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Afraid to Chat....
xeyare
Posts: 5 Arc User
This needs Dev attention badly and it needs it now. I'm not here trying to make demands, I'm saying it's really gotten this bad.
It's to the point where I am now turning Zone chat off completely (as in deselecting it on my chat tabs) because I'm afraid to participate in even the simplest of conversations for fear that I'll offend someone with a differing opinion and that somehow I'll end up with a 24 hour chat mute.
I should NOT have to fear another player's power to remove the Social Aspect of an MMO from my play experience for 24 hours.
Please Devs, please look into disabling this "feature" until you can come up with a better system. As it stands this is being abused, and for petty vindictive purposes.
The rest of the story: I was muted at 9:45-ish EST however I'd been AFK since about 9:30. AFK for 15 minutes THEN I get muted. This was obviously an attack on me and NOT intended use of the "report spam" feature. Although I understand just being ignored by sufficient people yields the same result. I was simply disagreeing with another player on their policy of abandoning alerts if they get teamed with a low level char. I was not alone in this but I've seen others that were on the same side as me still using chat.
I don't see how this can be working as intended at all.
It's to the point where I am now turning Zone chat off completely (as in deselecting it on my chat tabs) because I'm afraid to participate in even the simplest of conversations for fear that I'll offend someone with a differing opinion and that somehow I'll end up with a 24 hour chat mute.
I should NOT have to fear another player's power to remove the Social Aspect of an MMO from my play experience for 24 hours.
Please Devs, please look into disabling this "feature" until you can come up with a better system. As it stands this is being abused, and for petty vindictive purposes.
The rest of the story: I was muted at 9:45-ish EST however I'd been AFK since about 9:30. AFK for 15 minutes THEN I get muted. This was obviously an attack on me and NOT intended use of the "report spam" feature. Although I understand just being ignored by sufficient people yields the same result. I was simply disagreeing with another player on their policy of abandoning alerts if they get teamed with a low level char. I was not alone in this but I've seen others that were on the same side as me still using chat.
I don't see how this can be working as intended at all.
Post edited by xeyare on
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If you find your disagreement with someone that strong, it might be best to go to tells, or even create a new chat to argue with them in.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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It is the judgement of your peers.
For each player that places your account on ignore and for each player that reports your account as a spammer, you receive 'credit' towards a twenty-four hour chat ban. Upon hitting the magic number, you are chat banned and your accumulated credits are cleared.
You were not chat banned because you offended one player. You were chat banned because you have offended enough players since your last chat ban that you accumulated sufficient 'credits' to hit the magic number.
Welcome to Cryptic Studios.
I agree with your solution. Disable or isolate /zone and chat with your friends via custom channels, with your teammates and with your supergroup. It is important to note that this will not completely remove the chance that you'll be chat banned, but it will reduce it.
Do enjoy the game. :biggrin:
_____
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you aren't paying for it, you aren't the customer; you are the product being sold.
Dollar, dollar, bill, yo. Cash rules everything around you and me.
For what its worth, it doesn't require more than one player.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you aren't paying for it, you aren't the customer; you are the product being sold.
Dollar, dollar, bill, yo. Cash rules everything around you and me.
It needed it two years ago when this "feature" started to become an issue. By this point its become recurring issue that keeps getting brought up at the forums number. . . I lost count
But seriously, there's a lot of threads on this issue--a LOT (Flare will probably show up at some point with his sig full of links to every thread he's started on it). And while I thoroughly agree that this system should NOT work the way it does, and that it is extremely irresponsible for a game company to delegate such a task to players and essentially hand them police powers so great not even their moderators can override them once used*, the devs have repeatedly stated that it is "working as intended" (which seriously makes me question what type of standards they use to determine how they intend something to work).
Frankly I've raged about this issue so often in the past I don't know to say anymore, and don't even have the energy for it. It sucks, it shouldn't be, and I'm sorry that you had to go through this, but I honestly don't think that they're EVER going to do anything about it.
*they actually made it so that chat bans can't be overridden, so once you get one... enjoy :rolleyes:
I been a long time leaving but I'm going to be a long time gone.
Willie Nelson
T.U.F.K.A.S. (the user formerly known as Scarlyng)
Wrong on the CO forums since November, 2008
Deal with it and learn from it because as the devs have pointed out in the past, the system is not going away.
People are broken. - Lum the Mad
But we don't have active GMs in-game to police the chat, we are stucked with this retarded automatic system that can and will be exploited to grief "deserving" and "undeserving" players alike.
Meanwhile, at Tyria...
=^ _ ^= Kitty Lives!
No clue wth is wrong with people these days.
