Blame the excessive credit sinks for the over abundance of credit spammers in this expansion. It certainly seems like there are more than any other time in the 8 years I’ve played.

BW do a sweep of gold spammers normally around once or twice a year. Until 6.0 there were some but not as many as right now. Then again the sweep of gold spammers is due. To say it's because of the credit sink if just rubbish. There's no more now than from other times in the history of this game, as in just before the last sweep. It would be nice if BW do a sweep of these and while they are doing so also ban any account that has used them. I'm not a big fan of the credit sink but it's also not as bad as some like you are making out. Still it was asked for by some and as a player who does more asking than just about anyone else, well always different if it's someone else doing the asking.

BW do a sweep of gold spammers normally around once or twice a year. Until 6.0 there were some but not as many as right now. Then again the sweep of gold spammers is due. To say it's because of the credit sink if just rubbish. There's no more now than from other times in the history of this game, as in just before the last sweep. It would be nice if BW do a sweep of these and while they are doing so also ban any account that has used them. I'm not a big fan of the credit sink but it's also not as bad as some like you are making out. Still it was asked for by some and as a player who does more asking than just about anyone else, well always different if it's someone else doing the asking.

Sorry, but we have to agree to disagree here. I understand that there are snd always will be credit spammers, but the current situation was exasperated by the heavy handed credit sinks and reduced credit income from playing normal content.

Bioware were warm repeatedly on the pts that these over the top credit sinks would drive players into the hands of credit sellers because it would be too taxing for many low credit and even medium credit players.

This expansion is a credit spammers dream, it’s why there are more here than usual.

It is kind of an ironic sign of health that someone thinks that it is worth spamming gold in the game...

These aren’t players. They are organised credit websites who are running a business across many games in the industry.

Google “Chinese gold farmers” and you’ll see what horrible conditions these people live in.

Why not have a game mod play whack a mole in the game's chat?

They don’t want to pay anyone

I’ve offered my services for the last 7 years to do it for free, as have many others I know.

I recall spam bots being obsolete in LOTRO, what ever they did to mute them has worked ever since. had something to do with selecting who you receive mail and tells/whispers from I.E. simply click in options only to receive messages from your friends/guild list and same with mail. and I have no idea how they managed to never have a BoT in there world chat just goes to show its possible to fix the issue.

Yeah this was great they were non existent for years. Only recently they have come back, it seems when the production was turned over to SSG(standing stone games) instead of Turbine the flood resumed.

Yeah this was great they were non existent for years. Only recently they have come back, it seems when the production was turned over to SSG(standing stone games) instead of Turbine the flood resumed.

Huh that's weird... I really do wish they had some type exchange for Credits into either Rep items or Cartel Certs. or bring back the Certs to the Slot machine Deco at a rate of 0.001% just a thought

Huh that's weird... I really do wish they had some type exchange for Credits into either Rep items or Cartel Certs. or bring back the Certs to the Slot machine Deco at a rate of 0.001% just a thought

Edit : sorry for the wall of text, seemed to just appear. But damn I feel good getting that off my chest.

Yep, some games even have an exchange for currency like Cartel Coins.

And WoW even has a one month subscriber token you can sell on the Auction house for gold. Apparently it’s a really great credit sink to remove gold from the game.

Yes, the super wealthy in the game use credits to buy a “free” sub for themselves each month with credits. But Blizzard would still make exactly the same amount as if they paid for their subscription directly.

They can also make extra money from these sorts of transactions because guilds and super wealthy players will buy the tokens for other people who may not have subscribed or had the money to do so.

At the end of the day, Blizzard are making more money by offering these subscription tokens that can be sold on the auction house.

If memory serves, I think Gw2 has a similar system to convert credits in the game to a currency like Cartel coins (theirs are these purple crystal looking things). This helps as a credit sink be cause the conversion is really low and it actually encourages others to buy those purple crystal things with real money. (You know, keeping up with the Jones).

Speaking of which, when is Bioware going to rotate out some of the GTN Armor sets that have been listed now for 12+ months. If they rotated the stock more often like they do with the new RNG vendor, people would be more excited about checking the CM and may buy more as a consequence.

