Originally posted by Tisiphone

 

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Originally posted by Zarynterk
The REAL issues mmos have are those nasty channel flooding perpetrators, and the bots... not gold farmers at all, in any way... Thats like saying its not the drug dealers fault, its the addict. And you call them morons...

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Curious, not debating. What do you classify bots as? They are obviously not player characters, nor will they ever be them. If they are not farming gold and items, what are they doing?

Well I'll put it to you this way... Not every glider in wow was a gold farmer right? Same thing here, while I do agree that some farming agents use bots, not all do... Some people use glider bots to level. All i was saying in my original post is that gold farmers arent going anywhere, and we all know that.

Originally posted by WSIMike

Originally posted by luciusETRUR

Originally posted by Thunderballs

 

 

you are a bunch of whiny gits..

 

Log on ....block 3-4 spammers ....problem solved..

 

enjoy play

 

 

This would be a great argument.. if the blocklist was unlimited.

You know.. I remember I used to get as excited about people in this thread when NC would show some balls against the RMT in L2. I would defend them against others who said it was only temporary and not to get used to it. After a while, I realized the so-called "haters" were right.

To those all excited and declaring NCSoft victorious... Well... if you seriously think the RMT are just going to disappear or be significantly diminished from one round of bans... well... I hope you're not too disappointed. If you think this is some indication that NCSoft suddenly cares and is going to remain consistent in fighting it... again... I hope you're not too disappointed. 

I know the first reaction of some here is going to be to call me a troll... Only I'm not. Again, I was once ready to shout from the rooftops every time they did a banning in L2.. But after a while, you realize their actions are nothing but token efforts, usually done at very deliberate times... In L2 it's almost always been right around the release of a major update/expansion. They expect people to come back, or new players to check it out, and want them to get a good impression. So they do a banning, make some big statement about how they're combatting it, blah blah... Then a couple weeks later, it's right back to normal again, with the bot trains controlling catas and necros, people being spammed with RMT ads, etc. etc.

Who knows.. maybe I'm wrong this time and they really did get a clue. I'd like to think so because I have friends who play Aion. I bought an account and would like to play it, too. But I won't as long as RMT is running rampant in the game. So, I have a vested interest in NCSoft finally getting a clue and finally taking it seriously as well. I'm just not so willing to jump for joy at every announcement they make... I've heard it all before, too many times.

 

at least some one lives in the real world  you wont get rid of spamers  that easy .they will find a way they all ways do

I am glad to see that this has been tackled, at least for now, the real issue, imo, is the game itself. People would not feel the need to purchase gold or bot for levels if the game itself did not require all the moneysinks and increasingly larger level grind. Im not advocating instant level buttons and all that, so dont be rash and make that assumption, but easing off all the moneysinks and leveling requirements would help reduce the gold farming in the game. I think they should place more emphasis on abyss points and less on kinah and mob grinding. Just my two cents.

Cheers!

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Originally posted by vmoped
I am glad to see that this has been tackled, at least for now, the real issue, imo, is the game itself. People would not feel the need to purchase gold or bot for levels if the game itself did not require all the moneysinks and increasingly larger level grind. Im not advocating instant level buttons and all that, so dont be rash and make that assumption, but easing off all the moneysinks and leveling requirements would help reduce the gold farming in the game. I think they should place more emphasis on abyss points and less on kinah and mob grinding. Just my two cents.
Cheers!

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Interesting point. But that brings up the balance of risk, work, and reward. I think a lot of players have a tipping point when there's a big money sink (say, for argument, a mount) between buying gold and farming it. If the work involved is so great that the risk and underhandedness of buying gold is less of a concern, then they're more likely to buy the gold. However, tip it too much the other direction and it will never feel to players like they are accomplishing anything. People are at all shades of grey on the laziness scale, too.

Perhaps eliminating the larger money sinks and moving to player actions/quests to acquire the desired items would be an idea. Then you only have to worry about powerleveling.

