Its still quite early in the development stage and it's one of the last things on gamers minds when logging into a new game, but how should Titans handle griefers?
(Who - Definition - Why its a problem)
The Gold Spammer - People offering things for cash exchange - Even in buy to play there will be some entrepreneurs out there who find that scamming people out of real life cash. To new players it is a huge red flag and it de-legitimizes players who want to do "legal" exchanges.
The Chat Hole - People who find it necessary to write mean/offensive things to you - Whether in global chat or a private message people writing to you "you suck" or racist/sexist/homophobic slurs or just plain won't leave you alone.. these people really turn casual players away
The Lookie Me's - People who beg for attention through their avatars - This is mostly a problem for roleplayers. Players who take pride in putting their avatar on your screen and doing whatever it takes for attention tend to break immersion. In other games they've also chosen the strobe effect powers and blast flashing lights on screens causing other problems.
The Pushers - Players who try to assert location/map control over other players - Many games use proximity to NPC or object Kiosks for interaction and nothing is worse than being in the middle of a difficult craft (or other action) only to have your character moved out of the area. Also any "devices" or things that cause FX to your character without your permission.
PvP - ALL unsolicited PvP - People who want to be attacked (by other players or by NPCs taken on by other players) should be flagged to do so. People who do not wish to engage in PvP with another player should never be forced to do so.
- -
Are there any i missed? What steps should Missing Worlds Media take to alleviate this on the customer support level? What could City of Titans produce on the code/programming level to keep the player experience enjoyable for all kinds of players?
Crowd Control Enthusiast
The Evil Herder - a tank/brute that aggroes a bunch of mobs and drags them onto toons in non pvp zones
The aggressive ERPer - no means no
PvP: If you enter a pvp zone and don't want to pvp, leave the pvp zone. Though I think CoT is going a different route with this anyways so it's not really an issue. The only other way to be PvPed is to flag yourself for PvP, so just don't flag yourself.
Gold Spammers: Report and ignore.
The Chat Hole: Get over yourself, use ignore, use chat filter and move on.
Lookie Me: Ignore
Pushers: Move to a different instance or fight your way through. Nothing should stop them from standing where they want to.
Aggressive ERPer (never seen this one): Ignore!
Evil herder: Step away from that area!
I agree that most of these can and should just be ignored, but a lookie me with a bunch of special effects can cause lag. Pushers who move you away from public utilities while you're trying to interact can be hard to ignore also, maybe if characters can pass through each other in public areas but only get in each other's way in missions, and other combat zones.
I played the evil herder once. My group was too small to take on the Clockwork Paladin, so we lured him all the way up to Blue Steel. There were a lot of toons there who were just hanging around, leveling whatever, and once they got into the fight he went down pretty quickly.
I suspect that that would've been difficult to ignore, but I figured it was OK after all sometimes when I was trying to level the devs dumped a Rikti invasion on my head.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
One of the approaches to reducing gold spammers that we're trying is permitting in-game currency to be traded for Stars on the player-to-player market. Ideally, this will create legitimate competition for the illegitimate potential scammer. Having a helpful guidebook that notes that anybody offering currency for real world money is potentially trying to scam you out of your credit card information, and that you can exchange money for currency by buying Stars and going to the market (where prices will be determined by supply and demand, and thus as low as any honest seller is likely to make them), will hopefully cut deeply into gold spammers' success rates. With reduced success rates, they'll hopefully try something else.
Obviously, that's a lot of "hopefully"s, but it is one of the design goals behind the whole "trade Stars on the market" thing.
Abusive chat users can probably just be blocked.
The lag-inducing problem of the attention hog is an interesting one. It strikes me that there should be some sort of way to filter your settings so that, if something is causing too much slowdown, it can be set to low priority for your graphics card and possibly just left un-animated.
PvP issues - including herding foes into areas and pushing people around to disconnect them from interactive things - are probably several threads' worth of discussion.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I don't know if a rmt spammer is really a griefer. A problem and certainly annoying, but how much does getting spammed: " 10 mill inf for only $5! www.goldRus.com", really negatively effect your game play? It's not like spawning the Chronos Titan in the middle of a hammi raid or deceiving low level players into accepting teleports to certain doom.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
Clearly there are different levels of annoyance and some things bother some people far more than they bother others.
For instance I know there are some people out there who probably couldn't play MMO games unless they had strong tools for Ignoring various in-game chats. Being able to Ignore people (for whatever reasons) makes them happier and less upset. On the other hand I can't even remember the last time I ever specifically Ignored anyone in any in-game chat (even gold spammers types). Basically I very rarely if ever see anything in in-chat that makes me annoyed ENOUGH to bother wasting any effort using any provided Ingore features. That's just my deal - YMMV.
