Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Great to hear that active gm staffing is going to be a thing!
Totally agree though about the man hours \ reports issue (lord knows I for one am easily offended by certain topics) so should probably ponder on that more right now....
Sure enough there are things that are just outright offensive and should not be allowed! But IMO it becomes a bit more tricky when you play with so many nationality's. See all those nationality's bring with them an awful lot of cultural differences, which in terms isn't necessarily bad! But what you out right might find offensive an other might perceive as normal! soo ... i personally like to refrain from expressing myself out loud in certain situations just because i don't know a persons background, and since i cant look through my monitor and doing just that, i just hope that more people would find it in their heart to think before they say or act!
So in this case i am going to agree with the people that went for the ignore button. Punishing people with out them realizing what they did do "wrong" never solves the problem that lies underneath. If anything i believe that a community of gamers which are playing an "Massive multiplayer online game" should be able to have social skills enough telling the offender that what they are doing/saying is perceived as offensive and "wrong" at least in the culture from which you are! If there is enough mutual respect it should end there! If not you could always ignore the offender, and if there is an option to place a complaint to a GM that should be more then sufficient!
The last thing you want to do in this case is let players take matters in their own hands, and be able to punish other players! Such a system can very easily be abused to thwart your enemy's in a game such as this, which is an unwanted result if you would ask me!
Regards Boes aka Belmos
Of course when report is near the fine line, not enough to be accepted, but enough to see that the report had some merit, then there wouldn't be consequences for reporter.
Consequences would only go for an obvious troll reports, and reports that are very far from the level of reasonable cause. The further the report is from the line of reasonable cause, consequence for false reporting would be harsher.
That being said, I know that this wouldn't completely eliminate a workload from moderators.
It's indeed tricky to find a mechanic that helps to keep chat channels in line, but the one that still doesn't put overly strong pressure on moderators.
We really are a different breed. A lot more crass, and not as easily offended, as most other nationalities I have played with.
You can very easily tell an Aussie server.
My goal is to be able to use world chat as a normal person without seeing "lul, rekt, gtfo pleb" in every second post. True, the community can self police stuff, but only if the majority of it has an IQ over 25. Sadly, the majority of the MMO community belongs to toxicity now, so if the community should take care of it, even the normal people will turn toxic in the end.
Anyone who has ever played an MMO knows the terms under which they are allowed to chat. It's not a surprise to anyone the kind of speech that won't be tolerated.
Being a goober, or being annoying will never be moderated. Then ignore is the only way. Technically we can also combat toxicity by actively fostering a better community: answering questions promptly and properly, be welcoming and helpful, etc, but that is a player choice not a game mechanic.
I would also expect Intrepid to have a language filter you can turn off or on, so swearing won't be moderated, unless it is coupled with the offensive speech deemed so under the ToS.
Communities in MMOs were not always toxic. I know that will come off as nostalgic, but really they weren't. It has been a fairly steady decline over time, but one can argue that this is simply a decline of empathy and care for our fellow humans that is manifesting in society in general.
It really is up to us, the players, to create a better community. To help ourselves by helping others (but still killing them when the time is right). I,for one, look forward to the challenge of creating this community, not just being a part of it.
This is a very valid point, especially on EU. Let me use two examples here which of course will be very generalised, doesn't mean it applies to everyone in that nation:
Take for example a Swedish person. Swedish culture asks of its people to behave in a more reserved manner and keep a fair share of personal distance.
Italian culture on the other hand tends to be more active, talkative and the borders for personal space are much smaller than in my previous example.
Both cultures have their reason for existing and they both deserve their place in this world, but obviously it can lead to problems with communication and what is polite to one might be really rude to the other.
wont see it be spammed eternally then annd forces ppl to interact more personally *shrug*
Personally all I think that is required for a great game environment is for everyone to be:
Kultured (mature attitude), Kind (offering help and answering any questions) and
Konsiderate (to the feelings of others and their gaming experience
Sadly we are all humans so it's easy to forget ourselves behind a screen. (Lord that was annoying of me.
I wonder whether also a community report button that would automatically show the reporter a pop up -
ie:
This is ashes language policy, are you positive that this is a reportable issue rather than a miscommunication etc etc.. and listing a basic consequence if they continually misreport...
Then offer a button to click below to confirm or dismiss... and possibly even give it a five minute 'emotional cooldown' lock before sending.
Might make people think twice about excessive reporting and take a bit of the pressure off?
Reporting someone should also be limited, in a sense that a specific post can only be reported once, as every report is reviewed and submited by the offender, as well as no new reports about the same player can be issued if there is still a open report form.
The report form obviously cannot be moved or minimized and will be centered on the screen, forcing people to fill it iout and not ignore or dismiss it.
This might actually work and teach people some manners, but I am afraid this might be abused during PvP fights which would cause instant death to the reported player if it pops up during a fight. But then again, you shouldnt really chat while fighting other than with your guild/group, and they are unlikely to report you.
Thats generally part of the ratings in the US. It covers the fact that people on the internet are both simultaneously awesome and awful. Trolls will be trolls. Giving power to those in the community that have shown themselves to be level headed is an interesting idea, but could be abused aswell.
I saw this on wow on my own server in WoW. The blues were so excessive with their moderation the server made its own forum, and invited all the regulars to it. Before it was shut down after 6ish years it had 1500+ registered users. The same drama, the same World PvP happen threads, the same tears, but now outside of blizz's reach.
