I have noticed they are striking hard on the Harbinger now with a new slogan for the posts " Buy Cheapest credits at idiots.com as low as blah blah and some coupon % bonus " You can only ignore so many of these and I think it's time Bioware actually took this serious because poor innocent people are getting caught up and actually purchasing.

A special credit selling report system needs to be added into the game aswell as hard coding a url block list in the chat system so these dirt bags can't post the urls and even if they try and send a private in game mail it will also block out the details of the banned address. maybe some legit urls will get blocked but I think I would prefer that than letting these guys run around and control our servers with credit spam.

...poor innocent people are getting caught up and actually purchasing.

Are you seriously suggesting that people who buy credits from 3rd party sites are somehow victims that need protecting? In a game where you can buy them legally? Really?

they seem to have popped alot more, usually i see at least 2 different ones spamming for 2 different sellers. it used to be that once one popped up when i would go through the ignore/report as spam, half the time i'd the report as spam, but it would come back as character name invaild does not exist, and id look around, nothing. they were gone. i just assumed they were more vigilant.

however now, they are out of control. and i see alot of stuff on the GTN that is worth jack and squat usually, for 1,000,000,000,000 credits. so people are buying them.

You didn't even need to finish the thought.

At least for now, as it has been for a few months aside from GSF (which was mDe by a separate team this whole time according to the devs), any question beginning with "do you think bioware is making an effort" that doesn't include the cartel market gets an automatic answer of Hell No.

They show no interest in much else and choose not to communicate with us for the most part unless it's self-serving. They aren't making much of an effort. For anything...

You didn't even need to finish the thought.

 

At least for now, as it has been for a few months aside from GSF (which was mDe by a separate team this whole time according to the devs), any question beginning with "do you think bioware is making an effort" that doesn't include the cartel market gets an automatic answer of Hell No.

 

They show no interest in much else and choose not to communicate with us for the most part unless it's self-serving. They aren't making much of an effort. For anything...

I lol'ed at this. You are suggesting that a business only communicates with its customers when it is in the best interests of the business? Well that's just ground-breaking! Imagine that! It's as if a business cares more about profits than making the world a better place. I am stunned! Shocked!

Why would a business do something that wasn't in their own interests? You seem to be confusing BW with a charity.

I lol'ed at this. You are suggesting that a business only communicates with its customers when it is in the best interests of the business? Well that's just ground-breaking! Imagine that! It's as if a business cares more about profits than making the world a better place. I am stunned! Shocked!

 

Why would a business do something that wasn't in their own interests? You seem to be confusing BW with a charity.

The point I was making is that better companies at least try to make it look like they care about their customers because they will lose business if they alienate them. Bio ware acts like the customers don't matter as of late.

Better? Or you just looking to win a pissing contest over semantics?

I have noticed they are striking hard on the Harbinger now with a new slogan for the posts " Buy Cheapest credits at idiots.com as low as blah blah and some coupon % bonus " You can only ignore so many of these and I think it's time Bioware actually took this serious because poor innocent people are getting caught up and actually purchasing.

 

A special credit selling report system needs to be added into the game aswell as hard coding a url block list in the chat system so these dirt bags can't post the urls and even if they try and send a private in game mail it will also block out the details of the banned address. maybe some legit urls will get blocked but I think I would prefer that than letting these guys run around and control our servers with credit spam.

/report

/ignore

/move on

They will get to them. See..the security team..... they have to actually verify your report before taking action. They do not work 7/24.. so there is going to be a lag before action. Why must they verify rather then gen up some automatic system? Because otherwise people would abuse any automated system by false reporting players just for kicks and giggles.

The thing they should do is allow you to auto-ignore when you report (if you choose to) AND auto-flush everyones ignore lists when a character is whacked.

IMO, the current exploit of the friends program is giving opportunity to flush more credits from the game for these credit sellers to feed their business. That is actually the first priority IMO to get snuffed.

I play on Harbinger.... and NO.. they do not control the server. They are simply a nuisance that players need to cope with.

They are annoying but why should we have to put up with it yes it's part of the MMO gaming experience they are everywhere and would be making a very nice profit but using the report/ignore/move on solve is annoying and is getting old maybe Bioware can be the first to stomp the dirt bags into the ground.

Also would you buy credits if Bioware added a Credit bank to the Cartel Market or a Coins for credits exchange system ? because that type of system would destroy the business of these sellers and the money would go back into the game where it belongs.

Also would you buy credits if Bioware added a Credit bank to the Cartel Market or a Coins for credits exchange system ? because that type of system would destroy the business of these sellers and the money would go back into the game where it belongs.

That approach is bad for the game. It injects new credits into the game, which is inflationary. At least the credit farmers are only moving credits from one player to another... hence no inflation.

But to answer you question.. NO .. I would not. Why? It's way easy to make 5-10 M credits a week in this game without breaking a sweat. There is simply no need to ever buy from these credit peddlers either IMO.

My impression is that instead of doing something against the credit sellers, they're actually helping them.

At $5 or $6 per 1M from credit sellers and CM prices rising while GTN prices fall, it soon won't make a difference how you buy your credits. You may soon get more for the credits bought from credit sellers than you get for cartel coins...

Example:

From perspective of obtaining an item:

Ashfall Tauntaun is 3000 coins. At the best rate of 137.50 coins per $1 that's ~$22

On the GTN they sell for about 2,500,000 credits, at $6 per 1M that's ~$15

Or from perspective of buying credits:

$22 for 2.5M legally or $15 for 2.5M illegally.

Sure, it's against the TOS, but those sellers wouldn't advertise if there weren't people buying their credits.

