Spam Attacking - Let us begin the conversation here

DeletedUser30931

Guest
Subject: Spam Attacking
Definition: Attacking and recalling attacks persistently with the purpose to annoy an enemy and desensitize them to their attack alarm.

This tactic is not in the good spirit of the game and not what I think InnoGames intended the game to be. I would like to start a conversation here to end the tactic. The game has made great players quit because their mobile alarm gets blown up daily. Attacks should be attacks, not pestering due to the alarm. I think changing this would improve the game and prevent abuse of the game mechanics.

How do you feel about the tactic? How do you feel it can be prevented?


Petition: Please write your name below if you agree that Spam Attacking must be stopped and offer a solution, since one must be found. We must work together to find a solution and not put all the effort on InnoGames. If we expect a solution, we can find one.
 
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DeletedUser54997

Guest
I don't think there's anyone who actually enjoys spam attacking. But sadly I don't think it will ever go away, no matter how many polls or complaints or mutual agreements are made. Once the first person in a world spams, that's it really. If you're willing to spam then you should be willing to take any spam that comes back at you. That's the best that can be said really in my opinion.

It can sometimes be a legitimate tactic as well. A frustrating and annoying one, yes, but you can "spam" in more ways than just to blow up someone's phone. For example, preventing a nearby city from quickly supplying troops to a siege by landing attacks every 5 seconds so they cannot gold or dodge fast enough.

It sucks, but it will never go away. The only effective solution - don't spam in retaliation as once you do it just makes things worse.
 

DeletedUser55812

Guest
My personal opinion is that it should be removed from the game.... But how are you going to make it happen is the question :)
 

DeletedUser55701

Guest
Let's say what it is, It is impossible to remove this without removing the alarm itself, So let's go back to the days of having no alarm, People will have to stay online or send their troops far away to protect them while they sleep.

One other way, People who start spamming deliberately should be kicked out by the alliance leaders in the name of keeping up the spirit of the game, because most good players and alliance sort to spamming only as retaliation. So cutting it out at the roots is the only other solution but it is not that easy.
 

DeletedUser31931

Guest
Let's say what it is, It is impossible to remove this without removing the alarm itself, So let's go back to the days of having no alarm, People will have to stay online or send their troops far away to protect them while they sleep.
Unfortunately it is impossible to remove the attack alarm in full. Inno can remove that feature from the mobile app (which personally I don't know why they would), but there are still 3rd party attack alarms on the PC.

Grepolis report converter comes with one, which maybe would be removed if inno asked them to, but there are also illegal programs with attack alarms.

Though I cannot personally confirm, I believe the popular Russian bot (if you've played a while, I'm sure you know what I am referring to) also has an attack alarm on PC and even a feature that texts or emails or something. Again, I don't know the specifics, but I don't think the botters are going to remove their alarm just because we ask them nicely haha.
 

DeletedUser55701

Guest
Well, Players can turn it off on their own and they can go back to following the old technique.

idk why they keep it on and then complain. ;)

So, kicking players who start spamming seems like the only option. Good luck with getting everyone to agree on this!
smiley_emoticons_grin.gif
 

Fluvisol

Phrourach
One of the ideas brought up in the GPC was to have a slider on the app which allows you to let attacks only give you a notification after they've been sent for a certain amount of time (varying between 0-10 minutes)
For example an attack gets sent at 10:00, if you have the slider on 5 minutes the alarm will only go off at 10:05 if it's still on the way then. If it's canceled beforehand there will be no alarm

An issue we saw with this was that on fast worlds a cs can take down to 7 minutes (speed 3), meaning putting the slider anywhere over 7 minutes could lose you cities without notification, and ping recall spammers would just let their attacks go out for 7 minutes before recalling
A possible solution to this would be to reduce the cancellation time on attacks to enemies or neutrals (brown) to 2 minutes, as the fastest attack on a speed 3 world would be around 3 minutes with harpies. This would allow the slider to be set to 2 minutes to completely cancel out ping spam, while still getting notifications for every real attack

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this and other ideas as well as spam is a really hard thing to get rid of in one go without affecting different aspects of the game
 

G-Fight

Chiliarch
One of the ideas brought up in the GPC was to have a slider on the app which allows you to let attacks only give you a notification after they've been sent for a certain amount of time (varying between 0-10 minutes)
For example an attack gets sent at 10:00, if you have the slider on 5 minutes the alarm will only go off at 10:05 if it's still on the way then. If it's canceled beforehand there will be no alarm

An issue we saw with this was that on fast worlds a cs can take down to 7 minutes (speed 3), meaning putting the slider anywhere over 7 minutes could lose you cities without notification, and ping recall spammers would just let their attacks go out for 7 minutes before recalling
A possible solution to this would be to reduce the cancellation time on attacks to enemies or neutrals (brown) to 2 minutes, as the fastest attack on a speed 3 world would be around 3 minutes with harpies. This would allow the slider to be set to 2 minutes to completely cancel out ping spam, while still getting notifications for every real attack

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this and other ideas as well as spam is a really hard thing to get rid of in one go without affecting different aspects of the game
I like this one,

but I'd want to propose a small adjustment, let the slider and the recall time vary depending on the unit speed of the world, on u speed 3 (ws 2) it would be 7 mins as harpies with all modifiers would be just under 8 minutes tt.

