Business And Economy Archive
Thread: The real way to stop spammers in the game
RankorCity
Fri Jan 21, 2005 8:43 am
#14
Shadow73 wrote:
What some here call spamming should not be stopped. Its a part of the game, it helps players and it helps merchants. What makes some of the cities a lively place is the so called spam. It helps players find good vendors. Every time, when Im in theed I stop and check the afk messages to see if there is a vendor or something that it would be interesting to check out.
The only sad thing is the spammers who use the tools for useless messages and forget that there is a command called pause in the macro language.
Also realise that there are barker droids. Theese ones are made for only one purpouse. To stand and "spam". To help merchants. What irritates me a little is when I stand and marketing my shop and some kid tells me stop spamming. It is a part of the game. Clearly intended to be like that (refering to the barker droids).
Macros are a great part of the game. A shame they will be removed. The only trouble that I see with macros are buffbots and looting. But that could have been solved another way.. with altering the macro language (removing some commands).
Shadow
It creates lag.
It muddles up starports to where you cant have a conversation.
If I need something, I'll hit control V and look there...Or ask a friend who they recommend. Most people buy armor, weapons, and food/drink from the same person repeatedly.
Bottom line, if you are spamming in a starport, you wont be getting any business from me. The way I see it, if you stuff isnt good enough to be made popular by word of mouth, its not worth my time to go check your vendor to begin with.
Solidous
Fri Jan 21, 2005 10:00 am
#16
would this /shutup command come in an area attack form as well?
That would be funny. See 20 people on the ground crying becasue of the /shutup command. LOL 
DeQuosaek
Fri Jan 21, 2005 11:44 am
#17
Well, if you look in Options... there is an option that reads:
[X ] Show Messages From AFK Players In Chat
Or something to that effect. Just uncheck that. 
Khristen
Fri Jan 21, 2005 1:06 pm
#18
What I think would be helpful if AFK meant a player couldn't say or do anything until the AFK tag was removed. No shouting, no skill macroing, no nothing. You're a bump on a log.
Andhaveit be something that you can't turn off except by actually clicking something on the keyboard or with mouse movement. Meaning that in order to not be flagged as AFK (after say 3-5 minutes of no keyboard/mouse activity) you have to actually....be at the keyboard!
Player's could still macro things. They just couldn't do it if they weren't there. At least not without violating the TOS and using a third party program.
Then add a "privacy" option for players that use the manual AFK tag as a form of letting the machine pick up. Turning off the commlink, so to speak.
This kind of thing would solve many issues: quite a bit of starport spam, entertainer bots, loot bots, and other annoying ways to "play" the game without actually being there.
DeQuosaek
Fri Jan 21, 2005 4:02 pm
#19
Yeah, but at least half of the spammer I see are afk. So at least that's half the spam. =)
RankorCity wrote:
Only works if they are /afk...
SWG_Miriam
Fri Jan 21, 2005 4:41 pm
#20
ana-mo-cara wrote:
The player types /shutup while conning a spammer.
There's already an in-game mechanism which accomplishes "shutting up" the spammers. It's called /addignore.
To use it, just type: /addignore [playername]and it will silence the person cluttering the spatial chat with spam.
ecstasia
Fri Jan 21, 2005 5:59 pm
#21
RankorCity wrote:
Shadow73 wrote:
What some here call spamming should not be stopped. Its a part of the game, it helps players and it helps merchants. What makes some of the cities a lively place is the so called spam. It helps players find good vendors. Every time, when Im in theed I stop and check the afk messages to see if there is a vendor or something that it would be interesting to check out.
The only sad thing is the spammers who use the tools for useless messages and forget that there is a command called pause in the macro language.
Also realise that there are barker droids. Theese ones are made for only one purpouse. To stand and "spam". To help merchants. What irritates me a little is when I stand and marketing my shop and some kid tells me stop spamming. It is a part of the game. Clearly intended to be like that (refering to the barker droids).
Macros are a great part of the game. A shame they will be removed. The only trouble that I see with macros are buffbots and looting. But that could have been solved another way.. with altering the macro language (removing some commands).
Shadow
It creates lag.
It muddles up starports to where you cant have a conversation.
If I need something, I'll hit control V and look there...Or ask a friend who they recommend. Most people buy armor, weapons, and food/drink from the same person repeatedly.
Bottom line, if you are spamming in a starport, you wont be getting any business from me. The way I see it, if you stuff isnt good enough to be made popular by word of mouth, its not worth my time to go check your vendor to begin with.
Well said. I'm a merchant. I can count on one had, the number of times I have stood in a city advertising. I let my vendors do it for me. I list them on the planetary map, have decent prices, and try to keep them stocked (which is rough since I work full time and am a casual gamer). I have lots of repeat customers. Spamming is annoying, causes, lag, and creates many problems.
I absolutely despise the fact that when I take a shuttle to Theed or Coronet, I'm literally stuck for like 1 minute. I have a decent computer and I am not going to go out and pay $1000 or more to move a few seconds faster. Because that's would it would be. A few seconds. And a few seconds from 1 minute is not worth the money it would cost to upgrade once again.
/addignore is great. However it does not always work. I can't tell you how many times I have used /addignore and received the message so and so is not online. Well that's funny since I'm looking right at them while they spam, non-afk, and there is not an LD tag either.
I don't go to vendors if I know for a fact that their merchants spam. I completely ignore them. I'd rathert pay a bit more for an item then deal with someone who just creates more lag.
