garethrogue wrote:
Seriha wrote:
I'm with Karlina. While I understand wanting to squish the problem, hurting legit players in the process is not the way to go about it. And just because you might not've received a tell from a curious newbie does not mean others haven't.
That said, message frequency is the safest indicator of shutting something down. You're still going to get some messages that slip through the cracks, yes, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say legit players aren't sending 15+ tells a minute. If you are, you're either a very, very, very fast typer or sending things of significantly little substance. In any event, breaching this should prompt the player with a warning and initiate a cooldown period. You can still send tells as normal, but if you surpass that limit again before the cooldown expires, your whole account gets muted and not just that individual character. In the case of players having their accounts stolen and hit with this status, there needs to be something to make the player aware they've been locked and to easily contact a GM. They can then do their thing from there to lift the restriction, notate the account, etc..Of course, if the RMT tries this and sees the account holder is based in some US state, but the current connection is from China, well... I'd err against removing the lock even if the person did seem to speak passable English. Or defer the process to web-based/email support to confirm identity like with a driver's license scan.
Otherwise, I'm okay with something that'd block friend requests outright or impose a level restriction of the player's choosing. Being friends isn't a requirement to communicate. It might also be a good idea to revisit what XI did and make it impossible to search a zone or a player within it if you haven't been to it yet yourself. This should ideally help to cut down on the lists the bots can generate to contact. From there, it's just a matter of implementing and updating filters. They're never going to go away and I don't agree with the concept of punishing the buyer doing any good. As with most temptations to cheat, you'd have better luck in addressing why people consider RMT to begin with. And that's a direct result of accessibility to resources. Not fun and too grindy? You bet people will cut corners.
That said, message frequency is the safest indicator of shutting something down. You're still going to get some messages that slip through the cracks, yes, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say legit players aren't sending 15+ tells a minute. If you are, you're either a very, very, very fast typer or sending things of significantly little substance. In any event, breaching this should prompt the player with a warning and initiate a cooldown period. You can still send tells as normal, but if you surpass that limit again before the cooldown expires, your whole account gets muted and not just that individual character. In the case of players having their accounts stolen and hit with this status, there needs to be something to make the player aware they've been locked and to easily contact a GM. They can then do their thing from there to lift the restriction, notate the account, etc..Of course, if the RMT tries this and sees the account holder is based in some US state, but the current connection is from China, well... I'd err against removing the lock even if the person did seem to speak passable English. Or defer the process to web-based/email support to confirm identity like with a driver's license scan.
Otherwise, I'm okay with something that'd block friend requests outright or impose a level restriction of the player's choosing. Being friends isn't a requirement to communicate. It might also be a good idea to revisit what XI did and make it impossible to search a zone or a player within it if you haven't been to it yet yourself. This should ideally help to cut down on the lists the bots can generate to contact. From there, it's just a matter of implementing and updating filters. They're never going to go away and I don't agree with the concept of punishing the buyer doing any good. As with most temptations to cheat, you'd have better luck in addressing why people consider RMT to begin with. And that's a direct result of accessibility to resources. Not fun and too grindy? You bet people will cut corners.
Blocking someone based on their level has the exact same effect as my idea, only it can affect actual players who aren't as hardcore as you or I. At least if you could restrict chat to vet status 1, you'd get 100% of RMT, and new players would quickly graduate from that status.
As I've said once and twice before - give people the choice for those blocks. If I want to block tells from low levels or even people that are not on my FLIST then that's my decision. It's not hurting anyone else, since returning on 2.0 release in the UK I only ever used this function when I first joined the game.
Other than RMT, I don't remember the last time I got a tell from some one not in my LS/FL/FC.