So while the definition of the MMO term "grief" might not be fixed in stone it all boils down to various levels of valid annoyance and what the Devs can do to help us mitigate it.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
While I'm perfectly willing to ignore almost every annoyance, and I'm pretty hard to offend, I'm one of those poor old-fashioned people that believe mutual respect and common courtesy are necessary for a healthy society. Most people put up with offensive or downright abusive behavior because it's too much trouble to do anything else. Merely ignoring someone does nothing to modify their behavior.
"Griefing", by my own definition if no one else's, is being deliberately annoying or obtrusive for no other reason than because you can get away with it. The jerk who turns their auras and effects up to 11 and runs around in front of the costume contestants. Spamming chat with "ALLLL CAAAAAAPPSSS NOOOOONNSENSEEE!!!!!!!" or actually offensive invective in public forums, is much worse to me than "kiting Mobs" or "ganking noobs", but falls in the same category. Now to be clear, I'm not talking about "Good Taste Police." Wear your skimpy whatever, flaunt your innuendo pun, Make a political statement with your costume, I don't care. As long as you're reasonably polite and don't insist that everyone must stop what they're doing to pay attention to you.
I'm concerned from the standpoint of retaining new players or remaining family friendly. I would prefer a robust and easy mechanism for reporting, but a lot of people don't want to be bothered with that. They'll just quit. I'd rather we, as a community, be more willing to say that we won't tolerate rude and offensive behavior and we'll report it. First time, every time. And I'd like an assurance from the Devs that when someone acts up, they get an official "time out" to show that it isn't tolerated. The problems will eventually fix themselves or move on to more anarchic pastures.
Personally I had the idea of a character having to spend 5-15 minuets of game time(so logging out or switching characters does not get around this) in a "time out room", a plain white 10'x10'x10' room with no access to chat or remote services for issues that don't warrant a ban.
As far as easy reporting/ignoring, I am all for that. A drop down box of common offenses on the form is great. I guess I just draw a line in my head between rmt spammers and griefers. To me it is a different kind of problem, but one i do want a means to deal with in the game.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
The Raid Griefer - does exactly the thing to cause the raid to fail
Examples - forcing yellow dawn, killing civilians in tpn
I think most people faced with the "time out room" or "penalty box" that syntaxerror37 describes would just log off and not come back until their "five for fighting" was over. If you're going to enforce the timer on "game-played time", they just switch to an alt or roll one up. You're probably better off just disconnecting them for a set time period. Game kicks them out, they can't log back in, if they try they get a message telling them how long the suspension lasts for.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The thing is, it would be game time, and by account. Logging out would pause the timer, switching characters would still drop you in the box. You could conceivably log on with a different account and keep playing, but until you served your time, that account is stuck.
Realistically you could just open up You-Tube, grab a smoke, whatever you wanted to do while waiting it out. But I think punishing a player for bothering other peoples enjoyment of the game by taking away their ability to play the game and imposing an annoyance on them is quite fitting as apposed to an actual ban (temporary or permanent) for minor infractions.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
Okay, yeah, that might work. As you said, they probably just take a break and get a drink or whatever, but I can see it.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
This is more what I had in mind, actually. Although the Penalty Box idea made me grin. I'm in favor of both. First you go to the empty room. There's a sign saying "Think About What You have Done" and a big digital timer counting down from 6:00:00 hours, or something. they log off and can't log back in for, you guessed it, 6 hours.
Makes me smile just thinking about it.
Or better yet, you could make it look like that spinning rings trap that Zod and his crew were held in at the beginning of Superman II.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u3eQc_rx54
Edit: as a bonus, you could have the environment music in that room be a sort of whooshing sound coupled with a bunch of angry-sounding old men saying "GUILTY!".
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Oh, yeah. Account wide + play time, definitely. Okay, maybe not six hours. One hour would probably be enough to discourage the behavior. Cruel and unusual punishment is not the goal. Modifying behavior is the goal. Cruel and unusual punishment is just an effective and amusing means. :)
And no, Radiac, While I appreciate the reference, I want the absolute minimum of development time expended and entertainment value extended to evil-doers. :) What was that nuclear diplomacy game that's probably decades old, now? The idea was to avert nuclear war. If you "lost" you just got a blank screen saying "Game Over. We are not going to reward you with a dramatic mushroom cloud graphic for failing." It was something like that.
For what it's worth it'd be neat to see those "ring trap" things worked into the game in some form or fashion even if not for this purpose. It'd be a cool little easter egg. Maybe it could be a visual effect for some kind of crowd control power or some such.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
So far I'm hearing:
The Gold Spammer Solution: A report to GM report feature and ability to chat ignore. - Seems reasonable
The Chat Hole Solution: A simple chat ignore feature and possibly also a GM report - Seems reasonable (depending on GM response capability)
The Lookie Me's and Pushers Solution: Ignore them. - As an RPer I don't like this solution alone. I do NOT want to take away from other peoples ability to play the game. So would it be possible for the tech to make said character invisible and intangible to me? I don't know how that would work with the AI but Even if the AI knew they were there I really would like the screen to pretend for me. From a parental guidance standpoint and from a solo players standpoint this seems like good tech to look into.
