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

TAA · 2012-07-06, 06:00 PM

This idea started with suggestions I originally made in this thread. The original suggestion has been modified based on feedback given so far here (as of post #34).

Essentially the goal is to use the ignore list as tool to empower players to shape their own social environment. People who break social norms with unacceptable behavior (eg. racial/sexual abuse, griefing, exploiting, etc) would quickly begin to find their gameplay experience being affected. They would stop getting rides in vehicles, stop joining squads, and stop getting heals and repairs too. They can still play the game, but they would slowly shut themselves out from the social aspect of belonging to a team.

Improvements

Every time someone sends out a message for any reason (or speaks using voice) two boxes appear next to their name in the chat window. Click one box to mute them, click the other box to add that person to your ignore list. Muting someone blocks their voice and chat text until you unmute them. Ignoring someone has greater consequences for both you and the person being ignored.
People on your ignore list cannot communicate with you in any way. You will not see their chats or hear their voice. You wont even know they are speaking. Conversely they will be blocked from your communications.
When someone is put on your ignore list they are also automatically prevented from joining any squad (and the voice chat channel) to which you are a leader. They are also prevented from entering any vehicle you are driving. You are also prevented from joining squads to which they are a leader and from entering vehicles that they are driving.
Orders and squad commands given by leaders who are on your ignore list do not ever show up for you in the game. Your orders do not show up to the players you have ignored.
People on your ignore list cannot heal, resupply, repair or spot for you. You cannot heal, resupply, repair them or spot for them.
People on your ignore list are not visually identifiable to you in game via their nametags. Name tags are switched off completely for people on your ignore list so you cannot differentiate who the people are that you are ignoring other than by costume. Your name tag is also turned off to them so they cannot identify you via your name tag.

These above are the basic features of ignoring another player. It is a two-way affair that has real gameplay implications for both you and the other player.

The more advanced user can go into his settings and manage their ignore list with the following:

Click a tab to see the full list of people you are currently ignoring and of people who are currently ignoring you. You can select to un-ignore people here, but you cannot un-ignore people who selected to ignore you.
You can click on any person you are ignoring and enter a reason for ignoring them. The person you are ignoring will be able to see this reason.
You can appeal for forgiveness to any person who ignored you, but only after a cool down period has elapsed. You are allowed to appeal for forgiveness once immediately, once again one week after your first appeal, and once again one month after the second appeal. Any abuse on these appeals can be reported by the person receiving the appeal. Appeals appear next to your name on their ignore list.
Check a box to allow your ignore list to be viewed by selected friends of your choice. You must give permission to see your list to each friend individually.
Check a box to allow your friends to share their ignore lists with you. If you choose this option you will be able to view the ignore lists of your friends, but only if they have selected to give you permission to view their list.
You will be able to see stated reasons why your friends ignored people on their shared ignore lists. Based on those reasons you can choose to either add them to your own ignore list or choose to not add them to your ignore list.
If you share your ignore list with your friends, your friends will also be able to see all of the people who ignored you as well as their stated reasons for ignoring you. This last point was added to allow your friends to see if you are the problem player instead of the people you are suggesting they ignore.

TL;DR - Mute silences players. Ignore prevents you from interacting with them and them from interacting with you.

For reference this was the original suggestion before incorporation of feedback:

Originally Posted by TAA

Every time someone sends out a message for any reason (or speaks using voice) a box appears next to their name in the chat window. Click the box to add that person to your ignore list.
Allow ignore lists to be shared automatically with other people. Eg. If I enable the option in my settings, I can automatically have people added to my ignore list that other people I trust or play with have also ignored (friends, family, outfit buddies, etc).
You can set thresholds for acceptance of ignore list recommendations from friends. Eg. Someone is added to your ignore list only if 2/3/4/etc people from your selected friends or outfit list have ignored that same person.
Make it so that every time someone is put on an ignore list that they get a system notification telling them how many people just added them to their ignore lists.
When someone is put on your ignore list they are also automatically prevented from joining any squad (and the voice chat channel) to which you are a leader. They are also prevented from entering any vehicle you are driving.
Orders and squad commands given by leaders who are on your ignore list do not ever show up for you in the game.
People on your ignore list are visually identifiable to you in game. For example, their name tags might be orange.

Baneblade · 2012-07-06, 06:11 PM

Interesting idea.

Wahooo · 2012-07-06, 06:42 PM

Whose social norms? What is normal? Which country? What part of which country?

Are you hopping to turn FPS gamers into Hello Kitty Online gamers?

I like a couple of your ignore functions, I always find it good when ignore/mute is easy to do on someone. But a lot of those requested functions are a bit over the top, and yeah I see a griefing tool as much as a legitimate function of "social change".

Crator · 2012-07-06, 07:30 PM

I like the ignore list ideas you've given. One option that's needed is to allow permanent un-ignore on any one person in your list, so they are not affected by the auto-ignore features.

TAA · 2012-07-06, 07:53 PM

Originally Posted by Wahooo

I like a couple of your ignore functions, I always find it good when ignore/mute is easy to do on someone. But a lot of those requested functions are a bit over the top, and yeah I see a griefing tool as much as a legitimate function of "social change".

Originally Posted by DJEclipse

This shared ignored list can easily be used as a bully tactic.

There is a distinction between ignore and mute, and I do agree that the easier those functions are to enable the better it is for everyone.

How do you think this system can be used as a griefing tool? Would you care to give examples?

Here is an example of how I see it being used in a positive way: Someone abuses my wife/husband/child in game. If someone did that in real life they would no longer be welcome in my home, and I certainly would not interact with them in any way if I could help it. I trust my wife/husband/child, and when they tell me someone is not appropriate I would also want them immediately added to my ignore list.

