I was thinking how good it will be if you get employees to act as cops in game, to regulate player behavior and game play in real time. I'm talking about the little things as spamming advertisement messages in regular chat , picking on and annoying other players and using bad language. The big stuff too, as exploiting, boting and scamming. Even if it will be one cop, that can't be at all places at once and surly will miss allot of stuff, still it can bring a feeling that you shouldn't break the rules because someone is always watching and that you can play free of harassment cuz someone is always watching. Now at Calypso, even when you catch a player doing an exploit or scam it takes days-weeks to get him banned if ever, and thats a big crime. The players who spam advertisements in regular chat, don't get punished no matter how many support cases you send against them. It creates the feeling that who's ever in charge of calypso, doesn't care. I hope that things will be different at Arkadia (and as I see them now, Arkadia's team really care about their players). That every player will know that people who run the planet do care about his enjoyment from playing, without other people destroying it.
I'd also love to see player appointed 'Cops'. Trusted individuals that are dedicated to enforcing game rules. There is plenty of room to expand on your basic idea. At some point, it'd be nice to have GMs/'Cops'/Mods in-game, that way this wouldn't end up another Calypso.
hmm plenty of MMOs had that idea of a police system... IMHO the reason why most ditched it is really simple: The actions of the so called police will allways be questioned. So I think there still are only the two options: 1) hire staff to carry out the police role. 2) no police. Obviously 1) is expensive but getting it done by officials would reduce the questioning of their actions to a level that it would make sense to have them in the first place.
If there MUST be a cop in game to baby sit then it has to be one of the devs or an employee not a player. Far too much favoritism and cliques in EU as it is.. Im not up for putting some moron in a position of power just cause there are a few bad apples.
Yeap guys, as I said "get employees to act as cops in game". I don't even imagine getting a player to be cop, that will defiantly be an invention for abuse of power.
O NO! The horror. Soon there will be tax officers asking you from where you have all that money for your vehicles when you dont work.
I think people can mostly monitor themselves. I'd feel bad for the poor guy who logs-in as a monitor only to be bombarded with private and public messages like: "'xyz' is a scmmerz he stole form me" "u no 'abc' he expoted witg votl" "wen u raze sweet price???! u buy?" "u sux i get miss wit max-sib lr66" "excuse me 'qwe' said bad words" "u no 'sss' is 12 in eula says be 13 an he ks mob aginst toc" it'd be enough to take up drinking as a hobby.
As I said, those "cops' will not be known in the community, they will only be there to watch irregular activity. For scams that go in PMs, people will still have to send a complain report. Only their presence should be know, so you know you are always being watched, and should behave and go by the rules.
Wery bad addvertisment for EU. We dont have so many possibilities of irregular activity in game wich are not fixed by program code to be in need of cops. We dont want to call all existing player base and newcomers and possible investors as possible criminals wich will be watched by cops and their frends. What kind of players are those wich only goal is not to deposit , play and decay but to roam arround looking for possible or future exploiters or irregular activity players? Do we need to rename EU in "Wellcome to be harashed, watched, hunted, accused and baned" What will think possible future investor of EU then ? If EU have features or possibilities that you dont like then make petition to MA devs to recode or fix that instead to call for witch hunt.
Just my thoughts... because ideas should be developed as they are argued about. Appoint 9 people. Call them 'Judges' Requirements: X Years of Play Valid Recommendations Request forms Give them unique powers: Ability to Mute Players Ability to Boot Players Temp Ban (Progressive expansion of your powers with trust) Checks & Balance: All use of powers require filling out a report. All powers and in-game chats are logged. True Purpose: Development of Common Law In-game. Developing difference between exploits and actual use. Creating a Record with the help MA Support
Option to ignore someone in Public/Trade etc. chats will work way better (and people were asked to add this at least from 2005...)
I also asked for it in one of my earlier posts in this forum. It's up to MA though I would imagine. On the 'cops' issue, I think it would be prudent to have an undercover person from the staff in game that could 'mute' anyone who comes up and asks to 'color your armor' or 'upgrade your armor' etc. These direct 'no doubt about it being a scammer' types of people would then be reviewed for banning. Everything else would just be reported to MA. Use a different newbie avatar every time too to avoid any chance of being detected as a staffer. The staffer wouldn't need to be full time, just go ingame as a newbie every so often and scout the place for the typical serial-scammer. I was approached by a high-ranking avatar from a large society not long after I started to play on Calypso with an offer to upgrade my pixie armor to ghost. Just the the threat of being caught would help keep some of this down. Use IP bans on anyone caught in a blatant scam attempt.
If the game grows as big as it should, if it dominates the other planets, it'd be nice to rely less on staff members and more on other players. Whether it be an easy in-game reporting feature, or player appointed moderators in-game that can assist with things like player abuse or questions pertaining to Entropia and Arkadia (like billing, ect).
Honestly, you really only need to equip volunteers with muting. Booting people from the server should be reserved for the staff members. In any circumstance, a mute usually solves most problems. If there's an even bigger issue, like glitching, it can be reported in a priority report to staff members to handle. There's no need to let people run around with god-like power for there to be 'support' in-game, just simple things that can help the players. But I partially agree with you, we do need people that are willing to 'Judge' player's behavior and act upon it. I've seen tons of small communities like this fail because staff cannot always be watching players in-game.
