Hello
I have a chat with some friends, and we have some fear to leave our childen playing STO alone because some places in the game are not really exacly safely for teens to visit and play sto. The age classification is teenagers, but many of the content generated by players is mature or greater, somethimes doing some harm because how PW/Crypt deal with offensers.
The main problem is about drozana station and other social hubs. Most players know that there is not exactly safe, social safe, because the massive presence of perverts, trolls and other people who has love to spoil our day, making heavy provocations, offending via tell or open chat or do anything more heavy and grossly offensive.
Yes, you can place a private security level, but if you have kids, you'll know that they can easily change it with just a few clicks.
Even with all the protection and monitoring done by other friend and fleet members you can trust, Star trek online not have proper tools for parents to restrict game content, such as restricting access to certain parts of the game or completely block some settings, requiring password or other authentication to unlock.
Click to report gm is not the best option, because you have to have a bad moment in game and take some harm... And only later report a ingame ticket to GM, and for personal experience, this takes a lot of time and never work rightly and have a slow response for the game masters.
Opening a support ticket in the website never have a proper feedback, leaving a great and vage awnser, leaving no clear and proper answer about problems with bad beavior in the game. They spend days leaving you waiting without a answer, to just send a protocol generated by a script, without having to know the sensitivity of dealing with someone who is in real trouble, not knowing the right questions to pass, or any questions, to do adequate research to assist the player in trouble.
I ask to the devs to make a proper set of parental control.
1 -
To lock the private options, requesting a parental password to change or unlock.
2 -
Option to ingore entire fleets. A functional option to keep these troublemakers distant.
No one can deny it. Have entire fleets dedicated to making problems to other players or fleets. And even with frequent gm calls and PW tickets, the players themselves have never seen any positive effects.
3 -
The option to game client generate a proper chat log of the last hours and save in the player hard disk, with time and date and the
@handle of everyone.
Is hard to have the right presence of spirt to keep the head cool, take a screenshot and send a GM ticket or open a PW ticket if you are suffering sexual or other kind of harassment, being verbally assaulted, suffering bullying or other problem and the ingame tickets open to game masters and the PW website is not always adequate or sensitivity to demand the kind of proper evidence.
The website of the STO and PW does not have a clear and effective lines to guide the player to deal with this kind of problem, leaving open the griefers to act with impunity, implying that the gms and pw do not care about problems this level, and with the safety of players
4 -
Z-Store block or Buying Zen block: Ok, we love to spend our money here. But if you have to deal with teens, they can easily steal your credit card and use without a warming to buy a lot of zens and spend in anything, whether they cheated by other players, because the game itself is not different from a mature player of an addict for the opportunity to find a good item in the lockbox, or other situation where someone can spend zen without permission of the owner of the card.
No problem if your son or daughter convert dilithium to zen and later, if the game have a security option to block the option to buy zen directly from money.
The steam have the nice wallet option, this really helps. But if you are playing STO directly from other kind of game client, you have to punchase zen for other ways.
5 -
To block the acess of some maps, to prevent social or the bad behavior problems. Drozana is well know is a place with good people, good roleplayers, but have a good number of people with a bad behavior. The game masters and PW can't give a proper solution about this kind of people. At least, leave to us, parents, to protect our family with the help of the company of our friends or members of the same fleet.
If you try to visit a "blocked" place without a member of your fleet or a friend in a party, the game refuse to let you visit the place. If you leave a party, the game kick you to open space map.
At least, having a friend to go with you, you have at least some safely to visit some places in the game.
Other option is to do a full block in some maps of STO, for the same reasons I said.
With the right parental options we can let our children play with more tranquility and safely.
I can open a PW ticket to request this type of option, but this is something to the developer team make, to improve the safely of the players.
Comments
I am an adult with no kids, so this in not my concern. However if I had children, I sure the heck would not sit them in front of my PC and let them run loose on the internet or just any online game.
Total agreement.
The Original Poster is asking Cryptic to do their job as a parent.
If you honestly feel that your kids can't handle the content in the game, then don't let them play. It's that simple. Or you could simply always monitor their play time, you know, actually interacting with and helping them understand Why you don't want them experiencing certain things.
As a childcare professional, one who works with teens, I can honestly say , your idea of saying "NO" or imposing parental censorship controls will not have the effect you are looking for. It will only make the thing you are denying them all that much more attractive.
