Why not permasquelch

[Skuzzy]

Westy, you have been gone for a while.  When we gave players the option to change game ID's we started purging ID's on a daily basis.

Secondly, HiTech gave the community the .report/.vreport mechanisms to deal with players who were being abusive/derogatory online.  It works.  Unfortunately, it can also be abused, but we have ways to deal with that as well.

[Motherland]

Would it be impossible for a message to be sent to people's computers that a GameID has been purged and to take away the permasquelch associated with it? So that the ID can be used again by a new player?
Would it be possible for permasquelch to be tied to an account rather than a GameID?

[Skuzzy]

Nothing is impossible, but then it comes down to being practical.

So, you do not log in for a while, and the game ID gets reused, before you connect for it to be removed.

Any scenario which precludes a new user from being able to communicate, with the community, is unacceptable.

And again, perma-squelch is not a fix for anything.  It masks the actual problem.  That is also unacceptable.

[Delirium]

I was once a big fan of perma-squelch but I've realized that the text doesn't really matter to me.

What really irritates me is when someone tunes their vox channel to you and unleashes a verbal tirade. It isn't easily ignored and completely takes away from the game.

[L0nGb0w]

If your list of people permasquelched was to reset every tour, it would remove any players that may have just bugged you on one particular day, and you now don't know why they are squelched, and don't remember em.  Of course there's always that guy or two you are just done with       +1 to the idea 

[DMBEAR]

What really irritates me is when someone tunes their vox channel to you and unleashes a verbal tirade. It isn't easily ignored and completely takes away from the game.

This could be stopped from happening to you again by that particular player with permasquelch.

One of many reasons.  Here is the scenario.

1)  Player XX makes a nuisance of himself, gets perma-squelched by a ton of folks.
2)  Player XX realizes no one is listening anymore, so changes his game ID to XXX.
3)  Now XXX gets squelched by everyone.
4)  New guy comes into the game, picks up ID 'XX'.  Tries to talk to folks.  No one hears him.  He quits playing the game, thinking everyone is a jerk.

Meanwhile, player XXX is still pissing off players and changing game ID's every 30 days.  You are not going to build a community by running off new players and allowing the ones that are the problem to stay around.

If a player is a bad enough nuisance he has to be squelched by everyone, he should not be allowed to stay in the game. 

Masking a problem does not fix it and perma-squelch is nothing but a mask for a problem.

Now, I am not speaking for HiTech.  He may have a whole different take on this. but as Community Manager, that is my take on it.  If HT wants to slap me down, it is okay by me.

People that would permasquelch someone the first time they heard them or got annoyed by them are not the type of players that would help to begin with.

None of the people I'd use this feature on are new or need help...at least in playing the game. 

I'll just deal with it and play along as I have been for a couple years.  I'm just saying that after that short time there are several players I could tune out permanently and it would be more enjoyable than them popping up on the buffer or on range vox and then having to squelch them.

Just like Arena Caps, Ill accept that it won't change and still gladly log in daily.  I love the game, the forums, and the fact that HTC lets us Wish for stuff.

Thanks for responding Skuzzy.  Another reason I enjoy this game and forum is that you guys respond to us. 

[Pongo]

Skuzzy I guess that is a reason..but how likely is that really?
I think there has to be an implementation reason that trumps any "social" reason.

.Squelch seems to be a server side command. IE the server doenst send your client messages from the squelched player, as opposed to a client side thing that filters out the squelched messages or voice.
So when a name gets "reused" just delete the server side squelch lists. It would be stored against the .squelched party, not the squelching party.

The implementation issue I would see is that all those squelches have to be registered with the server every time a person logs in, whether the squelching person is there or not.
For a person that has been playing for years, 200 perma squelches might kick in at log in. Wastefull.
If its on the client, then its not so wasteful. But I don't think it is or can be.

Probably better to just make us decide if its worth our effort to take the time to squelch people every log in.
Channel 200 makes perma squelch less desirable to me. I just shut that off most of the time and the trouble goes away.

