Why are people making such a big deal out of the steam players? |
Lemodile « Censeur » 1423067280000
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TL;DR I don't think the moderation is the solution for changing a 'toxic' community, simply because we're not equipped to change people's attitudes effectively. I don't think the moderation is the 'problem' on this area either. The topic has more or less shifted from issues with/about Steam players to a toxic community and the moderation's role regarding it. I'm going to talk about a lot of different things so this will be long and hard to read. My apologies. I'm really going to try to not be overly defensive so bear with me :P I've never been one to be very affected by trash talk and the like, not as a player or as a staff member. Having that said, clearly some people are having considerable issues in game. What I don't fully understand though, is why people try to blame staff members for this. And if we are to blame, what do you expect us to do or change about the situation? I'll try to elaborate a few points below. Firstly, I'll be the first to agree that the moderation has a lot of room for improvement. There aren't enough staff members to go around. It can be a pain to reach us and we are usually not around when someone starts spouting their ignorant insults and swears. However, there's only so much we can do. Although a lot has improved over the years, we're still poorly equipped to handle what both players and admins expect us to do. That's not on us and blaming moderators for doing a poor job isn't helping either. Given A801's income (let's hope these Steam players people seem to hate so much will change that) working with voluntary staff members is pretty much the only viable option. We work with the tools that we are given and often these are insufficient to help the amount of players we are faced with. Some steps have been taken to empower the community to more or less handle things themselves through votebanning (which backfired with "ban teams" popping up in TR), ignore and silence features and the report and tribunal command. Clearly this is insufficient and unfortunately a lot of people believe reporting has no effect whatsoever (for moderators it's extremely helpful, so please use it). I don't think the solution is to introduce more commands, although we've been pushing for at least some changes to whispers; we're getting a lot of whispers from people speaking other languages and we get a lot of whispers from people with /silence* on. These two things slow us down considerably and it's one of the reasons why I personally barely ever bother to log on publicly in the evening; I'd just be forced to /silence myself which in turn frustrates more players. I realize that this influences other moderators as well. You just don't want to be the only moderator online with whispers on, it's a complete waste of time for everyone. As a result, there are long stretches of time where there simply is no moderator to be found whatsoever. As long as we cannot filter out at least the whispers in languages we don't speak, I don't see this changing soon. So much for the problems, on to possible solutions. It makes sense to, as has been suggested, expand the tutorial and educate people about all the commands at their disposal. I know that the Helpers have a shelved, dust-gathering tutorial module for teaching gameplay basics (though obviously more advanced than the current 'tutorial'). Perhaps that can be revived. Another possibility is to use the Steam release and their guide pages to instruct people in these things. It won't make a fundamental difference, but until now we've never had a proper place for posting guides. If people get used to it it may make a positive impact on how well-informed players are. Another thing that has been pointed out is that EN recently held mod applications. I think Phatnom illustrated quite accurately why that is not going to make that huge a difference to the overall perception of the community: there simply aren't enough suitable applications. Lowering standards to get more staff members seems tempting but has obvious drawbacks when it comes to things as power abuse, not to mention that many of the requirements are set in stone by A801 and not for moderators to change. The people pushing for more regulations are likely unaware of how moderation training works. It takes at least several months from being accepted to becoming public mod, with some people never becoming public staff or reverting back to being normal players. Being even stricter or adding even more training is not going to help anyone. Lastly, priorities. It's very tempting to prioritize hacking reports over all others because these reports are relatively easy to check (meaning you can handle more reports in an hour of playing) and because they are unrelated to languages / communities. I understand that from time to time handling insults and such may be more pressing, but out of the few available moderators only so many actually can understand what's going on in a room due to language barriers. This is frustrating to both players and moderators. A801 is against more aggressive chat filtering and as of yet it's also impossible to hand out karma for reports other than hacking, which could further discourage people from reporting these things. Dernière modification le 1423067640000 |
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Edit: Okay my thoughts are being contrary right now, but what I did mean it was all around that time when all(?) bans were lifted and sanctions were altered in a way that seemed too forgiving and things took a gradual nosedive. And thank you for taking the time to respond in a manner that didn't come off as pure sound bites. Dernière modification le 1423072200000 |
Haruhitastic « Censeur » 1423068060000
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Yes, yes; we've all heard the DON'T BAN PLAYERS THAT BUY FRAISES thing but that was yonks ago and is no longer true. Permabans aren't "effective" because users were permed for no reason and weren't unbanned. If anything, the new system is better; but if they brought smods back to perm as well that'd be great. |
Shinark « Citoyen » 1423068480000
