I disagree with that. First, because we do not know what are the game’s incomes, what margin they keep and how they use it. For all we know, they could already have the spare money to do so, and just choose not to. Secondly, because it would become mandatory to all players who NEED moderation (don’t we all?), even to those who bought the game with a specific amount of spending in mind and cannot afford a monthly subscription. We are not talking about a battle pass or an online shop… but of an actual service which is supposed to PROTECT players from abusive behaviours in game. That service should not be buyable, it should be the minimum prestation guaranteed to any client of an online platform.
If paying a monthly fee for an optional service sounds alright, paying for protection of clients against abuse seems so wrong.
Please, tell me I’m not the only one who feels that way
I agree that we should have have had proper industry standard moderation from the beginning. If you look at the history though the moderation has been more of an afterthought. Players had to push hard to get what we have now and it’s been a huge mess.
This type of moderation is reactive and you can tell that the budget is currently not there to support the current system.
Funcom has at least been frank that budgetary restrictions are a main cause, you can read that in the post Code linked above.
They’ve also been frank that they did not develop a good system to communicate.
Tencent owns Funcom and surely they have the revenue but they are not necessarily taking anything extra to give to Funcom without justification. This game financially, even without seeing the numbers, is clearly hanging by a thread. Look at the all the things we’ve lost along the way and additionally the quality of work in updates.
Consider the cost of business alone: there’s rent, utilities, marketing, tech services, transportation and hotels for events, supplies and salaries, etc.,…
The suggestion to implement paid service for Officials is to incentivize proper moderation, not to punish players. This would mean they’d have to budget changes and salaries.
Plenty of other companies have monthly subscriptions even if it’s not particularly modern. The other option is to up their game with the Battlepass and BLB. I think most can agree it has been largely lackluster in quality and quantity. That equates to lack of revenue or budgetary constraints.
We need to be realistic. The game is old. It’s not a top selling game even if it is beloved. Are they going to be honest about its future? Probably not. The criticism that it is becoming a Tencent zombie game is not unwarranted.
If that means squeezing a bit more out of us to get what we’re asking for, so be it.
I didn’t read it that way, but maybe that’s my fault. Since the post didn’t specify how many of these special claim blocks each player/clan would get, I didn’t assume it would be just one. If the implied limit is only one, then yeah, you’re totally right.
Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. Since we have no insight in their finances, all we can do is propose solutions. Saying “we don’t know” goes both ways.
Services are always paid for somehow. The only choice is how to pay for it. Even in countries whose governments often certain services for free, those services are paid for with taxes.
Hosting isn’t free. Neither is moderation. All these things have costs. So how would you prefer to pay for it? Ideally, the money from the sales – base game, DLCs, BP, BLB – should pay for these costs and still generate some profit.
If they’re not offering those services without subscription, it means they’re not willing to lower their profit margin to accommodate your wishes. You can call that greed if you wish, but quibbling about what you call it is not going to change the fact that you’re not getting the service you want for the money you’re willing to spend.
So what are your options, then? You can keep criticizing them on the forums and hope they’ll improve. We’ve all seen how well that’s worked out over the past 6 years. Or you can propose changes that try to break that ineffectual cycle.
One proposal is to have a subset of servers where people pay a subscription to cover the costs of the service they expect on those servers.
Another is to abolish server moderation completely and go back to the old days of players having to deal with griefers and trolls on their own.
At this point, the latter might even be preferable.
Or just remove official servers completely. Spare them the extra work since it seems they cannot do a proper job anyway. Players would have to find private servers and thats the end of the story.
I’ve joined late to the thread and have not read much at moment but I’d be happy with servers that have little to 0 input from admins ,wipe weekly or monthly type servers … higher xp gather etc … I would never pay
This is exactly my point, we know NOTHING. So far, no one has a good solution from what I can read, we are giving shots based on the situation we assume they are put in. Even you, who point at the flaws of others’ attempts shared no solution.
We are not employees of Funcom, we don’t know how their internal policy goes, and that’s it. We can only assume, give shots, and that’s it. My shot is that I disagree with that way of doing because throwing money out the window by assuming things about Funcom is not a smart move, which is an opinion, MY opinion.
