Control the lobbies

[Dutch Vanya]

Grey, with all due respect, I've seen moderators sit by and do nothing while players and teams either troll or violate the rules. I've also known CAs who quit because they have no real power. They have to sit there, be nice, and have no recompense as players tear into them. If their powers are less than that of a regular player then there is something seriously wrong. Heck, mall cops have more power than they do if someone misbehaves. All CAs can do is put on a happy face, file a CA report, then walk away leaving the offender to continue their abuse.

What is the point of CAs/Mods if a kick is implemented? Simple, to handle situations which requires more than a simple kick. Kicks can only solve a problem for the moment but what if an offender takes it beyond that and either stalks or trolls people numerous times? That is when a CA steps in with a match ban, preventing them from returning to the same match. Or when a CA mod steps in and just bans them from the game.

The argument that they have no reason for existing if a kick is added is flawed. In fact for the last year kick ability is probably the #1 request in game that I've run across. CAs can't be everywhere, they can't police all the lobbies. Heck they aren't even getting paid to take the level of abuse they take from the community.

Muse needs to say enough is enough and add the feature already. At one time I agreed, it would be probably abused/etc. But after a year of putting up with these people...the price of that abuse has come at the price of losing a lot of good players who just want to enjoy the game, not be trolled.

Someone make a kicking and blocking simulator for gilder. That seems like the perfect game for him.

[obliviondoll]

As some of you know already, I'm a new player, but I'm enjoying the game and the community.

That said, filter my impressions through the understanding that I haven't been around as long as the veterans, and haven't seen everything that some of you guys have been through.

I haven't seen enough abusive or problematic players to think a change is even remotely in order. I've been in a few non-novice lobbies as well as plenty of novice ones, and there has only been one player who I've felt was a problem for the game. One bad encounter in about 5 hours of time in battle and more than 30 hours signed into the game and following chat logs.

That one encounter was a person who, for some reason, took offense to me advising another new person about his role as an Engineer. He had asked a question, and I was responding with the best answer I could give. I'm only a level 2 Engineer, but nobody else was higher, and I've got a few hours under my belt already, while this was the aftermath of the new guy's first attempt in the role. I was called an offensive name and asked to be quiet in an impolite manner, but I simply continued my explanation without letting it upset me.

When the verbal insult was ignored, the player - who happened to be a Captain - changed the name of his ship to something about my mother. I laughed, and complimented him on an interesting ship name. His shipmates swapped to other ships and one even moved to the spectator position instead of fighting alongside him. His team still beat the team I was on, and I said "gg well played" because both he and the opposing crew performed well. He said a few insulting things in text chat, no longer bothering with voice, but nobody acknowledged anything he said. In the next match, he had a crew again, people who joined presumably without knowing or questioning what was going on. The fight itself was amazing, neck-and-neck, with both teams hovering at 2 kills for a while before we finally got a kill, and both our ships were vulnerable enough to go down before we could repair, taking them to a 4-3 lead. Our team eventually won out, but it was REALLY close. After-match text chat was full of "SO close!" "GG" "THAT. WAS. AWESOME!" "G ****in' G!" Everyone was pumped, but two typists were conspicuously silent right up until my "nicely played everyone! That was intense!" was followed immediately by "**** off" from you-know-who.

After that match, someone said "that [******] guy's a downer, I'm switching rooms" and everyone else quit the lobby within seconds.

If he keeps playing with that attitude, he'll keep getting the same reactions until he realises the lack of counter-rage is boring. If he gets any worse, there will be CA reports about him - if there haven't been already. I won't say that a vote-kick option can't work, but I think the potential for abuse far outweighs the (lack of) need for these tools in such an open and friendly community.

[GreyTea]

Someone make a kicking and blocking simulator for gilder. That seems like the perfect game for him.

He is well entitled to his opinion, and justified in the request, am pretty sure you were joking but had to say regardless.

