149 replies to this topic

[Belisarius1]

Zylo, on 02 May 2012 - 07:25 PM, said:

Couldn't this be used against players that have done nothing wrong?

There will certainly be rival merc groups within the same factions. If merc group X is for example recruiting members away from merc group Y what would be stopping merc group Y members from filing false complaints against any merc group X members that happen to end up on the same team in a match?

A system would need to be less open to abuse to be effective, otherwise it would create more problems than it solves.

That's exactly why any system related to this has to be neutered from day one.

An approval rating or whatever is fine so long as all it gives is bragging rights. As soon as this stuff starts to have real consequences, whether rewards for good behavior or restrictions for bad behavior, people will abuse it to upvote their friends and ban that guy who always kills them.

Edited by Belisarius†, 02 May 2012 - 07:53 PM.

[Hayashi]

Why not just set an ignore button so that you'll never hear/see what someone whom you ignored is doing?

Suddenly people become much less offensive when like AI, they are unable to interact with you.

And anything they do substantially that could influence the outcomes of battles, like friendly fire, can be dealt with via mechanisms to deal with those, specifically.

Because, after all, you can't quite abuse a system that just silences a player from your perspective only, and has no effect on the player himself.

[Rejarial Galatan]

If you want to assign a negative rating to a player for harrasing, then let the devs do so based on the reports and proof filed with them. cuz, i cannot think of a better non jaded or biased way to fairly do something like this.

[Belisarius1]

Rejarial Galatan, on 02 May 2012 - 07:59 PM, said:

If you want to assign a negative rating to a player for harrasing, then let the devs do so based on the reports and proof filed with them. cuz, i cannot think of a better non jaded or biased way to fairly do something like this.

Do you have any idea how much time it would take to sift through all those reports?

Good old fashioned ignore button is more than enough.

[Hayashi]

Belisarius†, on 02 May 2012 - 08:04 PM, said:

Do you have any idea how much time it would take to sift through all those reports?

Even nubnub doesn't have enough friends to deal with the volume of reports that will start once the game is released and random jerks start [s]trolling ingame.

[Insidious Johnson]

Hayashi, on 02 May 2012 - 07:59 PM, said:

Why not just set an ignore button so that you'll never hear/see what someone whom you ignored is doing?

Suddenly people become much less offensive when like AI, they are unable to interact with you.

And anything they do substantially that could influence the outcomes of battles, like friendly fire, can be dealt with via mechanisms to deal with those, specifically.

Because, after all, you can't quite abuse a system that just silences a player from your perspective only, and has no effect on the player himself.

Identify target, Ignore Target, Shoot Target. Streamlined and Sexy!

[Zylo]

Insidious Johnson, on 02 May 2012 - 09:08 PM, said:

Identify target, Ignore Target, Shoot Target. Streamlined and Sexy!

Except if the target happens to be on your team. In that case the troublemaker might end up reporting you for TKing. Even worse if the game uses a WoT style TK flag some on your team might start firing at you not knowing the history of the troublemaker you decided to TK.

[Victor Morson]

Glory, on 01 May 2012 - 10:38 AM, said:

I definitely do agree with you on this.

It would, however, be nice to have a more welcoming community on the whole for all players, even those who are Lone Wolves.

That's one big reason I really hope there's an easy to use friends list/invite system in the game, on the other end of the spectrum. Playing with lone wolves in a game like, say, Left 4 Dead can be a torturous experience; however, about 1 in every 5 games you'll bump into someone that's pretty cool and skilled as well. By adding these people to my friends list I've ended up with dozens of players I can get into a game with and encountered purely through Lone Wolfing.

Lone wolves that really get into the game will almost positively want to join a unit down the line anyway, with very few exceptions, so this is a good way for people to meet and form groups or join existing ones as well. Honestly I think a friends list is more important than an ignore list by a mile, really.

[Triskin]

Well your right about the abuse of other teams or merc units just tagging you as a bad player..

But I would say at least they could have a ignore/no play list for people that just get online and call everyone names or point to their junk. That way after about a month of them doing this they get to ONLY play with people that like that kind of stuff and we get to play the real game with great people.

[Rejarial Galatan]

Belisarius†, on 02 May 2012 - 08:04 PM, said:

Do you have any idea how much time it would take to sift through all those reports?

Good old fashioned ignore button is more than enough.

No, the ignore button is NOT enough, not by a LONG SHOT. When ppl harrass players, aside from good ol fasion RP harrassing of opposing houses or clans, it is serious. Belisarius, I direct you to this: http://penny-arcade....sode/harassment
Watch that, very very interesting. And having been the recipient of near LEATHAL PHYSICAL harrassment and verbal/psychological harrassment, I believe we need to do more than mute the trolls who launch this toxic assault on others and give good, honest gamers a bad name.