Taxes? Sure. My taxes pay the European Commission, which worked hard to inforce rules for Digital Services. I do hope that responsibility is held by the platforms to some extent. I am not versed in laws, but they do have articles about protection, moderation, and the use of datas.
I hope online websites, forums, and gaming online platforms with chats abide by those rules. Again, I am in no way versed in things regarding the law, but a company is a company still. If Funcom says their basic moderation concerns the safety of users to its core (eg: harassment issues), and internal grievances about land claiming is not concerned, then I will believe it. Maybe their moderation is limited to the agreement by the user of the Terms of conduct? Who knows, it would make sense though. Regarding some “level” of moderation, which is the protection of the users on their platforms, our taxes indeed do the job already.
By the way, if my answer feels random to you, just image the way yours felt to me when you father me about taxes. Where did that come from again?
Critize them? I agree with the one saying we need more information about their policies, it’s hardly criticizing them xD
You don’t need to be versed in laws to understand that the bit of text you quoted from the DSA Q&A page has nothing to do with what we’re discussing here. There’s no “content moderation” involved here.
However, if you feel that it’s somehow applicable to Funcom’s official server moderation and that they’re breaking the law, I would encourage you to act through the appropriate legal channels. The more we consumers hold companies accountable for their actions, the better.
All that said, you saw the word “taxes” and went off on a tangent that’s light years away from what we’re discussing in this thread.
No, they don’t. Again, you don’t need to be a legal expert to understand that Funcom is under no legal obligation to make sure players don’t abuse land claim to, for example, wall your base in.
But as I said before, if you’re convinced your taxes already make you entitled to that kind of protection, exercising your legal rights would be much more helpful and effective than speculating about it here.
So you’re not criticizing them for not providing the service you think they should? And you’re not criticizing them for not being transparent about their policies?
I mean, if that’s the case, then what are you even trying to say?
I’m honestly puzzled by people like you who think that “you are so negative” is a useful remark. Yes, I’m negative. So what? What should matter is whether I’m wrong, not whether I’m positive or negative.
So if you think I’m wrong, do you want to explain why? What’s one concrete improvement in server moderation that you have seen as a result of people complaining here?
I was speaking about protection and how I think that service should not be paid for, and you talked to me about taxes. I return the compliment to you.
Or make it more obvious to me, I have difficulties to understand why you started to talk about it in the first place. Maybe there’s a correlation, but I can’t see which one.
I never said that, on the contrary. Please read again my comment.
Honestly, I think they are already providing the minimum service they should give. Am I satisfied with it as a client? No, I think they can do more. That’s not what I call criticizing however. I just call it feedback.
Fair enough, let me explain. The mention of the taxes was an explanation of the general principle that no service is free. Everything is paid for somehow. Google search? Paid for by collecting data about you and selling it to the advertisers. Public schools? Paid for with taxes.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering why I felt the need to explain that, it’s because you said that the official server moderation is a service that “should not be buyable”. If it’s not “buyable”, then it has to be paid for in some other way. Which one would you propose?
I did read it. Hell, I just read it again, and it’s still as confusing as it was the first couple of times I read it before replying. Maybe it’s just the language barrier and translation issues.
I’ll ask you the same question you asked me: what exactly was the point of dragging the Digital Services Act into the discussion?
Do you? Because that’s kind of the opposite of what you said:
The way you wrote it, it means that the service that some of us are proposing to pay for should be included in the “minimum service they should give”.
Are you saying that they’re already providing adequate minimum service and that people like @Kikigirl have no reason to complain about it?
Okay, so you’re not saying that the minimum service is adequate. I don’t know how to reconcile all the contradictions in what you wrote.
Is it positive or negative feedback? And if it’s negative feedback, then what’s the difference between criticism and negative feedback? Not that it’s very important, but you’re the one insisting on a semantic distinction without a difference…
@E.y yoyr taxes grant you some legal protection against games promoting child abuse, racism, hate speech and so on. Promoting, not dealing with, because it might be appropriate when such themes are depicted (like slavery on Conan, yet Funcom doesn’t suggest that you go on a slave capture streak in any shape or form! )
It protects you against fraud, misleading comercial accords, unlawful behavior from company staff, etc. You get the gist of it. However this is not related to what @CodeMage was exemplifying. He made a tangent only to explain you that a better standard when it comes to moderation has costs. Poor moderation is not something any law protects you from, unless Funcom’s staff was personally abusive towards you in a personal manner, something that was never even hinted and doesn’t relate even remotely to this topic. Having competent moderation is not a right, basically. I can understand how you could conflate the too concepts, since people feel personally affected by some of Funcom’s moderation decisions, but these are two very different subjects.
