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Suggestions on how to eliminate goldspammers and sellers and their bots

Lord.BachusLord.Bachus Member RarePosts: 9,686

Does anyone have a good suggestion for Zenimax?

 

we all see the problem, yet  hardly anyone sees a solution...

 

and the real problem is not the goldsellers, they are a not the cause, but the a reaction from a few criminals that found a way to make money, because of players that cheet...

 

elliminate the cheeters and the goldsellers will stop their actions...  

 

But then,  how do you keep people from cheating?

Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)

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Comments

  • AeonbladesAeonblades Member Posts: 2,083
    Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

    Does anyone have a good suggestion for Zenimax?

     

    we all see the problem, yet  hardly anyone sees a solution...

     

    and the real problem is not the goldsellers, they are a not the cause, but the a reaction from a few criminals that found a way to make money, because of players that cheet...

     

    elliminate the cheeters and the goldsellers will stop their actions...  

     

    But then,  how do you keep people from cheating?

    Right Click name > Report Player > Fill out form

    Or the shorter version:

    Righ Click name > Ignore

     

    Problems solved.

    Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
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    If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.

  • BurntCabbageBurntCabbage Member UncommonPosts: 482

    what boggles my mind is...why in the hell are there gold farmers in the first place in this game...gold isnt even needed like that in ESO and when i loged in yesterday the gold spam was cut down alot..a whole LOT so maybe ESO woke up and read their forums and reports because they cleaned it up in the chat...now its the pesky bots camp dungeons that we need to worry about

    yesterday i was in northpoint and i saw about 20 diff bot warping around collecting mats if a mobb aggro them they would warp out of aggro...this speed / mob steath hack isnt a new one..iv seen it in other mmorpgs but i cant remeber the name but they need to get on that problem asap or the chinese will controll the matts dept. and destroy the economy

  • SpottyGekkoSpottyGekko Member EpicPosts: 6,916

    The only way to effectively combat spammers and bots is to have live GM's monitoring the game 24/7.

     

    It is virtually impossible to code an effective chat filter program that does not throw up a ton of false positives. The human brain is exceptionally good at spotting patterns and filtering "noise" out of chat messages to parse the actual content. The same goes for spotting bots.

     

    Relying on players to "report" goldsellers is hopeless, because each report has to be investigated by a human anyway. By the time each report has been checked, days could have gone by. And don't believe for a moment that the goldsellers aren't generating hundreds of false reports to tie-up the ZOS investigators...

     

    I cannot think of any reason why ZOS does NOT use active GM's to do this, other than that they don't believe it is cost-effective. People are expensive and I've no idea how many would be required to effectively cover 90% of the instances on the megaserver.

  • LeGrosGamerLeGrosGamer Member UncommonPosts: 223

    The solution is simple, but it will cost a lot of money and man/women power. Get GM's to catch botters and gold sellers, then back track their IP's and block the IP.  Gold sellers will have IP generators but in the long run and by being persistent you'll end up pin pointing their main IP.     But since it costs way to much, just add a huge block list in game and a report button that doesn't even work (Which is true by the way on almost every MMO with the "report" feature. The button will just popup a message telling you that Mr/Mrs X has been reported but in fact nothing has been sent, it's just so you can feel better on thinking you did something good for the community.)

     

       Also, we got EULA's with rules to follow and all, yet we got all these gold seller web sites at our disposal and some have been up and running since the early 2000's. Yet nobody seems to be doing anything to close them down? But I cannot sale my accounts or share my account with a friend? 

     

        When you look at the bigger picture, something doesn't add up properly. 

  • PalaziousPalazious Member Posts: 162

    I'm really not sure why they can't just permanent ban the master accounts of those selling gold in chat, mailing offers ect.

     

    It's worth it to pay GMs to watch the chat and ban accounts at $60.00 a pop.

