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Cryptic needs to work harder on Anti-Griefing
bindingchains
Member Posts: 88 Arc User
Earlier this morning, I queued for Undine Infiltration match. The match was going smooth until this player hid behind a desk (to avoid being seen by the enemies) with a dialog open with the last NPC, preventing the team from continuing the match since we were unable to talk to it.
He remained like this for about 30 minutes, forcing the entire team to wait, during this time he spammed me with chat invitations and words of nerd rage from his alts (because I took screenshots and asked the team to report him) until he was eventually killed by the enemies, only then we could continue. After that he trained the entire cave on us, focing a wipe. Despise all his best efforts we managed to finish the sto. After the match he continuously spammed me with Private Challanges, he has been doing this for the past hour non stop.
Cryptic gives players ALL THE TOOLS to grief on this game, teams are unable to kick out griefers, blocking a person doesnt prevent them from spamming Private Challanges requests and the list goes on. This player has been doing this for a long time, since he knows all the 'tricks', it was all tested before, it wasnt something random, he knew what he was doing, which means he has not been punished yet! He even has several channels open to spam others with invitation requests. I dont even have to mention the channel names were pathetic, one of them was called "Elite Reporters 37", to show how many times he has done this.
Rather than just making a ticket Im also making this PUBLIC, so people are aware and above all CRYPTIC is aware of whats going on and takes some action!
He remained like this for about 30 minutes, forcing the entire team to wait, during this time he spammed me with chat invitations and words of nerd rage from his alts (because I took screenshots and asked the team to report him) until he was eventually killed by the enemies, only then we could continue. After that he trained the entire cave on us, focing a wipe. Despise all his best efforts we managed to finish the sto. After the match he continuously spammed me with Private Challanges, he has been doing this for the past hour non stop.
Cryptic gives players ALL THE TOOLS to grief on this game, teams are unable to kick out griefers, blocking a person doesnt prevent them from spamming Private Challanges requests and the list goes on. This player has been doing this for a long time, since he knows all the 'tricks', it was all tested before, it wasnt something random, he knew what he was doing, which means he has not been punished yet! He even has several channels open to spam others with invitation requests. I dont even have to mention the channel names were pathetic, one of them was called "Elite Reporters 37", to show how many times he has done this.
Rather than just making a ticket Im also making this PUBLIC, so people are aware and above all CRYPTIC is aware of whats going on and takes some action!
Post edited by bindingchains on
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But I understand your frustration, that is totally unacceptable behavior. What a jerk !
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I play Cryptic games for over 5 years now, if they punish me and not this person Im done with this company.
Well I don't think you will get banned or anything, but the thread will be closed and deleted most likely.
Some people are very unhappy, and the only joy they get is griefing other players....sad really, but know that you're probably a lot happier then this griefer, he probably has a really sad unfulfilling life.
Cryptic you MUST do something to sort out these idiot trolls who are quite possibly pushing away much needed new players.
The reporting system is a running joke in this game, everyone knows it but yet the way some players get treated is totally out of order. This sort of thing does more harm to the game that any amount of bugs, exploits etc as it is just malicious.
b) File a support ticket. I don't mean clicking "report spam" but open a customer service ticket and report what happened, "report spam" doesn't report anything, it just puts the user on ignore. I think the button is mislabeled.
c) If customer support doesn't reply to you and you are harassed by this person ping the community manager (I'm not doing this so you have time to remove the @ handle in your postings). She may be able to help you out or push the general matter to attention.
It seems to be a general problem that STO doesn't seem to have game master supervision and harassment seems to be a returning issue. Maybe getting an official statement about that would be helpful at this point.
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simply ignoring doesnt prevent them from spamming Private Challenges, you actually have to go in your Privacity settings and choose a option that only allows Private Challange requests from Friends or Fleet members.
I always do that, to avoid the idiotic people from PC me (Private Challenge PC).
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
(Sadly, all among the reasons I would say this game should be considered 18+ regardless of what its ESRB rating is: because there is just way too much obnoxious and offensive behavior around.
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It's a bit off-topic, but I personally think online games in an unsupervised enviroment should in principle be 18+. A game enviroment specifically inclusive to minors has to be supervised, STO lacks game master presence entirely. You interact with other people, adult human beings that are as diverse as you can imagine to both ends of the spectrum.
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Thing is I can't understand why there isn't a mod online, to you know, moderate Zone chat (at the very least)
I know in War Thunder for example, people get put on "Read Only" all the time when they act up in Zone chat. And it's pretty instant.
And they come as often as needed. Which ends up being a handful of people per hour.
Not sure why they cant hire someone to do this here. Some of the things that are said in ESD zone chat are truly atrocious.
I for one would love to see the same thing here.