PvP Solution: Don't go into PvP - I don't like this solution for a few reasons. My ideal system would allow me to flag the characters/players I want to PvP with and them only. And a second option to flag myself for full open, anyone who wants a piece PvP. IF there are PvP only instances I hope they are small like the Hero Games of Champions Online and not taking alot of development.
The Evil Herder Solution: Move away - This solution plainly wont work. The griefer will just follow you. I don't really know a solution to this one.. Thought about it pretty hard and its gonna have to be an AI consideration.
The aggressive ERPer Solution: Chat and Screen Ignore would be best.. BUT I'm going to say that personally ERP has no place in a family friendly MMORPG in my honest opinion. I'd really hope that Missing Worlds Media took a hard stance in the terms of use agreement against it. Take that over to another game.
- -
While RPing in another game I came across another type of griefer:
The UI griefer - While RPing with friends someone came up and started griefing our RP session. We chat ignored him.. then they started initiating Trade requests so that our UI constantly pulled up the inventory screen. I was BEGGING for a toggle where I could turn off the ability to trade without needing to enter combat.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Awww, no fun graphics? Next I was going to suggest we have a flat, 2-D glass rectangle that flies over the outdoor maps at night with the faces of all the guilty partys currently serving suspensions pounding away on it from the inside and yelling silently to no avail to be let out.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
ROFL. Ok, you got me with that one. Public humiliation beats quiet time.
+1
ROFL. Ok, you got me with that one. Public humiliation beats quiet time.
+1
ROFL. Ok, you got me with that one. Public humiliation beats quiet time.
+1
One thing I always do when I think of "punishments" is think how I would feel if it happened to me.
You might think that it *WON'T* happen to you, but stuff happens and you might react in a "bad" fashion that triggers this. How would you feel if the system was used against you.
That is why most of the time, I generally feel the /ignore and report method for abusive things is the best way to go. That way it is left up to an impartial (in theory) 3rd party to sort out.
The rest of the time, it is just *you* having to do the ignoring.
Toggles to prevent *others* from interacting with you (ie trade windows) is fine (or even the basic /ignore prevents them from initiating trades/mail/PM's/duels with you).
Not so sure on the PvP zone/being able to toggle to "god mode" there though. It really does depend as to how everything is put together for it (ie a dedicated instance/a whole seperate shard/nothing of *specific* PvE interest there etc.
Official time out for annoying people...that's a good way to kill the game right there. Just because you don't like someone using all caps, does not make them a griefer. In fact, it doesn't even denote them as yelling. It's what it's taken as for sure, but it could just be...they're typing in all caps.
And all those things you mentioned, that you don't care about, can be considered not only annoying but acting up to someone else.
Exactly...though PvP zone is easy. Don't want to PvP, don't go into the PvP zone. There's some mission/item in that zone that you want? Then you're going to have to PvP or live without it (or rush in and try to avoid it). It's a PvP zone. You get your notice of what happens there when you enter it.
Brand X, I'm not suggesting that first offenders get the Big Hammer. Those people are usually chided gently by the community. How they react is the rest of the story. Nor am I suggesting that there be some automatic mechanism whereby after # reports the player gets "Time Out" I would never propose a way that a player, or group of players, has the ability to eject someone of their own accord. That is an invite to griefing, right there. In all this, I have always assumed some judicial review from a trusted moderator.
If I type something in caps to make a point or simulate shouting once or twice in a conversation it is not the same thing. That's taking me rather out of context, I did say "spamming" with the associated implication. And yes, I recognize that I may be annoyed by something that others find quaintly humorous and vice-versa. You know annoying behavior when you see it. I'm talking about a sustained, conscious effort to disrupt other people's play.
The things that I don't care about are things from which I can easily avert my eyes, or wander away from with a sigh and shake of my head. I put all that under Free Speech. Persistent, abusive, and unrepentant mischief is what I'm referring to. The old adage of "Your right to swing that stick is protected right up until the time it connects with my head." comes into play here.
I'm saying that after a sufficient number of people (whatever number that is) report someone for doing something that they ALL find annoying, action should be taken. And that action should be swift and shocking (but not in the long run harmful) to the person on the wrong end of it. The ignore that makes them "silent and invisible" protects me but ultimately doesn't give the offender any real reason to stop. So long as they can annoy one person with impunity, they will do so.
I'm more than happy with silent and invisible (and intangible/untargetable etc). Hell if they want to pay money just to be loud and look ugly then all the power to them.. just don't want them to be able to be loud and ugly at me.
Their money is still green but I don't want it on my screen.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
To be honest, I'd probably do something to get myself thrown in the Phantom Zone at least once, just to take screenies of it and to see myself in the pane of glass creaming to be let out.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Kneel Before Radiac?
