Tree of Savior Forum

Chat Bots and Word Filter

General Discussion
#1

whenever in a party and i want the lead to be passed to me because I am a corsair and being the party leader would activate my skill so i type:

“Hey, do you want to pass me the party leader so we can use Jolly Roger”

then i press enter…

Himegami: ***

What’s wrong with what i said? Why was it censored? Simple, “ass” is in the word “pass” so tough luck son, all those words you typed just got wasted.

now let’s type these words:

VG0LDS
HOAGOLD
GTMMO
USFINE
PVEGOLDS
SEAGM
MMOCEO
MM0TANK

these are just some of the site names shouted by those spam bots, and they go through the filter like any other word

how hard would it have been to include this in the filter? devs didn’t think of it? hah, if i wear my tinfoil hat then i would think that they are in on this whole scam considering i once read about corrupt gm’s in kcbt aiding some players so it wouldn’t be so farfetched that some devs or staff are related to these big players in rmt, but i digress

*edit: please don’t comment about the authenticity and the source of that rumor on the last paragraph, that’s not the point

##*

this^
/20charactersS

#2

Thing is, RMT spammers are quite crafty when it comes to avoiding word filters.
Let’s say I want to send a message “Buy silver from www.some_url”

The obvious way is to type it as it is - which is easily filtered.
But then again, I can substitute “o” for “0” and replace “www” with “wvv”. Or vwv. or 3vv. Or /////. Or any combination of thereof. And use “ä” instead of “a” and so on. Granted, that makes the messages look rather strange, but it still does the trick, and when scripts come into play, adding spaces here and there it becomes really difficult to reliably filter the words.

IMC would have to update/rewrite the filters on hourly basis, and unless ToS servers allow updating word filters on the fly, without restarting (which, I’m afraid, they don’t) it’s quite a struggle to keep up.

#3

It’s pretty simple actually. Allow us, the players, to make our own filters in game. </problem>

That way, IMC doesn’t have to waste time on constantly having to update filters, we can do away with pretty much anything we want to see, and if implemented nicely(ability to import/export filters) we as a community can make our own lists.

1 Like
#4

but wouldn’t that be better than banning them one by one? which is happening on this active thread

that is a concern, i hope their system allows for a dynamic word filter

#5

this^
/20charactersS

#6

In my opinion, applying filters to censor goldspammers is a hopeless fight. It’s pure efforts wasted.

Censoring words like “pass” or “class” or “mass” because of the “ass” is unintentional and will probably be fixed in the future.

Applying user unique filtering is pointless because the whole purpose of the thing is to not let gold sellers advertise at all. If you allow the person to see or not the advertisement then you are clearly giving in to the gold sellers and letting them hit their chunk of the population who won’t filter the words and actually buy from them.

The idea behind censoring gold sellers messages is to make it so difficult to read them that the common user won’t understand their messages at all and make it impossible for them to buy. This is an usual method (usually the first implemented) to fight goldsellers present on MMORPGs simply because it’s very, very easy to implement (does not require the implementation of anti-spamming systems or anti-bots).

#7

how convenient to label it as a wasted effort without trying?

if IMC actively censors every iteration and combination of the site names from these bots, it will eventually become unintelligible, so botters would stop spamming altogether since no one would understand the site name eventually if they keep adding spaces and characters in between

why dub it pointless again? if a user doesn’t want to see certain word from his chat then why wouldn’t they allow this feature? the user can even add his own list of words where only he/she will be affected so why is it pointless?

that is not the whole purpose, the main reason why people are annoyed is because of the spam, RMT does not affect you directly but the annoyance of spam does

#8

Well the fallacy is that the reason why we would want these filters is so that the people who would buy them wouldn’t see them. Thats not the case at all. This is a feature that would facilitate these spammers to not annoy the hell out of everyone else. Not to mention I could think of many personal uses for this.

To think something like this would solve the RMT issue is laughable, it’s not, but it’s something to ease the pain and to make communicating in any chat not an arduous thing.

To solve an issue like this you would have to mitigate the reasons why people use these third party services. In most cases the easiest way to do that is offer the similar services yourself. However IMC has already shot themselves in the foot with that with not having that sort of system out of the gate.