I mean War Thunder can't be making more money then STO... can it ?
and how much would it cost to hire several Mods for shift work ?
I can't see it being so expensive that it would affect other aspects of game production. Would be a very minor cost to implement, and would provide a few more jobs for people in the industry.
I mean, I'm sure some people would even "volunteer" for this position, so it could possibly be free to the company !
There's really no reason as to why it doesn't exist already. Especially if they could fill these positions with volunteers !
You are doing the same thing as the griefer and "knowingly" violating the "shaming" policy. Did you know that? No sympathy IMO since if you have been in STO this long and this happens once in a while since Beta.
It is a "social" game and if you can't interact with others just do solo games or PC games that are non MMOs. Why wait 30 mins to do anything about it . Did you know there is a "leave" button in all PvEs. I don't wait more than a minute after events like that...."solved". Go through proper channels and write tickets. Believe it or not they will respond. It is done in a confidential manner but they always respond. If not grief them instead for not taking action. I have seen people being muted or banned for what you did here and what the griefer did as well. Frustration should be vented to the proper channels without violating forums policies...does not pay up otherwise.
In before lock
I support the Star Trek Battles channel.
That's basically my rationale and how I would handle STO in my house if I had kids. They would not be allowed on except MAYBE with my direct supervision (as in, I'd be sitting with them the whole time). And what makes it is unfortunate is that Star Trek is a property that on TV is OK for teens and mature younger kids. For the game to be a de facto 18+ because of the lack of GM'ing is something I don't know why CBS doesn't crack down on PWE for. For goodness sake, Cryptic/PWE needs to have the funding and/or priority on hiring GM's and enforce the rules so that the game's real rating is in line with that of the show. I wish CBS would impress that on the PWE higher-ups so that the STO team would actually get the resources and support they need to make it happen.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
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Rayzee
excellentawesome#4589
torgaddon101
raeat
You are right, for too long this game has been in the hands of griefers, I remember a long time ago I had similar problems with a member of a known griefers only Fleet. When I told my friends and fleet members about my desire to contact that fleet owner, to report this member behavior, they said it was a waste of time. That fleet was long known to be a griefers only playground.
How can a game company allow this? This lack of supervision is ridiculous, even today when I asked directions to deal with the problem people made jokes, wishing me luck so my ticket was attended within a year. How can anyone play a game you have absolute no support? This person was definitely using a hack to continuously spam me, just like he has done before and nothing is done?
Edit: Just now I allowed private challenge matches again and the spam is still going on, over 4 hours after the incident. Not that I care because I never do PvP and finding that option was actually nice, but I can imagine how frustrating it must be for those who like to duel.
That's why all online games have the little disclaimer "online interactions with other player are unrated". That tells people that the game is rated "T" or whatever, and chat is usually rated "X"...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
For an MMO based on a more mature property, such as nuBsG, which I would expect to be rated R in the theater. Heck, when the show was on the air I used to try to predict plot points based on how many content warnings (you know, drugs, sex, language, violence) appeared at the beginning of the episode. My mindset is that anyone paying even the slightest attention to that show would know it ain't no squeaky clean Star Trek. I would not ask as much because parents should not be letting their younger children even watch the show it's based on in the first place, and the reasonable expectation IMO would be that mature material will be discussed even *just* to discuss that show's canon. I don't play it but I think it would be almost crazy not to expect swearing, controversial, and even explicit chat in that game.
But STO...is not based on something like that, so that should not be the expectation to see allowed in player behavior. I think a much better job needs to be done on the GM'ing. The TOS are about right but the enforcement in game is not there.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
And War thunder ended up removing that general chat, cause it was getting to be too much for them to deal with, even with near fulltime moderation against an endless tide of ugly stuff without end, and that's still far less than the sheer volume of zone chat that STO has! It's simply impossible for them to monitor chat and keep up, that's just the unfortunate truth. The only other option is to outright remove it, but the players already have the ability to do that for themselves at least.
Now of course, they could have volunteers, but that would introduce a whole new host of problems with having to train them, ensure their power isn't abused, and it's something they also cannot deal with considering the amount of volunteers that would be needed.
[/quote]
And War thunder ended up removing that general chat, cause it was getting to be too much for them to deal with, even with near fulltime moderation against an endless tide of ugly stuff without end, and that's still far less than the sheer volume of zone chat that STO has! It's simply impossible for them to monitor chat and keep up, that's just the unfortunate truth. The only other option is to outright remove it, but the players already have the ability to do that for themselves at least.
Now of course, they could have volunteers, but that would introduce a whole new host of problems with having to train them, ensure their power isn't abused, and it's something they also cannot deal with considering the amount of volunteers that would be needed.[/quote]
Wow, really ?
I've not been on for over a month, that is certainly news to me.
