Thats why there has to be a paid employee that would be in charge of going through all of the guides logs and strictly monitoring them.
The number of guides is such that it will be able to be closely monitored and regulated..the player base can never be monitored or regulated in such a way due to sheer numbers. But you are right in that there is no perfect solution.
Kilsin said:I have a few things in mind that I will be discussing with the team but sadly it is just too early to start putting together anything like this. As the Community Manager, I can assure you that this is one of my biggest focusses and when the time is right, I will be seeking the community for help with communication and in-game functions.
I am a big fan of a Guides program and something we called a "Player Council" or "Community Council" in VG, where some select members of the community are picked based on attitude, forum behaviour, in-game behaviour, activity and how respected they are within the community to help communicate community issues/likes/dislikes to myself and the team and we use these members to be the voice of the community and help communicate things of importance to us.
Customer Service is a separate field that is handled internally behind the scenes but Community Management is definitely my field and one that will become too big for me to handle alone! (I hope anyway lol) and that is when we will most likely look at a Guide Program and a possible Community Council, nothing is set in stone of course and these are just my thoughts being thrown around for you to get an idea of where I'm at with it but it will become more of a focus further along in development and maybe something we could set up during mid-late testing.
Some of those are great ideas. I just don't know about the EVE CSM model as suggested in the OP. The thing about that is as that model used elections it became too close to a real political run for office with players just trying to dig up dirt on and destroy other players reputations to prevent a run at the council. So I think we should avoid that sort of situation like the plague as it will neither benefit the community, a council, or anything gameplay-related really and only serve to create drama. That said, a council or class representative could be a good idea akin to Vanguard. Someone that can offer input on the classes at all levels of play and curate the feedback from players and speak on their behalf can be a good thing.
I enjoyed several of my interactions with EQ guides back in the day. They were often helpful as they could be, polite, and I can recall a number of different scripted events that they were part of running. Hopefully there will be something akin to that program with that sort of flexibility in Pantheon.
Kratuk said:... That said, a council or class representative could be a good idea akin to Vanguard. Someone that can offer input on the classes at all levels of play and curate the feedback from players and speak on their behalf can be a good thing. ...
I am all for community <-> developer interaction, when it's meaningful & effective. Another example; On the Shroud of the Avatar forums, there was a community member who stepped up and collected "Monthly Questions to the Developers" and the top 3 or 5, by vote, were sent to the devs each month for answers. After the first three months, the answers are incomplete.. That's weird, where's the process breakdown? Here's what was happening.. The questions the community wanted answered the most, weren't being answered, intentionally. The community inquired, the response? The developers only agreed to the process if they could ignore any questions they wanted. In other words, they wouldn't answer those questions, ever, no matter how many times they were asked. So, the community abandoned it, because it was the worst form of doublespeak political propaganda.
Devs: " Yes, we're transparent, and we're listening, and we're here to interact with you, our most valued customers, who have put forth a tremendous effort in community co-operation, please send us your questions and we'll answer them "
Community: " Ok, please answer these questions "
Devs: " Oh, no can do, that's a question we don't want to answer, but we're not going to tell you why or provide any feedback or context. "
Community: " ... I guess we're done here, then. "
Yeah, never again. :)
Vjek while I do not doubt the accuracy of what you say - I get a totally different message from it than the one you are trying to convey.
The message I get is not that efforts to get feedback from the player community are bad - it is that SoE was bad.
Firstly let us give VR a chance to show that they are a lot better than SoE - all Gods know that this is not exactly difficult to do.
Secondly let us give them a chance to show that interaction with players can work a lot better where the developer team is smaller and more dedicated to the game, and where there aren't quite so many players and the players have shown unusual interest in the game by subscribing in an era when that is no longer the common business model.
Thirdly - I ask the question of what we have to lose by the effort? The upside is a lot more than the downside.
If VR wants to treat us all like crap, ignore our opinions, and keep flawed and broken design elements - in other words imitate SoE - the which I consider virtually inconceivable - they do not need a player council to destroy the game by doing so. They can do it very effectively *without* a player council.
This post is intended to deal only with the idea of a council and none of what I say here is intended to be relevant to the question of whether there should be guides. As to guides you correctly point out there is a downside but unlike you I believe the upside is far greater and tight monitoring of guide conduct and prompt removal of the inevitable bad apples can keep the risk low. Especially if guide powers do not include things like bans and suspensions although they would be able to recommend such.
Part of the concern I have is that any policing done is never done consistently.
It can be aggressive in the start but taper off and disappear quickly as the days, weeks and months pass. In Vanguard it was completely gone as the game progressed in years. Cheaters and hackers were never dealt with.
Relying on "volunteers" gets you what you "paid" for essentially. You still need to manage them because "volunteers" abuse their granted powers - always, whether for personal gain, friends and/or guild advantage.
And frankly I don't understand suspensions. Bad, toxic players should just be removed. If you suspend them, that does nothing to change the underlying personality.
Toxic and scummy behavior as well as cheating has existed in gaming since day zero. I recall it in UO as far back as 96'. It was there in EQ when I started in the beta in 98. If there is not zero-tolerance then your game is turned into trash. One toxic cheater player can sour a game for hundreds of legite players.
