characters to be acknowledged as a valid name. Thus the spam command is unable to be used (cuz it spits the "invalid name" message at you).
This is not some company wasting time PLing a handful of trial toons to lvl 10 just so they can spam a few emails. That's counter productive, time is money for these people. This is happening because I have managed to get onto one of these companies mailing lists. My toon name is logged in that list and I can't escape the emails unless I change my toon name... I AM NOT changing my name. The second part is simple, this company is hacking the system to be able to use invalid names and most likely send lvl 1 emails.
If you are really curious, search these companies on Whois(dot)net and score their contact info. Also if you really wnat to stop these spammers, block payment from the Credit Card companies and Paypal... since these are US based companies they can be ordered by a federal court to suspend transactions to certain accounts due to unlawful use. After all these companies are breaking the law by spamming, yes the email service in game is covered by the law.
"You sir, have never been in a hammer fight, that much is clear."
-Blast_Chamber
*yeah, I quoted myself.
Every time i get a spam tell from someone i send a tell back saying: Buy naked pics of ur mom cheap!! www.nakedpics0fy0mama.com Then i /ignore spammer and send petition. Wonder if they'll ever petition me?
Even with the "No emails till level 10" rule, I've started to recieve email spam again. Are they really levelling newbish alts each time to avoid being reported? Amazing how relentless they are.
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On a positive note, spam seems to be way down on Infinity and Victory where I play. Ignore spammer seems to be working. I haven't recieved a spam email in weeks and only 1 tell in the last month.
So, the process seems to be working. Thanks to all who report as your making my game play more fun.
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Personally, I have not seen a spam tell or email since the email change was put in.
Great work devs!
Shard Warrior - 50 MA/Regen/BM Scrapper
Founding Member and Leader : Shadow-Force
Co-Leader: Council of Heroes
"Whatever evils come this way... we will be there to stop them."