Is not allowing free players to use tells really necessary?
By
Aggelakis,
Posted on: 2011-09-27 19:49 in Player Questions
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Heck, I remember when it was getting bad enough (it was just before the lockout of tells/email) that I started getting porn spam!|
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
/this.
It was *really* bad for a while. As in, even on the servers that *aren't* the highest population, it would make /tells (and emails) pretty well unusable. (Send a message to someone, get a bunch of spam in between so you're not sure if they replied or not... since hitting backspace sends to the last person you got a tell from, so you'd end up "replying" to an RMTer.) And email... yeah. The "Spam" button helped - as soon as you selected one, it'd block all from that sender (which could take out 10-20 at a whack.) But not logging in a character for a week? Ugh. Spend the first ten minutes just cleaning out email. |
And not just your typical porn, I'm meaning CHILD PORN!
Or, I think it was. It was in such garbled Engrish that it was hard to understand, but it included words like '14yo' and 'you happy lot see' (or something similar).
I sent a petition with the global name, what it said and immediately deleted the e-mail.
And this was after I had gotten a dozen plus normal porn spam in e-mail. I never would have thought that superhero pedophilia was a big enough market to go to such lengths.
I sit in my zen of not being able to do anything right while simultaniously not being able to do anything wrong. Om. -CuppaJo
It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion.
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Actually, we don't. All the 'tools' boil down to is a combination of ignore and report.|
Originally Posted by Morgan Reed
Whatever it was like, now players have a good set of tools to protect themselves from what they do not want.
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Ignore is a bad solution for this kind of problem, because ignore lists are finite. Eventually, you end up having to manage your ignore list, which is a pain and a half.
Report is a bad solution because support doesn't generally have the time to respond to these issues in a timely fashion. And adding resources to deal with it is a waste for Paragon.
Hide is pretty useless as well, unless you're willing to be hidden all the time. Otherwise, they would find you via search anyway, donig searches periodically and compiling lists of names.
Free accounts are basically very extended trials. Significant communication restrictions on such accounts are hardly unusual, and I, for one, appreciate them.
If a free player can't shell out $5 to lift the restrictions, then that's the way it goes.
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Right, so an RMTer who spends $5 can be assured of being able to do business for quite a while before a /spam report gets their account banned, yes? Given how much these guys presumably make, $5 per spam account every few days sounds like a drop in the bucket. Is that really going to be enough disincentive? RMT (as a whole) is, after all, a multi-million dollar industry, isn't it?
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Originally Posted by Brillig
Report is a bad solution because support doesn't generally have the time to respond to these issues in a timely fashion. And adding resources to deal with it is a waste for Paragon.
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NOR-RAD - 50 Rad/Rad/Elec Defender - Nikki Stryker - 50 DM/SR/Weap Scrapper - Iron Marauder - 50 Eng/Eng/Pow Blaster
Lion of Might - 50 SS/Inv/Eng Tanker - Darling Nikkee - 50 (+3) StJ/WP/Eng Brute - Ice Giant Kurg - 36 Ice/Storm Controller
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Like you say, you're not familiar with "The old days." What you're saying is incorrect. The spammers got wise to this - they'd have accounts just grabbing peoples names that went to the market, or grab them as they showed up in atlas or zoned. Or join teams, grab the names and leave. (I think some even got into SGs.) |
Originally Posted by Morgan Reed
(I'm ignoring you grossly exaggerated analogy.)
If you were looking for safety from /tells (now, at least. I'm not familiar with "the old days") you could /hide from searches. That would protect you from just about everything that you couldn't get from /local spam. |
I was on /hide on new characters and got them. So, no, /hide was not a cure all - and again, has damaging side effects, since it removes me from searches I *want.* (Such as "I feel like starting X TF, let's see who's in range and ask if they're interested.")
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| Whatever it was like, now players have a good set of tools to protect themselves from what they do not want. |
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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.|
Originally Posted by Morgan Reed
(I'm ignoring you grossly exaggerated analogy.)
If you were looking for safety from /tells (now, at least. I'm not familiar with "the old days") you could /hide from searches. That would protect you from just about everything that you couldn't get from /local spam. Whatever it was like, now players have a good set of tools to protect themselves from what they do not want. |
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!)