     

     

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  • BurntCabbageBurntCabbage Member UncommonPosts: 482
    Originally posted by SpottyGekko

    The only way to effectively combat spammers and bots is to have live GM's monitoring the game 24/7.

     

    It is virtually impossible to code an effective chat filter program that does not throw up a ton of false positives. The human brain is exceptionally good at spotting patterns and filtering "noise" out of chat messages to parse the actual content. The same goes for spotting bots.

     

    Relying on players to "report" goldsellers is hopeless, because each report has to be investigated by a human anyway. By the time each report has been checked, days could have gone by. And don't believe for a moment that the goldsellers aren't generating hundreds of false reports to tie-up the ZOS investigators...

     

    I cannot think of any reason why ZOS does NOT use active GM's to do this, other than that they don't believe it is cost-effective. People are expensive and I've no idea how many would be required to effectively cover 90% of the instances on the megaserver.

    i agree it cant be that hard to hire 3-6 people on a rotateing shift just to hangout and check up in-game on some reports or botting...but i think companys like to stay away from the whole GM being online and in-game because back in the day random ppl would sit there and hangout / play around n have random chats with them in-game...but if they are there to just SEE whats going makes alot of sence

  • VendakuVendaku Member Posts: 77
    The unfortunate truth is, it is nearly impossible to get rid of those people. There will always be gold sellers, so long as there are people willing to purchase it. 
  • ComanComan Member UncommonPosts: 2,177
    Originally posted by Palazious

    I'm really not sure why they can't just permanent ban the master accounts of those selling gold in chat, mailing offers ect.

     

    It's worth it to pay GMs to watch the chat and ban accounts at $60.00 a pop.

     

     

    Most of them are most likely hacked accounts or obtained in some other shady way. Block that account and they will simply continue to the next. My final fantasy account was banned for RMT. Did not even play that game at that point anyway (for months). So my assumtion is that my account got hacked and a gold seller used it to sell gold. 

  • SpottyGekkoSpottyGekko Member EpicPosts: 6,916
    Originally posted by Palazious

    I'm really not sure why they can't just permanent ban the master accounts of those selling gold in chat, mailing offers ect.

     

    It's worth it to pay GMs to watch the chat and ban accounts at $60.00 a pop.

     

     

    The idea that "accounts at $60 a pop" will hurt goldsellers is flawed. They are most likely using both stolen credit card numbers and hacked accounts to replace any banned accounts. These cc numbers are cheap and in abundant supply from various hacking groups.

  • Octagon7711Octagon7711 Member LegendaryPosts: 9,000
    Originally posted by BurntCabbage

    what boggles my mind is...why in the hell are there gold farmers in the first place in this game...gold isnt even needed like that in ESO and when i loged in yesterday the gold spam was cut down alot..a whole LOT so maybe ESO woke up and read their forums and reports because they cleaned it up in the chat...now its the pesky bots camp dungeons that we need to worry about

    yesterday i was in northpoint and i saw about 20 diff bot warping around collecting mats if a mobb aggro them they would warp out of aggro...this speed / mob steath hack isnt a new one..iv seen it in other mmorpgs but i cant remeber the name but they need to get on that problem asap or the chinese will controll the matts dept. and destroy the economy

    I would think that if someone just started and wanted to be uber and get to the top as fast as possible if they bought gold, they could skip crafting and gathering.  They could just go to the shops and buy their equipment, or buy nice stuff from trade. Buy there horse or horses,  one for speed, one as a mule.  Anyway that's my guess.  

    I question would be which popular MMO has managed to completely eliminate bots and 3rd party gold selling and how did they do it?

    Like others have said gold is like the drug world for MMO's.  As long as players buy gold there will always be a market.  Also the business brings in a lot of money so much that some regular players make real world side income by selling their extra gold to gold sellers.  Some people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for gold so it more then covers the price of $60 for a box and employees salaries.  One account may bring in a thousand dollars before  banned.  Gold sellers do it because they are getting rich.  See youtube interviews with gold sellers.

