92 replies to this topic

[Praslek2]

Without naming any names...
There is a certain player who is blatantly behaving in a manner designed to destroy the gameplay experience of all other players in the games that he/she is part of.

There is no doubt on the part of any players in these games that the player is destroying the match.

This has gone on for quite sometime. I don't know if there are multiple accounts involved, or if it's all one account.

What I do know, is this...

FEEDBACK:

The current system for dealing with trolls is not working well enough to get rid of a troll within a two to three week time frame.

[Ironwithin]

So ... did you report this person to support ?

[Random Carnage]

I'm happy to name names. Redacted. He TK's every game and is proud of it. Claims 200+ TK's and then abuses the f*ck out of everyone. Nice to see he can do it with impunity. How hard can it be for a TK ratio mechanic to be built in that doubles the ban time each offense after more then 2 TK's in an hour. This would give some leeway for unlucky hits while shutting down the griefers.

Edited by Alexander Garden, 27 February 2015 - 12:12 PM.
Removed name

[Phaeric Cyrh]

I experienced this unfortunate jerk last night (redacted). He killed 4 of us before we could take him down and severely damaged half the rest. All the while taunting those who were taking screen shots and threatening to report him to PGI by saying he does this "all the time" and that "they don't care".

Dude was pretty abusive in the chat on top of the team killing and seemed to relish rubbing it in our faces that PGI would do nothing.

Edited by Alexander Garden, 27 February 2015 - 12:10 PM.
Removed name

[KodiakGW]

Post up the mechs it is using. I'm assuming it's some derp's alt account using trial mechs. But, if we determine it favors certain mechs, do this (referring to him/her as "it" - since that is all they deserved to be referred to as).

1) See it on your team, don't click Ready. Notify your team that it is a known teamkiller, and notify the opposing team through allchat that you need to deal with it.
2) If it is in one of his favored mechs, leg it and get away as fast as possible. It will try to continue on since it favors that mech.
3) Notify the opposing team of its location and move your team out of their way and any line of sight so it does not get any radar contact with opposing team units.
4) Relish as it slowly gets picked apart by 12 mechs. Giving one opposing team member their kill for the challenge.
5) After it dies, agree with the the opposing team to have a 5 minute cease fire so everyone can type in "HAHAHAHA...you DIED!" over and over again so any of it's abusive chat is quickly gone.

After it experiences that 10-12 times, maybe it will quit for the night and reflect on the fact that it brought the community closer together in an effort to punish it. Something I believe is exactly opposite of what it's goal was.

Edited by KodiakGW, 27 February 2015 - 06:28 AM.

[Lily from animove]

the problem is 10 people say they report but only one does, if even.

[Phaeric Cyrh]

Lily from animove, on 27 February 2015 - 06:24 AM, said:

the problem is 10 people say they report but only one does, if even.

It should only take 1. PGI should be able to look at this guy's account and see an outrageous amount of team kills/damage and suspend his account.

The point being, it shouldn't have to even bother PGI. They could easily implement a mechanism in the game to deal with someone committing this level of team killing. It could even automatically suspend the account if it happens enough. Then let it escalate to PGI support to judge it on a case by case basis, re-enabling the account if it was deemed to have happened in error, or if there was some other mitigating circumstance (my 3 year old got on my acct, etc.. )

Edited by Phaeric Cyrh, 27 February 2015 - 06:38 AM.

[Ironwithin]

No it should not only take one.
What kind of wild goose chase would that be if PGI investigate every single person that is reported once with so many crybabies around calling people cheater because their precious atlas just got cored ...
That'd be a pretty hefty waste of time for the people at PGI unfortunate enough to do the investigating.

If there are several reports on the same person however it would become pretty clear that there is more to it than just the hurt feelings of a PUG and an ivestigation is warranted.

TL;DR: Always report as*holes and get the rest of the match to do so, too.

[Phaeric Cyrh]

Ironwithin, on 27 February 2015 - 06:55 AM, said:

No it should not only take one.
What kind of wild goose chase would that be if PGI investigate every single person that is reported once with so many crybabies around calling people cheater because their precious atlas just got cored ...
That'd be a pretty hefty waste of time for the people at PGI unfortunate enough to do the investigating.