If instead you have mature discussions about things that come up while they are playing which trouble you, you might find yourself connecting with your kids in a very real and honest way.
TL;DR version :
It's not Cryptic's job to parent your children.
Honest, mature discussions go a lot farther toward helping them become the people you want them to be , a LOT faster than censoring their life experience.
Just my Two latinums worth.
Your opinions may very.
Yes he does :rolleyes:
I mean is easier to ask others to look after your kids than to do it yourself .
Basicly he wants everyone banned or removed from game ...he wants star trek online singleplayer .
in the mean time Ill mail google to censor the damn internet .You never know when a kid will type "TRIBBLE" in the search box.
And if you have kids, you know, that even well-oriented, you do need some sort of resources to help avoid certain bad situations and problems or at least, help to improve how you deal with this.
You can't expect 100% of gms solve problems all time. And neither the ticket via PW website. The requirement is to make a way, in the game client side, to prevent problems which are well known and administration of the game has problems to solve in an appropriate way, taking time and not always able to make a appropriate solution.
You can simple forbidden and unistall the game, but if you have your family playing here, you want to give to them the best of the game, and if possible, block or avoid the nasty and bad points.
A player, I simple request a security feature to help parents to have in our side to deal with some well know problems. Not asking to get free dilithium under rocks, to make a old ages promisse to make some kdf content.
The request is more sensible, because is related with the safely of the players and the right way to keep them safe. This is a special set of options can help a lot and avoid some not wanted problems.
If you want to protect someone you love, you has the right to at least request ways to raise some protection, since I am a player, and because of this I worry how others players, are my friends, family, fleet friends and relatives are going to play this game.
If you are a regular player, ok, you can use or not use this kind of game option.
But if you need and don't have this, and are forced to register a support ticket in the PW website or open a ingame ticket, you learn how this is sometimes is too burocratic and not always receive an adequate anwser, or proper orientation at the right time you have to deal with a grave problem or have the proper support, because of the type of problem related deal too much time to get a proper anwser from the game master or from PW Support.
If you have a set of security options, the game master and PW support have less problem to deal. And us, parents, have a good tool to help keep safe from the critical problems.
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If you think your children are coming into contact with unsavory types in game, then you need to step in and do something about it. Explain to your child why that behavior is wrong and let them know that they need to avoid it.
Now she could go into the settings and change it all back, she doesn't. There has to be a level of trust between parent and child.
If you can't trust your child to play the game to your rules then they shouldn't be allowed on the PC.
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
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Make a female toon. KDF or Feed.
Go to Drozana.
After some moments here you receive a lots chats and tells of swearing, offensive offers in exchange for ingame sex, "private" dancing and other type of bad behavior chat. Fleet Griefers, making insulting and bullying others without fear of any game master or PW action.
In most of cases, they receive a temporary mute or ban, but later come back, without any change.
Crypt and PW are too passive how to deal with this type of problem, since they can not deal with the problem directly or give a better soluction, at least have provide ways for the player to have some extra protection.
Teenages can make any kind of mistake and suffer from bullying and other forms of attack, and even being teenagers, as parents, even giving advice and trying to do the best possible for them, I consider my right to at least request ways to improve they safely.
Instead of simply asking to send game masters to close a social hub with mature content (because this is too stupid), I am simple requesting a game client feature, to deal with this problem in a more effective way, to player side and to staff side too.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I am 51 years old and had 4 kids, all who are grown now and doing quite well in their adult lives.
So yes, i can very much understand some of your concerns, but it's still not Cryptics job to be the parent of your kids.
For example, my house has always had lots of computers in it, 10 at least at once, all networked....the catch is, they ALL were in the living room, made it pretty darn hard for my kids to get into any trouble online with dad sitting there watching them all night. Point is, BE the parent, take control, that simple.
I do agree Cryptic needs some in-game GM's to weed out alot of the troublemakers, but thats another different problem altogether. Oh, and you do already have an /ignore feature in game, not a great one mind you, but it is there.
1Join a Fleet with a code of conduct that matches yours.( like mine)
2 in chat setting uncheck local
3 In chat setting uncheck zone
4 No more worries
Ok, I respect your experience and opinion, but from my point, the problem is more complex.
First, i am not asking for a game master or for Perfect World try to raise my children. The whole point is this: I request a proper, effective way to protect someone you love to play this game without fear to find the nasty and awfull side of the game. A client side feature is enough to do this.
