Steven's Ban on 3rd Party content

HELLO ALL

In the Divine Order Discord Server we have been discussing the development of Ashes. The topic of 3rd party add on we broke out into a discussion on whether 3rd party content ban will be good for players or bad.

Views:
Majority - The ban is good for the game

Minority - The ban can be bad for the game since it frequently hurts the handicapped community.

Where do you fall in the discussion we would love to hear from you!

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Comments

Leviojima

Explanation of Minority Opinion:
There was recently a story about a one handed gamer who was banned in a game for using a 3rd party macro program to control his keyboard bindings while using his mouse. We do not want as a community to harm people who have less accessibility to the game.

We do not think that it is bad to create a fair base level to play but we do watch hopefully that the Ashes team will have work around in place for people who have difficulties playing MMO's at no fault of their own.

Wandering Mist

If someone is knowingly and willingly breaking the rules by using third party addons, what do you think should happen to them? There should be some kind of punishment right? If not banned, then what?

EDIT: What I said above applies to full able-bodied players who use addons to gain some kind of advantage over others. As to what to do for handicapped players, in my opinion this should be handled on a case by case basis by Intrepid.

Songcaller

You can use your mouse for keyboard buttons without using a macro/script. If you are using Macros they are against the ToS for Ashes of Creation and you will be disciplined or banned.

Leviojima

Wandering Mist wrote: »

If someone is knowingly and willingly breaking the rules by using third party addons, what do you think should happen to them? There should be some kind of punishment right? If not banned, then what?

I understand that for the average player (like me) bans and other forms of reprimanding are 100% Valid and justified. I only bring up the issue because I do have friends with missing limbs and other disabilities. I do not claim to have ANY answers on how to resolve the issues, and was hoping that by bringing the topic to the discussion that there might be others out there with helpful knowledge.

I would like to make this a firm statement: I am NOT judging Ashes or the Ashes team with this discussion. This comes from the desire to allow as many players as possible to play the game with us.

Wandering Mist

LeviathanSummoner wrote: »

Explanation of Minority Opinion:
There was recently a story about a one handed gamer who was banned in a game for using a 3rd party macro program to control his keyboard bindings while using his mouse. We do not want as a community to harm people who have less accessibility to the game.

We do not think that it is bad to create a fair base level to play but we do watch hopefully that the Ashes team will have work around in place for people who have difficulties playing MMO's at no fault of their own.

For that specific example, was the player who got banned only using the software to rebind the keys, or create multi-button macros? I myself use a razer gamepad which means I use the razer synapse software to rebind the buttons to the gamepad. However, I only have one action bound to each button.

I see no problem in doing that as I still have to press the same number of buttons as everyone else to play the game, I just press different buttons.

Leviojima

Neurath wrote: »

You can use your mouse for keyboard buttons without using a macro/script. If you are using Macros they are against the ToS for Ashes of Creation and you will be disciplined or banned.

I understand this point. My point was not that 3rd party content should be encouraged. Personally, I hope that the team has developed with the understanding that one handed players will be at a strict disadvantage over other players.

Songcaller

I use a Tartarus and a Naga. Both have keyboard buttons associated with them but none of my bound buttons have the macro functions enabled.

Wandering Mist

LeviathanSummoner wrote: »

Wandering Mist wrote: »

If someone is knowingly and willingly breaking the rules by using third party addons, what do you think should happen to them? There should be some kind of punishment right? If not banned, then what?

I understand that for the average player (like me) bans and other forms of reprimanding are 100% Valid and justified. I only bring up the issue because I do have friends with missing limbs and other disabilities. I do not claim to have ANY answers on how to resolve the issues, and was hoping that by bringing the topic to the discussion that there might be others out there with helpful knowledge.

I would like to make this a firm statement: I am NOT judging Ashes or the Ashes team with this discussion. This comes from the desire to allow as many players as possible to play the game with us.

It's been brought up before (I made a video about it not too long ago in fact). When the game gets closer to launch I would hope those kinds of players would be willing to reach out to Intrepid for help first.

Leviojima

Wandering Mist wrote: »

It's been brought up before (I made a video about it not too long ago in fact). When the game gets closer to launch I would hope those kinds of players would be willing to reach out to Intrepid for help first.

I am glad that there has been talk about this and the team is continuing to try addressing this moving forward. Creating the discussion was the only point of the post.

I am excited to see the game continue to evolve between now and release.

RocketFarmer

A compromise would be an Apple store model where only approved 3rd party add-one would be expected.

Sounds like there will be no compromise.

Grihm

Wandering Mist wrote: »

If someone is knowingly and willingly breaking the rules by using third party addons, what do you think should happen to them? There should be some kind of punishment right? If not banned, then what?

EDIT: What I said above applies to full able-bodied players who use addons to gain some kind of advantage over others. As to what to do for handicapped players, in my opinion this should be handled on a case by case basis by Intrepid.

The thing about many that abuses games, systems or hacks, glitches etc, is that they have no real interest in the game itself. How many have not heard or seen the chat comment from someone being reported with
" Oh go on..i have more accounts " or " laaawl noob...i dun care " etc etc.

