Player Moderators.

[Forien]

To prevent abuses there should be trial time, when your powers are limited. For example you cannot mute people, but you can "report them" with some more "priority", so there is some more thrusty person looking into your reports.

 

After some time of trial you coul get mute option to mute gold spammers etc. More time you work and more good work you do, powers could rise. Of course nothing beyond muting in /f, /z and similar chats.

 

There also should be logs for all moderators, and their work should be also be moderated. They all should sign ToS.

 

And if someone abuses power - warning/kicking out of the program/ban - depending on severity of abusement.

 

As for "profits" for volunteers, I cannot think of anything better than exclusive outfit for them only. And maybe some icon next to their name in chat (like pvp medal)

[Seemslegit]

4 minutes ago, Kitah said:

Put in age restriction rules. When I applied for my previous moderation job we had to prove our age through birth certificates/passport/drivers licence and it had to match the sign up name on the account. Not only that but time played on the game was also a crucial factor along with previous account history. If someone has been reported for griefing, don't let them on. If someone is under 18, they can't apply. Simple as.

This can be faked easily , not a viable sollution .

[Flareon]

I'd be down to help, I was hype for this game for a long time and I have much mod experience before in other games and forums, would love to donate some time. 

[Kitah]

1 minute ago, Seemslegit said:

This can be faked easily , not a viable sollution .

Any doubts lead to having face to face skype chats. It had to be photo identification as age identification.

 

2 minutes ago, Forien said:

To prevent abuses there should be trial time, when your powers are limited. For example you cannot mute people, but you can "report them" with some more "priority", so there is some more thrusty person looking into your reports.

 

After some time of trial you coul get mute option to mute gold spammers etc. More time you work and more good work you do, powers could rise. Of course nothing beyond muting in /f, /z and similar chats.

 

There also should be logs for all moderators, and their work should be also be moderated. They all should sign ToS.

 

And if someone abuses power - warning/kicking out of the program/ban - depending on severity of abusement.

 

As for "profits" for volunteers, I cannot think of anything better than exclusive outfit for them only. And maybe some icon next to their name in chat (like pvp medal)

I agree with all of this. Trial time sounds like an excellent idea.  All of it should be monitored like I said earlier. When a PlayerMod mutes/reports a player they should have to specify what type of situation it was "Gold spammer" etc. along with a brief description "Player a constantly said (x) in (y) chat in the court of (z) amount of time". With the priorty, I also agree with that too. I feel that is a must in this type of situation. If a playermod reports it should be placed above normal players in the community to show the urgency of the situation - which then a paid member of staff at their HQ can then look into the situation as they are currently doing now. 
 

[Grimoir]

Dont get me wrong guys, i do find the idea good but there is soooo much room for abuse here and i do know there are trustworthy players among the people here but its very few hence such a move is very risky. Anyways i do like the calm discussion :)

[Kitah]

1 minute ago, Grimoir said:

Dont get me wrong guys, i do find the idea good but there is soooo much room for abuse here and i do know there are trustworthy players among the people here but its very few hence such a move is very risky. Anyways i do like the calm discussion :)

Don't worry. I totally get where you are coming from as-well. There are quite a few people around who would abuse said power and would abuse people who they just simply dislike all the way down to randoms - which is why I feel it should be monitored and then the leash should be let loose a bit but should still be monitored by their HQ staff. The calm discussion here is super :)

[Forien]

1 minute ago, Grimoir said:

Dont get me wrong guys, i do find the idea good but there is soooo much room for abuse here and i do know there are trustworthy players among the people here but its very few hence such a move is very risky. Anyways i do like the calm discussion :)

 

Need for driver's license/passport/any ID verification and ToS sign not by your e-mail but by your real credentials should take away most of the potential abusers and trolls. What's left are relatively fewer people that just needs to be monitored.

 

I doubt anyone would get their account perma-banned. If NCSoft does this right, with picking people without negative history, high amount of gametime played, it should be fine. As long as PlayerMods can only mute people, there is no that much harm they can do. And if one does, it should be easy to revert and ban them instead.

 

Overall I think that advantages outweight risks. To me it's a win-win solution

[Sachi]

27 minutes ago, Nisien said:

I'd volunteer. Shoot, I'm already spending most of my time on this game blocking spammers, might as well turn it into something I can put on a resume as volunteer work.

^ Lol this. Might as well since I'm blocking 5-10 bots as soon as I log online..

[Olivar]

100% against this idea.

Worked with community mods and GMs in the past, and it always results in drama, gossip, rumours and power abuse.

