[Open Discussion] In-game Moderators

This thread is dedicated to discussions regarding the posibility of implementing in-game moderators selected from the playerbase.
So far we know that the only way how to report a player is to do it both in-game and to submit a ticket under the section "Ingame support", it's a dull and often not a long process which in the end doesn't get the job done. Can say this from personal experience - speedhackers (an entire league to be exact) still playing the game even if they've been reported numerous times. Chat spammer bots, just spammers and often cuss word users (rarely I'm one of them when things go south).
But still the thing is the reporting system doesn't work for minor rule breaks and it's a dull process since you even need to report the same incident in two places (in-game and on DBG website).

I'm suggesting to make 3 tier moderator system with each tier having access to more tools.
Tier 1: moderator can mute players for any time period between 1-24 hours. Has no access to additional tools.
Tier 2: moderator can mute/ban players for any time period between 1-48 hours. Has access to full game chat logs that are encrypted and a tool for decryting them in order to track down player submited complains. The reson for encrypting is to preserve chat privacy and to lot allow the entire community access it.
Tier 3: moderator can mute/ban players for any time period between 1-72 hours. Has access to full game chat logs and can teleport to any player as a spectator (can't interact with the environment).

Moderators receive the title "Moderator" and name, league, title is visible in grey color above player.
Also a public mod list is shown after doing a command /mod ; /moderator ; /modlist in which it shows moderators online and specifies their tiers and field of action (what he can and can't do).

Players have a limit of 5 mutes and 2 bans before their account gets suspended for a week, or longer depending on how customer support sees fit after they submit an appeal.

Thoughts?

Well, I don't see the devs giving special administrative rights to someone who doesn't work for the company. Special administrative rights however would be necessary (reading up on chat messages, checking out speed hack claims, etc) in order to perform the moderator job properly.

I use the igno list generously and it's been a very long time since I encountered any of the problems you mentioned above.

The thing with ignore list is that it's one sided, only you benefit from it and there are exclusions to it. A player you've ignored can be grouped up with you or against you in group content (pre-made not randomized groups). You might not see his chat but you will see him/her sooner or later.
Having moderators in general would serve better since it would put less stress (in the long run) on Customer support since they go through a long process to get something done which again isn't a good thing.
Also ignoring a players doesn't discourage him from acting against the game rules which again is worse for the entire community and again puts some stress on Customer support - if they receive a lot of complaints about a specific individual.
The rights I listed don't really give moderators much control over the playerbase, just enough to get the job done and to help out the customer support. Besides support can ignore claims of minor bans, mutes that last several hours or three days.
Right now I've seen only two forms of punishment - permanent ban or a ban for week, and often they are put on players with poor judgement - hackers get a week off, rude players can get a permanent ban. The system is there but it's in a poor state and giving the game moderators would be a huge leap in the right direction and since they wouldn't be employed by DBG it would be a cost efficient way of reducing the stress on customer support.

I wouldn't be against it, especially not if the honour was bestowed upon me, but I can't see it happening and I can't see the community taking too kindly to it, either. Look at how some people react to the community council. Nobody really knows what they do and they kick up a fuss about it. Knowing that some players have that sort of power in game, I think it'd just create more issues than it would resolve.

It would be especially problematic as power can go to some peoples head who then take out frustration and aggression on other people to which they now hold power over.

I think there should be other methods tried out first, such as global block and friends lists so that when a player is added to either, it applies to your entire account. This means you can block a person once and never have to deal with them on any of your alts, ever again.

Although I wouldn't have an issue with it, I think that an "account ignore" feature would be good, too, meaning if you ignore one character, the ignore is applied to all characters attached to that account. But I can also empathise with people who wouldn't want to expose all their alts.

The idea is not bad.. but haven't players done enough dmg to this game already.. Look at the community council and the horrible effect those "players" have on the game.
Players should never have a word in the management and direction of the game.

Special rights should be given to paid proffesionals that can be held accountable and be reprimended for their miscondact. Not random players.

Look at tori.. he wants it to be honoured.. because he needs to feel important in the eyes of the devs.. can you imagine a person like that actually having any direct power over the game??

P.S. Last time I challenged the intelligence of a guy on the CC my post was magically deleted.. maybe it will happen again... but can you imagine that sh*tty attitude take effect in game?