Which leads me to something that always bugs me about Bioware and their silly systems and setups that are monitored / controlled by the devs. Most, if not all are the brain child’s of “creative” people, not actual people who understand RL business practices, have experience in them or understand consumer behaviours.

Which is no fault of the creative guys if they are given those jobs to do. But they are ill equipped to understand them properly or implement them, monitor their data or figure out why some things have negative affects that drive down player enjoyment.

What am I talking about. :

1. You have how they design grind to make players play longer. Making it more like a job than relaxing and having fun. With leads people to leave the game.

2. Excessive credit sinks. There has been enough said on that one, that I shouldn’t need to explain why some players are leaving or why gold sellers are worse then ever

3. Customer service / listening to what your customers want and not doing the opposite or what every new idea they want to push without getting player feed back

4. Giving lip service to bad feed back because they think their creative idea is sooooo much better and players don’t understand. ie, “play Biowares way” or unsub. (Dumbest business model on the planet)

5. Being silent and not communicating when they make mistakes or implement bad systems players don’t like. ie, Community manager goes afk for months and players get frustrated at lack of communication and leave the game.

6. Making the same mistakes their customers hate, over and over and over again, like it didn’t work the first time, let’s see if they’ll like it if we put a different wrapper on it.

7......

I think we get the idea. Biowares creative departments, mostly through no fault of their own, don’t understand consumers / customers, which is what we essentially are. Putting creative people in charge of running a “sale and customer based” business is a recipe for disaster. They treat the players like mushrooms (in the dark and fed crap when they remember we are here).

They don’t understand that they are just a manufacturing business selling a product. If you don’t supply a quality product that people want to buy, you drive your customers away.

If any other type of manufacturing / sales business operated the way Bioware do, it would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.

Look at it this way. Say you manufacture cars to sell. You don’t have the car designers manage the whole process and you don’t let them touch the sales / customer service side. That is not their specialty. You also don’t let them implement all their creative ideas without a focus group of consumer feed back and I don’t just mean people in the factory or family and friends, I mean consumers you need to buy enough of your cars to stay in business,

Sadly Bioware’s model has it completely the opposite. The “car” designers run it all (not including EA bean pushes) on a daily basis.

They don’t understand their customers or customer service or sales.

They make arbitrary decisions with no focus group outside of Bioware and don’t listen to customer feed back about the designs they think are cool,

Ie. imagine you are a car designer who loves hot pink and wants to make all the cars hot pink. You convince your fellow designers to get on board cause you’ve never done that before or when you did, you used the “wrong shade of pink”.

You don’t ask any customers who you depend on to buy your cars.

Then you mass produce the cars and the majority of your customers hate it and refuse to buy your car cause it only comes in hot pink. Of course some people will like the hot pink, but they would have also have liked red, white, green or black and would have been happy with those choices because they love the model car and are colour blind or don’t care about the colour as much.

If the car company had done “market research / customer focus groups” or listened to their customers, they would have realised their mistake and not made all hot pink cars that made them lose loyal customers or potentially new ones.

In a real car company that would not happen because a business drive person / sales person would have asked the designers, how do you know everyone likes or wants hot pink besides yourselves?

Have you asked any of our customers and how many did you ask that aren’t friends or hot pink fans?

If you have please show us all the data, both good and bad and your risk assessment data if we use all of our resources to make all hot pink cars.

Edit : sorry for the wall of text, seemed to just appear. But damn I feel good getting that off my chest.

 

Yep, some games even have an exchange for currency like Cartel Coins.

 

And WoW even has a one month subscriber token you can sell on the Auction house for gold. Apparently it’s a really great credit sink to remove gold from the game.

Yes, the super wealthy in the game use credits to buy a “free” sub for themselves each month with credits. But Blizzard would still make exactly the same amount as if they paid for their subscription directly.

They can also make extra money from these sorts of transactions because guilds and super wealthy players will buy the tokens for other people who may not have subscribed or had the money to do so.

At the end of the day, Blizzard are making more money by offering these subscription tokens that can be sold on the auction house.

 

If memory serves, I think Gw2 has a similar system to convert credits in the game to a currency like Cartel coins (theirs are these purple crystal looking things). This helps as a credit sink be cause the conversion is really low and it actually encourages others to buy those purple crystal things with real money. (You know, keeping up with the Jones).