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  • BurntCabbageBurntCabbage Member UncommonPosts: 482
    Originally posted by Palazious

    I'm really not sure why they can't just permanent ban the master accounts of those selling gold in chat, mailing offers ect.

     

    It's worth it to pay GMs to watch the chat and ban accounts at $60.00 a pop.

     

     

    they may not be paying that much for the game..in fact i bet its 1/2 that and your forgeting a key point..they are making money ..lots of money so adding another sub wont hurt their pocket...but yes if you catch them enuff times it will hurt their funds enuff for them to go away  or rethink...but remember not all bots are these so called "chinese gold farmers" some of them are american brits so on n so on

  • angerbeaverangerbeaver Member UncommonPosts: 1,256
    Originally posted by Coman
    Originally posted by Palazious

    I'm really not sure why they can't just permanent ban the master accounts of those selling gold in chat, mailing offers ect.

     

    It's worth it to pay GMs to watch the chat and ban accounts at $60.00 a pop.

     

     

    Most of them are most likely hacked accounts or obtained in some other shady way. Block that account and they will simply continue to the next. My final fantasy account was banned for RMT. Did not even play that game at that point anyway (for months). So my assumtion is that my account got hacked and a gold seller used it to sell gold. 

    I doubt that if you weren't paying for the months you didn't play. I doubt they would hack an account and then pay $15 to have it up. Or, maybe they would. Not sure.

  • PalaziousPalazious Member Posts: 162
    Originally posted by SpottyGekko
    Originally posted by Palazious

    I'm really not sure why they can't just permanent ban the master accounts of those selling gold in chat, mailing offers ect.

     

    It's worth it to pay GMs to watch the chat and ban accounts at $60.00 a pop.

     

     

    The idea that "accounts at $60 a pop" will hurt goldsellers is flawed. They are most likely using both stolen credit card numbers and hacked accounts to replace any banned accounts. These cc numbers are cheap and in abundant supply from various hacking groups.

    Still.. if you give a GM the ability to right-click on a spammer and insta ban the master account and maybe ban that IP at the same time you make the goldseller use another stolen cc number, account and go through the whole sign up process again.

     

    They would spend all that time creating accounts for one opportunity to put it into chat.

     

    Not worth it for the goldsellers.

     

    If the accounts are hacked, stolen, etc. then they need to be banned anyways.

     

    Or do nothing...accept defeat and watch your real customers leave

    Palazious <The Vindicators> Darkfall
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  • RusqueRusque Member RarePosts: 2,785

    The only way to reduce (can never eliminate) it is to have ZOS sell gold for real money with an in-game shop for it.

    People are lazier and more impatient than you can imagine, they will continue to buy gold one way or the other and those of us that don't have to sit there looking at the gold spam because of those people.

    So if you offer gold for real money with an in-game shop, it's a more convenient way for gold buyers to buy gold (and safer, but they don't care about safety obviously).

  • SpottyGekkoSpottyGekko Member EpicPosts: 6,916
    Originally posted by Rusque

    The only way to reduce (can never eliminate) it is to have ZOS sell gold for real money with an in-game shop for it.

    People are lazier and more impatient than you can imagine, they will continue to buy gold one way or the other and those of us that don't have to sit there looking at the gold spam because of those people.

    So if you offer gold for real money with an in-game shop, it's a more convenient way for gold buyers to buy gold (and safer, but they don't care about safety obviously).

    Having ZOS sell gold themselves does not solve the problem at all. Most of the big goldsellers are active in many F2P games as well. They simply undercut the "official price" and still do a roaring trade. Some players want to cheat, but they also want to do it as cheaply as possible. image

  • alkarionlogalkarionlog Member EpicPosts: 3,584
    Originally posted by Rusque

    The only way to reduce (can never eliminate) it is to have ZOS sell gold for real money with an in-game shop for it.

