8/21/2024 - Game Rules Update Regarding Spam and Alliance Recruitment Messages

[Alex]

The Game Rules have been updated, specifically pertaining to Community Rule #3 - Spam Messages. (Changes emphasized in bold)

Quote

3. Spam Messages

Moderation Points Guideline: 20-50
Expiration: 6 Months

Sending unrequested solicitation messages to other players or repetitive or nonsensical messages.
Example: Sending another player an apple pie recipe three times for no reason.
Example: Sending out an invitation to your Discord server to all players in the game.

Note: We do permit unsolicited alliance recruitment messages to players not in alliances for the purpose of better engaging new players. However, such alliance recruitment messages are subject to the following restrictions:

• You may not send the same message to the same player more than once per 60 days.
• You may not message the same player any alliance recruiting message more than once every 60 hours.
• The same alliance may not have different alliance members message a given player more than once per day.

This change was made as a result of a warning issued by the moderation team for sending spam messages that was appealed with the claim that the previous game rules were not specific about the limitations of sending alliance recruitment messages, only that an exception was made for them.

My hope is that these additional points will clear up any confusion and set a new standard that will still allow for recruitment messages to be sent to new players (new players joining alliances is good for player retention and the community) while mitigating spam.

The first point, You may not send the same message to the same player more than once per 60 days, is intended to prevent low-effort spam by sending the same exact message over and over and over again. If you want to continue to message new players, you can, but you will now be required to use new messages, at least every 60 days.

The second point, You may not message the same player any alliance recruiting message more than once every 60 hours, is intended to limit you from messaging the same player every day. We will allow a message up to every 3 days, and 60 hours allows some grace there to make the rule more specific and manageable.

The third point, The same alliance may not have different alliance members message a given player more than once per day, is to prevent an alliance from having two, five, or ten of their members send alliance recruitment messages to the same player. Alliances are allowed to have multiple people send recruitment messages, but you must not bombard someone with messages from the same alliance in the same day.

We'll offer a grace period through the end of the month on strict enforcement of these new rules, as I know some folks have scripts and other procedures in place that may not exactly match these new rules. Starting September 1, however, we will enforce this rule in full if we receive reports regarding spam alliance recruitment messages.

In case anyone has any questions, that's why I posted this here -- please ask below.

[Lord Skeleton]

Much needed, EVH had been spamming at least 3 msgs per new player

[Alan]

Or you could of simply banned bots and scripts sending out alliance recruitment messages.

Force people to actually communicate with new players instead of folks having their first game experience being 47 messages that they'll never read.

 

[Alex]

11 minutes ago, Alan said:

Or you could of simply banned bots and scripts sending out alliance recruitment messages.

Force people to actually communicate with new players instead of folks having their first game experience being 47 messages that they'll never read.

 

And how would you propose we do that? Require a reCAPTCHA with every message sent?

[Witch-King Of Angmar]

15 minutes ago, Alan said:

Or you could of simply banned bots and scripts sending out alliance recruitment messages.

Force people to actually communicate with new players instead of folks having their first game experience being 47 messages that they'll never read.

 

I 100% agree with this

[Dopes]

Whew. I thought you were going to outlaw me sending random music videos of love songs to people I war with. That would have made me a sad 🐼

[jug]

Seems reasonable.

[Alex]

21 minutes ago, Witch-King Of Angmar said:

I 100% agree with this

Again, there's no good way to enforce this.

[Wingawoo]

This is sad, especially when sheepy has to get involved. Rare Sheepy W tho

[Neo Le]

46 minutes ago, Alan said:

Or you could of simply banned bots and scripts sending out alliance recruitment messages.

Force people to actually communicate with new players instead of folks having their first game experience being 47 messages that they'll never read.

 

recruitment bots help with new player retention. if it wasnt for that theyd prob be banned

[Alan]

34 minutes ago, Alex said:

And how would you propose we do that? Require a reCAPTCHA with every message sent?

You could put time limitations on messages. 1 message sent every minute that can be disabled for aa-wide messages. Same way that you make sure MAPs aren't duplicated with spam refreshes etc.

