Use of MailR will get your account banned

lestaudenmaierub17_ESO

Just a PSA: it appears that after the recent patch, any use of MailR to bulk mail your guild will result in your account being banned (or suspended). What this means is that you will no longer be able to:

1. Send/Receive whispers
2. Access the Guild Bank/Store
3. Talk in chat (Guild/Zone/etc.)
4. Amongst other things.

Could we get a developer position on the use of this add-on? We are way past the days of gold spam and this add-on makes it very easy for guild leaders to interact with their members.

Wykkyd

Actually, quickly accessing ANY API commands or game actions can cause the same results.

3 players contacted me several months ago about suspensions due to their use of my Mailbox addon (originally called Mail Bot as a jab to ZOS developers, heh). The addon simply returned mail back to sender if that mail had attachments and the prefix RETURN or BOUNCE.

Those players hadn't done anything wrong. The addon hadn't done anything wrong, functionally. What was wrong was the addon worked too quickly. I fixed it by inserting a delay between actions. So instead of returning all 30 mails in your inbox instantly, each one would then take half a second. So, a process which originally took less than 1 second was adjusted and buffered to take 15 seconds, to save the user from being spammed offline, suspended or banned.

The problem with MailR's mass guild mail (which is accessed via a secondary addon) is that it has a very large potential for causing the game to think you're spamming or doing something illicitly. It's effectively issuing up to 500 mail send commands in a row, and that's a very slippery slope. While the mail itself is, in the eyes of the user, honest and legit... the game simply sees you sending hundreds of mail commands in rapid succession.

From a game developer point of view: They aren't about to go write thousands of parsing options to try and determine if your mail was legit or not. They can potential soften their constraints & thresholds, but that's about all you should expect from them.

From an addon developer point of view: MailR's mass mail should probably have a greater delay, even to the point of it taking a second to a second and a half per mail.

Ultimately, I get what you're after. But in all honesty, in my opinion (as a user, a player and as an addon developer) you should probably be using outside-of-game means to contact players and not rely on in-game systems and addons to do this work for you.

I get that this is frustrating. I get what you're really trying to do, and while I personally wouldn't build that tool nor use it in that way I can see why you would do so. The game support staff and developers probably get it too. The simple matter is, it's the way you used the addon and the lack of throttle (or low throttle) between mail sends inside the addon that, together, caused a suspension or ban (you or the person(s) you're alluding to). The game spam filters caught the activity, flagged it and disabled social systems. <<< that is the risk you take when choosing to mass mail using an addon (a system which can never be perfect).

hiyde

In a game where you can be in 5 guilds and are dealing with the spew of 5 guild chat channels, officers having the ability to send a "Guild Mail" should be BUILT IN to the system.

Also, not feasible to suggest that a 500 member guild should communicate outside of the game. We're lucky enough to have a custom website/forum but even when we provide BIG incentives to register (and ask for no personal info beyond e-mail address), we can't even get 10% to do so.

Social isn't a great option either, because most people are about as likely to 'fan' and post on a gaming guild social page as they are an adult video company.

A guild mail is the one (and only) guaranteed way to get a message to your entire guild. It shouldn't be abused (we do 1 per week, 2 at most), but it needs to be an option.

Wykkyd

No, mass mail should NOT be a built-in feature. Guild Message Of The Day should be a built-in feature that, by default, alerts to chat.

ZOS_MichaelServotte

It is possible for action(s) like sending mass in-game mails to trigger some restrictive measures our security team put in place to combat gold spammers. We hope you'll understand why we cannot go too much into details when it comes to what could trigger which type of security response, but in this particular case, we are not talking about an automatic suspension/ban.

Rest assured, each case that triggers the security tool in this way is reviewed in order to quickly correct any potential false positives. As always, if you believe your account has been muted due to activities that do not violate our Terms of Service, please don't hesitate to submit an appeal so that our Support Team can investigate.

Giraffon

"Message of the Day" is really not a good concept because some players are not online everyday. Here's what we need:

Guild Announcements - just like it sounds
Guild Policies - details of what is expected from members

If I had those two sections with a reasonable amount of space I would have zero need to send mass mailings.

I raised this issue in another thread and got a response from Zenimax that they would consider the request. Here's the link for that if anyone is interested:

forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/130904/guild-communication

Unfortunately the discussion went off topic after the developer post, but still I am encouraged!

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

ZOS_MichaelServotte wrote: »

Rest assured, each case that triggers the security tool in this way is reviewed in order to quickly correct any potential false positives.

You mean like the several hundred of us falsely accused of something (which you NEVER explained) and MANUALLY banned not long after launch (18th April to be exact)?