[Bruv119]

new take on the perma squelch idea.

the squelch should last for 2 weeks!

[stran]

someone mention combat tour? what was combat tour? not much info about it.

[Oleg]

Secondly, HiTech gave the community the .report/.vreport mechanisms to deal with players who were being abusive/derogatory online.  It works.  Unfortunately, it can also be abused, but we have ways to deal with that as well.

.report dont work in low populated arenas like EW or MW, does it?
There are number of ppl who constantly spam chat with trashtalk, insults and other BS and say nothing worth to read at all. Squelch is only way to deal with it, and resquelching them every time is annoying at least.

btw, is insulting w/o using "bad" words forbidden and can result a mute? I dont want to annoy support for nothing, but probably it worth to send screen/film in that cases?

[EskimoJoe]

Haha nevermind.

[Skuzzy]

Oleg, you are correct.  In low populated arenas the ,report is not as effective.  I have been manually scanning the logs based on the .reports to see what the report was all about and manually issuing the restriction if the violation warrants it.

And yes, screenshots/films are always welcome.  We do endeavor to keep the arenas a *fun* place to be and be rid of the obnoxious.


Pongo, you are also correct.  Squelches are handled on the server.  Keeping a perma-list on the server would not be practical, as you mentioned.  Moving it to the client gets us back to the possibility of a newbie being ignored.

How often does someone request a game ID that is already taken?  I get, at least, one phone call or email a day about it.  I would call it, quite often.

[Stalwart]

One of many reasons.  Here is the scenario.

1)  Player XX makes a nuisance of himself, gets perma-squelched by a ton of folks.
2)  Player XX realizes no one is listening anymore, so changes his game ID to XXX.
3)  Now XXX gets squelched by everyone.
4)  New guy comes into the game, picks up ID 'XX'.  Tries to talk to folks.  No one hears him.  He quits playing the game, thinking everyone is a jerk.

Meanwhile, player XXX is still pissing off players and changing game ID's every 30 days.  You are not going to build a community by running off new players and allowing the ones that are the problem to stay around.

If a player is a bad enough nuisance he has to be squelched by everyone, he should not be allowed to stay in the game.  

Masking a problem does not fix it and perma-squelch is nothing but a mask for a problem.

Now, I am not speaking for HiTech.  He may have a whole different take on this. but as Community Manager, that is my take on it.  If HT wants to slap me down, it is okay by me.

So you're saying when a guy changes ID's you can't release the squelches?

Hmmm...
Maybe restrict how often you can change IDs to no more than once per tour.
Maybe release perma-squelch at the end of each tour too.  So it's only sorta perma-squelch.
Release squelches when a player changes ID.
Seems to solve your dilemma, and I bet there are a lot of folks that could live this idea.

[Skuzzy]

So you're saying when a guy changes ID's you can't release the squelches?

Hmmm...
Maybe restrict how often you can change IDs to no more than once per tour.
Maybe release perma-squelch at the end of each tour too.  So it's only sorta perma-squelch.
Release squelches when a player changes ID.
Seems to solve your dilemma, and I bet there are a lot of folks that could live this idea.

1) Right now a player cannot change his ID but once every 30 days.  It does not help.  Player XX, who you perma-squelched, changes his ID.  You now have to squelch him.  Now new guy comes along and adopts the old ID.  He is now squelched.

2)  Perma-squelch is on your computer.  Auto-relasing it once a tour does not fix the #1 scenario where an innocent is being squelched.

3)  You are offline and the player changes his game ID, so now your list cannot be changed as it is stored on your computer.  It cannot be stored on the server as the amount of init data to get into an arenais already quite hefty.

And one more time.  Perma-squelch is still masking the real problem while doing nothing to block the person you want to block.  Ok, do not allow him to change his game ID, ever.  Ok, so he closes his account and starts a new one.

[guncrasher]

guys no, means no.  give it up  .

semp