Guild Wars 2

A lot of players know what it’s like to see botters in an area, and there are no GMs around to smite them. Or when in WvW, a hacker is flying over Keep walls, or attacking while invisible. GM ProHeals is only one man, and can’t be on patrol 24/7. How about RMT spammers that constantly contact us in game? And let’s not forget about all those AFKers in world events getting credit with auto pet attacks. That’s why I’m suggesting a way for Anet to recruit help in the fight against rule breakers, and make money at the same time. Sell us temporary GM powers in the Gem Store for a very high amount, say 4,000 Gems for 1 week. Then we could kick people out of maps, or ban them outright.

Pros

• Instantly be able to remove rule breakers from the game, making for a cleaner and more friendly environment.
• Lessens the amount of work real GMs have to do, thus giving them more time to create additional content.
• Less clutter on the forums when players post about rule breakers.

Cons

• Abuseable. Troll players might ban legitimate players for fun.

Con Solution: In order to prevent unscrupulous players from abusing GM powers, Anet could set minimum requirements for access.

• Players must have a minimum of 20,000 Achievement Points. This is to show that they’re dedicated to the game.
• Players must disclose all the accounts they own, and must make an agreement where any abuse of GM powers means permanent ban to all their accounts.

Additional Revenue
If temporary GM powers could be sold, another way to generate sales is to offer customization ban animations. Sort of like PvP finishers. One ban animation could be Dhuum slicing the player down (ala GW1). Another animation could be a little rabbit hopping along, and then jumping at the player’s throat (ala Monty Python). Anet could easily sell each of these for 1,000 Gems.

Why would I pay for helping Anet to manage their game? If anything they should pay me lol

Malediktus.9250:

Why would I pay for helping Anet to manage their game? If anything they should pay me lol

Pay you in HKs?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Pros

• Lessens the amount of work real GMs have to do, thus giving them more time to create additional content.

Cons

• Abuseable. Troll players might ban legitimate players for fun.

Con Solution:

• Players must disclose all the accounts they own, and must make an agreement where any abuse of GM powers means permanent ban to all their accounts.

I just snipped a couple of things out here. So now, the Anet GMs who’s work you are trying to reduce have to patrol the people that bought GM status to make sure they are not abusing their status. So every time a person that bought GM power nukes someone from the game and the person complains the real GMs now have to go research what happened to make sure the person that bought GM power was not abusing their power. They will have to do this instead of or on top of all the in game reports of cheating they are also receiving and have to review. I don’t know, seems like more work for the Anet GMs to me.

Not to mention the staff that handles abuse reports are not the same people developing the content as far as I know.

JustTrogdor.7892:

I just snipped a couple of things out here. So now, the Anet GMs who’s work you are trying to reduce have to patrol the people that bought GM status to make sure they are not abusing their status. So every time a person that bought GM power nukes someone from the game and the person complains the real GMs now have to go research what happened to make sure the person that bought GM power was not abusing their power. They will have to do this instead of or on top of all the in game reports of cheating they are also receiving and have to review. I don’t know, seems like more work for the Anet GMs to me.

I have to agree with this. It just sounds like more work for the actual employees, since it would open the door to lots of ways to troll other players. People would abuse the crap out of this.

If implemented, the new “end game” for the most toxic, undesirable individuals in this community would be to obtain that GM status, and they would abuse it ruthlessly, even if it meant getting banned when caught.

AP does not equal experience, nor does time in game, nor does community reputation, etc. No amount of disincentive is going to prevent the worst of the worst from obtaining such a status.

Even real GM’s are subject to corruption (not accusing anyone of that, just stating fact), and their livelyhood (paycheck) depends on doing a good job. Giving such powers to players would be a colossal blunder.

That idea is just so stupid.

I can already see vets who want to leave the game troll and ban everything they see just for the lulz.

