As the game continues to die.
Continue reading “Wild Terra 2 Barely Punishes Gold Sellers”
Tag: Punishment
9% Of League Players Consistently AFK
And Riot is implementing harsher penalties.
Blizzard Again Promises Tough Punishment For Overwatch Trolls
If you could formulate a plan to effectively punish, and get rid of, toxic players in your community, you might just become the richest person in the gaming industry. Until then, we’ll need to sit back and watch as developers continue to commit to punishing toxic community members and hope that everything works out for the best.
For Blizzard, the ongoing discussion of toxicity has come back up after director Jeff Kaplan posted on the official forums regarding an account that had miraculously accrued more than two thousand complaints, been silenced for more than a year’s worth of time, and has been suspended three times.
"That account has a total of 2247 complaints filed against it — making it one of the worst offending accounts we’ve seen. The account has also been silenced for a total of 9216 hours. There are 3 gameplay suspensions on the account as well as 7 silences against this account (these are for abusive chat and/or spam). There is also a manual GM account suspension for "massive griefing" levied."
Blizzard’s plans to alleviate grief include removing silencing altogether and utilizing suspensions/bans more. For competitive, Kaplan stated that the company is in the process of handing out bans/suspensions for players who boosted in Season 5 of competitive mode, also adding that players will be permanently banned from competitive if they are found to be abusing it repeatedly.
"We will do this as it is our responsibility but we’d like to spend more time rewarding good players rather than having to focus on poor sportsmanship and unacceptable bad behavior so much. Like it or not, this is an "us, the OW community problem" and not just an "OW team problem". For better or for worse, we’re in this together."
Long term plans involve promoting positive behavior. Toxic behavior is a problem that MMO Fallout has reported endlessly on, with various developers flexing their muscles and threatening harsher punishments and longer bans. For developers, especially those with large competitive communities, the fight against toxicity is a constant uphill battle.
Blizzard’s Silence Mechanic Exposed As Automated
Blizzard recently introduced a new moderation system to World of Warcraft, one that promised to implement account-wide punishment for abusive chat once a player was reported by a sufficient number of people. The description of silencing, as shown below, states that punishment is inflicted “after investigation,” presumably by a live customer support staffer.
“Following the Legion pre-expansion, any player who is reported multiple times under the Spam or Abusive Chat categories will, after investigation, receive an account-wide silence penalty. While this penalty is active, the silenced player will find that their ability to chat with others is greatly limited.”
Twitch streamer Zach “Asmongold” recently decided to test Blizzard’s new silence system in World of Warcraft by typing one (emphasis on one) innocuous chat message (I love World of Warcraft) and having his raid group mass-report the comment as abusive. The account is muted within a minute. The accompanying email notes that the punishment will only be overturned if there is evidence that the account was compromised or for “other extenuating circumstances.”
A system where players can be muted (with each subsequent punishment lasting twice as long as the last) due to reports sounds ripe for brigading against unpopular opinions or merely mass trolling, leading to concern that the tool could wind up with players becoming victims of mob rule. Blizzard, in response, has assured that game masters will review each case:
This isn’t just an automated system, our Game Masters will review under the same rules they always have.
Only it is very clear that silences, at least in this case, are not being reviewed by a human. Asmongold’s email explicitly states that he has been punished with a full 24 hour silence. The account was not, as some people are stating, “squelched,” as the mute for squelching only lasts a few hours and Asmongold was silenced for the full 24 hours.
Blizzard has yet to make a statement either on their forums or otherwise.
Jagex Proposes Death Changes In RuneScape
Jagex is soliciting feedback on proposed changes to RuneScape’s death mechanic. As part of the proposed changes, players will no longer be punished for losing items due to server disconnections, the corpse run will be removed, and death will introduce a gold sink to the game’s economy.
Under the new system, players who die in non-pvp areas will appear in Death’s office. In order to retrieve their items, the player will have to buy them back at a percentage of the item’s cost, or sacrifice other items in order to contribute to the pool. Degrade on death mechanics for items will be removed as part of this update.
By forcing payments for all deaths, Jagex hopes to bring a little punishment back to dying which had lately become a minor inconvenience for most players.
You can read the entire FAQ at the link below.
(Source: RuneScape)
Sandboxing: Punishment Vs Consequences
Consequence and punishment are two words that sound interchangeable, however knowing the difference between the two is important to working with your customers and making a more enjoyable environment to play in. To put it short and simple, a consequence is a mixture of positive and negative and a punishment is just negative. Punishments exist to penalize activity that is seen as detrimental to the community while consequences allow for more freedom within the boundaries of restrictions to either increase immersion or keep said activity from being overused.
To start, let’s see some examples of consequence vs punishment. The criminal system present in most sandbox MMOs is a perfect example of consequence. You are free to kill members of your own faction, or just run around killing indiscriminately and play the marauding band of pirates/bandits you always wanted to be. After all, why would you want to sit at a resource node for hours on end or in an area filled with NPCs, when you can just run in, murder the fool who wasted his time, and steal his stuff? It’s so simple that you have to wonder why everyone doesn’t do it. To keep the field balanced, developers institute consequences for criminal behavior. Players may find themselves unable to access certain cities, on the radar for law enforcement, harsher penalties on death, and more. The idea is to keep criminal activity within the bounds of the game’s rules without making it so easy that no one wants to do anything else.
Consequences can refer to virtually any available choice in an MMO, expanded when the developer throws criminal activity into those choices. The consequence of picking the mage as your class means having less access to armor and weapons. Choosing to ally yourself with Saradomin in RuneScape means not having access to rewards available only to Zamorak’s followers. Creating a Horde character on World of Warcraft means not having access to certain factional cities and items. If you buy Pokemon Blue, you need to trade someone who owns Pokemon Red if you want to add Ekans to your Pokedex. And if you choose cole slaw and macaroni salad as the two sides to your barbecue ribs, you can’t have a baked potato unless you pay extra.
Punishments on the other hand are almost solely for disciplinary purposes. The developers don’t approve of what you are doing, and by going against their demands you risk punishment. You can kill someone repeatedly in World of Warcraft, but if you start throwing racial slurs at them you will likely be muted or banned. Jagex rolling back a character for botting in RuneScape is a punishment. Blizzard banning someone for gold farming is a punishment. An MMO that automatically logs you out after several consecutive hours of play with the message “go outside and get some sun,” is punishing. Jagex used to add muted characters into lore as people with their tongues cut out, but that is still punishment.
This distinction is important when designing features for any game, but most important when developing a sandbox MMO, and crucial for a series of articles that I have planned.
MMO Fallout 