The main problem is a lack of punishment for griefers. If people filing false reports were investigated and punished, there would no longer be a problem. All that needs to be done is to log what is reported for spam.
When someone files a complaint that they've been silenced for no reason, they could just look over the logs for that time period, and then lay the smackdown on the ones who reported them.
Amen. Could not have said it better myself... Well maybe... but why bother?
Earlier this week I complained about being silenced by players at ESD for no reason. I wrote an email to their "support."
Days later I received a response, where they completely disregarding the abuse, didn't bother to read the email and blamed me for policy spam abuse.
A+ Customer Support
Quite frankly, they just don't care. All that matters to them is the money, every penny they can find in a gutter and if implementing a cheap system that is easily abused means they don't have to hire more support staff, then so much the better.
I mean who cares how many customers you get to quit the game for sheer lack of incompetence... you already have their money right? It isn't like they are going to pay more in the future or anything, loyal customers are a myth. We'll just get the next sucker that comes along.
I responded with another ticket immediately upon receiving a first auto response. I was not a happy camper. The second one was from an actual person (Maybe the first one was too :P) I didn't like the fact that I, too, was accused initially that I "Must have violated some chat policy" in the first response... Its like the first one wasn't read. They just seen the title and responded. Had the mail been read, they would have seen that I was talking about harassment as well... Its only when I re-filed the ticket did the user that is harassing me get acknowledged.
Also I STRONGLY suggest you do not grief back using the report spam tool. Doing so is not exactly a wise idea. Fighting fire with fire never works folks
While I agree, and trust me I've been on the chat ban end of things multiple times for no reason, it's annoying, I'd rather have the system in place than without it. Like anazonda said, goldsellers would be running rampant and a GM would literally be sitting in ESD 24/7/365 instead of answering tickets (How they respond is another matter which is not what I'm talking about).
Finally, if you are being harassed by people then file a ticket. Not about the chat ban, but about the harassment AND them using the report spam system to stop you from enjoying the game. If the first one gets an automated response and it happens again, file another one referencing the first ticket ID.
That is the best way to handle it.
Regarding harrassment, I have filed tickets MANY times on the person in question. Nothing has ever been done to my knowledge. (No one would let you know anyways as its against TOS). However, I feel the person in question "connections" (SSR members in the fleet of the member in question) is affecting he/she and is somehow getting special privileges with devs...
Can't speak for the other moderators, but I am all in favor of modifying the existing chat spam controls. Some of the player-suggested modifications I like are:
* Start with a shorter ban time, with the ability to increase it if the user keeps getting reported for spam.
* Make users acknowledge what Cryptic says constitutes actual spamming before they can submit a report.
* Make sure each report gets logged in the ticket system, and that the person being reported gets every ticket number so they have a record of what happened that CS can actually verify.
* Give players a "Get Out Of Ban" instant amnesty option, limited so that true spammers can't use it to dodge the system.
* The ban shouldn't apply to self-policing chat channels like Fleet or Team.
For some reason I totally missed that point lol. But I do agree with it
Fleet/Team chat's should be excluded from the chat ban. If we don't want them talking it's pretty easy to deal with especially in fleet chat
I like the "shorter ban time" which increases with each one you get. If this were to be implemented though, it would have to work like STF respawn timers where if you go a set amount of time without any, it gets reduced back to the minimum value. This would alleviate those that are un-justly greifed with the current system in place. However as suggested before, a SIMPLE fix would be that if you are griefed, you can still talk to your self policed channels as I mentioned below...
THIS IS a no-brainer... Fleet/Team and Channels created by the one who got silenced should not be affected by a chat silence. Nor should the channels you need an invite to belong to it.
It would be nice to see a system where, if someone falsely reports users as spam that users that falsely reported is silenced for 48 hours or more, But how do you prove that the report is false, well it is as hard to prove that a report is false as it is to get to prove it is not.
At least make it so that lifers cannot be silenced that should be something very easy to setup I would think and it would be an added benefit to lifetime subscriptions. If a spammer wants to buy a lifetime subscriptions (doubt will happen much) so they can spam all they want and not be silenced, fine. Crytpic makes money off them and users can still put the very rare Lifetime spammer on ignore. Gets people to want to buy Lifetime subscriptions as well.
+1 to this as well...
BTW, The same amount of people to "report spam/Report to GM" function works the same as "Ignore" to silence someone last t I heard...
there's never anything worth reading going on in zone chats anyway.
