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Player Challenge: Make the Neverwinter Chat Ban System Better.
aandrethegiant
Member Posts: 3,369 Arc User
Neverwinter utilizes a text chat system that effectively keeps text chat spam to a virtually non-existent level. It has effectively blocked countless spam attempts, and is an instrumental tool that improves the quality of life in Neverwinter.
However, some have voiced their dissatisfaction with this tool for various reasons.
The NOCS podcaster in me had to inquire, and ask the powers that be if there can be a better way, to both keep our security, and ensure it's less likely to be abused (currently it is very very rare) or have unintended consequences (accidentally getting yourself temp-banned) ...
I am glad to say I have news to report! The dev team has begun evaluating it. They are looking for ways to improve the system, and would love to hear suggestions and feedback.
GOAL: So without further ado, I'd like you to play developer, tasked with the responsibility to improve the text chat system in place now. You have 60 days to implement.
Please keep all replies on topic, and clean. This is your chance to talk directly to developers (as you can BET Aandre's hand-delivering this one!) to better the game -- they are listening -- so make it good!
However, some have voiced their dissatisfaction with this tool for various reasons.
The NOCS podcaster in me had to inquire, and ask the powers that be if there can be a better way, to both keep our security, and ensure it's less likely to be abused (currently it is very very rare) or have unintended consequences (accidentally getting yourself temp-banned) ...
I am glad to say I have news to report! The dev team has begun evaluating it. They are looking for ways to improve the system, and would love to hear suggestions and feedback.
GOAL: So without further ado, I'd like you to play developer, tasked with the responsibility to improve the text chat system in place now. You have 60 days to implement.
Please keep all replies on topic, and clean. This is your chance to talk directly to developers (as you can BET Aandre's hand-delivering this one!) to better the game -- they are listening -- so make it good!
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Two ways you could do it:
1) "Report Spam" continues to auto-silence, but the silence sends chat logs to somewhere the volunteer mods can see them, and they can undo the silence. This ends the spam quickly, and ends any abuse quickly. It has very serious privacy concerns however.
2) "Report Spam" goes to the volunteer mods. They can silence. There is no more auto-silence. Since volunteer mods are not employees and cannot be given shifts or assignments (no sense debating those points, folks, that's going to be PWE's legal department's take on this under California and US labor law, they already had this discussion for the forum mods), there would be periods of time where spammers would run rampant, but there would be precious little chance for abuse. Somebody (Destravus?) would need to review silences periodically, to make sure the volunteers didn't go off the rails.
I actually prefer #1, but I can't emphasize enough the privacy concerns; somebody could report a conversation whose participants expected privacy, it could even be ABOUT one of the mods.
Text chat. Default 'zone' chat should have filters to redirect 'trade' stuff to a trade channel. Likewise for LFG etc. Should also be easy enough to 'throttle' it so that even a 'trade' channel stops folks from repeatedly sending the same thing over and over. Throttling is probably more effective in the long run that player run policing (which as we know, is potentially open to abuse).
This is on the assumption that the primary purpose of a 'default' chat channel is for new players to ask questions and for more experienced ones to be able to rattle off a quick answer. This helps build a sense of community, encourages new players (It can be frustrating to have what is a simple question and not get an answer). Personally, on the rate occassion s that I have zone chat turned on and see a new player asking a question, I'll TELL the answer in a PM so they can spot it easily amongst the rest of the 'noise'.
Obscenity filters. It's easy enough to put **** over 'rude' or offensive words, be even better if there was a log kept so that folks that repeatedly use certain words get an automated reprimand. Certain words should not need a 'counter'.
This should apply to zone chat only, not to 'say' stuff that could be going on between consenting adults in a private instance.
- Make chat bans dependent on where the "report spam" tokens were accumulated. If posts in the Zone chat accumulated the majority of the "report spam" reports, the 24h ban should affect only the Zone chat. If it was through whispers, only whispers should be affected. Guild chat should never be affected.
