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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
Other than that, things like being notified of people banned when you report them, reasoning for changes being made to mechanics or skills being given, not allowing name changes, and banning DPS meters help a lot.
/ˌlesāˈfer/
noun
noun: laissez-faire
a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering.
I think there should be a clear set of rules for everyone to play by without room for biased interpretations. There should be features to mute which handles spammers and overall rude people.
I think a fair amount of toxicity is good for a community, because a game driven by story telling between players, needs bad guys to motivate others and to act as foil characters for the good guys.
Undoubtedly toxicity is a problem that exists in almost all games where interaction between players is allowed, and it is a very important issue since this has a direct impact on the abandonment of the game, especially of new players, which for being low level, and not being able to enter to strong guilds, or because they are casual players, they cannot be compared with veteran players, who are often intolerant with them, insulting and limiting newbie players in different ways. Reducing in part the constant growth of the community.
The purpose of Intrepid Studios as a business must be to attract (not lose) as many players as possible, providing quality entertainment and systems that allow the balance and coexistence of as many types of players as possible. For this reason, I consider that banning players for being toxic is not a solution either, since, for the company, it becomes the same: loss of players.
That is why it becomes necessary to implement systems that allow a decrease, redirection, and incentivity of a better behavior, thus maintaining a balance between all parties, and reducing the effort of the Intrepid Studios team in the solution of conflicts. Fortunately, Ashes of Creation is a game that seeks to be directed by the community, allowing the players themselves to create the world, this makes certain levels of toxicity necessary, to give more excitement, dynamism and realism to the game, providing great possibilities for systems like the node war , castles sieges, corruption, caravans, among others.
Systems to avoid contact:
Blacklist, Mute X Time
Decrease systems:
PK: The corruption system and bounty system already exists, and this can be effective for both to protect veteran people and beginners, providing entertainment and realism to the game.
Insults in Chat or VoIP: I suggest a system managed by the government of the node, where you as an affected person can place a report to an npc, the npc will give you to choose options such as Reason? Insults, etc., etc. Where did it happen? Battleground, Dungeon, Raid, etc. Name of the player? And a copy of the chat log will be attached.
This will allow the government of your node, to have an archive of all the reported players in this node, and being able to sort by type of node, node, reason, and name of the player.
This will make the rulers can take care of the peace of its inhabitants, and build the policy within the node and with other nodes. After a certain number of reports to the same player, the government may place infringements for a certain time such as more expensive taxes, etc. Or even allowing the governor, if many of the players are repeat offenders and from the same guild, place infractions on the entire guild. Or ask other nodes to make the same infraction to a certain guild or player when they are within that node. The other nodes may also reject these requests, generate mutual support agreements, or wars.
It would be a way in which even the most newbie players and veterans could be protected by their own government, although that will depend on how each government works. There will be governments that will want to help more, others that don't. Everything will be the choice of the same players.
Redirection Systems:
Castle Sieges
Guild wars
Node Sieges
Node War
If the people want to fight, lets them fight in the correct place.
Incentive systems:
These systems can be like the mentoring system, among others. This way veterans will be able to receive rewards from their apprentices, and teach them to learn the mechanics of dungeons or raids. Or even help on other issues. This is a system that must be taken care of to avoid taking advantage of it without helping anyone, but at the same time allowing beginners to be trained, which will be very useful for beginners, and will give them a better gaming experience.
We need effective incentive systems, to reduce the amount of toxic people, and at the same time, that beginners and novices in certain content will have the possibility to learn.
Reporting System:
This would be a system to report players, the cases would be investigated by Intrepid Studios, but this will only be for extreme cases of harassment, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and sexual harassment, among others.
Really thx for reading me, and continue doing a great job like always.
Maybe a temporary forced title (ie. "Loot Pirate", "Group Quitter", or even community driven ones) or an in-game "list" that can be accessed combined with the suggest "Karma" system above
Tek
Not necessary, if you are having computer bans. You should be able to have clear rules that cover every situation otherwise how is the automatic system banning? As for human bans, of course, it's no longer possible since toxicity is a bit abstract.
League of Legends has a computer system that automatically hands out bans and it is USELESS. Why? Because context is important. Simply put, the system has a list of words and phrases that it considers to be toxic, and when a player report is submitted (regardless of the reason for the report), it scans the chat and hands out punishments based on that list.
One of those bannable phrases is "kill yourself", which is often used as an insult. I saw a player get banned for saying that phrase when all he meant was "kill your character to the turret to deny the enemy gold" (this is a valid tactic in the game). Nothing offensive, not directed at anybody, but he still got punished for it.
Similarly, I got a 2 week suspension because I went afk in a match. You might think just from that statement that I deserved it, until you understand the context. In that particular match (5v5 match by the way), we got smashed early on, and 2 of my teammates quit out, so now it's 3v5. One of my other teammates had been intentionally dying throughout the match, which is why the 2 other teammates quit. So it's now effectively 2v5. I call for surrender votes, they get denied. On top of that, the enemy team are purposefully hanging back to drag the match out as long as possible. That is the point where I went afk.
The computer system doesn't care for context, and hands out bans regardless.
Intrepid Studios, if you are reading this, then please DO NOT USE A COMPUTER TO HAND OUT PUNISHMENTS!
Sorry for ranting but my god reading this thread and seeing some of the suggestions really make me wonder if people turn their brains on before they start typing rubbish.
Another terrible idea. Context is important, and there isn't a single computer system I've seen in a game that can distinguish context. Take your "group quitter" title for example. If I get into a PUG of complete assholes who do nothing but insult me or purposefully annoy me, I'm probably going to quit the group. But now because I've quit the group I get the "group quitter" title even though I had a perfectly valid reason for leaving. The next group of people I meet will see this title and unfairly judge me based on that title.