In response, i know we are looking at the CA role and have increased number of mods in game now, perhaps making it more visual will help, we have a skype group with a large number of CA/Mods and devs in so we can respond quicker, obviously might not be quick enough. I have asked the question if we can do more, and tweak things see what we can do. obviously there are other points of concern and focus right now in development, But this has been an issue for a while, i can not promise anything perhaps more mods well make a difference,

[Milevan Faent]

Someone make a kicking and blocking simulator for gilder. That seems like the perfect game for him.

He is well entitled to his opinion, and justified in the request, am pretty sure you were joking but had to say regardless.

In response, i know we are looking at the CA role and have increased number of mods in game now, perhaps making it more visual will help, we have a skype group with a large number of CA/Mods and devs in so we can respond quicker, obviously might not be quick enough. I have asked the question if we can do more, and tweak things see what we can do. obviously there are other points of concern and focus right now in development, But this has been an issue for a while, i can not promise anything perhaps more mods well make a difference,

The best way to make a difference is to make it easier to get in touch with mods/CAs. Really that's all we need, though more of them is certainly not out of the question either.

[Nietzsche's Mustache]

First thing to note: I am obviously not a common forum poster. However, I am sick and tired of having games ruined by that one guy that doesn't respond. It's one thing if someone is chasing an achievement or doesn't agree with a captain on how to run a certain build. I get that, I don't want to punish that kind of independent thinking. However, the kind of situations we're dealing with are not those in which people disagree, and in my experience the people who use chat abusively are also not the single biggest issue, especially when I can simply mute the people that annoy me. It's those situations in which they simply don't respond at all. How will a CA fix that? How will a mod fix that?

For starters, I'd love to have access to CA's more quickly. I want to be able to type in global "is a CA handy?" and get immediate response. However, at 12:00am Pacific time, that's not the case. And even then, what can a CA do when someone does not respond to any communication AT ALL.

In all seriousness, this is the single most common problem I've seen: people don't respond, and it's the single most prominent reason why matches don't start faster. Matching people by skill level won't make it faster because, as we're all aware, this community is celebrated for the way it embraces new players mixing with old players and having everyone co-learn. It's when people are not communicating or they are fighting at each others throats while refusing to just go somewhere else that things go awry (more commonly, the former).

This is why I make these two suggestions, each of which to be necessary to the other and something derived from democracy, which even pirate ships organized under:

1: A vote kick

It's simple, it's called on by a captain, but no one votes until another captain (maybe two, or all) approve. Then, crew members on the aforementioned boat (or perhaps the whole team's crewmembers) will vote for the kick. Before all of that can happen though, a specific charge must be associated with the kick. "unresponsiveness" "trolling" "abusive language" "uncooperative" for example. But these charges have to be set in stone and described similarly to the report system as it exists now.

2: Impeachment

Just like a vote-kick, but for the captains. A crewman calls a vote, 2/3 or 3/4 of crew members approve (maybe just 1 half, even), then 1 or 2 captain approves (depends upon lobby size, I imagine. I can see 1 captain approval going awry in a 3v3 or 4v4). This is meant for that one guy that joins and grabs a captain seat, insists everyone ready up but has not addressed his crew and has brought a bunk loadout. It might occasionally apply to the guy chasing the harpoon achievement, but I'll admit that when I was chasing "Destroy 100 parts on a harpooned ship", I and my crews were frustrated and I'm not convinced I blame anyone who would have wanted to impeach me in lobby for it. I was lucky though, because there were a lot of people who were on board to knock that sucker out with me and I was grateful for it. 

I believe it was the economist Milton Friedman who argued against systems that depend upon "the right man being in charge". This is the problem with the CA/Mod system. At the same time, I think that opinions voice against vote kick functions are well founded. I think the solution is to develop a system in which a kick will take actual effort and conviction to achieve, but only requires those members of a lobby to make happen. I see no reason to believe that CA's and Mod's are solely capable of handling the problems of the community, but I do want to include them, even if only in some figure-head type of capacity.