Giving a platform for scumbags to troll hundreds of players at once as most MMOs do and not having the tools and controls in place to handle it will cost an MMO a great deal of $$$. Decent people not willing to be subjected to the trash from toxic troll-cheats will quit and not return. And the firestorm of disgust from them in social media will sink a game fast.
I just had an invite to a secret alpha for a new MMO. A very strong NDA is in place. I Logged in and was instantly subjected to extensive toxic trolling. The game is being designed with a strong social aspect so seeing other players chat and profiles s is made more pervasive than most common MMOs. It was horrendous. You could block individual players but I quickly realized I did not want to spend my time constantly blocking all these other players trolling incessantly. And I knew many of these trolls would also be trying to abuse and cheat as well. I logged and uninstalled.
Kratuk said:That said, a council or class representative could be a good idea akin to Vanguard. Someone that can offer input on the classes at all levels of play and curate the feedback from players and speak on their behalf can be a good thing..
Only if it is done right. If the team picks the council...then it will be bias and not informative of the population. Every game that claimed to have these sorts of things...including Everquest...none of my, or many others concerns were brought up...even though many people agreed. Usually they only bring up flame wars on the forums..which is a small percentage of the population. Only way to go about it is to have delegates I guess or something of that nature.
Anyways...if the dev team has the power to pick and choose the council you will not get the populations concerns accruately.
Also, activity shouldnt be considered since there are many lurkers who would probably put a lot of us to shame when arguing ideas.
zewtastic said:Relying on "volunteers" gets you what you "paid" for essentially. You still need to manage them because "volunteers" abuse their granted powers - always, whether for personal gain, friends and/or guild advantage.
It can be curbed though. Don't allow guides to work on servers they have characters on, possibly even have them be a guide on a random server each time they log in to volunteer. Also don't give the frontline guides special powers beyond what is necessary for them getting around, they are pretty much intended to just be mediators.
vjek said:I don't see how they can do it without paying people a wage. And if they don't pay them a wage, there are problems with that situation too, if the guides decide they should be paid, as has happened in the past, and was settled out of court.
IIRC that was because there were certain requirements like weekly/monthly quotas placed upon guides which crossed them over into workers instead of volunteers. Could be wrong.
If you give them powers of any kind (even teleportation, invis, and speed) this can be abused to great effect, for scouting for rares/nameds/open world raid targets, if nothing else.
Similarly with a random login. Just login repeatedly until you get the server you want. And it would be trivial to have multiple accounts so you could definitely get the server you had friends/characters on, if you wanted to.
All communication would happen via third party discord, so... there's absolutely zero risk of being "caught". I don't think it's worth the inevitable war of escalation that would always result in the abusers winning.
I think the best testimony to it not being a good idea is that history has repeatedly proven it's not a good idea. But I'm funny that way. :)
^Yea I have had bad run ins with guides or things like guides in other games or servers, not a lot but enough, and while some of them are genuine there will always be bad ones. Just thinking of the screenshots earlier in this thread showing a bunch of guides from the same guild, and remembering that guild being a top guild. I would bet anything one of the reasons they were up there was because they had prior knowledge and inside information that others didn't have.
Iksar said:zewtastic said:Relying on "volunteers" gets you what you "paid" for essentially. You still need to manage them because "volunteers" abuse their granted powers - always, whether for personal gain, friends and/or guild advantage.
It can be curbed though. Don't allow guides to work on servers they have characters on, possibly even have them be a guide on a random server each time they log in to volunteer. Also don't give the frontline guides special powers beyond what is necessary for them getting around, they are pretty much intended to just be mediators.
Ahh really? Apparently you did not read my example of how a guide exploited their access for direct financial gain. And I'm talking real money cash $$$. Making second accounts is easy and invisible to a game company.
And if you don't give them any powers then they are nothing more than every other player. So just let the community handle things organically.
Many times I have pinged higher level players of my class with questions. Very rarely did they not try to give me an answer if they could.
And I also was pinged as well as I progressed in level and skill. Some are nice about it, some not so much.
vjek said:If you give them powers of any kind (even teleportation, invis, and speed) this can be abused to great effect, for scouting for rares/nameds/open world raid targets, if nothing else.
Similarly with a random login. Just login repeatedly until you get the server you want. And it would be trivial to have multiple accounts so you could definitely get the server you had friends/characters on, if you wanted to.
All communication would happen via third party discord, so... there's absolutely zero risk of being "caught". I don't think it's worth the inevitable war of escalation that would always result in the abusers winning.I think the best testimony to it not being a good idea is that history has repeatedly proven it's not a good idea. But I'm funny that way. :)
Again, if they were dumb and designed it poorly sure. No use abusing those powers when you get nothing from it (and it would be easy enough to audit by GMS) and can't join a server you have characters on. The random doesn't have to be based on log in, it could be a timed thing on VR's end where you are assigned a specific random server for 12+ hours no matter how much you log in or out. Multiple accounts etc trying to get on a server for abuse would likewise be extremely easy to monitor even without any logged communication (but especially if someone ISN'T using in-game communication and answering petitions in a timely manner) compared to how tedious and/or expensive it would be to set up.
Even if 1 in 10 guides attempted to be shady somehow, thats still 9 quality and helpful people for the community. I'd say the good outweighs the bad, especially when safeguards can be implemented to weed out the corrupt in a timely manor. Like any other job/service in the world, there are good and bad people. As long as you can push your issue higher up the chain and/or report rude/bad guides then things should work out for a net positive.