But the thing is they wouldn't have a word in game development like the community council has, community moderation is something completely different and in the right hands beneficial for the game.
Many games have had moderators from playerbase, best example I could give would be runescape (played up until RS2 before the fall rise of combat evolution or whatever it was called) where the moderation sistem was supplemental to the overall rule/reporting system which worked quite well. In dcuo we have no moderation and the reporting system is flawed and overall does little good to the game quality - spam bots still go on and on for hours before the next one replaces it. Hackers can go through many days before being banned and so on.
I still fail to see any bad in my suggestion, of course the moderators will receive some backslash from playerbase same as the developers on daily basis but something has to change. I even played a game which was over run by hackers - Need for Speed World, their approach to reducing it was making two seperate servers - old player and new player one which was really really stupid and mass banning events - a special day in which they spend all their resources to ban hackers. Speedhackers was the most common problem there since it required no knowledge of anything just the program "Cheat Engine" or any other that increases the speed of gameplay. Besides that there were many other "tools" to achieve more, so far DCUO has two (to my knowledge) ways of hacking - speedhacking and exobyte radar alterations that display them without buying enchancers. With the games progression (and playerbase increase - if that ever happens) it will end poorly if nothing is done to prevent hacking and overall bad player behavior.

I would not be against this - in-game Mods chosen by DCUO.

It would help policing efforts here.

And Torikumu has offered good commentary here in the forums. I like reading his posts, even if I don't agree with them all.

Idk. What issues are there that need to be moderated?

Can you imagine how bombarded these "moderators" would be by all the namby pamby players out there that get offended (or pretend they are) by every little thing? Or what about those that have vendettas against others?

I think any openly known "moderator" would last maybe 24hrs before quitting that job.

There just aren't enough "real problems" out there. Speed Hackers? Pffft. Put me on ignore and move on. No one PvPs anymore anyway

*Bot chat spammers - in-game cash trading RWT
*Plain chat spammers
*Rude players
*Speedhackers
*Player harassment (especially between opposite factions)
Or anything else a player can get reported for.

(all the namby pamby players out there that get offended) Check what audience (age restriction) the game is designed for and what rules apply to such restrictions. Players have every right to report anyone that they feel have crossed a line, that's what the report function is meant for. Abusing it or not using it is a personal preference.
Also personal vendettas have a cause, if there is one - an offence, it will be dealt. If a player doesn't want to raid with you then ofcourse it's not a valid reason to be banned or anything of sorts. But you get the idea and I doubt personal vendettas would be something to look out for, it's obvious some players dislike some but if the moderation is done by good players with good intentions it would greatly reduce the toxicity of community at the cost of some players being held responsible for enforcing it.
I already stated this before ignore function is onesided it fixes the problem for you but not for everyone else.

Q:Would you rather be banned forever (and have no chance of an actual appeal) for being rude or receive a mute for a day or two?

Mostly trade chat needs moderation

Considering how the select few players abuse their privilege on Twitch I'd say this is a bad idea. A lot of the moderation there is necessary of course however they do nitpick from what I've seen. Yes, I'm one of the people that always clicks the "<Message deleted>" prompt.

I'm all for getting rid of spammers though.

Who'a going to moderate the player mods? Who picks the player mods in the first place?

Mind you, non of this would ever have an effect on me personally. I'm just here to argue for the sake of it.

Who decides what's "rude"?

Opposing harassment between factions? First off, thats just silly. Secondly that's not even possible as we have no direct interaction.

Against. CC (some excluded ofc) is a prime example why- no matter whether rumours around certain members have any substance.
Everything that could give an impression of favoritism/privileges just causes drama. Abuse seems possible and quite likely.

While I agree some form of faster action response to issues involving players that spam chat with obscenities or spend hours in chat seeing just how many players they can insult and try to aggravate (do they ever actually PLAY the game?) I'm not sure a player designated Moderator is the answer.

The game is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week so just exactly how many of these people will be required? If DCUO isn't paying them to provide these services can they honestly expect some one that may be PAYING them for the right to play the game to spend as much as 8 hours a day wandering around playing Mall Cop? So okay we cut that back to say 4 hour shifts or 2 hours that still could eliminate any number of potential Moderators who only have that much free time a day to actually log in and PLAY. Also at that point we need 6 or even 12 people a day to provide total coverage .. and that's just one day. What we need is 365 days a year of that .. who is going to schedule all that to be certain the required coverage is available? And if something comes up in REAL LIFE that prohibits a scheduled Moderator from logging in it raises a whole new set of questions... How does that person contact DCUO to let them know they can do the job that day? And when they do manage to work out that issue exactly how does DCUO contact one of its other Moderators to get them to fill in? That is just a brief outline of the nightmare that could develop just trying to establish a schedule.