Remember in FFXI, riding was a quest acquired skill, and then in WoW it cost money?

I wonder how many people bought WoW gold in order to pay for their riding skill and mount.

Originally posted by Rohn

I'm sure the gold sellers are feverishing working on ways to bypass the new filters right now, but for the moment, the spam has been almost eliminated completely.

In almost 4 hours of playing, I saw one gold seller spam message get through, and that was in Chinese script.

Well, that is of course how things always works in any MMO but it is great to hear that they finally is taking this issue seriously.

It was in the last minute, this is an issue that can bleed subs.

Originally posted by haratu

Where there is demand there will be supply, no matter what NCsoft does. The solution that has been put up is temprary, but futile as the only true way of solving gold spammers is to stop buying. 

Some people just have not worked out that buying gold = spam... the weird thing is i have seem buyers complain about spam too.

There are ways to kill gold spammers in chat.

EQII has a very effective solution. I tend to see less than one piece of gold spam per month in that game, and that is by /tell.

There are plenty of RMT mmos out for gamers who don't enjoy the gaming part of games.  You can not play those games along with other like-minded players who don't want to play the game either. Using RMT in a game that supposedly doesn't want RMT is like being the fully abled ringer in a special olympics. Must be an awesome pride you feel.

Originally posted by glid

Well if you think that gold farmers destroy MMos economies you must be dumb. They are just making it easier for people who want to spend money instead of grinding a million mob. It's exactly like RL. Money makes a difference. Some people are working harder than you are and don't wanna grind to enjoy the game. What is the problem with it? Anyway,  you won't stop it.

How hard an individual works has very little to do with the amount of disposable income they have.The most demanding jobs I have have ever had were also the lowest paying.

That being said,  what you choose to reguard as a gind, some people choose to consider an integral part of the game. If I want something I go out and earn it. This applies equally to both RL and in-game, and never shall the two meet.

Originally posted by Tisiphone

 

 

Interesting point. But that brings up the balance of risk, work, and reward. I think a lot of players have a tipping point when there's a big money sink (say, for argument, a mount) between buying gold and farming it. If the work involved is so great that the risk and underhandedness of buying gold is less of a concern, then they're more likely to buy the gold. However, tip it too much the other direction and it will never feel to players like they are accomplishing anything. People are at all shades of grey on the laziness scale, too.

Perhaps eliminating the larger money sinks and moving to player actions/quests to acquire the desired items would be an idea. Then you only have to worry about powerleveling.

Remember in FFXI, riding was a quest acquired skill, and then in WoW it cost money?

I wonder how many people bought WoW gold in order to pay for their riding skill and mount.

It is an interesting question. If you get things too easy (like you do when you buy gold or cheat) you tend to tire faster of a game.

As I see it is the problem grinds and timesinks. the less of those (like the daily quests many game have), the less need for goldselling. But there is also a logical opposite, when money is worthless like in WAR you lose some of the motivation.

A script that keeps track of non guild transactions also would help, not to just auto ban people but when a character is getting and giving away a lot of cash to non guild members there is probably something fishy and the GMs can check things up.

I think however that the best way to keep goldsellers away is a great crafting system. When you don't have to grind forever to be able to craft a weapon and it is at least almost as good as the stuff other people is selling you have an alternative to use loads of gold.

Another thing is that youll need to change all your stuff too many times in a MMO. If a saxon had a chainmail in the old days he could use it for many years but in a MMO youll need at least 10 of them when you are leveling up because the old one gets useless fast. This is of course one of the regular moneysinks of MMOs but it is stupid, it would be better in that case to be forced to repair it more often instead. You don't see Aragorn changing word every chapter.

For mounts you should always have the alternative to actually capture and train your mount yourself. It shouldn't be easy of course but is a lot more fun than having to buy the frigging thing for loads of gold.