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Lemodile a dit : I had this idea awhile ago and imo it could be pretty interesting You guy's could eventually split the team into 2; 1 team for hacking related issues and another for the insults racist etc... Of course this can't be done unless there's enough people but it could be pretty effective since while the other moderators take care of hacking and other related issues as you pointed are relatively easy to check, the other mods could take their time to check the rooms look at chat logs(?) and such to hand out mutes when needed. Of course we couldn't expect phenomenal results and more mutes but it would help for when people repeatedly break the chat rules. Tbh this still needs some more tweaking since it has flaws like if no one from a said team is online or such. Also, you adress the fact that you don't have the required equipment to do the job; maybe Tig should make this his priority instead of changing the ui colors and such. Lastly, You talk about a tutorial, but we can all agree that majority of the people ignore the tutorials completely so I don't see how it would help.. |
Shinark 1423068480000
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[Modéré par Lemodile, raison : Accidental double post.] Dernière modification le 1423068540000 |
Secretive « Censeur » 1423074120000
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firstly some on topic, i wish the steam players were more welcomed. many of them were original players back in 2010 or early 2011 and came back once transformice was announced on steam. i wish they were given advice on how to be better chams instead of berated; but at the same time, TFM has always been like this, any cham is likely to be called a noob, among many other worse names if they mess up, let alone when they're learning divine for the first time. i'm so glad that we're on steam, because the players that could come would greatly help atelier801's situation. i'm pretty sure they just broke even this year (according to meli's blog) and more players which could spend money on the game would greatly help TFM. so hopefully people stop scaring away the new steam players, they're very good for us. ---- @shinark, I feel like we already have this system in a way, with our mods in training checking chat offenses and public mods checking hack reports. It's just that, like you said, we don't have enough people for it to be any better than it already is. Mods in training can't even ban for hack, so they're pretty much limited to regulating chat offenses. I can't begin to explain how helpful it is when people use /report. Our report system is much easier to handle rather than whispering players, for me at least. I tend to miss whispers, especially around nighttime my time, when there's only one or two [public] mods on. Here's an example of my whispers one day a while ago when the cafe was a shitstorm. Having 7 different people whispering me (in the span of 3 minutes), watching a reported player for chat offenses in the main room, and keeping an eye on cafe. Sorry for the color, not sure if names are allowed from whispers / if posting this is allowed. So, needless to say, whispers are difficult. It's hard to respond to everyone, let alone help everyone. I don't mean this as an excuse as to why many people aren't helped, just explaining that, it's hard. i want to apologize for all the reports that don't get handled also, but don't view this as a 'we don't ever look at reports,' and please continue using /report. ------- I'm not sure the words for this- but it's very, difficult (I guess), for players to make suggestions for ways to help change how the mod team works. We aren't very transparent with the community about how mod training works or how we deal with certain things, and I wish we were more open about it. We try to change what doesn't work to make it better. for example, many players think becoming mod means just that, you become a public mod. or that maybe you are trained a bit and maybe watched for a week or two; but this isn't the case. We are completely private and unidentifiable as mod when we're in training. we are trained for months (for most of us hired to EN now, i believe everyone was in 'training' at least 5 months before becoming public) on how to moderate chat, then when/if we are considered for promotion to public mod, we learn more about detecting hacks. all this said, i do agree that there are many ways we can improve our system, but many chat offenses could be avoided if people used /ignore, /silence, /ban, /pw, or changed rooms. most english players even have the luxury of changing servers [between en and e2]. i wish mods could be around to help players more, but we just can't. we recently had applications opened and we were able to find some good candidates that you'll hopefully see in the upcoming months. i'm sorry that some see us as incompetent, clique-ish, distant, unhelpful, trigger-happy, or power figures, or anything else. it's unfair to y'all that we can't be more active or more helpful or more approachable; and i hope this changes on our part and that we are able to become more sufficient in your eyes. yikes this is a real text wall. tl;dr steam players are good for the community, accept them and help them. mods try their best, and we realize we can do better and we're trying. there are many ways players can help us, by using the many chat functions or by reporting. Dernière modification le 1423074180000 |
Vanitasu « Citoyen » 1423086720000
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I appreciate the insight from the moderators' side of things, and I apologize if anything I said previously seemed accusing. It's really nice to hear from you guys and learn more about how the application process works. It helps put things into perspective, and thank you for trying your best! I think we can all agree to hope that more steam players will at least stick around, haha. |
Iialiciaii « Citoyen » 1423102920000
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I feel like a way to get the people to behave better is to (stick with me here) have the mods be a little bit more one with the community. For example: One night in room 1 on the en2 server all hell was breaking loose, then a mod (only told us that they were a secret mod) came in and warned the person, who then stopped, but the mod was also having fun with us talking to us and playing around through their moderation messages (the pink text). The room got a lot more friendly the rest of the night, even after the mod had left. I think what players really need is to see that the mods are there for us and watching because I feel like many players think the mods don't pay attention to anything. It's just nice to see the mods in rooms talking to the players, even if its just saying hi or something on their free time between reports. Dernière modification le 1423102980000 |
