Monthly-base quotas that a guild must adhere to that socially impact the community from a disappointment perspective. IE: PvP Murder, World-Boss Raids, Naval Besieging.
I just want the ability to mute individual players and for that list to have no limitation. I should be able to put the entire server on it if I wanted.
Other than that I'd rather have no management of toxicity at all. If people want to be jerks they should be able to. WoW solved toxicity by removing player interaction from the game entirely. Important thing to avoid.
I think having a mute, report, and blacklist function in the game is essential in removing toxic players. Sure, with a game like this, it's really up to the players to police each other, but sometimes it's more simple to just blacklist a person or mute them. I only think the reporting function should be used for when players are obviously hacking, or exploiting parts of the game, because of a bug or something.
I also think having a merit system, or something to give props to a player, would be nice. I could be wrong, but I remember something like this in FFXIV, after players finished a instanced dungeon they could choose whether or not to give other players Reputation points(some kind of good karma) that would reward you with cosmetic items after you gotten to a certain threshold(100 Rep points = Unlocking a cool looking hat, 2000 Rep points = Unlocking a Unique Title).
I definitely think something like this would be neat to have, and promote more positive play from people, especially if they're being rewarded for being good sports. How this would be implemented in a Open world sandbox game like this; I'll leave that to the devs.
League of Legends did it best for me. I was a toxic douche once upon a time. I got reported for swearing and the auto system gave me a warning to shape up or get suspended/banned. I shaped up and never did it again. People who don't learn and evolve get harsher and harsher punishments/suspensions until perma ban happens
I posted previously on this thread about positive incentives for players to be non toxic. Time period was 6 months. Well if this was done then non toxic community would become the norm after six months. And the people that are still toxic could would be much smaller number and could be dealt with accordingly.
Ounce negativity gois out of control it is harder to deal with. This way you could avoid banning people and keep them as fellow gamers.
The best thing I could ask is about greif prevention, or player stealing. I would like to hear your stance on this and why you choose to allow players to kill and steal gatherables and certificates, rather then just deleting them from the inventory to help discourage greifing. It's fine to be killed to prevent someone from gathering the item, but once it's in ones inventory, killing the player to take the item becomes stealing.
This would include kill stealing by waiting for a player to weaken the mob, then killing the player before he slays the mob and stealing it's kill for the loot.
Truthfully, in a game that is going to be player managed/driven economies, regions, politics, the only out of game management from the Devs/GMs should be real world racial slurs and doxxing.
Other than that, people shouldn't get moderator for shit talking since that is going to be a core driving part of the game.
Talk too much shit, you're gonna get hit.
Or guild war
or declared Enemy of the State
or some other in game mechanic
I agree on that one - a mute function is important, thats basically it.
Truthfully, in a game that is going to be player managed/driven economies, regions, politics, the only out of game management from the Devs/GMs should be real world racial slurs and doxxing.
Other than that, people shouldn't get moderator for shit talking since that is going to be a core driving part of the game.
Talk too much shit, you're gonna get hit.
Or guild war
or declared Enemy of the State
or some other in game mechanic
The only true stance for a company to have in an MMO.
ALso I think that repeated attacks//PK on same person should count as harrassment, because you are obviously targeting that one person especially which can hurt them.
I'd suggest to find a way to give rewards for being opposite to toxic, like for being nice, helpful etc. Overwatch has quite nice approach, after each match you're able to give a 'badge' to three players of the match. Perhaps something in this direction?
Forbidding people doing things quite often doesn't work well, but growing community that is encouraged to be kind will benefit even outside of AOC
Again, it's a good idea in theory but what's stopping a few friends and I from "boosting" each other?
In general I wouldn't attempt to incentivize being a tattle-tail, that's an easy way to increase toxicity. Just leave it at ignore/block filters and move on. Anything else and people will not be happy. (i.e, banning people for expressing their distaste for someones performance during a raid, no matter how "toxic".)
Can I just say real quick what overwatch does is so annoying.
"GG" has no meaning.
Leave the world to be as it is, there will be elitist and there will be normies and casuals. They'll figure it out. It's supposed to be another world, jerks exist everywhere.
