- The standart /ignore & /mute commands accessible to players(resolves almost every case of ingame toxicity).
- For an MMO/Multiplayer game you need to let the playerbase deal with the toxicity itself. By giving direct methods of dealing with toxicity like automated systems or GM interference is not effective and it doesn't give the desired result. Chat bots recognise words and punish based on them but they don't consider the context behind what the player says(rarely happens but it does happen). Tickets and Reports need alot of resources to be invested in them just for handling a single part of the game... And its not that efficiant.
The right path for managing ingame toxicity would be indirect - Letting the players deal with a problem by giving them the right tools(the bounty system for example). Another way is focusing on the game to be social and to simulate social reprocussions. What i mean is when you explore the world and interact with other players your decisions leave a mark. Either by harrasingor helping you build your reputation in the server and make a name for yourself(Or maybe just mind your own business and do not focus attention on yourself). Simply by developing your charecter the decisions that you made in the past will affect your gameplay -> pretty much like how people in early WoW(When it was an MMORPG not just a G...) used to have lists of players that conduct scummy practices, acted like jerks or they were just unpleasant. By letting players sort their differences on their own provides the right amount of punishment or reward the person gets and bringes more depth to the game.
Alot more could be said about this method but i thing its the best path for an Online game. You either push your playerbase a bit to connect and interact with eachother or leave an automated system to match random people for a short period of time with a high chanceof them not ever seeing the people they just played with... thus leaving the opportunity for people to say anything they want without any repercussion whatsoever. Good examples for this is League of Legends, WoW rdf and lfr features(where people don't even interact with others) e.t.c.
Also for this to work the player names should be permanent with none or limited options to change 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
agree
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ilisfetMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I think the design of the game plays a larger role in player toxicity than people give credit to. The mechanics, game flow, and aesthetic all attract and encourage a certain mindset in players, which may or may not be toxic.
ESO, as much I use it as a case study of how not to design a game, has a very mature community with surprisingly little toxicity. Players are still condescending, fussy, exploitative, and rude, but swearing is rare and outright trolling and griefing is even rarer. People may argue for hours in zone chat but it's civil by internet standards. As to what encourages this? I'd say the lack of tools to grief is part of the equation, but also the atmosphere of the world. The Elder Scrolls elicits a type of laid back play that reduces stress. I can't pinpoint what specifically about TES makes people chill. Lack of challenge is probably one part, and emphasis on cooperation or solo play over competitive is another.
By contrast Mordhau is rather rife with toxicity. Players both have the tools to grief and lack the tools to properly report and handle griefers. Engineers can block pathways and spawns, teammates can kill each other, vote kick gives no information beyond who's being kicked and by whom. Mordhau is also a skill based competitive game, which is prone to being stressful when a skill gap arises. More stressful environment and few consequences to lashing out lend to toxicity blooming. The whimsical nature of Mordhau's violence also lends itself to trolling, as deliberately toxic acts can be characterized as pranks or other jolly merrymaking.
I still want AoC to be challenging, but I cannot deny a constantly challenging game engenders rage in incompetent people. You would also do well to not make the game too whimsical in any way, as that can normalize harmful pranks.
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VarkunMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
For me just a mute button will do fine in most cases, racist, sexist garbage just report it with appropriate screenshots as proof. All the rest I think will be handled by the closed community of the server and the reputation the toxic types will accumulate. I have a guild full of people that would delight in taking the toxic right out of their little hides and giggle like school kids while doing it. Because let's face it most of the toxic types tend to lose it fairly easily.
Close your eyes spread your arms and always trust your cape.
As someone who has gamed for nearly 25 years I have been blessed/cursed with seeing this handled well/poorly from wow to guild wars to eq so on and so forth.
The first thing that broke down community relations was queueing for a dungeon/ instance. By not having people put in the work to form their own parties they often could behave however they wanted in many instances. For example they could be rude/disrespectful or more in public areas and they would pay no penalty to group focused content.
Also once in the content they could treat others poorly instead of helping them learn or grow and the most inconvenience they might have is having to queue a different group for a few minutes.
As far as language goes when something was banned gamers came up with another way to say the same thing. I.e. in wow we stopped saying I am going to F you up when F got banned. Instead gamers started saying I am going to **** you. Or if someone was beaten t-bagging, which is not verbal, replaced the words.
Really the goal to make the game better should be two-fold.
One the developers need to knock down the most heinous speech and behavior like the F word and ban those from use. but that is not enough.
The other part needs to be give people a goal to achieve. When people strive for positive they automatically stop the negative in pursuit of the goal. But focusing on just stopping the negative does not ever mean that positive behavior will be reached.
So I would say start by having someone place basic leadership material on how treating other people well can be advantageous. Maybe have someone make short videos that are easily accessible with potential non game altering rewards. Maybe some leadership only titles once the videos are watched and a small test taken. Or maybe a pet after so many successful tests.