If there are several reports on the same person however it would become pretty clear that there is more to it than just the hurt feelings of a PUG and an ivestigation is warranted.

TL;DR: Always report as*holes and get the rest of the match to do so, too.

So you think PGI should ignore support tickets with screenshots complaining of a team killer until they get "enough" of them to warrant spending the 5 minutes it owuld take to look into it? And how do you propose they count these complaints? Should they make a ticket tied to the players account that keeps track of every complaint and then update it every time they get one, only actually checking into it if the number of complaints reaches some predetermined threshold?

This isn't someone complaining about a "haxor". That can be MUCH harder to prove, and in that case I can understand wanting a weight of evidence. But in this case a simple glance at the account in question would determine very quickly whether the complaint has warrant.

Or better yet, like I said, don't waste their time at all with it and build something into the game to deal with it automatically, and only bother PGI with the few instances where someone actually gets banned for doing it.

Edited by Phaeric Cyrh, 27 February 2015 - 07:03 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Phaeric Cyrh, on 27 February 2015 - 06:37 AM, said:

It should only take 1. PGI should be able to look at this guy's account and see an outrageous amount of team kills/damage and suspend his account.

The point being, it shouldn't have to even bother PGI. They could easily implement a mechanism in the game to deal with someone committing this level of team killing. It could even automatically suspend the account if it happens enough. Then let it escalate to PGI support to judge it on a case by case basis, re-enabling the account if it was deemed to have happened in error, or if there was some other mitigating circumstance (my 3 year old got on my acct, etc.. )

Phaeric Cyrh, on 27 February 2015 - 07:02 AM, said:

So you think PGI should ignore support tickets with screenshots complaining of a team killer until they get "enough" of them to warrant spending the 5 minutes it owuld take to look into it? And how do you propose they count these complaints? Should they make a ticket tied to the players account that keeps track of every complaint and then update it every time they get one, only actually checking into it if the number of complaints reaches some predetermined threshold?

This isn't someone complaining about a "haxor". That can be MUCH harder to prove, and in that case I can understand wanting a weight of evidence. But in this case a simple glance at the account in question would determine very quickly whether the complaint has warrant.

Or better yet, like I said, don't waste their time at all with it and build something into the game to deal with it automatically, and only bother PGI with the few instances where someone actually gets banned for doing it.

No, thats not how it works. surely in his case thats logically. But you need to undertsand that when every single report would be treated like this, then you may have 100 reports where one is a real issue and the 99 of 100 others are just a random accidently tk that happened and someone being butthirt about this reported it.

If now this happens daily you will have a laod of work for the support to do (next to other stuff). And because of this, it is very natural that you only react to these kind of reports when an unusal high mass of reports to a single player arrives. Otherwise you need a lot manpower for this stuff.

Because suddenly those 5 minutes would needed equally for everyone meaning suddenly 500 minutes. And this cost manpower and money. Oh let me troll around and make 20 accounts which do randomly accuse some people I founf of the Forum member list for tk's

Suddenly I Will very likely cause a lto damage by causing a massive amount of work for the support which actually costs PGI a lot time and this is money, and they may also delay other support tasks because of this, makign other games unhappy.

No ideally wht you write is what would be cool, but its not feasable. How about you go and work soemwhere for the support for a while to figure out why such a thing wouldn't work.

and you can guess 100% with all the haters nearly any game has some photshopping kiddy would come and make a nice screenshot how Redacted states to be proud of havign done 40 teamkills the last week. So not even the screen would be a first true indication fo proof. And so you would have to definately invenstigate ALL SCREENS and ALL the sstuff behind.

but when a screen appears of Redacted claiming 40 kills but only a single guy or two actually report, it is porbably not even true.

Further lets say One guy reports another guy because he is butthurt by gotten randomly tk'd. Now suddenly the support guy because he has to investigate this runs a script on that guy counting tk's and suddenly number is 41 and he get banned.

But what if the other 40 tkills have been done in private mode for the lols? because soem clans make clood trials and after those they make just a random "last man standing" of those battles.


Sry but your concept is bad because there are many cases that are loopholes, that would ban innocent, and would your system be very abusable by trolls and haters.

Edited by Alexander Garden, 27 February 2015 - 12:16 PM.
Removed name.