If you aren't careful then you may turn the ingame chat into a ghost town as everyone sticks to other forms of communication. Perhaps an unofficial server discord? Unfortunately you cannot moderate by numbers. You have to be able to see the whole picture, understand what was said in jest, what's part of a in game rivalry, and what is over the line. Furthermore a little bit of drama is good for a game, you want players to be passionate, and yea that passion will boil over at a few points, and yea threats of violence racial epithets, and slurs should not be tolerated. I usually favor less moderation over more, but a basic level is needed, and should be done by a professional team, not by a team of little dictators getting a rise out of hitting ban on anything that can be interpreted as "Toxic"
How though could the community help, or what does the intrepid team need to put in place to help take the weight of trolling through reports off of the server mods, or are there any ideas that you think might be worth considering that could help to retain a community that is friendly, welcoming and inclusive in public chat?
I think we have issue of Utopianism. This idea that we can build a "Friendly, welcoming, and inclusive community for all". The issue with this goal is we set this high standard for people to achieve, and then when they fail to live up to it we punish them, and it just becomes more draconian from there.
The reality is you will always have shitty people. Do you really think you can sanitize the AoC "community" from shitty people, when all it takes to be part of the "community" is the price of the game? The question is to what level do you tolerate that behavior, what behavior do you unintentionally discourage, and what behavior to you encourage when you give one person the power to police another?
They could even get creative and invent new words, same as when lol became lel, cock became cuck and so on.
Let's assume a mature filter is in the game, I can toggle if I want my virgin ears exposed to such filth.
If a user has it off we can assume they don't take issue with explicit language, and by extension we give an implicit approval for players to use such language in the game.
Ok so now I can say bitch in game. That Dragon was a bitch, that quest is a bitch to do, life's a bitch. If the game approves of cursing I can't imagine it would take issue with this.
"Quit your bitching." Pretty contextual. Is it in jest, an inside joke, what was the spirit it was said in? Does a bot pick up on that? Does it give further context to the mod who then renders judgment?
Also the logs generated by this bot would be huge. I'd feel sorry for anyone who would have to examine that data set.
If it's specific words that we don't want to be used then just censor those words. If people try to circumvent the filter then that in itself could be a violation.
I've found it often to be the case.
I've seen plenty of servers maintain a great environment for years, the issue as Ive seen it is as soon as one person starts publicly abusing chat, someone else thinks oh thats ok... until almost all the chat is irrelevant and unwelcoming to new players.
It doesn't normally happen fast, it's a snowball situation.
Although eventually you end up with a public chat that most of the population ignore.
But before the snowball grows, you have that positive environment.
So it's not at all an unachievable goal. Not Utopianism but an actual possibility.
With the right environment, the right safeguards, the right moderator structure maintaining something akin to a great environment shouldn't be seen as unachievable.
And I in no way hope to sanitize the community from shitty people, I think shitty people have just as much right to be here as anyone else.
What I'm trying to do is gather together ideas that Intrepid might consider worth thinking about, and to try to make sure that one shitty person in Ashes doesn't stand a chance of making the whole game a nasty environment for folks to spend their time.
I get the feeling you may not have read the entire thread, but my last comment about mods was referring to the Intrepid hired mods How can we make their job easier?
Thus your question about power of policing is one that needs to be directed towards Intrepid, not myself.
Also as to what kind of goals I'd be happy seeing in public chat, see my stupidly named kkk list.
I was always told that in brainstorming, it doesn't matter how stupid the idea, as long as you can get ideas in the first place.
That's because detailed critiquing such as the one you provided, come once you've got an idea of the best rough final plan to work on.
So whilst I appreciated the time and work you'd put into your critique of my original idea, I was attempting to gently nudge you towards moving towards producing ideas new to the thread.
Having already acknowledged that my idea was pants and moved on, I saw no reason to go back over it
It's interesting to see chat sometimes that looks like complete gibberish due to missing words. Sometimes when you think about it you can fill in the gaps, but other times...
If we have to have a language filter, than please make it optional. I'm an adult. I pay bills, go to work and even drive. I'm not a 4rth grader that needs to be ordered around and policed. If I want to say "eat my ass" I have every right.
If you don't want to see it, then keep your language filter on.
But spoiler alert, most people turn it off. Why? Because it's annoying to see ##_-&#@$ every 15 seconds because someone said "fartface"
There are a bunch of other words that are widely accepted to be ok for censoring. I would think they are fairly obvious. It's been done in more than one game and it can differ between territories.
I understand the point of language filters (publishers gotta tick that box) but any 13 year old playing an MMO, hell any ten year old, is going to know how to turn them off.
The Internet isn't just the Internet, the world is the world.
This was working well, but then the merge came, and we have had to start all over. A lot of the trolls we had gotten rid of were back with us. It's interesting for me to watch the process start all over again, but I am encouraged because it has restarted. Basically what has happened is that a lot of the core people from my old server have stood up and said "This is not acceptable behavior." They have been outspoken against the troll and helpful to those to whom the troll is acting poorly. This has encourage others to behave similarly.
My point with this is that all it has taken is the community, acting together, to clear out the trolls. There are the usual ignore and chat filter options, but those are just tools. If the community is willing to tolerate them (as they did on the other servers), then they will continue to be a problem. If the majority of the community fights that kind of behavior by acting in an opposite manner, then they will go somewhere else that feeds their needs better.
So, imho, what we need is less a way to punish the trolls and more a way to encourage positive behavior.
If you really think about it the only place to let loose is anonymously online. People are afraid of being punished for having different opinions from what is considered politically correct, so everything gets pushed underground.
When things get chased underground you can't see them. Then perhaps they grow into something monstrous. One such monster is called toxicity in the (insertgamehere) community.