Add Police NPCs/Mods to capital cities to observe chat and abuse.

Now bare with me here, I know this is going to have a ring of "Big Brother" to it. But the idea is it will help curb, or reduce abuse of the chat and game in general.

The basic idea being that we have a "bobby NPC" or "Mod Bobby"...


...now you would have one in each capital city through all 3 campaigns. They would walk around and basically observe chat logs and behaviour.

It could either be an NPC which a mod can choose to inhabit and control and observe through, or it could be a purely Mod controlled char.

Either way, you wouldnt be able to initiate conversations with it (i.e via Whispers). If they chose to speak to you, they could in the typical pink Mod text. But it would only be to tell to stop doing something or risk being banned.

It might occassionaly say something typically cockney, to keep in with Anets sense of humour. (Im from Newcastle, so dont ask me what your average Cockney says!)

I now this would add an aspect of "Anets watching you" to the game, but what stronger deterrant could you add to the game?

Its well known the best way to prevent people from breaking the rules or the law, is to have an obvious police/mod pressence. Who is going to spam the chat window, or say something inappropriate if they know a mod is, or could be, watching?

At the minute, we probably have mods who occassionally pop into outposts and cities and watch whats going on. But because we dont know their mods, they dont have any impact.

It would be alot more effective, if you saw a policeman character walking around and the spammers thought "damn....ok stop spamming now!!" It would even be a protective effort towards other risks ingame, like pedophiles chatting up young children, or people harrassing other players.

The fact is, Anet already watches everything we do. They collect data all the time on how we use your chars and what we say ingame, to try and catch botters and im sure mods spie on us all the time.

Would it really be so much worse to have an obvious administration pressence made clear in the form of a policemen or policewomen char?

The only issue I see is Anet would either have to employ new staff to man these characters 24/7, or they would have to pull staff away from other projects to do it.

But I think the benefits outweight the costs personally.

Plus if you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.

I know alot of people are going to be anti "Big Brother" and think this is extreme, but can you honestly think of a better deterant to scare off spamming and abuse?

[NOTE]

The bottom line is that asking for a mod to be constantly present in all capital cities, to catch people spamming or being offensive. Whether they be glammed up inside a policeman character, to hide their identity or not, would be Anet's choice.

But if people know a mod is there and watching, who can stick an instant ban on you. They will stop spamming and being abusive.

lol you cant be serius if they put this i want commandos that will help you with missions,minimarkets(no they dont sell minipets),mcdonalds,vodafone,and many others


now seriusly i dont think if they put a policeman(man i cant stop laughing)
they gonna solve the problem

mods...again? Can you say abuse?

if you dont like naughty words either turn your parental control on,or in the case of other such abuse,grow a skin.this is teh intarnetz yar?

Naughty words aren't as much of a problem as people's disgusting demeanors are.

Lions Arch
Kaineng Center
Kamadan

Each with multiple districts, and each on all servers..... that would be a LOT of people employed to babysit. Not to mention there are other cities that would need it just as much.

Ascalon
Augury Rock
Droknars Forge
Senji's Corner
Cavalon
House Zu Heltzer
Sunspear Sanctuary
Kodash Bazaar
Bone Palace

And people will always find a new place to spam. I often laugh when I enter a quiet little town like Maguuma Stade and see a total of 4 people in the city, and one person is spamming WTS Bone 10g each!

If anything, it would have to be a computer controlled system, but I doubt that could be done fairly and effectively. There is already a spam deterent which tells you you have been posting too much. There are ways around it, but not much, it slows people down some at least.

I also bet anyone hired to do this job would fall asleep, and not get the job done 100% of the time. Sitting there watching for someone to spam endlessly would be rather boring, and most of the spammers are real people who just don't know how to sell things. Finding bots by watching spamming isn't the best way to do it.

If this is a vote, I vote nay.

Too prone to abuse.

First to OP then below a question anyone

"'ello 'ello 'ello whats all this then" would be a typical thing to say

Also the AI in some ChatBot's is amazing so the copper could pickup on phrases that shouldn't be being said and people that swear missing leeters or adding '.' or '_' should be bannable as they may not use the filter or be offended but 'filter dodging' should be bannable if repeated.

