City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

How about a little active policing of RMT Spamming?

Aett_Thorn

By Aett_Thorn,
Posted on: 2011-12-03 04:37 in Suggestions and Ideas

 

Posted

Hey guys,

I don't want to be too critical since its not as though RMT Spamming is an awful problem BUT:

  • My Global Ignore is full and the list is always completely blue meaning they are all online. The only people on my global ignore list are RMT spammers, haven't you banned any of them? Does /ignorespammer do anything beyond a global ignore?
  • Every time I go into Wentworths in Atlas Park there is some character called "dfgyutf" or some such, spamming Local. Every time, without fail

If an online GM visted AP Wentworths they'd get to ban someone every single time, perhaps its something they could do when they aren't directly following up a call?

Maybe its time to add phrases like "urgamestore" to the profanity filter?

This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04

 

Posted

Is there an actual suggestion you are trying to make? Cuz all I'm seeing is a rant that GM's aren't banning RMTers fast enough to satisfy you.

RMTer's vastly outnumber the GM's and will always be able to create accounts faster than the company can ban them.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project View Post
Is there an actual suggestion you are trying to make? Cuz all I'm seeing is a rant that GM's aren't banning RMTers fast enough to satisfy you.
Thats because you are the type of person that sees a rant everywhere.

This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie Man View Post
If everyone who saw them in WW used the /reportaspammer option, they'd be auto-squelched.
Is that different to the Click the name, select Ignore As Spammer?

The reason I ask is because (as I said in my post) my full global ignore list is made up entirely through that function and it doesn't look like they are vanishing.

This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jagged View Post
Is that different to the Click the name, select Ignore As Spammer?

The reason I ask is because (as I said in my post) my full global ignore list is made up entirely through that function and it doesn't look like they are vanishing.
Yeah the same... it's probably /ignoreasspammer. I use the right click myself.

Using it silences them for you. But it takes several more players to use it to get the auto-ban to happen.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jagged View Post
Thats because you are the type of person that sees a rant everywhere.
I notice that you avoided my question about having an actual suggestion to deal with RMT spam. That's okay tho, it's difficult to think of effective preventative things that can be done to fight RMT that won't negatively impact legitimate players experience.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jagged View Post
Not avoided, ignored.
Ignoring the question is avoiding it.

Quote:
Anyone else could see the two suggestions in the first post.
If anyone can see them then you should have no trouble quoting and bolding them. All I see is you stating you don't think the GM's are banning RMT accounts fast enough between all the other issues they are working on.

GM employees are limited and they have a hard enough time keeping up with regular petitions/bug reports etc. and even if there was a dedicated RMT patrol they couldn't be everywhere at once

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jagged View Post
[*]My Global Ignore is full and the list is always completely blue meaning they are all online. The only people on my global ignore list are RMT spammers, haven't you banned any of them? Does /ignorespammer do anything beyond a global ignore?
The names in the ignore list being blue does not mean they're online. Like you said, they're just all always blue. You can check that they're not online easily with a /getlocalname. Odds are most or all of them have been banned now. AFAIK, reporting spammers ignores them immediately, and if enough people report them, they're chat-squelched and flagged for a GM to investigate.

 

Posted

I just do what ZM suggested and keep it moving. Im so used to my ignore list being full for years due to some of the less fun personalities in PvP, Ive never thought twice about my ignore list.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopeling View Post
The names in the ignore list being blue does not mean they're online. Like you said, they're just all always blue. You can check that they're not online easily with a /getlocalname. Odds are most or all of them have been banned now. AFAIK, reporting spammers ignores them immediately, and if enough people report them, they're chat-squelched and flagged for a GM to investigate.
And if that's not happening the problem is on our end not the GM's. It's not the GM's or the devs fault if the players refuse to use the features that will get the RMTer's squelched and flagged.


Edit: Oh and the getting chat squelched from multiple /ignorespammer reports does work. There's a guy up in Player Questions complaining about how he's been silenced after using the Help channel to look for someone to farm/PL him.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project View Post
GM employees are limited and they have a hard enough time keeping up with regular petitions/bug reports etc. and even if there was a dedicated RMT patrol they couldn't be everywhere at once
I see you found the first and most obvious of the suggestions. Well done. Keep trying.

However a dedicated RMT patrol would only need to visit locations of high traffic as these RMTers have been reduced to Local. Hence their ever present appearance at Wentworths.


Oh and there is a difference between avoiding something and ignoring something. See if you can work out the difference next time you cross the road.

This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jagged View Post
Hey guys,

I don't want to be too critical since its not as though RMT Spamming is an awful problem BUT:
  • My Global Ignore is full and the list is always completely blue meaning they are all online. The only people on my global ignore list are RMT spammers, haven't you banned any of them? Does /ignorespammer do anything beyond a global ignore?
  • Every time I go into Wentworths in Atlas Park there is some character called "dfgyutf" or some such, spamming Local. Every time, without fail

If an online GM visted AP Wentworths they'd get to ban someone every single time, perhaps its something they could do when they aren't directly following up a call?

Maybe its time to add phrases like "urgamestore" to the profanity filter?

Rant rant rant.

Ignore As Spammer silences the person for you and generates a petition to the GMs.