[GreyTea]

@Nietzsche's Mustache

Unresponsive players will get kicked under your system, Correct? So what if a player does not speak English? They will not respond to voice or text because they do not understand and they are just waiting for the game to start, Maybe just put some music on chill out wait patiently and oh they get kicked, Because of a language barrier, Now we have CA's from around the world who speak a multitude of language's who could of helped that situation and the person who spent the same money as everyone else would be allowed to play normally, But even in game as long as they are not afk and breaking any rules they do not deserve to be removed, because they do not want to communicate, There are plenty of people who play this game who do not understand English, Or might have dyslexia or hearing problems, communication is a factor in game to winning yes but people who do not communicate should be removed i disagree with.

[CheeseAlmighty]

@Grey T

I do not understand how language could be a problem in the lobbies, concerning set-up at least.

Let's say we have a non-english speaker in the crew. We tell him, "X, be engineer". Even if he can't understand English, "engineer" is a term in the game, that is commonly seen and should be easily recognizable.

Or let's say he's a gunner and we want him to bring some lesmok. We'd tell him, "X, bring lesmok please.". Lesmok is a technical term that he sees the his customization menu, he doesn't need to speak English the understand any of this.

Third scenario, we want this X gunner to use gatling on front. If we say, "X, use gatling." and using V, we say "Man the front guns." he should be able to understand. Because it says on the gun, gatling. Maybe he doesn't want to use the gun, because it's not really enjoyable for him. Well, that doesn't give him the right of taking away the fun from 3 other players on the ship, forcing them to compensate for him.

So in the end if he doesn't comply, I am sorry, but I would seek malicious intent.

[Hillerton [PC]]

I have to agree with Cheese here and take it even further. If someone don't speak English and thus can not understand his/her crew mates this can destroy the match for the other three people on that ship. So by that logic it is better to allow that one guy who cannot/will not work with the team a free pass and thus award damaging behavior. This does feel very wrong as those three that did want to work their best to win will be punished by it.

This game is so teamwork focused so I do actually believe that not being able or willing to communicate can and should be allowed to lead to that player being removed from that match. After all it is one persons enjoyment over three others. Ofc if they all just want to go without saying a word and just play that is fine and then no one will ever know if any one of them are their.

(again don't assume for everyone in casual lobbies just wanting to jump in to the game, some ppl still have tactics and specific things that needs doing that requires teamwork. Most likely they will also win the match in a pub)

[Dutch Vanya]

You guys can only enjoy a game if it is 100% meticulously organized?  I think you're going way too far, as you are basically saying non-english speaking players who don't comply may not play the game they purchased.

[Milevan Faent]

You guys can only enjoy a game if it is 100% meticulously organized?  I think you're going way too far, as you are basically saying non-english speaking players who don't comply may not play the game they purchased.

I actually agree with them a little. If you are trying to play even a little seriously, if you can't communicate with a member of your team, you basically can't play at all in any match that isn't all or mostly newbies. I have experienced this problem myself, with unresponsive players that then got on guns they shouldn't have, and basically made us lose the match by not listening or responding. If it's a matter of they literally couldn't due to a language barrier, that wouldn't remove the fact they became a problem player due to that language barrier, and should have been with people they CAN communicate with, if nothing else. If a player could not communicate with me due to a language barrier, and couldn't even understand basic keywords like Lesmok, not gunner, or other very critical yet simple things, then I wouldn't want them on my ship. As this is an English-Speaking (mostly) Team-Based (very heavily) game requiring at least decent if not high levels of coordination, even a single player not coordinating can basically kill the enjoyment for the OTHER players in that match. If I had to choose between ruining the game for that one player, or for the 15 other players in that lobby... well, that's a no brainer. Good bye to the one unresponsive player, language barrier or not.

[obliviondoll]

If you consider a publc lobby to be "serious" play, then in my opinion, you're doing it wrong. You're welcome to play how you like, of course, but so is everyone else in the lobby with you. If you NEED a communicative crew in order to have fun, make sure you bring friends. If you need communicative captains on your team, make sure you form a multi-ship party instead of just bringing your own ship.