Question : I have had people start whispering me with all sorts of things and most i ignore but there are a set few things that i feel strongly about and i react with things i maybe shouldn't of said BUT spelt correctly. Now for the question. When they pm you annoy you and you react and they say " i'm reporting you" should i worry? I didn't try dodge filter in anyway but life always seems to screw someone like me over instead of the person provoking me. and after reading the Q&A forum (or tech support) alot of claimingly/seemingly inocent players seem to get banned.

Anet the real things you need to ban lay below

heres a better idea:

make a new command called /abuse ! Every time you use this command the chot log is recorded and sent in for review.

this would only work in a perfect scenario. However, how do you propose we get these mods in place? Make them paid Anet employees? It's obvious they are already horribly understaffed. Make them volunteers? Abuse, arbitrary behavior, not adhering to their own rules, making up rules, having a bad day, etc etc.
Until Anet starts behaving as a professional company (being timely, listening to the customer base, having a community relations rep who doesn't constantly get pissy and offer ultimatums), I would only see them messing this up, too.
I agree it is needed, but with the state GW and Anet are in, I don't see it being done right.

As long as you pay their bills...

actually the best way to prevent people form breaking the rules or the law are to enforce them and let people know that they're being enforced. if spammers started seeing that other spammers were getting banned, they probably would stop themselves.

and how would you program an AI that could detect what is ok or not? what happens if you have someone who's just a faster typer having a conversation with someone else? might seem like spam to a computer program.

i've always thought the best way to get rid of spam if Anet really wants to would be to just have their mods pop in at random times and silence and/or ban spammers.

I think it'd be good to have moderators ban people for spamming consistently, but players should not know who/where they are.

/not signed - as the others have said, far too prone to abuse. Even the suggested /abuse command would get abused all to hell just as /bug did.

This is completely too constricting.

Reminds me of WoW and their absurd naming policy, i.e. "We're sorry but since Sacred Cow contains religious overtones, we have changed your name until you come up with something else."

I read an article about how this guy just messed with Blizzard and created relatively inoffensive names that Blizzard deemed inappropriate, finally coaxing them into letting him keep the name "Beer Goggles" for one of his characters.

Beer goggles deemed offensive as a name?

Now, I like GW. It's very easy to pick up and play, no monthly fees, they make sure to add fun little events now and again along with Christmas, summer festivals, and Halloween and they don't care what your name is as long as it doesn't have curse words or some kind of offensive tone to a race or people.

Now if we had police NPCs, naming policies would soon follow, and then you'd have the Anet police knocking at your front door to take you away into the GW Reorientation Camp.

Let's keep 1984 away from GW. We get enough of that bull in the real world.

Well that was basically the idea. I just glammed it up a bit! The police would be Mods!!

Well it was obviously trying for a laugh, aswell as trying to make a suggestion :P!

But I just think a mod presence should be known in capital cities, so people know if they get out of line someone is watching!

All Capital Cities huh? Because Henge of Denravi really needs police to control that constant riot...

Why must people have Anet hold their hand while they play this game? Seriously you can't handle spam? Oh poor baby there are too many words on the screen for you to read? WAAA WAAA WAAAAAH!!!

All I see when I read posts like Wilian's is: "I got away with spamming for too long and will cry out as immaturely as possible because I can't really justify breaking the rules."

I can imagine you as one of those people that stands around in Lion's Arch D1and tells people to stop spamming or you will report them. Get a life.

First of all, I never spam in this game.

Secondly, learn to ignore or shut chat channels off if you can't take the heat.

Who's the real immature people here? The people that spam or the people that cry about it on these forums?

Well actually yes, spamming in capital cities like LA, Kam, Drogs and others is out of control. Yes there are too many words being spammed on the screen. Your attempt at sarcasm isnt very good and it screams "im one of those spammers, hahahaha"!

And yes certian, immature players do seem to need their hand held while playing, because their like children who cant follow very simple rules, and find it impossible to consider other players.

When was the last time you saw someone having a continual non-sales related conversation in the all channel in Lions Arch? or similar capital cities?

It cant be recently or frequently, because its impossible. You cannot have a conversation in those cities, because the all channel is being spammed with too many sales words.

Your one of the many players, who has this attitude of "just ignore it!". Why should we do that? why should we have to ignore the blatent abuse of the talk channels in capital cities? why should we be expected to sit back and endure spamming?

Would you sit back and ignore it if someone was being abusive to your face? would you sit back and ignore it if someone was attacking you? would you sit back and ignore it if someone was being anti-social?