I just figure most of the listed things just aren't worthy to have any real action taken. Most of it feels like something that should be gotten over and ignore listed to take care of.
I was thinking of it as a 5-15 minute kind of punishment. The idea was something I came up with to basically punish people for being actively jerks, but not doing anything worthy of a ban. Though on some levels, it's worse. A ban just won't let you log in, where as the penalty box lets you in and then makes you wait.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
Snootchie-bootchies.
This reminds me of the time I got muted on Triumph Watch (the Triumph server's LFTF channel). I was playing with keybinds and macroes and accidentally ended up saying "$target, F^&K YO COUCH!", which was a thing at the time from the Dave Chapelle show. Or wait, was it that? I might have been something else. I think at the time I was like "I've been muted, wtf? This didn't happen when I accidentally said the f-bomb TWICE but its happening now?!?" I think it was all a matter of which mod was on at the time.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Heh.. s/he was probably working on the SG base and got annoyed there were no couches? ;)
Speaking of which, I want my In Game Loft to look a bit like this: :D
[img]http://homesdir.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/amazing-sunken-sitting-areas-sunken-design-590x472.jpg[/img]
I confess not understanding the purpose of sinking the couch area like that. It also looks a bit cramped and unusable for any sort of activity, as the table in the middle is too small for board or card games.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I suspect it's a case of fashion over function. It looks neat, whether or not it limits usability is secondary.
Ahem. ::fixes pince-nez and straightens waistcoat:: It is referred to as a "conversation pit." They were very fashionable in the 70's. Back when conversation and face-to-face, real-time exchange of ideas was a "thing." The center table is big enough to serve as foot stool or hold a few cocktails. The distraction and focus of a game wasn't necessary to ease social interaction back in the olden days. If you insist on a bit of sport Izzy's flat appears to have a lovely billiard...sorry, "pool" table in the background.
We now return to your current century.
That is the other thing.
When you resort to *penalising* other people just because a load of people don't like them, but they are not breaking the game rules themselves (ie trying to circumvent chat censors), and you force them out of the game for that reason, you are being very dracononian.
Only the developers/GM's of the game should have that power.
*NEVER* the players.
They should never be able to force the players out of the game[1]...
And then there is the problem of when you have paid money to the developers (subscriber) but the playerbase locks you out because you did something that they didn't like but it *wasn't* against the rules of the game?
Does this mean I can demand a refund from the company? Or does the player have to reimburse me?
Messy area. I would stay away from players being able to "punish" other players (ie prevention of playing the game) and generally limit them to ignoring/banning from "private" chat channels (which you own/mod).
[1] There are games that break this rule, but I don't think that this player base would generally play them. There is one where if you break the rules of the "state" that you are in, you are placed in jail for *game time*. And you get judged by a bunch of players if you should be released/punished further.
I'm against any game mechanics that make Bullying allot easier for players (subscriber or not) to perpetrate on another player.
Aye, Gangrel has a point. If one is not careful, the very tools designed to punish griefers can be used by griefers for griefing.
Now THERE's a good example, Alanis. You should use that in your song.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Including dramatic irony would spoil the irony.
Battle not with griefers, lest you become a griefer; and know that when you type into the chat channel, the chat channel types back.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
ALL in-game abuse must be regulated by customer service on a case by case basis.
The EULA should include a "at our discretion" clause that lets abusers know MWM has the right to shut them down and refuse them service (as they all do)
Crowd Control Enthusiast
If MWM wishes, and the volume of customer service (CS) tickets is high enough, they could ask for player volunteers to become "trusted moderators", one tier below the official CS reps. A player could receive a minor temp ban (general or chat-only) from a trusted moderator for a short list of well-defined infractions, such as goldspam in a public chat channel. The tempbanned player could appeal to CS, and if a trusted moderator gets their decisions overturned by CS too often, they are removed from the trusted moderator list.
Benefits:
>First line of defense on common issues; reduced need for large numbers of players to use /ignore when one /chatban from a trusted moderator will instantly solve it.
>More moderators lead to enhanced 24x7 coverage
>Moderator pool has a better chance of providing multilanguage support; could translate between player and CS when needed.
>Reduced workload on CS, and thus better/faster responses to the most urgent and important issues, such as stuck TFs and billing issues.
I for one would be against any sort of player involvement in punishments of infractions of our "griefing" laws. CoX did a fairly good job with most cases, and we will continue from where they left off most likely. Goldspammers would be dealt with harshly when reported. Any harassment will definitely be dealt with when reported (this includes inappropriate chat, griefing in general, etc.). Built in ignore and private chatban will be implemented as well as FX suppression. Lookatmes could be genericized non-permanently if that would curb their behavior. When reported of course.
See what I did there? Our community is not one that would let the neighborhood get trashed. You guys will be the first defense against general griefing in-game. Report anything you feel is not right. That part is simple and powerful. As for punishments ... that will probably be case by case and follow guidelines that are nowhere near being written yet. Behavior guidelines will be a part of the EULA and punishment will be at MWM's discretion as it is with all games.