- Add a cooldown for reports. If a player is reporting 20 people for spamming within five minutes, the problem is probably with this player, not with the reported person. The cooldown should increase depending on how frequently the command is used. The command-using player should not be told whether their report contributed to the target getting muted. If the command is on an internal cooldown, the target should only be ignored locally.
- Treat "ignore" and "report spam" differently. The former should only affect what the player sees on their screen, not what the ignored player can do. Only "report spam" should affect the target's ability to use communication features. Add a "report inappropriate behavior" option and treat it like "report spam", but log it differently for potential future use.
- Make the ignore portion of both commands account wide for the user who submitted the reports. If I ignore someone with character A, I should not need to ignore them with character B again.
- Only count "report spam" reports from characters that are level 20-30, not below. "Report spam" from lower level characters should be treated like a plain "ignore" command and have no global effect.
- Start chat bans at 2 hours and then escalate them to 8 and 24 hours (or 8, 12, 24). Resetting once a week.
Nice to see that you guys are (finally) doing something about it.
We asked about it over in CO about a year ago and got blown off and ignored, saying that it was 'working as designed'.
My only opinion to the player run Mafia based chat ban system is this:
You can absolutely NOT CHAT BAN ANYONE without a real HUMAN BEING looking at the reports first. PERIOD.
That is the ONLY way to remove any and all false positives (of which there are a ton of).
Putting someone on ignore should not be contributing either.
Yes, I know, having an automated system saves company resources - but those company resources come from paying customers, and customers stay around longer when they arent able to be griefed by other players.
This isn't even feasible in a sub-based MMO, let alone in a F2P where players can make as many accounts as they wish. It would give spammers, gold sellers and abusive players free reign for hours or days before anything could be done. It is not all right that 50, 100, 250 or more players should all have to individually ignore one misbehaving or spamming individual.
1.Remove the mute option from the Ignore feature.
2.Remove the mute option from the Report Spam feature.
3.Problem solved.
Ok, send a report from the Report Spam to whoever is sitting other side of the screen in PW/Cryptic and let them deal the Gold Spammers or individuals who were wrongly reported. Since there's supposedly be a person like that in there, or that whats we were told....
It's not any players job to deal with these Gold Spammer scum. Ignore option removes them from the chat and that's that.
Not too difficult when you think about it.
But i guess that's not an option.
And hey, thanks for listening your paying customers at the Champions Online when this issue 1st raised it's ugly head. Good job.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
1. Have the ignores/spam reports categorized into channels. If you get ignored X times from Zone chat, then you're just banned from Zone chat, nothing else. If the spammer goes to Local, and gets enough ignores there, then ban him from local as well. If the spammer gets reported from a third channel, then finally cut them off of all chat.
2. You should always be able to chat with people on your friends list. If this is going to become a problem, such as spammers inviting people to to their friends list to spam at them, then make it so that if you're muted, you can't send out friend requests, but you can accept them.
3. Give the ignores/spam reports a decay timer. When a spammer spams zone chat, dozens of people are going to ignore/report spam, right away. It's obvious that person is a spammer. But someone that ignored me three weeks ago shouldn't really count towards me being labeled a spammer just because I voiced an unpopular opinion. I think after, say, three days, the ignore/report spam demerit put on your account should disappear. This has no negative effects on the squelching of gold spammers since they'll hit their magic number of demerits in seconds.
4. Ignores/Spam Reports that are not given through a chat channel should not offer demerits to an account. This is how people abuse the system. One guy tells all his friends to search for @personName in the social window, right click their name, and hit Report Spam, and suddenly out of nowhere, someone's muted even though they said nothing. This will prevent some of the abuse, such as people being muted while offline and people being muted while they're already muted. Yes, both these things have happened before. If you make it so ignores and spam reports only give you a mute demerit when given through a chat channel that you actually typed something in, it'll give more merit to the system.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
So keep everything the same. Add a Trade channel, LFG channel and maybe even an advice/help channel. Very minimal coding at this point.