I feel like BDO does a great job they are always monitoring global chats and they have a warning system if your a repeat offender I think its 5 times your account gets banned and I really like that. I might be wrong in my example but something like that is great. Unfortunately if that is not implemented you will have people saying the worst of the worst due to their being no repercussion as in racial slurs etc etc. The worst case scenario to put this in perspective was when I heard of a girl being bullied by 3 dirtbags in general chat. The dirtbags were saying the worst of the worst to the kid. Now people will say that there's a mute ignore function but I think there should be a ban function after warnings or something. I cant even post what they said on here truly the worst. Do you really want to let people like that continue playing this great game I don't so I think hopefully there will be a warning ban system at least. Luckily though my squad came to the defense of the kid and we hunted them down over and over till they lost everything and quit the game. Some would say that's going to far but hey scum like that and what they said It was justice. Unless Ashes wants to have that player drama if so im going to get my crew ready to wreck people haha.
Toxicity is something that will forever be present, but there are ways to reduce it.
Before we can figure how we can reduce forms toxicity, we must figure out where it stems from. I will give what I found to be true through my 15+ years of being in the MMORPG genre and just a gamer in general. I will purposely exclude anonymity and human nature, since those are the most obvious reasons.
Causes for toxicity:
Censoring what people say ironically can cause more toxicity(excluding racial slurs, sexism, suicidal ideation) Reason: People hate losing the ability to speak their mind. Plus, censoring is an endless endeavor because players will find a million different ways to say what they want until it reaches a point where you're basically playing club penguin.
Nostalgia(unavoidable)
Player-owned servers(Ark, Minecraft, and Roblox are perfect examples) Reason: Lack of Accountability
Young playerbase
Gameplay without a learning curve, either teaming or not, with high reward
Gameplay with a high learning curve, either teaming or not, with low reward
Lack of developer/player co-hosted events
Poor moderation
Poor Quality Updates
Poor balancing of classes/gameplay(a bigger cause than people think)
Botting, Bought, and Bugs
-This encompasses players that go to third-party websites to purchase botting clients to skip the game, buying in-game currency/valued items with real money, and/or bug abusing like duping. All of these devalue the work the legitimate players did and creates resentment towards the developers for lack of preventive measure and repercussions.
Scamming (unavoidable)
FOMO related to gameplay(dailies, raid times, endless power-creeping)
Lack of recognition to content creators such as artists, cosplayers, and video-makers
Lack of communication from developers
Developers not accepting feedback
Dishonest developers
Competitive ranking system
Forced teaming with random players
-In all games where there is PvP, being forced to play with random players presents an issue of loss of control and feeling helpless. The is especially prevalent in MOBA games. In LoL, one of the most notorious games for its toxicity, has players put into a team with 4 other people. We don't know the other player's favorite champion pool, win-rate, specific elo, playstyle, etc. This can be frustrating when you enter a game and have no idea how the other person plays. If they do not fit your playstyle, there is nothing you can do about it because leaving can get you banned.
Long Inescapable games
-This goes with the previous point, but I will expand further. If the game stops being fun momentarily in a match, a player should not be punished for leaving. Staying in the match despite not being cool-headed only exponentially raises toxicity levels. Also, players should not be punished for leaving when something important comes up outside the game.
Inconveniances
1.Weight Limit
2.Vigor, Energy, or Resin System
3.Overcomplicated/Unintuitive User Interface
4.Spawn Camping
5.Trade Restrictions
6.Too much RNG
7.Not enough bag space
8.Server lag
9.Crashing
10.Unskippable cutscenes
11.Escort quests
12.Plants that die too quickly
After reading through the list, you will notice that most of the causes are from poor choices from the development side. So far, I have been told that this game will avoid some of these flaws. That is a good step in the right direction. I do hope that the development continues to look to players for feedback while also hoping the the players themselves will not let things slide, despite the game being pre-alpha. Glorious players, look for every bug, observe the combat for even the most miniscule of off-putting details, and feel the music and ask yourself if you're on an adventure or in a circus. The pre-launch is the most important part of how a game will turn out.
After reading through the list, you will notice that most of the causes are from poor choices from the development side. So far, I have been told that this game will avoid some of these flaws.