To me it's like saying: "Some cops are corrupt, so we should just not have police."
zewtastic said:Ahh really? Apparently you did not read my example of how a guide exploited their access for direct financial gain. And I'm talking real money cash $$$. Making second accounts is easy and invisible to a game company.
And if you don't give them any powers then they are nothing more than every other player. So just let the community handle things organically.
Again, they can implement the tools to keep that from happening or otherwise address it swiftly if it does. Even if they had no special powers in game, their real power is their measure of authority in handling player disputes/conflict/issues when it comes to making compromises etc.
Iksar said: ... To me it's like saying: "Some cops are corrupt, so we should just not have police." ...... Even if they had no special powers in game, their real power is their measure of authority in handling player disputes/conflict/issues when it comes to making compromises etc.
Happily, they're not an essential service, so an apples to oranges comparison doesn't apply, and Pantheon would be successfull or not without Guides at all. But if you're asking if I believe the risk outweighs the benefits? Yes, I do, because I'm a student of history and have learned from the mistakes of others in this regard. Non-employee guides are corrupt. In every game that has had them. They're not worth it, in my opinion.
What "measure of Authority" would they have, without GM powers or beyond-normal-player abilities? If they're not VR employees, what RMT guild would ever even talk to them? Those guilds don't use in-game communication of any kind unless it comes from an employee of the game company. That's guild policy. I mean, I get the optimism, that's your M.O. but are you forgetting the target demographic for this game? It's not some wide-eyed teenager born in 1985 playing EQ for the first time in 1999, who might have a measure of respect for a green name, in-game. These are hardened veterans who have been exploiting RMT in MMO's for the past 20+ years. This isn't amateur hour. They're professionals who make a living at exploiting games like Pantheon.
They're also not going to listen to anything except a potential permanent ban, which no guide will have (or should have) the discretion to apply.
vjek said:Happily, they're not an essential service, so an apples to oranges comparison doesn't apply, and Pantheon would be successfull or not without Guides at all. But if you're asking if I believe the risk outweighs the benefits? Yes, I do, because I'm a student of history and have learned from the mistakes of others in this regard. Non-employee guides are corrupt. In every game that has had them. They're not worth it, in my opinion.
What "measure of Authority" would they have, without GM powers or beyond-normal-player abilities? If they're not VR employees, what RMT guild would ever even talk to them? Those guilds don't use in-game communication of any kind unless it comes from an employee of the game company. That's guild policy. I mean, I get the optimism, that's your M.O. but are you forgetting the target demographic for this game? It's not some wide-eyed teenager born in 1985 playing EQ for the first time in 1999, who might have a measure of respect for a green name, in-game. These are hardened veterans who have been exploiting RMT in MMO's for the past 20+ years. This isn't amateur hour. They're professionals who make a living at exploiting games like Pantheon.They're also not going to listen to anything except a potential permanent ban, which no guide will have (or should have) the discretion to apply.
Says you. No way VR will otherwise have the CSR staff to manage the servers and all their individual player issues (let alone in a reasonably timely manner) without guides, unless of course this game does horribly and has a tiny population.
If VR says guides are considered official CSR staff then they should have plenty enough authority so long as ignoring them is punishable.
From what I can find this persons account lines up with what being a guide entailed in EQ, and with some adjustments I don't see how it can't be made even easier to monitor what guides are doing:
I think I have some experience regarding this.
Was a Volunteer Guide back in 2000-2001 for EQ before I left for the Army.
Was a paid Game Master for WoW, worked for Blizzard from Dec. 2007 until March of 2010. In fact, my volunteer guide experience helped me during the interview for that
From what I remember having to do as a Guide for EQ...
You could only be a Guide on a server you did not actively play on, or even have any characters on, to minimize any chance of favoritism.You were limited in your powers. You could zone anywhere, port to any player or MOB / NPC, go full invis (including it would remove you from any /who commands), insta-kill any targeted mob, summon corpses, provide 100% rezes, provide simple non-magic food, weapons, armor for players that lost their gear. Many of these abilities came from Instant, unlimited, right-click effects from the Guide armor you wore.You had to volunteer 8 hours a week. (Or maybe it was 4, or 6. Hard to remember, but you were required to do XX hours per week to stay in the program)There was a hierarchy to the system. There were usually 2-3 Trainee Guides -> 10-12 full Guides -> 1 Senior Guide -> 1 Game Master, who was a paid employee (who we rarely got to see most of the time. He would pop in now and then for major issues) PER SERVERYou were required to provide a list of all the petitions you answered, along with your resolution and logs on reports website that only you and fellow guides had access to. It was like a special forum.Special restrictions: Guides were not allowed in most high end raid zones unless absolutely necessary in regards to a petition! And once you addressed the issue, you were required to zone back out (Basically, you couldn't go chill out in Veeshan's Peak or Plane of Sky when there were no petitions). I believe the reason for this odd restriction was due to these zones being raid zones, and back in 2000, not many players achieved the requirements to enter these zones. I guess they didnt want us Guides to go in there and then start mapping out all the mobs / locations. SOE wanted to keep the special-ness to these zones, basically.You couldnt perma-ban players. You could disconnect players, and I think you could also suspend players up to 2 hours, but anything higher required the Game Master's intervention.Arbitrate contested camps. Not much could be done other than a simple "Please play nice". Even though EQ had a PNP, as a Guide, I didnt have much power to enforce it, and we were restricted on what we "allowed" to really do. Usually, just showing up though was more than enough to get the players to start playing niceAny other action of harassment, we could /flag players, with a comment on why they got flagged. Think like an account note. The Game Master would review these notes, and act accordingly.
