I don’t know if that will work. If you guys keep developing this game the way you are, I expect this game to get big. Once hardware adoption hits that next spike, this game is on the forefront of a genre that sells VR. Imagine you had 40k-50k players on concurrently. Im not sure bans are the way to manage a community once it is at that stage. If anything, I would expect a lot more user muting functionality. That will be a good problem to have though IMO.
I would rather hire a lot more Community Moderators with the money that we get from selling 40k-50k copies and continue responding promptly to reports than just give up and say “Oh well it’s expected in VR (and other games) that people can just be giant jerks to everyone and no one will do anything.” There’s enough of that in VR already.
But we’ll see what happens, as you said, good problem to have.
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Just had a flashback to the old Ultima Online Counselor system. Would definitely require some back-end work, but could be a solution if/when the community explodes.
A player reports harassment in-game. If a volunteer counselor is available, they get an alert and are teleported to the location of the incident with video-recording auto-enabled. If they think there is merit to the complaint, evidence is forwarded on to an actual employee for remediation.
When not policing the community (hopefully a minority of their volunteer time), volunteer counselors act as in-game helpers to new players with questions and as community liaisons. From the UO description:
Counselors served a crucial function by providing live, in-game assistance to young and newer players. While they could and did explain game mechanics, they also furthered the online community by encouraging young player to participate in community events, join guilds, visit player-run towns and housing areas, etc. In short, Counselors were the initial means to accessing the greater community for many new players.
What if we need a hand being protected in the wilds in order to farm rare materials? 
Rumor has it that there are people who would be body guards… For a bit of coin 
Aye, they’ll take ur coin protect you long until you’ve finished farming, then kill you and take the loot too 
lol XD
Yea, I definitely don’t mean to imply that you “give up”, I am more or less saying that giving the tools to the community to police itself is probably a more scalable approach. I am sure you guys will come up with some fun ways to handle it.
I do 100% agree with you on hiring more community managers. Do you guys have any plans to have any sort of in app Community Success team? I help lead a somewhat large Customer Success team at the moment, and ever since I discovered VR, the idea of an in app CS team has made a ton of sense to me and is something I predict we will see a lot more of as games with solid revenue streams pop up. I saw Alt-Space try it for a while, but I think it got too costly considering they don’t monetize their app. However, in Orbus, with the solid purchase price it may make sense. It would be interesting to see if an in game CS/Onboarding team would help with retention and referrals.
This is 100% something Union of Ham can offer. We charge per Hammy Boi/30 mins. We have very reasonable rates. We cannot guarantee success though. Those Nox people are known to pop out of nowhere and attack. They tend to roll deep. We can 100% provide protection from other Hammers though.
If you are interested in mercenary/protection services, please visit us at unionofham.com
And then word gets out and their gig us up
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Gank the Wilds, then offer protection… Define “extortion” lol
Isn’t this what gangs do? Trash the place then charge “protection” fees for being on “their turf”?
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UOH is an organisation & and family we are not a gang. If anything we more like Mafia lol.
We would make “Contracts” and wouldn’t break those contracts. but if you pay for 30 mins then after the 30 mins is up who knows what might happen
@Wayne_S We came up to people and told them we were going to attack and to prepare.
Now that wouldn’t bother me. It also bears no resemblance to my experience with Blacklisted and UoH. The chaps I met ganked us out of the blue when there was little chance of defense, and so I have to assume that’s what to expect from anyone in either group. They had done the same thing to another group.
The wall tactic was reported by one of my group which is why I asked if that is a tactic someone is using. I’m actually curious to check if it’s possible, not to use it but to see if it’s something I should expect while they’re still trying to fix and balance pvp.
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The closest analogy to Orbus PvP I can think of is Asheron’s Call 2. Orbus PvP isn’t really optional after a certain point, and in AC2 you had to traverse PvP zones to get to the end game PvE areas. It didn’t take long before those PvP traversal areas were full of camping griefers and PvE players were lucky to get through. I suspect this is one reason that AC2 died quickly while AC1 (which had dedicated PvE and PvP servers) lasted for 18 years.
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By contrast, Eve Online is still going strong on a similar PVP ethos.
The new End Game dungeon enterance is not located in the Wilds. You do have to go to PvP enabled areas if you want to participate in the high level economy and farm rare materials, but you don’t have to go there to do high end PvE.
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While I agree Orbus feels a little like AC PVP, I don’t agree that’s why AC2 failed, lol. AC players expected AC with better graphics, instead they got a dumbed-down WoW style game. I can’t believe I am debating AC2’s failure after like 15 years, ha.
Im not a PVP’er, and when im in the wilds, If I were attacked I would just stand and die. I get no fun out of non-consensual PVP, so you will not get a challenge, just another cowardly gank. Yep you get my loot, oh well.
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Don’t like PvP? Don’t go to the wilds. The risk of death is for a reason. It’s for fun and it’s for better gear .
With the new dungeons out, under geared players can at least do the sentry boss with a little bit of effort and strategy.
I personally love the paranoia of the wilds.
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Aren’t you a musketeer? You have it easy, if you don’t want to fight, you can run to the guards and laugh as the guards kill them. Musketeers are hard to kill, they can heal and run.
Yes, but im usually fishing in the wilds. I haven’t had any issues, everyone has been somewhat civil.