In-game player moderators

Suggestions
#1

I’ve been thinking about this a bit recently and I think it would be good for the game to have in-game player moderators, the idea is for when there is someone causing trouble, someone can message a player moderator who would be someone that is well known in the community, active player, that you know won’t try and abuse the power, they can try talking the person and getting them to stop misbehaving and if that doesn’t work then they can give them a “time-out” which will mute them temporarily, starting at 30min for the 1st time, and increasing if they are repeat offenders

When giving someone a “time-out” you’ll also have to fill in a player report with the details, this way the devs will also be aware of what happened and can deal with it accordingly

I mostly bring this up because there has been times when people have contacted me, because I’m a mod on the unofficial discord, to see if there is anything I can do when there has been someone causing issues in-game and it’s before the Devs are awake/online, while it’s not often that this happens, it only takes one person being a jerk to ruin the game for other people and this could help avoid that

9 Likes
#2

how do you know if they won’t abuse the power once they have it. you can never know that someone won’t abuse it

1 Like
#3

Because I’m sure the Dev team already have a pretty good idea which people already help out with the community already and who they can trust not to abuse something like this, and I’m pretty sure if any one was to abuse it even once they would have it taken away and probably have some sort of warning against them

3 Likes
#4

They won’t know for sure, but it will be from seeing how they act, respond in situations, help others, etc etc

#5

true but some people change once they have power

1 Like
#6

Well then that’s a risk

#7

why don’t we just teach player how to mute others would that not also be a solution

2 Likes
#8

They can still get in your face and follow you around
This is a game, you shouldn’t have to hide cause the mute system is stupid

#9

why not add a personal bubble thing that people disappear if they get too close

2 Likes
#10

This is an interesting discussion and something that we’ve thought about internally before too.
I definitely agree that some kind of in-game moderation that isn’t us reacting after the fact would be helpful like you’re talking about.

On a technical level in the short term we don’t have the ability to do that, since nothing like a global mute exists in the system.

The point about abusing it is a valid one, if only because there are very few well-known players to us that have never been implicated in some kind of reports. I think that just comes with the territory in a small community like that, since everyone knows each other but not necessarily likes each other.

Like you said would obviously want to make sure that every use of these functions would be on the up and up, but most of the time it would likely be the word of the new player (they usually tend to be) against the moderator, and there’s the aspect of giving feedback so they don’t suddenly become unable to communicate without knowing why, etc.

Essentially there’s a lot of angles to consider before we could instate a new system like that, so I think brainstorming these different ideas is great.

On a side note, do y’all think that muting somebody turning them into a wisp of light (the same one as unrendered players on the Quest) instead of just removing their hands would be an improvement? People right now can still be in your personal space or trying to block you with their body and removing the “face” on that might make it less uncomfortable.

9 Likes
#11

@Mathieu_D Muting audio vs gesture would be nice as well. Maybe the default mute is everything, but allow more knowledgeable players to unmute gestures? For example being on discord I’ll often mute a player but then can’t see their hands.

Edit: I also partook in a similar program as @Rickness_Voidwalker described. I was even granted the ability to teleport to new players (when I was not in combat) and so-on. Never once did I abuse this power, although I was accused once and later disproved it (there is an incognito spell that allows you to change name/appearance at random and a separate player got a -similar- name to me and killed a new player).

There’s also similar systems in older games, such as the Counselor system which is like sub-gamemaster level. They can answer in-game tickets, go invisible, teleport, and so-on. They are immortal but can’t attack etc (totally separate characters). Of course it’s easier to stay anonymous when you aren’t using your voice to communicate :slight_smile: lol.

In summary, this system does work. Abuse of power in this situation I find to be quite rare. I’d say punishment for doing so intentionally should be a full account ban. Using these powers should be reserved for pretty obvious and serious violations rather than moderate to meh violations.

1 Like
#12

I think there should be 2 different types of muting

1st one how it is now, except you don’t get rid of the hands. This is for people that are playing together in-game and also on some external voice chat too like discord or oculus party so they can get rid of the echo but still have the social aspect and be able to unmute in game to help people without echoing to everyone else that they are already talking to

2nd one could be called ghosting, for when someone is being annoying, abusive or harassing you, this would turn them in to a wisp of light like you said, stop them from trading you, inviting you or having any other interaction with you

4 Likes
#13

My biggest issue with muting people is that I can no longer see their spells if they’re a runemage, which can lead to frustration in PvP. There are a lot of people I’ve muted due to them breathing really loudly into the mic, blasting music, etc. If I encounter them in PvP, I may not even know they’re attacking me.

#14

Does push-to-talk in game not solve this problem already if they toggle that on their end? Then they can still talk in game when needed and the majority of the time stay in Discord.

#15

@Mathieu_D From when I last used it, PTT implementation is iffy at times and not preferable usually. Also unlike games like VRChat there’s no way to confirm when your mic is active. Plus you may want to talk to nearby players without having to use PTT.

In theory, PTT could solve this.

Edit: I also just realized that you’d hear an echo if they used PTT to talk to a nearby player. So it would mostly work but have some drawbacks. Especially if you are trying to record, as nobody wants to hear an echo :stuck_out_tongue:

#16

It took away the menu button I used most back when I was on oculus so I never used it cause I couldn’t get used to it, if it was on my left controller it probably wouldn’t be as bad, but I’m right handed so I mostly used the right menu button to open the menu, not having that was just annoying, I never bothered with it on index even though I could remap the button

That being said I could also not really tell if I was having audio issues or the push to talk was having issues so I found it better to just keep enabling and disabling it as and when I needed it rather than hoping pressing the button was working or if there was some sort of delay between pressing before I could talk or something

1 Like
#17

Okay, that’s good to know. I think that’s an issue with how unreliable the audio feels in the game sometimes and I hope we can improve on that again.

@Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeshka I see your point on the PvP too, that’s annoying.

I understand the merit for requests for a double layer of mute and “block” - I don’t think that’s something we can do in the short term but will bring it up and see if we can build upon that.

We did want to make the muting prevent invite spam since there’s been more reports recently of players harassing others by spamming invites. I don’t know when that’s going out yet but we’re hoping in the near future.

3 Likes
#18

I’d be happy to hear about this if you want to PM me about that experience and how they did it in those games and what measures they took there or what the features were.

1 Like
#19

It would not imo since I pretty often mute new players which are “broadcasting” stuff on HS or are just wayyy too loudly talkin to have some peace, not because I totally dislike them or something … I still wanna see their avatars though and even the hands missing is pretty distracting already. For example I still wanna see what they do and where they shoot at events. A simple symbol close to their name with a red-crossed speaker or so would be so much better imho to quickly see whom you muted and whom not.

Also it never happened to me that someone was body-blocking anything on purpose nor did I hear people following around others (you can just port away anyways) so I think both things are rather a rare case, any offensive stuff rather happens via audio.

2 Likes
#20

I have often when I have to talk in game a split group of people doing shards with. Where half uses discord and other half not. Which means every time I would talk in game it would also echo to discord if the push-to-talk function would be the only option… So we rather just ‘in-game mute’ the people that are on discord so we can talk both at the same time.

1 Like