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Broken Chat System and Player Harrasment
gravefatal1ty
Member Posts: 45 Arc User
As a long time player I feel it is time to speak up about some things. Some of you will give me grief and say I should suck it up and others I hope will agree.
I have been a member of this community for more than three years. I can remember when if you wanted to role play you were welcomed into communities and embraced for it. I can remember a time when we the players seemed to have the support of the developers. Now I am not saying we are completely ignored but it seems it is getting closer to that these days.
The chat system currently in place was a welcome addition to the game. The private channels are great so you can choose who stays in them. If someone is in your channel you supposedly have the tools in place to mute or kick someone. The current state of the chat system makes this almost impossible. you can mute someone and they can get around that easily. You kick someone they come right back in. A ban feature has been requested for quite a while and it is still absent.
Roleplaying is hard these days due to certain groups. These groups have gone as far as slander, posting real life info in game, and threatening players. I have seen a number of people quit the game because of these things. They come into chat channels and blatantly violate TOS.
We, the players, have been asked to file reports. We gladly do that and we immediately receive canned responses back and nothing seems to be done. The offenders are right back in the channels flaunting their TOS violations and bragging that nothing will be done.
I have posted on the forums before asking that something be done about the chat system and receive no response other than that the chat system is in beta. I don't know that it has ever come out of beta to be honest.
So to keep from rambling on this is my post to ask PWE/Cryptic if something can be done about the broken chat system and about the harassment to fellow players. I know that I would be able to enjoy the game much more if I was able to manage a channel more efficiently and if I didn't have to deal with harassment.
I appreciate any and all responses, comments, just anything I can get in regards to this post.
I have been a member of this community for more than three years. I can remember when if you wanted to role play you were welcomed into communities and embraced for it. I can remember a time when we the players seemed to have the support of the developers. Now I am not saying we are completely ignored but it seems it is getting closer to that these days.
The chat system currently in place was a welcome addition to the game. The private channels are great so you can choose who stays in them. If someone is in your channel you supposedly have the tools in place to mute or kick someone. The current state of the chat system makes this almost impossible. you can mute someone and they can get around that easily. You kick someone they come right back in. A ban feature has been requested for quite a while and it is still absent.
Roleplaying is hard these days due to certain groups. These groups have gone as far as slander, posting real life info in game, and threatening players. I have seen a number of people quit the game because of these things. They come into chat channels and blatantly violate TOS.
We, the players, have been asked to file reports. We gladly do that and we immediately receive canned responses back and nothing seems to be done. The offenders are right back in the channels flaunting their TOS violations and bragging that nothing will be done.
I have posted on the forums before asking that something be done about the chat system and receive no response other than that the chat system is in beta. I don't know that it has ever come out of beta to be honest.
So to keep from rambling on this is my post to ask PWE/Cryptic if something can be done about the broken chat system and about the harassment to fellow players. I know that I would be able to enjoy the game much more if I was able to manage a channel more efficiently and if I didn't have to deal with harassment.
I appreciate any and all responses, comments, just anything I can get in regards to this post.
Post edited by gravefatal1ty on
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Not really, not sure which MMOs you have been playing, but in nearly every mmo, chat is a terrible place full of the worst of the worst. the ONLY game that i can think of that does not have that is DDO, and that is because barely anyone speaks on chat.
And by extension, PWE Customer Service. Canned responses, and even responses that don't make any sense.
"Why don't you try X?" (when condition X was already outlined in the initial report).
"We've confirmed we credited the account..." (They agree to reiburse, but don't want to lose money, and call you a liar instead).
It's not just the roleplayers who are suffering from Customer Support/GMs. It's everyone.
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As I said, almost four years ago.
How much zen do I have to throw at PWE for a functioning chat system? We've had chat systems on the internet for a few decades now. Why can we have such advanced technology in this game but a chat system that has less functionality than the chat technology used in 1992?
I get really tired of being reminded that for all the progress Cryptic makes with this game, in many respects it seems we're regressing technologically speaking.
