Sicario said:People over-complicate this.
The reasonable solution is to provide the tools to players to moderate their own experience to their liking. What this entails is nothing complicated, only:
- Account-wide ignore feature
- Chat profanity filter with on/off toggle set to 'off' by default
- Report button for harassment
- Ability to choose which chatrooms you wish to be in (zone/map, general, tradeskill, etc.)
Problem solved. If people are bothering you or you just think they're annoying, ignore them. If they're harassing you or others clearly, submit a report for harassment.
The overall quality and an assertively fair and decent nature of the player base will be the meat and potatoes of this problem. I hope.
These tools specifically will be the gravy.
I also like the note function, just in case you end up grouping with said obnoxious person and need to remind yourself why you had them on ignore.
Feyshtey said:I am saying that an offensive word only has power to offend if you allow yourself to be offended. It doesnt matter if it's racial, or cultural, or vulgar, or otherwise. Particulary in the case of people using those words not because they are actually racial but simply because they know it'll piss you off. Be pissed, be offended. That's your right. But if you refuse to engage with the ****** you take any power he might have weilded over you. That's your choice.
I couldn't agree more.
/ignore and a report feature should cover most of it. And sometimes people will do things that you disagree with but have to accept. That's life. i understand that that statement can rub the wrong way but when you think about it, there's not much more to it. We control our own actions, and feelings too up to a certain point. We don't have that control over someone else and we shouldn't want it imho. If it's truly offensive, report away.
Trolls in MMOs are one of the chief reasons I dislike most modern MMOs in the first place. If Pantheon wants to be different a great idea to control this problem is:
Avoid Worldwide chat -- Don't give Trolls a forum to annoy. Avoid Global chats, keep social interactions more personable and more local to places in the game. Also players shouldn't be able to /shout over an entire continent. Have a /guildchat that players can moderate their own guild members conduct, but otherwise players in a particular area really should only be able to talk to players in that area. /Say should be the primary method of communication outside of /Guildchat, Maybe allow players who are in vendor mode to be able to shout over a city area. That would allow people who are selling goods a method of getting customers and also having a social control from preventing everyone from blathering on in front of everyone. You could also have a mechanism that allows players to advertise goods and prices without general text, or if there is general text have a profanity filter on it.
Arcuda said:I don't want a Global 'General' chat, you're right in that it gets bad quick. I do want custom chat channels though. What if I become friends with a group from another guild? I'd like to have the ability to jump in a chat channel together so we can easily communicate. We had a serverwide (all servers that is) bard chat back in EQ that was very helpful, any question someone knew the answer.Trolls in MMOs are one of the chief reasons I dislike most modern MMOs in the first place. If Pantheon wants to be different a great idea to control this problem is:
Avoid Worldwide chat -- Don't give Trolls a forum to annoy. Avoid Global chats, keep social interactions more personable and more local to places in the game. Also players shouldn't be able to /shout over an entire continent. Have a /guildchat that players can moderate their own guild members conduct, but otherwise players in a particular area really should only be able to talk to players in that area. /Say should be the primary method of communication outside of /Guildchat, Maybe allow players who are in vendor mode to be able to shout over a city area. That would allow people who are selling goods a method of getting customers and also having a social control from preventing everyone from blathering on in front of everyone. You could also have a mechanism that allows players to advertise goods and prices without general text, or if there is general text have a profanity filter on it.
Crazzie said:Be a person and respect others, and simply walk away.
The "walk away" route is probably best.
/report the evidence, and /ignore the player.
Above all: --do not engage--
Trolls (and hate-spewers alike) feed on attention. Deprive them of what they seek (a reactive audience), and they will eventually go away.
Report it to document it (leaving it to staff to moderate and resolve), and then walk away.
I think that when a player commits undesirable actions consistently, it ceases to be a matter of individuals shunning that player and more a matter of what the community and developers will tolerate as ethical. It's about sending a message. For example, I don't want to be part of a community in which the developers don't have a stance on sexist posts. I am faithful that the gaming community will tend to weed out people who have a preference for sexism, but the additional lack of tolerance for sexism by developers helps a lot. It's not just possibly bad for business that sexist posts are tolerated by administrators, but ignoring sexist posts sends a message that creators, moderators and employers may very well tolerate sexism. Feel free to substitute sexism with any other patently undesirable concept.