 

Speaking of which, when is Bioware going to rotate out some of the GTN Armor sets that have been listed now for 12+ months. If they rotated the stock more often like they do with the new RNG vendor, people would be more excited about checking the CM and may buy more as a consequence.

 

Which leads me to something that always bugs me about Bioware and their silly systems and setups that are monitored / controlled by the devs. Most, if not all are the brain child’s of “creative” people, not actual people who understand RL business practices, have experience in them or understand consumer behaviours.

Which is no fault of the creative guys if they are given those jobs to do. But they are ill equipped to understand them properly or implement them, monitor their data or figure out why some things have negative affects that drive down player enjoyment.

 

What am I talking about. :

1. You have how they design grind to make players play longer. Making it more like a job than relaxing and having fun. With leads people to leave the game.

2. Excessive credit sinks. There has been enough said on that one, that I shouldn’t need to explain why some players are leaving or why gold sellers are worse then ever

3. Customer service / listening to what your customers want and not doing the opposite or what every new idea they want to push without getting player feed back

4. Giving lip service to bad feed back because they think their creative idea is sooooo much better and players don’t understand. ie, “play Biowares way” or unsub. (Dumbest business model on the planet)

5. Being silent and not communicating when they make mistakes or implement bad systems players don’t like. ie, Community manager goes afk for months and players get frustrated at lack of communication and leave the game.

6. Making the same mistakes their customers hate, over and over and over again, like it didn’t work the first time, let’s see if they’ll like it if we put a different wrapper on it.

7......

 

I think we get the idea. Biowares creative departments, mostly through no fault of their own, don’t understand consumers / customers, which is what we essentially are. Putting creative people in charge of running a “sale and customer based” business is a recipe for disaster. They treat the players like mushrooms (in the dark and fed crap when they remember we are here).

 

They don’t understand that they are just a manufacturing business selling a product. If you don’t supply a quality product that people want to buy, you drive your customers away.

If any other type of manufacturing / sales business operated the way Bioware do, it would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.

 

Look at it this way. Say you manufacture cars to sell. You don’t have the car designers manage the whole process and you don’t let them touch the sales / customer service side. That is not their specialty. You also don’t let them implement all their creative ideas without a focus group of consumer feed back and I don’t just mean people in the factory or family and friends, I mean consumers you need to buy enough of your cars to stay in business,

 

Sadly Bioware’s model has it completely the opposite. The “car” designers run it all (not including EA bean pushes) on a daily basis.

They don’t understand their customers or customer service or sales.

They make arbitrary decisions with no focus group outside of Bioware and don’t listen to customer feed back about the designs they think are cool,

 

Ie. imagine you are a car designer who loves hot pink and wants to make all the cars hot pink. You convince your fellow designers to get on board cause you’ve never done that before or when you did, you used the “wrong shade of pink”.

You don’t ask any customers who you depend on to buy your cars.

Then you mass produce the cars and the majority of your customers hate it and refuse to buy your car cause it only comes in hot pink. Of course some people will like the hot pink, but they would have also have liked red, white, green or black and would have been happy with those choices because they love the model car and are colour blind or don’t care about the colour as much.

If the car company had done “market research / customer focus groups” or listened to their customers, they would have realised their mistake and not made all hot pink cars that made them lose loyal customers or potentially new ones.

 

In a real car company that would not happen because a business drive person / sales person would have asked the designers, how do you know everyone likes or wants hot pink besides yourselves?

Have you asked any of our customers and how many did you ask that aren’t friends or hot pink fans?

If you have please show us all the data, both good and bad and your risk assessment data if we use all of our resources to make all hot pink cars.

I hear ya Trixxi, in fact I am debating what single player game I should dedicate my soul too for ten years or longer. I enjoy exploration and terraforming planets, creating things, but the only game I could play for that extensive amount of time is an old EA game called Spore. Develop a galactic Empire, colonize worlds, terraform planets to sustain life, then reroll a new civilisation on a corresponding planet and overtake the first empire I created who would love everything I did along the way.... AHH Maxis how I missed thee so! Time for a Reboot on my new rig!

