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Comments
Yeah, that is probably possible, at least in theory. If you tried to do it in real-time though, it could probably cause delays in chat if the AI service goes down or is busy. But, at the same time, I'm not sure it'll be easy to gather all the chat in the game and bulk-send it to someone else for after-the-fact scanning and analysis; the volume of data would be pretty huge. It's probably "the only way," but it's probably not an easy, inexpensive, or problem-free way either (and that's probably why a lot of MMOs still have this same problem in various forms).
IP bans won't work because in an instant you can get another IP from a pool of millions.
And yeah, as a player council member I can tell you that I'd be happy to try to sit there and ban RMT spam bots, but I'm pretty certain of what will happen: within minutes of banning one, the watcher will take over as the spammer, and another watcher will be in place when I ban the next one. We're dealing with bot scripts running on server farms, and individual people can never win that race. Even player council can't sit there and play whack-a-mole 24/7 on all servers.
What we need is not a ban from game but some kind of ban of chat. One that doesn't let them know they have the ban banned.
Like I said, they can just have a second character in the same area monitoring the chat to make sure their message is still there (that's what I mean by a "watcher"). You can't, like, just block the chat from non-bots, because that implies you know in advance who all the bots are, and if you knew that you wouldn't even let them sign up.
As was said, probably some kind of machine learning is probably the only real way; it has to get smarter and adapt as the bots do. Plus, super-strict punishment for anyone who buys gold from these sites so the word gets out, I guess.
Yes there are, and some has been banned along with those gold sellers.
I have to assume that one of the reason they hang out in Velika is because they're preying on newer users who don't yet know how the system works, and are desperate for gold in a hurry.
So, a maximum transaction value based on say the friendship level you have with someone? Can't send more than that via a parcel. Applies to both vendor sellable items as well as direct gold amount. Spamming of parcels should be detectable easily enough (or perhaps be another thing that can be limited).
Substitute guild membership for friendship level, so you don't need to friend everyone in your guild. (Though track when there are transactions and when someone leaves a guild, in that case, any repeated patterns can flag them for CS review?)
Trades can be tied to past broker values of items (if they don't have a vendor value to act as a minimum), since those are being kept track of. If there is a large discrepancy between the item value and the gold given then it can be flagged for CS review. (Or get blocked automatically if you don't fulfill the transaction requirements for such values as 'gifts'.) EDIT -- To clarify this, my concern is more about things that are either direct gold or can be directly turned into gold via vendor. Taking into account the value (or broker given value) of items is mainly meant as a way to stop things like trading some worthless or low value item for lots of gold.
This might make it hard to do player events where people offer certain prizes, but we've lost plenty of other things in the never ending fight against bots and gold sellers already, so I wouldn't see that as a big sacrifice. (Could even turn that into an opportunity for improvement, create a formalized player event system where you can put in prizes and such, attach some writing, and then get help from the system to run it. Like a listing of when you want to run an event that people can see. Maybe sign up, and whatnot. Maybe even get sort of automated monster spawns as part of it, if you're willing to put in the resources.)
Limit or revamp the C.O.D. system as well? Turn it into a more formalized trade system? Or have it be subject to the same rules as trades for value of items, so that it can't get turned into an automated collection system of gold from sellers?
Pretty much make it so that it's next to impossible to transfer too much if you don't have any preexisting and meaningful connection between two characters. That could potentially curb any delivery methods where they just have some throwaway characters do the work at very little cost to their farming setups.
Though usually the very best cure for this is making it not worth and not profitable to sell gold in the first place. Punishing only the buyer because he's easier to catch, still leaves the seller at large, ready to pounce on the next fool. So finding a way to make the whole system not appealing to sellers would be a good direction to take. But at what cost?
It's very difficult to track these gold sellers/buyers because they are sure to make many mules with proxy chains so they can't get traced. They have huge amount of experience on dozens of game. I know some gold buyers but they make sure to use some methods so they don't get caught. Only new clueless players will get banned which is also bad for the game.