The Mana World Forums

I just think, someone told me all that big deal is because someone got abused and we lost many players...
but we can loose players what cant agree with public chat logging too, so its double-edged blade... just thinking.

Avenn wrote:I just think, someone told me all that big deal is because someone got abused and we lost many players...
but we can loose players what cant agree with public chat logging too, so its double-edged blade... just thinking.

I find it hard to believe that someone would quit the game over this. Worse things happen and people keep playing.

I think it should be a TMWC discussion and decision. I voted yes. More features to improve the game socially is nice. I like MC's Idea although I'd like for our GM's to use there discretion as /freeze frame/ events can be taken way out of context as we all know. I would like a video logging feature personally and maybe a playback option on the client itself. It should not be difficult to add. If we push this aside and it becomes a problem later than it becomes our fault. If we can do this now than why not?

MC I'm glad you and me are on the same page about the nube quest. For me it is very boring and confusing. The quest needs more direction. The map is a bit huge and this can cause confusion for beginning players when there is not allot of direction. Even the guy that blocks your path should give you some kind of direction. All NPC's should point at your next objective IMO at the beginning of the game. Perhaps we could discuss this more in a new thread? Not sure if one has been made.

I was going to hold off on posting on this but I think I'll voice my opinion on the matter anyway.

I voted "yes" But I have both thoughts on the matter of how it can be a great thing or turn out badly.

Though these are the reasons why I voted yes.

Pros:

1) It would stop people from abusing each other in the general tab
2) People say people would start abusing in whispers...but whispers do not need to be tabbed on manaplus. There is a box in the settings that puts whispers in the general tab. (Though im not sure if this would make a difference it would depend on the recording system/client settings).
3) The logs wouldn't be read by people everyday and not everything would be read. If someone was to screenshot an abusive thing thats the *only* time it would be looked at and not the whole day but that specific time of the incident.

It might be a good idea to make a proposal to have a trial first to see how players adjust to the idea though.

regards,
Chicka

On side note I can admit I'm not big fan of this idea, because: TMW privacy policy recently has become bad/undefined/careless/ignorant. Some examples:

• Why I should report to Google when I register account in game? (Recaptcha thing is from google and definitely logs my IP, but I'm not warned data would be send to 3rd party).
• Some 3rd party CDN used. I have no idea what they store about me and what's their privacy policy. I'm not anyhow warned my data will be processed by 3rd party.
• TMW also lacks privacy policy. Nobody cares to explain what you store about me and how it could be used. This could look bad from legal point of view in many jurisdictions, btw.
• Passwords are sent as clear text. So if you login via public wi-fi you can expect your acount to get hacked.

IMO if someone really eager about helping new players to get in game, it could be better idea to implement in-band captcha, transferred in eAthena protocol together with answer (like XMPP does, etc). So client can do registration without visiting some external web sites. It shouldn't be hard to generate small picture with digits, send it as eA packet and receive client response as another eA packet. IIRC 4144 even had idea about it already. FYI, it's a well known fact for QAs that the more crap user have to do during registration, the more users would get annoyed and would abandon registration - that's where we come to lack of new players. Requirement to switch from game to some external web site and then struggle with some recaptcha and forms is not good at all (half ot time I can't type text recaptcha shows me, btw). Then it could be nice idea to do password hashing to prevent accounts thievery. These steps would at least keep those who already plays or in mood to play in game.

P.S. last but not least, looking on poll results, those "community members" who are behind of all this buzz can expect at least half of players to be hostile to them. For the mere fact their wellbeing requires to make game a bit closer to police state. And since privacy policy of TMW is already painful topic, such "improvements" are hardly welcome.

EDIT: I wanted this post to be a PM *facepalm*. Oh the irony I'd do that in this thread.

The public chat is by definition public, and as it was mentioned upper, everyone can record it. Even if TMW is a rpg, players are responsible of what they say in public, responsible regarding the law, just as they are regarding the game rules. This should be explicitely written in game's privacy policy and terms of service as it is all all public game servers and just as this forum holds our public words for years.
On the opposite, Guild channel are not public ones or left under the responsiblity of guild leaders. Guild bot should not be logged, and the guildspy and partyspy @ commands should be removed if they still exist.
I may add that @wgm should be directed to a kind of GM mailbox along with chat, thus a log, at least for GMs to be aware of the possible issues that occured during they were offline.
I cannot understand why some are against and even why the question is asked, because TMWC doesn't need our authorization.

Nard wrote:I cannot understand why some are against and even why the question is asked, because TMWC doesn't need our authorization.

Because if we do these things *without* asking, we get accused of not communicating. Of course, sometimes we get accused of that even when we do communicate ...

Over the past 3 months, I have become *painfully* aware of why, historically, development on TMW was done in secret and the players were only presented with an end result.

I had several major tasks ready to start at the beginning of September (magic rewrite, chat channels, ...), but I've hardly gotten anything done.

I'll ask this question again: privacy of what? What kind of super-top-secret international affairs CIA discussions do you have that make public chat logging such a massive problem? It's a public MMO game chat, if you have things that are truly secret, then you shouldn't be talking about it there in the first place. For everything else, chances are no one will ever read your conversations anyway as the logs will only be for abuse cases.

o11c wrote:

Nard wrote:I cannot understand why some are against and even why the question is asked, because TMWC doesn't need our authorization.

Because if we do these things *without* asking, we get accused of not communicating. Of course, sometimes we get accused of that even when we do communicate ...

