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Conversation spam

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Alpheias
Tactical Farmers.
Pandemic Horde
#41 - 2012-10-25 21:09:20 UTC
Tiberu Stundrif wrote:


I'm tired of this political crap CCP thinks will solve its problems while it tries to fix a broken mechanic.


What part of requesting a /and/ opening a conversation is considered a game mechanic?

Agent of Chaos, Sower of Discord.

Don't talk to me unless you are IQ verified and certified with three references from non-family members. Please have your certificate of authenticity on hand.
Vellamo Lyr
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#42 - 2012-10-25 21:16:07 UTC
Hypocritical, last summer this happened when DBRB told us to spam a chimera pilot on the 319 undock.

We were warned by a GM, we knew this would happen. I don't understand the sudden surprise and uproar.
Alpheias
Tactical Farmers.
Pandemic Horde
#43 - 2012-10-25 21:27:12 UTC
If anything, CCP should slightly tweak the auto reject so anyone who isn't in your contacts, your corp or alliance gets blocked, if that is what you ticked in the settings menu.

Agent of Chaos, Sower of Discord.

Don't talk to me unless you are IQ verified and certified with three references from non-family members. Please have your certificate of authenticity on hand.
James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#44 - 2012-10-25 21:41:07 UTC
Alpheias wrote:
Tiberu Stundrif wrote:


I'm tired of this political crap CCP thinks will solve its problems while it tries to fix a broken mechanic.


What part of requesting a /and/ opening a conversation is considered a game mechanic?

Um, all of it?

Enjoying the rain today? ;)
Alpheias
Tactical Farmers.
Pandemic Horde
#45 - 2012-10-25 21:47:41 UTC
James Amril-Kesh wrote:
Alpheias wrote:
Tiberu Stundrif wrote:


I'm tired of this political crap CCP thinks will solve its problems while it tries to fix a broken mechanic.


What part of requesting a /and/ opening a conversation is considered a game mechanic?

Um, all of it?


Now you are just splitting hairs. Game mechanics is for example how your ship interacts with other ships on grid.

A user who tells his or her EVE client to send a request to open up a chat window with player XYZ is not a game mechanic, no amount of how many times you say it is or how much you wish it was so you could have some legitimacy to your claim that it is a exploit.

Agent of Chaos, Sower of Discord.

Don't talk to me unless you are IQ verified and certified with three references from non-family members. Please have your certificate of authenticity on hand.
Major Annoyance
Decadence.
RAZOR Alliance
#46 - 2012-10-25 22:08:41 UTC  |  Edited by: Major Annoyance
GM Homonoia wrote:
Customer support is making this post to clarify a specific type of case and our policies regarding that type of case. Recently we have seen a rise in reimbursement requests on the grounds of a conversation spam exploit.

Is this an exploit? No, it is not an exploit and we will not be reimbursing any losses on the grounds of conversation spam.

To clarify this point, this used to be an exploit, but the conditions that caused it to be an exploit were fixed a while ago. In the past a conversation request would generate a popup that would take focus within the game client and would not let you continue to play until you made a decision on the request. However, currently the popup will not lock you out of the rest of the game and it will not grab focus. You can ignore the request and keep playing the game. There is also an option to automatically decline any conversation requests sent your way.


This is simply wrong. None of the people who were convo-spammed, were able to activate or deactivate any modules or to click into space or overview to align into the force field. BTW: even with auto-reject set to on, the requests reach the client and at least cause lag. Technically, this is a DDoS attack on a player's client.

The spammers have been warned by GM Bunyip for exploit usage (as everyone can read on evenews24, October 11th) and one of the carrier pilots (a member of my corp) has been reimbursed by Senior GM Nova - although he refuses to reimburse the other pilots who died in exactly the same way. So who is right now? You or them?
Chiimera
State War Academy
Caldari State
#47 - 2012-10-26 01:59:55 UTC
Just to get to this stage where CCP acknowledges there might™ still be a problem has taken hours over months on petitions, and being screwed around by GM's. It's about time GM's actually started looking into problems instead of hiding behind the EULA.

What do I mean by the EULA? If you publish conversations between yourself and a GM, under the EULA they are entitled to ban your account and can go as far to completely delete accounts. This gives the GM's the ability to give whatever half assed response they want and then ban you if you make it public that they are screwing you around.

While it is a great strategy to use canned responses that are somehow indirectly related to a very specific issue in the first instance just to make sure that a player is serious about their petition it shows that the GM's are lazy and can get away with whatever they want regardless of the amount of damage it does to the reputation of the game and company. This is a "death by a thousand cuts"

So, GM's stop telling the players (who by the way, their subscriptions pay your wage) that you are not going to reimburse things because you have not confirmed convo spamming. Tell the players you are still investigating. I have watched as some players were given canned responses, ignored for long amounts of time, reimbursed and then banned for 3 days (poor guy) and all while your GM's were telling us there was no grounds for reimbursement you told our opposition that they had been caught, you even used the term "EXPLOIT" in the message.
Aranth Brainfire
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#48 - 2012-10-26 03:57:43 UTC
I consistently regret visiting these forums.