If you have a problem, you can request the help from the game master or send a ticket to Perfect world. But the game masters rarely send any word to you. Rarely try to chat with you to check your problems and in a sensible way try to know about your problem. They can do the work without any "human" contact, at least to serve as mentors or try to pass clear information how to deal with certain problems in the game, when they are reported.
Star trek online have a huge amount of players and making some more directly contact with a player with problems can or not can be forbbiden from game master rules (I don't know if is), but because the high amount of ingame thickets, you hardly realize an action of a game master in most of the cases.
Opening a support ticket in the Perfect World website can't help much. You receive days later a suport ticket, empty without any detail... And day later you receive a reply for a member from support team. The answer is always empty, without details or explanating, only a vague "
this is being investigated and we can not report any results of the investigation".
And the same people, the griefers, the trolls, the perverts and other social-problematic players are in the same local, day by day, without change.
As player, is really hard to trust this kind of reaction from the game masters and PW Support team, hinting something like passivity, inaction or mainly, lack of clarity in the responses and actions for victims problems.
Ok, I can teach a teenager or kid how to send a ticket to game master in the game, reporting a problem. I can teach and support them to write down a whole support ticket in the PW website. But this help me? Or them?
Because this, I learned: If the staff can't deal with the problem, can't give at least a sensible, humam and a enlightening message giving at least some security to parents and concerned with serius behavior problems I mentioned above, I have to find a way to make with the developers to make a feature to help me and other with the same problem.
Again, I have to say this directly: I not asking a change of posture from game masters (this is with Crypt and your inner staff to deal), or a change of posture from Perfect World (again, this is the PW and your inner staff to deal).
The problem is not how you raise or teach your kids. Is about requesting a importante feature, to help you to protect someone.
Parents have your own ways to teach kids. Each family have your own values. Some are liberal, some are conservatives, atheists, religious, and have experience with internet games, others are learning how to use.
Requestig a proper feature helps to resolve a lot of problems with a lot of people. Help to find the right solution to some people, before leaving the game or because a groupe or bad players, you forbbiden a person to have fun in the STO.
For Crypt and to Perfect World, making this sensible but important new feature show to parents the importance of the parental concern about your kids. They give better ways to resolve old problems, leaving the PW tickets and game masters freely to deal with other problems, because the parents are dealing with the kids, teaching how to play the game, making in the client side the security at your own way, with responsibility and own choice.
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Making my own options from chat channel is easy to do, but only after you learn how to do this.
And in the options button you don't have a direct link to chat options, to edit. This is a flaw. In the options window you have to access all option, and of course, the more sensible ones, like privacy and chat options.
Today, kids and teenagers can learn quicly about games, in comparative as parents, have a hard time to deal with technology. Is easy to you, player, says "click here, there, block this, that"... But Star Trek Online is not user friendly if you want to only configure privacy/chat/ parental options.
This is another thing to improve with the Star Trek Online: A better and clear way to configure chat and privacy options. The game tutorial can teach you, but is not easy for a lot of people to configure the game, mainly if you are only checking if your kids are ok playing STO.
Again, a better, clear and simple way to configure privacy / chat and parental control options can be really important and usefull for a lot of people. In and out of the game.
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Social responsibility is always a good choice of action.
Its not that i disagree with the need for better policing of the game, some Turbine run games actually have good in-game GM's who will swiftly deal with anyone that harrasses another player, i've seen them ban in a heartbeat (actually know one of the GM's), but.....this is not those games sadly.
There are chat options that you can set right now in your chat window for you or your kids to never see offensive terms, use them...i actually don't care when i am on drozana and see the people running around and acting like a 5-year old, i cant see anything they say, so they just look like a cartoon monkey running around to me....be creative on your own, use the chat window features, use the /ignore feature, they are in the game for the reasons you are needing.
Now, for the part nobody would probably like: its called supply and demand. I've seen enough of DEMAND and enough SUPPLY that I think it would benefit Cryptic if not PWE to set up similar services. They don't necessarily have to be free, and I feel that it could well be a subscriber perk or a one time purchase. Depending on demographics, it could well be a free service in hopes of getting more families together to play!
And, honestly, parents aren't going to be around 24/7. Maybe you were all perfect kids with at least one stay at home parent, but I grew up a latchkey kid. Both of my parents worked, often late, and I've know more than a few families where the kids have to be unsupervised because economically the family couldn't make it if they weren't dual-income.