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Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
Right, so an RMTer who spends $5 can be assured of being able to do business for quite a while before a /spam report gets their account banned, yes? Given how much these guys presumably make, $5 per spam account every few days sounds like a drop in the bucket. Is that really going to be enough disincentive? RMT (as a whole) is, after all, a multi-million dollar industry, isn't it?
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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).
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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Past evidence has shown that even a tiny speedbump is enough to get the RMT spam out. So yes, in all likelihood a $5 requirement would be enough to deter them. Support generally isn't 'every few days' behind, the problem is that they can't be 'gone in 60 seconds' fast, which is around the level of response you'd need to keep it from being annoying.|
Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
Right, so an RMTer who spends $5 can be assured of being able to do business for quite a while before a /spam report gets their account banned, yes? Given how much these guys presumably make, $5 per spam account every few days sounds like a drop in the bucket. Is that really going to be enough disincentive? RMT (as a whole) is, after all, a multi-million dollar industry, isn't it?
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(multi-billion dollar industry, btw)
Simply put, those who are preaching for free accounts to get access to /tell without having a pay wall, either don't remember, or weren't around for the massive spam we all had to deal with when i9 first dropped.
First, it was broadcast. Then it went to blind team invites, then it went to /tells, then it hit emails. It was literally like that (and you could get hit with multiple instances of those variants) every few MINUTES.
It didn't matter if you /hide or /ghide, or even created an entirely new character. They had people sitting in the tutorial zones, writing down names of people who popped in. They had people under the globe in Atlas, every WW, every train station, just writing down names.
I rotate out my alts after they burn off their patrol XP, so i would cycle ALL my characters about every 10 days. I'd log one of them in, and have over 100 emails/offline tells from spammers PER CHARACTER.
So.. yeah.. big fat NO.
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I really have no sense of the speed with which spam accounts get banned (as a practical matter given the demands on the GMs), but I don't think RMTers would need to hit every server. Even a little experience with CoX teaches one that Freedom and Virtue get the lion's share of players and are therefore easily the best targets. And $5 opens /tell forever for that account, right? It's not a monthly fee is it? If so, a single $5 expense compared to $15/mo is a pretty huge difference and explains, to me anyway, why RMTers would never invest in real subscriptions but might not blink at free accounts with a one-time $5 "cost of doing business" fee (per ban) if it earns them hundreds or thousands in the process.
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Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
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.
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NOR-RAD - 50 Rad/Rad/Elec Defender - Nikki Stryker - 50 DM/SR/Weap Scrapper - Iron Marauder - 50 Eng/Eng/Pow Blaster
Lion of Might - 50 SS/Inv/Eng Tanker - Darling Nikkee - 50 (+3) StJ/WP/Eng Brute - Ice Giant Kurg - 36 Ice/Storm Controller
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Nope. We had email spammers who would get you just from seeing your character. I always run on hide. I have for years and years. They would see my characters going into the auction house or somewhere else, tag and record me. (When you see a character, you can get their global. Even before /getglobalname, there were ways to do this.)|
Originally Posted by Morgan Reed
If you were looking for safety from /tells (now, at least. I'm not familiar with "the old days") you could /hide from searches. That would protect you from just about everything that you couldn't get from /local spam.
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Then they would start sending global tells.
From blocking these people my global ignore lists filled to capacity even though I am always hidden. So my clearly global name was recorded and passed around. I only had to be seen once.
I'm all for putting a barrier in place against these people. It's too bad for the new players, but as they say "this is why we can't have nice things."
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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!).|
Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
I really have no sense of the speed with which spam accounts get banned (as a practical matter given the demands on the GMs), but I don't think RMTers would need to hit every server. Even a little experience with CoX teaches one that Freedom and Virtue get the lion's share of players and are therefore easily the best targets. And $5 opens /tell forever for that account, right? It's not a monthly fee is it? If so, a single $5 expense compared to $15/mo is a pretty huge difference and explains, to me anyway, why RMTers would never invest in real subscriptions but might not blink at free accounts with a one-time $5 "cost of doing business" fee (per ban) if it earns them hundreds or thousands in the process.
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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.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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They would, and they did. Even avoiding Freedom (playing primarily Victory and Pinnacle,) I *still* got tells just bombarding me. Characters I didn't go on for a while, I'd have to spend several minutes clearing out email.
