How will the game be moderated?

No, we all follow your logic perfectly. Yes, there will be a terms of service. Yes it will read as an objective set of rules. Yet history has proven, across all the games I've played, that even banned players can become unbanned. Moderation isn't black and white.

Humans will be human, and as such are very error prone. It is impossible to completely remove subjectivity, even with the best set of objective rules. You may not like it, I'm not entirely sure I like it either, but that's the problem of dealing with humans. High value customers do get better service in many businesses because they are paying for the better service, but at somepoint it makes no sense to help a high paying customer if they are a risk to the business.

Nothing I've said here is beyond common sense. Some of your points are fair, most are logical, and I agree that the topic is worth discussing but I'd like to give the devs the benefit of the doubt. Innocent until proven guilty, or rather I will assume they have integrity until proven otherwise.


edit: made some changes to word choices.

 

No doubt. I'm not trying to point a finger at the devs or the mods at all.

I'm definately speaking in the abstract here. But human nature and business nature are two things that are very common and expected outcomes can be surmised without much trouble.

 

How might the low-value customer bar be raised? Would this include different mods, or another resource?

 

You try to design a game where there aren't the big holes which require subjective intervention. They're a year+ away from release so it's likely they don't know what these holes are.

 

I don't think it's game design, I think it's customer service response design. You simply make your TOS understanding of what's ultimately important and what's not. For me, I'm thinking that people in a PVP type mode would be able to handle a lot of the day to day conflict themselves. I'm not really concerned with the non-pvp crowd. That's a world that seems to reinforce unresolved subjectivity.

My proposed solution is re-posted below.

 

I don't know how the game will be moderated, but one thing I do know is that GMs will not have the super powers that GMs had in UO. They will not build in these super powers because if they did have those powers there is always the remote possiblity that hackers might be able to discover what needs to be activated in order to elevate your character's privilages to GM.

For that reason they said they would not be granting GMs super powers, but they will have the ability to ban you from the game server, and they will likely be able to tell the game server to transport your character to a jail cell for a period of time... lol I loved the UO jails.

 

I didn't even know that UO had jails. What were they like? I visited jails in other games, just not UO.

Also, I hope SotA has jails. Not for bad behavior but for stealing or murder or other crazy stuff. You always meet the most interesting people in jail.

 

It was a long time ago. I don't recall. I was brought in by a GM while he interogated a person that was a griefer of some kind. I don't even remember how I was involved. I either reported the guy or was friend of the person who did. Either way it was a gloomy dungeon type thing, and it was really cool. The guy was in a very tiny cell that didn't look like a lot of fun. hahahha

 

The thing that always confused me about in-game moderated jails was that really for that brief period of time, the GM's were just giving the bad guys what they wanted. I don't know anyone that didn't like those kinds of jails and the interactions that came out of them. Which makes it curious why game designers never seem to put them into the game design from the beginning. They're really stupid customer service tools, as often the offense is something that has nothing to do with the game itself - so why have that conversation in the game when it needs to be done outside the game where the player is no longer "playing".

Instead, the jails should be integrated with the game for things that aren't bad behavior but instead just part of the accountability system. Where you're not going to be banned for those actions, but you're going to be held accountable within the game.

 

If the thread is about whether paying lots of money gets you a free pass then yes - I fully expect it will. Money talks after all and that is just how the world is like it or not.

On the topic of moderation the selective multiplayer bit does offer an additional avenue. People can just be forced into single-player online for 72 hours or whatever. It stops them from harassing other players but doesn't prevent them from playing the game they bought.

Cheaters on the other hand (people who hack the game to put themselves in god mode and things like that) should just be banned after two infractions or so as they are extremely detrimental to the health of the game. That is my opinion anyway.

 

They can't enter god mode because there is no godmode built into the game.

 

Having never hacked an online multiplayer game I don't know how it works or what makes it possible but I've come across other people doing it. But I'm sure some people will find some way to cheat.

 

You bet, there is even online community dedicated to hacking/ruining games.

 

And what if that cheater was a high lever backer? It's not out of this world to believe that some of those LotMs are rich gold farmers who will exploit, spam, be disruptive, cheat, lie, steal, etc. Do you believe they will get a free pass? A personal pardon from RG?

 

There are all kinds of fear in these forums, there will be more fear in the game. No GM or team of them can be expected to be Fire Marshals at the ready for every squabble or he said/she said that Will occur in the Game.

As far as any suspected Hacking & Game Cracking, I will trust SotA will deal with this, when and if any arise. Hands may very well be held here in these forums. The Game , is a different Story.

 

Yep, and we'll even see him in the game from time to time!

This is indeed true but this is done for one primary reason: those high level accounts are *ongoing* paying customers. You don't want to lose their business in the future lest you don't care about quarterly numbers. SotA backers who pledged high are one-time customers and never ever have to pay again since they even will get 5 games free for the next 5+ years. Portalarium already has the money, they aren't going to get any more so have no business reason to treat you any differently than a $25 backer.

Totally agree. Everyone should be treated equally and follow the same rules.

I'll bet the terms of service that all customers will be subject to is going to be much longer than that. As a business, you'd want to CYA as much as possible and that ain't gonna cut it. Just look at the TOS of any online service, be it game, website, etc.

This is the gray area and usually the ones that take up the most time when /reports are handled. Server logs will also record all player chat and actions, so this is where the subjective call will need to be made. But someone spamming gold farming services or hate speach or religious bigotry or whatever are not covered by your 3 points above. What about someone advertising real-world goods or services and using SotA as a platform for that advertising? Your TOS are too narrow and don't protect neither the business or the customers enough.

 

I was under the impression that people that pledged large amounts like $10k have been contacted personally by RG. I can't imagine that line of communications disappearing. If a $10k backer was doing something highly inappropriate I would think it would be handled a little more directly than some in game ban.

That's about as far "extra considerations" a high dollar backer should get. Bans are not reserved for the peons but a phone call isn't out of order for VIP (at least at one point in time they were VIP)

 

I'm glad you agree, because this is precisely what I was getting at: people purposely behavhing badly and then getting to chit-chat with RG about the situation. THIS IS WHAT THEY WANT. If the actual punishment doesn't outweigh the pleasure of connecting with RG, Portalarium will end up throwing itself into a whirpool.

 

I think cheating can be placed into two different catagories: hacking and finding an exploit. Hacking is altering the game's design in some ingenius way for personal gain. Exploiting on the other hand is simply finding a bug and using this bug to circumvent limiting mechanics. There both cheating as far as I'm concerned, but one is far more serious than the other.

 

....I think the point missing in this discussion is... how many LotMs are there? 16? And how many of them are likely to do anything severe enough as to be considered for a banning?

In my model, I didn't mean to suggest that -every- minor dispute concerning a LotM or other high backer would go to RG or other main Portalarium folks... Just if it's a severe problem AND involves major backers/investors. And as I said, how often is that likely to happen? I wager it's somewhere between "none" and "zero".