Next add a per post auto temp ban. If a person post anything to any channel more than 3x in 5sec. they are warned and auto temp banned for 30min.
Now, if they persist and are temp banned more than 5x in a 24hr. period, then they are banned for the current full ban of 24hrs.
Now, if they persist past 3 full bans, THEN send to CS to warn/whatever that said account will be perma chat banned if it persists past this point.
No to hard to implement code wise and less work for staff. I dont know, it's just an idea.
I didn't realize this was possible, and assumed that it can only be done through someone's Zone chat post or another form of actual communication. This is definitely the #1 tweak that would probably address the majority of abuse cases.
1:Restrict the chatban to only sending e-mail, zone, trade, and emote/local channels. Custom channels have their own mods that can silence people, guilds can remove spammers, and teams can kick. But restricting them from everything universally just makes them feel that the Troll Mafia runs things in Champs-town, and that's the reputation you're undoubtedly trying to avoid.
2:As someone said earlier-restrict the chatbans to only being 2 hours, rather than 24. That makes them annoying rather than debilitating, and makes it slightly more difficult for the Troll Mafia to enforce. And if someone earns more than 5 tickets in a 24-hour period, it gets sent to a GM for review-if they're legitimately breaking ToS, they get a permanent ban. If they're not, you look into who's ignoring them, and remove their rights to ignore anyone.
3:Just...stop doing automated chatbans. Even if they did solve something, CO runs on a free model, so a muted account can be dumped in favor of a new one with a minimum of trouble. A dedicated player with a gold account, a guild to chat with, and channels he needs to be invited into, however, doesn't want to just make a new account. He wants to not be abused in the first place. An answer as to what exactly the Chatbans are supposed to solve would be appreciated, and we could analyze it based on those merits, rather than having bitter memories of the Troll Mafia and randomly being muted for days.
Just my two local.
Is there a level requirement for zone chat in Protector's enclave? If there isn't, there should be, say level 10-20. Second, there should be an automatic block for the same message in less than 5 seconds, or a message where at least 50% of the words are identical. If that's too draconian, then a sort of diminishing returns system, the more often you spam, the longer you're required to wait between spam.
An interesting opinion. Anyone who does not wish to see another player's chat, spam, whatever, would have that option without banning the chatting player. It does nothing to improve player A's quality of life for other players to not be allowed to see the messages of those he dislikes.
Evidence of this ?
1) create official channels for things like LFG or WTS/WTB. Have messages with such phrases automatically directed to the appropriate channels. A variation of this is how GW1 dealt with trade spam in zone chat. It might not eliminate it but, if well implemented, could reduce it dramatically.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
What Class Are You?
2. The function of report spam should be made very clear - i.e. if it is only for gold / Ad sellers state this clearly.
3. Severely punish anyone who abuses this.
4. Make report spam only count from high level players in Protector's Enclave (and level appropriate for elsewhere). This ensures that only people who have spent time leveling a character can report spam and they will be badly affected by any punishment should they abuse this system.
As for the system changes: Make ignore have nothing to do with chat bans. Report is fine. I don't intentionally report anyone unless they are flooding the screen with HAMSTER or saying something totally inappropriate. But I would like the ability to just ignore people without worrying about it adding to them being banned.
Everyone says it takes 20/21 ignores or reports to get you banned, and that they add up over the whole time you've played. If so make it so that it degrades 1 per month or something.
Make it so they actually have to click something you said in chat to report you. Don't even have the option available in other menus. In no way should someone be able to report you if you haven't even said anything.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
First I would have multiple default channels and I would have a tool-tip/pop-up at some point describing them. Along with the Zone channel I would also have a Trade, LFG, and Player Help channels added.