JDNight said:Through the experiences I have had in life, my education, and 15 yrs of supervisor/manager experience I can say that I believe the best way to stop people from doing something is to simply make it so that it is unprofitable or that doing it would be unsuccessful. You will remove 95% of the offenders. Punishing people, training (teaching) people, or even sypathizing with them does not work nearly as well.
Isn't it unprofitable to get punished? And is it really that easy to circumvent bans? Perhaps the developers can weigh in here, but I think a user would have to either purchase expensive new equipment or know how to MAC spoof in order to bypass a ban.
I'm genuinely curious about the effects of training people. Could you elaborate please? :)
Vandraad said:Instead of insisting upon extensive rules governing what people can say to you (generic you, plural), how about you think first about blabbing personal garbage into global chat channels? Why do people feel it necessary to spam personal details in public chat? You need to talk to someone specific? Send a tell. Stop spamming global chat channels.
Without saying too much about my personal life - grief is not a rational experience. It is not logical to expect people who have lost a parent or parental figure to abide by logical rules. Maybe this person felt vulnerable, alone and desperate to share his or her experience with someone. Maybe this person hit the incorrect button. There are multiple possible reasons here. Grief is a hopelessly, bitterly, awful non-rational process. I hope such a person is not subject to shame in the future.
My position here is still to moderate extremely anti-social responses. Regardless of what anyone says - whether it is agreeable or not - it is not appropriate to respond in certain abusive ways.
Wish I had been around when this was first posted!
What I take from most of our community is
1. A Community is only as good as its people in it.
2. General chat is there for general chat unless there is no general chat that would make my day!
3. I don't think anyone here didn't feel empathy for the original poster as most of us probably seen something similar happen in general chat of a any given game.
4. Ignore is a powerful tool, and reputation is only yours to harm it or make it awsome!
See this is another reason why I'm excited about this game as it seems to target mature gamers. And we as gamers of our generation is kinda of our duty to discourage any cyber bullying or inappropriate gestures. Of course we can't controll situations that might feel uncomfortable but we can't let these twits that put you in an uncomfortable state free pass's so I encourage to simply write things you find un appropriate to say it that was not appropriate and defuse the situation in the most peaceful way possible and sometime you will get through to some of them and yet sometimes they are some that can't be saved
But I support a strong community where we stand against thest actions.
B
AlannaTheFair said:Isn't it unprofitable to get punished? And is it really that easy to circumvent bans? Perhaps the developers can weigh in here, but I think a user would have to either purchase expensive new equipment or know how to MAC spoof in order to bypass a ban.
I'm genuinely curious about the effects of training people. Could you elaborate please? :)
Thanks for the reply. As far as if being unprofitable to be punished, I guess it depends. Punishment can make things less profitable, but if the profits are high enough, people can ignore the punishment. i.e. Save $1MM by not following regulations, get fined $150k. This really depends on the individual and how they perceive the profits and the losses due to punishment.
I don't actually know how hard it is to circumvent a ban, but gold spammers seem to be able to do it all the time.
As far as training, I am talking about training a company might do for their employees. Reviewing behavioral policies, teaching people to be respectful, team work initiatives, ect... I do think these can be effective, I also think they are most effective on people that are already inclined to behave properly. They really act as more of a reminder. People that are truly inclined to be jerks will simply continue being jerks.
I am all in favor of the /ignore and /report system. Let VR handle the problems. They should make certain to have a disclaimer, telling all players they reserve the right to ban anyone using language or behavior that is offensive. However, after working in corporate america for so long, I really have a dislike for absolute rules. There are way too many people that get caught up in punishments that may not have deserved them and often it just breeds resentment.
tl;dr Let VR sort out the really bad cases, but give them the flexibility to be fair. We as a community should be dealing with the day to day pains in the neck.