[Belisarius1]

You can't police that kind of thing with an algorithmic system. The best you can do is introduce blanket, draconian restrictions that negatively effect and limit everyone who plays the game, that might happen to catch a couple of griefers who are too stupid to find workarounds.

[Rejarial Galatan]

I would rather exterminate with extreme predjudice on the harrassers than just silence them with a mute button. I am sorry, but muting them doesnt fix it, only hides it. The issue as a whole will NOT go away by ignoring it. It WILL go away by taking action, being PROACTIVE and doing everything we can to rid them from the game. I cannot nor WILL i speak to the opinions of others on this, but, I have a 0 tollerance for ANY for of REAL griefing or harrassing. Harrass me all you want in terms of Role PLaying, but, take it outside that, and I will report it. Period. THe end of those trolls begins with those of us who are willing to stand up and take action and not just react.

[Zylo]

Belisarius†, on 03 May 2012 - 09:59 PM, said:

You can't police that kind of thing with an algorithmic system. The best you can do is introduce blanket, draconian restrictions that negatively effect and limit everyone who plays the game, that might happen to catch a couple of griefers who are too stupid to find workarounds.

Some of the problems like team killing can be handled with mechanics. Same with language, put an optional default ON chat filter for those who are easily offended.

Anything else could be reported but of course that makes more work for the devs. Punish the worst offenders of course, but also punish the worst of those who abuse the system by reporting things that aren't violations as they are wasting the time of the staff. I doubt the staff will want to deal with someone complaining that another player is trolling them just because that player accused of trolling is making the other look like a fool on the forums or in game.

[Belisarius1]

Rejarial Galatan, on 03 May 2012 - 10:03 PM, said:

I would rather exterminate with extreme predjudice on the harrassers than just silence them with a mute button. I am sorry, but muting them doesnt fix it, only hides it. The issue as a whole will NOT go away by ignoring it. It WILL go away by taking action, being PROACTIVE and doing everything we can to rid them from the game. I cannot nor WILL i speak to the opinions of others on this, but, I have a 0 tollerance for ANY for of REAL griefing or harrassing. Harrass me all you want in terms of Role PLaying, but, take it outside that, and I will report it. Period. THe end of those trolls begins with those of us who are willing to stand up and take action and not just react.

Then you probably shouldn't be on the internet. Period. Sorry.

Also since all caps appear to make an argument stronger: it WILL NOT go away if you introduce ridiculous penalties and filters and big-brotherisms. That will just make the griefers SMARTER as they find ways to avoid restrictions, while ANNOYING THE CRAP out of a lot of perfectly innocent players who become collateral.

Zylo, on 03 May 2012 - 10:15 PM, said:

Anything else could be reported but of course that makes more work for the devs. Punish the worst offenders of course, but also punish the worst of those who abuse the system by reporting things that aren't violations as they are wasting the time of the staff. I doubt the staff will want to deal with someone complaining that another player is trolling them just because that player accused of trolling is making the other look like a fool on the forums or in game.

A reporting system that requires a PGI employee to manually check every submission just will not work. They have far more important things to do. I think people are severely underestimating how much work those would be to sift through, even if you hand out penalties to egregious over-submitters.

An in server mute is fine, as is an opt-out chat filter. A per-game vote-kick system would also be possible, but it would have to be very carefully done. I'd like to see votes counted seperately within sides; to my knowledge, that's something very few games have done but makes a lot of sense. So to deal with griefers and TKers, a 7/12 majority within a team might be enough to kick their own teammates. Barring hackers - which are a totally seperate issue - I don't know that I can think of any good reason to kick someone on the other team.

It's possible that once the metagame gets going, houses could have internal discipline systems in lieu of devs sifting through behavior reports. They would have to be completely player-run and self-sufficient, supported only by an interface that makes them possible. Even that's far too open to abuse for my taste.

Edited by Belisarius†, 03 May 2012 - 11:55 PM.

[Victor Morson]

Rejarial Galatan, on 03 May 2012 - 10:03 PM, said:

I would rather exterminate with extreme predjudice on the harrassers than just silence them with a mute button. I am sorry, but muting them doesnt fix it, only hides it. The issue as a whole will NOT go away by ignoring it. It WILL go away by taking action, being PROACTIVE and doing everything we can to rid them from the game. I cannot nor WILL i speak to the opinions of others on this, but, I have a 0 tollerance for ANY for of REAL griefing or harrassing. Harrass me all you want in terms of Role PLaying, but, take it outside that, and I will report it. Period. THe end of those trolls begins with those of us who are willing to stand up and take action and not just react.

