RMT

[Taliriah]

Not sure if sarcasm, but your post reads like it. If you are being sarcastic, it's not about making a system impervious to RMT (though that would be fantastic). It's about making playing the game better for players.

Obviously it was sarcastic, and my point is that such a filter would be worked around so fast that there would be no perceptible improvement.

[Larirawiel]

The problem is, with those filters/regexes you would only get the advertisement spammers. But banning them will not really improve anything. Because you can spawn new advertisement accounts without any costs. A trial account is enough to do that.



Cheers

[Fhqwghads]

Or we can just not go down the path of using a system that can be easily worked around and abused by malicious actors. I like that idea more.

Feel free to explain how it can be "easily abused." Just saying it can be easily abused is not proof of how it can being easily abused.

I can't help but notice nobody else has bothered coming up with any suggestions. Just a bunch of contrarian garbage with zero evidence of how my entire suggestion can be abused.

[Fhqwghads]

Obviously it was sarcastic, and my point is that such a filter would be worked around so fast that there would be no perceptible improvement.

It's simple to adapt the regex to match new RMT string permutations. All SE has to do is make it a plain old text file that's read by the server every few minutes to keep the regex fresh and up to date.

Instead of making baseless accusations of ineffectiveness or potential for abuse, how about offer up suggestions or prove that what I submitted in the OP won't work.

[Fhqwghads]

The problem is, with those filters/regexes you would only get the advertisement spammers. But banning them will not really improve anything. Because you can spawn new advertisement accounts without any costs. A trial account is enough to do that.

The regex would catch new accounts as soon as they're spammed. It's not like the regex evaporates as soon as it matches text.

[Mosha]

Feel free to explain how it can be "easily abused." Just saying it can be easily abused is not proof of how it can being easily abused.

I can't help but notice nobody else has bothered coming up with any suggestions. Just a bunch of contrarian garbage with zero evidence of how my entire suggestion can be abused.

People can be baited into tripping the regex and then a malicious group can mass report them.

[Fhqwghads]

People can be baited into tripping the regex and then a malicious group can mass report them.

How often do you think that would happen? Despite frequency, if this happened the event would be reviewed when the target contacts SE's customer service for wrongful suspension. Server logs would show what happened. The target gets their account back and the malicious group of players is suspended instead for abusing the system. Make it very clear in the TOS that this sort of abuse won't be tolerated.

But just for the sake of argument, the process would only auto-suspend accounts less than 3 months old. Even if some poor sap was the target of cruel players and was unable to convince customer service of their innocence, they wouldn't lose a whole heck of a lot of time vested in the game.

[AmiableApkallu]

If the regex detects this string, more than 10 people report & blacklist the account and the account is 3 months old or less, the system automatically suspend it.

How do you know the system doesn't already work something like this? I mean, I report an account (I don't bother with the blacklist), and I never hear from it again. :shrug:

[Mosha]

How often do you think that would happen? Despite frequency, if this happened the event would be reviewed when the target contacts SE's customer service for wrongful suspension. Server logs would show what happened. The target gets their account back and the malicious group of players is suspended instead for abusing the system. Make it very clear in the TOS that this sort of abuse won't be tolerated.

But just for the sake of argument, the process would only auto-suspend accounts less than 3 months old. Even if some poor sap was the target of cruel players and was unable to convince customer service of their innocence, they wouldn't lose a whole heck of a lot of time vested in the game.

That's a cop-out. There is a glaring flaw in your idea and your response is to contact customer support if they get wrongfully banned (SE CS is awful btw) You completely neglected to think about the human factors. Also, it would happen quite a lot because people can be extremely petty and cruel like you said, there is even a term for it "Brigading". It's an undercooked idea.

If I was a sprout and lost 3months of work I would just quit the game.

[LyraShu]

Using regex can be messy for games with player bases as big as we have. What about other languages? How would you filter to keep common phrases out of the pulls? What about when the gil traders mode their phrases a bit to keep you guessing (instead of saying gil, like saying bread for example), would your system account for that as well and keep regular players out of the net? What about private messages?

What about the time investment for SE to check the logs for banned people that wanted checks (not all of them would be legit). How long would regular players who were wrongly banned players need to/expected to wait? Every single case would be some time to determine the resolutions and even if there was someone who could do it stupid quick, it stacks up real fast.

We have already seen in other games (and this one) how players can abuse systems similar to this. If you don't like someone and want them gone, this could be a weapon.

Really, I think this system has too many holes using as a good blanket. I am not sure if there is a "perfect" answer for RMT past "Don't buy it". Supply and demand is a real thing.