You (ZOS, not you personally AFAICR) said exactly the same thing at the time that they were reviewed .. only after several hundred were affected did anyone in ZOS belatedly take it seriously and it took over 24 hours for all the innocent players to be reinstated .. we never got any compensation for ZOS' negligence, I doubt anyone affected by bans like this one will be any different.

ZOS_ChipHilseberg

Just trying to summarize what I've seen here and in the other thread. It seems like you folks are looking for a way to send a message to other guild members, and to have that message attract their attention somehow (because "Message of the day" and "About us" already show static text to all guild members on the home page). Is that correct?

Wykkyd

Yes, they want to send guild-wide notices.

Wykkyd

Personally if I were going to bake it into the default UI/features I would have it be something that a player could opt out of on a guild by guild basis. For what that's worth.

Sasky

ZOS_ChipHilseberg wrote: »

Just trying to summarize what I've seen here and in the other thread. It seems like you folks are looking for a way to send a message to other guild members, and to have that message attract their attention somehow (because "Message of the day" and "About us" already show static text to all guild members on the home page). Is that correct?

As far as the use cases, I've seen 2 main ones:
- A policy change that guild officers want to inform all members about
- A list of upcoming guild events (weekly or so)

The two advantages that Mail has over About Us / MotD are:
- Much longer character limit for mail, letting you send more details/events
- Push-style notifications when sent (even if logged out). It's really easy to miss MotD changes.

The second use case would become unnecesary if a calendar system for guilds was implemented. This has been tossed around as an idea before. I've even looked at trying to make a calendar addon, but there isn't a good way to send the data between members (MotD would let you do very brief titles for only 3-4 events with its low character limit.)

I agree with Wykkyd that any calendar or changes to MotD should have optional push-style notifications. A lot of people complain about the "Guild member completed trial", so you'd want to make any added notifications optional because some people won't appreciate them.

hiyde

Chat: Ineffective because people are dealing with chat spew from up to 5 guilds PLUS zone PLUS IMs Group Chat etc. Most don't setup tabs to filter.

MOTD: Ineffective because this is not displayed at login. People have to constantly remember to check for new messages. They don't.

Guild Mail is the most effective way to get important info to guildmates (not to mention having the room to do it). I use all of the above. Guild Mail, hands down, gets the best response. It's not even close.

Another solution would be if the MOTD popped up at log-in with any new message(s) since the player last logged in. Not in the chat window. I have an addon that does that and guess what? 5 Guild messages of the day fly by so fast I don't end up reading any of them. Character space is a concern, though.

As someone who's worked in Digital marketing since the late 90's, I understand what spam is and I believe in opt-in/opt-out. But in the game? Not so much. If you don't want to know what your guild is doing once or twice a week, I'm not sure why you'd even care to be in that guild. If the guild is abusing mail and spamming you, there's a quit button.

Bottom Line: I've never played an MMO where it's so challenging to get a message to players (but I'm sure they exist so no lists please lol). While I'm open to equally effective options, Guild Mail cuts right through these issues. Without it, our weekly events would be dramatically less successful. This ability should be built into the game and have limits on how often it can be sent.

Gillysan

When you log in the MOTD should display in the chat where you have that guilds chat enabled. That is common in just about every game I have played with a guild system. Please feedback and ask them to do this.

Well, I obviously skipped a few posts, my bad. Yes, this is what we want.

ZOS_ChipHilseberg wrote: »

Just trying to summarize what I've seen here and in the other thread. It seems like you folks are looking for a way to send a message to other guild members, and to have that message attract their attention somehow (because "Message of the day" and "About us" already show static text to all guild members on the home page). Is that correct?

ZOS_ChipHilseberg

We have some new code in testing to put a notification in the notification window whenever the message of the day (MotD) for a guild changes. If you are offline when it changes you will be notified the next time you log on. The notification will name the guild that changed their MotD and put the text of the MotD in the note field (the tooltip on the page looking icon). We are also looking into expanding the MotD field size to allow for more information to be shared.

Cuyler

Wykkyd wrote: »

Ultimately, I get what you're after. But in all honesty, in my opinion (as a user, a player and as an addon developer) you should probably be using outside-of-game means to contact players and not rely on in-game systems and addons to do this work for you.

I can get onboard with all your points except for this one. ZOS has put so much emphasis on guilds and trading in guilds with ESO. With that much responsibility resting on guilds and they're leaders there really needs to be a better system to coordinate with guild members built in.

I can understand the frustration of developers trying to battle the spammers but I feel that the lack of bulk guild mail system is a detriment to a fully functioning guild based economy.

