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Time to address the elephant in the room...
nyghoma
Member Posts: 546 Arc User
So as some of you may know, there is rampant griefing going on in the community. I'm not talking about the random 1 star here or there, or even revenge reviews. I'm talking about the use of multiple alt accounts and /or bot programs to deliberately harass authors. The guild I belong to, Dungeon-Masters, has been prey to this form of harassment. A player will log in late night, run a program and spam our quests with 1 star ratings, in order to push them into obscurity. This started to happen a few weeks ago with a few of our well-know authors. I experienced it first hand on releasing my new quest.
About an hour after I advertised it here on the forums, someone did speed runs on the quest and anonymously 1 starred it for the next 2 hours. Then stopped. I sat there and watched the rating go down and the 1 stars build up every 15-20 minutes. To me this was clear harassment. As an author, you can spend months on crafting a new project. All chances of this project goes down the drain due to this form of griefing.
So I figured, no sweat I'll just let customer service figure out who this person is, deal with them, and repair the damage. But little to my surprise, PWE customer service can't bother with these issues. I've spent over a week in correspondence with them, getting nothing but automated responses until I insisted on the speaking with a supervisor. When I finally got a supervisor, the person was clueless to the issue. They thought my grievance was with verbal abuse in my reviews. They had no idea my issue was with 1 star bombing in the fashion i described.
And to compound the frustration, I was told ONLY if racial slurs or profanity was used in a review, would customer service get involved. Translation: "We will not get involved in altering anything unless our company is at risk of getting sued". So this is the PWE policy? No protection to authors making content for Cryptic. The same authors who extend the shelf life on the game.
The community has already lost some featured authors due to this policy. How many more will Cryptic lose? Why are they letting the griefers win? How hard is it to change a few ratings if they discover a quest is truly getting griefed in this manner?
The bottom line is I'm a customer who is nearly $1000 into this game and thousands of hours into the foundry. This is a important issue to me and what it's doing to my guild. Cryptic NEEDS to change its policy. 1 star rating due to clear harassment NEED to be repaired. I don't even blame the the trolls. You can't get rid of trolls, they will always exist. Cryptic has the power to fix this and refuse to do it.
It's like reporting a robbery, having the cops catch the thief, and not returning the your property they found. It is pure negligence. Up until this point I was an avid Cryptic supporter, but Cryptic has failed the community and me on this issue. I have been nothing but a huge supporter to the foundry community. Until this policy is changed, I refuse to support this company.
About an hour after I advertised it here on the forums, someone did speed runs on the quest and anonymously 1 starred it for the next 2 hours. Then stopped. I sat there and watched the rating go down and the 1 stars build up every 15-20 minutes. To me this was clear harassment. As an author, you can spend months on crafting a new project. All chances of this project goes down the drain due to this form of griefing.
So I figured, no sweat I'll just let customer service figure out who this person is, deal with them, and repair the damage. But little to my surprise, PWE customer service can't bother with these issues. I've spent over a week in correspondence with them, getting nothing but automated responses until I insisted on the speaking with a supervisor. When I finally got a supervisor, the person was clueless to the issue. They thought my grievance was with verbal abuse in my reviews. They had no idea my issue was with 1 star bombing in the fashion i described.
And to compound the frustration, I was told ONLY if racial slurs or profanity was used in a review, would customer service get involved. Translation: "We will not get involved in altering anything unless our company is at risk of getting sued". So this is the PWE policy? No protection to authors making content for Cryptic. The same authors who extend the shelf life on the game.
The community has already lost some featured authors due to this policy. How many more will Cryptic lose? Why are they letting the griefers win? How hard is it to change a few ratings if they discover a quest is truly getting griefed in this manner?
The bottom line is I'm a customer who is nearly $1000 into this game and thousands of hours into the foundry. This is a important issue to me and what it's doing to my guild. Cryptic NEEDS to change its policy. 1 star rating due to clear harassment NEED to be repaired. I don't even blame the the trolls. You can't get rid of trolls, they will always exist. Cryptic has the power to fix this and refuse to do it.