[Phaeric Cyrh]

I'm having trouble following you Lily.. Is the problem that no one reports team killers, or that rashes of TK reports are flooding PGI?

I was on board with you earlier when you said no one actually reports them.. Now there are virtual armies of Photoshop griefers trying to frame people for TK'ing, which would be a complete waste of time, because for as much time as it takes to check my profile, PGI can check a players acct and verify if they have been TK'ing intentionally or not. There is no script that needs to be run.

But like I said.. The whole point of this is acknowledging that for whatever reason the current system isn't really working so we are suggesting PGI implement something that would not only be more affective, but also apparently save them from this flood of fake TK reports.

Edited by Phaeric Cyrh, 27 February 2015 - 08:05 AM.

[Remarius]

I get the impression they accumulate reports from past PGI comments so personally I always report.

Redacted has been doing a lot of team killing and even managed to get their own thread on Mechspecs.

Edited by Alexander Garden, 27 February 2015 - 12:13 PM.
Removed name

[Lily from animove]

Phaeric Cyrh, on 27 February 2015 - 08:02 AM, said:

I'm having trouble following you Lily.. Is the problem that no one reports team killers, or that rashes of TK reports are flooding PGI?

I was on board with you earlier when you said no one actually reports them.. Now there are virtual armies of Photoshop griefers trying to frame people for TK'ing, which would be a complete waste of time, because for as much time as it takes to check my profile, PGI can check a players acct and verify if they have been TK'ing intentionally or not.

But like I said.. The whole point of this is acknowledging that for whatever reason the current system isn't really working so we are suggesting PGI implement something that would not only be more affective, but also apparently save them from this flood of fake TK reports.

both. there are many reports about tk's most often come from little butthurt kids getting randomly tk's venting off steam.
Then there are real team killers, but many people just also ignore such a troll and go on, they say: we gonna report you, and never do so.

and so as one at the support, you are porbably going to have 100 tk reports of which only one actually is a true Tk case by a intentional team killer. and so if you spend 5 minutes for each thats 500minutes. Thats a lto manpower needed.

Someone can abuse this to block the support and cause laods of work by making false reports. Some even may go so far (because haters) and fake "clear" screenshots.

So you simple solution does not work, because the reality is not that simple. Not even checking logs is that simple, because many units make events in private matches and may have a lot tk's by whatever the event brings.

let a random tk be reported and the support guy going to make the log search, then this could cause a false ban because of 1 accidently teamkill while the other 20 tk's he did this week were clanevent related internals. Making false bans can massivle damage the reputation of a company and its game.

And because of this, the support will read the mail, note the pilots name and only react on such a case when enough people people are going to complain. Becaue this prefilters a good quota of false accusations and keeps the real support effort at a manageable level. And this is why it requires everyone who was there when the tk troll was there to actually report them. because then you will raie the alert level above the marker that has to be reached to investigate the case further. Then a guy from the staff is very likely going to gather the info and check this stuff.

Edited by Lily from animove, 27 February 2015 - 08:15 AM.

[Phaeric Cyrh]

Lily from animove, on 27 February 2015 - 08:11 AM, said:

both. there are many reports about tk's most often come from little butthurt kids getting randomly tk's venting off steam.
Then there are real team killers, but many people just also ignore such a troll and go on, they say: we gonna report you, and never do so.

and so as one at the support, you are porbably going to have 100 tk reports of which only one actually is a true Tk case by a intentional team killer. and so if you spend 5 minutes for each thats 500minutes. Thats a lto manpower needed.

Someone can abuse this to block the support and cause laods of work by making false reports. Some even may go so far (because haters) and fake "clear" screenshots.

So you simple solution does not work, because the reality is not that simple. Not even checking logs is that simple, because many units make events in private matches and may have a lot tk's by whatever the event brings.

let a random tk be reported and the support guy going to make the log search, then this could cause a false ban because of 1 accidently teamkill while the other 20 tk's he did this week were clanevent related internals. Making false bans can massivle damage the reputation of a company and its game.

And because of this, the support will read the mail, note the pilots name and only react on such a case when enough people people are going to complain. Becaue this prefilters a good quota of false accusations and keeps the real support effort at a manageable level. And this is why it requires everyone who was there when the tk troll was there to actually report them. because then you will raie the alert level above the marker that has to be reached to investigate the case further. Then a guy from the staff is very likely going to gather the info and check this stuff.

