Would in-game incentive to report gold spammers be a good idea? (like achievements and/or gold)

myunclecidub17_ESO

Personally I think it would be awesome to get the community behind this.

alexw12381ub17_ESO

No, incentives would not work.

it would only lead to a ton of players being reported by mistake in a fast moving chat box.
and i personally believe that keeping the game free of such people VIA reporting them is the only Incentive anyone should need.

a better alternative would be to create Moderators that cant ban players

(simply someone that can report Players and have that report go straight to a Dev)

myunclecidub17_ESO

Yes, it's a good idea

It could be only awarded on accounts flagged as gold spammers and banned.

Saints

No, incentives would not work.

Gold spam is a minor issue, and when the devs sort out important game/quest breaking issues, they will handle the gold spam - as it is in every MMO

anfmofo

No, incentives would not work.

The incentive is they are annoying. DO u need more?

myunclecidub17_ESO

Yes, it's a good idea

I personally would like the title "Spam Killer" in game.

orntharon

Yes, it's a good idea

The incentive should be that you get a percentage of the gold that the sellers had on their character as a bounty for reporting them.

Alternately, let the gold sellers and bots continue to play, but make them targetable and lootable by player characters once they have been correclty identified as selling/botting. This way if bots are camping a boss you can mow down the bots with the bosses and get extra loot!

Terminus

No gold as a reward,
How would the achievement work?
"Report 100 players?"
I forsee mass reportings of innocent players.

As a community, it's our responsibility to report players who violate the rules.

myunclecidub17_ESO

Yes, it's a good idea

When banned, couldn't you just flag them as gold spammers?

EliteZ

No, incentives would not work.

Just no.

Another stupid idea to try and get something out of nothing. Why must people be rewarded for everything? Report them because they ruin the game, not so you can get a few extra gold or some unneeded reward to benefit you.

myunclecidub17_ESO

Yes, it's a good idea

I thought it was good idea.

MightyToSave

No, incentives would not work.

The gold spammers would just report themselves and sell the gold they just advertised. They or someone else would find a way to exploit it.

A reward of banned gold spammer is enough for me.

On a side note I think that there probably is not a lack of reporting, but a lack of prevention. The gold sellers need to be stopped BEFORE can annoy us. I could spend all day reporting these guys.....but then I wouldn't be enjoying the game.

You get an E for Effort though!

Terminus

myunclecidub17_ESO wrote: »

I thought it was good idea.

Hey, at least you're trying to come up with some constructive solutions.
That's the best anybody can do, you're not complaining about it!
So for that, thanks!

claudekennilol

No, incentives would not work.

It's a horrible idea. You would just then have bots reporting bots and being rewarded for it. ZO knows it's a problem. Obviously. They're already working on ways to alleviate the problem. Bribing people to do it is only going to cost them more time because then they'd not only have to take note of the bots (like they're already doing), but then they'd also have to take more time to reward the players in addition to the steps they're already taking but are not talking about.

ChampionSheWolf

No, incentives would not work.

Sorry but this is a horrible idea and would be abused by people who like having shiny achievements or awards. A lot of innocent people would get swept up in a craze to reporting the bots and cheaters.

Vandarion

No, incentives would not work.

If someone comes up with a completely safe and efficient idea then sure it will have my vote. Why not reward people for doing a good job? But:

• One should not be able to abuse the rewarding system
• Rewarding should lead to increased effectiveness (significantly)
• The rewarding system should be well balanced: How much, how the rewards will affect the user experience of all the players, how will it change the game?
• There should be only a marginal amount of risks or ill effects in relation to gained effectiveness so that the implementation of the system could be justified

I guess that it's possible to create a working rewarding system, but is it possible enough? Until someone convinces me otherwise my vote will be nay.

Rathsteel

No, incentives would not work.

I thought about this as well, and I came to a conclusion after many hours of random thinking about this.

1. Incentives would create people to report honest people for rewards.

2. Do what SOE did and just have a GM that camps chat in zones and phases. When he sees the gold spamers, just immediately ban that account with a screenshot sent to a database for ensurance that no innocent people get banned.

dionysis_gt

I'm not big on rewarding people for reporting gold spammers simply because less gold spam is it's own reward as it keeps the chat log more usable for everything you actually want from zone chatter.

What I don't understand is how the gold spam is so incredibly bad in ESO and how nothing seems to be done to actually address the problem. I try to report at least a couple of spammers per play session and have to ignore dozens more. I am typically ignoring a new spammer account not already on my ignore list every 3-5 minutes in game. How can there be so many spam accounts in a subscription MMO? These have to be hacked somehow because there is no way a $15/mo subscription on top of a $50 initial license would allow for profitable spamming on the scale that it is occurring in ESO. There just can't be that many customers willing to pay shady vendors for fake goods... particularly in a game that feels as casually rewarding as ESO. What security flaw is being exploited by spammers and is there a way to close that loop and fix the issue?

Is this just a side effect of the "mega-server" where all the gold spammers are able to reach the entire server population? Is there a better way to permanently IP ban exploiting accounts?

