SE, how hard is it to eliminate the bot spam?

[Roth_Trailfinder]

The way to get rid of Gil seller spam is to get rid of the Gil sellers. And you do that by making it economically unviable to continue trying to sell their Gil.

I've proposed a means of doing this in the past, though some like the means, others do not. And the fact that SE has apparently not chosen to implement any such means, similar or dissimilar, suggests that they are not that interested in actually stopping a problem found mainly on non-Japanese data centers.

[Ashkendor]

Many of those on the list are for more experienced players who are likely paying a sub. Heck, when you're on a trial, you can't even get mail.

Yeah, the person I quoted didn't say anything about it being "for new characters only" or any such, so I can only assume they want this massive change to /tell functionality across the board and I just really find it to be... well, stiflingly antisocial. I mean, this is an MMO. Imagine you meet a cool person in DF, then figure out after the run that they're from your server. You can't send them a tell and when you try to friend request them, those are blocked!

It begs the question: how are you supposed to make friends without communicating in the first place? :3

That being said, to allow us to put on /busy and allow people on our friends list, FC list, and LS's to send tells would be a HUGE step towards cleaning up spam. Yes, you might miss the occasional random compliment on your glamour, but it also puts it in the players choice whether or not to restrict incoming tells.

Yeah, if it was a toggle or some such that'd be one thing but completely changing /tell I can't agree with.

[Stormfur]

I thought of a solution to this...that would work for everyone, and then wondered why it hadn't been implemented (*cough*console restrictions please look forward to it*cough*)

So there's probably something I'm *not* considering here, but why not...

All users to create their own filters?

Kind of like the macro system but with dropdown menus. This way you could selectively block anyone BUT people on your friends list, OR block people who send X tells within Y minutes, OR people who have been playing for less than 30 days or WHATEVER controls you want. Sure there will be some false positives, but at least this way you could tweak it to fit your playstyle.

[odie]

The restrictions and the filters wouldn't work....these guys already teleport, move through walls, etc...they'd get around it if they needed to.

[Myriads]

I'm on Diablos. Last night I got 27 Gil Seller spams over the course of my evening. The first one zipped in even before I loaded into my inn room.

I click and add to ban list and move on. That at least prevents any one of them from hitting me multiple times. When the list gets full I spend a bit killing off the top 60 or so names. It's a chore.

What I'd like is a filter that I could set that would let me ban an incoming tell based on any word or phrase it contained. All of last nights spam fell into one of three 'form letters'. If I could pick out a phrase, plug it into my filter, then most of my problem would be solved. Sure eventually they will create a new one that gets around it, but I can then add that one. If things could be reduced to seeing 2 or 3 of these a night I'd be fine. And to me this seems the most reasonable way to deal with it.

Heck, some nights I've had as many as half a dozen of these tells roll in one after another, all from different bots. It's an annoyance.

[Bladesinger]

The WoW Token option was something Yoshi mentioned as well - HOPEFULLY he's still looking into that =\

[Roth_Trailfinder]

Putting a band aid on a sucking chest wound will not stop the wound from sucking air. Blocking the Gil seller spam directed at individuals will not stop the Gil seller from sending that spam out.

If you want to get rid of the spam, you *have to make selling Gil an uneconomical proposition*. You HAVE to remove all profitability from the sale of Gil in order to get them to leave. Anything less will not solve the problem. The tells are not the problem - the people controlling the bots sending the tells are.

[Ragnorak]

We here on Gilgamesh dont see this much if even at all... But there's a 3rd option in all of this for you small server guys. Ask people to stop buying gil

[Darker_Midnight]

To the OP: You are assuming the botters play by the same rules as the players. You're assuming the bots run on computers with pretty graphics and expensive setups.

It would be economically unviable to do so. They just tunnel through the server's communications protocols (oversimplified, they simulate keyboard presses and mouse input) and more than likely run a basic program that 'plays' the entire game in a tiny little black and white window. A single computer could likely run hundreds of bots, all sending instructions directly to the server without that pesky graphical user interface called 'the game'. Exactly how it works is beyond me, but that's how the bots manage to teleport and do all their wonderful tricks.

So tl;dr - it's effing hard for the admins of this MMO, nevermind any other popular MMO, to get rid of bots. As long as it's economically viable to do so, they will come.

Everyone else above me has already mentioned the obvious answer - stop buying gil.

[Morzy]

So u wanna restrict the communication capabilities of new players when the game is the most confusing(subjective).

Do u hear urself?