You are missing my point.. How do they "note the players name"? How do they record these complaints and cross-reference them later without spending time to do so? How do they know Y player has had X many reports filed against them for team killing?

The answer is they would have to open a ticket and document the complaint. How long does this take? Surely you aren't suggesting they completely ignore complaints, and don't create a ticket, which they cross reference for additional complaints because then how would they keep track of these complaints? In their head? Word of mouth? If they get so many complaints about all these things (and I believe they are busy) how do they keep track?

How much longer beyond creating a ticket does it take to click on their profile and look to see how many team kills they have in a given period of time? A minute? Maybe less?

Regardless, and for the 3rd time, we are recognizing that it is perhaps too cumbersome and not efficient for PGI to actually check up on these themselves and that they should implement something to take care of it in game. Simply don't have it apply to private matches since that wouldn't make sense anyway, if one repeatedly invites a TK into ones private match then I guess that would kind of make that person an idiot.

Edited by Phaeric Cyrh, 27 February 2015 - 08:31 AM.

[xWiredx]

The fact that this thread exists, the player was name and shamed, and we know PGI hasn't done anything about the reports is relatively disconcerting.

When you report somebody for such behavior, -always- include a screenshot (or more than one if they smack talk a ton or have multiple TKs). If PGI still doesn't do anything about it, then consider alternatives.

[Lily from animove]

Phaeric Cyrh, on 27 February 2015 - 08:30 AM, said:

You are missing my point.. How do they "note the players name"? How do they record these complaints and cross-reference them later without spending time to do so? How do they know Y player has had X many reports filed against them for team killing?

The answer is they would have to open a ticket and document the complaint. How long does this take? Surely you aren't suggesting they completely ignore complaints, and don't create a ticket, which they cross reference for additional complaints because then how would they keep track of these complaints? In their head? Word of mouth? If they get so many complaints about all these things (and I believe they are busy) how do they keep track?

How much longer beyond creating a ticket does it take to click on their profile and look to see how many team kills they have in a given period of time? A minute? Maybe less?

Regardless, and for the 3rd time, we are recognizing that it is perhaps too cumbersome and not efficient for PGI to actually check up on these themselves and that they should implement something to take care of it in game. Simply don't have it apply to private matches since that wouldn't make sense anyway, if one repeatedly invites a TK into ones private match then I guess that would kind of make that person an idiot.

I doubt the logs record the teamkills and I doubt the you just click somehting and you do have this "shownW stats and logs ar ebig this ia an MMO, you will need quite some time to get even these statistcis. Servers would explode when upport guys additional to their usual load have to do all this support invenstigation stuff. have you ever worked with large scale software analysing logs probably not. a simple search in adatabase can last quite some time

So the usual form such a guy at the support has may be a simple GUI where he enters who reportet what about who.

so it may be a simple 3 field 2 freetext and 1 selectbox.

he types (or copy and pastes) the name of the one who wrote the mail, in the one, selects (griefing) as report reason from a dropdown menu, and nters the name of the guy it is about. done.


time: 1-2 minutes.

I work in It with bigger systems and the things are not as quick and easy as you think. And everytime you do just another subfilter with a new attribute like excluding priate matches this needs developement time and it needs exceution time and this sums up rather quick and a lot more than one may think.
There is a buttload of superexpensve specialists focussed on database performance optimisation because this is a very diffucult topic on a real big scale. and the more you track the more you have to store somewhere in logs or databses. and thats far from quick, even if the scripts actually would be easy. because such scripts would be huge. And on database level this would be the same. Disk space in datacenters for companies is hella expensive. (Unlike for private persons). Because there are service level agreements behind this in relation to discspace, and backup concepts and many many other stuff.. So you will porbably not try to gather every bit and piece of data unless you do this for a short time and a specific purpose, but surely not because you want to catch a single troll for 40 tk's in a month and let you cost this feature like 1000$ a month more. And this just for gathering the data. it does not even include analysing and processing this data. And then we come to the next expensive thing: Most licensed databses have a per core license, bigger databse = more cores = lotas expesnive (again). or making this in logs means having more need for CPU's which again more expensive.