Toxicity has nothing to do with the game itself. Mostly, it comes from lack of coping mechanisms of the player. Even in the most perfect game, a toxic player would eventually show their toxicity, simply because they do not get their way for once. Same with elitism or whatever petty subject some of the players will work themselves up over.
Thinking that "doing everything right" will reduce toxicity is naive. It will just shift the reason for it to other fields. Toxic behavior is best reduced by ignore lists that have no maximum length, i would oppose bans. Take away a toxic player's audience by having their targets ignore them. And mechanisms that make sure if you mute one character of a player, all his characters are likewise muted. That you will not see his offers on the markets and that he cannot send you in-game mail either.
Overly toxic people will then find themselves in a world of their own after a while and either move on or quit. And that is my experience from roughly 3 decades of online multiplayer PvP gaming.
- Have a toggle for mature language filter. (Not everyone who plays is 18+)
- Ignore/Mute has solved nearly all my problems. (Don't like the way someone is talking to you? Then ignore them, don't feed into it.)
- Reporting players, a feature to add screenshots for proof (That way you can't just say Player A did this or said this )
- Maybe a system that monitors certain words (But honestly, if people want to be toxic they'll find a way to get around a system like that- but that's where screenshots help)
If the game lacks a monitoring system, I've seen communities out players on other platforms. Forums, tumblr, etc. Their bad behavior will hurt them later.
"Bravery only means something to those who are afraid of death."
There should definitely be a report system in place, but one that cannot be abused by toxic players.
Screenshots shouldn't be necessary as a GM can look at the chat log around the time the report was sent.
If a report was sent without an actual incident happening (trolls), the sender should be punished. On repeated offence even block their account for a few days for wasting GMs time.
Toxic behavior is best reduced by ignore lists that have no maximum length
I never understood why they'd put a maximum length on the Ignore list. It was always a much shorter limit than the Friends list, too, which in my experience was the wrong way around! Hahahaha
Truthfully, in a game that is going to be player managed/driven economies, regions, politics, the only out of game management from the Devs/GMs should be real world racial slurs and doxxing.
Other than that, people shouldn't get moderator for shit talking since that is going to be a core driving part of the game.
Talk too much shit, you're gonna get hit.
Or guild war
or declared Enemy of the State
or some other in game mechanic
Funny, I read the topic and thought that it deserved an answer, then I read the first post and thought there was nothing more to say! But thought it might give weight to reiterate.
Truthfully, in a game that is going to be player managed/driven economies, regions, politics, the only out of game management from the Devs/GMs should be real world racial slurs and doxxing.
Other than that, people shouldn't get moderator for shit talking since that is going to be a core driving part of the game.
Talk too much shit, you're gonna get hit.
Or guild war
or declared Enemy of the State
or some other in game mechanic
Funny, I read the topic and thought that it deserved an answer, then I read the first post and thought there was nothing more to say! But thought it might give weight to reiterate.
exactly my thoughts.
Ragnarok Online had the same.
You insult my guild members and we come knocking on your doorstep with a force to be reckoned with.
In the end Combat would decide who is right and the winner has all the rights to shit talk the looser.
Just look at league of legends. Super policed game but everyone is also super toxic and it does no good, it actually promotes negative behavior more.
There is a line and sometimes people cross it.
I think most people would agree to hand wave all in game actions as long as it isn't explicitly exploitative and hurting other players.
I think most people agree that some things should not be typed in the chat or direct messaged to players and players who do this should have the ability to type in chat revoked until they can be a good boy/girl.
Ability to mute people is assumed.
The ethical liability of a game designer on the real lives of the players outside of the game is an interesting subject. I think the things you are doing with the 5 day warnings before sieges and thinking about the people who can't play everyday are good things in this regard. If you do see a strong correlation between game systems and out of game toxicity, I would suggest looking into that and see if that is something you want to keep in the game or if you can change something to make people's lives better outside the game.
Anonymity without social repercusion for being a dick is what makes games toxic.
A face with social/economic repercusions is the way to go.
Idk why this just made me think of a suggestion someone on the Fallout New Vegas Multiplayer discord channel said.
Make it so that players names are hidden. That way you can only add someone to a group or PM them if they choose to tell you their name.