[color=#ff0000]Sound Lead, Bullpen Writer[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
One of my favorite responses for zone-wide abusive broadcast chatter was simple, elegant, and educational.
Have someone ask in broadcast "How do I ignore someone?"
Then respond "Just type /Gignore spammername"
Then let nature take it's course as others explain to the spammer that most of the zone is now ignoring their entire account. They go silent after that on their own. Funny thing is for the few times I did this I never actually ignored the person. I just enjoyed their responses.:)
Maybe just have a note on the start up screen for players to develop a thicker skin than to take typed text seriously?
Archeage has a [url=http://archeage.gamepedia.com/Justice_System]Justice[/url]system built into it.
But as I said, I doubt that most former CoX players would play it in the first place ;)
Could it be used for griefing? Quite possibly... but only really against those who had *already* broken ingame laws. So if you were going to be "good as gold" and follow the law, it wouldn't affect you. If you were going to go around and commit crimes/kill other players/steal items... then yes, it could be used against you.
But hey, you can also redeem yourself (wipe off those black marks against you).
There is developing thicker skin, and then there is the person resorting to out of game stalking/harrasment.
Unfortunately, although most of the US players were good, when the EU/US global chat system got merged, a few of the US players decided to make life VERY difficult for the EU RP'ers. One of them was the owner of one of the large RP channels US side.
Going so far as to resort to out of game harassment/abuse on CoX linked sites.
And that was an area that NCsoft/Paragon couldn't really touch the person. On the sites that the company ran, they did all they could. But on the fan sites, NCsoft couldn't do a thing.
side note: I had a problem with one of the players a few years back when Tabula Rasa was up and running. She didn't just cause issues on my forums, but also over on PlanetTR (another set of forums).
I was thinking more along the lines of in game. Where you may or may not read something you don't like. I don't want to hear about how someone may or may not like something, by telling them to not talking about it and they continue to do, by definition, that's griefing when really it's just me who needs to grow up.
Why I say, just grow a thicker skin, also, I'd guess we'd have limited people to control such chatter.
Nothing we can do about other web sites.
Way back in the mists of ancient time ... before [i]The Internet[/i] ... in the BBS days ... one of the BBS's I was a member of had a wonderful moderator utility for their forums. They called it [b]TIM Status[/b] ... meaning, The Invisible Message.
It was functionally a sort of Moderator Imposed /Ignore status applied to a user. The way it worked was that the troll could say anything and everything they wanted ... and it would show up [i]on their screen[/i] and they'd see it posted and everything ... but no one else would see it, except the Moderators. Thus, any trolls could not only post their garbage and not be noticed, but the Moderators got to record a record of the troll hanging themselves by their own words. The thing is, trolls who "earned" TIM Status [i]weren't told that they had been silenced[/i] by the Moderators, and they would essentially figure out (eventually) that they were being ignored ... and leave on their own ... usually after expending tremendous amounts of time and effort on getting attention that no one was giving them.
In an MMORPG context, what would be the equivalent would be a kind of use of Phasing Tech, where there would be a "plane of existence" that we shall call ... Purgatory ... for the delightful imagery it conjures up. Players who draw the ire of the Moderators get "banished" to Purgatory. Purgatory is a sort of "parallel existence" in which they can see everyone else ... but no one outside of Purgatory can see (or hear) or interact with them. The trick is to not TELL them that they've been sent to Purgatory and let them try and figure it out on their own.
Essentially, it's a Banhammer By Another Means, but you get the idea. The upside is that in the event of a False Positive, someone banished to Purgatory can be reinstated, while actually banning the account and preventing game play can cause an entirely different reaction.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Is CoT even going to have enough Moderators to moderate? Will they be good ones? I've been on some MMOs that, while not effected myself, have seen some lousy GMs who's idea was to silence lots of people because they could/didnt like what was being said, even if it wasn't trolling (disagree with me, when I have power, sort of deal).
you what this?
[img]http://i.imgur.com/xWlJyO9.png[/img]
;)
And if a certain threshold of Dislikes are reached, it gets logged for review?
I'd prefer people to learn common sense and be able to handle what usually amounts to nothing more than "I didn't like what they said."
That's what /ignore is for.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Buy to play will go a long way to cut down on the (gold)spammers. If a ban means having to purchase a new $25 box instead of an automated script downloading another free trial version your average gold spammer will very quickly run into the point where it is not cost effective to spam.
A better control over acceptable character names helps too. It takes too big a staff to handle each and every character creation manually, but an automated test that flags potentially offensive and or nonsensical character names and forwards them to an admin would again make it that much harder for scripts to setup the whole process automatically. If a character name must match something resembling an actual (pronouncable) name there is a lot less room for a script to generate them automatically and at the same time makes it that much easier for irritated players to ignore the much shorter list of spambot generated names.
