The Mana World Forums

MasterKenobi wrote:I would like to add my thoughts too this public discussion.

It is my opinion that GM's should NOT get involved in player relationships.

Simple name calling, crude comments, and the like can easily be managed on a player level. The developers have implemented an "ignore" function for this purpose. A player should never come to the courthouse with the complaint "he called me this" or "she said that about me". I have always encouraged players to handle these type of issues on their own, and will continue to do so.

It is also my opinion players should not come to the courthouse with complaints of spamming/begging etc. Unless of course it is causing problems with actual game play, such as lag etc. This can be handled in game. First by using the "ignore" function, but also by contacting a GM in game and have them witness the spamming/begging.

The bottom line for me, is the community should(in theory) be able to moderate itself for the most part. You act like an ass and you get treated in kind, either by being ignored or by rejection. You are kind, and you are treated for the most part with kindness. I realize this will not always be the case and there are exceptions, but a vast majority of the time it works.

Just a few quick thoughts for you to ponder. I will add more later if need be.

MK

We held a discussion in Hurnscald today to discuss this post by Masterkenobi. More than a handful of people participated in the discussion. It was done on the fly, so no formal decisions were made, but a few suggestions:

One dealt with player "Arbitrators" that are chosen somehow by the players, to work in cooperation with GMs to settle player disputes when ignore does not seem to offer a solution to the problem. Katze and verelwar did voice some intelligent opposition to the idea.

As far as the idea got, a panel of three would be chosen, two by players, and one by the GMs. The two players would be elected for a 3 month term before seeking to renew their terms, voted on in the "Player talk" forum. In most cases of player conflict abuse where players that can't get along and ignore has somehow either not been used or failed in some way, the players could appeal to the arbitration panel to help the players find some way to resolve the issue.

While I supported an idea that certain problem players could be "mass ignored" (ignored by as many players that agreed with the ignore) for a period of time, Katze felt this might be too harsh and was "mobbing" against problem players. I do agree Katze that this could be a problem as well. I hope that we can generate more input on this style of ostracism and how it could work and/or if there are better ways.

I also supported the idea that the panel work with the players that are in conflict with each other to coming to some sort of agreement so their conflict could end. I feel this would be a better solution than a GM ban threat, which would only leave sore feelings and a possible return of the problem. This idea wasn't discussed deeply during this meeting.

Verelwar felt that the arbitration system, as it is offered above, may have some serious flaws, especially with voting "friends" in to moderate. The addition of a GM on the panel was my hope that this would balance out any problem like this.

Another idea offered by Prsm was that guild leaders, elected arbitrators and gms all sit in panel on finding a solution. This was offered at one point in the discussion, but we did not detail very far on this idea.

A last thought was the arbitrators would use a map like "botcheck" to meet and handle problems between players there to avoid people walking in on the resolution meeting.

While this idea is still being thought about, I hope that we can either deepen this idea or find some other viable solution to how players can moderate problems within the community.

Player, GM and Developer thoughts on this matter are more than encouraged.

Thank you,

Wombat

I enjoyed the wholde discussion with wombat on this matter today. Many ideas were bantered about
but the idea of a group of arbitrators seemed to make the most sense!

When conflict can not be resolved quickly, why not have an "odd number" of arbitrators hear all relevant details and vote accordingly.

Once again this would not be a perfect system! no system is ever perfect, but it would allow for a second line of defense against conflict resolution.

MK suggested that we can govern ourselves and this would be one step closer to doing so.

Looking forward to everyones thoughts on this!

Prsm

I'm not sure of this as a way of moderation... it just adds more complexity without a clear advantage (democracy is not hard to manipulate).

I really think that there should be no way to BAN someone for just being a jerk on somebody else. MK was referring to using the ignore feature, and rejecting these persons socially, instead of banning. I don't think that the situation would be any better, even with players involved, if the 6 banning rules are still the same. Current moderators have done no more than applying the rules, I don't think it's a matter of who's moderating, but when do we want moderation.

However, the idea you describe would be a very cool one for a role-playing democracy in the game, and the elected ones could perhaps give some use to the prison (this kind of punishment might be only a short hard-coded amount of time, just a few minutes, not a big deal, and don't allow for it to be repeated on the same person for a delay of time). To avoid multiple accounts there should be a minimum level required to be able to vote. Moderators should not intervene on the elected "king" decisions and after some time (a month?) a new king should be elected, and people would have to choose wisely. Perhaps the king could name a few soldiers (no more than maybe 5) that are granted the ability to PvP.
Perhaps the king's power is only effective inside of cities and near maps.. so that people can still hide from the "law".