If possible I would have a system in place that would redirect "WTB", "LFG", etc posts to appropriate channels automatically. There are a number of obvious abbreviations that could be used, and I wouldn't worry about trying to catch all variations just the obvious ones. This would help alleviate some of the Zone spam, it would help users that are legitimately looking for trade or groups by focusing that activity in proper channels that they can monitor. This would also keep players that accidentally post in the wrong channel from getting flagged for spamming.
I would only allow players of level 10 (or some other arbitrary level that's appropriate) to submit a spam report.
I would track the number of times a player was placed on an /ignore list by other players. Once a player has been /ignored by X amount of people I would either flag them to have a CS person investigate, or place a short ban (in all channels) on the player and have a CS person investigate. I would only add to the tracked /ignore count if the ignoring player was of the level 10 (or whatever) requirement similar to spam reporting. Once the CS person investigates they can decide if the player needs to be banned longer, to release the ban, or possibly take other action. If a person has been placed on X amount of people's ignore lists there's a good possibility the offending player is being offensive (whether meaning to or not) and should be investigated/warned.
Spam would work similar to /ignore except it would have the added component of the system tracking how often a person posts to chat in general (counting all comments), and how often the player posts identical statements. I would also only ban a player from the offending channel the first time. Further bans I might then ban on all channels.
I would have some intelligence in the system tracking. If a player has posted something involving LFG in the LFG channel I would have looser restrictions than if they posted LFG in some other channel for instance. If a player posts X identical posts in Y time they receive a short ban. Each time a player is banned for this the ban becomes longer. Once it gets to a certain point a CS person should investigate.
Being reported for spam by other players should add to a counter. Once that counter reaches X amount of times reported the player should receive a short ban. Each time they receive a ban the ban should be longer until a CS person gets involved. This system should be more strict on the offending player as in a "normal" situation people have to really be spamming pretty badly to get X number of people to report them. This is assuming you have a system in place keeping level 2 characters from being able to use this feature.
There should be some logic that tracks both the automated and the player reporting systems. Make sure there isn't a bug that catches a player from spamming 3 identical LFG messages giving them 2 hour ban and then 5 people end up reporting them adding another 2 hours to the ban.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
1. Being silenced should only affect "Say" and "Zone" channels. Since reporting spam also adds the person you report to your ignore list, reporting a person will prevent them from spamming you while still allowing them to send messages to their friends/specific players, party members and guild members.
2. Implement a "LFG" and a "Trade" channel to end the argument about whether LFG and Trade messages in zone chat are spam or not.
3. Limit the amount of messages per minute per player in public channels such as Zone, so you won't have gold spammers saying the same message 50 times in 5 seconds. A 5 second cooldown or something for messages in Zone would be nice.
This won't make it impossible to grief by reporting decent players for spam, but it'll make the problem MUCH smaller.
1. Restrict the chatban to only sending e-mail, zone, trade, and emote/local channels. Custom channels have their own mods that can silence people, guilds can remove spammers, and teams can kick. But restricting them from everything universally just makes them feel that the Troll Mafia runs things in Champs-town, and that's the reputation you're undoubtedly trying to avoid.
2. Divide this into Ignore, and Report Abuse. Ignore doesn't count to chatban, Report Abuse does. Report abuse includes categories for Gold selling, and racial/sexist/homophobic slurs. The first ban is 2 hours, then 8, then 24 after that. A player who's been chatbanned will always receive a report on what behaviors they were reported for, and may contact a GM for an appeal; the GM may review the player's log of speeches and emotes. If under review, the GM deems that the player was inappropriately reported, those who reported them lose the Report Abuse option.
3. If possible, make it so Ignore also disables your ability to see the character and the special effects of his/her powers. Make them invisible and inaudible.
Agree on this one. It would be extremely helpful in the moonstone mask (or other RP location) when some bored 'child' is constantly spamming weapon/spell effects on top of folks who are simply attempting to have a conversation.