That would add an interesting dynamic to the game(immersive as well considering its based on RL) and at least prevent against people harassing someone out of nowhere through PMs. It would also make it so that randoms have to say what they say out in public where other people can hear and have the ability to report them.
Cause there will be thousands of reports a day, a lot of fake reports along with real ones, and there surely will not be enough staff to comb through them all. A logical report system would put reports with the most reports at the top of the list, which this would help with.
Hmm, someone mentioned repeated player kills as a form of harassment.
I mean, if combat is mutual then it shouldn't matter, but if it's just someone, or even a guild, is stalking a player then it could be an issue.
I don't mean like one or two kills, or even a dozen, but if it's egregious there should be some type of system to deal with it.
I'm not sure the specifics exactly of how the corruption system will work, but maybe a scaling corruption penalty for each kill of player who is a "non combatant" in a short period of time, regardless of who kills the particular player. By scaling, I mean the penalty grows with each kill, maybe geometrically even.
Players these days are smart enough to rotate who does the pk to avoid "harassment", so only a universal counter of some kind would work imo. This shouldn't apply to combatants or guild wars (if that's a thing in this game). Ie.. guilds that have declared war on each other.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Who said combat is always mutual?
And, no, it doesn't apply to Combatants or Guild Wars.
What are some things other games do to manage toxicity that you think work well? What would you like to see in Ashes of Creation?
I'm old school. I believe in the sticks and stones might break my bones but words will never break me mentality.
In general Jalal's first post sums up my other thoughts. But I want to add 2 thoughts:
From a verbal perspective, I believe a blacklist and maybe a redlist is sufficient. A redlist would be something you can add someone to that eliminates communication for a limited duration that also sends a system message to the redlisted player informing them that they've been redlisted - thus informing them that their behavior was not approved of. It's basically telling someone you need space. If they continue after the redlist timer runs out then just blacklist them.
Action wise, I think that your criminal system should take care of it. In a territorial dispute game you should 100% be allowed to steal mobs, hunt down a player in a territory you are trying to attack/defend and if they keep coming back it's their fault. In-game community defensive action should be all that is needed to stop someone from harassing others, killing lowbies/newbies, etc. If you're a solo player who refuses to interact with others, well, you reap what you sow. This is an MMO after all.
That said, please, for the love of god don't go as extreme as New World. You get banned for mildly calling out someone's mistake in global chat. It's asanine.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Hmm, someone mentioned repeated player kills as a form of harassment.
I mean, if combat is mutual then it shouldn't matter<snip>
Which is why I asked...
Who said combat is always mutual?
Repeatedly killing a Non-Combatant is harrasment.
It depends on the game philosophy for AoC. I know they want contested content, and as Raeyik mentioned, people should be able to claim and protect territory for themselves.
If someone is foolish enough to keep trying to move into a spot that a guild is claiming, I think it's fine to kill them repeatedly.
Comments
A face with social/economic repercusions is the way to go.
Other than that I'd rather have no management of toxicity at all. If people want to be jerks they should be able to. WoW solved toxicity by removing player interaction from the game entirely. Important thing to avoid.
U.S. East
I also think having a merit system, or something to give props to a player, would be nice. I could be wrong, but I remember something like this in FFXIV, after players finished a instanced dungeon they could choose whether or not to give other players Reputation points(some kind of good karma) that would reward you with cosmetic items after you gotten to a certain threshold(100 Rep points = Unlocking a cool looking hat, 2000 Rep points = Unlocking a Unique Title).
I definitely think something like this would be neat to have, and promote more positive play from people, especially if they're being rewarded for being good sports. How this would be implemented in a Open world sandbox game like this; I'll leave that to the devs.
It was hands down System of a Down's best album.
Ounce negativity gois out of control it is harder to deal with. This way you could avoid banning people and keep them as fellow gamers.
This would include kill stealing by waiting for a player to weaken the mob, then killing the player before he slays the mob and stealing it's kill for the loot.
I agree on that one - a mute function is important, thats basically it.
You can be loyal nice and calm.
Or you can be a toxic person get a bad reputation etc...
Please nothing like WoW....
The only true stance for a company to have in an MMO.
Oh no, not you people...