I do not think you really have an idea what supporting such a "on the fly through all the logs" system would actually cost to store the data analyse and process, but I can tell you it is not cheap on the level that MWO operates.

[Phaeric Cyrh]

Lily from animove, on 27 February 2015 - 08:54 AM, said:

I doubt the logs record the teamkills and I doubt the you just click somehting and you do have this "shownW stats and logs ar ebig this ia an MMO, you will need quite some time to get even these statistcis. Servers would explode when upport guys additional to their usual load have to do all this support invenstigation stuff. have you ever worked with large scale software analysing logs probably not. a simple search in adatabase can last quite some time

So the usual form such a guy at the support has may be a simple GUI where he enters who reportet what about who.

so it may be a simple 3 field 2 freetext and 1 selectbox.

he types (or copy and pastes) the name of the one who wrote the mail, in the one, selects (griefing) as report reason from a dropdown menu, and nters the name of the guy it is about. done.


time: 1-2 minutes.

I work in It with bigger systems and the things are not as quick and easy as you think. And everytime you do just another subfilter with a new attribute like excluding priate matches this needs developement time and it needs exceution time and this sums up rather quick and a lot more than one may think.
There is a buttload of superexpensve specialists focussed on database performance optimisation because this is a very diffucult topic on a real big scale. and the more you track the more you have to store somewhere in logs or databses. and thats far from quick, even if the scripts actually would be easy. because such scripts would be huge. And on database level this would be the same. Disk space in datacenters for companies is hella expensive. (Unlike for private persons). Because there are service level agreements behind this in relation to discspace, and backup concepts and many many other stuff.. So you will porbably not try to gather every bit and piece of data unless you do this for a short time and a specific purpose, but surely not because you want to catch a single troll for 40 tk's in a month and let you cost this feature like 1000$ a month more. And this just for gathering the data. it does not even include analysing and processing this data. And then we come to the next expensive thing: Most licensed databses have a per core license, bigger databse = more cores = lotas expesnive (again). or making this in logs means having more need for CPU's which again more expensive.

I do not think you really have an idea what supporting such a "on the fly through all the logs" system would actually cost to store the data analyse and process, but I can tell you it is not cheap on the level that MWO operates.

I'm a network engineer, so I know how this **** works.

As far as accessing this data, I would bet you are wrong. After all I can click on my profile here https://mwomercs.com/profile/stats and get stats in about 10 seconds, down to how much damage I have done with each mech variant I own, and the accuracy of every weapon I have ever fired including detailed stats of shots fired, hit, missed, damage done and the overall time I have ever used it, and you don't think PGI has access to how many team kills I have made? And that somehow accessing this one single field of data, what 50, 100 times a day (and there is no freaking way it is even this many TK complaints with screenshots daily) is going to bog down thier servers? What the hell kind of database do you think they are running MySQL?

They give players the ability to access these kinds of stats with a click of a web button and you think support techs accessing this database a few more times a day to verify TK complaints is going to bog down their systems? I have news for you, they aint running on Tandy's with magnetic tape drives anymore ok.. It's 2015 not 1995.

If you think the problem is that they aren't logging this stat, then the obvious question is WHY THE HELL NOT?

Edited by Phaeric Cyrh, 27 February 2015 - 09:19 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Phaeric Cyrh, on 27 February 2015 - 09:08 AM, said:

I'm a network engineer, so I know how this **** works.

As far as accessing this data, I would bet you are wrong. After all I can click on my profile here https://mwomercs.com/profile/stats and get stats in about 10 seconds, down to how much damage I have done with each mech variant I own, and the accuracy of every weapon I have ever fired including detailed stats of shots fired, hit, missed, damage done and the overall time I have ever used it, and you don't think PGI has access to how many team kills I have made? And that somehow accessing this one single field of data, what 50, 100 times a day (and there is no freaking way it is even this many TK complaints with screenshots daily) is going to bog down thier servers? What the hell kind of database do you think they are running MySQL?

They give players the ability to access these kinds of stats with a click of a web button and you think support techs accessing this database a few more times a day to verify TK complaints is going to bog down their systems? I have news for you, they aint running on Tandy's with magnetic tape drives anymore ok.. It's 2015 not 1995.