    People are lazier and more impatient than you can imagine, they will continue to buy gold one way or the other and those of us that don't have to sit there looking at the gold spam because of those people.

    So if you offer gold for real money with an in-game shop, it's a more convenient way for gold buyers to buy gold (and safer, but they don't care about safety obviously).

    age of wushu did this and gold seller are still there annoying the hell out of us. only thing it will do is gold sellers will sell it a little cheaper, and remember if zenimax sell gold for 5 they will sell for 4 and tehy will still win, remember in china the normal worker get less then 1 dolar per hour (some say its for the day of work), is no wonder iphone and most eletronics are build in china and sold here pretty much the 300 dolar device you pay for only cost then 100 to make, the rest is just the brand you are paying.

     

    only one game I see gold sellers really disapear on a game, it was shin megami tensei: imagine, and that was because to make gold you just need 30 min to have enough to spend andgold used inventory space each stack ahd a limit of 50k so anything more would cost you another space and so on, so no way in hell they could store a large ammount of gold and no one would risk your account for a 30 min farm, it also helped we had gms on most of time and the first spam on gold seller was reported by everyone

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  • KyleranKyleran Member LegendaryPosts: 43,373
    Originally posted by BurntCabbage
    Originally posted by SpottyGekko

    The only way to effectively combat spammers and bots is to have live GM's monitoring the game 24/7.

     

    It is virtually impossible to code an effective chat filter program that does not throw up a ton of false positives. The human brain is exceptionally good at spotting patterns and filtering "noise" out of chat messages to parse the actual content. The same goes for spotting bots.

     

    Relying on players to "report" goldsellers is hopeless, because each report has to be investigated by a human anyway. By the time each report has been checked, days could have gone by. And don't believe for a moment that the goldsellers aren't generating hundreds of false reports to tie-up the ZOS investigators...

     

    I cannot think of any reason why ZOS does NOT use active GM's to do this, other than that they don't believe it is cost-effective. People are expensive and I've no idea how many would be required to effectively cover 90% of the instances on the megaserver.

    i agree it cant be that hard to hire 3-6 people on a rotateing shift just to hangout and check up in-game on some reports or botting...but i think companys like to stay away from the whole GM being online and in-game because back in the day random ppl would sit there and hangout / play around n have random chats with them in-game...but if they are there to just SEE whats going makes alot of sence

    It's not that hard, or expensive, help desk staff in Manilla runs about $8.00 an hour, speak good English and a company could employ a pretty good team of moderators to police the game world. (and it would be a heck of a lot more fun than the customer service work most companies hire them for)

    Active, in game moderation would be the most effective means to control the problem, but it does cost some money as mentioned.

     

     

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  • myxaplixmyxaplix Member UncommonPosts: 41

    Gold spamming is probably a unsolvable curse in practically all games out there. WOW still has the problem and they have spent years trying to eliminate this scurge. As said an earlier poster, its possible to curtail spammers by offering items and game money for sale but that doesn't solve the problem of players buying their way to power. 

    Having a spam filter (even a good one...not like ESO right now) has little real effect since reporting the spammers doesn't stop them from cycling though mountains of hacked accounts that keep the several steps ahead of the Devs.

    I unfortunately think this is a horrible problem without a viable solution :(

  • spizzspizz Member UncommonPosts: 1,971

    Check this out, someone on reddit is reporting that BOT´s are already doing their business in COLDHARBOUR.

    This is ridiculous.

     

    http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/23npu6/bots_already_at_coldharbor_spawn_killing_mobs/

  • BeansnBreadBeansnBread Member EpicPosts: 7,254

    One option is to make currency account bound and make the game a dev based economy instead of a player based economy.  Devs set the prices for all the items you need for crafting/fighting/whatever. You can also get drops or find things in chests. You can gather mats. You can get items in almost every way you get them right now with the exception of getting them from other players.

     

    Basically, make the player earn everything they have themselves. Build an account over time. Earn it yourself the whole way.