If you're in a public lobby and you're a Captain, by all means say "Excuse me, Buffy McEngineer, that buff hammer doesn't do much for this ship's loadout, could you replace that and the wrench with a spanner/mallet combo please?". You should expect that sometimes, you'll get "I'm going for a buff parts achievement" as a response and have to deal with it if they're not willing (or able) to swap to a different ship.

I'm usually willing to accomodate my Captain when I join their ship, but if they're an obviously drunk Squid pilot, and they're insisting that I hold fire with a Flak turret until we're at point-blank range, I'm going to be asking them to please give me a Carronade or Flamer if they expect me to listen to that "advice". And no, being a level 8 Pilot doesn't exempt you from the possibility of being wrong, even when the Gunner correcting you is only level 2.

I prefer it when I get people I can talk with, but I don't consider it necessary because I play for fun, and winning is just an added bonus. I like that I'm getting better at winning matches, and I'm a little disappointed when it feels like a better-organised crew or a more communicative friendly Captain could have tipped the balance. I've seen a ship where only the Captain brought a fire extinuisher, and I - as Gunner - was left to control fires with Heatsink ammo where possible because I knew there was never any help coming.

[Milevan Faent]

If you consider a publc lobby to be "serious" play, then in my opinion, you're doing it wrong. You're welcome to play how you like, of course, but so is everyone else in the lobby with you. If you NEED a communicative crew in order to have fun, make sure you bring friends. If you need communicative captains on your team, make sure you form a multi-ship party instead of just bringing your own ship.

If you're in a public lobby and you're a Captain, by all means say "Excuse me, Buffy McEngineer, that buff hammer doesn't do much for this ship's loadout, could you replace that and the wrench with a spanner/mallet combo please?". You should expect that sometimes, you'll get "I'm going for a buff parts achievement" as a response and have to deal with it if they're not willing (or able) to swap to a different ship.

I'm usually willing to accomodate my Captain when I join their ship, but if they're an obviously drunk Squid pilot, and they're insisting that I hold fire with a Flak turret until we're at point-blank range, I'm going to be asking them to please give me a Carronade or Flamer if they expect me to listen to that "advice". And no, being a level 8 Pilot doesn't exempt you from the possibility of being wrong, even when the Gunner correcting you is only level 2.

I prefer it when I get people I can talk with, but I don't consider it necessary because I play for fun, and winning is just an added bonus. I like that I'm getting better at winning matches, and I'm a little disappointed when it feels like a better-organised crew or a more communicative friendly Captain could have tipped the balance. I've seen a ship where only the Captain brought a fire extinuisher, and I - as Gunner - was left to control fires with Heatsink ammo where possible because I knew there was never any help coming.

... Does this game have anything BUT public lobbies? If you are referring to the passworded things, that's not really an option 99% of the time in this game. Basically, until we have matchmaking, we ONLY have public matches, with absolutely random teams, who may or may not be even close in skill level.

That said, it's not like I'm even talking about that. The problem I have is when I get into a match, and find one person who doesn't listen to a thing I say, regardless of what it's about. I ask them to bring Spyglass, and not its useless alternative, and they ignore me, which is a pretty big reduction in the capabilities of the ship no matter how you look at it. I ask them to change their engie tools to something that benefits the team more, and if they ignore that, it's another huge reduction to the ship. If they prove to be good enough to make up for a crappy loadout, then I can at least be satisfied with that, but if they then ON TOP OF THAT, completely ignore what I ask of them during the match, and do actions which more or less mean we lose because we can't do anything? Then they're 100% interfering with my enjoyment of the game.

If someone is going for an achievement, fine. I'll comment on how stupid I personally think the achievement system in this game is maybe, but I'll let them go for it. But if they don't even tell me that, then I'll have to assume it's just another unresponsive player like the dozens I've encountered, and if they don't prove their worth in the match, odds are I'll either leave that lobby, or ask them to leave. I have fun when I'm winning, or in close matches. If I end up in one-sided defeats, the game gets boring rather fast. No one likes getting stomped. If I can directly point at a single unresponsive player as the reason we got stomped, then I'd like to see them kicked from my ship, rather than have to keep dealing with that kind of shit.