Again, the solution--turning off zone chat--works wonders.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Pretty much this ^^^^^
Never been chat banned myself, but I know a problem when I see it. This little feature has ruined many a CC and cost CO a few players along the way too.
All I did was disagree with the practice of leaving an alert before it's over just because you ended up with lowbies on your team. I simply argued that in most cases smash alerts only last 2-5 minutes. I said my peace and then I go up to go make me some food. Come back 15 minutes later and I can't chat for 24 hours.
That's INSANE. (BTW I loved the Inmates Running the Asylum comment earlier, thank you for the laugh Haleakala)
But as of now I'm no longer utilizing Zone chat and after 3 years almost of playing I think it's extremely sad I have to even consider this course of action, let alone implement it. But I will not suffer not being able to talk to friends in SG chat or tells just because someone else got butthurt in Zone chat. Also, it's not hard for most people to get a couple friends to "report spam" on someone and AFAIK it only takes a few spam reports to get you muted. It's extremely childish though, I don't mind saying.
Also, I don't think it should be hard to break the code for the auto-mute system with some kind of a (null) call or some such. But knowing the fragile code of this game even a simple break like that would probably result in a server crash every time someone /ignored someone.
What's really insane is that you've been playing for three years and have been able to stand zone chat on all that time! I mean it's impressive really... I had to turn it off around day two or three of playing CO and have very rarely ticked it back on since. If you want to really have a good social experience in the game, roleplay, or just join a good friendly supergroup. Zone chat in CO is really just watching a bunch of people throwing buckets of stupid against a wall hoping something sticks. It's very rarely anything of value.
What appeals to each one of us about our play experience varies by player. Some people enjoy the social aspect of chatting with random people over zone. Others prefer to chat in character, others still chat very little at all. Personally I tend to have zone chat turned off by default for much the same reasons you give, as well as the fact I find it hard to keep track of all the constant stream of zone plus any other channels (SG, custome channels, etc.) I may have on at the same time and it hurts my eyes (I might be ready for glasses after all these years of staring at a monitor screen... :redface:).
PS: By the way, some of the people that have reported abuse by this feature are RPers that have been silenced by anti-RP griefers. So RPing won't save you from the chat ban (and depending on who you run into might make you a target for it
Neither of those are true. It takes 20 ignore/report spams and they can accumulate forever. The only thing that resets the counter is actually getting a ban. Also, it is possible for one person to get someone chat-banned.
That's all it takes -- a level of maturity that tells someone, "Hey, I can grief this person for daring to disagree with me, at no consequence to myself!" This is why anyone with two active brain cells should have known that putting the power to affect other's in-game experience in the hands of the anonymous internet user was going to generate abuse.
They make me sad, too, Kitty.
I been a long time leaving but I'm going to be a long time gone.
Willie Nelson
T.U.F.K.A.S. (the user formerly known as Scarlyng)
Wrong on the CO forums since November, 2008
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
I've talked to numerous devs and GMs about the issue and I get the same answer: It's not our goal to have displeased customers, but it is an issue we're not allowed to discuss.
As anyone who has experience in this issue will tell you: You don't even need to be online to be chat banned. Silver players are allowed to directly control the game experience of paying gold members. There is simply no excuse for any player to have direct control over another's game experience. It is wrong.
I am also scared to socialize outside of my circles in this game due to the extreme apathy Cryptic and PWE have shown towards the issue. People are always going to use the anonymity of the internet to be bullies, to harass, and so on. I just wish that Cryptic and PWE didn't enforce the legitimacy of this by giving them a weapon.
Flare's guide to hosting and judging costume contests!
(link under construction)
My one question though is if the same person continually ignores you and then removes you and then ignores you again does this count as 1/20 or does it continue to count against you until you're muted? I mean is that why it took 15 minutes for the person to get me muted or because they were trying to convince 19 friends? If one person can repeatedly utilize the /ignore feature on someone until they're muted then this system is even worse off than I thought. Potentially even beyond repair.
Yes, it is possible for one person to ignore, stop ignoring, ignore, stop ignoring, and so on until you're muted, those count to your chat-ban. I've been victimized by this method in addition to the SG with a grudge method.
It's not beyond repair though. The system itself can be completely removed. Have the ignore function simply make it so you don't see anything from the person ignored. What the deal is, is the chat channel system account wide. It effects STO players as well as CO players.
Flare's guide to hosting and judging costume contests!
(link under construction)
Quoted for utter truth.
And it is due to this poorly designed system that I refuse to have Zone chat even up. I'm playing a MMO, and I refuse to talk to the general masses, or see them talk to each other.