Ilysia « Citoyen » 1423137240000
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The toxic community been around for years and it been brought up countless times. But allot of players support it and just tells you to toughen up and lolz at you for trying to improve the community. You have tribes about there which are community fealing is generated by being jerks to others in public rooms. Thise days I daily see people making sexual comments on public. I think it is getting worse but I am also happy to see more and more protesting against this. More moderators ingame to take care of the commuity. |
Haruhitastic « Censeur » 1423149540000
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iialiciaii a dit : That's all fine and dandy if there's enough staff to support a mod staying in a room for more than a few minutes because of reports lol |
Retrouvaille « Citoyen » 1423151040000
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Are you really tring to contact mods properly? As far as i can see all my requests have been satisfied. And for steam players OFC they need a proper tutorial |
Thenazrin « Citoyen » 1423164540000
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approving the tutorial should be the first thing you do cuz it seems like it would be the easiest thing for you guys to do right now I made a 17 minute long video basically explaining all the hazards in the game on the map and also the first seven minutes tell people how to shaman it's the basic commands which most people don't even know those I'm going to be redoing it soon to make it shorter to make a specific tutorial for shamaning there some people just irritate people without even using bad language problems people ranting for hours the longest I've ever seen went on for 3 hours that was about 6 months ago though but still there's been some pretty long rants I mute them but new people coming in the room see this shit going on in then they comment on it and I don't want to mute them too |
Deklion « Citoyen » 1423186740000
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I've been a player from 2010-2012. Steam made me start playing again so idk why people are complaining,it's great for the game. |
Iialiciaii « Citoyen » 1423191480000
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Haruhitastic a dit : I did say that it would be between reports and only saying "hi" or something... it takes 3 seconds to type hi (maybe 6 for them because they have to type the command to speak in moderation). Plus, from what I've heard from the mods that comment on mod complaints, the mods don't get many reports that aren't through whispers. So the mods that have whispers turned off all the time and aren't getting any whispers should have at least SOME free time to talk to us players. |
Xenguy « Citoyen » 1423194840000
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Most of the new steam players I've seen are rude, obnoxious, and offensive..... If our community is as 'toxic' as people say it is.... I'm sure they'll fit right in. |
Implozia « Citoyen » 1423244460000
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Ummm.. hello? can i join a little? i am a steam player and an old player of tfm and i think tfm had better times.. but this comunity of rude persons? please! sorry for my bad english i am romanian but i find english players way way way friendly.. i play on steam for some months and i found that many of them dislike tfm for is players.... i think the same.. i really hope everything is going to be okay about tfm :( .. is a game of my childhood.... once again sorry for my english i hope i did nobody to feel bad or mad :( .. thanks for reading my comment... |
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A lot of my steam friends play transformice (since I met them first on transformice), and I must agree that seeing the older players who don't join from steam are quite obnoxious. I asked a friend about it yesterday and they said (I quote) "If older players were not so vile, I think everyone would get along nicely." But of course that's not how this game works apparently. Everyone's always gotta complain about one particular player because "they said this" and "they said that", like they've always got an excuse. What I see regularly in rooms is a ton of new players cussing at each other, simply because they've seen others do it, and their first thought is "holy crap I can do the same thing and maybe I'll look cool". Not calling out names here, but a few days ago there was someone who insisted I was a guy. I explained to them that I wasn't a boy, and that I appreciated it if he would look at my profile for further confirmation. He carried on calling me male, and this pulled in some other people who thought it was okay to call me a man, too. They even had the damn nerve to ask for pictures, which is clearly harassment (they're lucky I didn't report them). And yesterday there was another steam player who I caught picking on someone, calling the "someone" autistic because of how they typed in the chat. I tried to side with the poor kid getting cussed at, but eventually he left the room and the guy picking on him turned towards me, calling me emo. I told him I had depression and ADHD, which I really shouldn't have done because he just made a pretty little mess out of that, too. He did leave me alone after a while, but it's those young children who I wish would really mind their damn language on public websites/games, even if they're new, or else they're going to get into a whole lot of trouble with staff. So, to sum it up. I am against people who hate on steam players, but I am also against people who join from steam just to be little dickheads about everything. |
Grimrice « Citoyen » 1423308120000
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I love it that it came to steam. I can now play with my steam friends who are complete noobs on tfm. Now i can insult them in game saying how crap they are before they rage quit amd write a bad review. Dernière modification le 1423308600000 |