Unless your a complete wuss, with no back-bone I wouldnt have thought so. We should have to endure abusive behaviour inside a computer game, any more then we should in real-life.

Problems dont just go away if you ignore them and forget they exist. If that means we have to have a constant Mod presence in certain locations, to hold peoples hands and tell them off when they spam and miss-behave then fine.

If they want to act like children, then they should get treat like children!!!

Yup, it's irritating, but are you willing to pay the wages of all the people necessary to do this?

Mate, your alot more immature for trying to promote an idea of just ignoring abuse and ignoring spamming and pretending it doesnt happen.

How does ignoring problems fix anything?

Why should those of us who go to LA to have a conversation, have to shut off our local chat because its being abused? Why should we have to be the victims and the ones being alienates because a minority are immature and childish?

I'd love to see how you would react if a gang of anti-social youths started hanging around your street, drinking alcohol, spitting, shouting, breaking windows and generally being abusive!

Would you close your blinds and your curtains, close your windows and pretend they werent there?

Would you hang your head when you leave your house, so not to get their attention?

Your calling other people immature because their actually trying to be pro-active and stop spamming and abuse, yet your the one telling them to close the curtains and ignore its happening.

That attitude is alot more immature.

I think this would work, from experience......
A couple of days ago, I was doing some AB. For the most part it was a string of decent fights with close scores and very enjoyable. Unfortunately, we then got moved to a different outpost, and the next fight started off with the stupid insults and childish language that I'm sure you're all familiar with. The next AB started with the same, so one of my team members replied "We are ANet staff, behave yourselves"....I have never seen a more civil AB in my life....no leeches, players were complimenting opponents on builds, and everyone said gg or similar at the end.

I'm pretty sure my team-mate wasn't ANet staff (apart from Gaile, I'm pretty sure staff members would keep that to themselves in-game), but the point is that the stupid childish language and behaviour was removed because there was the possibility that someone in a 'position of authority/power' would directly see it and be able to act on it.

I agree, it would work if it could be implemented, and if it was done fairly and consistently. Unfortunately I just don't think it's feasible.

Actually I think the problems of abuse and trade spam in the public channel could both be eliminated without help from A-Net if only players on the whole cared enough. Everyone in range could simply gang together and drum the offender out of town. eg. everyone whispers a random "shut up" type message to the offender - without being abusive themselves of course. Do not respond to anything the offender says. Just repeat your message every few seconds until they leave, crushed under the weight of incoming whispers. The burden of maintaining an ignore list would be on the offender, not on everyone else - and they couldn't /ignore everyone in town.

Another good tactic for trade spam in the public channel, that anyone can do on their own: Just go stand next to them and keep announcing "player x is a scammer, do not trade with them". They will cry and moan and threaten to report your evil lies. You will laugh and whisper to them "go ahead and report how I ruined your trade spam in the public channel". Then they will leave.

Unfortunately, if someone is immature enough to spam a message in the first place, then spamming "shut up" back wont work.

Chances are they will love the attention, and lap it up. They would just banter back and enjoy causing a scene.

If it was a mod who came and told someone to shut up, they would stop in a second because they know they have power.

FTW!



A new trade system should fix the spam-problem.

Nice idea though

Please don't present your opinions as if they are facts. The reason I mentioned it, is because I have seen it happen. A PUG I was in did it, and a couple of them got all their guild-mates to join in. Yeah, he tried some come-backs, and tried to make a scene. But nobody responded to anything he said, just kept sending random whispers to him. He soon got fed up and logged out. Similarly, I myself have done the fake "scammer!" alert, and the guy zoned out because it was obvious to him that further spamming on the public channel with "W TS" was useless - nobody in earshot was going to buy from a suspected scammer.

Please dont use such an aggressive torn. My point was valid. Some people would revil in the attention and the chaos they cause.

Your method may work at times, but there will be other times when it doesnt. Plus if I entered a town, and a "spam war" was going on between the spammer and dozens of other players trying to push him out, I would leave that town.

I dont want to stand there for 10-15 minutes while two sides of people shout at each other! We dont want to incourage people to have "spam wars" until one side caves in and leaves. Thats incouraging aggression and forcefull tactics that arent required.

Your method may be affective at times, but its anti-productive because ur using spamming to push out spammers. Your cant fight evil with evil! Having a visible, Mod presence and knowing your being watched is alot more effective, and a peacefull form of discouragement.