I am sure I am missing many more things, but that was a gist of being a Guide.
If they re-opened the program, and allowed the same abilities and restrictions as above, I am sure it would be a huge positive step in the right direction for DBG.
P.S. Regarding the special restrictions above, breaking it was the quickest way to get yourself kicked out of the Guide program. Most often than not, when the GM or Senior Guide logged in, the first things they would is get a list of all the guides logged in, along with their zones, and if you were in any of the restricted zones, the first thing they would say in the special Guide channel was "Hey so-and-so, any reason your in Veeshan's Peak right now?". If you didnt give a valid reason, 9 / 10, they would summon you to them immediately and you would get a warning. 2nd time, you would be fired from the Guide program
Please link me to the history you speak of in which the negatives of a guide system outweighed the good? I feel like you are giving massive weight to a handful of fringe cases compared to the hundreds/thousands of postive experiences.
Iksar said: .. No way VR will otherwise have the CSR staff to manage the servers and all their individual player issues (let alone in a reasonably timely manner) without guides, unless of course this game does horribly and has a tiny population.
Right there with ya. If modern slavery (as in, expecting work without wages) is required for success, the game will fail.
Iksar said:If VR says guides are considered official CSR staff then they should have plenty enough authority so long as ignoring them is punishable.
Agreed. But they will never afford even minimum wage for the number of guides required. As history has proven, they will not be employees, otherwise, it's too expensive.
Iksar said:Please link me to the history you speak of in which the negatives of a guide system outweighed the good? I feel like you are giving massive weight to a handful of fringe cases compared to the hundreds/thousands of postive experiences.
You want me to prove to you that humans (guides) were/are corrupt? When people in this very thread have already done that? Hehehe. I saw it my EQ1 guilds and EQ2 guilds first hand. Our leadership had guides that told them when raid targets were up, when rare nameds were up, and when epic quest mobs were up. In fact, in most cases, they wouldn't even bother gathering the troops until their guide spies told them a target was available. And those guides? They did it with exactly what you've outlined, all their special abilities.
And finally, none of those games kept guides. No modern north-american-developed fantasy-themed first-third-person MMO currently has Slavery guides. I mean, I could be wrong, but if they're so awesome, why don't all those same games have them, today?
Community support groups that are just normal players, that help new players? Great idea, let's do that more. Anything beyond that? Corruption ensues, because of the abuse of powers granted.
Today, with VPNs being one click install and you're done, you could never keep a guide off their home server. Hell I could by myself have 10 different VPNs on 10 different VMs and neither my hardware nor Internet connection would even notice. You don't think a large hardcore/RMT guild would -ensure- they had a guide available 24x7?
But yes, I am putting an inordinate weight to the relatively small number of corrupt guides. You know why? Because the impact they have is disproportionately massive.
I totally understand the desire to help, and be positive, but this is not going to go well for Visionary Realms if their business plan is predicated on Modern Slavery for success.
vjek said:You want me to prove to you that humans (guides) were/are corrupt? When people in this very thread have already done that? Hehehe. I saw it my EQ1 guilds and EQ2 guilds first hand. Our leadership had guides that told them when raid targets were up, when rare nameds were up, and when epic quest mobs were up. In fact, in most cases, they wouldn't even bother gathering the troops until their guide spies told them a target was available. And those guides? They did it with exactly what you've outlined, all their special abilities.
And finally, none of those games kept guides. No modern north-american-developed fantasy-themed first-third-person MMO currently has Slavery guides. I mean, I could be wrong, but if they're so awesome, why don't all those same games have them, today?
Community support groups that are just normal players, that help new players? Great idea, let's do that more. Anything beyond that? Corruption ensues, because of the abuse of powers granted.
Today, with VPNs being one click install and you're done, you could never keep a guide off their home server. Hell I could by myself have 10 different VPNs on 10 different VMs and neither my hardware nor Internet connection would even notice. You don't think a large hardcore/RMT guild would -ensure- they had a guide available 24x7?But yes, I am putting an inordinate weight to the relatively small number of corrupt guides. You know why? Because the impact they have is disproportionately massive.
I totally understand the desire to help, and be positive, but this is not going to go well for Visionary Realms if their business plan is predicated on Modern Slavery for success.
Again, why have police at all when some are corrupt?
Great, but there is no reason guides should have any more information than players when it comes to spawn timers or when any named/raid or any mob might be up. Not sure why a guide would be needed these days when any determined guild would have their own sets of eyes keeping tabs on any highly contested content (if any exists without lockouts or some other means of mitigating content denial altogether). The powers they have access to can be tailored and monitored more carefully to where it wouldn't really help even if they managed to work around and have a guide on the same server. They could also require linking a main account to the guide account with specific level requirements, or any number of more creative solutions. They might give them no special powers at all beyond being able to assist with simple issues and disputes, filtering more complicated or pressing issues up the ladder.