This is something like a lot of people starting another flame war because they weren't asked vs. a few people moaning because they do not understand why they were asked.
You sure did the right thing o11c.

@Nard: It's not about authorization, it's about asking for other opinions before changing something people would totally dislike.
Somehow like testing new content before releasing it - and this is the best thing they can do.


I already voted "yes" before I read veryape's post because I saw the great benefits for GMs.
But now I can only point at below quote and add a "+1":

veryape wrote: 1. The ones who abuse the rules in public will learn fast to do it with whispers, effectively making the change worthless. Worse still, it would soon become impossible to lure them into talking about/advertising scams in public because they KNOW that what they say can come to the attention of a GM, rather than now when they could suspect a GM of being present while in hiding.

I voted yes...because abuse of any kind be it virtual or real is wrong. And having seen abuse perpetuated in TMW and the glaring absence of heroic players diving in to "manners" the culprit I'd say logging is the way to go.

Like "public" chat isn't already logged... Maybe you could be honest and reword the vote to read: "Should we use the logs we already collect from public chat to assist in determining player abuse?"

I will abstain as o11c will do as he wishes.

o11c wrote:

Nard wrote:I cannot understand why some are against and even why the question is asked, because TMWC doesn't need our authorization.

Because if we do these things *without* asking, we get accused of not communicating. Of course, sometimes we get accused of that even when we do communicate ...

As I see it, you are asking our advice on a minor point. Most of developers communicate quite well (dev/players meetings, monthly reports....) at least with players. The communication problem holds strategic decisions, mostly regarding the server development, rules interpretation... On this point there is an obvious lack of communication not only between players and developers and leading team, but between developers themselves (in which I include admins and GMs).

Cassy wrote:This is something like a lot of people starting another flame war because they weren't asked vs. a few people moaning because they do not understand why they were asked.
You sure did the right thing o11c.

@Nard: It's not about authorization, it's about asking for other opinions before changing something people would totally dislike.
Somehow like testing new content before releasing it - and this is the best thing they can do.

I am not going to start a flame war on this topic, my intention is only to point out the inconsistency of the opponents, and also of the rule. Also, debate is always a good thing, even on pointless topics, in that meaning o11c was right to ask for sure.

• First of all because public chat is already logged, if not by server administration, at least by some chat bots or just by players who enabled chat logging in official client, both never asked for any authorization, and don't need it anyway because the chat is public.
• Secondly because the question doesn't include "what should we be allowed to do with such a log?", and this question is the most important point.
• Third, the server is at the moment a private one, though opened to the public, and host/main administrator(s) can do what they want without telling us. And they already did in the past: example: the guild bot was logged and probably still is, though it should not be.
• Public chat is by definition public, and players should obey the rule whether a GM can read or not, or it is an implicit authorization for players to transgress it (at their own risk).

o11c wrote:

Nard wrote:I cannot understand why some are against and even why the question is asked, because TMWC doesn't need our authorization.

Because if we do these things *without* asking, we get accused of not communicating. Of course, sometimes we get accused of that even when we do communicate ...

As I see it, you are asking our advice on a minor point. Most of developers communicate quite well (dev/players meetings, monthly reports....) at least with players. The communication problem holds strategic decisions, mostly regarding the server development, rules interpretation... On this point there is an obvious lack of communication not only between players and developers and leading team, but between developers themselves (in which I include admins and GMs).

Cassy wrote:This is something like a lot of people starting another flame war because they weren't asked vs. a few people moaning because they do not understand why they were asked.
You sure did the right thing o11c.

@Nard: It's not about authorization, it's about asking for other opinions before changing something people would totally dislike.
Somehow like testing new content before releasing it - and this is the best thing they can do.

I am not going to start a flame war on this topic, my intention is only to point out the inconsistency of the opponents, and also of the rule. Also, debate is always a good thing, even on pointless topics, in that meaning o11c was right to ask for sure.

• First of all because public chat is already logged, if not by server administration, at least by some chat bots or just by players who enabled chat logging in official client, both never asked for any authorization, and don't need it anyway because the chat is public.
• Secondly because the question doesn't include "what should we be allowed to do with such a log?", and this question is the most important point. If only abuse reports verification, it should be appreciated by GMs, then there is no potential privacy violation.
• Third, the server is at the moment a private one, though opened to the public, and host/main administrator(s) can do what they want without telling us. And they already did in the past: example: the guild bot was logged and probably still is, though it should not be.
• Public chat is by definition public, and players should obey the rule whether a GM can read or not, or it is an implicit authorization for players to transgress it (at their own risk).

Abstention for these reasons.

@Nard: Sorry, I still don't really understand why you go for lack of communication in a thread that is about communication... but okay, in another line you mention that it was right to ask for sure, so I guess in the end we're on the same side

I don't see this as a minor point btw.
You are right that chat logging is also possible and most likely done, but not globally, which is a big difference, and it's important to ask/tell this players officially.

Nard wrote:Secondly because the question doesn't include "what should we be allowed to do with such a log?", and this question is the most important point.

Totally agree.

Nard wrote:Public chat is by definition public, and players should obey the rule whether a GM can read or not, or it is an implicit authorization for players to transgress it (at their own risk).

Also agree with this as this is a good point.
Though it seems that some players don't know and/or don't like that.
This again makes me not sure if I should vote yes or no (still having veryape's post in mind)...