Without having read the 6 pages of posts so far, I bet the vast majority were some variation of no. We don't want no stinkin' moderation. Let the players moderate themselves... All I have to do is think about the EQ1 Phinigrel server to know this does not work. Power guilds dominate everything. They will use any method at their disposal including any cheats they can find, to make your life miserable so they can get what they want. Player moderation of each other never works.
Ahhh.... The never ending story! lol
/ignore is a good staple of gaming
Personally, I'd like to see a PUNT mechanic in game.
If Arsetard begins a foul-mouthed, x-rated tirade about his girlfriend's sexual habits (and I've seen this in EQ... it WILL happen eventually) and how cool all of it is to him... My immediate and biggest concern is not making him go away from my screen but the children playing the game. And there WILL be children playing our game. Parents bringing their children along in game is one of the coolest things about MMOs IMO. We need a tool to stop this behavior when it becomes an open assault.
It's great that we can all /ignore this Arsetard, but how do we make him STOP?
/punt Arsetard
Once say... 15 people have reported with the /punt command, the character is punted form all global/public channels for say... 4 or 6 or 8 hours.
And perhaps it takes 20 /punts to remove someone?
This is a temporary chat ban.
One person or even a handful of friends cannot be allowed to punt someone out of spite.
It shouldn't be easy to do and it shouldn't last forever.
Everquest has digressed to the point that NOTHING gets anyone banned now. NOTHING gets anyone warned by CS any longer. RMTs.. part of the game. Profanity... no worries. X-rated language and character names... see it all the time. You can name your toon ANYTHING. And I mean ANYTHING. I personally just ignore it, but years ago we had children playing in our guilds and it torqued me off when ARSE HATS would callously spew filthy language into general chat channels simply because they could and they knew there were no consequences.
VR... PLEASE don't let this happen in Pantheon
I already know many of you will scoff, but as someone was saying about another's post... sounds like you might be one of those DOING the trolling if you want NO safeguards in place to prevent it.
I do not PAY to play a game so you - an immature and socially maladjusted teenage boy or grumpy old man - can come online after drinking with buddies and attempt to burn the server down overloading the profanity filter. Do that in YOUR HOUSE, not OURS
I don't know what the maturity rating for Pantheon is. Therefore I cannot comment on children and families playing. That being said, I do not understand fully why there is opposition to moderation. Is this a pride issue? A financial issue? A generational issue?
I want to ask the uncomfortable question about who will be playing Pantheon. Are we assuming too much that a certain demographic and only that demographic will be playing? While I am certain that this forum community is mature, I also have not heard about the marketing strategy behind Pantheon. Will there be commercials? Will there be gaming magazine reviews? Which age ranges will be targeted? Who else outside this forum community will be targeted, and who else outside this community can be expected to play? For instance, it was my high school classmates, not original EverQuest players, who turned me on to Vanguard. The fact of the matter is that people who never played EverQuest may still be interested in Pantheon.
There is a point to be made in that cooperative play requires players to behave. That certainly seems likely given that many players here are mature enough to appreciate and understand that aspect. But is there another, hidden population of users that will defy this logic if Pantheon is advertised successfully to them? And how many of them need to come together in order to merit the distinction of unreasonable? Another member earlier in this thread mentioned having to ignore loads and loads of players on WoW. That has been my experience too, and it's one reason why I don't log in to that game anymore - I really don't want it to come to that on here. I want to play a game to relax; I don't want to have to block users left and right because they grate on me for using racist and sexist language, spreading propaganda about political candidates and baiting less mature users into fruitless and damaging arguments. It's my hope that stringent standards will turn away - let's say younger and more naive users who may play - from icky play practices.
When a fly bites you, you don't brook suggestions to the effect that you grow a thicker skin. You smack the fly. I have little sympathy for stances that argue this will curb freedom of speech. Moderation should target bigotry, name-calling and other hostile comments. This isn't a political forum - people simply want to play to have a good time free of verbal abuse.
AlannaTheFair said:I don't know what the maturity rating for Pantheon is. Therefore I cannot comment on children and families playing. That being said, I do not understand fully why there is opposition to moderation. Is this a pride issue? A financial issue? A generational issue?