Hiyde hits the point home here:

hiyde wrote: »

As someone who's worked in Digital marketing since the late 90's, I understand what spam is and I believe in opt-in/opt-out. But in the game? Not so much. If you don't want to know what your guild is doing once or twice a week, I'm not sure why you'd even care to be in that guild. If the guild is abusing mail and spamming you, there's a quit button.

I wouldn't go as far as to say they should quit if they feel spammed. I agree that an opt-in/out feature would be required.

The addon works great btw, please find a way to make this easier on us. Guild tools is another but the "throttle" can take up to 2hrs to send the required 500 mails. Once a week that can be quite a lot of lost game time.

OokamiKage

To me it sounds like there needs to be a Message board sort of way to lay out all the wanted things. It could even be a sort of (insert guild name) Guild Book that updates when guild leaders edit/update information. Out of guild members wouldn't be able to see the info if it's in a special menu since you would need to be a part of a guild in order to see the information. It gets added after joining, and deleted after quitting/being removed.

berendttb14_ESO

or how about adding a guild warning that flashes across the screen at login that Reads new messages from (guild name) so it doesn't go through chat bar and is unmissable unless you aren't at your computer that you cant turn off but if you read the message it will not pop up again until a new message is posted

just a suggestion it would solve the spam mail bans and be effective for communication

TRIP233

ZOS_ChipHilseberg wrote: »

We have some new code in testing to put a notification in the notification window whenever the message of the day (MotD) for a guild changes. If you are offline when it changes you will be notified the next time you log on. The notification will name the guild that changed their MotD and put the text of the MotD in the note field (the tooltip on the page looking icon). We are also looking into expanding the MotD field size to allow for more information to be shared.

Yay! Now guild leaders can message everyone at the same time! No need for one at a time messages. Or using an add-on that could get your account flagged.

Cuyler

ZOS_ChipHilseberg wrote: »

The notification will name the guild that changed their MotD and put the text of the MotD in the note field (the tooltip on the page looking icon). We are also looking into expanding the MotD field size to allow for more information to be shared.

Am I correct in assuming @ZOS_ChipHilseberg that it's ZOS' intention for us to use the MotD to get the messages across to our guild members instead of using the mail system?

If so the size of the MotD field would need to about the size of two full emails which is about how much info I need to update my guild on a weekly basis. I speak for my 5 guilds when I say we need to convey a lot more information than what can be said in the MotD and "About us" fields.

OokamiKage wrote: »

To me it sounds like there needs to be a Message board sort of way to lay out all the wanted things.

I believe that the guild homepage is meant to be a message board as it should be, but it's not. It's more of a "tweet" board at the moment.

What I'd personally like to see on the guild homepage is the "about us" section have an infinite size field to store whatever info we like. Then when saved it would appear as the same size window but with the ability to scroll down through the information.

DarthFett

Cuyler wrote: »

What I'd personally like to see on the guild homepage is the "about us" section have an infinite size field to store whatever info we like. Then when saved it would appear as the same size window but with the ability to scroll down through the information.

This I would agree with.

Speaking as a regular player that is in 2 RP guilds, 2 store guilds and 1 guild bank I would really appreciate NOT having email sent to me in-game.
I understand the need for Leaders and Officers to connect with people (I'm an officer in my RP guild) but forcing email on people is not the way to go about it.

I agree that maybe 10% of people in guilds actually go to the guild website or even signup on it but then those are the people you need to be focusing on.
Mass emailing everyone in the guild just causes annoyance and most just delete it anyway (I know I do). If people want to be included in guild activities or want to know what is going on they are going to read the MOTD or go to the website (if there is one).

ZOS_ChipHilseberg

Internally we've expanded the MotD field to 1024 letters, given it a bigger space on the guild home page, and added a scroll for especially long messages.

Taonnor

ZOS_ChipHilseberg wrote: »

Internally we've expanded the MotD field to 1024 letters, given it a bigger space on the guild home page, and added a scroll for especially long messages.

Please implement a visual effect on login for daily guild message. For example a yellow text in chat or something else.

xillix666

ZoS needs to add more GUILD FUNCTIONALITY, it is very limited compared to other games. The limited MOTD and INFORMATION section, is very limited to the amount of information you can post.

That being said, we as guild leaders need to be able to send mails to all of our guildees, keep them informed, and a calendar would be nice to schedule guild activities and raids.

Observant

Using this Add-on will not get your account banned, don't worry @xillix666‌.
I use it all the time to communicate events and competitions within my guild.

I believe they're working on a new MOTD that shows upon log-in as well.