Just as an idea (probably not doable).

In my opinion there are quite a few problems with this idea of arbitrators:

1)I don't like the idea of adding another layer of bureaucracy. This is a game after all, and the more "politics" gets involved the less fun the game becomes.
2)The idea of "voting" for arbitrators would be nothing more than a popularity contest. You could not guarantee any type of impartiality in conflict resolution without creating your own structure of rules to follow. Then, how do you hold arbitrators accountable?
3)On the subject of accountability, how do the arbitrators plan to enforce their decision should the subjects decide not to abide by the arbitrators decision?

I could go on but I just wanted to point out where I believe this is headed. It's almost as if we would have separate GM's(arbitrators) for player disputes. Only these GM's would be decided on by the community and have no real power. This is not the answer in my opinion. When I say the community can govern itself, I am referring to instances of spamming/begging/name calling etc. Things that can easily be solved with the "ignore" function and individual responsibility. It's an effort to remove a small layer of bureaucracy, and make the game more self regulating and hopefully more fun.

I believe the current system is working on the most part, it just needs a little more tweaking. This particular instance has brought to light a flaw in the rules. Either the rule needs to be changed or how we enforce the rule needs to be changed. It is my opinion the way the rule is enforced is at issue here and needs an adjustment on the GM's part.

That being said, we GM's are accountable for our actions. Players are welcome to review GM decisions at their discretion. The Developers have worked hard to create a GM log that is publicly available. Although players are not privy to our private discussion(nor should you be ;P)we always post the results of our discussions when appropriate. It is my opinion, players will not always like our decisions but they should always understand them.

That's enough for now, I can add to this discussion later if need be.

MK

MasterKenobi wrote:I would like to add my thoughts too this public discussion.

It is my opinion that GM's should NOT get involved in player relationships.

This is also my opinion. But I there has to be distinguished between real player relationships, with which I mean relationships between two equal players or two equal groups of players, and some troll that annoys or tries to annoy everybody. A third "group" would be individuals who behave in a certain way a group doesn't like.


My suggestions as to how to handle these different cases:


Relationships between two (or more) equal players/groups of players:

The player/groups can and should handle this themselves. There is no need for any moderation from a GM or even a punishment. The ignore function can be used if wanted.


Trolls that annoy or try to annoy a certain group, an individual player or just everybody, without any real player relationships:

This then should be and needs to be handled by a Game Master since those people won't listen to anything a normal players says. Further it is necessary to avoid "mobbing". The ignore function can be used, but is (imo) not a sufficient solution for the actual problem (mobbing instead of changing something). A punishment is necessary if warnings didn't help.


Individuals behaving in a manner a group does not like - personal relationships:

This can be tried to be handled by the group itself but there is a risk of an ecalation of the situation which would lead to a "mobbing" kind of situation towards the individual player. Therefore an objective person such as a GM should moderate the whole situation. The ignore feature is not a good solution here if "mobbing" is to be avoided.
Punishments by the respective GM might be appropriate in some cases.



If we think of using "Arbitrators", they must not be from one of the concerned groups since they surely are biased and can't be objective. So one might come to the conclusion that arbitrators are unnecessary since we already have six Game Masters who at least should be (some of) the most objective persons in the game.


This is my opinion.
Thanks for your attention!

Regards,
Katze

Just to be clear, I'm not saying GM's should not be enforcing no spamming/begging/name calling etc. I think I covered that in another topic.

I'm suggesting that for the most part the ignore feature be used first. If it continues to be a problem try to contact a GM in game. The absolute last resort should be to report these things in the Courthouse. At this point the GM's will investigate. As part of the investigation our first questions should be: "did you try ignoring?" and "why didn't ignoring work?"

If the community decides to try and implement some kind of "group of arbitrators" in game, I of course have no objections. But I believe it should be separate from all GM involvement for reasons previously stated.

MK

I dont know guys about that idea. All I can report is its common there is no GM on line. In the end most everyone in the game trusts me and asks for help over matters. General things like OH NO I missed clicked and now so and so has my *some item*. Little things like that, but when you are new they are not little things at all. As always we all go on helping them as we can. Answering questions for them is out best way to help them I think.

Just for the record it took two devs to teach me how to trade so dont feel foolish anyone this has happened to. But I did lol.
sugarcorgit

for the record, i started the conversation with "if people can't follow 5 simple rules", what can we do!

we all doubted the idea would fly ........ but if your not part of the soultion ........

Players should stay away from moderation. And this has been explained already several times in years old threads.

Regards.

GM have nothing to deal with playrers relationship till those aren"t going in breakthrough in rules
evolve in RL and IG


Regards