Heres an idea; incentivize players to police other players while penalizing false reporters.

Musonius · April 2014

How about you game devs give us players useful tools to police each other vis a vis botters, spammers and the like. Such as an easy 1 or 2 click report feature that lets us be the eyes and ears for the GMs but still continue playing the game without bogging us down in lots of menus and having to type in detailed descriptions. These reports could then be scored in some way that allows the most important ones to become a priority for a GM to pop into a given instance to check out.

To make this an even more effective system the players that provide accurate reports could be given some sort of resource to allow them to purchase some special vanity items, such as pets or horse skins or the like while players making erroneous reports lose some of the resource or eventually get dropped from the program if they make too many bad reports.

deathly809_ESO · April 2014

So, if you report a player incorrectly then kick the user who reported them wrong out for a week.

Sarenia · April 2014

On EVE Online, players have been known to embed themselves into corporations (guilds) and lie dormant for as much as a year or longer, quietly rising up the ranks, just to one day destroy that corporation. Gut it's assets, set it's players up for destruction, and as a final slap in the face -- post videos of the final betray on Youtube for everybody to enjoy.

What is my point?

People can't be trusted. On a private server with a small number of players, sure. You can assign GMs and if they screw up, you boot them and roll back the server. You have maybe a few hundred, or a few thousand annoyed players. No big deal.

If somebody pulls a sleeper cell scenario on an MMO, it becomes an international news article. The entire world looks on in laughter, and the game faces potential imminent death.

"But Sarenia, they could just not give those players any real tools of power!"

A player could still carefully set up other players for the banstick, recording their progress over time, and then launch a video documenting how they singelhandedly fooled ZOS and got players wrongly banned. Reviewers look on and criticize ZOS for not having the competence and manpower to police their own game.

"But Sarenia, Zenimax would obviously manually verify each report!"

Then why do they need player's with elevated privileges to begin with? It opens the door for accusations of corruption and favoritism, for little to no benefit. And if, Akatosh forbid it, they gave these players any real tools of power -- imminent doom awaits.

That's just one scenario. I could think of many more ways a player with elevated privileges like this to screw over ZOS. It's just a bad idea, sorry.

PS. Speaking in the third person is totally normal... I promise.

aegis156 · April 2014

Musonius wrote: »

How about you game devs give us players useful tools to police each other vis a vis botters, spammers and the like. Such as an easy 1 or 2 click report feature that lets us be the eyes and ears for the GMs but still continue playing the game without bogging us down in lots of menus and having to type in detailed descriptions. These reports could then be scored in some way that allows the most important ones to become a priority for a GM to pop into a given instance to check out.

To make this an even more effective system the players that provide accurate reports could be given some sort of resource to allow them to purchase some special vanity items, such as pets or horse skins or the like while players making erroneous reports lose some of the resource or eventually get dropped from the program if they make too many bad reports.

I think you were born 70 years to late, Stalin and Himmler would be proud of you

indytims_ESO · April 2014

I don't care about giving players 'power', but I DO think it would be an excellent idea to make it EASIER to report spammers. I've stopped bothering. Reporting a single spammer takes too many steps, and too much of my attention away from what I am doing. A "Right click/Report/Auto Ignore" in one feature would be AWESOME - and yes, other games have this feature.
-

badmojo · April 2014

Don't give players power, but cosmetic rewards would be great for encouraging reporting of the bots/spammers.

drschplatt · April 2014

Yeah, I wish there was a "report spam" or "report gold seller" option on the right click. I've gotten to the point where I'll ignore 10 people in 1 hour, if it takes me 2 or 3 minutes to report each of those players, that's 20 - 30 min I'm wasting on something ESO should be doing anyway. Do they not have GMs who can read a chat screen?

nerevarine1138 · April 2014

Brilliant.

We'll not only add a whole set of reports that need to be independently verified by GMs, we'll give them a whole new set of offenses that need to be policed.

Melian · April 2014

I've reported dozens of spammers, but the only "reward" I want is for ZOS to put in a spam filter. I don't want to profit off them. I don't want power. I just want them gone so I can go back to enjoying the game.
The next best thing would be a quicker way to report them (and ignore them automatically when I do), whether their spam is in chat, mail or guild invites.

dreildragb14_ESO · April 2014

First of all 2 weeks and all the bots I reported are still here farming, so other than an automated response they don't seem to care. (I write down the names and then type reports, I got a list of 67 names currently)

Second they unbanned a ton of people who didn't ask for or appeal it, you google it and see yourself cheaters laughing they got cold hard busted and now a free pass to come back into the game with their original accounts.

So honestly whats the point now.

knaveofengland · April 2014

oh my prefects with the mute hammer , ban hammer , followers what will players think of next getting paid for it

Musonius · April 2014

I am not asking for powers for the players, just a quick and easy report system that allows us to report the cheaters without badly interrupting our game play, which the game GMs could then use as a pointer to know where to go look. This with some small novelty incentive for the players to use the system would help us help the devs improve the atmosphere of the game.

As it stands now, if I report a spammer, bot or player otherwise cheating, I have to take significant time out of my play to do so, I have no idea if any thing is being done AND Zenimax spams my email for every report I make. In all these years it seems devs have not learned the most important aspect of an MMO is the social one. They seem to have no idea of how humans behave and how that behavior effects the players desire to keep paying for their product.

Dunhilda · April 2014

Sarenia wrote: »

On EVE Online, players have been known to embed themselves into corporations (guilds) and lie dormant for as much as a year or longer, quietly rising up the ranks, just to one day destroy that corporation. Gut it's assets, set it's players up for destruction, and as a final slap in the face -- post videos of the final betray on Youtube for everybody to enjoy.

What is my point?

People can't be trusted. On a private server with a small number of players, sure. You can assign GMs and if they screw up, you boot them and roll back the server. You have maybe a few hundred, or a few thousand annoyed players. No big deal.

If somebody pulls a sleeper cell scenario on an MMO, it becomes an international news article. The entire world looks on in laughter, and the game faces potential imminent death.

"But Sarenia, they could just not give those players any real tools of power!"

A player could still carefully set up other players for the banstick, recording their progress over time, and then launch a video documenting how they singelhandedly fooled ZOS and got players wrongly banned. Reviewers look on and criticize ZOS for not having the competence and manpower to police their own game.

"But Sarenia, Zenimax would obviously manually verify each report!"

Then why do they need player's with elevated privileges to begin with? It opens the door for accusations of corruption and favoritism, for little to no benefit. And if, Akatosh forbid it, they gave these players any real tools of power -- imminent doom awaits.

That's just one scenario. I could think of many more ways a player with elevated privileges like this to screw over ZOS. It's just a bad idea, sorry.

PS. Speaking in the third person is totally normal... I promise.

Band of Brothers Gone but not forgotten

We learnt the hard way that day we were betrayed.