Now lets talk who gets these UNPAID jobs and what qualifies them to run around with the ability to eject other players from the game. There is an old saying "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" So some person playing this game is suddenly appointed "Moderator" and asked to wander the game assisting with problems like spamming, harassment, etc. How does DCUO moderate the Moderator and ensure they are not banning or punishing other players just because they don't like them or disagree with something they said, that was in no way a TOS violation, obscene or racist in nature? And if this does happen who does the player being basically abused report THAT to? We are talking about giving certain players controls that only paid members of the DCUO staff currently have the ability to use and they are computer experts (at least lets hope so) .. exactly how does DCUO manage to train these Moderators so they know how to use this new stuff to do the job they are expected to preform?

I've discussed this topic before, a long time ago, and what the game really needs is On line Game Masters who are employees of Daybreak/DCUO that come in to the office and monitor in coming reports of violations and respond in game to deal with the issue. City of Heroes had these during its almost 8 year run on line... and those GMs could not only deal with social issues but were trained to provide technical assistance in game when an issue arose. What do we do right now if we are in a mission and encounter a glitch that won't allow us to proceed or complete that mission? Sending in a report is fine but that may not even be seen for days and who knows how long before any action, IF ANY, is done to correct the situation. We log out and back on and hope it corrects itself, we Start the entire mission over and so forth. On COH you contacted Customer Support which was available 24/7 and they dispatched a GM that could join you inside that mission and fix the issue OR if it was to difficult to fix at that time.. went into GOD mode and completed the mission for you so you didn't wind up spending an hour in game playing and getting nothing. Sadly I seriously doubt we can even see that here on DCUO.. The DEV staff was cut a while back to save money so I seriously doubt they have funds to hire more employees, train them and get them in game to provide similar services.

The idea just has way too many flaws that could wind up being exploited and I cant see how DCUO could possibly expect anyone to provide that much customer service from anyone they didn't PAY to do it.

Giving players the ability to regulate other players is a bad idea.

Thats Daybreak Job , devs can hire a Moderator , I dont trust players to be a Moderator , laging severs + clipping ends up looking like something else . I would hate being falsely accused something didnt do, plus If sub people if falsely accused and timed out/ban they will quit the game , so less money of the severs and game .

Agreed.

I'm sorry,
Bad players falsely accuse players of Speed hacking 24/7, not to mention- Clipping +Lag, plus bad server connection can easily lead to some-players account being banned for the wrong reasons.
I read that nonsense all the time in pvp,
Not to mention we have trade chat spammers, broken pvp, I'm sorry but Players as moderaters cannot be trusted, Too many of them would easily abuse this.

My first MMO, Shaiya, had a kinda sorta not really in game moderator program. They called them "Game Sages". I served as one twice. For reasons already mentioned in this topic, these Game Sages never had any actual power, but were instead just meant to be in game eyes and ears of the GMs, something to break that disconnected feeling many games suffer where there's little to no direct communication between GMs and players. Game Sages had a direct link to both players and GMs, and were sort of a middle man, passing info back and forth.

It was a purely voluntary position, and was unpaid with the exception of some monthly cash shop points. On the whole it felt very unrewarding. We were expected to be on our game sage tagged toon the majority of our game time, and the minute you made your presence known, you were flooded with whispers. Lots of people automatically loved you because you were some kind of game staff, lots of people automatically hated you for the same reason, and very few actually understood what you could and couldn't do.

Aion, on the other hand, flat out refused to have any sort of in game moderators outside of GMs who rarely interacted with the community, specifically because of the possibility of abuse of power. I think most MMOs probably take this stance, and there's plenty of valid reasons for that.

I like the ideas behind this. I'm sure it'll do a lot of good for community relations since a lot of bitterness that drums up comes from unresolved conflicts that mods could have put an end to.

However, I disagree with the idea of using players for this. Yes, it's probably cheap or free for Daybreak to go this route to enforce their rules, but unless if they sign some sort of binding contract, this could backfire pretty hard with abuses of power (however little or great they hold based on your tier system). I'm concerned that without proper training and a very clear set of rules as far as how mod abilities can and cannot be used, this could get messy.

I don't know that it would be worth it to spend the resources needed to recruit and train players that can be trusted to remain objective and will report into the game frequently at regular intervals in order to do this "job" that they'd be set up to do. On the other hand, hiring staff members specifically to do this as a job would also be something of a waste I think. Especially since they'd have to have things covered 24/7. So I'm not so sure how these ideas could realistically be implemented though they are definitely needed.