But as mentioned before: Working as intended. And it's not being removed for some reason not a single one of us can fathom.
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There's a _reason_ you are getting ignored and it's not because people are 'out to get you' it's because you' ae annoying people enough to go to the effort of right click > Ignore'.
If you can't moderate yourself in chat then the sytem will do it for you.
1) You can be chatbanned while not actually in game to do something that annoys someone else.
2) One can be silenced (and people have been) for making an unpopular, yet completely appropriate chat post.
3) Chat is part of the game that people are paying (hopefully) for. A random stranger should not be allowed to take what you are paying for away from you because they feel like it.
4) It only takes one person to chat ban another.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
And what about me? Was when I signed on and 2 minutes later announced only ONCE that my SG at the time was having a costume contest in zone, reason enough for me to get chat-banned?
If I ruffle someone's feathers by hosting community events that dozens of people participate in, is it fair for the 30-90 people who prepare by spending Gs or even Zen, to come out to said event that never happens because some bozo with an itchy finger thinks my character isn't cool? Or I didn't happen to have a category in this one particular contest that they felt they could participate in?
I, nor xeyare, nor anyone else should have to roll over for selfish jerks who pick a fight with us just because they can abuse the system.
So what if the system bans 1 person who deserves it, that doesn't make the system as a whole, right! I'd fathom a guess that out of every 15-20 people chat banned, 1 or 2 actually were harassing someone, or doing something worthy of the ban. Is that fair? Is that, "working as intended" as somebob quotes one of the Devs?
No, it's not. The right thing to do, is to do away with the system.
Flare's guide to hosting and judging costume contests!
(link under construction)
It's easy to guess at the reason, money. It would cost money to reprogram the game engine. Also, without the system, they would have to hire someone to police gold spam, at least in the games where there might actually be some, or actually hire GM's. Y'know, the more I think about it, the more I believe the system is not only unprofessional, it's downright disdainful of their customers.
I been a long time leaving but I'm going to be a long time gone.
Willie Nelson
T.U.F.K.A.S. (the user formerly known as Scarlyng)
Wrong on the CO forums since November, 2008
The people that "deserve" it don't even need to get chat banned when simply placing them on ignore already solves the issue of the "offended" party not having to ever hear them again. This "she had it coming..." argument is nothing but a red herring.
People don't get chat banned because they had it coming. They get chat banned because of a messed up system that doesn't even need to be in place to fulfill this function people like this claim it serves. Not even the devs agree with it, since we've been told in no uncertain terms in the past that the ENTIRE reason for being of this useless system was to stamp gold spammers--not to hand out punishment to anyone that "deserves" it.
Its not up to any of us to determine whether or not someone is being "offensive" enough to "deserve" getting silenced from the entire game--specially not when they're (most likely) paying costumers like us. That's supposed to be the game MODERATOR'S job, not ours. And its not even the intended use of the system, as has been stated by the devs before.
Maybe we need a sub forum for "Chat Banned Rants"
I was banned last week, you see me complaining?
I had a good laugh at it. Less talk, more drops.
I don't think the reason is money. I would think this would be an easy fix. Yes, the Devs cannot take this feature out of the game engine. However, how hard would it be to raise the number of ignores before a chat ban initiated? I say raise the number of ignores to 1,000,000, that would pretty much get rid of this feature all together, unless someone poed a million people. I do not understand code, but would it be so hard to go in and change that one number in the base code?
Like hell they can't! It's program code. If it was added, it can be disabled, deprecated or removed.
Note: Having NOT seen the code, I can't say how BIG an undertaking that would be. But it's not "impossible".
It may simply be that the current crop of devs simply don't have the technical skills to remove it. But that's not the same thing.
The fact is, this system can be (and is being) used to grief innocent players. Sure, some players need to, occasionally, be slapped with a bit of STFU. But this is what Ignore is for IN THE FIRST PLACE.
The fact that it can be used to nuke an offline player's ability to chat is, pardon the insensitivity of the term, retarded.
There are, essentially, ZERO controls in the game to prevent such abuses, and the in-game GM'ing here is apathetic to the point of neglect.
This is merely one more indicator that the game is on life support at this point.
"Champions-Online and Star Trek Online contained hundreds of hours of mediocre content!"
and "nothing was polished".
--Jack Emmert
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
No. We are saying that Cryptic is not going to spend any money working on it just because a handful of players do not like it.
How is that not clear? :rolleyes:
People are broken. - Lum the Mad
Who are we after all? Customer? Bah! We should be grateful to be able to play this glorious game!!
*strikes evil pose*
=^ _ ^= Kitty Lives!