Comparing it to slavery, unless they decided to implement forced hour/labor requirements (which is what would get them sued), is being more than a little disingenuous. If someone is genuinely passionate about the game and wants to spend time here or there helping others but is otherwise free to stop whenever they want then they are hardly a slave. If that's slavery then most people volunteering around in the world are slaves.
Not having active guides/GMs goes a lot further toward damaging a game and its community (it certainly hasn't helped Daybreak). The weight unchecked negative/toxic players can have on a community is much greater than that of a few bad guides, and it's much easier to deal with a few bad guides than it is to curb large groups of players and any resulting community leaning toward toxicity as the status quo.
Anyway I don't think any sort of superpower is necessary for resolving issues, since they have been stated to be "mediators". In this case, they can just be connected to the /petition tool and able to create chats with players where they can work on the issue. It's no longer 1999 and many tools are avaliable now to solve thoses situations.
Things like character stuck, bugs, quest items eaten and such are for real GM issues as they are game errors, but everything social tied to mediate, newcomer's help and first level's footsteps do not need any kind of power.
I definitely agree with Iksar (and others).
Among possible powers a guide could have that I do not see as open to *too* much abuse. All subject to monitoring by VR.
1. Having the title "guide". If someone is acting badly, anyone can ask them to stop but if the request comes from a guide it may be more persuasive.
2. A temporary block on the use of chat by a goldseller. This will shut them up a lot faster than needing to wait for VR to act - at least after the first few months when I expect VR to be very active in having official VR people on-line. Any use against a non-goldseller will be very obvious so a guide probably couldn't abuse this very much before being bounced out of the position. And a temporary block on chat wouldn't be extremely harmful to the victim of abuse - not like a ban or suspension.
3. A bit more controversial - a temporary block on the use of chat for other violations of the rules. Perhaps with an automatic referral to VR to help them monitor for abuse. Thus if someone repeatedly violates the rules, whatever the rules may be, after being asked to stop they could be silenced for a while. If the same account violated the rules repeatedly or in a very egregious way VR would have the referrals to review and they (not the guide) could impose harsher sanctions.
This could apply to repeated spam, insults, use of profanity, blatantly offensive language or the like - with a requirement that a guide give a warning before imposing the temporary block. A very limited power where abuse might be obvious and the harm done to any innocent player wouldn't be too severe. Yet the benefit to the quality of life could be great.
4. On the more positive side - the ability to run limited events just to "show the flag". Even if only something like a 15 minute hide-and-seek or search for an object with the winners getting a small amount of coin, a temporary and not excessive buff, a cosmetic "I love guides" cap or the like.
5. On the more positive side, the ability to give minor benefits to players even without an event. Thus "A guide is in Butt Cheeks City at the crafting hall for the next 15 minutes. Anyone that wants a 30 minute buff "plus one to the chance of crafting success" go over and say hello". Just to show that the Gods (VR) and their avatars (the guides) play an active and beneficial role in the world.
Iksar said: Also don't give the frontline guides special powers beyond what is necessary for them getting around, they are pretty much intended to just be mediators.
When I was a guide in EQ1, the most common thing I remember doing was helping people who had become a victim of some sort of glitch. Things like getting stuck in the environment, or they or their corpse fell under the world. So I had to have the ability to 'summon' players, and summon corpses regardless of distance (after verifying that their corpse was indeed in an inaccessable location and not just under a bosses feet).
One time there was a legit server crash during prime time and our Full GM authorized us to assist big raids, who were in boss fights at the time of the crash, with corpse recovery and 100% res's. I got to help one of the Top guilds in the world (at the time, who I will not name) recover their corpses from the top Boss in the game (at the time). Was quite fun chilling with these guys/gals while we sorted out their CR and they discussed how the fight was going before the server dumped them.
Sometimes it would be the NPC's monsters that would get stuck in things and couldn't be attacked. Sometimes we needed to 'insta-kill' them so they would then respawn again since we couldn't /summon NPC's.
I even remember this one time a Vendor in a low level zone got trained away from his spot and wouldn't path back home. Somehow the game was coded that if the NPC wasn't standing in just the right spot he wouldn't open his Vendor window for you. So even when players found him they couldn't buy or sell stuff from him. Since we didn't want to 'insta-kill' and wait for it to respawn since we didnt' know the respawn timer, I had to 'agro' the NPC onto myself with my nifty invulnerability and have him chase me back to his spot and then 'memory whipe' him to clear agro. Once he was back in his spot he went back to normal.
Very rarely did I ever actually need to 'mediate' anything. Since there were clear Play Nice Policies, I usually just had to remind people what the rules were for things, and players would work things out or move on. If there ever was a serious problem with players legit griefing or harrassing each other, we just took people's statements and created a Report and sent it on to our Full GM who would investigate in the logs and decide if warnings or penalties needed to be issued.
The real reason for the Guide program was to deal with all these kinds of problems that took time to deal with but didn't really require any type of 'authoritative decisions'. This meant the full GM's would have the time to investigate true issues that required their authority and ability to issue penalties.