Client side stuff like what's been requested seems reasonable to me, and more importantly won't require everyone else to change.
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As a lifetime member of STO, I officially became a financial liability as of April 2012 when compared to a subscriber.
well, with all due respect. there are many options that you can explore. however, they will not be fool proof as your teenager can always override them. you can, however, threaten to de-authorize the computer if they do so.
under the team settings tab of the social window (defualt key O), you have a button that says privacy. here you can control the following:
1. allow only friends and fleet to chat
2. allow only friends and fleet to email
3. allow only friends and fleet to make team invites
4. allow only friends and fleet to tell (private message)
5. allow only friends and fleet to trade
6. allow only friends and fleet to issue challenges
7. allow fleet invitations
secondly, like others have said, you can enter into chat settings (escape then chat settings) and in the first tab, you can check and uncheck all the different chat channels available. the two that you should get rid of are zone and local. however, be aware that it only affects messages displayed in the chat window area. if they are in the instance and someone says something over local chat, they will see it for a couple seconds, before the chat message fades. that is the caveat.
in terms of locking content or restricting content, it is very hard for them to do so. only a developer can be able totell you if they have it in their software engine to allow such a thing. trolls are a fact of life. they will show up anywhere. you can warn your teenager against such areas, but again. it is between you and them.
a final note, although you have the best intentions for your child at heart, a restrictive policy on an mmo takes away from the overall experience. they can be missing out on fostering friendships with other players as well as receiving help from random strangers like you are here. i do recommend sitting down with your child and establish ground rules for what is acceptable behavior and what isn't. listen to their feedback and treat them with respect and they will be more than likely to abide by whatever terms and conditions you two agree upon. however, this is between you and your child. no one here has any right to tell you otherwise.
best of luck
The points is simple and clear: Request a new feature in the game, to help people to improve the safely to your kids / teenages, because the currently options are not enough to deal with the current problems, mainly because the "report to gm" and opening a support ticket in the PW website don't give enough feedback to the player victim of behavior problems.
Parents can use this parental control options to avoit a great amount of problems before anything more serious happens.
Before.
Preventive.
Is really better instead you have a hard time giving support to a stressed person after a horrible ingame incident, dealing with a cold support system with empty and souless answers. And with the player view, nothing change.
The request is to give parental control to a parent set and lock some sto game options to prevent the worse problems in the game. Is not damage control, is preventing fire before this happen.
Yes, is easily to say to not leave any kid or teenage unsupervised in any moment. It would be practical to make to clear the trust that parents make for their children or teenages is 100% on what they say or do.
But as parent, you have the right to check and request ways to leave your family safe. Not because the lack of trust. You can trust 100% in your family, but you can't have always 100% of trust in places that can be harmful to your children. You can not be too passive, leaving dangerous places or compelling moments happen because of some small group of people of bad and non-social psoture do this without fear of punishment.
Ok, we can say, teach things, but you leave without guild a kid or teenage frequent a well-know local with a right amount of problems, with perverts, griefers, trolls or other kind of anti-social posture, sometimes bordering on criminal, sexually embarrassing or worse?
You can simply close your eyes leaving a possible chance to game that is fun to become a traumatic experience, embarassing, just stressful for not having the necessary options to prevent this?
Is not about to give to game master or to PW staff the right to raise kids,
getting rid of parents responsibility. Is to give to the parents the option to block or lock some options for a better safely, if necessary.
Is not about how you deal with this problem. Ok, any experienced player can deal with this easily. But is about parents without good skills with games or computers to find at least a fair way to prevent problems.
Is a feature can improve the safely in many scenarios, to help many types of parents.
A father or mother can create a STO account, can install the game and play with your children or at least, become more responsible and closely follows the game, turning off the features gradually, when they feel comfortable with the game environment, unlocking some parental options, leaving to kid or teenagers limits and showing respect and trust. Or if is an experienced STO player, can set the game to avoid well-known problems.
If you don't have problems, you can ignore the parental control options like any game and this can't change your game in anyway, like any mmo in the market. But Star Trek online don't have this feature now, for unknown reasons. Is better to have a safe way to deal with this, preventing any future harm if have the acess of this option.
Star Trek online have great features. Fleet groups, space combat, foundry, team missions, etc... But have a some bad points. Some of them, can be avoided with a proper parental control feature.