However, the RMT spammers outnumber the GMs and the GMs have more duties than simply getting rid of every RMT spammer that pops up. Worse, the RMTers are using throwaway accounts to broadcast.

As I said, the GMs are kept busy, so they can't sit in WW all the time.

The GMs can't block based on IP address because there's no guarantee the IP address isn't spoofed or a proxy portal address. Moreover, with the state of NAT and DHCP, they stand a good chance of blowing out a number of legitimate users at the same time, and having the spammers back in minutes on a different IP address.

This is not something you can use the "go nuclear" option on. It doesn't work. The only thing that works is deprecating and/or removing the incentives to utilize RMT. Even penalizing people for using RMT doesn't help a hell of a lot. There's always going to be SOMEONE convinced that they can get away with it (and be right).

While I understand your irritation, it's not productive.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jagged View Post
I see you found the first and most obvious of the suggestions. Well done. Keep trying.
Sorry to disappoint you but that wasn't a suggestion that was explaining why what your ranting about isn't feasible.

Quote:
However a dedicated RMT patrol would only need to visit locations of high traffic as these RMTers have been reduced to Local. Hence their ever present appearance at Wentworths.
Would never work for obvious reasons.

1. The company can't afford to hire people to stand around waiting for RMTers to show up.

2. Since Local chat has an area of effect RMTers will simply move out of range and keep spamming, thus requiring either even more employees to be
hired to camp the new locations or following to those new locations and leaving the old spot unwatched for RMTers to pop in and spam while the GM's are gone.

But if you are offering to pay the salaries of those patrolling GM's out of your own pocket, maybe the company will consider the issue.

Quote:
Oh and there is a difference between avoiding something and ignoring something. See if you can work out the difference next time you cross the road.
Your inability to grasp the difference between avoiding a question in a discussion and ignoring traffic while crossing a road explains a lot about your posts.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project View Post
2. Since Local chat has an area of effect RMTers will simply move out of range and keep spamming, thus requiring either even more employees to be
hired to camp the new locations or following to those new locations and leaving the old spot unwatched for RMTers to pop in and spam while the GM's are gone.
Wrong and laughably so. A GM only needs to hear the spam to ban them, they don't have to hunt them down. If they move out of range that is as good as a ban. If RMT spammers want to spam local chat in places few people can hear them, then let them waste their time.

Now please carry on telling my why my "non-existent" suggestion won't work.

This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jagged View Post
Wrong and laughably so. A GM only needs to hear the spam to ban them, they don't have to hunt them down. If they move out of range that is as good as a ban. If RMT spammers want to spam local chat in places few people can hear them, then let them waste their time.

Now please carry on telling my why my "non-existent" suggestion won't work.
Jagged, the RMTers can simply find the range at which the GM won't see the local chat, but others in WWs will. Or, they can move to a similar high-density area and spam there.

Or, if the GM roams between the various WWs on the same server, the spammer can patiently wait until the GM moves on, then continue spamming until he/she gets back.


But, if the GM is just going to sit there all day (or even just at peak times), then you'd need a GM at each Black Market/WW. So that is at least 6 GMs per server that NCSoft would need to pay for during that time, in addition to the GMs they'd need to handle actual gameplay issues during that time. 6 * 16 = 96 GMs they'd need to have just sitting there, watching for spam.

Even if you limited it just to the low-level areas, that's still 32 GMs that you'd need to pay to sit there. And then if the spammers move on, they'd need to find the new location, and sit there, while leaving the markets open again.



Use the ignorespammer feature, and tell others to use it. It is a much more efficient solution to the problem, if everyone uses it.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus

 

Posted

I realize RMT spammers spamming in local near the AP and Mercy markets does suck.
But my trivial "solution" to that is that I simply don't go to those places. *shrugs*

By avoiding those places I've maybe averaged seeing a RMT spam about once a YEAR. On busy Virtue no less.
I'm serious - I see so few RMT spams per unit time that it effectively does not exist for me.
Problem mitigated.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn View Post
Use the ignorespammer feature, and tell others to use it. It is a much more efficient solution to the problem, if everyone uses it.
Indeed. I was surprised and pleased to discover from this thread that names on the list being in bright bold doesn't mean they are online like all the other lists. Which makes me feel like I am not wasting my time placing them on ignore.

This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04

 

Posted

The clear solution being that I deserve my own banhammer to cleanse this filth from the game.

There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jagged View Post
Wrong and laughably so. A GM only needs to hear the spam to ban them, they don't have to hunt them down. If they move out of range that is as good as a ban. If RMT spammers want to spam local chat in places few people can hear them, then let them waste their time.

Now please carry on telling my why my "non-existent" suggestion won't work.
You mean besides the fact that:

  1. The GMs can't (as in CAN NOT) camp in Atlas Park (16 server shards, some with multiple instances of the zone) 24x7?
  2. That there are how many instances of WW in multiple zones, in multiple instances on multiple servers?
  3. The accounts being used to spam are throw-aways with the real money being moved through a website and the inf transaction happening in private chat with real accounts?


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Posted

Just give Jagged and I the ability to ban people. That way, Jagged can ban the spammers, and I can ban whomever I want*! Problem solved!





*I swear I'll only use it for good. I pwomise!

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus