Trolls: Or, a pastebin you need to glance at.

So, due to my health issues, I often sleep several times a day. One quirk of this is that I'm often up early in the morning-

I usually block and report the waves of trolls pretty quickly, so I didn't realize just how long-lasting their duration of spam typically lasted, until I left the game running for 3 hours and returned to this.

Don't worry, you don't need to actually read the excessively long and irritating spamlog, just scroll through it really fast. The issues pop out at you.

Jon, any chance of getting in-game moderators?

Forget any annoyances the regularity and content of these spam waves have toward those that just have to glance at it; normal users that end up logging on after the initial wave and any 'you can block users' comments have passed are liable to get a very poor opinion of the game because of this.

:X

 

The amount of spammers is getting annoying.

 

http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/suggestion-lock-world-chat-until-renown-5.7531/
I get that it's not a popular idea because it seems harsh, but with the addition of a co-op chat group in the next build, I think the impact it would have on new players is minimal. Even with a pool of moderators, bans need to have weight or these people are likely to just get agitated by them and come back with more spam like this.

 

It's not popular because it seems counterproductive.

The idea is limiting at its core, since it completely tosses away valid new players for the sake of trolls;
Your perspective seems to entirely be 'what's best for the older players', and ignores that we'll still get a selection of trolls that will easily and quickly make it to renown 5 regardless.

A better variant would be to have a new player only chat room [which could be handled by moderators and volunteers with advice]; but again, that has the issue of saying 'hey, newbies, you have to earn the right to be in a chatroom without trolls', which is a bit disconcerting as well.

Regardless of any merits to your idea, or elements from it that are implemented, moderation is still absolutely necessary.

Of course, there's a REALLY easy [not necessarily in terms of coding requirements ] solution:

1. Add moderation to chat.
2. Limit chat to renown 5. The combination of these two factors will remove trolls.
3. Have a special (chat tab/alternative area) for new players that allows them to post a single (editable) question and receive replies from people willing to volunteer time over in that tab (including the moderator staff).
New players would be unable to view other questions, only their own, which in addition to the limited spam ability, should prevent trolls from getting too invested in the matter.
Players could easily mark questions as answered or spam, allowing the tab to remain clear of unnecessary elements.

 

I can't tell if you're seriously overestimating or underestimating how long it takes to get 5 renown.

 

I did forget you can't exactly run adventures 2 higher than your level on a new account, so it may take longer than I calculated for.

Nevertheless, never underestimate a troll.

And really, why is moderation such an issue for you?

 

Huh? Some form of chat moderation is a good idea for sure, but if the most powerful moderation tool is a ban, then that needs to have some actual consequences for the person it's used against. The guy mindlessly spamming garbage into the world chat isn't one who cares if his account gets banned; if he's even mildly determined, he can have another one ready to continue doing the same thing in just a couple of minutes. The goal is to make the effort needed to spam the chat high enough that nobody would bother doing it. Right now, it takes very little effort, and we're witnessing the effects of that.

 

I see you blocked the user High Taxes, from your viewpoint it looks like I was talking to myself.

 

I pretty much always assume that, though.

And iirc, High Taxes had a bit where he spammed lewdities.
I don't block easily, but anyone that really makes a trolltastic mess of things doesn't get leeway, either

What's really weird is that I have [lets not call out names, I guess, so Person A] blocked in-game and [Person B] on forums, but don't have them blocked the other way around, because I've never had issue with them in the alternate format.

So yeah, not a major burn the bridges approach to it, but, especially when I'm trying to scan chat for questions to answer, not really up for any troll-based frustrations, either.

 

I am not sure that restricting new users to a newbie chat channel is a good idea. Any game like this where you can really sink your teeth into the gameplay without having to pay upfront (or at all) will attract a certain number of 13 year-olds who are more interested in the fact that the game is free than anything else about it. Some of these will act, well, like 13 year-olds. But even though some new users are annoying, forcing non-annoying newbies (whom we'd very much like to encourage to stick around) into a channel with the annoying ones is not a recipe for retaining good new players. One of the things that attracted me to CH is that it is blessed with a solid stable of players who chat in complete, punctuated sentences. I think it's wise to put our best foot forward with new players and let them see that right away.

I have been impressed by how many experienced players stay around in chat and answer newbie questions with patience and good humor. Having official chat moderators might help smooth things out, but Blue Manchu is a small team and even the best moderator team requires at least some oversight. I would imagine BM will at least want to wait to see how much difference a dedicated co-op channel makes before incurring the administrative overhead involved in having formal chat moderators.

 

We are working on moderator tools for in-game mods, hopefully coming soon.

 

This is a whole level above the cute and charming lenbear nonsense, isn't it? :/

I propose that you should not let people talk in general chat until they have completed some portion of the *single player* campaign - maybe the first 6 levels or something. This way, at least it slows the trolls down if they just want to troll the chat, and newbie players usually are too busy just trying out the first few SP missions to even care about the world chat.

 

You'd be surprised how many folks still in the tutorial have questions for the world chat

 

@Flaxative , @Mr. Magnifico Thanks for the supporting points.

Yeah, in every 'what should we do' compontent that has come up since the Steam launch, it's always come back to 'Card Hunter is special because of the warm, welcoming, eager-to-assist, high-quality (grammar, respect for others, humor, etc) community. That's what made me go from 'pleasantly distracted' to 'enthusiastically passionate' in my outlook on the game [that and the dev quality, which ties in].

As I noted in my first reply, things that limit new user involvement aren't ideal, and the major flaw of any 'restricted chat' components.

And sure, spamming a moderator-level 'suspend user' isn't ideal [though a temporary IP ban tied in to the suspension would help, and Steam accounts could similarly likely be directly targeted for lock-out even with password editing added in, and lets face it, that'd remove most of the trolls], but it's mostly a stress on the moderators, and it's a stress I think- at least as a first step in dealing with chat complications- is worthwhile.
I definitely think suspensions should have short term durations as options [especially a 10 minute 'warning' one, my experiences in moderation showed that a lot of people put a lot more thought into things after a firm slap on the wrist], as I'm not a fan of perma- banning people unless necessary [though definitely, some of the people in that pastebin would get my 'seal of disapproval' for it].

In any case, I think moderation should be the first step before any other elements are considered [and I'm glad to hear it's coming ].

 

All they need to do to convince me to moderate is to promise me a hilarious gnome based module to be released 'sometime in the future'.

First I'd moderate eagerly in anticipation of the module, then I'd moderate out of gratitude for its inclusion.

I'm easily bought

Of course, if you REALLY wanted to buy my affection, you'd give me a miniature of a drunken gnome in a party hat wielding a wine bottle.

I mean, it's always nice to have a miniature that reflects your real world self, right? :X

Though, between my investment in the game and community..
..and my rather firm eye twitches over the trolls..
I'd do it anyway, if asked.

..but uh, you know, consider those other two things, okay?

 

I don't have a Gnome problem, okay?
I mean.. wait, yes I do.
It's the Gnomes that ARE the problem, I'm just making sure everyone knows about it.
I can stop any time I want to!




Side note, pretty sure I'm getting the pumpkin-headed dwarf this Halloween, I ended up with enough pizza to spare for a third expansion and a miniature, assuming my recollection of its cost was right

And who isn't intimidated by a pumpkin-headed dwarf wielding a carving knife, right?

 

So the first part of the pastelog seemed like an ordinary day and I thought you were overreacting, but then line 1100 started.

AND IT KEPT GOING.

I feel super bad now about not being too fond of Lenbear, because Lenbear was only super clueless and still tried to be decently nice, cementing her in our hearts forever. This is just plain old spammers, and that's all there is to it. Moderation is definitely needed for things like this, even if it's just to make an impression on the new players with out nice clean chat room.

 

Yeah, sorry, went with 'full 3 hours' rather than 'highlight reel'.
Probably not the best approach for impact and clarity, but you can't really blame me for not wanting to touch that log long enough to edit it, either :X

And Lenbear rarely bothered me. Two of her accounts I had to block /just because she wouldn't stop spamming/, but when she didn't do that, she was just, as you said, clueless.
And that I can deal with juuuust fine.

The log up there, though? Not so much :X

 

The only thing these guys are clueless about is proper etiquette