Not an aficionado of Gorn-ing or political ravings at DS9, eh?
For anti-griefer-ing... Put on the report form that the target will be informed on who is reporting them. That could stop people who are fine doing it when they know they are anonymous, but would not do it if they knew they were not anonymous anymore.
Or it'd just start a grief war. Which could be interesting to watch...
Sometimes I think I play STO just to have something to complain about on the forums.
But honestly, just excluding fleet and team chat from the ban would go a long way. It effectively makes the game unplayable from a multiplayer standpoint, barring any third-party lines of communication.
Just banning from PM, local and Zone would be acceptable to a lot of people. I don't use the latter and rarely use the former and most of the trouble makers seem to use local or zone.
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Just banning from PM, local and Zone would be acceptable to a lot of people. I don't use the latter and rarely use the former and most of the trouble makers seem to use local or zone.
I agree with this completely. Spam is only a problem in zone, local, and PM, so it makes perfect sense for the silencing to only work on posts made in those. It would decrease abuse without increasing spam.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
Not an aficionado of Gorn-ing or political ravings at DS9, eh?
For anti-griefer-ing... Put on the report form that the target will be informed on who is reporting them. That could stop people who are fine doing it when they know they are anonymous, but would not do it if they knew they were not anonymous anymore.
Or it'd just start a grief war. Which could be interesting to watch...
I'm pretty sure it would turn into a grief war if people knew who was reporting them. And since spammers can easily create new accounts, it would be legitimate players who would suffer.
The reporting needs to remain anonymous to the public, but CS absolutely needs to be able to verify who's reporting who and for what.
Just banning from PM, local and Zone would be acceptable to a lot of people. I don't use the latter and rarely use the former and most of the trouble makers seem to use local or zone.
I agree with this completely. Spam is only a problem in zone, local, and PM, so it makes perfect sense for the silencing to only work on posts made in those. It would decrease abuse without increasing spam.
I believe spammers would simply relocate to the channels they have access to.
Team and Fleet chat are different in that you must be part of a team or fleet in order to participate in the first place. In a sense, they are invite-only channels that spammers do not have free access to, so there's no point in silencing normal users from those channels.
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I agree with several of the above posters that, at the very least, team and fleet chat should not be affected by a player being silenced. Possibly even private messages as well.
I don't know how much work it'd be to get the coding for that -- possibly something the devs can address after Season 7 launches in a couple months.
I agree with this completely. Spam is only a problem in zone, local, and PM, so it makes perfect sense for the silencing to only work on posts made in those. It would decrease abuse without increasing spam.
Team and Fleet chat are different in that you must be part of a team or fleet in order to participate in the first place. In a sense, they are invite-only channels that spammers do not have free access to, so there's no point in silencing normal users from those channels.
+1
Now we are getting somewhere , all we need now is a developer to agree, that silencing users should only effect the silenced user in Zone and Local chats and I believe you will make a lot of people happier.
I agree with several of the above posters that, at the very least, team and fleet chat should not be affected by a player being silenced. Possibly even private messages as well.
I don't know how much work it'd be to get the coding for that -- possibly something the devs can address after Season 7 launches in a couple months.
Also, I forgot to mention you should be able to PM those on your friends list as well... But yes, local and zone should be the only chats you are silenced from if the current system remains in effect, unaffected...
I wanted to note that there is no longer a function to "Report Spam" unless I am missing it somewhere. I now only see "Report to GM". In my situation in order to get silenced, each person that is required to get someone silenced has to fill out a GM behavior ticket. This should speed the process up some in finding who did it, unless "ignore" is working again...
I believe spammers would simply relocate to the channels they have access to.
Yes, but that's labor-intensive, and those channels are moderated by users, who can control how many other moderators they have. If the community wills it, they can have 24/7 instant response. Zone, local, and PMs are moderated by the GMs, and they don't have the staffing (and can't really) to keep up with it; that's the whole reason this system got created in the first place.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
this silence is bs..cryptic needs to change this sytem..im standing in my fleet starbase pming a fellow fleet member and suddenly im silenced..this is wrong..why should i be silenced when im pming a friend and im not even in a social zone talking to anyone else..this system needs to be changed
Yes, but that's labor-intensive, and those channels are moderated by users, who can control how many other moderators they have. If the community wills it, they can have 24/7 instant response. Zone, local, and PMs are moderated by the GMs, and they don't have the staffing (and can't really) to keep up with it; that's the whole reason this system got created in the first place.