One Simple example of a video could be this: make it a rule that people may not talk negatively about another person in the guild behind their back unless it is to an officer/guild leader for the purpose of correcting bad action/behavior. It is stupid simple really but no one does this mostly because they have never heard of it. However if they did, imagine what it would be like for a game community that holds this truth closely. People could be less afraid of bullying and be more trusting to build solid relationships. Increasing the effectiveness of interpersonal/guild/community relationships. There would be less negative to sift through making progress in the game faster and more solid.
I teach personal leadership professionally and as such am someone who seeks to use video games as a solid medium to teach these things. I would love to see game companies embrace forward thinking in this area. The world needs it for sure.
The great problem I see with this topic is that sometimes is not as simple like
"THIS IS GOOD"
&
"THIS IS BAD"
let's take an actual example of this, I think everyone here are against racism, homophobia, misogyny, death treats, black mailing, religious slurs, doxing, etc etc etc.
But a lot of you have said that if it's only words it's ok just to ignore, block or mute the person, BUT there was recently a case where a group of people in Fallout where constantly harassing character that, quote, "looked very gay"
So this group of people where constantly chasing and killing other people's character based on that, and after sometime they earned a lifeban from the servers, now, I have knowledge that here is AOC there's gonna be at least one LGBTIQA friendly guild, let's say that me or my guild decides to constantly attack, fight and KOS the members of that guild for that particular reason, if none of us say a word while we attack, then no one is going to be able to do anything about it, the same applies for example if someone makes a girl only guild, or any other kind of group that could become a target, the fact that there could be no actions against this type of conduct makes me think twice about what can be applied to "dealing with toxicity"
Just to be clear I'm 100% positive about people decided to play the role of the villain, or just doing PK because that an option, but there should be always some countermeasures when this actions are lead just by the idea of being a jerk, we always have to remember that sometimes this could escalate to dangerous stuff that none of us want
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
I think this is a great idea!!!
Not just punish the toxic but give the good ones a reward
I just started to play Guild Wars 2 for the first time since it originally came out and I have to say I think one of the ways they make the community welcoming and not toxic is the mentor/commander system. I've only been playing for a week mind you but since I've started I haven't had any single person cuss me out for asking for help and any time I need help doing a map or getting gear I just join up with the local flagged commander who is leading a raid around and answering questions. I don't know if being a commander offers rewards for being one and I don't know if giving rewards for being one would sour the position but I think this could be a direction you go for to promote a good community and help remove toxicity till people get involved in fighting over resources then guild wars then eventually the world war of AoC..
also i wanted to mention, there are some things that are not toxic on their own but it all comes down to the people and the way they use it...
this is more of a reminder really, nothing in need of intervention from gms but a little positive advertisement may be good?
some people really over-react to how others want to play and say things like "carebears" or "roleplayers" as if these are crimes and insults!
they need to remember that everything together makes the world come to life with more details.
sure you might hate some aspects of it! but believe me if it was gone, then you end up with time travel paradox thing ... so just remember don't overreact if you want to hate something .... keep it on a controlled level of hate XD
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easyMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
It's ok to use auto-ban systems for temporary bans, chat mutes etc. But if you are you going to do things like permanent bans or long term bans. Have a real person check the situation before issuing the ban.
Also, make sure you are clear with your rules and give examples of what is acceptable and what is not. It's quite frustrating when you don't know what is an offense and what is not.
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Wandering MistModerator, Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One
It's ok to use auto-ban systems for temporary bans, chat mutes etc. But if you are you going to do things like permanent bans or long term bans. Have a real person check the situation before issuing the ban.
Also, make sure you are clear with your rules and give examples of what is acceptable and what is not. It's quite frustrating when you don't know what is an offense and what is not.
I agree that heavy punishments should be dealt out by a person rather than a computer, but it's almost impossible to have clear cut rules that cover every situation. The difference between banter and harassment depends entirely on the people involved. Not only this but the words a group of people consider socially acceptable constantly change over time.
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but here's an idea for rewarding the helpful as opposed to just punishing the toxic:
Rift has one of the best mentorship systems I have encountered in any MMO I've ever played (and I've dabbed in many over the years). It allows you to set a mentorship level to your character, then help players in that level range to complete quests and experience multiplayer content. And as the higher-level player, you still receive experience (albeit a smaller amount than you would at-level), so friends who recruit friends don't have to roll new toons just to play together. There's no such thing as out levelling one another. It's awesome.
You could combine this with some sort of reward currency system for helpfulness, or perhaps the experience it yields applied toward a skill tree that gives minor helpful and/or cosmetic skills. Doing toxic deeds could deplete this currency or experience and make you have to give up your boons for your poor choices.
Just an idea, but it is one way too give positive reinforcement of desired player behavior and negative punishment of undesirable in one system.
Thinking about this further if the corruption system debuffs players enough at the higher ends of the corruption scale so they are close to useless or easily farmed and killed, instead of bans what if offending players entire account got flagged at the highest end of the corruption system and it would never go away. If you add auto-muting for characters above a certain corruption threshold and disable trades above a certain corruption level as well you effectively neuter the troll.
Every character they made on any server would always be fully corrupted forever and there would be nothing they could do about it. The community would also have a near permanent pinata available until the player was forced out by constantly being hunted and killed across every character.