Rather have NCsoft put dedicated people on this who do this as a paid job then some power hungry people

[Forien]

2 minutes ago, Olivar said:

100% against this idea.

Worked with community mods and GMs in the past, and it always results in drama, gossip, rumours and power abuse.

Rather have NCsoft put dedicated people on this who do this as a paid job then some power hungry people

 

That's why we are talking about "power of muting" not a "power of GM" :P

[Olivar]

Just now, Forien said:

 

That's why we are talking about "power of muting" not a "power of GM" :P

 

will not make any difference.

There's powere there and it can be abused, ruining the playing experience of people.

[Kitah]

Just now, Forien said:

 

That's why we are talking about "power of muting" not a "power of GM" :P

Beat me to it :D

 

I also feel report priority should also be put there for bad players. Player mods report, gets placed at the top of report pile for GM's and HQ staff to deal with.

[Forien]

2 minutes ago, Olivar said:

 

will not make any difference.

There's powere there and it can be abused, ruining the playing experience of people.

 

For me, playing experience* is already ruined. I think you should read all the discussion. 

Edit:

* I'm talking about /f and /z chats of course, not gameplay itself.

[Psyona]

Unfortunately I'm kinda siding with Olivar on this.

As much as it COULD work, and as much as people would love to help the community,it surely will result in toxicity and jealousy of others,which could cause problems on a larger scale. I know it caused big problems for my team in Cabal,and we didn't even have any special powers. People were just jealous asses.

[Despondency]

2 minutes ago, Psyona said:

Unfortunately I'm kinda siding with Olivar on this.

As much as it COULD work, and as much as people would love to help the community,it surely will result in toxicity and jealousy of others,which could cause problems on a larger scale. I know it caused big problems for my team in Cabal,and we didn't even have any special powers. People were just asses.

People will be that way no matter. It's the Internet, people will do anything that they want, even if it belittles another person because of the anonymity. I believe the saying goes: If there's a few bad eggs, do you toss out the rest?

[Kitah]

Just now, Psyona said:

Unfortunately I'm kinda siding with Olivar on this.

As much as it COULD work, and as much as people would love to help the community,it surely will result in toxicity and jealousy of others,which could cause problems on a larger scale.

Offering no bonuses to players other than the ability to have report priority and muting shouldn't lead to that much negativity. Not only that but keeping applications always open for those who want to apply gives everyone a equal chance. Adding in age restrictions might make people upset but you need those restrictions in to sign NDAs anyway.

 

They could just trial it out as another temporary fix for these silly gold spammers. Sitting in Goldleaf foundry and I cannot even keep up with the blocking and reporting of these gold spammers. Block 1, 3 more appear.

 

Would love to see what NCsoft has to say about this discussion though.

[Lermoran]

Given some time, NCSoft could easily pick from trusted users to form a team whose mutes form a mute list. Each mute is given a reason and is linked to the comment that they were muted for. This way when an NCSoft member checks the mute list, they can decide what deserves further punishment (and can see if anyone is abusing their privileges).

[Psyona]

7 minutes ago, Despondency said:

 If there's a few bad eggs, do you toss out the rest?

 
The problem appears where there are a lot of bad eggs, and they keep turning the good eggs against you by venomous flaming.

 

7 minutes ago, Kitah said:

Offering no bonuses to players other than the ability to have report priority and muting shouldn't lead to that much negativity. Not only that but keeping applications always open for those who want to apply gives everyone a equal chance. Adding in age restrictions might make people upset but you need those restrictions in to sign NDAs anyway.

 

You're right,absolutely. But I'm just talking out of personal experiences. Still giving my team as a simple example. We had no bonuses,it was pure volunteer work. Just doing your thing and helping/answering players questions, we had absolutely zero power. All we got from the GM team was a simple weapon skin so people can spot us easier.
And it caused a buttload of drama. People were jealous that they didn't get accepted (mostly because their applications sucked and they were known for being previous trolls/rulebreakers). We were called the GMs lapdogs,etc etc. Only items we ever got was a stack of 5 Server Megaphones per week, and even they were purposed to advertise our Team and the chat channel where people can come for help. And with all that,70% of the server hated us/was jealous.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm 100000% for this, I'd love to see it,not only for bot muting,but ingame help of all kinds. I just have a feel that NCSoft wouldn't take such a risk,not sure. Would love to see what they have to say as well.