They need to fix the chat systems though in general Muting is a nightmare (assuming you can actually get it to stick) and kicking doesn't do squat...
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its wrong to be silenced for doing nothing wrong..i was having a polite convo with a fellow member then silenced for no reason..I SHOULD NOT BE SILENCED WHEN I DID NOTHING WRONG:mad:
Bottom line is this, it needs to be rectified/revamped...
What needs to happen in the revamp...
Specifics on how someone gets silenced. Not guessing about what it takes. Right now its all guessing. Who and when should be included. This may start a "grief war", but read the last point. It should clarify.
There is no more "Report Spam". It is now "Report to GM". This opens a behavioral ticket. That creates a record. If someone reports they get silenced regardless, it needs to be investigated BEFORE a response is automatically created stating "You must have violated some chat policy and it can't be removed" line of spam. I am sure not everyone will file a ticket that they got silenced. Probably only the ones that were truly griefed will file tickets...
Self-Policed channels (inlcuding friends on your PM/Mail list and Fleet Mail) needs to be seperate from the mute. Mutes should only apply to the very most at Global Public Channles (which is where an invite is not required), Zone and Local.
Griefers and/or Retaliation (using the system back to grief someone who just griefed.) need to be punished. No questions asked. If they griefed another player, then they should get punished, just like the game TOS states.
This might take more of a staff than cryptic has, but in theory it shouldn't be much more. Maybe at the least 1 or 2 more people in the ticket dept.
Based on how many hours it takes on the weekends for a response to high-priority tickets, I'd say you're off by at least an order of magnitude.
Reading tickets and responding to them doesn't not take an entire building of staff if the process is organized and efficient. It should take one person no longer than 3-5 minutes of time per ticket to read, verify and act. If it takes longer, efficiency and process needs to be evaluated in the current structure.
Broken down lets say 5 minutes MAX...
8 Hours in a day is 480 Minutes. Take away 1 hour for lunch and 15 minutes for two breaks, that a total of 1 1/2 hours (Max mind you. You may not take breaks or an hour lunch. You may take double breaks and 4 hours lunch, I don't know.. :P)
So we have 390 minutes in a work day. Divide that by 5 (for minutes) and you get 78 tickets one person can process... A staff of 3 could process 234 "high priority tickets a day" with behavioral one of the top priority tickets I would hope..
I am sure Cryptic receives several tickets a day, way more than 234. Now this is where the efficient comes in at. GM tickets (Behavioral and such) should only go to a GM. Bug tickets should go to the bug team, etc etc. It may already be like this, but I do believe all tickets go into a "pool" where they get sorted. This is partially verified by the fact of the ticket ID numbers seem to increase by 1 for each new ticket submitted.
There are many ways to make this process efficient with the least amount of people or revenue.
I couldn't agree more. If you don't want to read what I'm typing, ignore me, but I don't see how that in any way merits being silenced. Why should someone else's personal choice affect me? As for the OP, I've never heard of something like that actually happening, but given the type of griefers there are in this game, in particular, I have no doubt what you're saying is accurate. People like that should be banned from the game for life. I think any false ticket submission, false reporting, etc should result in a lifetime ban as it's perjury.
i dont agree..it shouldnt take much to get a system like that in place...if cryptic doesnt make changes people will stop playing and this game will shut down
I couldn't agree more. If you don't want to read what I'm typing, ignore me, but I don't see how that in any way merits being silenced. Why should someone else's personal choice affect me? As for the OP, I've never heard of something like that actually happening, but given the type of griefers there are in this game, in particular, I have no doubt what you're saying is accurate. People like that should be banned from the game for life. I think any false ticket submission, false reporting, etc should result in a lifetime ban as it's perjury.
Well the fact of my OP was that I was silenced WITHOUT doing anything. I did not violate ANY chat policies (Can't see how as I did not type a single bite in zone/local.), all I did was one "running man emote".
And as of last, I am hearing of more and more people getting silenced for no reason. Maybe they are targeting our fleet, the 106th Fleet, I don't know. But whatever it is it seems there may be a group out there targeting random or select people and silencing them. Granted the new system seems to require a "Report to GM" behavioral ticket, it shouldn't be to hard to track who is actually doing it. That is unless the "Ignore" function is working to silence people again.