The best way to combat toxicity is to encourage positive performance.
If you take anything from my post, please remember positive reinforcement as historically been more constructive than negative reinforcement. Several studies can be found online which validate my statement.
Incentives and stats are my preferred method for handling toxicity while at the same time encouraging group play. A commendation system is a popular tool used by some of the most toxic genres of online gaming. A commendation system helps to differentiate the helpful/informative/leaders from everyone else. Not only are commendations an excellent way for players to reward one another for working together, it is also a statistic that could be monitored by both the player (encouraging them to level their reputation up for rewards) but also for the developer to find players that might be a potential chat moderator or in-game GM.
The system could also be built upon in-game to help players determine the type of guild they are about to join or even decide whether or not they should be doing business with a particular player. The downside being a break in the immersions of player to player interactions and the introduction of toxicity caused by the commendation system. This could however be counteracted by both limiting the number of times a player can inspect the commendation level of another player by requiring an item to do so, or the commendation level could be all together invisible for players and instead players are given a rating of Fair-Good-Great-Starplayer.
Even if the commendation statistics are completely hidden from the players but players are rewarded with trophies (For Freehold) or cosmetics for reaching certain levels in certain categories it would encourage more positive performance as players would want to increase their level to gain the aforementioned rewards.
Building on this system it might also be a good idea to give players the ability to "sad face" one another for being a jerk. To avoid "sad face" spamming, players would be required to have interreacted with one another for at least 2 hours in a party or siege setting before they can commend or "sad face" someone. This way players would also be incentivized to formally party other players and interact with one another.
Another way game developers have built on this system is to use the stats generated to set priorities for match making and by grouping toxic players together in-game. Not sure how that would apply to the MMO but it could be a way to branch the system over to APOC.
Another suggestion would be to prompt players in-game with a warning about their behavior. Nothing too threatening, it could read, "Woah! Are you sure you want to say that?" It might give players that extra second after typing a slur to change their mind and reword their statement.
We need a closely knit server community.
I remember, when a player in WoW still had a certain reputation.
Everyon knew the big tanks and healers on the server, or the best blacksmith etc.
All that went away with the growing number of servers, rename-tokens and server transfers sadly....
If someone is toxic, then I want everyone on the server be able to learn it in the forums/discord etc.
It would be really cool if we had per server a thread, where people could post events that happened on the server.
Example:
We have General Discussion, Announcements, NA Guilds, EUW Guilds etc, now we would need a "Server" place to create threads.
Something like "deskboard " with good person, tanks, ceafters; so same way with most reported persons
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
Way to give party member/solo player badge for good tanking, healing, damaging, good play, bad play, good rp.
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
Ah this is an interesting tangent I'm glad you brought up @kethatril , and I'd love to dig into this more too! Could you (or anyone else) provide examples of approaches similar to this that you like? (e.g. mentorship programs, other community engagement programs)
Way to give party member/solo player badge for good tanking, healing, damaging, good play, bad play, good rp.
I'd love to see custom chat filters to self-regulate what you don't want to see. In previous MMOs I've found this feature to be very useful to deal with toxic behavior. Certain abbreviations or phrases like "l 2 p n o o b" (just to name a more harmless one) may not be a reason to report someone, they are toxic nonetheless and get used to provoke a reaction out of you.
Everyone has a bad day from time to time, and sometimes I don't want to see this shite when I already had a stressful day.
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
Ah this is an interesting tangent I'm glad you brought up @kethatril , and I'd love to dig into this more too! Could you (or anyone else) provide examples of approaches similar to this that you like? (e.g. mentorship programs, other community engagement programs)
Way to give party member/solo player badge for good tanking, healing, damaging, good play, bad play, good rp.
For negative badget 3 person must give same badget so it count as one
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
Ah this is an interesting tangent I'm glad you brought up @kethatril , and I'd love to dig into this more too! Could you (or anyone else) provide examples of approaches similar to this that you like? (e.g. mentorship programs, other community engagement programs)
Way to give party member/solo player badge for good tanking, healing, damaging, good play, bad play, good rp.
For negative badget 3 person must give same badget so it count as one
Character with a lot of negative badgets will be shown on web page same for good player this way everyone will know who is good tank/healer/dmg/crafter/rp/good person and whom better mute in chat or avoid inviting in group
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
Ah this is an interesting tangent I'm glad you brought up @kethatril , and I'd love to dig into this more too! Could you (or anyone else) provide examples of approaches similar to this that you like? (e.g. mentorship programs, other community engagement programs)
I have to agree with many others here that a Mentorship programm coupled with a recommendation function would be really good.
Recommendations could be earned through completed dungeons/raids/group quests, at the end people could each recommend one person.
Make it so that Mentors need to have played a certain amount of hours and a certain amount of recommendations from other people before they could become Mentors.
Give mentors a special symbol before their name or colour their name differently in the chat, so that people know that these answeres on their questions are right.
A lot of you are suggesting we include some sort of public metric regarding recommending a player to play with or showcasing "jerks".