While this may cost MWM some money, it is likely to also save them money. Games with free trials tend to have a huge amount of characters that are created, played for a few minutes and then logged off. All these characters are stored and take up disk space, making it harder and harder to log in (unless automated processes for that are created on the server side, which means additional computers and computing power to separate active from rarely active from throwaway accounts),
/ignore This is a cheap command because it can be implemented entirely on the client side and does not require any server interaction. The client simply needs to block any communication to a chat channel from any character on a locally held list. There is therefor no reason to burden the server with this (i.e. the message reaches the client computer, but not the screen. A server block would prevent it from reaching the client).
/banish This is a much more expensive command that not only prevents communication, but all forms of interaction. This can only be implemented server side because it also excludes hitbox checks and (spell)effects caused by the banished player from affecting the banishing player. Because this must be done server side there will have to be a limited number of slots of this per player, and using this command should flag both banished and banishing player for possible admin attention.
/accountignore This igores all characters from a given account that the targeted character belongs to. For privacy reasons this must be done server side. The same limitations and regulations as for /banish should apply.
URL filtering. Just like we can filter bad language (and please allow players to report bad language for admin consideration) we should also be able to filter out URLs from chat. In fact, we should be able to automatically ignore in its entirety any message that contains an URL.
/silence Is an admin command that prevents the flagged character from sending any message other than to a dedicated admin channel where they can then argue their case with an admin. Admins can then put certain URLs on a blacklist and automatically silence any character that says them, or something that sufficiently closely resembles them (to prevent intentionally misspelling banned words and URLs. There's some relatively fast algorithms that give a deviation from a specific standard phrase (e.g. google and microsoft use them to provide suggestions and word completion based on incompleted words while you are typing them, and they scan against a database with hundreds of thousands of words).
Autosilencing however must be done only for pretty heinous phrases or for phrases that can not possibly appear in normal conversations (like the URL for a gold seller site) because 'oops, our bad' won't cut it with an enraged player who just got silenced for saying something that was perhaps rude but by no means ban-worthy (and yes, in terms of severity of the sanction /silence ranks up there right along with /ban and /ipban)
Interesting idea. Seems like it would be more effective then a standard banhammer. I have also heard of some ''public'' banhammers that happened in older MMOs usually to infamous server trolls or griefers. I doubt that would work nowadays though as I bet someone's going to try to rise some chaos over ''False Positive'' bans.
Formerly known as Bleddyn
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Could be interesting to use phasing tech such that /ignoring another player would also, at the next available "seamless" opportunity, ensure that the /ignoring player was not in the same phase as the /ignored player. Maybe have it as a distinct command (e.g. /phaseout), if there's reason people might want to /ignore without phasing out.
Note that this is just speculation, not an indication of MWM's plans.
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Actually, Warcabbit (IIRC) has already hinted/suggested that there might be a system in place such that players who are "ignored" (or whatever) will tend to be put in separate shards. This may even go so far that the really bad apples might end up effectively ostracized. This was brought up in one of the early interviews, so the idea may well have been dropped by now.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
The Phantom Zone? :o
I've seen this thread mention many novel methods for handling "chat griefers" which would involve various degrees of extra Dev development to implement and/or various amounts of extra GM maintenance once the game is running.
Now I won't deny that certain baseline features (like an /ignore command) are probably needed because there are a few legitimate cases that players need to be able to deal with from time to time. But I will once again readily admit that I'm coming at this issue as someone who has not bothered to /ignore ANYONE that I can recall over a span of time playing online games measuring in the decades. As Brand X alluded to earlier in the thread I suppose I simply have a very "thick skin" when it comes to these things.
So to my thick-skinned mind I think MWM should conserve their relatively limited time and resources and basically not overly worry about preemptively establishing all sorts of extra systems/features to deal with problems that may not be significant to begin with. Yes we should have a workable /ignore command and yes would should have adequate GM oversight available to police the bad situations but beyond that let's only reactively consider setting up extra-fancy "ignore based phasing" and "multi-level banishment" schemes if it turns out we really have to.
Frankly I don't think the Devs of CoT should waste more than the absolute bare minimum of time/effort defending against these kinds of "problems" that are at best limited and/or even debatably questionable to begin with.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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The only issue with sanctions like this is that it could become easy for the trolls to actually use this to their advantage - effectively using the anti-troll system to troll.
That's why I generally favour simple "ignores" - possibly with an expiry date. That and, well, people growing a thicker skin - I've seen people flip their lid and become petulant over the silliest things - even unintentional gaffes or mistakes - or even for "not playing the game right" or disconnecting in the middle of a mish/match.
Edit: Ninja'd by Lothic!
and maybe a slash command to block me from looking at those costume that are made to look naked? :D
and if im a parent, and i had kids, maybe the Block can also trickle down to their accounts, so all toons made by that individual, look generic to each of the the kid(s) accounts, too?