One additional potential issue, I have been kicked by the server twice so far claiming I had exceeded the message rate limit when I was sending no messages at all to any chat stream. Is there conceivably some exploit that is allowing gold spammers to bot/spoof other clients to produce their spam? If so, that would be a security flaw to fix immediately.

There is clearly some way for spammers to detect logins of other players since I usually get spam mail shortly after logging in on any given character. That would be fairly trivial depending on what sort of player listing API's are available (who /zone sort of calls). It seems like this sort of automailer API request could be tracked pretty easily from the server though. That would be a high priority use pattern to issue an immediate automated ban pending review of message content and a permanent account/credit card ban for verified offenses.

Honestly... I'd rather live with a handful of broken quests or items than the volume of spam currently occuring on ESO. For every broken quest I've found, there has been dozens more working and awesome right around the corner... but the overwhelming volume of spam is a constant drain on the quality of experience.

Sharee

Yes, it's a good idea

alexw12381ub17_ESO wrote: »

it would only lead to a ton of players being reported by mistake in a fast moving chat box.

Just a comment: you can stop the chat box from moving if you manually scroll it up before trying to click a name (scrolling it up just one line is enough).

The box only auto scrolls if it is at the bottom of the message queue.

qwertyburnsb16_ESO

Yes, it's a good idea

On balance I voted yes. I assume that ZOS investigates any reports before banning and the process is at the moment really laborious with the amount of spammers and bots.

halvard4685

No, incentives would not work.

I think gold spammers are getting reported enough already. I don't think having more being reported is going to help.

lonetac

No, incentives would not work.

Absolutely not. Ive already been banned cause someone reported me for gold spamming (since reinstated after my case was reviewed). This would be abused heavily just to get rewards. Its very clear its an automated system banning people as I have said one word in global since the game is released and they said "after a thorough review..." so I am 100% positive they have an automated system banning people. This would be way to easy for people to abuse and they cannot be trusted. Players are toxic and the game companies need to come up with systems to prevent this, not on the players to do so.

pjt15253

No, incentives would not work.

God no! This is the internet! Have you learned nothing!? People would report each other just for the rewards and flood an already flooded customer service dept with false reports.

zgrssd

No, incentives would not work.

No, for several reasons:
First they are only an issue in the 1st zone. So I am not convinced they are the problem many people make them out to be on the User Feedback Forum.
Beyond those first zones all you really see is legitimate player farming and the ocassional amateur botuser (it's an amateur if they go out of the area or use bots during main server hours).

Second this would be only an incentive to report people. There is not an issue with not enough people reporting them.
An incentive to report would only lead to false accusations. At worst you get goldsellers making gold by reporting legitimate palyers!

Third, even if they are somehow a much bigger issue on the NA server, they are still in the early stages of thier service. Right now we have multiple Businesses trying to get market coverage/build a market, even if that means they are currently not getting anything out of it.
During introduction phase of a product you have to risk high Advertisement (banned gold spammer accounts) and production (banned bot/farmer accounts) cost per unit. When they see it is not worth the effort, they will vanish. No shorterm action can truly affect a business, only longterm planning can solve this issue.

orntharon wrote: »

The incentive should be that you get a percentage of the gold that the sellers had on their character as a bounty for reporting them.

Alternately, let the gold sellers and bots continue to play, but make them targetable and lootable by player characters once they have been correclty identified as selling/botting. This way if bots are camping a boss you can mow down the bots with the bosses and get extra loot!

If we have the way to identify Goldspammers or Bots, this would be a less severe deterent then just banning them.
Goldselling is a business. Thier main cost factor is the accounts that get banned (and thus have to be replaced with new ones). They expect to get thier accounts banned (everything else would be plain self-delusional) and it is only a mater how much profit per account they can make.
Plus what I said above as point 3: Currently we are in the early phases, so they continue even if it results in a net loss.

kaosodin

No, incentives would not work.

Lol people wanting rewards for doing what is right. Either we all have to follow the rules, or none of us have to.

Varivox9

Yes, it's a good idea

I think it may lead to more trolling/false reports, but atm, I'm willing to risk it... It's just a terrible setup currently.

Eris

I voted no because I think that the system would be to vulnerable to abuse.

Jadeviper1974

No, incentives would not work.

What they need to do is make the reports more streamlined. It is utterly ridiculous that you have to right click, then chose a drop down, then type something in, then check box for a screenie, then finally send it a fully completed ticket just to report some miserable spammer. It should be right click, chose "report spam" and done.

Gisgo

Different goldselling companies would report each other and tons of false flag cases will lead to the ban legit players.

Nice idea.

Faugaun

Yes, it's a good idea

orntharon wrote: »

Alternately, let the gold sellers and bots continue to play, but make them targetable and lootable by player characters once they have been correclty identified as selling/botting. This way if bots are camping a boss you can mow down the bots with the bosses and get extra loot!

This

Faugaun

Yes, it's a good idea

Or they mow each other down