However, this would defeat Steven's previously stated concepts for the group dynamic whereby the developers are against including functions, metrics, mods/parsers, that would otherwise cause players to discriminate against one another for joining guilds, dungeon parties, farming groups, etc.
Steven stated he did not want players making decisions based off numerical figures such as percentages as to whether or not a group will allow a player to join them.
Also it is important to remember that the same players who enjoy griefing also enjoy attention. Although the normal player might look at a showcase as punishment a troll would likely see it as if it were a leaderboard/achievement. This would be further encouraged by the fact players could also just switch to an alternate account when they do not want to be a troll, and switch back to build more infamy.
The best system would be one that works in the background where players can not observe it functioning. Or a system that solely/mostly leans on positive reinforcement, such as the one I discussed above.
Another popular method would be the new feature a certain MOBA has been advertising on YouTube videos. System generated tags for players. For example: Fun to play with, leadership skills, willing to sacrifice, no you take it, I love to trade, give me the shiny things, etc. However, unlike that MOBA I would not suggest including negative tags such as: feeder, oops wrong button, oh your on my team?, etc.
To avoid the same issue I mentioned above which would be providing the players tools for discriminating against one another. You could also set the tags to be dynamic so that only 5 tags display at a time and they decay over time, that way guilds will not set requirements for certain tags to join etc.
It would give players some bit of metrics about each other while not providing a grounds for discrimination.
I pretty much agree with Jahlons post at the beginning of this thread. Only moderate slurs and real world attacks. I would like to add that I would appreciate the ability to not just blacklist/ignore a player, but instead that entire account. A dedicated troll will just keep making alts to troll their target, and an account wide ban will help with this. It would also help keep a community blacklisted player on the community blacklist as they won't be able to just ditch their reputation entirely by just rerolling.
I do have an example of toxicity moderation gone wrong. In BDO there was a point where the negative karma received from killing a player was increased. This caused a surge in 'karma bombers', or people who would grind over your spots knowing full well that the new penalties were too harsh for you to do anything about it. I hope that any moderation action that the Intrepid team decides to take keeps in mind how people will abuse that system to grief others. The 'murderer's isn't always the toxic player in every situation.
@LieutenantToast I think that the "reward good players system" could be like the honor system in LoL BUT without the extra shiny rewards in order to avoid the players "helping" just in order to get some stuff
Some of the ideas that the community is proposing are cool and what come to my mind is rewards in form of titles OR maybe giving free samples of things that otherwise will cost in-game currency (not embers), like stuff pretty much anyone can get, but that are moderately high cost, some ideas could be
Mentor System - Title "The Guide" - Other reward options maybe a little crest or seal in character portrait
At the end of a siege, raid or a dungeon there could be a window where you can give the person you feel was the most helpfull points for helping, guiding or been kind to you or your group, when you reach certain amount of point a token is mailed to you via in game mailing system (this could lead to 3 different systems, either the point are permanent and the more you get the better the token is or the points are spend in order to get the token, this last is mandatory and automatic OR a combination of this two where the points have to be spend but the player decides when he has enough to get a good reward) and the player can exchange it for a dye, BUT just for one that maybe is among medium to high price, nothing that is exclusive or rare, the same could be applied for house furniture, it could even be a random item from a pool of options always something nice but not exclusive, that how i think the reward system should work.
The reward good players systems seem to be in games where players pickup and drop groups regularly. Some of this seems to be present in AoC already, eg defending a caravan gives you a reward but the most problematic behavior is usually between members of rival guilds or within guilds. In these cases it often takes the form of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and sexual harassment which is, unfortunately, extremely common in mmorpgs.
Chat related incidents seems fairly easy to solve, right click report and have it checked by a person as AIs are not capable yet.
Action related incidents, such as repeatedly killing someone until they send nudes, never seem to get resolved. Reports with text areas to explain the context, video evidence or out of game evidence are rarely resolved unless the perpetrator has said something damming in game and then it's just treated like a chat incident.
I've seen so many people stop playing games due to the harassment they have received and I have yet to see an mmorpg successfully manage it.
I think the only solution is to employ more people to go through reports and have a zero tolerance policy of problematic behaviour.
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Glorious Ashes community - it's time for another Dev Discussion! Dev Discussion topics are kind of like a "reverse Q&A" - rather than you asking us questions about Ashes of Creation, we want to ask YOU what your thoughts are.
Our design team has compiled a list of burning questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding gameplay, your past MMO experiences, and more. Join in on the Dev Discussion and share what makes gaming special to you!
Dev Discussion #7 - Toxicity
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?
Keep an eye out for our next Dev Discussion topic regarding MMO "stickiness"!
Depends on your definition of toxicity and how hardcore you want to be about minimizing it.
You'll have better luck controlling it by keeping players entertained with the game. Using fluff things that aren't directly related to combat or improvement to give players some in-game R&R time might seem like a waste of coding but, really, toxicity erupts when players run out of things to DO. Offering a massive variety of R&R activities that are just satisfying and enjoyable will help curb the tendency to resort to griefing, bullying, instigating nonsense, and the like.