I want to ask the uncomfortable question about who will be playing Pantheon. Are we assuming too much that a certain demographic and only that demographic will be playing? While I am certain that this forum community is mature, I also have not heard about the marketing strategy behind Pantheon. Will there be commercials? Will there be gaming magazine reviews? Which age ranges will be targeted? For instance, it was high school classmates, and not original EverQuest players, who turned me on to Vanguard. Who else outside this forum community will be targeted, and who else outside this community can be expected to play? The fact of the matter is that people who never played EverQuest may still be interested in Pantheon.
There is a point to be made in that cooperative play requires players to behave. That certainly seems likely given that many players here are mature enough to appreciate and understand that aspect. But is there a another, hidden population of users that will defy this logic if Pantheon is advertised successfully to them?
Forum glitch. Please delete. Thanks!
AlannaTheFair said:I don't know what the maturity rating for Pantheon is. Therefore I cannot comment on children and families playing. That being said, I do not understand fully why there is opposition to moderation. Is this a pride issue? A financial issue? A generational issue?
I want to ask the uncomfortable question about who will be playing Pantheon. Are we assuming too much that a certain demographic and only that demographic will be playing? While I am certain that this forum community is mature, I also have not heard about the marketing strategy behind Pantheon. Will there be commercials? Will there be gaming magazine reviews? Which age ranges will be targeted? Who else outside this forum community will be targeted, and who else outside this community can be expected to play? For instance, it was my high school classmates, not original EverQuest players, who turned me on to Vanguard. The fact of the matter is that people who never played EverQuest may still be interested in Pantheon.
There is a point to be made in that cooperative play requires players to behave. That certainly seems likely given that many players here are mature enough to appreciate and understand that aspect. But is there a another, hidden population of users that will defy this logic if Pantheon is advertised successfully to them?
This is a good point I think. I come from a non-EQ background (FFXI) and I have a hard time wraping my head around the concepts that are from EQ. Its not that I flatly dont understand the actual concepts. Its that some of it seems odd to me. For instance in the endgame topics in EQ its bad ettiquette to camp something someone else was already camping. However in FFXI that was normal, and most time it wasnt this huge rage quit evil process. You didnt have contempt for the other person or group it was a competition. Anyways, there are different gaming cultures. And I think if the devs do intend for the masses to play with the cooperative play and ettiquette that was fostered in EQ, they need to make that concept crystal clear. Because if I knew nothing of this concept and came in to Pantheon blindly just thinking it looked fun. I would be pretty pissed and confused if I found myself blacklisted one day because I claimed a Named that someone else was camping. Because in FFXI it was understood until someone got first blood, no one had special rights to a mob. The only mobs that were yours and yours alone were in instances. Non-instanced mobs were always up for grabs to the fastest puller no questions asked. And complaining about it was a quick way to be shunned by the community.
Trust me when I say there will be a disconnect from people not familiar with EQ style ettiquette vs what the game mechanically allows you to do. Now obviously some people will just do the wrong things to troll others like trains and ninja looting or Spaming area chat. But I think this game will attract many people that are new to an experience like Pantheon as well as many from other old school games (VG, AC, DAoC, XI, UO, AO, Lineage, etc). And from these different games they will bring with them their own games culture at least to some degree (For instance I usually say Party not Group. I usually say endgame event and not raid, Im also more familiar with Linkshell or Clan than I am Guild. I also call mana regeneration, Refresh.)
So in answer to your question Alanna. Yes I think some folks probably are assuming way too much about who all will be playing this game. From what gaming background they come from? And if they have been infected or always were part of the current popullar trend of toxic gaming culture (even in PvE)?
Do I have an answer to this problem? Pray? Choose the RP server? Code for Behavior? Keep the Ban Hammer within easy reach? Choose the PvP server and punish the a-holes yourself?
