Improvement: Ignore list as a tool to encourage a positive social environment

[jakaul]

Originally Posted by TAA

Those are great comments! Would you be able to elaborate a little on something?

When you say that visual indicators are a way to pick out someone for bullying you are very right. However I dont understand what form this bullying would take exactly. For example, lets take a hypothetical group of 5 players (the bullies) and a hypothetical new player (the victim). The five bullies add the new player to their ignore lists and can now visually identify him. However they cannot interact with him in any other way other than to dance around in front of him a little.

Now take another hypothetical example where the five bullies dont add the new player to their ignore list. They cant visually identify him, but there are a number of things they can do to him - verbal abuse via chat and voice, eject him out of vehicles, take it in turns to friendly fire kill him (so as to minimize their grief), run in front of him while he is firing and cause him to rack up grief, etc. They can organize all this over voice, and as long as one of them can pick him out via his name tag they can all do as they please.

Why add visual identification at all? I think it is important for visual reinforcement. If one guy starts mouthing off at his squad and sees the people around him changing to orange tags one by one (because they are adding him to their ignore lists) it is a very strong visual cue for people to immediately start changing their behavior.


Your concern about friendly fire off being abused for an advantage is also very valid - on paper at least. However it is a valid concern, and I have modified my original post just now to help ease those concerns (see the 48 hr cooldown, and complete inability to interact). The truth is that in an FPS you cannot simply change settings in the middle of a firefight.

Example: your squad is all ignoring each other so that there is no FF between you. You cannot ride any vehicles that one of you is driving, none of you can be a squad leader, and you cannot heal or repair each other. In the middle of a firefight one of your buddies gets killed. You rush over to revive him. You stop, press escape to access the game menu, click on the social button, select the ignore list tab, find his name on your list, press the button to unignore him, press escape again to get back to the game, revive him, then repeat the process to add him back to your ignore list. Practical application of this? Almost none. Note however that to ease your concerns that there is an easy solution as per my modification above.

Edit: Note that the FF off was something I added later in my suggestions, and not part of my original version. I added it for the following reasons:

• Despite the grief system in place for PS2 it is still the case that FF can be used to persistently harass one individual, especially if done by a group working together to minimize grief
• Players who are ignored may want to retaliate or continue the abuse by killing people who ignored them

I cut out the rest and I haven't had a chance to catch up to the thread, so bear with me if I'm out of date. Regarding a visual indication - my problem is that from a human/software interaction point of view, it is pretty common to use a convention like you're describing to "point something out". For example, if I want a user to take note of an error, I can make something bold or in red text, etc. Where I think your idea is missing is an ignore feature is not to point someone out - it's to ignore that they exist. With this in mind, my suggestion would be rather than make their names appear in a different color, you simply turn off their visual indicators. That's more or less what you really want, right - to be able to glance and realize they don't matter to you.

This serves a dual purpose - it eliminates the need for your eyes/mind to take note and translate the information (orange = ignored = don't pay attention) to zero nameplate text (nothing to process = don't pay attention). Also, it protects the ignored from group head hunting to a very large degree. In PS1, some of my outfit mates would get TKed by some idiot and as many as a squad would actively hunt that person down multiple times. Imagine how easy this would be if that person's name was simplistic to pick out in a group of friendlies? Less information is better here - just turn the feature into something that lets you really ignore the presence of that individual.

The biggest problem I have with turn any FF off is I think this game REALLY needs FF on to be what it's aiming to be. You should have to pick your shots at all times, you should have to worry about some dude running around in front of you. Even if you put a big timer on this sort of thing, with a F2P game, people could easily create a squad of heavily armored units (I'm guessing MAXes), have them ignored by a squad behind them, and effectively create a crazy double damage output but single damage input chokepoint. IMHO, I really just think the no FF thing has way too many holes for it not to be exploited to a very high degree. Especially when I think your goal can be achieved with FF still active.

Regarding the TK fests that could occur - they tend to last about five minutes and things calm down. I'm personally not that concerned about it.

[Crator]

I got a simple fix for the TK problem. Just make it so that if someone gets TKed x amount of times by someone else and/or someone else in the same outfit/platoon/squad then they get weapons lock for x amount of time. There is a workaround to that but it's a bitch. :P

[Akadios]

I love the idea of showing people who are ignoring you or who you are ignoring.

I think that any ignore list sharing is a bad idea however this could be used by super large outfit alliances to basically enforce a shunning of a person at the whim of a couple people. Get in an argument with one person and all of a sudden half the people on the server have you on ignore even though it was in tells. It would happen.

You asked for examples of how it could be used to grief, I provided that one, however to be honest I can think of many others. I haven't spent a lot of time to think of specifics but I can think of issues around command chat (if it makes it's way in), I can think of black list alts popping up too (IE share your list with this toon and in turn every week this toon shares his compiled list of everyone's list with you), etc. If anything like that occurred it could do so much damage before it was fixed.

I also think that the turn off of friendly fire must be out. This would be too easy to exploit by organized groups.

I love the idea though, I just think that it needs to be cut back a little from what you have.

[TAA]

Originally Posted by jakaul

snip

Your arguments are well thought out and make sense. I am altering the original list now to remove the FF aspect. I think you make a compelling argument to remove it.

Originally Posted by Akadios

I love the idea of showing people who are ignoring you or who you are ignoring.

I love that idea too, but I also feel that Jakaul has a good point. The idea is to ignore them so maybe it would be better to simply switch off the tags. However I do really like the idea of providing visual reinforcement to all players involved of what they have done to their own game experience (ie. now I cant get in that vehicle, or I know that engineer cant help me).

How is this for a compromise: players who are ignored no longer have a name tag. They have a generic tag of 'TR soldier', 'NC soldier' or 'VS soldier'. This tag would still be in a different color to give that positive visual reinforcement that ignoring too many people is affecting your gameplay experience. It would also allow you to immediately see which vehicles you cant get in so you dont waste your time, even though you wouldnt know who exactly is driving that vehicle.

For now I have changed the original post to having no name tags. Tell me what you think. Better with no name tags or with generic colored name tags?

Advantages of colored generic tags

• Visual identification of who cant interact with you in the game even if they wanted to.
• Visual reinforcement of how your actions are affecting your own gameplay experience.
• It allows you to see that you cannot interact with a player, but it doesnt allow you to identify exactly who that player is.

Advantages of no tags

• It makes ignored players blend into the background for you. You wont be able to tell easily who you are ignoring or who is ignoring you. This makes it much harder for two people to pick each other out of a crowd for any potential retaliation or grief.

Originally Posted by Akadios

I think that any ignore list sharing is a bad idea however this could be used by super large outfit alliances to basically enforce a shunning of a person at the whim of a couple people. Get in an argument with one person and all of a sudden half the people on the server have you on ignore even though it was in tells. It would happen.

You asked for examples of how it could be used to grief, I provided that one, however to be honest I can think of many others. I haven't spent a lot of time to think of specifics but I can think of issues around command chat (if it makes it's way in), I can think of black list alts popping up too (IE share your list with this toon and in turn every week this toon shares his compiled list of everyone's list with you), etc. If anything like that occurred it could do so much damage before it was fixed.

I also think that the turn off of friendly fire must be out. This would be too easy to exploit by organized groups.

I love the idea though, I just think that it needs to be cut back a little from what you have.

Yes that is true, sharing of ignore lists can be used by a large group to ignore one person. Here is why I am still not convinced it would be a problem though:

• It assumes that all the members of an outfit or alliance will automatically ignore whoever they are told to ignore. Would it happen? Would you ignore someone because somebody you dont know told you that you should do it? I am not sure that would happen, especially if the consequences of adding someone to your ignore list would also apply equally back to you.
• The people being ignored can appeal to each person who ignored them. They can explain their point of view and apologize for their actions. It is then up to the individual to decide if that is enough. Eg. You ignore a player because someone from another outfit that is part of your 'alliance' told you to do so. The person you ignored writes to you: "I dont know what I did to be ignored by you. Maybe I offended you in some way, or I did something to annoy you. I promise you that it was not deliberate, and I profoundly apologize for anything I may have done to offend you. I promise that I will be more considerate of my actions in the future, and if you give me the chance I would love to be able to continue working with you in-game to fight off the enemies of our faction." Would you still be inclined to keep this person you never met and who never did anything wrong to you on your ignore list?
• Mass ignores work both ways. If one outfit gains a reputation for specifically targeting innocent players in this manner what is to stop other outfits from shutting out that problem outfit? A group that engages in such behavior may very well find themselves forced to relocate servers when they ruin their reputation and a lot of other outfits shut them out.
• A mechanic in game to allow viewing the ignore list of other people just simplifies a process that can already be done. If a group desires to mass exclude one player they can do so anyhow (share names via email, chat, voice, TS, XFire, etc). See the post made by Loverator above regarding his experiences in WoW. Without those tools built into the game it just makes it harder for other groups to respond effectively against that group of problem players.

This all comes back to the reputation one builds for themselves or their group in the social environment of the server. The concept of working together with others and compromising to find solutions is something that all shared social groups must deal with. The easiest way to make sure you are never going to have problems? Be polite, treat everyone respectfully, help your fellow team mates, and enjoy the fact that it is entertainment but not entertainment at the expense of others. What if you dont have the social graces to be nice to other people? Simple: keep your mouth shut and dont go around doing aggravating things like bailing out of galaxy transports in mid air and leaving the two squads of people inside to die a fiery death for lols. Nobody will have a problem with you if you just follow those common sense guidelines.

Originally Posted by Crator

I got a simple fix for the TK problem. Just make it so that if someone gets TKed x amount of times by someone else and/or someone else in the same outfit/platoon/squad then they get weapons lock for x amount of time. There is a workaround to that but it's a bitch. :P

It is a good suggestion. I decided to just take off the FF clause out of the equation though. There are valid concerns that people have been presenting about it, and creating new rules to make it work (eg. the 48 hr cooldown rule I had put on before) just starts complicating what in essence is a very simple idea.

I think that keeping it simple is important. Lets just hope that the disincentives against FF that the devs have instituted in the game are sufficient to stop these FF problems from getting out of hand.