Guild Wars 2

With the big megaserver changes coming down the pipe, chat trolls are going to become a much bigger problem. Right now, many servers generally only have to deal with one or two, but given the general quality of the community compared to other games, I think GW2 players, in aggregate, should be trusted to moderate their own playing space.

Silence mutes a player for everyone for a short period of time. A silenced player can’t talk in either map or team chat, and cannot use /say, but can still talk in private channels. The goal is to provide a ‘nuclear option’ for players, for when a player is persistently disruptive to everyone else, and reasoning with them, or ignoring them, has failed.

Players can start a vote to silence another player in the map at any time, but they can only use it once per account per day. Someone to second the silence may be required. The game will then poll a random selection of people in the map, and if there is a strong majority, the target player will be silenced. All silencing attempts are logged for review by support. Players who are silenced multiple times will be silenced for increasingly longer periods, and may be flagged for review by support. Penalties may be levied against players who use silence without a strong majority; players should ensure that the vote will succeed if they intend to use it.

Why would there suddenly be more /mapchat Trolls? There isn’t going to be any map cap increase. I haven’t heard many complaints on the forums from those servers that have a higher population about chat Trolls, so I doubt it will magically become a problem now.

As for your idea, I doubt it will come to fruition, as there are many more important things to implement in the game. In my opinion, of course.

Why not just block them?

If anyone else thinks they’re a problem they can block them too. Meanwhile people who don’t mind, or who may actually be having a conversation with this person, can carry on as normal instead of having a random selection of players opinion imposed on them.

Firstly, your base foundation is false.
The system you are proposing can actually be used to troll people. So no.

I could accept a system where you can report someone for spamming. Once a certain quota is reached (talking about hundreds of reports here) he will be silenced for a week. The more times someone gets silenced the longer the punishment.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Why would there suddenly be more /mapchat Trolls?

Not really following the logic either. I’m guessing because OP is assuming that the new system will basically work like a overflow where people from different servers are combined together, thus increasing the likelihood of trolls from different servers being combined together in a single map

Giving other players the power to mute players will only lead to another form of harassment where some people simply mute players because they can.

Champions Online has such a feature that was tought to be used against goldspammers, but there are not even goldpsammer in that game, but the function is often abused by groups of players. Saying something like “I don’t like Wolverine” could already be enough that some people try to mute you for the next 24 hours.

a) completely wrong premises, nothing is changed by the megaserver in regards to this
b) proposed system heavily abusable – no
c) we have a blocking tool and I don´t need other players deciding for me what I want to see and what not, I am quite confident I can manage that myself
A real good addition to the block feature would be autodecline to lfg groups if you are creator and someone you blocked tries to apply.

Silence players by vote?

Really?

Do you honestly want the dozen or so 15-year old players from the “Leet and Pro Awesomesauce Guild” to have the ability to vote to silence other people?

OP, it doesn’t take a megaserver to notice the problem you trying to address.

Last week I took advantage of the free transfer to certain servers. Many other did as well to the same server.

I have been leveling an alt, so went to do the QD champ train for some xp and level appropriate loot drops for awhile.

Seems the server I transferred to does the boar>troll>oak>spider rotation, skipping the bandit. With the influx of many players from different servers, the bandit became a big issue, with some players wanting to include it in the rotation, and the original server players resisting.

For over a week now the QD train has been in a semi-perma state of chaos, with the map chat becoming quite ‘lively’ at times …

I see this as a minor bump-in-the-road compared to what things will be like after the megaserver hits …

Merus.9475:

A silenced player can’t talk in either map or team chat, and cannot use /say, but can still talk in private channels. The goal is to provide a ‘nuclear option’ for players, for when a player is persistently disruptive to everyone else, and reasoning with them, or ignoring them, has failed.

So, just to get my head around this, a silenced ‘troll’ cannot talk in either team or map chat but can still grief you in a whisper?
Sorry but what’s the point in that?…and what if you’re the troll doing the silencing?

Block is sufficient, I think. It’s you who get to choose who you don’t want to hear, which is a good way of doing it. Block does need to apply to emotes, though.