They also dealt with any 'refund item' issues if people had a glitch make them lose an item. When these came up, the Guides just took the person's statement and then flagged the Petition for review by the Full GM. They would make the call if the person legit lost an item due to a game glitch and deserved a replacement. And it took a full GM to do this anyway, since as a guide you had no powers to create items for players. The most we could do was issue these 'Care' packages that we could buy from special GM vendors that had some basic items for players who had lost all their stuff due to a glitch like a corpse disappearing before they could loot it. These items were generic gear for a set level range and they couldn't be dropped and were worth zero coin to a vendor. Once the player got their own items back they just 'destroyed' these items.
And as you can imagine... Everything you did needed to be reported. If you summoned some guys corpse, you recorded it in the petition notes. If you 'insta-killed' an NPC stuck in a wall, you recorded it in the petition notes. If you were required to help out a player in a raid zone next to a raid boss, you recorded that in the petition notes. Since everything was logged, the GM's could always know where you went and when, and if you used any of your super powers. It was important for you to have a paper trail of why you were doing things. You also didn't always know when a Full GM was online, since they could be invisible even to the Guides. In fact, they could be standing right next to you monitoring your interaction with a player in real time and you wouldn't have a clue unless they wanted you to know. Even senior guides could be invisible to the other guides and could monitor you.
In my time as a guide I never heard of any corruption or Guides cheating. There were times Guides made poor decisions and needed to be taught how to better resolve things. Sometimes guides were let go because they didn't learn and kept making mistakes. But I don't recall outright cheating in the way some players have explained in this thread.
watemper said: Just thinking of the screenshots earlier in this thread showing a bunch of guides from the same guild, and remembering that guild being a top guild.
The guild tag you were seeing on those Guides/GMs in the screenshots was the 'GM Guild' for that server. So basically it was 'Order of Servername'. In the screenshots it was 'Order of Povar' which meant they were guides/GMs on the 'Povar' server. Just like regular folks, guides needed a way to chat with each other without using 'global' channels. So they had a Guild so they could guildchat with each other, in case they needed help or advice from more experienced guides or a Full GM.
The Guides who have 'the apprentice' next to their name, it meant they were newbie Guides in a 'probationary' period. After a while if you were doing a good job, and the senior guide recommended you, the Full GM would raise you to full Guide status and you'd lose 'the apprentice' tag.
vjek said: Today, with VPNs being one click install and you're done, you could never keep a guide off their home server.
A VPN doesn't magically allow you to have a Guide character on any server you want.
In EQ1, when you became a guide it was on an assigned server (you didn't get to pick it). They made sure to assign you to a server that you had no characters on. Once you created a character on that server, they manually 'flagged' that character as a 'guide' and summoned you to a special 'GM' zone that had vendors for you to buy the Gear that had all the 'click' effects to help you in your Guide duties.
If you tried to create a new character on that account on any server the GM's would be able to tell and you would likely get asked right away why you needed another character on your guide account. And chances are high you wouldn't be a guide anymore.
vjek said: Hehehe. I saw it my EQ1 guilds and EQ2 guilds first hand. Our leadership had guides that told them when raid targets were up, when rare nameds were up, and when epic quest mobs were up.
While I can't say that this didn't happen, this does suprise me a great deal.
To make sure you Play on the same server as your 'guide spy' you would have to start characters on the server After the spy got assigned to it. And in the early years, I don't remember EQ1 having a paid server transfer service... am I wrong? When did they add that?
As quoted: Guides were not allowed in most high end raid zones unless absolutely necessary in regards to a petition! And once you addressed the issue, you were required to zone back out (Basically, you couldn't go chill out in Veeshan's Peak or Plane of Sky when there were no petitions).
If your guide spy ever got caught doing this 'scouting' by being somewhere without a good reason to be there and got kicked from the program, you'd need to have a New person to get into the Guide program to be your spy. Even if you had an account with some serious /play time (they didn't accept newbie players to be guides) on a Seperate account on a Seperate server who could then apply to the guide program, you still couldn't be sure that they would get assigned to your Home server. So you would then need to do a paid server transfer (when they even offered that) to whatever server that new Guide spy got assigned to.
Now... perhaps your Guide spy wasn't actually a friend but rather just some Guide guy your leaders 'corrupted' in some way (Bribery maybe?). How would you do this without getting caught. You'd have to somehow get that Guide to join your 'out of game' communication (ie Discord) without letting on what you were up to in game. And then what happens if the first guide you approach isn't interested (aka A good person who doesn't want to help you cheat) and then reports you for trying to corrupt a guide. Even if you don't get banned, your going to get flagged and it's going to be very hard to convince another Guide to come join your discord.
Even if you did get lucky and find a corrupt guide and successfully convinced this stranger Guide to help you out, what happens if that guide gets caught and you need to replace him. You expect to be Lucky twice in a row?
It all just seems like a very risky way to do it, since things like ShowEQ existed that were much easier to setup and harder to track. Is it possible that your Guild leaders were actually using 'ShowEQ' to do their scouting, and just didn't want to say that's what they were doing just in case some do-gooder reported them? They might just tell you that a friendly Guide is feeding them the information since if somebody reported it there wouldn't be any truth to it and so it couldn't be proven and no chance of any bans or anything.
zewtastic said: Apparently you did not read my example of how a guide exploited their access for direct financial gain. And I'm talking real money cash $$$. Making second accounts is easy and invisible to a game company.
I went back to find your previous post...
zewtastic said: This was done before in EQ and Vanguard and was exploited by a number of the so-called guides. They used inside information and special guide tools to give their friends and guilds special access or key details needed for encounters, enriched their own accounts and secondary accounts on other servers. This led to guides also farming rare items with inside knowledge and thus the selling of items and access for real $$.