But this is something that i would have liked to have had in CoH like 2% of the time in the 6+ years that I played... so its not very high on my list, but nice to have as a "Ohh Ohh" feature when someone discovers a workaround or costume bug in the future. ;)
The only thing technically wrong with convoluted /ignore schemes or even your "save the innocent children from seeing semi-nude characters" panic buttons are the fact that they waste Dev development time/effort on things that are either very rare outliers or questionably not really objective "problems" to begin.
If MWM had like a $50+ million budget and 500+ plus Devs working on it then sure we could afford to have all sorts of fancy features to handle semi-silly things like this. But since MWM isn't blessed with this reality these things are at best "would be nice to haves" that could be considered for a far future if time allows.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Yep ;)
It'll turn out to be a bad idea. Talk about an easy way to easily harass people "Hey, let's get together and all target someone today with /ignore"
If the game is rated T (like CoH was) , then can we just kick out parents who complain about anything like that?
Sure we can. ;)
But if you kick the parents, who's gonna keep paying for the kids to play? :P
Enough of the others hopefully :)
As a parent, I just don't care for other parents complaining about their kids being exposed to things, then trying to change it instead of stopping their children from playing it. I'd rather just see them banned. :p
Fair enough. :)
Just remember, its because of those same parents that the ESRB is around. ;)
This might be a sore subject, so i'll try to refrain from going on about it any more. :{
I don't mind the rating system. I just hate it when people then allow their child to play the game that falls in line with the rating system.
"OMG! This game is to mature for my child! What are you making!" "It's rated M...for mature...it's not made for your child." "But it's a game!" :p
The trap people fall into is that they naively assume that what they think would make a game "Rated Mature" is exactly the same things that the people rating the game consider for their jugdments. Turns out most people forget that these things are almost totally subjective in nature. Case in point: several countries have totally banned the showing of Fifty Shades of Grey whereas the French gave it their "12" rating which let's anyone 12 or older see it. Viva la France! ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I was thinking purely from the US side of things. I realize in other countries they rate things differently.
I wasn't really trying to highlight that different countries do thing differently. I was trying to point out that people in general can never really absolutely agree on any one thing when it comes to ratings of any kind. That's why it's sad when some (most?) parents blindly rely on ratings systems without spending any personal effort at all regulating what their kids are exposed to.
I'm not saying rating systems are totally useless - it's probably safe to say you wouldn't want to let a 5 year old play a mature rated game by himself. Regardless ratings systems should never be an excuse to "parent on cruise control" and parents shouldn't be allowed to be shocked when any specific game may have content that they specifically don't like.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Here's a trick question for everyone concerning /ignore commands.
Where do the /ignore lists get stored?
Do they get remembered on the player doing the /ignore or do they get saved on the target of the /ignore? Or do they go to both places?
If characters have personal /ignore lists that apply only to them, that makes it harder for Customer Service to identify how many Players have used a /ignore on a particular offender (ie. "votes" of /ignore).
I'm thinking it might be wise to track /ignore on both ends, rather than just on one end. That way, if you've got a Spammer and the community starts doing an /ignore en masse, that then becomes very obvious to any Customer Service agent reviewing the records of that specific offender. Include timestamp info so that it's easy(ier) to track down an offending chat message or something similar and you'll have done most of the Customer Service agent's job for them (in this, I speak from the experience of having done this sort of Customer Service work for ESO, and no, their tools didn't have this functionality and I wish they did).
The beauty of a "both ends" system for tracking /ignore is that once a specific character's "history" of being /ignored by other grows large enough, that character can be automagically flagged for review by a human staffer as being a potentially disruptive element ... rather than just [i]assuming[/i] they're disruptive and auto-banning them.
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However, I personally pretty much disagree with everything he wrote. C'est la vie!
And no, I did not read Fifty Shades of Grey and I have no interest in seeing the movie.
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What's extra funny about the French giving it their "12" rating was that the vote for that rating was supposedly not unanimous - some of the people on their ratings committee actually wanted to give it their lowest "G" style rating which would have allowed anyone of any age to see it.
For what it's worth I haven't bothered to read the book or see the movie either - every review I've seen concerning it suggested it was relatively tame/boring regardless. I was mostly just using it as a topical point of reference to make my point about ratings subjectivity.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
re: 50 Shades = movie flop
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Well critical flop anyways. 40million budget with 500million made, doesn't make for a box office flop. Here's hoping CoT flops that much at the profits :)
What?! Hollywood capitalized on the popularity of a book, but made a terrible version of it? Sacre bleu! And millions of people went to see it just to find out what the big deal was, even if they didn't read the book? This has never happened before!
Please.
I tried reading the book. Got maybe two or three chapters in and lost interest in the characters. I thought it had a long way to go before it became erotic to anyone with more than adolescent ideas about sexual adventure. I think the popularity snowballed after it became sort of "mainstreamed." At that point it became ok for a wider audience to have an excuse to read it and shiver in their flannel pajamas about how "naughty" it was.