They wouldn’t sell power like this, they would make you apply for it like other trusted positions. If selected, you would have to agree to terms that had real world consequences. You would be required to have a static IP and one that wasn’t linked to a public service (VPN) because a change in IP would remove this privilege from your account. All GM power would be accessed through an external application and every request would require an authentication key to submit. Higher security is required to prevent problems with stolen accounts or unattended sessions.

If something like this was going to happen however, some other MMO would already be doing it. Some MMOs have player forum moderators, but taking away account privileges is far more serious than forum privileges.

The usual solution is to simply crowd source it. After a certain amount of reports from unique individuals not linked to any other submitted reports (like friends, guild, same IP), the reported account is immediately flagged and either looked into with a priority or automatically handled. For example, in cases of botting, automated action would be to require the offender to enter a captcha within a few minutes, otherwise they’re locked to character select.

No matter how trustworthy a single play may become, they would still be able one day to do something that may be irreversible.

Or they could get hacked for whatever reason, and their powers still misused.

This is something that should never happen.

You can’t stop botters because lazy players go to sites to buy gold and wind up with a keylogger or rootkit on their computer and their accounts get stolen. Or they sign up with one Email to everything with the same password and the admins of the bad site will try to log into GW with those details and take accounts.

JustTrogdor.7892:

I just snipped a couple of things out here. So now, the Anet GMs who’s work you are trying to reduce have to patrol the people that bought GM status to make sure they are not abusing their status. So every time a person that bought GM power nukes someone from the game and the person complains the real GMs now have to go research what happened to make sure the person that bought GM power was not abusing their power. They will have to do this instead of or on top of all the in game reports of cheating they are also receiving and have to review. I don’t know, seems like more work for the Anet GMs to me.

Not to mention the staff that handles abuse reports are not the same people developing the content as far as I know.

Yeah JT. I thought about this, and still I stand behind the general idea. Why? Well, regardless of who would issue out bans, the player will still dispute the punishment. We’ve seen RMT accounts post frivolous disputes in the Account section, only to be shot down by GM Chris.

In order for an idea like this to work, there needs to be real consequences. A complete ban of all accounts would be the best thing I could think of, since most players care about their main accounts that they’ve invested so much time into. Maybe Anet could charge Gems on a “per account action” basis. 500 Gems are deducted from the account each time an attempt to kick a player, or perma ban them. That could cut down on a lot of the troll attempts, since it gets really costly to abuse.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

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Being as bat nuts crazy as you are, you should never have any GM powers.

I would pay if I could shut down other player effects around me while at outposts or within cities.

The GM team already do a fantastic job without the need for players to get involved. We all already have the tools we need to deal with botters, gold sellers, trolls and grievers! We have right-click and report and we have an amazing community base as well.

Bots take time because from what I understand, a GM has to observe before pulling the plunger.

Most gold sellers get booted within an hour of being reported. (Simply observe your block list and they go “offline” sooner than we realise and never come back!)

As for trolls & grievers, we have our very own special tool called ‘Map Chat’ – by engaging in a friendly way with one another, it is proven that trolls and grievers become a minority – and many friendships blossom as well! (Tried and tested on EU’s friendliest server, Piken Square! )

As for ‘buying’ GM power with gems – this in itself is a bad idea even if they did give some powers to ordinary players (which they hopefully will never do) – power shouldn’t be determined by how much you can afford, but what good you can do for the community you’d work for.

I read this at first thinking it was satire…. Now I’m not sure. This is one of the most ludicrous ideas i’ve heard.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

JustTrogdor.7892:

I just snipped a couple of things out here. So now, the Anet GMs who’s work you are trying to reduce have to patrol the people that bought GM status to make sure they are not abusing their status. So every time a person that bought GM power nukes someone from the game and the person complains the real GMs now have to go research what happened to make sure the person that bought GM power was not abusing their power. They will have to do this instead of or on top of all the in game reports of cheating they are also receiving and have to review. I don’t know, seems like more work for the Anet GMs to me.

Not to mention the staff that handles abuse reports are not the same people developing the content as far as I know.

