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.