[Hoja Lateralus]

If you consider a publc lobby to be "serious" play, then in my opinion, you're doing it wrong

If you consider public lobby to be place with only players who want to play "non-competetive" and don't care about losing or winning and fun at all - you're doing it wrong, sir. Many players want to be the very best (like no one ever was ) and public lobbies are the place where they can train themselves. Why do you see so many metamidions in pubs? Because with the random crew you don't have to worry - everyone can shoot gatling and almost everyone know (or will be explained shortly) how mortar should be shot.

If you NEED a communicative crew in order to have fun, make sure you bring friends. If you need communicative captains on your team, make sure you form a multi-ship party instead of just bringing your own ship.

It is SOME solution, I'll give you that. That's why we need better clan system. Luckily I'm in a clan with almost 100 members so I usually can find a team to play with.

If someone is going for an achievement, fine. I'll comment on how stupid I personally think the achievement system in this game is maybe, but I'll let them go for it. But if they don't even tell me that, then I'll have to assume it's just another unresponsive player like the dozens I've encountered, and if they don't prove their worth in the match, odds are I'll either leave that lobby, or ask them to leave.

This. Very much.

My two cents - the game is fun when everyone is doing their best and cooperating. The game is not fun when (even on enemy team) there's some low-lvl captain who rushes alone, not caring how many ships he encouters or where his ally is and does it with double-mortar pyramidion (sic!). As someone said - this game requires a lot of communication and cooperation - that's how it's made and that's why we love it so much.
Maybe we can make a system of commends for captain which would allow him to point a specific player and give him some order. Such pre-made communicates can be translated (at least the text) and therefore non-english speakers could understand them. It would require some UI work but it's doable (but maybe the effect is not worth the work).

[obliviondoll]

If you consider public lobby to be place with only players who want to play "non-competetive" and don't care about losing or winning and fun at all - you're doing it wrong, sir. Many players want to be the very best (like no one ever was ) and public lobbies are the place where they can train themselves. Why do you see so many metamidions in pubs? Because with the random crew you don't have to worry - everyone can shoot gatling and almost everyone know (or will be explained shortly) how mortar should be shot.

At no point did I say that you CAN'T play competitively in a public lobby. I said that if you're not bringing your own crew (and preferably also teammate/s) that you should EXPECT your ship to perform competitively every time. You SHOULD expect that occasionally you'll get an uncommunicative problem crew member, or someone who won't listen to your instructions. You'll sometimes have to put up with someone who doesn't care that the achievement system is ridiculous in your opinion and wants that precious little picture anyway. And sometimes, your Gunner won't be able to hit the broadside of a barn even if you park inside it.

It's perfectly fair to create a lobby with scramble turned off, and stack all your friends on your team, then play with them and no matter who joins, you know you'll be playing with teammates and crewmates you trust. If you don't have people you trust, then you should consider making more friends in-game. It's pretty easy to go into the game with a casual mindset for a bit, NOT worry so much because you know you're going to meet some idiots, and find people who communicate, and who get along with you. If you're in a clan, just check the clan list, see if anyone there is interested in crewing with you. If not, consider joining one - as mentioned, clan tools aren't the best, but they help more than the nothing you get without one.

As for the comments system, giving the person on the helm an extra slot for orders (they only use ASD right now, so a W slot is available) would be great. "Select crew member" and have it so the game says "YOU THERE!" before the order, and makes the text a private message to that player.

That way, they hear a specific "Listen up" type notification before the command, and they get a private message pop-up with an auto-translated instruction for what they should be doing.

[Claxus]

I love that idea. What I want most is a specific weapon command. Something like when you hit V > A, you could press a number key to choose the corresponding weapon on the loadouts, and maybe the gun's icon would highlight. There's been a lot of times where I really want someone to get ready on a specific weapon, and if it highlighted like that it'd really do the trick.

If we had that, and a way to communicate commands to a certain crew member (your suggestion), I think it'd go miles in helping team synergy in public matches. Make the crew text chat more noticeable visually and audibly, and that's all you really need.