SWG_Miriam
Fri Jan 21, 2005 6:17 pm
#22
I actually like the "spammers" (or whatever you want to call them)advertising their wares at starports. I like it for the same reason that I intentionally do not learn the alien languages. It adds to the game immersion environment. I like hearing alien languages which I do not understand in the background. I like the feeling of being in a hustling/bustling metropolis with people yapping away contributing to a sea of incomprehensible gibberish if you're not listening closely.
This is the way a metropolis is supposed to be. Ever walk down the busy downtown streets of New York City or Delhi? Or even in a packed cafeteria? This is the type of immersion the barkers add to the game. It's great.
And if you don't like what the "spammers" add to the game, then there is always the /addignore option, and you can even go to the game settings to automatically ignore spatial chat from AFK players.
The day they force AFK barkers to go away will be a terrible day for SWG.
LastEE
Fri Jan 21, 2005 6:40 pm
#23
Ooh, the live event idea is much better... Just know if you don't want to be attacked by a live event either don't go afk near the starport or if you HAVE to, don't be a crybaby if you come back to keyboard dead, as these are regular events. As a reb, I know better than to go AFK for even a few minutes in the starport area of Kaadara.
Then again, just having random thugs spawn in town who are naturally aggressive (red) to anyone who uses spatial and is AFK but either not attackable (white) or non-aggressive (yellow dot) to anyone ATK or not using spatial AFK (at random locations, not the fixed locations), and if the AFK person manages to kill the (starting easy) thug while not going not-afk, more and tougher thugs spawn until either the person goes ATK or incaps (which would then turn the dot white or yellow), requring 3 deaths to die. Someone ATK but with the AFK tag on would most likely figure out what's going on by the end of the second incap. Maybe throw a system message at them as to why the thug attacked. These thugs would have very little in the way of credits, practically never have loot, and give very litte if any XP when killed thus preventing people from using them as reasons to loot or XP-up.
Then again, just having random thugs spawn in town who are naturally aggressive (red) to anyone who uses spatial and is AFK but either not attackable (white) or non-aggressive (yellow dot) to anyone ATK or not using spatial AFK (at random locations, not the fixed locations), and if the AFK person manages to kill the (starting easy) thug while not going not-afk, more and tougher thugs spawn until either the person goes ATK or incaps (which would then turn the dot white or yellow), requring 3 deaths to die. Someone ATK but with the AFK tag on would most likely figure out what's going on by the end of the second incap. Maybe throw a system message at them as to why the thug attacked. These thugs would have very little in the way of credits, practically never have loot, and give very litte if any XP when killed thus preventing people from using them as reasons to loot or XP-up.
ecstasia
Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:31 pm
#24
SWG_Miriam wrote:
And if you don't like what the "spammers" add to the game, then there is always the /addignore option, and you can even go to the game settings to automatically ignore spatial chat from AFK players.
The day they force AFK barkers to go away will be a terrible day for SWG.
Again, this was covered in my response. As for then option to ignore AFK spammers, not all spammers are AFK. So that defeats the purpose. And yes I have that option checked anyway and it's still bad.
Personally I believe that the day they force the AFK barkers to leave, will be the happiest day of most everyone's SWG experience. Anyone who is merchant and cannot make a living without spamming needs to rethink their professions.
ana-mo-cara
Sat Jan 22, 2005 12:20 am
#25
I view it as community policeing smacking the afk spammers. If they are not afk and are actually tabbing the spam there isnt much you can do, and sicking tuskens on them or whatnot will still not work. They will just put pets in defend mode.
Spammers are players that are not usually playing if you go to a city and there are twenty spammers outside the starport guess what they are lagging up the game for you.
Spammers undercut player skills. You should have to have advertiseing to get noticed. That or take the time to develope a business. I suppose there is an issue of too many players wanting to be in the crafting market or selling stuff for money, rarely for the craft, and these are the people that spam.
Yes looping macros are going the way of the dodo. The only reason they are not gone already is the devs need to find solutions to some of the problems these macros solve.
Surveying. It takes alot of time, and haveing a player sit at a pc and manually sample for ten hours is just beyond cruel. Its as fun as watching paint dry
Camping. Only slightly less annoying then surveying you will still have more fun watching paint dry.
Danceing. Oh joy standing in one place with twenty other players. Well maybe if they nerf this macro we could gasp have less lag in cantinas. I have never understood why people even do this.
Crafting macros you know to stop carpal tunnel syndrome. If you havent done a crafter grind you have no clue exactly how raw you are at the end.
Solutions
Surveying shout require finding and mineing a new resource each time, and the sum xp should be ten times the percentage sampled. Players should not be allowed to sample in a city.
Camping should involve actually doing something in the camp for xp. Some redundant exercise to increase the xp for each camp. Perhaps building a trap in a camp should give camping xp aswell that would be simple enough.
Danceing. Should have terminals instead of tips anyway. Unless your a master buffing. A dancer goes to an empty cantina in say keren, and starts danceing. To entertain npcs that give out generic healing, and when the dancer is prompted by the npc to flourish and so on the dancer gets paid. Result the dancer dosent need to afk it aslong as they follow instructions they get paid. Plus the better they follow instructions the better the xp.
Crafting needs some gigantic items to make. These professions require no skills to make master. Just retarded over and over actions. Why cant a chef get a wedding cake a ws a cannon barrel a armorsmith a creature mount armor.
In general the only thing thats saveing the spammers anyway is that looping macros make these things tolerable in the first place. I hope to god in the curb when the xp system gets a looking at that these looping macros could be gone.