Amsai said:But I think this game will attract many people that are new to an experience like Pantheon as well as many from other old school games (VG, AC, DAoC, XI, UO, AO, Lineage, etc). And from these different games they will bring with them their own games culture at least to some degree (For instance I usually say Party not Group. I usually say endgame event and not raid, Im also more familiar with Linkshell or Clan than I am Guild. I also call mana regeneration, Refresh.)
This is what I am worried about. I think the community here has underestimated the level of enthusiam that younger gamers in general have for challenging games. It's not simply EverQuest players who yearn for games that reward hard work; it's everyone who is sick from WoW's business model, which by my calculations is a lot of people. The easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy model is dying. The WoW forums and the SWtoR forums are replete with these kinds of complaints. I would rather have a moderation program in place now as opposed to players complaining about the indignity of moderation imposed later.
No one in my work place or at my university complains about standards imposed about what we can say. These standards are there for a reason, and that is to create a space where workers or students can flourish. Pantheon is similarly a private setting intended for other purposes than debate. It would be different if it were a debate and discussion platform, but it isn't. No one is actually entitled to say whatever he or she wants, and I don't care because I am a player who simply wants to play the game. Pantheon is not a chat app. This is the other side to free speech: that you must respect the right of private persons and entities not to care about what you care about, even if (or should I say especially) them not caring results in a larger profit margin.
In the end, it's probably up to capitalism to determine what stays. If players leave due to perceived trolling and insults, then the game will embrace strict player conduct policies. As for me, I hope we can embrace such policies so as to pre-empt this scenario. Because I don't want to have to leave due to constantly putting people on ignore.
Anyone who has seen the toxic attitudes on social media is right to be concerned about this issue. However, my suggestion (if you can call it that) is to do as little as possible.
1. If you play, you sign a waiver (you CAN be banned)
2. Sure, you get an appeal - but it is VR who decides ultimately.
3. Unless the bahviour is eggregious, allow players to sort it themselves (ignore etc)
4. Do something really stupid and you get sorted (Rude name = char delete/name-change etc)
5. Do something epically stupid (like ignore warning) and get banned
Point 3. is the most important.
Quixotic people like Anita Sarkesian (sp?) are fighting imaginary wars. However, the fallout from them is bleeding through into both Universities and Schools, inculcating an acceptance as fact of ideas that are dangerous fantasy. This is happening to the very demographic all MMOs seek, for growth: Today's Youth.
While I understand Alanna's (and others') points (i.e. you don't expect an office worker to walk up to another and hurl abuse at them for 20 mins) this is a very different animal from 'those who perceive abuse' (trolling etc). It is the word perceive I strenuously object to. This word makes it a subjective determination by the 'listener'; Thus impossible to police. As an educator of the young I can tell you, without equivocation, that this reversal of the onus of responsibility is detrimental to their long-term mental wellbeing. Expemporising further on this would take pages and serve little purpose here.
However, to summarize:
VR should have standards: the absolute minimum to maintain basic civility.
Qendiil said:Everquest has digressed to the point that NOTHING gets anyone banned now. NOTHING gets anyone warned by CS any longer. RMTs.. part of the game. Profanity... no worries. X-rated language and character names... see it all the time. You can name your toon ANYTHING. And I mean ANYTHING. I personally just ignore it, but years ago we had children playing in our guilds and it torqued me off when ARSE HATS would callously spew filthy language into general chat channels simply because they could and they knew there were no consequences.
This is not a direct reflection of the game or the community. It's a reflection on the management of them. Gamebreak and Sony before them view Everquest as if it were an old rusty well spigot. It's pretty basic, more or less sturdy, needs very little maintenance to keep operating, but still provides water. Maybe not a lot of water, but enough that a minor effort of oiling it occasionally keeps the steady low-level stream flowing. It's not all that pretty, but it's reliable for what it provides. Nothing short of completely modernizing it would make it a trully bountiful source of water and the effort to do so would be better spent on building a whole new well elsewhere or drawing on public water mains.
Because they choose not to invest the resources needed to investigate player conflicts and develop a rigorous response protocol that they follow consistently, they choose instead to do nothing. Because they've done nothing for so long those people who years ago would have been rightfully banned remain. Those ongoing disturbences are a glaring reminder to all that there are no repercussions, so more people go down that path with little or no fear of reprisals. The problem grows into the festering cancer it is now.