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Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
I really have no sense of the speed with which spam accounts get banned (as a practical matter given the demands on the GMs), but I don't think RMTers would need to hit every server.
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The monthly recurring amount is trivial, since no RMT spam account is going to last a month. And in any event, it's not the amount so much as the fact that NCSoft will ban the card number. Needing a new CC number for each account is a major hurdle.|
Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
I really have no sense of the speed with which spam accounts get banned (as a practical matter given the demands on the GMs), but I don't think RMTers would need to hit every server. Even a little experience with CoX teaches one that Freedom and Virtue get the lion's share of players and are therefore easily the best targets. And $5 opens /tell forever for that account, right? It's not a monthly fee is it? If so, a single $5 expense compared to $15/mo is a pretty huge difference and explains, to me anyway, why RMTers would never invest in real subscriptions but might not blink at free accounts with a one-time $5 "cost of doing business" fee (per ban) if it earns them hundreds or thousands in the process.
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Anyway, people who were here before (and this includes Paragon) know that this was a huge problem in the past. If your ideas are correct, then we should be able to see it in a marked increase in RMT spam in the coming weeks - if that comes true, then Paragon can re-evaluate their strategies. In the meantime, we have a proven method of dealing with the problem, and absent evidence to the contrary, continuing with it seems to be a sensible solution.
RMT people are LAZY. LAZY LAZY LAZY. If they can't create an account and spam you in the minimum number of steps it takes, then THEY WON'T DO IT. There are other games that are faster, easier, and unrestricted.
City is protected because of extra steps required for RMT to be useful. Only the desperate folks use City for spamming. After all, local is nigh on useless - I don't even have it in my main window anymore; local, help, and broadcast are off in their own little tab where I don't have to see the random jabbering and occasional spam.
Also: regarding the speed that spam accounts are banned, each use of /ignorespammer puts a mark against the account; too many /ignorespammers and the account system will automatigically block the account, and support gets automagically notified. So use /ignorespammer early and often if you see any kind of spam.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.
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That was kind of my point.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
Nope. We had email spammers who would get you just from seeing your character.
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If you can receive /local spam, then there is a good chance that your character can be seen. And that would open you to the /tell spam, just as much as the /local.
And I do not think anyone is talking emails. I thought this was about /tell being overly restrictive, not anything else. Emails are currently pretty locked down. Can't do it before 10th level, can't do more than one per 15 seconds...
My opinion still stands though. If /tell was restricted from free accounts solely to prevent RMTers (as in absolutely no other reason) then it isn't all that effective. There are still other ways around it. Pay wall doesn't even stop it directly, as there are some RMTers that advertise in other games that only have paid accounts. (Granted, that game probably does have more exposure than CoH.)
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Short answer: Yes.|
Originally Posted by Ateria
I mean... come on....
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Long answer: Yes, by Crom!
Seriously. There were days I would log on to a character and there would be over 300 - that is three hundred! - emails from spammers.
Tells were just as frequent and much more annoying in that they jarred you out of what you were doing.
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And yet the fact remains that /tell spam has been eliminated by the restrictions. So while you can believe whatever you like the truth is the restrictions work and won't be removed.|
Originally Posted by Morgan Reed
That was kind of my point.
If you can receive /local spam, then there is a good chance that your character can be seen. And that would open you to the /tell spam, just as much as the /local. And I do not think anyone is talking emails. I thought this was about /tell being overly restrictive, not anything else. Emails are currently pretty locked down. Can't do it before 10th level, can't do more than one per 15 seconds... My opinion still stands though. If /tell was restricted from free accounts solely to prevent RMTers (as in absolutely no other reason) then it isn't all that effective. There are still other ways around it. Pay wall doesn't even stop it directly, as there are some RMTers that advertise in other games that only have paid accounts. (Granted, that game probably does have more exposure than CoH.) |
Oh and those other games you are referring to when you claim the pay wall wasn't effective, well those accounts were either hacked, or stolen from players using RMT transactions. The RMT sites didn't buy their own accounts.
Haven't I seen this on TV Tropes?
"Long ago, the wizards all banded together and created the Great Barrier, to keep the Big Annoyance from pestering us ever again!"