It's not perfect... can take more time (for the team build), but ultimately you end up with better runs. Fact is, people have differing ideas on how the game should be played... different purposes for playing (the player the OP describes probably has "fun" causing chat rage).
Others are serious farmers who look for the best time/reward effort/reward ratio... where "fun" is not the objective... the objective is the reward (grinding out the latest shiny)... It is no secret why certain missions pop in queues while others you can wait a lifetime...
PUGs are not the place to be looking for everyone to play your way, or the devs way, or sometimes even rationally.
The benefits of building a team is that you know what you are going to get... and if you find players whose game play style annoys you, you never have to invite them to your team again.
What I can tell you, is that this exact discussion exists in every mmo I have ever played... and generally amounts to ... nothing.
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
That being said OP, I fear you're only making things worse for yourself. These trolls usually watch the Forums to pick their targets, one of them even literally told me so when I was faced by his annoying behaviour in-game. They're probably watching this thread too so I guess I'll be seeing some of my 'friends' soon enough again in Infected...
1) No naming and shaming in public
We had this before I started, during my tenure we changed it (not my doing as such, just a temporal coincidence) Our reason for this was threefold. Firstly we did not want a pillory for everyone to gather around to see who's the bad guy of the day.
Or the alleged bad guy, since secondly, readers of a shaming post have no proof whatever of that it really happened the way it is described. On our site we had a regular influx of complaints where copy and paste from the chatlog had been tampered with, where accusations were obviously made just to shaft somebody for whatever other reasons, and a public forum is bound to leave a negative impression about some player because you "heard something about him" even if it was disproven later on.
Finally thirdly it does not serve its purpose. A public accusation usually centers around the player accused and the accuser instead of the problem at hand. Since people cannot contribute to the latter (they weren't there) they will contribute about the involved parties with a lot of comments of little help ("I have experienced player A as well and he has always been a good sport" "I know player A and he just isn't a nice person"). Also you will have a huge troll magnet for people just stirring up emotions, getting their popcorn, and watching the ensuing free-for-all brawl. I guess here it would be even worse because back on "my site" we were mostly monolinguistic, so not as many foreigners trying to get a point across in a language which they do not speak as well as their mother tongue.
And while a company can somewhat live with abuse being thrown their way, they will not be happy at all when somebody starts going after their customers publicly and in an unwarranted way.
2) "Reports don't do anything"
Less than you may want, more than you may think (judging from our site). Thing is: what happens after a complaint gets in? We have to check out what happened. You cannot just ban somebody because somebody pointed a finger at them. This may include asking the other side about their side of the story. We did have to look into data stored on our server to match up reports with what we knew happened - but of course we did not store everything. So yes, often it is a "he said she said" situation where you just cannot take sides. But reports were kept and if similar reports of the same player misbehaving kept popping up, action was taken. But this takes some time, you will not get a swift retribution.
And you will probably not see that somebody has been punished for what they did. Not every misbehavior warrants a ban from the game. (If repeated often enough it does, but not the first time, maybe not the first three times) I don't know whether a similar system is at work here behind the scenes, but on my site we had the possibility of in game punishments. Translated into STO terms they were along the lines of "lose 100k dilithium", "get banned from (certain) queues for an amount of time" or suchlike. But players still came on after that and you had no way of knowing they got this punishment - we did not mark their names in any kind.
So my advice would be "report whenever you see something that isn't okay" - repeated reports probably will have an effect. But also keep in mind that not everything you do not like and think is totally inappropriate will be considered in the same way by everybody else. Personally I would like to call people for a "serious talk" when others still may say "grow a pair and carry on".
3) Chat monitoring
(This has nothing to do with my experience back in the day) To keep a position open for 24h a day the common calculation is "5 people". 3 people for the shifts (3*8=24), the two others to cover for holidays, sick leave and stuff. Here, for 7 days a week instead of 5, we could just say you need 7 full time employees by rule of proportion (it isn't quite as simple). Thing is, a job "permanently stare at your monitor, read stuff that even at best of times is boring" (yay, STOm4st3r now has a purple Mk XIV beam array. Oh, somebody doesn't like Obama. And somebody else wants to do some space PvE) just isn't possible on a normal working schedule, you just cannot do that for 4 hours straight, so you need breaks. Since one person wouldn't probably be enough to watch all then zone chats anyway, let's say you need two watchers, each having a different set of chats in his window, and a third who just needs a break. Now we are at 21 employees just for that. Full time employees, maybe not the highest salaries, but full time nonetheless. And there are more complications. It just is not really viable I guess.
Looks like he had a change of heart and removed it. Otherwise he would have gotten dinged instead of the real perpetrator.
Also if you had read any of the other posts you would see that others advised him to remove the name.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
ugh... useless piece of TRIBBLE.