This is not unique to Everquest. It's not even unique to gaming. It exists in every community that is not monitored and maintained. My son has been exposed to the same langauge that occaisionally would spout up in Everquest back in the day while in the grocery store, or much worse at a sporting event. I cant shield him from that in every walk of life. I can only teach him that it's not appropriate. And I cant scream righteous indignation and berate the parent of a child who doesnt do the same. It would do no good, and would probably devolve into something far more ugly that either my child or the one I meant to aid would also have to witness.
Having said all that, I'm still in full agreement with Evoras. There seems to be some belief here that we (the opposition) think there should be no monitoring at all. And short of maybe one or two people in this thread, that's not a notion being even entertained. There should be monitoring, and there should be bans. But for my part, I jumped into the converstaion at the point at which someone suggested a perma-ban for first offense, which I find to be equally ridiculous to no monitoring at all.
How can it be argued that everyone should expect all community members to be adults who behave appropriately with one another, and suggest that no one should be expected to be an adult able to work within the community to govern itself to some degree?
"That being said, I do not understand fully why there is opposition to moderation. Is this a pride issue? A financial issue? A generational issue?"
This must be generational because in my world, maturity is knowing (or learning that) words don't hurt, and that I can control how I react to other people. I am a woman, and if someone said something sexist (or racist, or bigoted, or something against religion, or crude, or crass, or anything of the sort), I shrug it off and pity that person for feeling the need to get a rise out of people to feel better about themselves. They're just words on a page, and those words can do nothing to me. That gives me all the power I need and nobody can take that away from me.
Here's something else to consider: Someone in one of my old guilds thought the world was going to end because someone mentioned a conversation was "beating a dead horse." This is a common euphamism, and not meant to condone animal abuse. But she was such a horse lover, she wanted those people to be thrown out of the guild. So once you start banning people for one person being offended, where does it stop? How far down the wormhole do we go when any little innocent conversation could bring a ban hammer because someone is offended?
So you ignore. And report. (I think it was EQ that saved the last 20 lines of chat along with any /report, so it couldn't be abused and judgements on reported people could be made in context.) And go on your merry way.
Lghtngfan said:"That being said, I do not understand fully why there is opposition to moderation. Is this a pride issue? A financial issue? A generational issue?"
This must be generational because in my world, maturity is knowing (or learning that) words don't hurt, and that I can control how I react to other people. I am a woman, and if someone said something sexist (or racist, or bigoted, or something against religion, or crude, or crass, or anything of the sort), I shrug it off and pity that person for feeling the need to get a rise out of people to feel better about themselves. They're just words on a page, and those words can do nothing to me. That gives me all the power I need and nobody can take that away from me.
Syntro said:
While I mostly agree with your conclusion (player driven reporting/squelching), I disagree with how you got there. The acquisition of your maturity should have been supplemented with the basic knowledge and recognition that all people respond to words uniquely - not strictly your form of acquired invulnerability. The general population will be filled with a wide spectrum of emotional intelligence and I think it's important to take that into consideration. Words, undoubtedly, can hurt people. If you want to experimental proof, go tell a loved one that you hate them using just words.
But yeah, some basic optional filters with a robust and responsive reporting system which has appropriately scaling timeout punishements should be sufficient.
I dont argue for a second that there are legitimate cases of people who have been truly wronged who have a right to speak their mind and ask others to be considerate. So that's not what we're talking about here. And we're not talking about how your words can really hurt someone close to you. That's a completely different topic because emtional connection to others changes every dynamic. I have unintentionally hurt my wife's feelings in a way that any other person on the planet would have taken it as a compliment.
If invulnerability to words is aquired (it's a learned response) and that ability provides a strength and emotional protections from jerks who want to see you hurt, then how do you serve people by eliminating that learning process?
Conversely, if you learn that you can bully and silence people you don't agree with by claiming emotional trauma by their words, have you learned a positive reaction?