Err....no. From what I've seen, most of the posts in this thread so far have made it clear that we don't want Intrepid to interfere too much when it comes to "toxic" behaviour, and instead to let the community handle it. If you want to be the "villain" and a complete asshole to everyone, you are well within your right to do that.....
...Just don't expect anyone to want to group with you, help you or interact with you in any way.
-A "good karma" system could be very cool. Let us somehow "bless" good players or people that helped us, give them some kind of reward, we don't even need to know what it exactly does or how many blessings we have achieved. limit it so it can not be exploited and make it anonymous and invisible, just let it know it's there. "The gods are watching, be nice and you will be rewarded"
Help? Interaction? I get it that for some people, games online is a place to make friends, hold hands and sing kumbaya, but for most people that are over competitive and don't give 2 poops about how evil someone is as long as they can use eachother to achieve theyr on desires. Be it dungeon, raid, or any kind of content, make no mistake thay will...
Sorry to tell you, but in basically every game with trade system you can do that its called : " here, take some money for helping-me friend, can i add you in case i need this kind of help again? "-system...
If and i mean IF there is to be rewards for good players handling evil players, it should have the opposite too, just imagine gain titles like: Killer of Thousands, Bringer of Darkness, Apostle of the Evil Gods, makes my blood boil...
I can only speak for myself of course but if you piss me off too much I don't care how good you are at the game I won't play with you.
Piss off enough people and you'll find yourself on people's "kill on sight" lists. Games like this are very unfriendly places for assholes.
Not that it really matters to me. You can do as you wish and face the consequences.
for example: the Mayer would be able to make some Kind of Blacklist for people with bad behaivior so they would have to pay mor for stuff from NPC's. This would be self regulating since a Mayer who wouldn't take his job siriosly would get replaced rather quickly.
You bring up a good point and it is definitely something to consider.
In my experience runescape has the least toxicity out of the games Ive played.
I think a major factor in the game is that noone is hindered too hard for walking their own track.
Those who dont succeed in dungeons may be good at skilling or merching.
Theres some light toxicity in PvP worlds and in competitive scenarios but theyre optional and u can roleplay deft if u wish to and turn public off.
You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
It would be like staring at the sun. It would likely hurt you, but it's fun looking at it.
@damokles - I like this thought process.
A way to track all the names that a person has used and on which servers perhaps. Kind of like how Steam will tell you all the names a person has used. It could be important to track things. I wonder if this could be tracked on ones forum profile somehow.
In regard to the server threads, I feel like a post should be given approval before showing on the thread, maybe?
@kethatril Division 2 implemented a reward system for helping out players who "call for backup". This should definitely be something Intrepid looks into for AoC.
Damn it, i can't even argue with that cuz its so true, i'm BR, and most of our time on the internet is simply creating ways to mock pretty much everything under and above the sun, there's no topic we can't make people feel unconfortable about and we are proud about it. But no other nation on the internet can deny that we are the spice that brings the flavour to all games online, people love to hate us just as much as we love to be hated by the rest of the world.
The idea of having commendations (and some kind of reward that goes with it) could be really cool. I like giving kudos to people that deserve it. I'm just not sure where this would enter into play for Ashes. I see that kind of stuff mostly in instanced dungeons / PvP... which seems like something that won't be so big here.
FFXIV had a mentor system that to get into you had to actually have some achievements under your belt and they had mentor icons for PvE, PvP, and crafting separately. But again, that mostly gave rewards for people doing instanced things with new players...
The only thing I worry about (a little) is what happened in BDO for a while where one guild took over everything on the server, and they had absorbed enough top tier guilds that no one could actually do anything about it (people tried)... not sure there was anything the GMs could do since it was all within the rules of the game... but at the same time it killed the game for a lot of people I knew. They left because changing servers meant starting over... which in that super grind-heavy game meant you would never be able to reach the top. I'm not as worried because it seems like this game will actually be more skill-based, not gear grind RNG based where having just 1-2 levels on someone meant they win no matter how good you are.
I think the corruption system along with a mute button will take care of most things but I also think the corruption system won't work and Steven will have to get rid of it eventually. I don't think corruption will make it into the final game and if it does it won't last very long.
So to answer your question, I think toxicity is an unsolvable problem but you should still try because someday it might lead to a solution.
Solutions from other games:
-Blocking functions for chat (to deal with harmless but annoying meme-ing) and several chat channels help a lot (e.g. in BDO most people only read their guild chat in order to avoid the toxicity in server chat).
-Unchangeable user-ID's and community-wide communication to create reputational effects (guilds/societies etc could play an important part here - IF alliances and cooperation is important).
-Karma (system penalty for excessive serial-killing/willful destruction etc) or Bounty (system- or maybe even player-initated rewards for headhunting) would be helpful for more severe cases and toxic actions. These should probably get deactivated for the "lawless wilderness" though (after all, a bit of PvP risk makes some adventuring a lot more fun).
Unfortunately, a reporting function for severe cases, checked and decided by humans (GMs) is pretty much unavoidable (there might even be a legal requirement in some countries for this). By the way, BDO handles the "reporting" relatively user-unfriendly by requiring the user to install some screencapture program themselves to make a video (Screenshot usually not sufficient) as proof of toxicity that then has to be uploaded within a support ticket. While user-unfriendly, it creates also a threshold that really only serious stuff is getting reported.
In the end it will also require a fine balance, what is permissable and what is punishable. (roleplaying anyone?^^) Just keep in mind that not everybody in the game will be a hardcore PvP player age 18+ from the USA and that AoC needs to stay attractive for a broad audience.