Some combat related things might be useful, like Colosseum fights. Have Colosseum's in the game that offer players a chance to set up 1v1 duels with monsters or other players in a controlled fashion. Don't be lazy by just slapping down a PvP pit and hoping players will just use it for for whatever. A place for warriors to show off their skills by defeating summonable bosses or where groups can go to practice teamwork.
Recreational activities in a game will probably go a lot further to create a more harmonious and sustainable environment.
Well you could have vidoes oor website on game etiquette and communication. But one way that is not to obvious is to publish demographics on how many people are raiding. Be surprised how many people do not raid.WoW is said to be less than 50 percent. Now there is no reason for the average player to not do an entry level raid. But lets say Ashes of Creation is about at 50 percent. So you publish that number and ask the community to get more people involved in raiding and set goals.
So if you have people looking for new people to raid they will probably be more freindly to them.
I lot of the trolling I have seen is people fighting over a raid spot so if you had a flex raid. Raid were number of people can vary (maybe already that way) that alleviates the problem a little bit.
A lot of the trolling I have seen outside raiding is between new players or palyers that are not too skilled and players that think they are skilled. Think if you put nicely not in this words. But when a person is toxic and not building positive environment they are bascially killing your own game. So just having a log in message like
One way to keep servers full is to be polite.
But it all comes down to what you will allow. I used to post in WoW forums mainly for PvP game balance. And well a lot of the posts that people posted were very toxic. Unfortunately when people are toxic to you after a while you start being toxic to them and the whole things just kind of have the snow ball effect.
99.99999999percent of the the time I am a very polite person almost all the time. But really I let those trolls get the best of me. That being the case I am for banns from chat even if it is just for 6 hours for first offense maybe more for second offense resetting ounce a year. What that does is sends a message to the brain that proper behavior is required. In this particular case I think this statement holds true. People will rise to the expectations you have for them.
Now for those people that think muting is enough well negativity just snow balls out of control. So if you have a toxic server that is a lot of people on your mute list. So there should be some regulation even if it is just a moderate one.
But a sure way to deal with it is something like if you go six months to year or x amount without being found guilty of being a troll you get some kind of reward like lets say some amout of gold. You could in fact get reported but if there no substance behind the claim it does not disqualify you.
Now some people just post things in trade like well I went to the grocery store and then I walked my dog and I just had dinner which was........you guys get the picture well for those people a little ban for cluttering up the chat channel or maybe just an in game letter to their mail box the first time not to clutter up the chat channel.
Maybe there could be chat channel just for socializing server wide or zone wide.
IMO in a player driven world only real life threats, doxxing, and racism should be chat-banned. All the rest should be managed by the community itself, add a block/ignore function
I swear, some of these forum threads should be renamed to "Hey Intrepid, can you guys just make a game like WoW, so that we have another WoW to play while waiting for an expansion in WoW?"
-Block player in chat
-Report excessive racial slurs or threats of violence to a GM.
-Mature Filter - Toggle on/off
-Don't ban PKers that are chasing other players around. Let that player getting killed ask their guild or better yet a Bounty Hunter because that player-killer is racking up some serious corruption.
With the way the corruption system works I see no reason to even hire a bounty hunter. Just feed the PKer corruption and keep him pissed enough to the point you kill him and take his stuff once he reaches that point.
Comments
- The standart /ignore & /mute commands accessible to players(resolves almost every case of ingame toxicity).
- For an MMO/Multiplayer game you need to let the playerbase deal with the toxicity itself. By giving direct methods of dealing with toxicity like automated systems or GM interference is not effective and it doesn't give the desired result. Chat bots recognise words and punish based on them but they don't consider the context behind what the player says(rarely happens but it does happen). Tickets and Reports need alot of resources to be invested in them just for handling a single part of the game... And its not that efficiant.
The right path for managing ingame toxicity would be indirect - Letting the players deal with a problem by giving them the right tools(the bounty system for example). Another way is focusing on the game to be social and to simulate social reprocussions. What i mean is when you explore the world and interact with other players your decisions leave a mark. Either by harrasingor helping you build your reputation in the server and make a name for yourself(Or maybe just mind your own business and do not focus attention on yourself). Simply by developing your charecter the decisions that you made in the past will affect your gameplay -> pretty much like how people in early WoW(When it was an MMORPG not just a G...) used to have lists of players that conduct scummy practices, acted like jerks or they were just unpleasant. By letting players sort their differences on their own provides the right amount of punishment or reward the person gets and bringes more depth to the game.
Alot more could be said about this method but i thing its the best path for an Online game. You either push your playerbase a bit to connect and interact with eachother or leave an automated system to match random people for a short period of time with a high chanceof them not ever seeing the people they just played with... thus leaving the opportunity for people to say anything they want without any repercussion whatsoever. Good examples for this is League of Legends, WoW rdf and lfr features(where people don't even interact with others) e.t.c.