I hear ya Trixxi, in fact I am debating what single player game I should dedicate my soul too for ten years or longer. I enjoy exploration and terraforming planets, creating things, but the only game I could play for that extensive amount of time is an old EA game called Spore. Develop a galactic Empire, colonize worlds, terraform planets to sustain life, then reroll a new civilisation on a corresponding planet and overtake the first empire I created who would love everything I did along the way.... AHH Maxis how I missed thee so! Time for a Reboot on my new rig!

Sim City used to be a favourite of mine. But I use to get impatient to see what my changes would do and ended up cheating how the game was designed to be played (unlimited credits at the start)

It still held its appeal because I could create scenarios to see who I could mess with the population

I really like strategy and tactical games. I’m not a fan of repetitive and extremely predictable AI driven pve. I don’t mind the story, but I only want to see it few times and then I get bored. It’s why I’ve mainly pvp’d since this game started because every match has the potential to be different and tactics and strategy “use to” be essential in the old days to win.

Now I spend a bunch of time crafting and playing the GTN, which has now become boring because I’m mega rich.

I’ve tried a few other games the last 12 months and before that I was really excited to see that would become of Star Citizen as it looked like it would tick everything I want or need from a game to play for 10+ years.

But it’s an absolute rort of game development that will never leave alpha/beta mode because they are making too much money stringing people along with a “some day promise”. It’s now cost more than any “aaa” game to make by a long margin and they are making tonnes of money off it and it’s not even “officially released” as a whole working game.

Such a shame as it had so much potential.

Sim City used to be a favourite of mine. But I use to get impatient to see what my changes would do and ended up cheating how the game was designed to be played (unlimited credits at the start)

It still held its appeal because I could create scenarios to see who I could mess with the population

 

I really like strategy and tactical games. I’m not a fan of repetitive and extremely predictable AI driven pve. I don’t mind the story, but I only want to see it few times and then I get bored. It’s why I’ve mainly pvp’d since this game started because every match has the potential to be different and tactics and strategy “use to” be essential in the old days to win.

Now I spend a bunch of time crafting and playing the GTN, which has now become boring because I’m mega rich.

 

I’ve tried a few other games the last 12 months and before that I was really excited to see that would become of Star Citizen as it looked like it would tick everything I want or need from a game to play for 10+ years.

But it’s an absolute rort of game development that will never leave alpha/beta mode because they are making too much money stringing people along with a “some day promise”. It’s now cost more than any “aaa” game to make by a long margin and they are making tonnes of money off it and it’s not even “officially released” as a whole working game.

Such a shame as it had so much potential.

I need to build a credit empire but probably wont happen I tend to help people most of whom don't actually need the help but feel the need to dup my willingness to help people. needless to say, I also want to do the completion thing on several classes. Collection wise I have more than I need, just need a couple things while my sub is active then I will most likely go back to preferred status once again.

The point I am at now is the subscription is totally optional. I don't really need it to enjoy the game, kind of wish I stayed preferred for a few reasons. I suppose I could take the time and really dissect every planet top to bottom. but like you said things do get boring. My biggest plan now is save for a second laptop and duo box a bit build a secondary account. because at this time no one has the amount of free time to spend on gaming like I do. Nothing else I really care to play either that matches the content I have in SWTOR, kind of a blessing and a curse haha!!

there are ways to fix the gold spammers on starter planets.

so long there are players in this comunety that are using there site to sell credits for real money or buy credits for real money there keep spamming since there know there is ask for it.

so long there is ask for it and some players use it there are not gone since there know there is ask for it in this game and we can offer then.

same with items on the GTN if there is much ask for a item and that item are selling a lot off players since there know there is much ask for it then there keep selling then.

if there is no ask for it for that item then it wont sell hard.

that means for span bots so long there are players in a game comunety that are asking for it there keep spamming it since there know that there are some players asking for it and there give it to then.

there are ways to fix the gold spammers on starter planets.

 

so long there are players in this comunety that are using there site to sell credits for real money or buy credits for real money there keep spamming since there know there is ask for it.

 

so long there is ask for it and some players use it there are not gone since there know there is ask for it in this game and we can offer then.

same with items on the GTN if there is much ask for a item and that item are selling a lot off players since there know there is much ask for it then there keep selling then.

if there is no ask for it for that item then it wont sell hard.

that means for span bots so long there are players in a game comunety that are asking for it there keep spamming it since there know that there are some players asking for it and there give it to then.