I believe they do ban them and I am not foolish enough to believe, that a ban will stop them and I also do not expect to see a ban happening within my attention span on some spammer (that would mean a reaction within mere seconds).

Sure, it's against the TOS, but those sellers wouldn't advertise if there weren't people buying their credits.

Hopefully BW also does ban the buyers. The moment there are no more buyers and all potential buyers (=people who do not care for the rules) are to afraid of getting caught to try, there will also be no more sellers.

I have noticed they are striking hard on the Harbinger now with a new slogan for the posts " Buy Cheapest credits at idiots.com as low as blah blah and some coupon % bonus " You can only ignore so many of these and I think it's time Bioware actually took this serious because poor innocent people are getting caught up and actually purchasing.

 

A special credit selling report system needs to be added into the game aswell as hard coding a url block list in the chat system so these dirt bags can't post the urls and even if they try and send a private in game mail it will also block out the details of the banned address. maybe some legit urls will get blocked but I think I would prefer that than letting these guys run around and control our servers with credit spam.

It seems pretty clear that they do not care. At least they don't care enough to actually do something meaningful, even reasonable, about it.

What do you suggest they do, they ban them, the credit sellers create a new email, a new account and advertise again, as long as people are stupid enough to buy from them they will keep doing it, all EA/Bioware can do is keep banning them and try to prosecute where possible.

As for buyers being innocent victims, we are supposed to be at least fifteen to play (teen rating), anyone who is fifteen or over and doesn't realise that buying credits from a third party is dodgy (or illegal in some cases) needs a fulltime carer.

They are annoying but why should we have to put up with it yes it's part of the MMO gaming experience they are everywhere and would be making a very nice profit but using the report/ignore/move on solve is annoying and is getting old maybe Bioware can be the first to stomp the dirt bags into the ground.

 

Also would you buy credits if Bioware added a Credit bank to the Cartel Market or a Coins for credits exchange system ? because that type of system would destroy the business of these sellers and the money would go back into the game where it belongs.

There is already an effective way to purchase credits for real money, and it's perfectly in compliance with the TOS.

That method is to purchase Cartel Market items, wait ~2 days, and post them to GTN. Poof, you've turned $ into credits.

BioWare is unlikely to put anything into CM that creates credits directly. They need to control the flow of credits into the economy tightly to ensure inflation doesn't go crazy. They've done a bang-up job of that over 2 years and hopefully that will continue.

What do you suggest they do, they ban them, the credit sellers create a new email, a new account and advertise again, as long as people are stupid enough to buy from them they will keep doing it, all EA/Bioware can do is keep banning them and try to prosecute where possible.

 

As for buyers being innocent victims, we are supposed to be at least fifteen to play (teen rating), anyone who is fifteen or over and doesn't realise that buying credits from a third party is dodgy (or illegal in some cases) needs a fulltime carer.

I suggest they write some code to detect credit spamming. WoW is pretty good at this. When I left the game, gold spammers had to get very, very creative to get their messages across and it was never via chat/text.

I suggest they lower the number of /reports required to automatically chat ban someone for spamming.

If they want to make a real investment, I suggest they hire five people at $25,000 per year (about $35,000 after benefits) to do nothing but monitor for credit spamming around the clock and instantly and permanently ban accounts and IP addresses that do it. That's 972 subscribers worth of revenue. I would hope they can afford it.

do you people even realize how easy it is for the credit spammers to make multiple accounts at a time,... Bioware can be banning them by the bushel full and they will be back with 10 more 30 minutes later.

just because you THINK they are not doing anything, doesn't mean they aren't trying to curb them..but the credit spammers have the ability to create multiple accounts at a time , have the people to do it and have the desire to do it.

if you make the account creation system too hard new players may not want to join the game, make it too easy and you get potential issues with spammers. Its a never ending battle.

See a spammer, click the name , report spam...move on with life.

as for the "innocent people getting caught up"...BS !!! there is nothing innocent about someone going out of the game to an advertised site selling credits and plopping down real money to buy them..they know EXACTLY what they are doing and are NOT innocent and IMO should be banned for it as well if they are caught and proven they bought from a known spam account.

If they want to make a real investment, I suggest they hire five people at $25,000 per year (about $35,000 after benefits) to do nothing but monitor for credit spamming around the clock and instantly and permanently ban accounts and IP addresses that do it. That's 972 subscribers worth of revenue. I would hope they can afford it.

And those 5 poor souls will then spend 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year monitoring chat?

So for covering a whole day, your 5 people would be reduced to 1,33 already, as more than 8h per day would be impossible (lets assume for a moment, that there are people who can monitor chat for 8h without going insane).

There are currently 17 servers. Each got 4 starter planets and 2 fleet main chats.... so a minimum of 6 channels per server to monitor. That would be 102 channels to be monitored by 1.33 people... and taking action upon reading something illegal.

And you believe, you would notice that as being effective? The credit seller mafia would probably laugh and redesign their 3rd party spam program to just create spam-bots at a higher rate. And even then, each spam bot would still get their message through at least once, even if it would by some miracle get nuked the very split second they spam their message.

The absolute only way to get rid of credit sellers are as follows (rated from top to bottom in preferred and most effective):

1. hit their operating center with a strategic nuke

2. hire assassins to kill everyone who does benefit from the credit purchase

3. ban the buyer and make it public (incite fear for any other potential buyer)

4. ban the seller (and also ban everyone, who was giving money to the seller in the previous hours)

5. ban the advertisers

It's same as any MMO. They don't care about the currency spammers. Only people buying the credits the bots spam for.

It's not that easy to ban them permanently as a lot of people would think, considering the F2P system where they can just make another account and be back to spamming moments later.

And they won't be doing the advertising from their good accounts either, it's all disposable F2P's.