Also for this to work the player names should be permanent with none or limited options to change it.
agree
ESO, as much I use it as a case study of how not to design a game, has a very mature community with surprisingly little toxicity. Players are still condescending, fussy, exploitative, and rude, but swearing is rare and outright trolling and griefing is even rarer. People may argue for hours in zone chat but it's civil by internet standards. As to what encourages this? I'd say the lack of tools to grief is part of the equation, but also the atmosphere of the world. The Elder Scrolls elicits a type of laid back play that reduces stress. I can't pinpoint what specifically about TES makes people chill. Lack of challenge is probably one part, and emphasis on cooperation or solo play over competitive is another.
By contrast Mordhau is rather rife with toxicity. Players both have the tools to grief and lack the tools to properly report and handle griefers. Engineers can block pathways and spawns, teammates can kill each other, vote kick gives no information beyond who's being kicked and by whom. Mordhau is also a skill based competitive game, which is prone to being stressful when a skill gap arises. More stressful environment and few consequences to lashing out lend to toxicity blooming. The whimsical nature of Mordhau's violence also lends itself to trolling, as deliberately toxic acts can be characterized as pranks or other jolly merrymaking.
I still want AoC to be challenging, but I cannot deny a constantly challenging game engenders rage in incompetent people. You would also do well to not make the game too whimsical in any way, as that can normalize harmful pranks.
The first thing that broke down community relations was queueing for a dungeon/ instance. By not having people put in the work to form their own parties they often could behave however they wanted in many instances. For example they could be rude/disrespectful or more in public areas and they would pay no penalty to group focused content.
Also once in the content they could treat others poorly instead of helping them learn or grow and the most inconvenience they might have is having to queue a different group for a few minutes.
As far as language goes when something was banned gamers came up with another way to say the same thing. I.e. in wow we stopped saying I am going to F you up when F got banned. Instead gamers started saying I am going to **** you. Or if someone was beaten t-bagging, which is not verbal, replaced the words.
Really the goal to make the game better should be two-fold.
One the developers need to knock down the most heinous speech and behavior like the F word and ban those from use. but that is not enough.
The other part needs to be give people a goal to achieve. When people strive for positive they automatically stop the negative in pursuit of the goal. But focusing on just stopping the negative does not ever mean that positive behavior will be reached.
So I would say start by having someone place basic leadership material on how treating other people well can be advantageous. Maybe have someone make short videos that are easily accessible with potential non game altering rewards. Maybe some leadership only titles once the videos are watched and a small test taken. Or maybe a pet after so many successful tests.
One Simple example of a video could be this: make it a rule that people may not talk negatively about another person in the guild behind their back unless it is to an officer/guild leader for the purpose of correcting bad action/behavior. It is stupid simple really but no one does this mostly because they have never heard of it. However if they did, imagine what it would be like for a game community that holds this truth closely. People could be less afraid of bullying and be more trusting to build solid relationships. Increasing the effectiveness of interpersonal/guild/community relationships. There would be less negative to sift through making progress in the game faster and more solid.
I teach personal leadership professionally and as such am someone who seeks to use video games as a solid medium to teach these things. I would love to see game companies embrace forward thinking in this area. The world needs it for sure.
"THIS IS GOOD"
&
"THIS IS BAD"
let's take an actual example of this, I think everyone here are against racism, homophobia, misogyny, death treats, black mailing, religious slurs, doxing, etc etc etc.
But a lot of you have said that if it's only words it's ok just to ignore, block or mute the person, BUT there was recently a case where a group of people in Fallout where constantly harassing character that, quote, "looked very gay"
So this group of people where constantly chasing and killing other people's character based on that, and after sometime they earned a lifeban from the servers, now, I have knowledge that here is AOC there's gonna be at least one LGBTIQA friendly guild, let's say that me or my guild decides to constantly attack, fight and KOS the members of that guild for that particular reason, if none of us say a word while we attack, then no one is going to be able to do anything about it, the same applies for example if someone makes a girl only guild, or any other kind of group that could become a target, the fact that there could be no actions against this type of conduct makes me think twice about what can be applied to "dealing with toxicity"
Just to be clear I'm 100% positive about people decided to play the role of the villain, or just doing PK because that an option, but there should be always some countermeasures when this actions are lead just by the idea of being a jerk, we always have to remember that sometimes this could escalate to dangerous stuff that none of us want
I think this is a great idea!!!
Not just punish the toxic but give the good ones a reward
this is more of a reminder really, nothing in need of intervention from gms but a little positive advertisement may be good?
some people really over-react to how others want to play and say things like "carebears" or "roleplayers" as if these are crimes and insults!
they need to remember that everything together makes the world come to life with more details.
sure you might hate some aspects of it! but believe me if it was gone, then you end up with time travel paradox thing ... so just remember don't overreact if you want to hate something .... keep it on a controlled level of hate XD
Also, make sure you are clear with your rules and give examples of what is acceptable and what is not. It's quite frustrating when you don't know what is an offense and what is not.
I agree that heavy punishments should be dealt out by a person rather than a computer, but it's almost impossible to have clear cut rules that cover every situation. The difference between banter and harassment depends entirely on the people involved. Not only this but the words a group of people consider socially acceptable constantly change over time.