GM Homonoia, kudos to you for your efforts in responding and my condolences for any brain damage you may suffer after reading this thread.

Posters with speculative accusations with no basis in reality and an inability to follow basic logic... please go.
James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#49 - 2012-10-26 05:01:53 UTC
Aranth Brainfire wrote:
Posters with speculative accusations with no basis in reality and an inability to follow basic logic... please go.

And who exactly are you referring to?

Enjoying the rain today? ;)
Silk daShocka
Greasy Hair Club
#50 - 2012-10-26 06:56:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Silk daShocka
"For example, in fleet engagements we do not reimburse for any reason; we punish people abusing our systems, but we do not reimburse because there is no way to do so fairly." -GM Homonoia


Edit: After reading a post a bit above mine it appears that you can be banned for making public conversations between yourself and a GM. I had posted here conversations that occured between someone else and a GM. I'm not sure if that's against the rules and I apologize if it was.

I pulled the conversations from here:
http://themittani.com/news/convo-spamming-moving-illegal-activity

There's a serious lack of consistency in your PR. One minute it's an exploit, the next it isn't. One minute it's fair to reimburse, the next it ins't.

Hopefully your CS team can learn something from this.
Chiimera
State War Academy
Caldari State
#51 - 2012-10-26 07:02:13 UTC  |  Edited by: Chiimera
Nice save :)
Challu Ni
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#52 - 2012-10-26 08:10:14 UTC  |  Edited by: Challu Ni
Hi GM Homonoia,

It's really not that hard to test. Can you please verify stuff before saying things like, "no one should lose a ship specifically because of this. In a fleet fight you should simply have auto-reject enabled." Because it's simply not true in all cases that that will mitigate the situation.

In the instance in question, a significant portion of 150 ships convo spammed an individual, causing the client to become unresponsive, irrespective of whether auto-reject was set on or not. Surely that can be replicated by the thin clients you have? There was no lag in system at that time (let alone no tidi..) and all the fire was one way. I imagine this load profile is also available from your logs?

This has been a rather frustrating process dealing with the canned responses in petitions where the canned response had nothing to do with what was being discussed. Heck, the only consistent thing has been the inconsistency, when it comes to this issue.

And now you've gone ahead and decided that the infraction is punishable, but the damage caused by the infraction is not.

Truly unfortunate.
GM Homonoia
Game Master Retirement Home
#53 - 2012-10-26 09:20:32 UTC
Tiberu Stundrif wrote:
GM Homonoia wrote:
As posted earlier in the thread, the claim that it produces significant lag is still under investigation. Right now it is not allowed because it is spam, just like repeatedly EVE mailing someone is spam and not allowed.


Thanks for completely ignoring the majority of my post and instead write a canned response. We have GM responses which say very clearly that this is an exploit and ships have already been reimbursed because of it.

I highly suggest the GM team actually sit down, grab a coffee and speak to each other about this instead of sending all sorts of mixed messages and responses.

In dealing with the WV- incident, CCP GMs have given VERY different responses to what has been posted here.

I'm tired of this political crap CCP thinks will solve its problems while it tries to fix a broken mechanic.


I did have a sit down with the GMs in question. They made a mistake. This can happen as GMs are human too. That particular case is part of the reason that we made this particular announcement.

Senior GM Homonoia | Info Group | Senior Game Master
GM Homonoia
Game Master Retirement Home
#54 - 2012-10-26 09:27:47 UTC
Major Annoyance wrote:
GM Homonoia wrote:
Customer support is making this post to clarify a specific type of case and our policies regarding that type of case. Recently we have seen a rise in reimbursement requests on the grounds of a conversation spam exploit.

Is this an exploit? No, it is not an exploit and we will not be reimbursing any losses on the grounds of conversation spam.

To clarify this point, this used to be an exploit, but the conditions that caused it to be an exploit were fixed a while ago. In the past a conversation request would generate a popup that would take focus within the game client and would not let you continue to play until you made a decision on the request. However, currently the popup will not lock you out of the rest of the game and it will not grab focus. You can ignore the request and keep playing the game. There is also an option to automatically decline any conversation requests sent your way.


This is simply wrong. None of the people who were convo-spammed, were able to activate or deactivate any modules or to click into space or overview to align into the force field. BTW: even with auto-reject set to on, the requests reach the client and at least cause lag. Technically, this is a DDoS attack on a player's client.

The spammers have been warned by GM Bunyip for exploit usage (as everyone can read on evenews24, October 11th) and one of the carrier pilots (a member of my corp) has been reimbursed by Senior GM Nova - although he refuses to reimburse the other pilots who died in exactly the same way. So who is right now? You or them?


This has been discussed and the GMs in question made a mistake. They were acting on out of date knowledge. Mistakes happen and GMs are not perfect. This is also the point where I have to remind people that you are not allowed to share GM responses as that is considered to be a private communication between CCP and that individual. We always try to be lenient, but if this sort of thing starts to cause undue unrest we may end up having to enforce those rules.

