Chat Messages and Spamming

Maverick827

I'm working on an addon for displaying boss strategies in dungeons.

Obviously, a large portion of this addon would be relaying said strategies in group chat for people who might not have the addon installed. You walk up to a boss, press a button, and everyone knows what to do. This type of addon is pretty common across MMOs that allow addons.

It doesn't look like we have the ability to send chat messages directly, however, which seems pretty silly since anyone who would want to abuse such a system to spam could easily do it without ESO mods, but I digress.

I initially planned to just have a button start firing off a few group chat messages automatically, but now I'm testing a workaround:

The button uses the CHAT_SYSTEM:StartTextEntry() method to put in the first bit of text (it's split up into chunks to fit the max length for chat entries) into the chat window. It then registers a handler for the EVENT_CHAT_MESSAGE_CHANNEL event. The handler looks for messages from the player themselves (e.g., the first part of the strategy that they just submitted), and when it finds one, it puts in the next bit in the chat window. Repeat for the rest of the total message. Unregister the event at the end.

I wanted to check in and see if there was any potential negative ramifications of implementing something like this.

Does Zenimax have any sort of auto-spam detection that might flag a player of spamming? If someone uses my addon, and a hypothetically vindictive group member reports them for spamming, would the people working on that ticket be able to tell that the person wasn't spamming gold selling websites, obscenities, or anything malicious and not issue a punishment? Or would they just look at the time stamps and say "well, he sent four chat messages in one second, throw the book at him!"

Thanks.

zgrssd

Atlas does this already, but afaik it is not working for Vet Dungeons.

The main issues is that addons cannot send chat messages, only prepare them (so the user can commit them via enter).

Maverick827

Are you sure? I don't see anything about strategies in that Atlas description, and a quick glance over the code doesn't show anything like that, either.

I've already have the workaround written, I just need to know if sending 4 - 5 paragraphs within a few seconds could have any negative effects on a person's account due to spamming (this only works in group chat).

zgrssd

Maverick827 wrote: »

Are you sure? I don't see anything about strategies in that Atlas description, and a quick glance over the code doesn't show anything like that, either.

I've already have the workaround written, I just need to know if sending 4 - 5 paragraphs within a few seconds could have any negative effects on a person's account due to spamming (this only works in group chat).

There seems to be some sort of spam detection system. I and friends have been kicked to login screen for "exceeding message limit".
It especially happened in the second phase of Selenes Web final fight.

But those always were cases where we had not used the chat for a minute. So we can't be sure if it was a bug or a fallback error message.

Garkin

Maverick827 wrote: »

Are you sure? I don't see anything about strategies in that Atlas description, and a quick glance over the code doesn't show anything like that, either.

I've already have the workaround written, I just need to know if sending 4 - 5 paragraphs within a few seconds could have any negative effects on a person's account due to spamming (this only works in group chat).

Strategies was in different addon - VeteranBosses. But I'm not sure if this addon still works as it wasn't updated for the new patch yet.

Maverick827

Garkin wrote: »

Maverick827 wrote: »

Are you sure? I don't see anything about strategies in that Atlas description, and a quick glance over the code doesn't show anything like that, either.

I've already have the workaround written, I just need to know if sending 4 - 5 paragraphs within a few seconds could have any negative effects on a person's account due to spamming (this only works in group chat).

Strategies was in different addon - VeteranBosses. But I'm not sure if this addon still works as it wasn't updated for the new patch yet.

Yeah, I saw that addon, but felt I could make something more to my liking that I knew was updated, working, and I could modify when I wanted to.

Maverick827

I'm working on this mod again and it would be great to get an official answer from Zenimax.

Are there systems in place that would penalize someone for using a mod that posts 5+ messages to group chat in a short amount of time?

Gillysan

Maverick827 wrote: »

I'm working on this mod again and it would be great to get an official answer from Zenimax.

Are there systems in place that would penalize someone for using a mod that posts 5+ messages to group chat in a short amount of time?

You need to flag your own post or submit a support email through the main website.

I highly doubt that 5 entries of text would get you banned. Especially if you put a 3 second delay between entries.

You might consider making a book like addon similiar to Harven's Quest Journal. An index sorted by region(zone) then bosses in that zone. A Monster Compendium.