Cripes. How did I let myself get dragged into THIS discussion?!
I think Neverwinter is a good example of how not to handle this, but not sure how to do better.
I believe if you get too many people reporting you in too short a time, you get autobanned for a bit. This has been used by groups of griefers on innocents.
Gold spam is rife, and almost unreadable as they ban words and you get VV.VV.VV.60ID517E.( () /\/\ appearing in the spam to try to beat the filter.
The effect of the gold spam is that people simply turn local chat off in certain zones.
Dealing with the chat-hole, being able to right click a name in chat with a menu option to block/report is essential. Otherwise you get the barcode userid issue that occurred in CoH with people making a userid of capital i and small L characters IIIIlllll and you can't work out what it actually is to report.
An option to suppress other players' effects on your screen would also be useful to deal with the look at me, and also helpful for people who have issues with particular effects triggering migraines, epilepsy or motion sickness.
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I remember on Triumph there was a guy/group? where everyone was named "The Parallel Illusion" by using 1's in place of lowercase ells and capital eyes. I thought that was clever. That said, I can see how spammers would exploit it.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
That explains the first 85million but word of mouth and it still made more. And you allowed yourself to be dragged into it, because we're waiting for more info to be released to discuss it :p
Yeah I'd have to agree with Brand X. People, use the ignore function that is why it is there. same with the look at me's and pushers, if they are bothering you switch to a different instance. It really isn't that hard to do. take a moment to put them on ignore or switch instances so they won't bother you anymore. Problem solved.
Zekna, Black Mana Guardian. (sewer power leveler)
Ignoring a problem does not magically make it go away. Yes, using the ignore/block options and having a fairly thick skin are important. But if you have someone who is actively trying to ruin other people's play, then there needs to be policies in place to stop them.
I think the thing to do is provide players with the ability to self-police via their personal ignores and blocks as well as a good report function to get the attention of GMs in-game. Punishment for griefing will have to be decided on, but I think we are all in agreement that we all don't like it and won't tolerate it. Fairly, if the abuse is not specifically covered in an agreement it will have to be judged on a case-by-case basis.
We will have to have the same (or better) functionality for in-game violations as CoX did (i.e. genericizing copyright infringing costumes) to avoid legal actions not to mention griefing, so I can envision it working fine.
[color=#ff0000]Sound Lead, Bullpen Writer[/color]
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I don't know. What one person considers griefing, I usually consider some to just be annoying. Someone goes spouting something off in Broadcast that I disagree, many might consider griefing and to them, I just think "grow up"
Okay, going to use last Superbowl here...WHOOOT! SEAHAWKS LOST! THEY SUCK! Imagine that spammed in broadcast, and not someone goes, SHUT UP! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT! But of course, that Patriot fan is happy and just expressing it, but it's griefing that Seahawks fan. Since they were asked to stop and didn't, they must be griefing.
Now pick some more serious topic of easily annoying people. Now as a player, I'm not annoyed by it even if I don't get involved with it, I might even be mildly entertained by it and think let them spout off nonsense. Someone else gets upset and hurt because well they're those types who are easily hurt by whatever someone types into a chat box. So they think they're being griefed.
That's why /ignore is the best option. If you're easily hurt and whiney you have a way out of seeing it :) What they might need is the ability to not team with them in a party queue for instance!
I see what you're getting at... but those same people that you Permanently added to Ignore, in the next 364 days, might be Normal. ;)
Wouldn't you rather have a /TempIgnore
..and if you add the same person More than Once (or Twice) to /TempIgnore,
then they are Automatically PERMA /Ignore(d)? ;)
I could go with a temp ignore as well. One could also just ignore and then clean the ignore list from time to time.
I agree. Normal ignore feature and a way to report behavior in-game. That should solve most problems. That way if it's just a sensitive person, they can report the behavior as well as ignore it. Then a GM can look into it. The only problem I foresee is the perpetrator may do something one and stop before another can witness it. Either way though,they will have stopped.
[color=#ff0000]Sound Lead, Bullpen Writer[/color]
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Thats what I do with gold spammers and people who get my back up (generally through attitude/language). After a week I tend to clear out the list and restart from scratch. It keeps the list clean and up to date. And with spammers, it is normally just a problem for a short period of time.
But sometimes a quick /ignore and changing the chat tab is enough for me to cool down and refocus/regroup/analyse what happened. Then I go back remove the /ignore and carry on.
I generally keep "global channels" open, although in separate tabs to local/broadcast/NPC chatter etc. Just so if I really wanted to I could stop paying attention whilst still being "present" in the channel, with just a click of the mouse button.
If someone really wants my attention, they can always PM me; they tend to be enabled on ALL chat tabs I use. But the fact that I am in a channel does not mean I am paying attention 100% of the time.
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