Money should matter in a MMO, more than it does in WAR but less than it does in Wow.

People are happy because this does effect their play on a daily basis. We actually notice the change and we praise it. The truth is NCSoft is probably just smart at where they allocate their resources. Instead of spending time banning gold spammers 24/7 they spend their time banning actual farming bots (which is the root of the problem) and work on a filtering system that works with the client on the side. True spam bots can change it up and we've seen that with the weird character spam that gets through every few hours but NCSoft's filter system probably has a way of automatically filtering messages of that variety. Therefore now NCSoft has to put very little effort into curbing that problem and can now put efforts towards curbing the bot problem (and believe me it's very small in comparison to L2).

Queues... CHECK

Goldspamming... CHECK

Goldfarmers... In Progress

But really it was the spam that was going to cause people to leave. Most bots are unnoticeable and at this point it's hard to tell if someone is a bot or not. I hear on European servers this issue is much different but I can only give my opinion based on my own server, the EST timezone Azphel server. I can always find the mobs I need to kill, there are bots here and there but they at least don't affect my gameplay. In Lineage 2 I frequently had to fight bots for leveling spots, raidbosses and the like.

Originally posted by FastTx

In Lineage 2 I frequently had to fight bots for leveling spots, raidbosses and the like.

Were you literally fighting them, or do mean you were competing for the spawns?

I think if some system was in place that caused bots to flag for PvP it would be a real boon in discouraging them. Imagine having bot-hunting as a feature in the game.

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

Originally posted by FastTx

In Lineage 2 I frequently had to fight bots for leveling spots, raidbosses and the like.

Were you literally fighting them, or do mean you were competing for the spawns?

I think if some system was in place that caused bots to flag for PvP it would be a real boon in discouraging them. Imagine having bot-hunting as a feature in the game.

I mean both. Many tactics were used, and admittedly sometimes it was fun. You may think it would be a big boon in discouraging botters and it is true bots are not found in the Abyss. It would only form the need for botters to have "Bot defenders" like they had in Lineage 2.

If you were a low level, say level 45 and you had to pk a bot for the use of a hunting zone. A few minutes later a level 60+ bot defender would port in and PK you.

They got rid of gold spamer's for now great what about the bot's? I think they should have got them first.

Bull Crap! My wife is on right now on Lumiel and all i see in her chat box is continous gold spam as usual!

Yeah, the spammers are back today. Not as bad as before but I'm guessing that's only because they all haven't figured out how to bypass whatever the devs have done yet.

^^^ is the first thing I saw when I logged on earlier today. The chat was being spammed nonstop. Besides that, I see a lot more private shops with gold buying information.

Originally posted by heartless

^^^ is the first thing I saw when I logged on earlier today. The chat was being spammed nonstop. Besides that, I see a lot more private shops with gold buying information.

It isn't nearly as bad as it was but given time now that they found a way around it probably will get just as bad. NCSoft is going to have to tweak their chat code to block them out too as well as those now using .net in their message to get around NCSoft's last "fix".

They seriously need to consider having a separate chat channel for the starting areas and not allowing players to send tells or have access to any of the global channels until after they complete all the campaign and the ascension quests in the starting area as well.

They need to disable the use of those characters in Aion.

Originally posted by FastTx

They need to disable the use of those characters in Aion.

Definitely agree.

That didn't take long for them to return.  It seems they need to find a more permanent solution to the gold spamming.  It'll be interesting to see what they try next...lol...It's becoming like a soap opera.

Originally posted by junzo316

That didn't take long for them to return.  It seems they need to find a more permanent solution to the gold spamming.  It'll be interesting to see what they try next...lol...It's becoming like a soap opera.

It's not like this is the first game to go through these problems.  Of course, it would be nice if for once a goddamn company was proactive rather than reactive, but I give up with these compaines any more actually setting up these types of things ahead of time or listening to people that warn them to have things in place before they go live.