I would rather see 10,000 gold spammers than to be silenced ONCE by griefing. But since I don't watch zone and local, it really doesn't pertain to me.
This NEEDS to be addressed. People NEED to held accountable for griefing. If not, it will get so bad that no one will want to play. To use the excuse, "Use teamspeak or vent or VOIP in general" is not a valid argument as many fleets still need access to in-game chat. I and many others have stated it in many replies here how to correct it. Now we just need action.
Lack of support staff is hardly the fault of the player, rather, it is the fault of those that house players.
Rather than lay blame at this point, which is pointless, what we need now is ACTION, a response to what is going to be done about this. I believe talking at this point is irrelevant now.
If you are being silenced for no reason, I encourage you to post here and talk about it. Just do not name names or such. I wouldn't want to see this thread get closed for falling off topic or for violating Terms of Service of the forums.
Lack of support staff is hardly the fault of the player, rather, it is the fault of those that house players.
The ignore function is reporting is working to silence. i just got silenced today. Granted I was recruiting which is another issue I addressed in another post, but the fact was it was instant. Reporting something to the GM generally takes time for someone to manually review the case. As for the running man, that would P%*$ me off too. People like that should get a 1 month vacation from STO for a first offense. Firstly because the running man is stupid and needs to go back to the 80s where it belongs, and second because I hate false flaggers. False flagging should be severely punished.
The ignore function is reporting is working to silence. i just got silenced today. Granted I was recruiting which is another issue I addressed in another post, but the fact was it was instant. Reporting something to the GM generally takes time for someone to manually review the case. As for the running man, that would P%*$ me off too. People like that should get a 1 month vacation from STO for a first offense. Firstly because the running man is stupid and needs to go back to the 80s where it belongs, and second because I hate false flaggers. False flagging should be severely punished
Comments
Amen. Could not have said it better myself... Well maybe... but why bother?
I responded with another ticket immediately upon receiving a first auto response. I was not a happy camper. The second one was from an actual person (Maybe the first one was too :P) I didn't like the fact that I, too, was accused initially that I "Must have violated some chat policy" in the first response... Its like the first one wasn't read. They just seen the title and responded. Had the mail been read, they would have seen that I was talking about harassment as well... Its only when I re-filed the ticket did the user that is harassing me get acknowledged.
I don't plan on it...:)
Regarding harrassment, I have filed tickets MANY times on the person in question. Nothing has ever been done to my knowledge. (No one would let you know anyways as its against TOS). However, I feel the person in question "connections" (SSR members in the fleet of the member in question) is affecting he/she and is somehow getting special privileges with devs...
I like the "shorter ban time" which increases with each one you get. If this were to be implemented though, it would have to work like STF respawn timers where if you go a set amount of time without any, it gets reduced back to the minimum value. This would alleviate those that are un-justly greifed with the current system in place. However as suggested before, a SIMPLE fix would be that if you are griefed, you can still talk to your self policed channels as I mentioned below...
THIS IS a no-brainer... Fleet/Team and Channels created by the one who got silenced should not be affected by a chat silence. Nor should the channels you need an invite to belong to it.
+1 to this as well...
BTW, The same amount of people to "report spam/Report to GM" function works the same as "Ignore" to silence someone last t I heard...
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Not an aficionado of Gorn-ing or political ravings at DS9, eh?
For anti-griefer-ing... Put on the report form that the target will be informed on who is reporting them. That could stop people who are fine doing it when they know they are anonymous, but would not do it if they knew they were not anonymous anymore.
Or it'd just start a grief war. Which could be interesting to watch...
"Ignore" doesn't silence people; that was removed a long time ago after only being in place a very short time.
If YOU do not want to deal with them then just put them on your ignore list. Problem solved.
Just banning from PM, local and Zone would be acceptable to a lot of people. I don't use the latter and rarely use the former and most of the trouble makers seem to use local or zone.
I agree with this completely. Spam is only a problem in zone, local, and PM, so it makes perfect sense for the silencing to only work on posts made in those. It would decrease abuse without increasing spam.
I'm pretty sure it would turn into a grief war if people knew who was reporting them. And since spammers can easily create new accounts, it would be legitimate players who would suffer.
The reporting needs to remain anonymous to the public, but CS absolutely needs to be able to verify who's reporting who and for what.