The above does work....
....except you MUST do it in private channels (so you have to invite people in). If it's an open channel (anyone can join) it's EXTREMELY easy to get around mute and bans (as mentioned - just leave and come back into said channel).
Yes, it's a major failing of Cryptic's private channel thing. But it's the only thing you can do.
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Didn't mean to imply role players were the only one. I know there are many others affected by it. I have seen some of the responses telling you to do something you have already done too.
not once have i ever seen a PWE member come on the game and keep the chat system real and in check. the chances that PWE could hire additional mod teams for 24h/7d service on the game would be absurd beyond silly considering 4 years the chat has taken care of itself, "why fix something isnt broken" thinking comes to mind.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
How is a chat system not broken when you try to mute someone and then they are immediately able to talk again. you kick someone and they are allowed to come right back in. I never suggested hiring more mods, just simply fix the chat system so it works as it should.
The chat system is broken and PWE/Cryptic knows it. It just seems they choose to do nothing about it.
And yes. A playerbase is more mature when you are paying to play something. When you have a F2P model anyone can play the game. F2P you don't have to have mom and dad's credit card to play or a game card. Folks that decide to sit in mom or grandma's basement typically don't play as well.
But let's not make this a name calling post as it seems others are trying to do. The point of this post is to ask when/how PWE/Cryptic is going to do something about these issues we have been dealing with for years now.
And don't assume something is about your group in this post. if you do that then isn't that the same as admitting guilt?
1. your right, they know and do not care, glad you ahve realized that.
2. Anyone who thinks that P2P makes a difference in chat has no idea what they are talking about. Eve has one of the worst, most garbage, communities and yet it is a P2P game. look at WOW, the names "barrens chat" comes from that P2P game.
Your playerbase is generally older. How many 13 year olds you know that has a credit card? Those that are given an account to play by their parent, not all mind you, have a parent that monitors what they are doing. I know most parents might not but I would. Granted I wouldn't let my 13 year old play STO but some do.
I dont mind 13 year old silliness.
its childish and annoying but ignorable.
However, adults acting like 13 year olds is another matter.
And P2P makes no difference to the population of those.
I know quite a few who can just ask their parents for theirs and the parents do not bat an eyelid. in todays society, parents rarely look over at what their child is doing anymore. I gave a couple examples in my previous post. P2P makes no difference.
Also, i know many people younger than 20 who are more mature than people in their 30's and 40's
Not necessarily. You can have thirteen year old kids with their parents' credit card behind them , playing the game. Meanwhile you can have thousands of mature adults who play the game when its F2P simply because it's worth it to them.
And not really, it's called public image.
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The main point of all my rambling and this post is we supposedly have the tools in place to deal with harassment on our own within the chat systems, mute/kick but these seldom work.
Someone mentioned Eve earlier. Their chat system is based off of XMPP just like STO's is. When you mute someone in Eve you set how long and what for. You ban someone from your channel they don't get back in.
My main point about the F2P model versus the P2P model is that you can ban someone in P2P and they don't always have an alternate account they can get on. They stay banned until you unban them. in F2P it is easy to create a new account and use that to continue the harassment. And yes I know you can't run and create a new one and immediately go about your chat endeavors. if I recall you just have to have 10 hours of play time to enable most chat functionality.
And P2P is never a guarantee of more mature chat, that's a generalization based on false information. It's usually quite the opposite, where people feel they've paid for the right to act like complete "insert colorful expletive here", also there are many in a range from overindulged child to useless punk highschool kid whose had their subscriptions paid for by mommy or daddy to let the computer babysit and keep these spoiled rotten kids out of trouble, P2P has some of the worst chat you can find and often the only time this isn't the case is when chat is heavily moderated.
I will agree though that in game chat could use a lot of work, but for the most part there is something be said for just going with a 3rd party application and ignoring chat altogether.
Most of the time I only use chat when I want to feel my brain cells die reading some of the utter nonsense going on in ESD or most other social zones, or when I want to review what the NPCs were saying during missions.