"Well yeah, but that was a long time ago, and I wasn't even alive then! So we should bring the Great Barrier down because the Big Annoyance isn't even around anymore!"
"...but the Big Annoyance is gone because of the Great Barrier."
"That's what I mean! The Big Annoyance is gone now, so we don't need the Great Barrier!"
"..."
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This trope conveniently neglects to add this necessary bit of dialog:|
Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
Haven't I seen this on TV Tropes?
"Long ago, the wizards all banded together and created the Great Barrier, to keep the Big Annoyance from pestering us ever again!" "Well yeah, but that was a long time ago, and I wasn't even alive then! So we should bring the Great Barrier down because the Big Annoyance isn't even around anymore!" "...but the Big Annoyance is gone because of the Great Barrier." "That's what I mean! The Big Annoyance is gone now, so we don't need the Great Barrier!" "..." |
"But if we take down the Great Barrier, the Big Annoyance will return and we'll need the Great Barrier again. Might as well just leave it up and save ourselves unnecessary stress."
NOR-RAD - 50 Rad/Rad/Elec Defender - Nikki Stryker - 50 DM/SR/Weap Scrapper - Iron Marauder - 50 Eng/Eng/Pow Blaster
Lion of Might - 50 SS/Inv/Eng Tanker - Darling Nikkee - 50 (+3) StJ/WP/Eng Brute - Ice Giant Kurg - 36 Ice/Storm Controller
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Sadly while the Big Annoyance is gone now we have to endure the Little Annoyances that keep trying to sabotage the Great Barrier.
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Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
Haven't I seen this on TV Tropes?
"Long ago, the wizards all banded together and created the Great Barrier, to keep the Big Annoyance from pestering us ever again!" "Well yeah, but that was a long time ago, and I wasn't even alive then! So we should bring the Great Barrier down because the Big Annoyance isn't even around anymore!" "...but the Big Annoyance is gone because of the Great Barrier." "That's what I mean! The Big Annoyance is gone now, so we don't need the Great Barrier!" "..." |
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Your opinion is contradicted by the fact that it actually was effective. Reality trumps opinion.
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Originally Posted by Morgan Reed
My opinion still stands though. If /tell was restricted from free accounts solely to prevent RMTers (as in absolutely no other reason) then it isn't all that effective.
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Holy cow, you're right.|
Originally Posted by Morgan Reed
Fair enough.
But there are still RMT /local spams. |
We need to keep free players out of there, too.
The thing is, so much team recruiting is done using the good old, "<Blah> team forming, pst if interested," method that F2P players will be completely excluded from joining teams that form this way (which is most of them, isn't it?).
I predict there will be a torrent of exchanges like this on every server:
[Broadcast] Noobee: what is pst
[Broadcast] Anglyznorgast1cyzm: pst = please send tell
[Broadcast] Noobee: how do i send a tell
[Broadcast] PrettyPinkKittee90210: /tell
[Broadcast] Noobee: it says i cant cuz im on a free acct
[Broadcast] Anglyznorgast1cyzm: pay the 5 bucks or learn to love soloing, noobster
[Broadcast] Noobee: this game sux bye
NOR-RAD - 50 Rad/Rad/Elec Defender - Nikki Stryker - 50 DM/SR/Weap Scrapper - Iron Marauder - 50 Eng/Eng/Pow Blaster
Lion of Might - 50 SS/Inv/Eng Tanker - Darling Nikkee - 50 (+3) StJ/WP/Eng Brute - Ice Giant Kurg - 36 Ice/Storm Controller
So our only choices are to either alienate free players from the game, or else allow ourselves to be deluged by RMT spam again?
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F2P can't use Broadcast |
Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
The thing is, so much team recruiting is done using the good old, "<Blah> team forming, pst if interested," method that F2P players will be completely excluded from joining teams that form this way (which is most of them, isn't it?).
I predict there will be a torrent of exchanges like this on every server: [Broadcast] Noobee: what is pst |
Teams are the number one killer of soloists.
If you were looking for safety from /tells (now, at least. I'm not familiar with "the old days") you could /hide from searches. That would protect you from just about everything that you couldn't get from /local spam.
Whatever it was like, now players have a good set of tools to protect themselves from what they do not want.
So I do not think it is as useful as you believe.