We are all here to play a game and have fun. Yes, we should all follow the rules to keep it fun for everyone. There are jerks here, and people that do not care about anyone's experience but their own. There are also good players, and those who are committed to this community. The mods get hammered everyday with hundreds if not thousands of complaints. Honestly they deserve to have fun playing the game too. Instead they are in a constant, never-ending seige of complaints about this or that, Begging, spamming, caps, ect. At some point, someone developing the game had a genius idea to add ignore feature to the chat box. This single feature eliminates almost all of the problems any player experiences with others in chat. I often wonder why so many of us choose to type out complaints for the mods to deal with, rather than simply typing /chat ignore "name". Should a mod really have to sift through chat logs to find these offenses and handle punishments? I think there are better things for them to do, things that are more fun for them, and could help the gaming experience. Sometimes one violation of any given rule is met with 5 other messages giving them a warning and then an argument follows. Some find the flood of warnings more annoying than the original offense. Usually those who beg, who have poor chat manners, or use profanity are repeat offenders. I think a campaign to remind the community of this genius ignore feature would be a better approach than an endless battle for something that probably won't stop since new players join every day. Usually when people get kicked and or banned, they return with an attitude. I recently experienced this myself. Sometimes it's an argument with a mod, sometimes the player gets revenge by intentionally harming other players, and those suspected of reporting them. Either way, it breeds a lot of bitterness between the players, and including bitterness toward moderators. Those who have no chat manners will eventually be ignored to the point they move on, or a mod finds them on their own. Maybe the addition of a "mute" penalty for use by the mods would be more effective than the inevitable back and forth of warnings and responses from multiple kicks or a whole group being kicked. There's another harmful side effect. The sense of playing in extremely strict environment somehow takes the fun out of the game for a lot of people including some who are an asset to the Empire. I have done a poor job communicating that lately. I'll try to improve. I hope his incredibly long post makes sense to the powers that be.
no, im saying most of the time the ignore feature is easier and better idea than the report feature and stops multiple complaints about same person every day. It might even cut the down the complaints to a more manageable level and prevent the sense of playing in a police state. You do not play on the same server I do and probably have no idea what im talking about.
Sorry wisdom teeth coming so pain is second nature and looks like he edited few times from OP, I just deleted mine cause I doesn't make sense anymore
I actually used awesome grammar skills to separate that wall of text in a more manageable set of paragraphs based off of main topics.. so yeah ..
In reply to the OP. I completely agree with most of what you said. We constantly harp about the /ignore feature. (not added by game developers by the way. A nice little feature brought to you by EMC). Whenever a public showing of "so and so is bothering on the chat channel" or "why are reports for caps not being answered fast enough", it is always replied with, "Use /ignore and all of your problems are solved". Now, while as a moderation team we would love for all our workload to come off that easy, it rarely is, and we are happy to work the way we do. We would not be a good staff team if we completely depended on the community to moderate themselves . Thats why we remind the players of the tools given, but at the same time, we are around to tend to those who do not wish to use those tools. We are happy to do it. Thats why we are ASKED to be mods, and not forced to be them. We are willing to make the sacrifices in game to help make the playing environment the best we can. So, no we do not expect everyone to just use /ignore for everything and every situation, even if it seems appropriate. Thats why our unique report system is so awesome. So we can handle those situations accordingly and make notes where needed to keep track of trouble makers. Not saying we do a perfect job. However, I will say after nearly 300 great days of being a moderator, this team does a pretty damn good job for people who are not trained to do so. We love this server. We like to see happy players. I have the personal belief of no grudges. Some can think I come off as cross, or strict. But even if you just came off of a tempban, I have no problems with you if you do not break a rule. Just keep on playing and your the best person in the world to me. Everyone is awesome until they choose not to be in my book.
When I go to the movies and see a funny movie sometimes I laugh openly and loudly at a scene, and make a comment to the person sitting next to me. So do many of the others, who find the scene funny. Although talking and laughing during a movie is considered rude by everyone, sometimes the laughing and talking is overlooked for a moment, and we all continue to enjoy the movie. Now imagine an usher was at the end of every row delivering stern warnings anytime someone laughed openly. The warnings started causing more disturbance to the movie than the short period of laughing. It doesn't matter if the usher enjoys the job they are doing, or even if they volunteered to do the job. They can always say "rules are rules, and cannot be broken". They can also say "if we let you laugh, everyone else will laugh and the theater will descend into chaos", and they may be correct in this statement. It can also be said that if you do not like the enforcement of a zero tolerance policy in the theater, maybe you should go to a different cinema. And although that is true, some people may have an interest in keeping a great cinema, great. After all, the theater isn't about the usher's sense of accomplishment in enforcing rules. It is about the viewers being able to watch the movie and having fun while doing so. My point of this story is there is a balance of enforcement that need to be found. Zero tolerance during what is supposed to be a fun event, zaps the fun right out of the event. The inevitable consequence of over-enforcement over a period of time, is that people stop going to the theater, and wait for the movie to come out on DVD. But that doesn't help the cinema. I am not writing these posts this in concern for my own personal experience. I'm calling attention to it because I am seeing several people beginning to leave the "theater". I, like many you, have enjoyed this theater, and I really don't want to see it harmed. I think there is a need to have an open discussion to find the balance of enforcement, and the community standards. This would be helpful to everyone, so let's not turn the topic into discussing one event, or a lesson in grammar.