Technically this is possible, since a player could go out and buy a new copy of the game and start a character on his Guide assigned server. Thus allowing him to get insider information on spawns and such. It also would be difficult to catch unless it got reported and they started an actual investigation and looked through the logs of things. But unless somebody knew he was doing this, it isn't something that would likely trigger any warnings since from all appearences he would just be a random player killing a named mob for it's loot and there wouldn't be anything telling the server that he had insider information.
I do accept that Corruption exists. And it could be possible for corrupt players to exploit the system in some way. So I won't try to argue that you guys are just pessimists and that a Guide program would be just fine and you should just accept it. I would hope that if VR decides to use a Guide program, that they would make efforts to limit the ways the system could be exploited, and have some tools that allow them to track it when it does happen.
If VR does have a Guide program, I will probably apply to be one. In fact I would even apply to be a full paid GM, but I have no idea if they would let me work from home and I don't want to move, so that might not be an option.
Anyway... just some of my experience and thoughts... not sure if it really helped the debate in any way.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:zewtastic said: This was done before in EQ and Vanguard and was exploited by a number of the so-called guides. They used inside information and special guide tools to give their friends and guilds special access or key details needed for encounters, enriched their own accounts and secondary accounts on other servers. This led to guides also farming rare items with inside knowledge and thus the selling of items and access for real $$.
Technically this is possible, since a player could go out and buy a new copy of the game and start a character on his Guide assigned server. Thus allowing him to get insider information on spawns and such. It also would be difficult to catch unless it got reported and they started an actual investigation and looked through the logs of things. But unless somebody knew he was doing this, it isn't something that would likely trigger any warnings since from all appearences he would just be a random player killing a named mob for it's loot and there wouldn't be anything telling the server that he had insider information.
I do accept that Corruption exists. And it could be possible for corrupt players to exploit the system in some way. So I won't try to argue that you guys are just pessimists and that a Guide program would be just fine and you should just accept it. I would hope that if VR decides to use a Guide program, that they would make efforts to limit the ways the system could be exploited, and have some tools that allow them to track it when it does happen.
If VR does have a Guide program, I will probably apply to be one. In fact I would even apply to be a full paid GM, but I have no idea if they would let me work from home and I don't want to move, so that might not be an option.
Anyway... just some of my experience and thoughts... not sure if it really helped the debate in any way.
The actual full story is probably in another post.
In 2002-2003 I opened my home in CA over the labor day weekend to anyone in my guild that wanted to get there. I provided all food and ammenities. I even had a PC room set up with five systems online that people could play on.
I had about 22 people show up, most from CA. But one kid, about 22yo. iirc came from Ontario CAN. (of course Canada).
He told us how he paid for his entire trip (round trip flight) with funds he made from selling in-game items he farmed using his guide account, as well as information he discovered using his guide account. Not ultra rare or high-end items, just decent, lesser know items that were valuable to regular players. He then showed us what he was doing online.
It was one of my first brushes with how much money some people were making by selling virtual items. The first was a rl buddy selling harvested items in UO back in 99-2001ish.
I see no need for any guide type players.
Anything a player needs can come from the playerbase organically. Questions, tips even items and gold.
A player gets stuck, there are now unstuck commands and teleports. No idea why else a "special" guide might be needed. There is none. The negatives outweigh the positives.
zewtastic said: No idea why else a "special" guide might be needed. There is none. The negatives outweigh the positives.
Because VR won't be able to afford the CSRs needed to interact with the player base otherwise? Griefing, cheating, RMTs and exploiting will run rampant and drive away a portion of the player base. A few bad apple guides don't outweigh all of the other issues that will be solved by the majority of volunteer guides.
It seems so obvious that the positives outweigh the negatives to make your points seem silly. Losing a portion of the paying subscribers vs having a handful of guides profit behind the scenes is not any choice at all.
philo said:zewtastic said: No idea why else a "special" guide might be needed. There is none. The negatives outweigh the positives.Because VR won't be able to afford the CSRs needed to interact with the player base otherwise? Griefing, cheating, RMTs and exploiting will run rampant and drive away a portion of the player base. A few bad apple guides don't outweigh all of the other issues that will be solved by the majority of volunteer guides.
It seems so obvious that the positives outweigh the negatives to make your points seem silly. Losing a portion of the paying subscribers vs having a handful of guides profit behind the scenes is not any choice at all.
You cannot turn over policing of an MMO (especially one that is not FTP) to unpaid volunteers. Giving so-called unpaid volunteer "CSR's" any kind of enforcement power over other players opens more potential for issues and lawsuits.
Any business accepting payment to provide a service also accepts the responsibility of supporting that service. It should be part of the business model.
You using some sketchy scare logic to seemingly rationalize your opinion just exposes it for it's fallacy. Having unpaid, volunteers will never stop any of the issues you seem to say it will.
I agree and support almost everything vjek has been saying.
As soon as any single person here (especially if they are community member, and doubly especially if they are already outspoken community members) is given a "role" of any sort that role gives them any sort of power over any other members, it will quickly be abused.