So what is your solution? Remove the playerbase from the game permanently? Sure, that will stop the goldspammers but that will also shut down the game

Sure, as long as there is a demand for it, the goldspammers will see there is a market. But you can't expect players to stop buying from the gold sellers out of the goodness of their hearts. Bioware has recently unknowingly created a system - with crafting - where the players are encouraged to get more credits to be able to craft. That's going to push a lot of players over the edge to go and buy credits from the goldsellers, because they have spent all of it in crafting. They tried to create a credit sink to perhaps scare off the credit sellers, but instead the devs created the perfect environment for them with it.

One solution could be for Bioware to start credit packs themselves, but that's going to introduce a lot of problems and goldspammers will just undercut Bioware's prices. So, another solution would be to ease down on the credit sinks and restructure crafting so it won't cost millions like it does now. In this situation it should be the sellers that should be primarily punished, not the buyers. Because with the current crafting system the people buying credits are technically pushed into the goldsellers hands by the devs.

So what is your solution? Remove the playerbase from the game permanently? Sure, that will stop the goldspammers but that will also shut down the game

 

Sure, as long as there is a demand for it, the goldspammers will see there is a market. But you can't expect players to stop buying from the gold sellers out of the goodness of their hearts. Bioware has recently unknowingly created a system - with crafting - where the players are encouraged to get more credits to be able to craft. That's going to push a lot of players over the edge to go and buy credits from the goldsellers, because they have spent all of it in crafting. They tried to create a credit sink to perhaps scare off the credit sellers, but instead the devs created the perfect environment for them with it.

 

One solution could be for Bioware to start credit packs themselves, but that's going to introduce a lot of problems and goldspammers will just undercut Bioware's prices. So, another solution would be to ease down on the credit sinks and restructure crafting so it won't cost millions like it does now. In this situation it should be the sellers that should be primarily punished, not the buyers. Because with the current crafting system the people buying credits are technically pushed into the goldsellers hands by the devs.

i know some game's that have a type off credit packs selling in there item shop and thats not working.

if you wane here my solution i can give you 2 options but i tell you now 1 off then will never happing since Eric has told it years ago that most off the communety there gone lose by option 1 and it fix the gold spammers but there pay a big price for it

option 1: and this option will never be come out more since its not gone happing more and the solution is to make the pay full pay to play again but what i told this is something that never will haping since most off the comunety is free to play and going back to pay to play is a big lost for then and yea it fix the gold spammers but the price there gone pay for it is to high for then since there losing real money and big part off the comunety.

option 2: that EA and bioware need to talk with other company's from other MMORPG game's to find a solution that can fix it in one time for all the MMORPG game's that have this problem now.

and still its better to have then all on the starter planets spamming then on the fleet where it was more worse years ago.

on the starter planet you come not much there on the fleet you come there a lot more.

Huh that's weird... I really do wish they had some type exchange for Credits into either Rep items or Cartel Certs. or bring back the Certs to the Slot machine Deco at a rate of 0.001% just a thought

slight note on that..... at 2k token per cert and 5k per token... a cert now costs 10m. and thats if you do get one within the alotted 2k drop rate.

slight note on that..... at 2k token per cert and 5k per token... a cert now costs 10m. and thats if you do get one within the alotted 2k drop rate.

Not only that, but you have spin it so many time that it takes forever. It’s such a complete waste of time.

bioware needs to start doing someting again against the spam bots since there become now more and more active again on other place's like the fleet again and on the ship by sending mails to all the players again.

and now there can stop the spam bots on the fleet before its out off controle again like 4 years ago.

bioware needs to start doing someting again against the spam bots since there become now more and more active again on other place's like the fleet again and on the ship by sending mails to all the players again.

and now there can stop the spam bots on the fleet before its out off controle again like 4 years ago.

I bet the dev team is working on a big take-down of the goldspammers at the moment. It usually goes like this, they take the credit spammers down in one sweep and we have joy and peace for a while again.

These aren’t players. They are organised credit websites who are running a business across many games in the industry.

Google “Chinese gold farmers” and you’ll see what horrible conditions these people live in.

That's not even remotely close to what the person you quoted was relating it to. It went over your head, but they meant that if there is more spam, then there is more players, and more players buying more credits.