The chat and the people are great. No different from than any other game I've played. You just have to be strong enough not to care what people say... If you're made of 'glass', just close the chat. LOL.
Ignore is a different matter. That works as expected.
I am referring primarily to the chat rooms we create. if you have 300 people in the chat room you can't ask all 300 to ignore someone. Well you could ask but why should you have to. Why put a mute/kick funtion in place if it only works part of the time.
What does Cryptic do in their own room to moderate like say TTS. Oh wait, the devs hang out in there and can remove people directly. We the players just get to muddle along.
Any chance we can get some dev/gm/community mod input on this post?
Speaking of reading go back and read the post. I am not talking about zone or local channels. I am referring to chat channels the players create. Last I checked there is not a mute/kick option in zone.
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I agree with what you are saying wholeheartedly. Send in a ticket and ignore them. But what I want to know is what do you do when you send in the ticket as asked by Cryptic/PWE and the response you get back is to do exactly what you have done and the offender is back in 10 minutes?
The tools in place do not work. Mute they come back. kick they can come back. You ignore and that fixes it for you. 300 people in a channel can't be expected to ignore someone. PWE needs to do something about their broken tools.
And I am not mentioning any groups in this thread. I am not giving them the attention they so desperately want. As I said earlier, if they want to assume I am talking about them then they are admitting to being part of the problem.
Come on PWE/Cryptic. Give us your 2 cents.
I'll say it again. This thread is not intended towards any group. The ones it is intended for know who they are. if they choose to comment it is their perogative. I am not mentioning them since I don't want them to think many of us truly care about them. We just care about not being able to moderate our chat against them.
Have a nice day Nabreeki.
And yes, the chat system is quite broken for channels above 1200+ (IIRC the exact number escapes me) people that were around since the beginning. It's been pointed out by a few big name channels that were around since then that are having issues moderating the chat. Mute rarely works, unmuting is the same. Kicking is just pointless as they can just /channel_join all over again. The only option anyone seems to have is to create a new channel and that, for some is just not possible.
It was something they tried to fix, however there has been no word on it for months. The downside is that Brandon mentioned awhile ago, is testing in their test environment is harder to do since they don't have the numbers that some channels have.
The process for handling in game harassment isn't very publicized. However I will say that it does get looked at and the number of reports do matter. It seems like they don't care because really, we do see the same people over and over doing the same things. Ultimately yes, this is a F2P game and the biggest help I assume for all would be a working chat system for big channels instead of just restarting the channel.
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The only ways that they are circumventing muting or kicking are if the channel is public, or if someone promoted a mole into an operator position in a private channel who is removing the mutes or reinviiting the offenders. The first one is easily solved by setting the chat channel to private, while the second one is mostly your own internal problem. I say mostly because Cryptic could do something to make it a bit more transparent, giving an indicator of who is doing the muting/unmuting and inviting/kicking in order to root out any such moles.
We did hear a number of times that the chat system was being worked on and then it seemed to go stale. I know one of the channels I am in it would be essentially impossible to recreate it so thank you for taking that into consideration.
I just know from the standpoint of large channels it would be awesome if a little more time was put into fixing the issue or at the very least some sort of acknowledgement that it is being worked on. Looking back I have made two other posts about the broken chat system and never received a single response. I know not everything can be commented on or dealt with right then but some help after this length of time with things not working would be awesome. The constant badgering, harassing, general a**hatery is making this game very hard to even want to play.
Case in point: I had a user on my ignore list who was able to spam friend requests at me (as in, send a request, remove it and then do it all over again), this proceeded for nearly 10 minutes.
2nd Case in point: Another user on my ignore list proceeded to follow me around and spam trade windows at me (not intending to do anything other than spam boxes at me).
I did report these two incidents and all I got was a response about the ignore feature and that I should use it. It would be nice if these issues are actually looked into instead of getting rubbed off.
So just even ignoring the users in question doesn't work entirely if you have someone who is just there to try to get under your skin.
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