[Forien]

 

3 minutes ago, Kitah said:

Offering no bonuses to players other than the ability to have report priority and muting shouldn't lead to that much negativity. Not only that but keeping applications always open for those who want to apply gives everyone a equal chance. Adding in age restrictions might make people upset but you need those restrictions in to sign NDAs anyway.

 

Well, I think that outfit for volunteers who do their job well isn't too much to ask :P 
(sorry, outfit freak here)

Anyway yes, we start to repeating same arguments all the time, @Kitora and @Lermoran :) now we should bring NC Soft attention and see what they think (as no matter what we can discuss here, they can just bash it out, or implement in their own vision)

[Milord]

It's a great idea but what would be the selection criteria? considering there are plenty of corrupt people. I dunno how well it's working on runescape but it seems like a good idea.

[Ianto]

I like and hate this idea. On one side I want these bots to be dealt with...but on the other I feel like the system would either be uselss or too easy to exploit. I also prefer separation of players and gms in my videogames...when the two mix the community just gets wierd. That being said though OP is right it works very well in Runescape of all games XD.

[Joukuoj]

In theory and if done right it can solve a lot problems. Problem is with players as moderators is abuse. For example played Skyforge and EU forum got 3 players from same guild(friends which had their own "multi gaming community") as mods and they had GM rights(banning, muting, deleting/editing forums) and after 1 month EU forum was dead. No1 control their work. Even tickets/protests from community had no effect.

 

So players as moderators can be done, but they need to have limited power and 1-2 ppl from NCsoft staff need to review/check their work. If they abuse their power, then NCsoft staff need to solve it right away. Making one moderator on each server with muting in chat option rights only at start and after 1-2 months of "normal" work they will get rights to moderate forum. With right control over them you can have 1-3 ppl from NCsoft staff to watch over 10-20 players as moderators and it will work.

[CuppyCakes]

If you want the glory hounds to f off, make it so there's no rewards, including being checked for rl ID and being told no revealing you're a player mod, also make it so more than one player mod needs to ban someone/approve a ban before it goes through.  

If you want no power abuse, make it so they can only ban characters or accounts with no char higher than lvl 20 for example. (not sure to what lvl bots regularly reach, if they can get to cap then....)  

Personally I know I wouldn't exactly mind directly solving my clogged chat, and I don't want/need moderating privileges aside from strictly bot banning, but I'd want to just do it without being noticed from my own char. Unless I'm being paid through ig currency or items at least, I wouldn't be switching between the main bot areas constantly just to watch for bots, but banning all bots on my way to places, and trust that the combined effort of all the player mods is enough.

Either way even this solution is not enough and it would be more efficient to ban in such a way that they can't bypass using proxies first and foremost.

[Mysuke]

I would never trust players with that. They could however do something i saw in another game where a few players are selected by the publisher to be "curator" and have direct contact with the GM/CM team, which helped they held events and hunt bots/spams. No mod power, just a direct line with the staff to make the job faster.

 

Or just hire more GMs and make them actively hunt for bot/spam in-game, they aren't some kinda of small indie company with a low budget.

[Forien]

Entire idea of PlayerMod is to help NCSoft deal with problems while spending no more money. Because if they could hire more people to just deal with goldspam they would. 

 

Just as pointed earlier:

• Ask adult players to apply
• Application needs real credentials and some ID verification
• Only people without negative history and people with many hours spent ingame would be chosen
• At first they would be at trial with no actual rights, only report priority (their reports would go ahead of normal reports on report queue)
• After trial they would get mute right (at first limited to few hours/one day)
• Each mute should be followed by a comment and would be logged
• Logs would be checked by NCSoft employee either to provide further punishment or punish abusive PlayerMod
• Abusive PlayerMod would get warning, get kicked out of program or get a permanent ban for a game - depending on how grievious his sins are
• PlayerMods would sign ToS and NDA with their real credentials and have them linked to their account. This makes them more trustworthy, as much less people wants to do bad when they real name is involved and their actual account can suffer
• PlayerMods all powers should be only the ones that doesn't affect gameplay. So far we (players supporting an idea) think that they should have report priority and option to mute players in /f, /z and similar global chats (wouldn't affect /s /p /g /w etc)
• Every mute made by PlayerMod would be linked to his account with comment for each mute. If he is found abusive, all his mutes could be easily reverted
• As an outfit geek, I would really love if PlayerMods after some time - and if they aren't abusive - could get some exclusive outfit and/or a title. 

Still, all of this is only my suggestions and kinda summary of topic. It's anyway only discussion and NCSoft probably won't care :D