SOME sort of anti-harassment feature? Ignore/vote out/mute/anything

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#41

Then what is your proposal for a solution? I hear you when you say /mute would affect the game - but toxicity affects it also. I keep saying it cannot possibly be one or the other; life is not inherently toxic or binary :slight_smile:
Have you ever voted to exe someone because of their conduct just to escape their words? I have, and would do so 10/10 times; but that doesn’t solve anything - it just creates more animosity until I can click that button at the end of game, and if that’s our ONLY immediate recourse to temporarily escape the toxicity, that affects the win/loss for everyone way more than a /mute would.* (better articulated)

Telling someone they have no choice but to wait until the end of a game and report or accept a ban is akin to saying
“I am going to tie someone to a chair and force them to listen to me until I allow them to leave, or I will punish them.”

That’s… unethical; and I know it’s an oversight, but it’s a pretty big one for an MP game. It’s just a matter of time before someone somewhere gets legitimately psychologically triggered/injured because they can’t walk away from an abusive onslaught without accepting a ban.

So… /mute is no good, a /mute vote is no good, but I’m not sure I really agree that it would be the same as removing them from game. Perhaps if someone were silently and anonymously voted to be muted by 4 individual players, just allow their logs to be read while alive. That does not bar communication and I think is more than fair as far as prohibiting abuse. If it were abused, it would be because it would be an organized effort - and such things would be blatantly obvious to a mod/guide* looking over the game’s chat log if the targeted player /reported abuse of /mute vote… right?

#42

Last pitch then I am walking away from this for a while…

Simplest solution suggestion yet:

Simply open /report feature to in-game access and if someone uses it and files a report against another player, lift the ban consequence on their Exit Game.

Oh but it would be abused, you say? Only once. Then they’d get banned for salty/false reporting… self-solving problem that kills 2 birds with one stone.

If more than a few players use this feature in a single game, it also obligates the rest of the players to /report the same offending player so that they may be released of their game-bligation and go on to join another, less toxic game. In the same vein, that would also serve as a counter-measure against false reports (as the false reporter would hopefully and reasonably be reported for game throwing by the remaining players).

Drawbacks…?

#43

No, unless I believed that player was an enemy of my faction.

I appreciate analogies for when they work, but this is not one of those times. If somebody in the game is threatening you or threatening your mental or emotional well-being or otherwise endangering yourself somehow and you feel too uncomfortable to continue – you need to leave the game immediately. Your well-being is more important than a ban for leaving a video game. Hell, I bet your ban would even be lifted if a moderator went over your case and realized the reason you left.

You are not tied to your chair and forced to play Throne of Lies. It is your choice whether entering a game with 15 other random people from the world is worth the risk of finding someone terribly nasty. Imperium42 cannot force players to be polite, but we also cannot force policies that threaten the integrity of the game.

4 Cult members could literally silent Mute a BD player by themselves. Unseen can have 3 members and get a Neutral Ally or King as the final vote. Players could begin a meta where they automatically mute the King every single game, or start a meme where they mute player 1 every single game. I guarantee these scenarios would happen and would ruin the game. More players would be negatively affected by muting than the players being affected by toxic players.

#44

Understood. Thank you for your thoughtful response.

I agree with you. I would also go on to suggest that under duress, people’s judgment is frequently impaired as far as making the call shot to leave. That doesn’t excuse either party, really, and they should still absolutely /report the offender, but if someone were to leave a game due to extreme psychological stress, it is unlikely they would think to screenshot or write down the name of the offender before alt-f4’ing.

Ethically, I feel the burden of appealing a ban over a potentially triggering incident should not fall to the victim, but the offender. I just don’t know what solution to suggest, and commenters aren’t being very helpful with alternatives that would provide the same safety/escape function. (Seemingly mostly only attestations of why personal safety is a weakling’s interest and ToL is above that. I sincerely hope that’s merely a perceived implication.) :frowning: I had hoped that opening the dialogue would result in a conversation about what IS possible.

Thanks again for your thoughtful reply. It was an appreciated departure.

And – I still think the notion of open /reporting to in-game functionality, even if only for the specific purpose of toxicity reports, has merit.

2 Likes
#45

In-game mod monitoring has a lot of merit. I don’t think anybody denies that. I just believe it to be too grand of a feat to accomplish. The :resources required: to :benefit: ratio is heavily skewed in the resources required side of things.

Maybe players that you report at the end of the game can be put on your own personal blacklist. This blacklist would not allow you to join games with that person if they are not yet banned.

#46

Let’s look at real life for a solution to the problem - the police.

Okay, from my research, they can’t seem to prevent all crimes. Sometimes, they will openly be in an area and only idiots will commit crimes in front of them, so they only prevent current crimes but not repeat offenses.

Oh wait, they also have undercover agents - they go around without looking like police to catch those dang repeat offenders.

Another tool they use is surveillance, so they can figure out who did a crime after they did it and stop repeat offenses.

The devs have the surveillance down, they just need undercover mods and open mods to monitor games.

1 Like
#47

They would also have undercover mods in place whenever a mod plays a game, as they can report them and make sure someone sees it (maybe it should be someone else who was not in the game, to get an objective perspective, not really sure on the policy there)

#48

How about we don’t do that because the police and moderators function in very different environments.

1 Like
#49

Police in America when you are committing a violent crime:Shoot that muthafucka
Mods when someone is breaking a rule: Warning/Ban

See the diffference?

#50

Police don’t kill people all that often. But let’s not discuss it, don’t want a ban.

1 Like
#51

I’m pointing out that’s what a cop would do when a violent crime is being committed. You said to look for a solution from IRL, I was pointing out that Mods are Sorta like the police of a game.

#52

The mods are not going to kill someone for toxicity, sorry for actually trying to contribute to the thread

#53

Shamelessly quoting myself cuz I think this bit got lost in the shuffle. It seems to me that this ^^^ notion might give everyone what they want, even the Mods asking for more reports to read :slight_smile: