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Seriously. I've got a log from the past 15 minutes with about 100 messages in it from just bot spam. Probably more.
Establish criteria to make this happen. Just do something. When the people who can make it happen are there in-game where it's happening, they can take care of it right away. Even if it's just a few active users, it'll disincentivize the bot accounts from occurring in the first place.
Blacklist fixes hides a single symptom of a much larger problem. It is not a solution.
@Thrashinuva What exactly are you asking for here? A blacklist option exists. Are you saying veteran players should get admin privileges to deal with bots? Because I see serious issues with that solution, in its current state.
@Anarchy Marine
I mean exactly what I said. There's no need for users to be able to ban players. A simple silence option would effectively be the same as a bunch of players reporting someone and them getting silenced automatically.
Surely you don't believe the situation is fine as is?
@Thrashinuva There would be room for abuse of an option like that. There are already players in this game, that seem to have some very disturbing views on freedom of speech and expression. Say you had someone getting offended by an avatar, symbol art, or word choices in game. Instead of single use, manual blocking options like we have, you would have those who share the same views actively trying to get the person who offended them mass reported and auto blocked by everyone, the same way bots would be.
Yes, it would help stem the bot problem, but it would open up a Pandora's box of sorts, in regards to hate filled people, that want full control over the atmosphere of the game. People that think their games should be safe spaces, when it's an online experience, and is used by people from many walks of life, and that carry different values and beliefs. It would be like Twitter in game, as you would give the average user far too much control.
The best, and worst solution I've seen so far, is SEGA selling meseta in game, for far less than the bots are offering. No real world market would deter the bots entirely, but would heavily inflate the in game player vending market. There are no real solutions, save for SEGA blocking China, as that's where most of the bots are coming from. Of course, that said, the counter the bots could user, are VPN's
Edit: we have a blacklist option. It silences the person that you are having a spam issue with, and eventually those bots get banned. More throw away accounts are then made to replace them.
This system is prone to abuse like Anarchy has already said. What would work wonders is if they added the Black Desert word filter. I used to see gold spam all the time until they added that and now you can selectively censor certain things like www. or .com etc. It's a pretty smart filter too. Never seen any spam since and no need to blacklist anyone as I see no spam.
It might cause issues? What about the issues that already exist? And when it does cause issues you can do something about it.
There's already a word filter. Where there's money to be made, there's routes to take around word filters.
Just look at the other thread of bots, it's 23 pages long. When a bot is successfully reported and banned, they just create a new one.
What you need to do is implement a fast and effective method to crush the efforts of bots. The status quo isn't good enough.
@Thrashinuva The issue is what it stopping someone from using it to ruin another player's experience and essentially bullying them out of the game. Even if the abuse is caught and punished, the damage would have already been done and may cause the abused to quit the game.
Even games like FFXIV have bot issues, where accounts cost money. Bots continue to exist because people buy from those sites. Only way for it to end is for people to stop buying from those sites.
So I don't think this will solve it like you think it will, and it is incredibly abusable. Too much of a risk, in my opinion.
@Thrashinuva Am I missing something? There is no word filter that players have control over. At least not one in game. The BDO one is player specific and lets the player decide what gets filtered.
The BDO word filter solves the spam problem 100% and can continually be updated by players in game as they find loop holes. I got mine to the point where I see 0 spam no matter what they do and have not seen it for over a year. If that's not problem solved then I don't know what is.
There's no effective way to stopping bots. As long as morons keep buying they'll keep selling and it wont matter how fast or how many times they get banned they'll keep coming back. I mean they're pretty smart. Most of the process is automated.
@Archetype-Luna It's a difference of scale.
You have one or two users active in the game, and you give them a simple silence function. Mods could do it, but they don't. If you have issues you only have to worry about the behavior of these two individuals. Now what's the difference between paid mods doing this and volunteers? They can both be held accountable. One is fired and one has their account banned if they abuse their power.
You're so worried about the potential abuse that you're forgiving the blatant and constant abuse occurring as we speak.
@Zenny The feature I propose for would effectively stop bots immediately. Completely.