Some serious, honest advice: Don't ever make this rant in game, or even on the forums once the game goes live. If anyone heard how much you are offended by verbal harassment, I can absolutely guarantee you will be trolled until the end of time. The less craps you give, the less problems you have and if someone knows they're under your skin, they will burrow in deeper.

Quite simply to someone that's being a dick there's not much humor into annoying someone who doesn't care but there's lots to someone who gets upset. Throwing threats of "reporting them" (As said, PGI nor do other game companies have the time to deal with this unless it's really severe, and even then probably not) will just add fuel to the fire, because they know it won't do anything - it's positively not even remotely scaring them off. In short everything you just said is like blood in the water to the people you hate.

So yeah. To paraphrase the intro of MST3k, repeat to yourself it's just the internet. You should really just relax.

Edited by Victor Morson, 04 May 2012 - 02:16 AM.

[8100d 5p4tt3r]

I am inclined to think that playing a game such as Battletech that a minimum level of intelligence is required and with that a level of maturity.

Saying that, I have been part of a few Betas and early forum access for at least three games over the last 2 years and in that time I have seem the forums start out relatively civil but as the game(s) received more attention from the player base the forums degraded rather quickly into a haven for snide, immature and just out right trash of all shades with bickering and nothing really constructive in the forums other then constant whining.

I hope that fate is not the same for this game.

I want to hope that the Mechwarrior community can stay above that level. Though there will be an influx of trash, especially being F2P. The least we can do is weed that out but I fear it will happen regardless.

In my love of Battletech and Mechwarrior I can't say the last time I came across a ****** bag of a tool, in contrast to FPS/MMOs that are already on the market.

Not to say they aren't out there, just not nearly as many.

Now, considering the range of age that is aware and involved with the community, I am inclined to think there is a solid base for the game to grow from and keep the community lite on the ****** baggery.

Edited by 8100d 5p4tt3r, 04 May 2012 - 06:52 AM.

[Havoc2]

This is the internet.

It's the haven for people who used to be "telephone tough-guys". Everyone is a 7 foot tall 400lb black-belt whos sister could kick your dad's arse on the internet.

Years ago when we were all playing MW2 online we were the ones smart enough to figure out the commands (or follow directions) to get online though DOS, then to figure out the ping of someone so we could hit them through all the lag.
If we sucked, we changed things and improved.

Now, everyone under the age of 16 has grown up with the internet. Things have been made as stupid resistant as possible to make it accessible for everyone and therefor more profitable.
If someone sucks, it's something else's fault. The weapons are unbalanced, everyone else is cheating, their connection sucks blah blah wah wah wah.

There is going to be crying, there is going to be whining, there will be d-bags who walk to do nothing except talk about how big their e-peen is in public chat. There may be personal attacks.

As Hayashi has already said. Ignore button works wonders.

[Victor Morson]

8100d 5p4tt3r, on 04 May 2012 - 06:50 AM, said:

I am inclined to think that playing a game such as Battletech that a minimum level of intelligence is required and with that a level of maturity.

I invite you to spend some time with the most notorious members of Smoke Jag over in MWLL and see what you think afterwords.

[Rejarial Galatan]

Belisarius†, on 03 May 2012 - 11:37 PM, said:

Then you probably shouldn't be on the internet. Period. Sorry.

Also since all caps appear to make an argument stronger: it WILL NOT go away if you introduce ridiculous penalties and filters and big-brotherisms. That will just make the griefers SMARTER as they find ways to avoid restrictions, while ANNOYING THE CRAP out of a lot of perfectly innocent players who become collateral.

Obviously you have never been the victim of physical, emotional or verbal harassment. I have, and one of them nearly killed me. Ignoring harrassment, or muting them or taking such passive steps will not do anything to end it. We must stand up and put a stop to it, by any means necessary. In the short view, those who troll or call names do so thanks to the anonymity we get on the internet. It also boils down to a plethera of people who think: ignore it/them and it will go away. No, this isnt the way to do it. We gotta find ways to spot, and persecute them, show them by what ever means/tools the dev team give us. Make the environment hostile to them. Not hostile in terms of griefing/harassing the griefers, but, labeling them as such for all to see in some way. As to your claim of it makes them smarter or they find work arounds? IF they were able to get smarter, in all honesty, they would see that what they are doing is having a serious effect on those they target and would appologize for the activity and end it. BUT, that is a long long, millenia + distance from where we sit now. No. We gotta do something, something MORE than ignore them and HOPE it goes away.

[Halfinax]

I believe that peer review is a good solution here. Rather than the devs going purely based on what other players say a player did. Basically members of the community can watch a full replay of the battle (including text...maybe voice as well, but since that isn't in at launch it's moot) to see if the offenses actually occured and then report that back via reviewers' poll to the devs on whether or not the offense was real.