  • asmkm22asmkm22 Member Posts: 1,788

    Setup their firewall to reject IP addresses from blocks assigned to certain parts of the world, such as China and Korea.  Then block IP's associated with VPN services.  That would cut out the vast majority of spammers and botters.  From there, it's a matter of updating the block list to reflect new VPN's that pop up (easy to do), and dealing with whatever is actually communicating from the US.

    I do this kind of thing for my clients, to cut down on everything from email spam to external port scan attempts.

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  • BurntCabbageBurntCabbage Member UncommonPosts: 482
    whats sad is that people have no idea how this will kill the game if they  **ESO ** keep sitting on their hands and do nothing..can you picture the huge pvp zergs porting around with speed hacks and stealth hacks like they use while farming nodes? this game could be lost in a matter of weeks if they **so called chinese farmers** decided to do so...im sure everyones mother would unsubb and move to the next new mmorpg but i really hope it does not come to this...also i hate when ppl say "well i dont pvp soo... "  this game is more based around the fact you lvl to get to pvp dominance and fight aginst other factions ..imo its build "like" daoc the pve is there but the game is more based on pvp its what they were /are working towards...will it work...prolly not the future does not look bright atm but its a great game too bad this is what mmo's have become now
  • IvidnaelaxIvidnaelax Member UncommonPosts: 67
    Just do a regional IP block for China and parts of Asia for that matter and see how fast it gets stopped. More specifically China and maybe North Korea. 
  • SpottyGekkoSpottyGekko Member EpicPosts: 6,916
    Originally posted by BurntCabbage
    whats sad is that people have no idea how this will kill the game if they  **ESO ** keep sitting on their hands and do nothing..can you picture the huge pvp zergs porting around with speed hacks and stealth hacks like they use while farming nodes? this game could be lost in a matter of weeks if they **so called chinese farmers** decided to do so...im sure everyones mother would unsubb and move to the next new mmorpg but i really hope it does not come to this...also i hate when ppl say "well i dont pvp soo... "  this game is more based around the fact you lvl to get to pvp dominance and fight aginst other factions ..imo its build "like" daoc the pve is there but the game is more based on pvp its what they were /are working towards...will it work...prolly not the future does not look bright atm but its a great game too bad this is what mmo's have become now

    What makes you think the "next new MMORPG" launch will be any different to this ?

     

    Goldsellers overran the Neverwinter launch...

    Goldsellers overran the FFXIV:ARR launch...

    Goldsellers are overrunning the ESO launch...

     

    Can't wait to see what happens at Wildstar's launch...

  • Nightbringe1Nightbringe1 Member UncommonPosts: 1,335
    Originally posted by Palazious
    Originally posted by SpottyGekko
    Originally posted by Palazious

    I'm really not sure why they can't just permanent ban the master accounts of those selling gold in chat, mailing offers ect.

     

    It's worth it to pay GMs to watch the chat and ban accounts at $60.00 a pop.

     

     

    The idea that "accounts at $60 a pop" will hurt goldsellers is flawed. They are most likely using both stolen credit card numbers and hacked accounts to replace any banned accounts. These cc numbers are cheap and in abundant supply from various hacking groups.

    Still.. if you give a GM the ability to right-click on a spammer and insta ban the master account and maybe ban that IP at the same time you make the goldseller use another stolen cc number, account and go through the whole sign up process again.

     

    They would spend all that time creating accounts for one opportunity to put it into chat.

     

    Not worth it for the goldsellers.

     

    If the accounts are hacked, stolen, etc. then they need to be banned anyways.

     

    Or do nothing...accept defeat and watch your real customers leave

    Flag the accounts selling gold and ban any account that buys gold from them. Banning the vendor's accounts accomplishes nothing, they are using stolen accounts/CC numbers. Ban the people supporting the vendors.

    Of course, you still have to pay live bodies to monitor the gold sellers, which most companies won't.

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