It's like reporting a robbery, having the cops catch the thief, and not returning the your property they found. It is pure negligence. Up until this point I was an avid Cryptic supporter, but Cryptic has failed the community and me on this issue. I have been nothing but a huge supporter to the foundry community. Until this policy is changed, I refuse to support this company.
Post edited by nyghoma on
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Comments
You can do like I did some time ago, actually remove your content (I went further and deleted mine).
But in all seriousness, this is one of the many problems I addressed in a thread last week, were I was berated for having an opinion and wanting us to work together.
Don't expect a change from Cryptic. They don't give a **** about us or this game. I think that's evident when I don't even get a response about my quest being missing. It's just gone, and they can't even be bothered to take two minutes to let me know if I have any chance of ever seeing it again. They only care about the dollars, and as long as they cater to the pansies who don't want to die (will spend hundreds of dollars buying health stones and scrolls of life out of the store so they don't feel bad for losing) and the pvp'ers (the elites who aren't really elite, they just pay dollar after dollar on stuff to make their stats higher) then they will not look twice at us who actually wanted to or did support, defend and play this game to it's entirety.
RIP - Dirty Politics May 21st, 2013 - July 30th, 2013
Yeah I have a problem when a company can't follow their own ToS. These companies think they are too big to fail, and have this mortgage bank mentality.
Cryptic doesn't realize, if they let the trolls win, all it does is chase authors away or generate further retaliation within the community. If one person can get away with abusing alt accounts, what's stopping all of us from abusing the same mechanic?
Every time they idiot-proof something...they make better idiots.
1. The combat system is the best feature of the game, everything else is lack luster.
2. The Foundry content generated by the users is the only possible saving grace.
Therefore, Authors are the bread and butter for this games content. Many of the sites and players stated the content generated by the users even far surpasses the official content. So, why not protect your most valued asset that will continue to keep players coming to play the game and spending money on it's development?
As an author who has been the target of multiple anonymous 1 star bombs (so far 40 of them in multiples of 10), there needs to be a system in place to stop griefing period. If there is a complaint about griefing the team should be able to pull up said quest see the associated IP and ban hammer their account for good, whilst removing the greifing reviews.
I can honestly say I had huge plans for future content but every time I open up my quest and see it's been the target of more bombing I just completely loose the motivation to continue. The only winner in that scenario is the Griefer, and so far PWE has nothing in place to stop them.
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
Aside from the editing of posts from the mods, I am willing to bet there will be no feedback from anyone from Cryptic about this or any other issues the authors are having, as per usual.
As for me, I'm taking a break until we get some more goodies to work with unless something else comes along that will allow me to express my creativity, which will probably happen before we get the kind of foundry updates we need to keep from using the same assets over and over and over...and over and over.
I personally have not felt this kind of hit to my quests, but I do see it happening with others and have for a while now.
What did you spend it on
Bill's Tavern | The 27th Level | Secret Agent 34
I couldn't have said it better.
Yeah, some of us have tried to support the community, but some folks would just rather see it fall to pieces.
Every time they idiot-proof something...they make better idiots.
Fixed.
/10char
"An Occurrence at Faolon's Field" (daily eligible)
Shortcode: NW-DGPROFMWU
"A Lunacy in Havenlock" (needs reviews!)
Shortcode: NW-DUY2JXAQQ
"Hah! You are doomed! You're only armed with that pathetic excuse for a musical instrument!!!" *the Savage Beast moments before Lonnehart the Bard used music to soothe him... then beat him to death with his Fat Lute*
Yeah, me too...
Yeah... Me too...
Neither of these are the issue or solution at hand though.
Every time they idiot-proof something...they make better idiots.
I was in this guild. I got harassed constantly until I got myself kicked out for lashing out at trolls. Then SURPRISE, no more harassment, at least not until I become popular and start making people jealous. Hmm....
