Hello all, take any MMO player on earth and ask them if they have met a troll or abusive player and the answer will be yes.
But what can be done?, reports are usualy very slow to act and often result in nothing being done.
I have what i think is a solution and i'd love your opinion.
Basically we, as a community mass ignore abusive players.
Trolls love an audience so imagine if the playerbase just ignored them, they would be forced to make an alt, then we'd just ignore that alt.
I can imagine they would grow tired of doing that pretty quickly.
So what counts as a bad player.
Trolling: Constant trolling that is fun for no one.
Spam: Fools who can't stop spamming.
Any verbal abuse: Just angry players who make the experience worse.
Anyone who purposely wipes dungeons or loses to spite their team: they don't deserve to play.
These forums would also make it easier for players to make "public announcements" and highlight toxic players for all to see.
How would a post look?
Example
Name: trollmuff
Crimes: Spamming in chat, verbally abusing players.
Any evidence you have, like a screenshot or video of them wiping a dungeon on purpose.
obviously you wont always have evidence, but it would be best to get some first.
I truly think this would create a playerbase of people we want to play with, but it would need to executed correctly.
If we mass ignore the scum, we control the playerbase.
Give me your thoughts, do you think it could work?
I honestly believe some of these issues will be fixed initially by community... if that does not work we will have access to gms to express our grievence. Most often times in a community setting an annoying person or group are easy to deal with if you are patient.. if the death penalty is high..
There needs to be an unlimited /ignore list (and GMs should have anonymous access to amalgamations of those lists so they know who the idiots are hehe).
I'd like to see some kind of rating/reputation system with likes and dislikes that are public, but people always seem to think that would be abused *shrug*.
Many games have rules prohibiting "naming and shaming" other players on the forums. I am not at all sure that this isn't a good idea. As often as not - maybe more often than not - posts saying "Fred is a douche" are written by the trolls and abusers who simply carry on their trolling and abusing on the forums. So using the forums to name the bad guys may just play into their hands.
I also think that the problem won't be nearly that bad for a number of reasons.
1. Assuming the game is subscription based (not yet a certainty) the people playing will have paid for the privilege. Other than anyone on a free trial and they may have significant retrictions. People that pay for a game on average respect it a lot more and feel they have more to lose if they get banned for misconduct. Plus much of the trolling and bad conduct is from juveniles that won't be able to play if it isn't free.
2. Smaller servers give players a strong incentive not to go out of their way to make too many enemies. This is even more true if grouping is important. After a hopefully crowded start I don't expect huge servers where most people won't know who you are no matter how badly you act.
The reason name shaming is prohibited is largely because noone ever has proof of the said incident.
As an officer in a high end guild I would constantly ask people to provide any sort of proof, before even talking to the "offender". Often times one player "feels" they are wronged, but in reality they are not.
Disposalist said: There needs to be an unlimited /ignore list (and GMs should have anonymous access to amalgamations of those lists so they know who the idiots are hehe).
I would not be surprised if there was an algorithim where the system will be able to flag any account that shows up on a set number (say like 50+) of ignore lists (especially if it all happens in a short time) and triggers a special log dump of that guys chat into a ticket and sent to a GM to investigate. So even if there isn't any reports on that guy... if everyone in a zone suddenly types "/ignore jerksname" within a 5 minute period the system automatically creates a ticket for a GM to look at.
My thoughts:
Naming and shaming is really subjective and you have to take it with a grain of salt. As a guild leader I have seen both sides of it. People falsely accused because someone was upset/jealous/disagreed with them/took offense over something minor, and people who through their actions really did harm a lot of people's experience. But telling those apart when you are hearing about it second hand? Really hard.
I've also seen reputation systems abused by trolls or over petty grudges so I am leery of trusting those. I mean, I once kicked a person out of my guild for severely violating our rules. She then spent months telling everyone who would listen how I was a terrible person. It actually got to the point where most of the rest of the guild had had enough, and *they* all petitioned for a GM to step in and stop her from harassing me. Which I have to say was gratifying, but it shows the danger of any sort of situation where players can rate each other.
I have heard some interesting ideas tossed around by people so maybe there is something somewhat automated that could be done, but I think it would need to be designed very carefully to prevent abuse.
Yea there is a fine line with systems like this that end up being abused by groups of people. There are also never just one troll that comes by. I know full on guilds in TLP Everquest that pretty much train to kill you for camps and such. I have seen them interested in Pantheon also, so we will have that toxic crowd here I am sure.
If you don't like someone personality wise, that's one thing, but if you have someone training you my best advice is to always record and just archive it. Make it a practice to always record your gameplay and just zip it and put it on a flash drive. Could make for some fun nostalgia down the road and safe gaurds you from trolls if you are known too record everything.