Respecting the diversity of parents there with ways of dealing with their children, to have a feature of this kind would help many of them. Besides being beneficial to the players and their families, could help bring a better image of security to the game.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The chat setting is not user friendly. If you don't have experience with the game, you have a hard time to find the correct place to change the chat settings. Is easily to find people who missed the setup of the chat. Taking the point of view of parents, sometimes is really hard to understand a non-user friend feature.
If the chat settings have a tab in the options window, can improve a lot and help people to configure the game more easily. But again, having a option to prevent a simple /join channel, blocking can be nice.
I can undertand this point and respect your opinion.
But most of opinions and suggestions is about how to deal with kids. Ok, after reading all of them, I make the main point is about the feature, the option to leave open the possibility the each family have the right to make your own rules, with the help of the parental control feature.
I agree, placing limits to interactions in the game limit the game experience. But sometimes is necessary, because is hard to deal with some type of problems in many levels, in many contexts.
Making a way to help to prevent problems can be enough for some people. Can't help others and is not enough to others. This is clear.
Requesting a feature is not only for me, but for a lot of people that have to deal with hardly choices, that have to set a safe place to leave your children to play. Is to set a way to keep the safely first.
Features like Parental Control can prevent and avoid a lot of problems. Can't solve all problems, but helps a lot. Having the option to have a better control of the game, you can leave someone to play safely, preventing the most common and unwanted problems.
Is better to have this feature on, and have a better environment under a fleet, where friendships are controlled and easy to handle with the help of other fleet member, with more experience in sto instead leaving kids playing alone.
Again, is not about leaving kids under responsibility on the other. It is about to set a more manageable and healthy environment for teenages and kids making friends, like a club or a school (in this case, a fleet)
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
that would benefit from this option.
seeing how most of the population is adults with kids and they leave there games going and go afk, and there kids sneak on and play the game.
so it would be understandable to have this option.
specially for religious freaks who deny reality and consider 90% of the english language evil.
My honest opinion, not trolling lol.
Glad I grew up learning English. I feel sorry for anyone who had to learn it as a second language.
My blog! Zen|Dilithium tracking on Thursdays
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As a lifetime member of STO, I officially became a financial liability as of April 2012 when compared to a subscriber.
First: Do not let your kids play an MMO unless they are at least 16 or older. It would save other players from all those annoying kids too.
Second: If you must, absolutly want your kids to play the game, pull up a chair and oversee their actions.
Third: Just log out of the game when you are not around, and don't let your kids see your password.
And don't expect a small company to waste a LOT of its already spread thin manpower and funding to make something just for your convience.
Sarcasm: Sure, they should totally waste time on this while the KDF has around 20% of the Federation content. And lets watch some Sarcastaball too while we are at it! /sarcasm off.
They are your children, its your DUTY to take care of them, and not pass it up to Cryptic.
Lazy parents and blaming their faults on everybody else but their own high and mighty selves.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
Which is...extremely annoying, and I would like a function to ignore the Starfleet Dental in fashion that not only removes their chat, but their characters's images too from my monitor.
Still, its not something that can be done with such a small game.
But still... this is annoying, rather then mature. Even teenages have to deal with such annoying things, like homework, teachers and the trolls in school.
As for the perverts.... don't stroll around on Drozana in a skimpy outfit.
That's the equivalent of letting your child stroll around a dark alley at night in a bathsuit when Pedobear is nosing around from behind the garbage cans.
If you do that you are asking for trouble.
wall-o-text, so i boiled it down for you. your kids, your responsibility, if you didn't want that responsibility you never should have had them. not cryptics job, not the governments job, not the schools or the teachers job to watch your kids.
your job, do it, or give them up to someone who can.
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
Hmmmm......... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUmJDVRDRTQ
In either case, 0/10.
While I don't disagree with your intentions, the game is rated T, BUT as always the ESRB adds a note "Online interactions NOT rated by the ESRB" pretty much for this reason.
also.. there's not much keeping your kid from just creating another account that you don't have a lock on.. P2P and all.
"Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB" - Warns those who intend to play the game online about possible exposure to chat (text, audio, video) or other types of user-generated content (e.g., maps, skins) that have not been considered in the ESRB rating assignment
That said, basically the ESRB is saying use at your own risk, and allow children to use at your discretion.