Slower worlds have much higher tt and it would only be logical imo to let have those a longer time to recall
 

Fluvisol

Phrourach
Slider works well. Max is 10 mins then you can adjust if you have cs closer
The problem is if the spammer has a cs at say 8 minutes he'll expect you to set it to 7 minutes
To avoid the slider he will just recall attacks when they're 9 minutes out. Hence why we thought the reduced cancel time would be good

Another idea I forgot to mention was to have a snooze button on the alarm
Obviously it would require you to still be online but it allows you to stop alarms for a certain amount of time without fear of forgetting to turn them back on. It's not as impactful as the slider but could save marriages :D
 

G-Fight

Chiliarch
What you always can do as well is make the time to recall about 25% of the standard tt (no 30% boost, atlanta, Cart & Meteo) but with a maximum recall time that varies on the unit speed as I proposed in my latest comment. This to combat short range spammers AND long range spammers but gives you still the needed time to prepare your defense, dodge, militia etc.

What it means is the following.

Eg.
Given:
Unit speed 3: max 7 mins recall time
Attackers A's TT is 8 mins (Harpies)
Attacker B's TT is 60 mins (Harpies)

Attacker A attacks you with harpies with 8 mins tt. And let's assume you get alarmed via app after recall time has ended. 1 minute isn't that much to react appropiately if he wouldn't recall it. So I'd propose to make the recall time 25% of the standard tt. It would not reduce with effects of Atlanta, Meteo etc. So the attacker can't recall after 2 minutes in this instance and the defender gets notified 6 minutes in advance for the impending assault.

Now, just 25% seems very unfair for the same defender against the attacks of attacker B, because that means Attacker B would get 15 mins to recall and only after 15 mins the defender would know of the incoming via notific.
So there's a max recall time depending on unit speed (eg 7 mins for US3).
That means regardless of tt, you can't recall after 7 mins on that world and the defender would get notified only after the attack cannot be recalled anymore.

The defender gets notified well on time but cannot be spammed with fake attacks. Attacks would show up IG like they do now regardless of the ability to still recall.
 
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DeletedUser55855

Guest
The slider option is difficult to implement per the devs. We don't know if it can realistically be done.

huge waste of time for devs, simply by removing ingame alarm altogether spam is solved, ones that want to stay up 24/7 and deal with inc they will, ones that want to enjoy RL more and sleep more will do just that.

solving spam as limiting attacks nor anything similar that will effect spam as it is will not happen, knowing how discussion about it between German council members and EN council members ended.
 

Rachel.L

Phrourach
solving spam as limiting attacks nor anything similar that will effect spam as it is will not happen, knowing how discussion about it between German council members and EN council members ended.

do you know something we don't, @MythicalPoodle?
what happens in the gpc forum is unpublished
so you know this confidential info how?
perhaps @Baudin Toolan or @Richard need to check into nda issues

this is an issue that has been on the table since the last gpc council and one that players in MULTIPLE markets want changed
it is the topic of numerous threads in the EN forum, this is not the first
whatever happened between gpc members, this still needs to be discussed
 

DeletedUser55701

Guest
What you always can do as well is make the time to recall about 25% of the standard tt (no 30% boost, atlanta, Cart & Meteo) but with a maximum recall time that varies on the unit speed as I proposed in my latest comment. This to combat short range spammers AND long range spammers but gives you still the needed time to prepare your defense, dodge, militia etc.

What it means is the following.

Eg.
Given:
Unit speed 3: max 7 mins recall time
Attackers A's TT is 8 mins (Harpies)
Attacker B's TT is 60 mins (Harpies)

Attacker A attacks you with harpies with 8 mins tt. And let's assume you get alarmed via app after recall time has ended. 1 minute isn't that much to react appropiately if he wouldn't recall it. So I'd propose to make the recall time 25% of the standard tt. It would not reduce with effects of Atlanta, Meteo etc. So the attacker can't recall after 2 minutes in this instance and the defender gets notified 6 minutes in advance for the impending assault.

Now, just 25% seems very unfair for the same defender against the attacks of attacker B, because that means Attacker B would get 15 mins to recall and only after 15 mins the defender would know of the incoming via notific.
So there's a max recall time depending on unit speed (eg 7 mins for US3).
That means regardless of tt, you can't recall after 7 mins on that world and the defender would get notified only after the attack cannot be recalled anymore.

The defender gets notified well on time but cannot be spammed with fake attacks. Attacks would show up IG like they do now regardless of the ability to still recall.
This one seems better than the slider and comparatively less complicated to implement.
smiley_emoticons_thumbs-up_new.gif


We should have the option to choose between the usual alarm to get notified as soon as it is launched and this method. Just in case people feel they could've avoided loosing if they had the original alarm in place.
 

DeletedUser36530

Guest
This one seems better than the slider and comparatively less complicated to implement.
smiley_emoticons_thumbs-up_new.gif


We should have the option to choose between the usual alarm to get notified as soon as it is launched and this method. Just in case people feel they could've avoided loosing if they had the original alarm in place.
100% love this. this suggested idea seems great, can someone think of a way it won't work? and I also like the addition of choosing yourself whether or not you want your alarm to be set at spam-proof or as soon as the attack is sent.
 

Baudin Toolan

Grepolis Team
Changing when the app notifies you of an attack, be it immediately or after 2 or 3 minutes of your choice, is a difficult thing to do and we're not sure if that is something that can be done reliably.
 
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