No you were saying Dzogen, Wushin, Kamalicious and Thunder were all the same person and were putting bounties on your quests. A little different.
docs......U da man!
Every time they idiot-proof something...they make better idiots.
Wow. Nice job, Doc.
You needed a whole new account to respond to this thread? You could have just said it on your normal account. why do feel the need to say this to me anonymously? Oh wait, because of fear of retaliation? You see, even you took extra precautions b/c of this issue. I think you've made my point for me quite elegantly.
This has nothing to do with "e-fame" or "self-importance", as you put it. This is an issue that affects ALL of us, including potentially new authors. This issue has affected my guild as a whole. I see how you are trying to twist this into a crybaby, narcissism thread. Nobody is an idiot.
Maybe you haven't become a victim to this kind of harassment and you can't relate. Maybe, your the guy doing the harassing. I don't know. I don't know why you chose to quote a useless response to this thread to make a point. I don't expect Cryptic to care about the time and money I've personally sunk into the game. I just think they need to know the kind of customer they letting go of, due to the mishandling of the issue.
Every time they idiot-proof something...they make better idiots.
In my opinion, you guys should be doing this. I think you know who is doing this to you, either directly or indirectly, and I think you know why. While giving them a taste of their own medicine probably won't stop them on its own, it's likely to rather quickly wipe the board clean of all foundry quests by both groups. And I think everyone knows once this person's quests are gone they will quickly disappear, as they clearly have no love for creating quests. And then you all could happily return to creating again without fear of the main source of these malicious reviews.
Okay, Panic.
Its not the devs fault people grief. People will find a way to abuse ANY system they come out with.
I know you think that, but that just makes me sad. I won't get into it here but suffice to say thanks to a very helpful person who emailed me after running my quest I got all the info on who bombed me (repeatedly). You can always pm me if interested but I am tired of getting into it all here. You guys didn't believe in me and I can understand it. Nor did I handle things well. Either way, I agree that this does happen, it surely needs to stop on all parties sides. If you don't like someone don't play their quest period and just leave it alone. But this is the internet, thinking people will actually do that is probably wishful thinking.
For those who have sadly decided to respond by leaving, pulling your quests, and otherwise subjecting yourselves to censorship, you do realize that you have given the griefers exactly what they wanted. They win, you lose. They forced you to stop doing something that you really loved, or you wouldn't have been doing it in the first place.
It is one thing to leave because you have lost interest, it is another to leave because you have been driven off. You have given them the power. The best thing you can do is ignore them. Griefers only grief when they get a reaction. Otherwise they get bored and move on. When they move on, you are still there, your quests are still getting played, and you are stronger for the experience. It's not fair, or right, but it is sometimes the way it is.
Don't let anyone determine what makes you happy, except yourself!
But for this system to work, it would be the responsibility of authors to NOT harass the occasional, legitimate 1-star reviewers.
Hive Mind (NW-DN9YKEVUS): Get inside a crashed alien ship to discover its purpose.
Absolute Zero (NW-DOVUXHT8P): Activate a massive teleportation machine to pursue an evil mastermind.
So the griefers storm the restaurant and <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> on the tables. We dutifully call the authorities, and they aren't interested.
So... the only thing we have control over is our involvement.
I'm thinking of unpublishing my stuff, too.
Cryptic knows better from several years of STO Foundry. They have no excuses.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
I really, really, REALLY hope that authors don't have to resort to that. I do believe in "eye for an eye" in some instances. Cryptic just needs to police harassment.
But if all else fails....What are we left with? Quit or fight back, right?
Every time they idiot-proof something...they make better idiots.
This may be true, and I have thought long and hard about it, but at this point, it's between us and Cryptic. Trolls will never go away, especially in a f2p game. There is not simple or elegant solution to delouse trolls.
Every time they idiot-proof something...they make better idiots.