You could make the chunk larger and say 120 messages in an every 2 hours that reset with turn change (since people do RP). 

You can even charge people credits to remove this cap. Look at that Alex! Another way for you to make money!

2 minutes ago, Neo Le said:

recruitment bots help with new player retention. if it wasnt for that theyd prob be banned

Simply incorrect. While being in an alliance helps with retention the method used to recruit whether it be bot messaging or physical messaging does not make a difference.

The physically sent messages are probably better than bot sent as you can give them the personal touches for the nation you're trying to recruit instead of having all your messages open with "Hello Adventurer".

[Neo Le]

11 minutes ago, Alan said:

You could put time limitations on messages. 1 message sent every minute that can be disabled for aa-wide messages. Same way that you make sure MAPs aren't duplicated with spam refreshes etc.

You could make the chunk larger and say 120 messages in an every 2 hours that reset with turn change (since people do RP). 

You can even charge people credits to remove this cap. Look at that Alex! Another way for you to make money!

Simply incorrect. While being in an alliance helps with retention the method used to recruit whether it be bot messaging or physical messaging does not make a difference.

The physically sent messages are probably better than bot sent as you can give them the personal touches for the nation you're trying to recruit instead of having all your messages open with "Hello Adventurer".

as the person who is the reason for this rule change, this effectively nullifies the need to ban automated recruiters as they wouldve all been bannable under the previous rules.

 

Also it is cut throat, if one is using a bot, all of them are.

11 minutes ago, Alan said:

You could put time limitations on messages. 1 message sent every minute that can be disabled for aa-wide messages. Same way that you make sure MAPs aren't duplicated with spam refreshes etc.

You could make the chunk larger and say 120 messages in an every 2 hours that reset with turn change (since people do RP). 

As far as I am aware, not enough people join this game in an hour to even *hit* this limit routinely.

edit: 2 hours even then, go to a nation created alert channel and start counting.

 

ADDITIONALLY, there arent enough allianceless people out there thatd youd hit this EVEN if you counted this, if a bot didnt run for awhile itd get curb stomped, but not for long mate.

Edited August 21 by Neo Le
Curb stomp time

[Alan]

3 minutes ago, Neo Le said:

Also it is cut throat, if one is using a bot, all of them are.

I turned 2, 1 man alliances into Top 30s because I never used automated recruitment scripts. I spent the 3 minutes to look at their nation, region, even converted messages into their languages and made sure that they felt welcome.

Any alliance that claims about recruitment issues has only tried to rip people out of the P&W Community Discord who are asking for help or send blanket messages to players who don't even speak English.

Put some effort into your alliance. I guarantee you'll see people appreciate you for it.

[Neo Le]

3 minutes ago, Alan said:

I turned 2, 1 man alliances into Top 30s because I never used automated recruitment scripts. I spent the 3 minutes to look at their nation, region, even converted messages into their languages and made sure that they felt welcome.

Any alliance that claims about recruitment issues has only tried to rip people out of the P&W Community Discord who are asking for help or send blanket messages to players who don't even speak English.

Put some effort into your alliance. I guarantee you'll see people appreciate you for it.

far as im concerned i have a very good and loving community i have helped foster.

Ive put in more than enough effort.

also, i didnt complain about recruitment issues, there was no definition of when it isnt considered spam and i got moderated for it, so i showed them thr glaring asf issue.

I made it more difficult for automated recruiters to get people, stop your complaining.

Edited August 21 by Neo Le

[Kastor]

ngl I’d rather you ban bots than completely screw over smaller alliances.

Edited August 21 by Kastor

[Sirius Black --George]

20 minutes ago, Alan said:

You could put time limitations on messages. 1 message sent every minute that can be disabled for aa-wide messages. Same way that you make sure MAPs aren't duplicated with spam refreshes etc.

You could make the chunk larger and say 120 messages in an every 2 hours that reset with turn change (since people do RP). 