Watemper said: Make it a practice to always record your gameplay and just zip it and put it on a flash drive. Could make for some fun nostalgia down the road and safe gaurds you from trolls if you are known too record everything.
This does take up a ton of HD space... but for anyone who actually wants to do this and doesn't have the skills to setup complex recording software, there is a really cool app http://plays.tv that you just download and in setup choose a HD location to save the files to... and then run it in the background. It see's whenever you open a game and it automatically starts recording it for you. You can whitelist or blacklist which games you want it to record. It has other features, but for just basic background recording of your play session it works great. And no I don't work for them, it's just an app I started using recently and thought I'd mention it.
TriteEnvile said:I honestly believe some of these issues will be fixed initially by community... if that does not work we will have access to gms to express our grievence. Most often times in a community setting an annoying person or group are easy to deal with if you are patient.. if the death penalty is high..
This really has never been the case in any MMO. Toxic players form groups/guilds of toxic people. They subsequently become known scum. Even if they are largely ignored by the majority of the playerbase, they more often than not become a power player in the guild heirarchy and raid mechanics. Hardcore raid guilds driven by loot and power by and large do not care about their trolls or their toxic behavior as long as the GM's don't enforce a policy.
Pantheon Devs need to have a solid reporting system so there doesn't need to be a witness or a complaintant online. We should be able to /report or /submitcomplaint, and expect that Pantheon policy police are willing to actually punish their paid userbase. These punishments should include 24-72 hour chat bans, followed by 24 hour - X days of actual ban time if the player continues with their hostile and toxic ways. This should include having a rather fleshed out and detailed TOS in regards to player behavior.
I am a proponent of chat bans. I feel that they are an effective way to have people still be able to enjoy the game with their guild via their voice tools while constantly reminding the offender that in game abuse will lead to a lack of freedoms that will limit their success in grouping with the rest of the community. Even if they were caught training or the like having the gods strike their vocal cords for x days should still provide an incovenience that most players won't want to deal with.
I also support an unlimited block list and it should be a requirement for any modern MMO.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:Watemper said: Make it a practice to always record your gameplay and just zip it and put it on a flash drive. Could make for some fun nostalgia down the road and safe gaurds you from trolls if you are known too record everything.
This does take up a ton of HD space... but for anyone who actually wants to do this and doesn't have the skills to setup complex recording software, there is a really cool app http://plays.tv that you just download and in setup choose a HD location to save the files to... and then run it in the background. It see's whenever you open a game and it automatically starts recording it for you. You can whitelist or blacklist which games you want it to record. It has other features, but for just basic background recording of your play session it works great. And no I don't work for them, it's just an app I started using recently and thought I'd mention it.
That's why I mentioned a flash drive..:P
How to deal with a troll, first you ignore him, maybe report gim depending on the topic he's using, make sure he never in the same group with you, I usually run tank in games so now I'll let him now his behavior lost them the tank, which might cuase a reaction but he's ignored so I really don't care. Basically what I'm trying to say is if someone is goi ng to troll constantly they are going to be well known and not for good things and if they continue they will have a hard time finding groups becuase people won't like him, and won't want him. Have a hard time getting trades becuase he'll be on too many people ignore list.
I am a big fan of violently aggressive policing by the company itself in response to complaints from players. The kind that takes time and money but insures a quality experience for players (which I would pay for...I would easily pay $20 a month for such a sub if it were guaranteed service of this type).
A name filter that prohibits names with numerals in it, names like crotchblaster, etc. GMs that are always on (at least 1) and a system that logs your chat every session when you log in for evidence and is sent automatically the moment you file a complaint (and say deletes it at the end of each session unless you save it to save space). Trolls, ***holes, spammers, etc who are actively ruining people's experience get banned. Account deleted, characters removed, IP banned, and serial number from game copy banned. If they want to pay again and start over, then fine.
This goes with my belief that free accounts on the trial should have NO shout, only be able to send ONE /tell every 5 minutes (except in response) and only local short range chat ability until they have a paid copy of the game and sub. If you violate the rules beyond something where say you got into an argument with someone and it was a genuine dispute that maybe got a little heated (you should get warned or suspended maybe if you go too far there), then gone. Just deliberately doing things that only serve to ruin people's fun, gold spam of any sort, gold buying of any sort, gone. ZERO tolerance. Forfeit all your money and game copy and all your digital presence. Just like in the real world, you have to police people and their behavior because there are always going to be abusers and pieces of **** who want to ruin other people's lives because they are just miserable creatures.