Instead they are trying to mitigate the greater issue by putting limitations on game systems to attempt to curtail RMT. However that itself is causing the player base to turn to the third party RMT since it’s easier and as a passive aggressive middle finger to IMC for making their playing sessions a pain in the balls.

I’ve gotten a bit too far removed from the OP topic so I’ll digress.

Ultimately these are bandaids to make the playerbases quality of life in game better, while IMC can figure out a way to provide the same legit services on their end.

TL;DR: Player based filtering would go a long away to increase quality of life for everyone while IMC can figure out a long term solution. <3

#9

Just putting this out there. I was doing this quest in Orsha and one NPC was named Lanaldos and I was telling my friend he has a quest or something. I made a pretty long sentence about this NPC (location and his quest) then all I got was **. It took me awhile to realize why because his name has ANAL in between. I just literally exhaled very loud and logged out for awhile.

#10

well said /20charsss

#11

i know that feeling, typing a long narrative to explain something then all you get are some asterisks, but we digress :stuck_out_tongue:

#12

Without trying? IMC has been trying to apply filters since day 1 and spammers are still spamming today.

You have, however, no idea how many combinatorial possibilities there are. “MMOTANK” can be censored, but “M M O T A N K” won’t be. Then if they censor that too, they can change to “M-M-O-T-A-N-K”. Then what? They’ll have to censor plain “M” letters?

Applying unique user filters wouldn’t change anything. A single spammer could spam the phrases “MMOTANK”, “M M O T A N K”, “MMOTANK”, etc, etc and they would eventually go through your filters. Just because the filters are different for each person does not mean they would go back and spam the casual “MMOTANK”.

You would eventually have to block the person, ending up with the system we currently have right now.

Thus, it is pointless.

People who turn to RMT as a form of protest against IMC are simply stupid.

#13

I died a little inside reading this… :sob:

I know your pain. :broken_heart:

#14

I would prefer filter to be an option which I can choose to either turn it on or off.

#15

Full heartedly agree. However dismissing it because it’s stupid doesn’t mean it’s not a problem that needs to be addressed.

#16

Oh ■■■■ servers up, I’m out.

#17

i see, then why is MMOTANK, SEAGM, and HOAGOLD since day1 still here? filters applied? NOT

you do know that things like that are easily detectable with some simple algorithm using the base word as a variable

now you’re just trying to be spiteful, we all want to solve a problem, no matter how small of a solution it is, telling us that this proposed solution is useless is not helping anyone

now if i was a user, and i wouldn’t want to see “MMOTANK” from my chatbox, i can just include that on my personal word filter, would the botter know that? no. thus preventing the word from being displayed on my chat

for example, a filipino curse word “gago” is not included in the word filter, i can include it on my personal filter and no one is inconvenienced with my decision to do so

#18

So, what with bots?

#19

What? You mean the keyword “MMOTANK”? It has been blocked before but they probably removed the filters seeing it was useless. There was a point where spammers were saying MM0TANK instead.

Since you are talking about algorithms, I’ll tell you this: if you make a sequential search for every character and compare with the string “MMOTANK” you would also have any phrase that contains those letters blocked by the filter. For example, the phrase “Mister MOle, ThANKs…” would get blocked because the letters in caps sum up to “MMOTANK”. Of course, it’s a stupid example, but it’s the best I can come up with now. And also, gold sellers could work around it by simply changing it to “MM0TANK” or “MMOT@NK” (different characters would fail up in the sequence matching).

Ok, I am being spiteful. But I don’t think applying filters really helps. In my opinion the best solution to this is start sueing gold seller companies. This however, may take longer and give more headaches.

As for a short term solution (which is what you want), if I were IMC, I wouldn’t waste my employee’s time writting all sort of combinations to chat filter gold spammers just to see them work around it the next day. You don’t go into a fight you can’t win. They shouldn’t be wasting workforce with those sort of stuff. Even banning them can be sort of a waste because they will just keep coming back (unless IMC can afford to stop the DLC sales).

They don’t need to know what words you blocked in your filter. They can spam “MMOT@NK”, “M-M-0-T-@-N-K” or any sort of combination they want together and i’m sure it will go through most filters (unless you intend to spend the rest of your life writting different combinations of word filters)

#20

But there is a form of RMT in game already–it’s selling tokens in the marketplace! Yet we still have 3rd party RMT.