/signed. It would just be hilarious to experience it.

Ok, so lets say you have an idea everyone likes, and agrees with. Now, what is your idea for paying the people doing this 'police' work?

Monthly fees? - that makes people stop playing faster than a server shutdown
In Game Ads? - that annoys people enough to stop playing as well
Donations? - LOL

I honestly don't see any possible way to do what you want. It would require a very large number of people to do this, and thats even if you only place them in 3 cities (LA, Kaineng, and Kamadan). Each has multiple districts, and each has those multiple districts on multiple servers (American, European, Japanese, etc.). And if you did limit it to 3 cities, how many topics would be posted here complaining that Ascalon, Shing Jea, etc. don't have this as well?

IT CAN'T HAPPEN. Even if there was a monthly fee already in place, it wouldn't be enough to pay the people required for this.

all you need is a mod to pop into kaineng, kamadan, lions arch, and ascalon for about 5 minutes a day and give an unannounced 2 or 3 hour silence to anyone spamming. pop in at random times during the day, temp silence the spammers, and move on. people will eventually get the idea that they can actually have consequences from spamming and it will start to die down eventually.

I appreciate its not a perfect idea and it would require created dedicated staff to cover it. But I do think an occassional or persistant Mod presence in capital cities is needed to maintain the peace and the rules.

Its not good to just rely on us to put tickets and tell on people. They need to take a small hand in self-managing the community hands on.

You would be amazed what an automated system that will guide the mod can accomplish. Account flagging is very easy, now its just a trick of following them when active in "danger zones", if they violate, they get a warning, repetions results in ban, three strikes is out. They will never bother the community again.

Developing, maintenace etc, all require peoples work, u dont really need to add monthly fees for a few mods that are well supported by a good system. And i bet you they have automated flagging systems as they can track farming activities too.

/notsigned

In pretty much every game I know with ig mods, its open to abuse. The type of people who are attracted to moderator positions (no offense to any guru mods here ) are those who are power hungry.

Just from experience, its a bad idea.

Honestly, no offense taken here, Hawk. If any one of us is actually enjoying what we do here, I feel sorry for that member of the staff. This is rough work, and we don't even get paid!

In all seriousness though, we have enough unofficial in-game agents of IMMAREPORTURASSNAO (see: statement about ULGG) without having a pile of official people handing out warnings and bans directly. It's an idea that could work in a lot of games, but I don't think it's right for Guild Wars. Hundreds of thousands of players (I refuse to believe that 3 million game copies sold = >1 million individual players, given the facts that so many accounts are banned and so many people have multiple accounts) in so many different locations at once... It simply wouldn't be feasible to have a hired staff to watch over them all, and having a volunteer crew could (and probably would) get really messy, really fast.

I feel like I just reiterated what others have said... Oh well.

ok, basic concept aside this would be hilalirous

You don't need to add a bobby to every city, there are NPC guards already there! Lionguards in LA, Imperial Guards in Cantha, and Sunspear Guards in Istan!

What if, (assuming Anet finds nothing better to do before or after GW:EN) they instuited the guards as a police force?!
The guards could have a dragging animation or an attack that would either kill the offender (by an admin /slay {thereby muting him until he rezones}) or drag him into an adjacent zone (banishment by popular vote!).
And if the offender tries to run from the guards, they could have a chase around towns!

How increiably amazing would that be? Talk about adding more life to towns!

The spammer is already spamming. The others use whispers and therefore do not contribute to the spam. There is no spam war. Please learn to read.

Is there a reason you insist on using such a rude torn in your replies? I can read all too well! If your talking about whispering someone until they stop then fine, I accept its not going to infringe on the chat channels. And thats your choice.

But that puts yourself and others at risk of being banned for harrassment if your continually whisper someone and they feel threatened. There is nothing to stop that individual from screen capping the whispers and pointing the finger at one or more people.

But its still using aggressive techniques against abuse. We shouldnt incourage that. We shouldnt have to use such methods or put ourselves at riskk, to weird out spammers. All it would take is a persistant or occassional mod presence in towns to make people realise their being watched.

I really dont think its too much to ask the occassional Anet mod to pop into a city now and again, and just watch the goings on. I wouldnt ask them to be there all day, and to detract from their jobs or their lives.

But they can stick their heads in now and again, and make examples of people.