Remove new player zone chat restriction

nextnametaken

It's 130 Am and there are only 120 people in Millennium City, 91 of them are under level 12 and they can't use the zone chat to look for teams, ask questions, or otherwise feel like this is a "more than one player online game"

lilukario

I might sound like an idiot here, but when did new player got zone chat restriction?
Cause I sure did not when I was F2P and joined the game.

flyingfinn

Wasn't there somekind of 24 hour Zone chat restriction for new players?

somebob

If memory serves, absolutely brand new accounts can't use Zone for the first 5 or 10 hours of their account lives (to prevent them from spamming zone with gold websites...despite money in CO being nearly worthless). But once they hit that point, they can talk on any and all characters.

And the restriction came around once CO went to F2P mode. If you'd subscribed at some point anywhere on your account (or spent Zen as well), you didn't have the above lock.

flamingbunnyman

flyingfinn wrote: »

Wasn't there somekind of 24 hour Zone chat restriction for new players?

The 24 hour chat ban comes from being /ignored or /ignore_spammered too many times.

theravenforce

I remember there being a 20HR Chat Restriction (to LOCAL only. Not even PMs were allowed).

So after 20hrs had transpired on your account of in game real time play you gained access to all chats.

fudgemonsta

http://co.perfectworld.com/freetoplay

Scroll down to the Chat tab and hover over the '?' mark.

The restrictions seem very minor, especially since upon leaving the tutorial with a new account you get a hundred Zen, which you can then buy something cheap like a key or something and bam, you're released.

Not everyone wants to chat in zone chat. I kinda doubt that even half of those lowbies are wanting to speak, personally.

nextnametaken

fudgemonsta wrote: »

The restrictions seem very minor, especially since upon leaving the tutorial with a new account you get a hundred Zen, which you can then buy something cheap like a key or something and bam, you're released.

The 360,000 New Champions that have come to the game and left since January 2012, dont' know about spending the Z. They don't get the "You got a 100 Zen for beating the Qularr" email until they've already quit the game. There is no reason for them to buy a key, they don't have any damned lock boxes after the tutorial.

Thirty minutes in the tutorial with near pure silence, that really creates a 'massively multiplayer online" first impression.

Why do so many players quit before finishing the tutorial?

fudgemonsta wrote: »

Not everyone wants to chat in zone chat. I kinda doubt that even half of those lowbies are wanting to speak, personally.

So if a few don't want to speak, then we should silence all of them.
The policy to date has improved the game population and playing experience to such a degree that 80% of New Champions left the game before level 12.

MC zone used to fall down to a 150 player count around 2AM server time, that count starts at 10PM now and twice this week we've fallen below the 150 player count norm that didn't deviate for two years.

Silence is golden if "Feels like a funeral" is the goal.

bluhman

There is a rationale to do this - troll accounts are not unheard of, and allowing them to use zone would let people use bypass spam accounts to advertise gold websites (like maybe even for other MMOs). Not that I've really seen it as a problem right now, but the potential's there.

The more nuanced method to solve the problem is to do what I've seen a lot of other MMOs do: Automatically add new players to general purpose chat channels; LFG, Trade, Help, etc.

flyingfinn

flamingbunnyman wrote: »

The 24 hour chat ban comes from being /ignored or /ignore_spammered too many times.

I'm not that of a noob.

This is what i was talking about:

If memory serves, absolutely brand new accounts can't use Zone for the first 5 or 10 hours of their account lives (to prevent them from spamming zone with gold websites...despite money in CO being nearly worthless). But once they hit that point, they can talk on any and all characters.

nextnametaken

Oh yeah I forgot that guy with over 100 accounts two winter events ago, that kept getting silenced and logging in with another of his accounts, we counted and silenced over 100 before he switched to another account base name that also had like 100 accounts attached to it, and those got silenced, then two days later another set of accounts showed up.

Then PWE cut off China and Russia and some other places from playing and
we never heard from that guy or had that kind of situation happen again.

If all it takes is spending that 100Z to make trolling spam accounts, then nothing is stopping anyone from doing that already, which they probably are, but not for spamming.
Obviously someone is selling that Z store stuff in the auction house and
silencing some of you people who made them mad with expert efficiency.