Rift has one of the best mentorship systems I have encountered in any MMO I've ever played (and I've dabbed in many over the years). It allows you to set a mentorship level to your character, then help players in that level range to complete quests and experience multiplayer content. And as the higher-level player, you still receive experience (albeit a smaller amount than you would at-level), so friends who recruit friends don't have to roll new toons just to play together. There's no such thing as out levelling one another. It's awesome.
You could combine this with some sort of reward currency system for helpfulness, or perhaps the experience it yields applied toward a skill tree that gives minor helpful and/or cosmetic skills. Doing toxic deeds could deplete this currency or experience and make you have to give up your boons for your poor choices.
Just an idea, but it is one way too give positive reinforcement of desired player behavior and negative punishment of undesirable in one system.
Every character they made on any server would always be fully corrupted forever and there would be nothing they could do about it. The community would also have a near permanent pinata available until the player was forced out by constantly being hunted and killed across every character.
If you take anything from my post, please remember positive reinforcement as historically been more constructive than negative reinforcement. Several studies can be found online which validate my statement.
Incentives and stats are my preferred method for handling toxicity while at the same time encouraging group play. A commendation system is a popular tool used by some of the most toxic genres of online gaming. A commendation system helps to differentiate the helpful/informative/leaders from everyone else. Not only are commendations an excellent way for players to reward one another for working together, it is also a statistic that could be monitored by both the player (encouraging them to level their reputation up for rewards) but also for the developer to find players that might be a potential chat moderator or in-game GM.
The system could also be built upon in-game to help players determine the type of guild they are about to join or even decide whether or not they should be doing business with a particular player. The downside being a break in the immersions of player to player interactions and the introduction of toxicity caused by the commendation system. This could however be counteracted by both limiting the number of times a player can inspect the commendation level of another player by requiring an item to do so, or the commendation level could be all together invisible for players and instead players are given a rating of Fair-Good-Great-Starplayer.
Even if the commendation statistics are completely hidden from the players but players are rewarded with trophies (For Freehold) or cosmetics for reaching certain levels in certain categories it would encourage more positive performance as players would want to increase their level to gain the aforementioned rewards.
Building on this system it might also be a good idea to give players the ability to "sad face" one another for being a jerk. To avoid "sad face" spamming, players would be required to have interreacted with one another for at least 2 hours in a party or siege setting before they can commend or "sad face" someone. This way players would also be incentivized to formally party other players and interact with one another.
Another way game developers have built on this system is to use the stats generated to set priorities for match making and by grouping toxic players together in-game. Not sure how that would apply to the MMO but it could be a way to branch the system over to APOC.
Another suggestion would be to prompt players in-game with a warning about their behavior. Nothing too threatening, it could read, "Woah! Are you sure you want to say that?" It might give players that extra second after typing a slur to change their mind and reword their statement.
Hope that helps!
Something like "deskboard " with good person, tanks, ceafters; so same way with most reported persons
Way to give party member/solo player badge for good tanking, healing, damaging, good play, bad play, good rp.
Way to give party member/solo player badge for good tanking, healing, damaging, good play, bad play, good rp.
Everyone has a bad day from time to time, and sometimes I don't want to see this shite when I already had a stressful day.
For negative badget 3 person must give same badget so it count as one
Character with a lot of negative badgets will be shown on web page same for good player this way everyone will know who is good tank/healer/dmg/crafter/rp/good person and whom better mute in chat or avoid inviting in group
I have to agree with many others here that a Mentorship programm coupled with a recommendation function would be really good.
Recommendations could be earned through completed dungeons/raids/group quests, at the end people could each recommend one person.
Make it so that Mentors need to have played a certain amount of hours and a certain amount of recommendations from other people before they could become Mentors.
Give mentors a special symbol before their name or colour their name differently in the chat, so that people know that these answeres on their questions are right.
However, this would defeat Steven's previously stated concepts for the group dynamic whereby the developers are against including functions, metrics, mods/parsers, that would otherwise cause players to discriminate against one another for joining guilds, dungeon parties, farming groups, etc.
Steven stated he did not want players making decisions based off numerical figures such as percentages as to whether or not a group will allow a player to join them.
Also it is important to remember that the same players who enjoy griefing also enjoy attention. Although the normal player might look at a showcase as punishment a troll would likely see it as if it were a leaderboard/achievement. This would be further encouraged by the fact players could also just switch to an alternate account when they do not want to be a troll, and switch back to build more infamy.
The best system would be one that works in the background where players can not observe it functioning. Or a system that solely/mostly leans on positive reinforcement, such as the one I discussed above.
To avoid the same issue I mentioned above which would be providing the players tools for discriminating against one another. You could also set the tags to be dynamic so that only 5 tags display at a time and they decay over time, that way guilds will not set requirements for certain tags to join etc.
It would give players some bit of metrics about each other while not providing a grounds for discrimination.