Says the pays-no-sub-fee-to-play LTS'er.
People are broken. - Lum the Mad
A handfull? I think you greatly underestimate the number of people who would like rid of this system:rolleyes:
I have never been chat-banned, but even I can see the inherent wrongness of this system.
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
Reprogramming costs being little to nothing or large, the real cost would be having to police chat in their games themselves. That's why changing the number required (which should be an easy fix) isn't going to happen either.
Neither you nor I know how many like or dislike the system, so I fixed that for you.
I been a long time leaving but I'm going to be a long time gone.
Willie Nelson
T.U.F.K.A.S. (the user formerly known as Scarlyng)
Wrong on the CO forums since November, 2008
Oh I have no doubt that a great number of people dislike this system, even I think it could be done better. But in the absence of any quantifiable data (can you point me to a poll on this subject?) my assertion remains. When the player base can be measured in the 1000's, 20-30 people ranting in a forum is a mere handful. You can change the words if they do not suit you but the statistics remain the same. :rolleyes:
And as several posts over the years have shown, even in this thread, some people do like the system.
Look, the system is what it is and judging from the length of time this subject has been active and the responses from Cryptic, they have neither the budget nor desire to change anything.
The solution is simple, don't make yourself a target for griefing.
People are broken. - Lum the Mad
Exactly. You nailed this perfectly.
In my opinion and extensive experience, the "being judged by your peers" sentiment works ok sometimes and fails miserably other times. It fails becomes a popularity contest, people start ganging up on somebody, justified or not it's WRONG that it works that way. Even if somebody "had it coming", it doesn't justify a broken system and shame on any of you who try to defend such a system.
It does take care of some trolls sometime, but I have seen just as many people who have not done anything wrong get chat banned multiple times.
Vizzone (aka. Lee Tosi) is a good example of this, making in-character roleplaying on Zone chat, and has gotten chat suspended by it at least 3 times that I know of. Or any number of Costume Contest announcers, chat banned for simply announcing a costume contest.
It's been asked for since... well... a long time. The most we ever got was a "we'll look into this" type of response from ShadeShooter with an offer to put Costume Contest times & locations on the official website.
That's a shame...
For the record, I regularly go through my ignore list and remove anybody who I can't remember specifically why they're on there. I only have about a dozen players on my ignore list permanently.
Consolidate the currencies! (Please!)
Does your Champion have a theme song? (share it!)
Got a funny in-game screenshot? (share it!)
Please fix the Overdrive energy unlock! (Should help promote thematic build diversity!)
Dealed by who? By us, the players? I think there's plenty of IGNORE buttons being pushed about it. We moderate the chat, but who moderates the moderators?
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
Only a handful......
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
The handful of people who LIKE to abuse it, yes.
Consolidate the currencies! (Please!)
Does your Champion have a theme song? (share it!)
Got a funny in-game screenshot? (share it!)
Please fix the Overdrive energy unlock! (Should help promote thematic build diversity!)
Take out something that's embedded in the software already, and who knows what goes with it? Personally, I'd rather risk not being able to voice my opinion (for what it's worth, which usually ain't much) for 24 hours...
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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That sentence is pretty self contradictory.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
Apparently he likes to ignore the rather huge sum of money that is needed to invest in to get LTS in the first place... He's making an existential fallacy, false logic.
Consolidate the currencies! (Please!)
Does your Champion have a theme song? (share it!)
Got a funny in-game screenshot? (share it!)
Please fix the Overdrive energy unlock! (Should help promote thematic build diversity!)
Oh hell no.
The only people who like this system are the ones who get to abuse it for their own personal gain like if someone inadvertently bumps your post to sell an item and you get them chat-banned. Or someone wants to just talk to you because they don't agree with you, and you take it as a provoked attack. How DARE they disagree with you, right?
Not having the budget is NOT the reason for their lack of action. This has been a problem since 2007 (see link #1 in signature). I would have been more than willing, ecstatic even, if they sacrificed a few of the MANY things they've released in order to focus on making the base of the game's system stronger. The desire to change or lack thereof? Yeah that's the most likely reason, too much effort for them.
But don't you dare tell me or anyone else "not to make ourselves targets". Does hosting community events make me a target? Talking with with friends in local chat about how cool the new costume set is, does that make me a target? I should be a good little player and just shut up about the system since I can't change it right? Wrong. :mad:
I've done nothing but help the community of this game and I swear I will not stop fighting this gross negligence of our rights as customers. Screw the fact that I might not change anything, at least I know what I'm doing is the right thing to do.
Flare's guide to hosting and judging costume contests!
(link under construction)