Here is an example of how I could potentially see it being used in a negative way: I join a large outfit of 100 players. I then start adding people to my ignore list who I want to grief. Those people are added to the ignore list of 100 other people. Ha ha ha.

There are major flaws with the reasoning of this last example I gave though.

It assumes that all other 100 people in my outfit deliberately activated their settings so as to receive shared ignore lists from other members of their outfit.
It assumes that all the people in my outfit selected a threshold of 1 in their ignore list additions from other members of their outfit. That means they trust my opinion completely.
It assumes that my outfit is going to put up with me doing this without good reason. How long before they kick me out, or before individual people remove me from their list of people they trust to share ignore lists to them?

Let me phrase this another way: if your friends logged in last night and told you they found someone hacking/abusing/exploiting. Would you want to give that guy a ride in your galaxy transport today? Would you want to revive him in the field? How do you pick him out from the crowd? Do you stop to manually check your personal hate list against everyone you come across in game?

I am proposing tools be added to facilitate the process. It empowers players to shape their own personal game experience.

Originally Posted by Crator

One option that's needed is to allow permanent un-ignore on any one person in your list, so they are not affected by the auto-ignore features.

Absolutely!

Crator · 2012-07-06, 08:04 PM

Good points. Another feature needs to be the ability to remove all ignored players on your list that were given to you buy another player. So basically a flag on the ignore that lists the player who put the entry on your list.

Wahooo · 2012-07-06, 08:05 PM

Originally Posted by TAA

Let me phrase this another way: if your friends logged in last night and told you they found someone hacking/abusing/exploiting. Would you want to give that guy a ride in your galaxy transport today? Would you want to revive him in the field? How do you pick him out from the crowd? Do you stop to manually check your personal hate list against everyone you come across in game?
!

That is an excellent example but might get a bit complicated as well. I suppose notes on the WHY they are being ignored could be added. I do hesitate though on over complicating anything.

Thing is, there are people who would wear the number of ignores with a badge of honor, they would make their presence known somehow. There are others (whole outfits actually) that might take pride in frustrating those who by many peoples standards have done nothing to be ignored and put on "lists".

Crator · 2012-07-06, 08:08 PM

Originally Posted by Wahooo

I suppose notes on the WHY they are being ignored could be added. I do hesitate though on over complicating anything.

Good addition. One of the reasons I like this idea is because I've had people ask other people to ask me in-game why I have them on ignore.

TAA · 2012-07-06, 08:09 PM

Originally Posted by Wahooo

Thing is, there are people who would wear the number of ignores with a badge of honor, they would make their presence known somehow. There are others (whole outfits actually) that might take pride in frustrating those who by many peoples standards have done nothing to be ignored and put on "lists".

I dont know about you, but I personally wouldnt care what they bragged about because I would never see it - they would be on my ignore list.

I bet they would love playing a game where their outfit is the only group in the entire server willing to communicate with them, give them orders, follow their orders, give them tranport/repairs/ammunition, etc. How long do you think it would take before they realized they are better off starting a new character and acting more reasonably?

Again, another way to look at it: given enough time all those groups that wear such grief as a badge of honor would be left to interact mainly with each other. Good for them. They enjoy the griefing experience and they should be allowed to interact with their own kind all they want.

Cuross · 2012-07-06, 10:04 PM

I like the idea and could actually see it being a wonderful addition to the game. However, the game is going to be f2p so anyone can create any number of accounts and toons. I can not imagine an ignore list having more than a hundred slots or whatever, but sure they wouldn't be able to level up very often if they were only playing to troll, but then again, the power difference between a BR1 and a BR'1+' are going to be so miniscule (at least according to the Devs, anyway) that they won't need to level up too much to still be useful. And I think that getting into IP/email account ignores would be getting over complicated.

Quite frankly, I like the idea of punishing the incredibly offensive players in this kind of fashion, but in a f2p game, I fear it is nearly impossible to stop a troll.

jakaul · 2012-07-07, 01:01 AM

Interesting. You want to scarlet letter someone that may only have a problem with you so all your friends can outcast the person? I can't support this, sorry. It's effectively a way to group grief one individual.

Flaropri · 2012-07-07, 02:04 AM

I'm all for ignore lists, but not for automatically sharing them with others.

TAA · 2012-07-07, 02:28 AM

Originally Posted by jakaul

Interesting. You want to scarlet letter someone that may only have a problem with you so all your friends can outcast the person? I can't support this, sorry. It's effectively a way to group grief one individual.

How is this different from me getting on voice chat and telling all of my friends to ignore someone? The automatic sharing process I suggest would be purely opt in, and you would choose who can add to your list. Its just a way to simplify a process that can already take place with much hassle and work around. There could even be another option - check this box to receive ignore list recommendations from your friends (individually selected by you), check this other box to have those recommendations added automatically. If you like you could manually approve each recommendation.

Secondly, how would this group grief work exactly? Would you care to spell it out for me so I could understand what would happen? How would this compare to the situation I have already outlined in this other post above?

Originally Posted by Flaropi

I'm all for ignore lists, but not for automatically sharing them with others.

What if I told you that if you didnt want to, nobody would ever share anything of the sort with you? What if I told you that you didnt have to share any of your ignore list with anyone? The point of the idea is that it is completely optional and opt in on an individual person basis.

Addendum: I was just suddenly reminded of something I read long ago. GSF1.

Hosp · 2012-07-07, 03:04 AM

"While i cannot agree with what you say, i will defend to the death your right to say it"

The Degenatron · 2012-07-07, 07:55 AM

Seems to me a whole lot of extra coding for what is soon to be an obsolete feature.

With IGVox and the automated mission system already in the works, I can't see the amount of effort being worth it.

Just give me a mute button for the Timmys and I'll be happy.