If you think the problem is that they aren't logging this stat, then the obvious question is WHY THE HELL NOT?

and here we go, these stats are mostly just a value in a db, thats all, ther eis no life tracking when did what happen and with which frequency, further do we know how broken these stats actually are.
And the game does not check tk's obviously and woul probably not even be able to differ them between private and public.
and who said, that your stats from the the homepage are actually the stats directly taken from ingame databses or logs? its mostly a few values in a single databse sheet made for every user being exported by the game instead being a database request everytime someone looks into his stats. And those stats are long term stats thy actually say nothing specific. So wheres the difference betwen the guy playing 2 years having gathered 40tks, ot the guy palying 2 years suddenly wenting butthurtmode making them in 1 week on purpose? You don't knwo them these stats tell nothing specifc.

Why do you think is the challange stats delayed by 15 minutes when the playerstats are a on 10 second base? because very likely you are not entering the game database when going to your stats. those stats are mostlikely sending this regulary to a seperated databse on the forum. and as said, these stats an accounts lifetime result they tell not much for these kind of cases or when a tk was made. remember the times when people had no teamindication triangle? people racked u a lot tk's during this time because they thought its an ecm protected opponent.

Now you want a support guy judge the future of an account by these inaccurate partially broken stats not even saying you anythign deeper? WOW

Edited by Lily from animove, 27 February 2015 - 09:37 AM.

[Phaeric Cyrh]

Lily from animove, on 27 February 2015 - 09:36 AM, said:

and here we go, these stats are mostly just a value in a db, thats all, ther eis no life tracking when did what happen and with which frequency, further do we know how broken these stats actually are.
And the game does not check tk's obviously and woul probably not even be able to differ them between private and public.
and who said, that your stats from the the homepage are actually the stats directly taken from ingame databses or logs? its mostly a few values in a single databse sheet made for every user being exported by the game instead being a database request everytime someone looks into his stats. And those stats are long term stats thy actually say nothing specific. So wheres the difference betwen the guy playing 2 years having gathered 40tks, ot the guy palying 2 years suddenly wenting butthurtmode making them in 1 week on purpose? You don't knwo them these stats tell nothing specifc.

Why do you think is the challange stats delayed by 15 minutes when the playerstats are a on 10 second base? because very likely you are not entering the game database when going to your stats. those stats are mostlikely sending this regulary to a seperated databse on the forum. and as said, these stats an accounts lifetime result they tell not much for these kind of cases or when a tk was made. remember the times when people had no teamindication triangle? people racked u a lot tk's during this time because they thought its an ecm protected opponent.

Now you want a support guy judge the future of an account by these inaccurate partially broken stats not even saying you anythign deeper? WOW

Well DUH! of course this data is being exported to a searchable database.. Not sure what your point is really.. So, uh, lets just say we agree on this.. Yes, your profile data is being exported to a searchable database every x number of minutes or whatever.

Cool..

And now... You are saying that this data is broken and unreliable? You don't think PGI can accurately record kills? Seriously?

Next point.. I was never referring to banning someone on a single incident, so you can quit building that straw man now. Nor was I suggesting that PGI would need to know the exact date and times each TK occurred so as to verify individual occurrences. Not sure how you got that idea when I clearly was referring to someone like the subject of this post who is obviously a serial team killer and this would be apparent with a quick glance at the players profile.

Regardless, none of your arguments have made any sense.. This data is (or should be) easily obtainable by PGI. Querying the database to look at TK numbers would not bog down the servers, nor would it result in an unreasonable burden to PGI employees to check.

Furthermore I HAVE BEEN ARGUING THIS WHOLE TIME THAT PGI SHOULD NOT BE BOTHERED WITH IT AND SHOULD INSTEAD BUILD A MECHANISM IN GAME TO DEAL WITH IT. That way we can get the TK's out of the game and PGI's employees nor it's database need worry about it unless someone actually gets banned and then they can review the data to decide if the account should be reinstated if that person were to appeal the action.

I have stated this numerous times and you keep ignoring it, so until you address it, or make some other actual rational argument that furthers the discussion I am done.

Edited by Phaeric Cyrh, 27 February 2015 - 10:07 AM.

[NetherlightWolf]

This guy sounds like someone named baby jesus in the past. Had to kill him in his firedstarter after he shot 3 ppcs into my dire wolf's back not even 30 seconds into the match.