Guild Wars 2

Many of us like and encourage the Anet brag “we have the friendliest community”.

With the addition of f2p, I know we’ve all thought about the quality of the community chat such as map chat. They’ve added a few safeguards to help keep new players from poisoning the quality of chat. Map chat is our main way of asking for help, expressing excitement from a good drop, getting assistance or just having random fun.

I enjoy being able to start a random conversation while mapping or farming. That’s what MMO’s are good for. I often find a good conversation is just waiting for a fun comment to get it started. There are a few that feel the need to insert rude, obnoxious and even foul language into the mix. My options are to then party the people I was chatting with – if possible, /block the irritant, continue in whisper or walk-away.

In LA and other hangouts, the idlers are often more toxic than in the non-city areas. I’ve found that by blocking the mouthy or foul ones, the chat is often pretty good quality. I’d hate for our map chat to go the way Trade and Map chat went in WoW.

The other night I thought it would be a nice feature to have escalating penalties for map chat abuse. We would be our own judges based on block list hits against an individual.

With a tiered approach, when the first tier is hit (say 20 blocks) the player would get some restriction such as: one chat per 5-10 min in map for a week. The next tier would be longer and last longer. Higher tiers would be more severe such as blocking map chat totally for a week and up to a month. (You could take a peek at the current blocklists and see how many players have a high tally)

The feature could be a checkbox near the profanity filter checkbox and could be an opt-in for interested players. Plus, upon reaching a tier, the offending player would get an in-game notice that they have been restricted, how and why.

For example, if I opt-in, I would no longer see any messages from that person until their time period has elapsed. That way I would benefit from /blocks that other people have submitted.

I enjoy MMO gameplay, but the verbal abuse from other players in unnecessary and detracts from the enjoyment. Even when I’m a bystander.

New players have commented about wondering about the so-called friendliness. I encourage them to continue asking questions, if needed I coach them on asking good questions and looking at the /wiki first when they can.

I hope this might stir some future improvements along this line of thinking. Maybe instead of restricting map chat, you could add another chat category that is restricted along these lines.

I’m hoping you can create something along the lines of the Code of Conduct required for the forums that is policed by the players.

keenedge.9675:

I’ve found that by blocking the mouthy or foul ones, the chat is often pretty good quality.

Sounds like the block system we have now works pretty well then.

keenedge.9675:

With a tiered approach, when the first tier is hit (say 20 blocks) the player would get some restriction such as: one chat per 5-10 min in map for a week. The next tier would be longer and last longer. Higher tiers would be more severe such as blocking map chat totally for a week and up to a month. (You could take a peek at the current blocklists and see how many players have a high tally)

So could I prevent someone from talking in map chat for a month by just asking people in my guild to block that person?

I thought F2P players weren’t able to use /map?

Sounds way too open for abuse. If you really can’t stand someone in /map then simply block them. No need for further useless restrictions.

I agree with what Niea said- was about to make the exact same comments.

However, this being said, I think that players who have been reported for breaking the ToS regarding the chat should have stricter punishments regarding the chat.

For example, players who have used offensive language, vulgarity and abuse in chat should not be able to use chat in-game for a period (or permanently) depending on the severity and frequency of their language.

The key to this would be that I could ‘subscribe’ to the top ‘/blockees’ submitted by other players.

The player would not be blocked from map chat unless they hit a really high count.

Verbal abuse is already a bannable offense. The block function and report function already do most of what you want, but without the risk of abuse. Your idea, if implemented, would also require a way to ‘punish’ people who abuse the function. That would be extremely difficult and only Arenanet would be able to measure if someone were abusing the function. Abusing the report function is also a bannable offense and for very good reasons.

we have these thing,s in place already .no need for any thing more. myself i find it far more easy to just fully blocking the person or persons who are well not that well educated shall we say . as well as the use of the chat filtering system works great . i just hope there is no cap as too the number of people you can block for these thing,s .

keenedge.9675:

The key to this would be that I could ‘subscribe’ to the top ‘/blockees’ submitted by other players.

The player would not be blocked from map chat unless they hit a really high count.

The problem with such a list though would be that not all people on that list would be goldsellers. What if an immature 12 year old makes the list but when they’re 13 they are much more mature and thus not really worthy of being blocked anymore? Such a list also strips someone away of their personal judgment, see someone say the N-word repeatedly in /map or whatever then block them. Blocking someone for criticizing one’s favorite show, saying some random storymode spoiler, or liking some other show you don’t like or similar would be douchy.

While I think the OP’s suggest has some opportunities for abuse, it is an interesting suggestion. I’ve always thought that real policing in any on-line forum requires community monitoring. There’s really no other way to do it.

You’d have to put in some safeguards- a banned person can challenge the ban and penalties to people who manipulate the system if caught.

But these sorts of systems can work if you also build in the concept of a trusted moderator: maybe some combination of play time, some measure that reporting isn’t overused, establishes you as someone whose vote counts more than a new account who has already blocked five people today.

A simpler initial option might be to count how many times you were blocked, show that to everyone on log in, and have some way for Anet to check the players with exceptionally high block rates. If you know you are being watched, you are less likely to act badly.

That said, I rarely find map chat very bad. Sometimes you get a couple players having a snit in sPVP but GW2 map chat seems pretty tame to me. Then again, I don’t spend a lot of time in cities and I do have good personal filters

The thing is, some people like to block people who haven’t necessarily done any rule-breaking.

Sometimes I’ve blocked a person temporarily simply because I didn’t like their attitude but still wanted to have a conversation with the other players in map chat.

Others block people who are somewhat spamming a guild recruitment message, others might want to block players who are speaking in another language so they can still have a conversation in their own language with other players.

I have know players in other games that have blocked people who they have had drama/problems with out-side the game, so that they don’t bring the drama in-game as well.

You carebears need to chill out about this f2p “armageddon” on the way, it’s a paranoid and unfounded farce imho. Map chat has had idiots in it from day one and will do till this game dies, f2p or not.

I’d rather have freedom of speech and just ignore the dorks than the potentially abusive restrictions and penalties you suggest.

It’s an MMO, by no means an excuse for free reign of bad behaviour, but seriously it comes with the genre. Harden up or just turn it off and guild chat.

I’m a teacher, and nothing is more annoying than the kid who keeps running to the nearest adult and trying to get another kid punished. Just hit the block button and stop the drama. Please.

fireflyry.7023:

You carebears need to chill out about this f2p “armageddon” on the way, it’s a paranoid and unfounded farce imho. Map chat has had idiots in it from day one and will do till this game dies, f2p or not.

I have to agree with this.

The F2P-blame is largely scape-goating and cognitive bias. People expect F2P guys to cause drama, and since the F2P release, people have been pinning any sort of abuse and toxicity on this F2P release.

Pre-event for a world boss fails? Blame the F2P-ers.
You get steam-rolled in PvP? Blame the F2P-ers.
Dungeon takes 4 minutes longer than expected? Blame the F2P-ers.
You dodge off a cliff? Blame the F2P-ers.
Druid elite spec isn’t what you wanted? Blame the F2P-ers.

Ok, slight hyperbole but case in point.

Maybe some “veteran” players have been using it as an excuse for poor behaviour too.