A Suggestion to cut down on complaints, in game rule breakers, and exploits.

Countless times I have tried to report people using the inappropriate channels to trade or otherwise "spam", report people using bots, selling game gold, or cursing out a newer player just because he/she wants to learn how to play the game. In Order to cut down on so many complaints from so many players, newer and more advanced players alike, why not employ, or promote regular players, to a higher status of something such as a Game Guide, Game Sage, Game Guardians, whatever you wish to call them. They are in most Massive Online Multiplayer Game titles. Their purpose is to answer complicated questions, help newer player with a quick answer to a question, and help the community. For the most part however, to deal with the in game rule breakers. They have the ability to ban accounts for the appropriate reasons, such as people spamming, botting, or just being plain rude towards other players for no valid reason (no i dont speak of a little joke here or there, im talking about the full blown agruements we all have seen at least once in a local chat channel). My question to Guild Wars is why not consider putting this into effect to cut down on the complaints you get from players daily. Have someone in the game to take the complaints from players immediatly and deal with them quick and accordingly. Have a separate chat channel anyone can talk in to, no matter what town, district, or game thier in (Prophecies, Nightfall, Factions), to imedeatly gain the attension of in game guide to assist them when they have a moment. I get very tired of reporting the same players, getting the same automated messages where nothing is accomplished and that same player still plays the game in inapropraite ways, and if something is done, its not till well over a few days later. And if employing someone new is out of the question, give a regular and respected player this ability, and to catch that players eye, add a small token of appreciation such as in game gold, a unique weapon, or unique looking armor so as he/she can easily be identified by the other players. I have discussed this idea with my fellow players and they all believe this idea would be beneficial to the Guild Wars World and Community. I would appreciate any feedback from anyone else on this forum who believes this would be a good idea to have added to the game.

first of all paragraphs are your friends lol that is one serious wall of text O.o and second /signed with some rules, one there should be some ranks for these guides to prevent abuse,

the lowest rank would be the ones that can point out bad players but all in all they are just there to answer questions. they would have an aura to to allow players to see who they are and when you hit f10 there would be a list of available ones for you to pm. there would be a ton of these guys around, but they would be players that have played for a while and know what they are doing and are willing to give up time to answer questions.

the second rank would be people that can suspend accounts and flag people for banning. they could also mute players in chats and do all sorts of that kind of thing, there would be much less of these guys and it would be much harder to get into this spot so as to make sure this isnt abused. these guys can also remove the rank 1 guys from their position if they abuse their power.

the third rank is the most powerful these guys can ban people suspend people mute w/e and just in general be game mods. however this is the hardest spot to get and the one that is watched the closest. there would be very few of these guys and they can remove rank 2 guys and rank 1 guys from their posts.

with that we could get some help with the game management with less chance of abuse, prolly to work your way up to rank 3 you have to be rank 1 for a while then rank 2 and show your merit.

Yea I noticed that after i had posted, but I had other things troubling me, such as i posted this threadt 3 times lol.

But on topic again, I agree with your suggestions for ranks, but at the same time I still say to save Guild Wars profits you know all corpoations arent willing to part with, use players for this job.

Give each title some sort of insentive as I said earlier, a unique armor set, in game gold, a one of a kind mini pet that they cannot trade, etc. Something to interest the players into taking up this position.

You mean like GM's in WoW?? lol those are useless and abuse their power all the time.

I think they should put in a runescape like report system. A visible report button put somewhere where it can't be clicked accidentaly. Then everytime you report something it takes a screenshot of the chat window and a records chat for 30 seconds afterwards. That way they can automatically know the character names of the people breaking the rules.

wow, Darkhell, that is a remarkably simple solution to many problems that many people have spent much time debating...

wonder why they don't do something like that....? i bet the answer is simple too...

Probably because they can't afford to pay people to look through it. It's not in their budget since they don't have monthly fees.

Instead, I believe, they use automated programs that detects patterns in chat, builds, etc. and sends a flag when such trends are detected.

Runescape has a great report system and a great GM system (those are the only great things about it). I wouldnt mind helping newbies out...more then i already do, and i'd love to be able to mute those all-chat spamming assholes (excuse my language). I'd do this for no benefit...well...maybe a little purple aura to match my armor maybe?


/signed

Oh and those who abuse their power could kiss their account good-bye...maybe I.P. ban 'em?

The idea sounds great, and is one I have heard numerous times. There are, however, too many variables which is why ANet probably will never implement something like that.

Coming from someone in a position of leadership, delegation is a crucial aspect of smooth operation. Indiscriminate delegation, however, is very dangerous. Ideally, there should be reputable, well-known players that would seem to fit the mold for these positions. But from an organizational standpoint, there is no accountability. Suppose someone worked very hard to get themselves in a position of such power. This could be a very honest person; but if they enforce a judgment on someone mistakenly, there would be a lot of issues. The judged would be very upset, and most likely pass out accusations of power abuse. The judge would then come under scrutiny, even though he only did what he thought was right. ANet would get blamed, even though the enforcing party has no official ties to ANet, and therefore ANet should not be held responsible. Yet since they oversee the game, all things in the game they must be held accountable for. Are you starting to see the picture? No organization can afford to delegate to people they cannot directly hold accountable AND claim responsibility for. The variables have the potential to be very detrimental, and an organization will not take that risk. Notice that For-Profit organizations rarely if ever accept volunteers, precisely for this reason. It sounds financially ideal, but the accountability issues are too dangerous.

Your ideas, and all the subsequent ideas listed here, are great; they will just never be accepted. Sorry =/

You have a very valid point, but for every problem there is a solution.

So banning account may be a bit to harsh in some cases which can cause issues in the community, therefore the volunteer "GM's" we will call them, should ONLY have minor abilities but at the same time remain helpful to others. Such as muting spammers or chat abusers.

Now for the harsher punishments, there are a few things that could be done. One is hire a few people to moniter the game, the abuse of power wont really be an issue if its actually someones source of employment.

Another idea is due to the volunteer GM's, complaints should be reduced significantly. Less players emailing support for people being incredibly rude, inapropriate, or trading in the local channel, etc. So take some of those same employees and use them in the game as the high ranked GM's with the ability to ban, solve glitches, shut down bots, etc.

This is the last of the solutions i brain stormed which i actually perfer to the others. Keep the players as the low ranking GM's. Its still a great idea to have these people around to help and have the ability to mute chat abusers. As said earlier in this thread though, give them a button which will imediately access to a screen shot system, or a recorder, or basically something that will right away capture proof of the offense. This button also linked directly to the Guild Wars support and should always be dealt with as soon as possible. Guild Wars staff themselves look over it and decide what the proper punishment is and carries it out.

This way they have to hire no new staff because the players looking over the community themselves. They use and already created support line, all they do is deal with GM reports before any others, AND there is no abuse of power because Guild Wars staff looks over the proof themselves and decides if any harsh punishment should be carried out.