You can even charge people credits to remove this cap. Look at that Alex! Another way for you to make money!

Simply incorrect. While being in an alliance helps with retention the method used to recruit whether it be bot messaging or physical messaging does not make a difference.

The physically sent messages are probably better than bot sent as you can give them the personal touches for the nation you're trying to recruit instead of having all your messages open with "Hello Adventurer".

Frankly this ideology is absurd. People do indeed read messages, granted; not all of them but that does not change anything. 

 

So if you ban bot messages what does that help? Then alliance IA members will send the SAME exact message via copy / paste.... The change would benefit people for sure, people in alliances with 100+ members whom they can have recruit for them daily. Also your point about "communicate with new players" is mute, you do understand people can still reply to recruitment messages right? There was a time before bots, this is exactly how it was. Normally I wont tell someone their opinion is wrong, but yours is wrong 

 

P.S this would stop no one from making a bot using the official API to ping a IA role every time a new member is detected. Once again alliances with 100+ members would benefit. Also good for you on your engagement on every member, some people just do not have the time to do that, if you choose to spend your time like that, then good for you. 

Edited August 21 by Sirius Black --George

[Neo Le]

1 minute ago, Sirius Black --George said:

Frankly this ideology is absurd. People do indeed read messages, granted; not all of them but that does not change anything. 

 

So if you ban bot messages what does that help? Then alliance IA members will send the SAME exact message via copy / paste.... The change would benefit people for sure, people in alliances with 100+ members whom they can have recruit for them daily. Also your point about "communicate with new players" is mute, you do understand people can still reply to recruitment messages right? There was a time before bots, this is exactly how it was. Normally I wont tell someone their opinion is wrong, but yours is wrong 

I like your train of thought here

It shows a good reason why we need the bots over manual

[Alan]

8 minutes ago, Sirius Black --George said:

So if you ban bot messages what does that help? Then alliance IA members will send the SAME exact message via copy / paste.... The change would benefit people for sure, people in alliances with 100+ members whom they can have recruit for them daily.

The game averages about 100-150 new nations a day. 

Capping messages at 120 message every 2 hours means you can still message every single new nation each day. What it denies is you blanket messaging all 7,000 nations not in an alliance every day.
 

12 minutes ago, Sirius Black --George said:

Normally I wont tell someone their opinion is wrong, but yours is wrong 

It's not an opinion. It's math. Some people don't want their inbox spammed every 30 minutes telling them to join some alliance. Some players enjoy just doing things by themselves.

[LachlanPnW]

Does this also apply for discord?

[Kyubnyan]

What if it's a different apple pie recipe each time? Surely that would be allowed right?

[Commander Kay]

How do you ensure you dont send someone duplicates? when recruiting 50+ppl manually at a time it can be hard to keep track of them all.. especially if you do it for different alliances in that span of time

[namukara]

What's the policy around sending recruitment messages for alliances I'm not in or that might have ceased to exist 3 years ago?

[Lourenco]

I like these changes,
As long as people follow trough this is probably the best case scenario.

I would't ban bots or scripts, they are a part of this community and some people have a major foucus on developing them. Its important to let people do this sort of thing and be creative in-game.
Be it trough art work, nation pages, DoW, Bots, whaterver floats your boat.

17 hours ago, Alan said:

Or you could of simply banned bots and scripts sending out alliance recruitment messages.

Force people to actually communicate with new players instead of folks having their first game experience being 47 messages that they'll never read.

 

[Neo Le]

12 hours ago, Commander Kay said:

How do you ensure you dont send someone duplicates? when recruiting 50+ppl manually at a time it can be hard to keep track of them all.. especially if you do it for different alliances in that span of time

It isnt considered spam... but that is up for administrator interpretation.

[Anarchist Empire]

If more than person is doing recruitment in an alliance, guess now they need to coordinate to make sure to avoid messaging same people or warn points? Guess grace period gives those who have bots time to make sure their bots don't break these rules I guess. Feel this could very easily be broken on accident, when a new player I'd receive recruitment messages from different people from same alliance.