Again, it's a good idea in theory but what's stopping a few friends and I from "boosting" each other?
In general I wouldn't attempt to incentivize being a tattle-tail, that's an easy way to increase toxicity. Just leave it at ignore/block filters and move on. Anything else and people will not be happy. (i.e, banning people for expressing their distaste for someones performance during a raid, no matter how "toxic".)
"GG" has no meaning.
Leave the world to be as it is, there will be elitist and there will be normies and casuals. They'll figure it out. It's supposed to be another world, jerks exist everywhere.
Before we can figure how we can reduce forms toxicity, we must figure out where it stems from. I will give what I found to be true through my 15+ years of being in the MMORPG genre and just a gamer in general. I will purposely exclude anonymity and human nature, since those are the most obvious reasons.
Causes for toxicity:
Reason: People hate losing the ability to speak their mind. Plus, censoring is an endless endeavor because players will find a million different ways to say what they want until it reaches a point where you're basically playing club penguin.
Reason: Lack of Accountability
-This encompasses players that go to third-party websites to purchase botting clients to skip the game, buying in-game currency/valued items with real money, and/or bug abusing like duping. All of these devalue the work the legitimate players did and creates resentment towards the developers for lack of preventive measure and repercussions.
-In all games where there is PvP, being forced to play with random players presents an issue of loss of control and feeling helpless. The is especially prevalent in MOBA games. In LoL, one of the most notorious games for its toxicity, has players put into a team with 4 other people. We don't know the other player's favorite champion pool, win-rate, specific elo, playstyle, etc. This can be frustrating when you enter a game and have no idea how the other person plays. If they do not fit your playstyle, there is nothing you can do about it because leaving can get you banned.
-This goes with the previous point, but I will expand further. If the game stops being fun momentarily in a match, a player should not be punished for leaving. Staying in the match despite not being cool-headed only exponentially raises toxicity levels. Also, players should not be punished for leaving when something important comes up outside the game.
1.Weight Limit
2.Vigor, Energy, or Resin System
3.Overcomplicated/Unintuitive User Interface
4.Spawn Camping
5.Trade Restrictions
6.Too much RNG
7.Not enough bag space
8.Server lag
9.Crashing
10.Unskippable cutscenes
11.Escort quests
12.Plants that die too quickly
After reading through the list, you will notice that most of the causes are from poor choices from the development side. So far, I have been told that this game will avoid some of these flaws. That is a good step in the right direction. I do hope that the development continues to look to players for feedback while also hoping the the players themselves will not let things slide, despite the game being pre-alpha. Glorious players, look for every bug, observe the combat for even the most miniscule of off-putting details, and feel the music and ask yourself if you're on an adventure or in a circus. The pre-launch is the most important part of how a game will turn out.
Goodluck!
Toxicity has nothing to do with the game itself. Mostly, it comes from lack of coping mechanisms of the player. Even in the most perfect game, a toxic player would eventually show their toxicity, simply because they do not get their way for once. Same with elitism or whatever petty subject some of the players will work themselves up over.
Thinking that "doing everything right" will reduce toxicity is naive. It will just shift the reason for it to other fields. Toxic behavior is best reduced by ignore lists that have no maximum length, i would oppose bans. Take away a toxic player's audience by having their targets ignore them. And mechanisms that make sure if you mute one character of a player, all his characters are likewise muted. That you will not see his offers on the markets and that he cannot send you in-game mail either.
Overly toxic people will then find themselves in a world of their own after a while and either move on or quit. And that is my experience from roughly 3 decades of online multiplayer PvP gaming.
- Ignore/Mute has solved nearly all my problems. (Don't like the way someone is talking to you? Then ignore them, don't feed into it.)
- Reporting players, a feature to add screenshots for proof (That way you can't just say Player A did this or said this )
- Maybe a system that monitors certain words (But honestly, if people want to be toxic they'll find a way to get around a system like that- but that's where screenshots help)
If the game lacks a monitoring system, I've seen communities out players on other platforms. Forums, tumblr, etc. Their bad behavior will hurt them later.
Screenshots shouldn't be necessary as a GM can look at the chat log around the time the report was sent.
If a report was sent without an actual incident happening (trolls), the sender should be punished. On repeated offence even block their account for a few days for wasting GMs time.