I do have an example of toxicity moderation gone wrong. In BDO there was a point where the negative karma received from killing a player was increased. This caused a surge in 'karma bombers', or people who would grind over your spots knowing full well that the new penalties were too harsh for you to do anything about it. I hope that any moderation action that the Intrepid team decides to take keeps in mind how people will abuse that system to grief others. The 'murderer's isn't always the toxic player in every situation.
Some of the ideas that the community is proposing are cool and what come to my mind is rewards in form of titles OR maybe giving free samples of things that otherwise will cost in-game currency (not embers), like stuff pretty much anyone can get, but that are moderately high cost, some ideas could be
Mentor System - Title "The Guide" - Other reward options maybe a little crest or seal in character portrait
At the end of a siege, raid or a dungeon there could be a window where you can give the person you feel was the most helpfull points for helping, guiding or been kind to you or your group, when you reach certain amount of point a token is mailed to you via in game mailing system (this could lead to 3 different systems, either the point are permanent and the more you get the better the token is or the points are spend in order to get the token, this last is mandatory and automatic OR a combination of this two where the points have to be spend but the player decides when he has enough to get a good reward) and the player can exchange it for a dye, BUT just for one that maybe is among medium to high price, nothing that is exclusive or rare, the same could be applied for house furniture, it could even be a random item from a pool of options always something nice but not exclusive, that how i think the reward system should work.
Chat related incidents seems fairly easy to solve, right click report and have it checked by a person as AIs are not capable yet.
Action related incidents, such as repeatedly killing someone until they send nudes, never seem to get resolved. Reports with text areas to explain the context, video evidence or out of game evidence are rarely resolved unless the perpetrator has said something damming in game and then it's just treated like a chat incident.
I've seen so many people stop playing games due to the harassment they have received and I have yet to see an mmorpg successfully manage it.
I think the only solution is to employ more people to go through reports and have a zero tolerance policy of problematic behaviour.
Invincible Tank
Unrivalled Dps
Queen of Growlgate
Kraken Tamer
Super Cutie
H8 me cuz u ain't me
Depends on your definition of toxicity and how hardcore you want to be about minimizing it.
You'll have better luck controlling it by keeping players entertained with the game. Using fluff things that aren't directly related to combat or improvement to give players some in-game R&R time might seem like a waste of coding but, really, toxicity erupts when players run out of things to DO. Offering a massive variety of R&R activities that are just satisfying and enjoyable will help curb the tendency to resort to griefing, bullying, instigating nonsense, and the like.
Some combat related things might be useful, like Colosseum fights. Have Colosseum's in the game that offer players a chance to set up 1v1 duels with monsters or other players in a controlled fashion. Don't be lazy by just slapping down a PvP pit and hoping players will just use it for for whatever. A place for warriors to show off their skills by defeating summonable bosses or where groups can go to practice teamwork.
Recreational activities in a game will probably go a lot further to create a more harmonious and sustainable environment.
Just my two cents.
So if you have people looking for new people to raid they will probably be more freindly to them.
I lot of the trolling I have seen is people fighting over a raid spot so if you had a flex raid. Raid were number of people can vary (maybe already that way) that alleviates the problem a little bit.
A lot of the trolling I have seen outside raiding is between new players or palyers that are not too skilled and players that think they are skilled. Think if you put nicely not in this words. But when a person is toxic and not building positive environment they are bascially killing your own game. So just having a log in message like
One way to keep servers full is to be polite.
But it all comes down to what you will allow. I used to post in WoW forums mainly for PvP game balance. And well a lot of the posts that people posted were very toxic. Unfortunately when people are toxic to you after a while you start being toxic to them and the whole things just kind of have the snow ball effect.
99.99999999percent of the the time I am a very polite person almost all the time. But really I let those trolls get the best of me. That being the case I am for banns from chat even if it is just for 6 hours for first offense maybe more for second offense resetting ounce a year. What that does is sends a message to the brain that proper behavior is required. In this particular case I think this statement holds true. People will rise to the expectations you have for them.
Now for those people that think muting is enough well negativity just snow balls out of control. So if you have a toxic server that is a lot of people on your mute list. So there should be some regulation even if it is just a moderate one.
But a sure way to deal with it is something like if you go six months to year or x amount without being found guilty of being a troll you get some kind of reward like lets say some amout of gold. You could in fact get reported but if there no substance behind the claim it does not disqualify you.
Now some people just post things in trade like well I went to the grocery store and then I walked my dog and I just had dinner which was........you guys get the picture well for those people a little ban for cluttering up the chat channel or maybe just an in game letter to their mail box the first time not to clutter up the chat channel.
Maybe there could be chat channel just for socializing server wide or zone wide.
-Block player in chat
-Report excessive racial slurs or threats of violence to a GM.
-Mature Filter - Toggle on/off
-Don't ban PKers that are chasing other players around. Let that player getting killed ask their guild or better yet a Bounty Hunter because that player-killer is racking up some serious corruption.
With the way the corruption system works I see no reason to even hire a bounty hunter. Just feed the PKer corruption and keep him pissed enough to the point you kill him and take his stuff once he reaches that point.
GGez