Same goes for players in the game. Any type of knowledge, power, ability that others don't and can't have will be abused. Power corrupts. You can't argue and say it's about policies, you can't say we'll do better, you can't say "not us", because you don't know. The only thing that is 100% is that power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutly.
As soon as you give someone the ability to get a slight edge or give their "friend" a hint, it'll happen.
Like it or not Pantheon will be a competitive game for some, many, (all, at one point in time over something (shiny, resouse node, quest, loot, raid, house, opinion)) and in a competitive game the slightest edge matters A LOT to some people.
I will be a competitive player, I'll camp, I'll grind, I'll raid but I'm not the type of person who gets so into all of this on my games that I let the things talked about above affect me too much. But when I do hear about it, see it and watch the effects of it, it completely destroys the game for me.
My first expereince was seeing BOTs in DAoC for the first time when I reached high level. I loved that game and when I saw this and it's abuses, it ruined the game for me. I quite playing shortly after becaues the game no longer seemed fair for someone like me.
philo said:Because VR won't be able to afford the CSRs needed to interact with the player base otherwise? Griefing, cheating, RMTs and exploiting will run rampant and drive away a portion of the player base. A few bad apple guides don't outweigh all of the other issues that will be solved by the majority of volunteer guides.
It seems so obvious that the positives outweigh the negatives to make your points seem silly. Losing a portion of the paying subscribers vs having a handful of guides profit behind the scenes is not any choice at all.
Again, if their business model is predicated on volunteers for success, they should fail. That's economics 101. Unless you're a tyrannical despot and you literally own the people, don't rely on slave labor for success. :)
But to your point, philo, if griefing, cheating, RMT's and exploits will run rampant, with the current design and implementation, they need to fix the current design and implementation. Regardless of whether or not volunteers are involved, griefing, cheating, RMT's and exploits are solved problems.
As an example, currently, it's possible to grief other players with Feign Death. They've demo'd how to do it in the videos. Maybe a good first step would be to fix Feign Death so it can't be used for griefing? That would reduce CSR ticket burden. The other issues have been addressed on these forums for years, if VR is willing to step up and implement the solutions. They probably aren't, but even so, the solutions exist.
Another example is selling loot rights or permitting players to loot items if they weren't present and participated in the fight. Change the game so they can't do that. One less RMT tool, poof, gone.
Push the RMT problem to the account level, and solve it with geoip, restrictions on CC changes, restrictions on phone number locale changes, and 2FA required for anything unusual. Just like Google and many other online companies & MMO's already do today.
If the actual goal of having the volunteers there is to reduce the load of paid employees by reducing customer service tickets, then fix the game so there aren't as many customer service tickets.
If exploits and cheating are the problem, then set the policy to be permanent bans of the account, credit card, address, phone number, and name on the account, once exploits and cheating are proven. No second chances.
If certain countries are causing your billing department an inordinate amount of chargebacks? Ban those countries from playing or change your billing policies for those countries.
Each of those steps reduces CSR ticket load. And none of them have anything whatsoever to do with whether or not you have unpaid volunteer guides. If the supposed unique value of unpaid volunteer guides is mediation? Normal players already do that, and will /petition when it doesn't work. Just like an unpaid volunteer guides would escalate if players didn't listen. If you want to give a Guide tag to normal players and prioritize their /petitions? Great. Do that more. At least they have no special powers to abuse, despite adding to the CSR ticket burden. ;) And as others have suggested in this thread, assigning very helpful players a "Helper" tag harms no-one, and is also not prone to abuse.
An acknowledgement of inevitable corruption (by your statement of "a handful of guides profit behind the scenes") provides the justification for NOT having guides, as most other north-america-developed fantasy-themed MMOs have decided over the past 20 years. I'm not being facetious. You and others apparently know the problem will happen, yet are willing to implement a system that will guarantee it happens? I'm not seeing the logic there.
Looking at vjek's last set of points.
If you have to rely on volunteers you deserve to fail. Nope many perfectly legitimate and reasonable models use volunteers heavily.
Volunteers are slaves. Doesn't even deserve a reply.
Griefing and cheating have been fixed - all you need is to implement the known solutions. Sure some forms of griefing can be fixed - eliminate trains and no one will be intentionally trained. But we players are creative and there are endless ways to cheat and grief. Almost as self-evidently false as the slavery comment.
Permanent ban for any exploit or cheating? Doesn't sound as outrageous until one considers that some actions are far less egregious and obvious than others. Ban someone for using an exploit once to get 10 silver pieces? Maybe a short suspension and a warning that the wrist will only get slapped once. But more importantly it can be hard to tell the difference between someone exploiting deliberately or just not realizing that it is an exploit rather than an odd game design.
But most important of all - the things a guide can do that have nothing to do with griefing or cheating. Holding mini-events and giving out small but not unbalancing favors like temporary buffs. Keeping an eye on chat with the power to block obvious goldspammers when those arise. Etc.
No reason for this program. Way to easy to abuse.
Besides guides in EQ weren't always knowledgable.
The 1 experience I had with a "guide" was when I (a necro) was paying someone to let me sacrifice him for essence emeralds and the guide saw this... and tried to stop it.. by constantly moving my character. And eventually zoning me away... because he didnt understand the game mechanics.
I'd rather not deal with below average players handling disputes.
Create GMs that are paid by VR and let the community deal with smaller disputes. I dont need Joe from down the street telling me how to manage a camp.