Eternal Guild
( Web | Discord )
I never understood why they'd put a maximum length on the Ignore list. It was always a much shorter limit than the Friends list, too, which in my experience was the wrong way around! Hahahaha
Funny, I read the topic and thought that it deserved an answer, then I read the first post and thought there was nothing more to say! But thought it might give weight to reiterate.
exactly my thoughts.
Ragnarok Online had the same.
You insult my guild members and we come knocking on your doorstep with a force to be reckoned with.
In the end Combat would decide who is right and the winner has all the rights to shit talk the looser.
Ahh Good times
There is a line and sometimes people cross it.
I think most people would agree to hand wave all in game actions as long as it isn't explicitly exploitative and hurting other players.
I think most people agree that some things should not be typed in the chat or direct messaged to players and players who do this should have the ability to type in chat revoked until they can be a good boy/girl.
Ability to mute people is assumed.
The ethical liability of a game designer on the real lives of the players outside of the game is an interesting subject. I think the things you are doing with the 5 day warnings before sieges and thinking about the people who can't play everyday are good things in this regard. If you do see a strong correlation between game systems and out of game toxicity, I would suggest looking into that and see if that is something you want to keep in the game or if you can change something to make people's lives better outside the game.
Idk why this just made me think of a suggestion someone on the Fallout New Vegas Multiplayer discord channel said.
Make it so that players names are hidden. That way you can only add someone to a group or PM them if they choose to tell you their name.
That would add an interesting dynamic to the game(immersive as well considering its based on RL) and at least prevent against people harassing someone out of nowhere through PMs. It would also make it so that randoms have to say what they say out in public where other people can hear and have the ability to report them.
Cause there will be thousands of reports a day, a lot of fake reports along with real ones, and there surely will not be enough staff to comb through them all. A logical report system would put reports with the most reports at the top of the list, which this would help with.
I mean, if combat is mutual then it shouldn't matter, but if it's just someone, or even a guild, is stalking a player then it could be an issue.
I don't mean like one or two kills, or even a dozen, but if it's egregious there should be some type of system to deal with it.
I'm not sure the specifics exactly of how the corruption system will work, but maybe a scaling corruption penalty for each kill of player who is a "non combatant" in a short period of time, regardless of who kills the particular player. By scaling, I mean the penalty grows with each kill, maybe geometrically even.
Players these days are smart enough to rotate who does the pk to avoid "harassment", so only a universal counter of some kind would work imo. This shouldn't apply to combatants or guild wars (if that's a thing in this game). Ie.. guilds that have declared war on each other.
And, no, it doesn't apply to Combatants or Guild Wars.
I felt the need to clarify because some people get in a huff about misconstruing a statement.
Repeated PKs as harrasment is going to be about repeatedly killing Non-Combatants.
I'm old school. I believe in the sticks and stones might break my bones but words will never break me mentality.
In general Jalal's first post sums up my other thoughts. But I want to add 2 thoughts:
From a verbal perspective, I believe a blacklist and maybe a redlist is sufficient. A redlist would be something you can add someone to that eliminates communication for a limited duration that also sends a system message to the redlisted player informing them that they've been redlisted - thus informing them that their behavior was not approved of. It's basically telling someone you need space. If they continue after the redlist timer runs out then just blacklist them.
Action wise, I think that your criminal system should take care of it. In a territorial dispute game you should 100% be allowed to steal mobs, hunt down a player in a territory you are trying to attack/defend and if they keep coming back it's their fault. In-game community defensive action should be all that is needed to stop someone from harassing others, killing lowbies/newbies, etc. If you're a solo player who refuses to interact with others, well, you reap what you sow. This is an MMO after all.
That said, please, for the love of god don't go as extreme as New World. You get banned for mildly calling out someone's mistake in global chat. It's asanine.
Who said combat is always mutual?
Repeatedly killing a Non-Combatant is harrasment.
It depends on the game philosophy for AoC. I know they want contested content, and as Raeyik mentioned, people should be able to claim and protect territory for themselves.
If someone is foolish enough to keep trying to move into a spot that a guild is claiming, I think it's fine to kill them repeatedly.