The only way to punish someone is to remove what they are trying to gain access too.

* A player cheating in PVP = Remove all PVP levels, rewards, titles etc, and offer them a permanent title named Dishonourable worm.

* A player dealing in online buying Gold / Stones / Gems etc as in monetary value to benefit in game = Empty their bank and wallets fully. Leave nothing. Also, add a permanent title of Prospered by Greed.

* A player is constantly reported for the use of profanity, behaving bad in general and simply just trolling and spreading a poor atmosphere all around them = Remove all options of them to group up, PVP in groups, raid etc etc. Leave them to wander alone until their reports stop by their own actions of becoming a better person.

Last but NOT least, Outriders have a superb way of dealing with cheaters. They brand the cheaters entire screen with a watermark of the word, Cheater, and they cannot remove it. Sure, some will ignore it, but streaming with that will tell the truth on what sort of " player " that is.

tautau

Those are nice ideas, @Grihm , but I would prefer a perma ban. No refunds. Don't let them back in 6 weeks.

That also achieves your goal of "remove what they are trying to gain access too (sic)". Perhaps also list banned player names as a warning to others.

Grihm

tautau wrote: »

Those are nice ideas, @Grihm , but I would prefer a perma ban. No refunds. Don't let them back in 6 weeks.

That also achieves your goal of "remove what they are trying to gain access too (sic)". Perhaps also list banned player names as a warning to others.

A full ban is absolute the best outcome, but if there will be any sort of " less " severe outcomes, removing what they want i feel will be felt.

Noaani

I am not really one to defend Intrepid in this particular situation, but I feel it needs to be pointed out that the ban on third party software is only in relation to third party software that has not been approved for use.

The player in the OP could simply show Intrepid what it is they are using, and why they are using it, get approval for it, and then carry on with their day.

Conrad

Perma bans won't have much effect on gold sellers. There is only a sub so far less repercussions.

Maezriel

In regards to those w/ disabilities, this is actually my primary defense whenever the talk of controllers comes up. Unreal has baked in controller support and Intrepid can take time to ensure their game is available to everyone.

The only reason someone would feel the need to utilize a third party addon to play the game is b/c Intrepid failed to give them an alternative.

Noaani

Maezriel wrote: »

The only reason someone would feel the need to utilize a third party addon to play the game is b/c Intrepid failed to give them an alternative.

While this is true, imo it is unreasonable to expect Intrepid to provide for all disabilities. That is precisely why companies exist to provide products and services to assist such people - individual developers simply cant do it all.

JustVine

LeviathanSummoner's concern for their friend is valid. However, I think everyone is missing an important consideration. 'When and why would the punishment come up?'

Steven wants to exclude 3rd party apps. There are a number of ways it could come up and ways to properly deal with it.

Possible problem cases:
1. Some kind of drm
2. Players reporting who don't know the differently abled players scenario or are being blatantly troll
3. Auto detect and reporting

Possible solutions:
1. Intrepid could provide their own in house controller support and tune it to the needs of the community in question.
2. Intrepid could develop a whitelist with strong guidance from the differently abled community(the most reasonable low resource solution)
3. Case by case positive flagging of players who get exceptions implemented by appealing to the mods.

As Noaani points out, its unreasonable to expect a small company relative to the large project to devote something so resource intensive as 'catering to all.' However, I would personally be disappointed if there was no controller support in the long run, which is the main way to solve this particular issue and make able bodied controller users happy as well.

Drm of some kind will probably be implemented, making it more likely to cause problems (as intended) for 3rd party apps. This makes white listing difficult to garuntee. The whitelist will become a constant political mindfield and take up hr and dev resources. Endless whining from able bodied people to boot about 'why cant I have x tho'. Not having one cuts off a lot of toxicity routes and doesn't pose a resource drain. Still, theres plenty of available free software that helps a lot of these problems out there and in use. If dev resources are scarce, white listing existing solutions is the cheapest solution in the short term.

If a reporting or detection system is used I would hope mods would be trained to be sensitive towards the topic and would hope they had a system for prioritizing based on this type of case to get appealed to a human mod so it gets resolved quickly (no one likes a youtube copystrike type scenario.) Mods cost money, and are expensive. But necessary any way. Might as well implement a way to manually flag exclusions to your detection software so they aren't constantly handling repeat cases of things that are case by case approved of. This is probably the 'kindest' way to handle the problem without adding too much dev time. But its the most reliant on company culture and human judgement.

In reality a lot of these scenarios and solutions will probably be considered and probably closer to beta. The ban is probably not going to be so cut and dry. And if it is, there's still solutions.

Conrad

I heard they are planning to eventually at some point expand to other platforms, so I would guess controllers will be possible. However, beyond that its just a guess for me

maouw

WanderingMist's suggestion makes a lot of sense to me.

Exceptions for people with exceptional circumstances.
Otherwise you really are exposing yourself to vulnerabilities.

The choice becomes:

Spend money on a team of people who can whitelist exceptional circuimstances
Spend money on a team who need to monitor every 3rd party addon that anyone playing the game decides to use, and a dev team to handle it. AND the balance team needs to take 3rd party add-ons into consideration when tweaking levers, etc.

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