Merchant Archive
Thread: SPAM at the starports
I've recently been noticing a lot more people setting up SPAM /shout macros in front of Starports. Often times these are paragraphs long, and repeated every 15 seconds. As a merchants, we need to spend skill points for add barking on our vendors. But that’s only a local /say at the vendor. Also we can spend skill points and get advertising 3 for planetary map registration, which is nice. But all of that doesn't seem to grab peoples attention nearly as well as SPAM /shout-ing.
Sure, I can setup a SPAM /shout macro myself, and let it run for the 12 hours a day I'm at work, or while I'm sleeping. But I don't think this is right. And I don’t want to add to the noise-to-signal ratio.
Is there any way for the developers to limit the SPAM /shout-ing to something more reasonable? Either eliminate it entirely? Or reduce it to once every 2 minutes or something?
Use direct e-mailings, its much more effective then spam shouting. Its less invasive and a well writen email, that appears to be totaly "personal" will get good responses from far more people than starport spam does.
I disagree I think someone shouting that they have wears for sale is okay. I've seen it on every server.. the key is to have it so vendors are only placed at novice merchant level. Then there wouldn't be as many vendors to spam for.. they'd have to use the bizarre..
How about a system message: "You can not spam that message again for 40 more seconds"
If it forced people to actually retype the paragraph, they would do it less.
~Prinethea
Moving vendors to Novice Merchant... with the increase in the Bazaar Cap, that may not be a bad idea.
SPAMing at Starports has always been a problem, and it will continue to be... but, you have similar issues in "modern" day airports: solicitors, and TONS of advertising. But there are laws about how loud the solicitors can go. The right to relative quiet often trumps the right to speak loudly.
There may be a "no shouting" zone imposed 200m around a starport. Anything /shouted or /yelled will automatically be ignored. Anything spoken normally would have a limited ranged.
That would greatly reduce the noise pollution.
Thorizan wrote:
Moving vendors to Novice Merchant... with the increase in the Bazaar Cap, that may not be a bad idea.
SPAMing at Starports has always been a problem, and it will continue to be... but, you have similar issues in "modern" day airports: solicitors, and TONS of advertising. But there are laws about how loud the solicitors can go. The right to relative quiet often trumps the right to speak loudly.
There may be a "no shouting" zone imposed 200m around a starport. Anything /shouted or /yelled will automatically be ignored. Anything spoken normally would have a limited ranged.
That would greatly reduce the noise pollution.
That no shouting zone is a very nice idea. Or allow someone to shout only once a minute.
I agree that directed e-mails are much more effective. But, that actually takes work to do. These SPAM /shout-ers just setup a macro and go AFK. 10 hoursand 2400/shouts later they turn off the macro and start playing the game normally.
I now report afk spammers. It's sad people and most of the populace wishes you would stopyour spam or die.
IMO shouting at starports is an interesting RP content of the game. It makes you feel like you are at a well crowded place that is full of life. I named some of my waypoints "Market" - for good reason. You can get everything there, often at very good condition and you can sell everything there. I make my best deals at those "markets" and not on my vendors. Selling items apart from the bazaar is also sometimes neccessary, i.e. when some character needs something quickly or had no idea of what he was missing until he sees the just called pet... And of course - the bazaar is sometimes really laggy and simply not working.
Nevertheless I agree that OOC or spam shouts destroy any fun. Surely a good merchant notices any movements of characters and may find the right item to offer for the characters that are currently surrounding him - so a good merchant wont shout an offer for weapon powerups when only entertainers are around and of course he wont shout twice if there are no new characters.
Anyway, a limit of repeats would be a nice thing, i.e. one message can only be posted once per 60 seconds. As said - that would force spammers to retype and might be of great help.
Adding a no-shout zone is not really a good idea in my eyes. If you block shouts at the starport, it will move to the cantina, etc. You cant block shouts everywhere, they are there for some good reason - RP!
We really should accept that starports are some sort of market place and they should be useable as such, so here is my brainstorming. I.e. I can imagine a number of small tents (small piece of cloth, put on four wood sticks - just like the NPC "tents"), that can be rented, i.e. one hour for 1000 credits, by anyone with enough credits or with novice merchant. Vendors (or better NPCs that only have one type of item to offer and dont act like vendors but like trainers, i.e.) could be included there for rent. These vendors can randomly "shout" what items they have to offer or advertise a shop and - best of all - because they are server controlled, they neither would spam all at the same time nor offer items of the same category at the same time. This would really allow some more RP and reduce spam at starports heavily, together with a repitition blocker. Mayors should be able to place such tents in their PCs, so their PCs possibly develop a little better - visitors no longer have to search for shops.
I just have no idea how to block "need training" or "need players for PC" or similar shouts/spam.
I'd be happy about some feedback!
May the force enlight your paths,
--Hatchery