Senior GM Homonoia | Info Group | Senior Game Master
Xolve
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#55 - 2012-10-26 11:38:48 UTC  |  Edited by: Xolve
GM Homonoia wrote:
It is not allowed because it is spam. However, no one should lose a ship specifically because of this. In a fleet fight you should simply have auto-reject enabled. Even if you have not, you will receive 1 popup that does not grab focus and does not prevent you from controlling your client normally. Simply ignore it.


So just for clarifications sake- when was the last time YOU were convo'd by 2-300 people on a non-reinforced node at 10% Time Dilation?

Even with blocked convo's from unknown pilots, and auto-reject on pilots were either coincidentally white screening, OR getting the conversation windows anyway. I would dare say that investigating the issues surrounding claims made by players before making a post attempting to clarify the 'hows and whys' would probably restore a fair amount of the player bases faith in the GM Community.

No offense, but it's pretty scary when 'Game Masters' of any level fail to understand even the basics of the game they represent. The overwhelming amount of 'cut and paste' responses the last year or so has left most of us with a pretty lackluster view on the Support Staff; and it should be pretty telling when the majority of experienced players submit their first petition with a request to escalate to a Senior GM.
Major Annoyance
Decadence.
RAZOR Alliance
#56 - 2012-10-26 12:30:00 UTC
GM Homonoia wrote:
This has been discussed and the GMs in question made a mistake. They were acting on out of date knowledge. Mistakes happen and GMs are not perfect. This is also the point where I have to remind people that you are not allowed to share GM responses as that is considered to be a private communication between CCP and that individual. We always try to be lenient, but if this sort of thing starts to cause undue unrest we may end up having to enforce those rules.


If you have discussed this, then why don't you post the result along with the reasons for your decisions?

GM Homonoia wrote:
This is also the point where I have to remind people that you are not allowed to share GM responses as that is considered to be a private communication between CCP and that individual. We always try to be lenient, but if this sort of thing starts to cause undue unrest we may end up having to enforce those rules.


Is this meant to be a threat against me?
Gianna Micheals
Mogadishu Butchers
#57 - 2012-10-26 12:34:57 UTC
Sorry, i do apologise, i read the thread tittle as "conversation spam"........

However, on topic, it would probably help you guys if you maintained some form of consistency within your argument..... how many people do you believe you were "convo spammed" by? i see it differs between "most of a 150 man fleet" to "2-300"

Also (although i know pictures and screenies etc are all admissible from the court of CCP) has anyone actually got any screenshots of the alleged incident? it seems like there is a lot of hurf blurf about an incident where CCP's log's show very little...its not as if CFC have ever tried to game the system before?

I think you got this one right CCP, well done guys :)

CFC = LOL!
Sir Marksalot
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#58 - 2012-10-26 12:41:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Sir Marksalot
Gianna Micheals wrote:
Sorry, i do apologise, i read the thread tittle as "conversation spam"........

However, on topic, it would probably help you guys if you maintained some form of consistency within your argument..... how many people do you believe you were "convo spammed" by? i see it differs between "most of a 150 man fleet" to "2-300"

Also (although i know pictures and screenies etc are all admissible from the court of CCP) has anyone actually got any screenshots of the alleged incident? it seems like there is a lot of hurf blurf about an incident where CCP's log's show very little...its not as if CFC have ever tried to game the system before?

I think you got this one right CCP, well done guys :)

CFC = LOL!


"Haha CFC getting their own medicine!!!!"


next post


"Convo spam doesn't happen :colbert:"


NPC alts own. Snipe.



edit:
Major Annoyance wrote:

GM Homonoia wrote:
This is also the point where I have to remind people that you are not allowed to share GM responses as that is considered to be a private communication between CCP and that individual. We always try to be lenient, but if this sort of thing starts to cause undue unrest we may end up having to enforce those rules.


Is this meant to be a threat against me?


Do not question the gods, young one.
Katsami
Holy Amarrian Battlemonk
Crimson Inquisicion
#59 - 2012-10-26 12:47:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Katsami
Major Annoyance wrote:
GM Homonoia wrote:
This has been discussed and the GMs in question made a mistake. They were acting on out of date knowledge. Mistakes happen and GMs are not perfect. This is also the point where I have to remind people that you are not allowed to share GM responses as that is considered to be a private communication between CCP and that individual. We always try to be lenient, but if this sort of thing starts to cause undue unrest we may end up having to enforce those rules.


If you have discussed this, then why don't you post the result along with the reasons for your decisions?

GM Homonoia wrote:
This is also the point where I have to remind people that you are not allowed to share GM responses as that is considered to be a private communication between CCP and that individual. We always try to be lenient, but if this sort of thing starts to cause undue unrest we may end up having to enforce those rules.


Is this meant to be a threat against me?


That was my initial thought. This thread sure escalated quickly.
SicSemperTyrannis
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#60 - 2012-10-26 12:47:35 UTC
Free Xolve 2012