Yeah JT. I thought about this, and still I stand behind the general idea. Why? Well, regardless of who would issue out bans, the player will still dispute the punishment. We’ve seen RMT accounts post frivolous disputes in the Account section, only to be shot down by GM Chris.

In order for an idea like this to work, there needs to be real consequences. A complete ban of all accounts would be the best thing I could think of, since most players care about their main accounts that they’ve invested so much time into. Maybe Anet could charge Gems on a “per account action” basis. 500 Gems are deducted from the account each time an attempt to kick a player, or perma ban them. That could cut down on a lot of the troll attempts, since it gets really costly to abuse.

Yeah but now with your plan you are just adding layers upon layers of extra work for the real GMs. Scenario:

Gem Store GM A: Bans player Bob

Player Bob: Complains to real GMs that he was banned for no real reason.

Anet GM: Okay I’ll look into it. Anet GM now has to look into player Bob’s account history which in turn negates the time saving issue you described. Anet GM finds out the ban was without reason. Anet GM then has to unban Bob and apologize for the error. Anet GM then bans Gem Store GM for abuse of power.

Gem Store GM then contacts Anet GM: Hey man, it was an accident I promise. I clicked the wrong person, (or I was certain it was a bot/hacker/whatever). Please unban my account.

Anet GM: Okay let me look into it. Anet GM then has to research the activity of another account to see if it was truly an accident or was done maliciously. This takes even more time away when they could be dealing with abuse reports themselves.

Now let’s look at things without your suggestion.

Anet GM gets a report that Bob is cheating/abusive/violating ToS: Anet GM looks into it. If the report is BS then nothing happens to Bob. If the report is legitimate Bob gets banned or suspended.

Bob contacts Anet GM: Hey I was banned without reason. I didn’t do anything.

Anet GM: Sorry it’s on record from our Anet GMs you violated ToS. End of discussion.

Work wise for Anet GMs the last scenario makes much more sense.

The GMs wouldn’t have to worry about it, because the moment they showed up to deal with the problem, someone would kick them from the game and ban them.

And by “someone”, I mean “probably me”. ::evil laugh::

I do not support the OP’s suggestion. Allowing GM powers to be purchased would have an incredibly negative impact on the game.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Work wise for Anet GMs the last scenario makes much more sense.

Agreed.

It sure is Poe’s Law in here.

Shufflepants.9785:

It sure is Poe’s Law in here.

I’m well aware of what is going on. I’m just having my share of fun playing along. SP and I have a history of going back and forth like this, although it has been awhile.

Unfortunately it is bed time for me so I’ll have to catch up later.

JustTrogdor.7892:

snip

It’s sad that certain players would ruin things for the rest of us trustworthy players. I can certainly vouch for myself that I’m not prone to abusing GM powers.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

JustTrogdor.7892:

snip

It’s sad that certain players would ruin things for the rest of us trustworthy players. I can certainly vouch for myself that I’m not prone to abusing GM powers.

There is always going to be a group of people that like to ruin things “for the rest of us”. That is not only true in gaming but in real life as well.

Terrible idea, never going to happen.

Uh, no. No. Just no.

This thread is tangible proof of a need for a -1 button. No way in heck should this ever be implemented.

I been called bot many times while I was just doing pve and why do u think 20k AP means anything at all? i see plenty of 25k AP players who play like noob. He/she could be 10 years old with 30k AP. Its a bad idea end of discussion.

Reminder: some folks here love to start threads with controversial ideas and see what happens (in other words, they make the popcorn right after pressing ‘Post Reply’)

#things-to-do-when-dead-in-denver-or-waiting-for-xpac

Rym.1469:

Malediktus.9250:

Why would I pay for helping Anet to manage their game? If anything they should pay me lol

Pay you in HKs?

With 500 APs for every kicked player.

Terrible idea. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

I’ve seen a very limited version of this type of feature abused in Cryptic’s games. Worst feature ever.

Never give custody of the asylum to the inmates.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

JustTrogdor.7892:

snip

I can certainly vouch for myself that I’m not prone to abusing GM powers.

http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/57607022.jpg

I also vote no.