I believe spammers would simply relocate to the channels they have access to.
Team and Fleet chat are different in that you must be part of a team or fleet in order to participate in the first place. In a sense, they are invite-only channels that spammers do not have free access to, so there's no point in silencing normal users from those channels.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I don't know how much work it'd be to get the coding for that -- possibly something the devs can address after Season 7 launches in a couple months.
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+1
+1
Now we are getting somewhere
Also, I forgot to mention you should be able to PM those on your friends list as well... But yes, local and zone should be the only chats you are silenced from if the current system remains in effect, unaffected...
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Yes, but that's labor-intensive, and those channels are moderated by users, who can control how many other moderators they have. If the community wills it, they can have 24/7 instant response. Zone, local, and PMs are moderated by the GMs, and they don't have the staffing (and can't really) to keep up with it; that's the whole reason this system got created in the first place.
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They need to fix the chat systems though in general
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What needs to happen in the revamp...
This might take more of a staff than cryptic has, but in theory it shouldn't be much more. Maybe at the least 1 or 2 more people in the ticket dept.
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Original Handle: the_orig_jean_luc_picard
Based on how many hours it takes on the weekends for a response to high-priority tickets, I'd say you're off by at least an order of magnitude.
Reading tickets and responding to them doesn't not take an entire building of staff if the process is organized and efficient. It should take one person no longer than 3-5 minutes of time per ticket to read, verify and act. If it takes longer, efficiency and process needs to be evaluated in the current structure.
Broken down lets say 5 minutes MAX...
8 Hours in a day is 480 Minutes. Take away 1 hour for lunch and 15 minutes for two breaks, that a total of 1 1/2 hours (Max mind you. You may not take breaks or an hour lunch. You may take double breaks and 4 hours lunch, I don't know.. :P)
So we have 390 minutes in a work day. Divide that by 5 (for minutes) and you get 78 tickets one person can process... A staff of 3 could process 234 "high priority tickets a day" with behavioral one of the top priority tickets I would hope..
I am sure Cryptic receives several tickets a day, way more than 234. Now this is where the efficient comes in at. GM tickets (Behavioral and such) should only go to a GM. Bug tickets should go to the bug team, etc etc. It may already be like this, but I do believe all tickets go into a "pool" where they get sorted. This is partially verified by the fact of the ticket ID numbers seem to increase by 1 for each new ticket submitted.
There are many ways to make this process efficient with the least amount of people or revenue.
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Well the fact of my OP was that I was silenced WITHOUT doing anything. I did not violate ANY chat policies (Can't see how as I did not type a single bite in zone/local.), all I did was one "running man emote".
And as of last, I am hearing of more and more people getting silenced for no reason. Maybe they are targeting our fleet, the 106th Fleet, I don't know. But whatever it is it seems there may be a group out there targeting random or select people and silencing them. Granted the new system seems to require a "Report to GM" behavioral ticket, it shouldn't be to hard to track who is actually doing it. That is unless the "Ignore" function is working to silence people again.
I would rather see 10,000 gold spammers than to be silenced ONCE by griefing. But since I don't watch zone and local, it really doesn't pertain to me.
This NEEDS to be addressed. People NEED to held accountable for griefing. If not, it will get so bad that no one will want to play. To use the excuse, "Use teamspeak or vent or VOIP in general" is not a valid argument as many fleets still need access to in-game chat. I and many others have stated it in many replies here how to correct it. Now we just need action.
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Lack of support staff is hardly the fault of the player, rather, it is the fault of those that house players.
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Rather than lay blame at this point, which is pointless, what we need now is ACTION, a response to what is going to be done about this. I believe talking at this point is irrelevant now.
If you are being silenced for no reason, I encourage you to post here and talk about it. Just do not name names or such. I wouldn't want to see this thread get closed for falling off topic or for violating Terms of Service of the forums.
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That is indeed a level of ****** up that has baffled me for a long while.
Still, imagine the abuse in that system?
The ignore function is reporting is working to silence. i just got silenced today. Granted I was recruiting which is another issue I addressed in another post, but the fact was it was instant. Reporting something to the GM generally takes time for someone to manually review the case. As for the running man, that would P%*$ me off too. People like that should get a 1 month vacation from STO for a first offense. Firstly because the running man is stupid and needs to go back to the 80s where it belongs, and second because I hate false flaggers. False flagging should be severely punished.
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