@Thrashinuva It wouldn't really stop the bots immediately nor completely. A person still has to manually select said bot and apply silencing action to them. They have to be aware of said bot to begin with. If they aren't aware of the bot, the bot will continue as normally. If the bot gets silenced, a new one is put in its place that has to be found and silenced all over again.
Also, even if the abuse is held accountable, by that point the damage would have already been done.
this suggestion turned out poorly in warframe. regardless of the actual effectiveness of the system you're suggesting, giving some users moderating power over others tends to have poor optics and runs the risk of damaging the community's trust in each other and the game's management. as this is a different game than warframe, the cost/benefit calculus may certainly be different here, but the risk of abuse should not be treated as a mere hypothetical that can be safely ignored until it actually occurs. an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
@Thrashinuva I gotta say, when I first responded to you, I thought you were reasonable, but after seeing some of your replies, I can't say you are. You want fast and easy solutions, to an issue that has long since plagued many MMO based games. And no solution has yet been fool proof. No solution should be so open ended, that it would allow for a system wide abuse. There are no quick and easy solutions to this issue, and your reactions to the responses here, make me wonder how new you are too Multi Member Online games. I already stated why it wouldn't be a great idea, and you simply ignored me, because you didn't like the response.
My elder brother who has played PC since 2004 ( when WoW launched) even agreed, as he's already seen that idea, tried and failed before in online games. You give the average player power they shouldn't have,(even if it's to solve a problem, that the general consensus is, that it needs to be solved) the average player will abuse said power, almost every time. It might not happen right away, but you are looking at future of that as the next big issue.
As I stated before, the only solution that comes close to solving the issue in a safe way, would be for SEGA to do what Blizzard did with World of Warcraft, and cheaply sell in game meseta, thus killing the bot runners market. That in turn would cause heavy inflation on market prices, and items would sell for far more than they are worth, but your bot problem would disappear, the same way it vanished in WoW.
Between your idea, the silly idea of locking the ability to type messages, behind player level reached, and the idea that you must have a character name with proper spelling, a real name, not one made up, with proper punctuation, and other flawed ideas as seen in another thread, are all bad, and not well thought out. Ideas that would either lead to abused systems, wrongful account blockage, or accounts that are limited in scope of character creation.
You aren't wrong in wanting bots gone, in fact you are preaching to the choir here, however none of us actually thinking critically on the subject, want half as*ed solutions, that in the grander scale, are lacking in key areas that would hamper, or even potentially hamper, the average, overall player experience.
@Archetype-Luna Yes, that is correct. It's a matter of scale. A single person can silence 5 bots in a single minute. Every single one of those bots will take much longer to actually get set up.
And they may have to become aware of them first, but think about it. Where are you most likely to find a bot right now? Go to any block that's over half full, and go near Cofy. You don't have to be aware of them first in order to do this one thing, and the bots will come out on their own.
@Anarchy-Marine @lily-rain You both are not reading into this properly. No one is suggesting that this is a strategy without flaws. There are flaws. There's potential for abuse. Even with that, it's still better than the situation we have now. Say you can't hunt down every bot: If you can simply push them away from the most populated blocks, that's still a win. Right now there's absolutely zero resistance against bots. You report a bot and you will not see them removed for days.
@JuggernautGTX I believe the Tweaker crew tried to implement a chat filter recently and it failed dramatically. Either way decades of spam e-mails and other bots have proven for a long time that filters don't accomplish anything. You need a human that's intelligent enough to understand what they're looking at, which also gives every other player in the game the ability to use the chat without such a filter.
But hey, if anyone can actually manage to implement literally anything, that would at least be a step in the right direction. The solution I propose is hardly that different than normal moderation. It's just alleviating what must be a tremendous burden to the paid moderators who can't handle the workload, and giving some of the responsibility to the community itself which wants to see something better for themselves. I'd like to see some of you at least try to imagine how this could potentially work, rather than only imagine every possible reason that it can't. I can do both of those things, but can you?
well to say something to the stuff you suggested....might be easier to have a auto silence system...if 10 different players blacklist an account within 24 hours that account gets automatically "silenced" and reported by the system - but also punishing people who "abuse it" on legit players....doubt anybody would abuse that system if he has to fear a ban just to "mute somebody" who could file a ticket and get unmuted
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