Now a fictional story based on my own experience as server admin and from years of experience in MMO games…
Funcom decides to employ a group of server admins, three 8 hours long shifts work, as there is always a daytime somewhere, there is always daytime and peek hours somewhere on the globe.
And they sit and do their work night and day, day and night.
What comes next?
“Admin is a diiiiickheeeeaddd! He made a wrong decision! Admin is unfair! Admin supports that other clan! I HAVE A RELIABLE SOURCES WHO SAY THAT ADMIN IS A MEMBER OF THAT ALPHA CLAN!”
Same thing, but more expensive for Funcom.
Of course I am not defending Funcom, I don’t care what they do, but I want to show you how things are going to be, because “it cuts both ways”.
You can bet it will be exactly like that, @Bathory .
But pros are used to it. They don’t care. It comes with the territory. We would get better moderation, but I don’t think it’s likely that we ever get premium servers.
No, that I have known from the beginning.
I do not confuse the two kind of protections (first land claim abuse which is up to them, second deeper issues like harassment or exposure to harmful content through their platform).
I only brought the second one because the example about the taxes does not make sense to me unless you bring the second kind of protection. I was trying to keep in touch with him as much as I could there.
Now, why doesn’t it make sense to me, even as an example?
I will try to explain. Sorry in advance for the phrasing.
I understand things have to be paid a way or an other. From what I read from Codemage, he explains that moderation too, has a cost even if I (= players) don’t see it. I understand what he means by that. BUT (and this is where our minds differ), when you decide to give access to an online platform, you do not just do it randomly, right? It is thought of first, pros and cons, and how to deal with it after it is released, right? And that’s when I don’t understand about the cost: wasn’t moderation thought of to some extent as part of the cost? Even if what we have is not ideal, there IS a kind of moderation, a form of protection from abusers in game (land claiming abuse). That whole topic was made because that kind of moderation seems somehow lacking, not working properly, making grievances and lack of understanding about the reasons why some moderating is done the way it’s done, hence this topic for years. And I agree with that. However, where I don’t agree is about the cost of the improvement of an already implemented system (the “moderation” within the official servers).
Some are of the opinion that it costs more money to moderate in a better way, because they need more staff for instance (who need to be paid of course), or more tools maybe, or more time, or more something… anything, really, which will cost money anyway, to improve the moderation system. For Codemage, maybe it’s not just an opinion, maybe it’s a reality, hence his example of taxes to give a parallel example to what exists in life.
My opinion (and why I couldn’t relate the taxes example) is that in a company, missions are meant to be changed through time, even without additional money put in it. Work evolves, improvements are made from wobbly projects in which money has already been injected (eg. the project of having official servers). We are not in their boots, maybe it does cost more, maybe it does not. Maybe Codemage throughout his experience was lucky enough to meet with people with their heads on their shoulders so they would not cut the costs on the employees’ shoulders, but believe me, without costing a penny to a company, a system can be improved anyway (in a quite aweful way admittedly sometimes). However, paying more for special servers, will not mean that the money will go to better moderation. And let us say we do pay more, and they happen to moderate better… How do you know the players willing to pay will be enough so this system would last? I don’t know, it seems just weird to me. Moderation feels like “part” of the basic package for me, a package resulting of their reflection about costs and whatsnot before launching official servers and keeping them on for years. That is why I say it should not be a buyable service.
Now, the important question: do I have an idea how to make this system work better? I honestly don’t. I only know that paying for special moderation as a solution feels wrong on so many levels to me. Hence my comments, that’s it.
I’m not a super bright person, I’m not super versed in games either to mention a system which would match Conan. I don’t have answers, nor solutions, I can only recognize what does not feel like a solution to me. I’m just an average player, sorry.
@CodeMage
Sorry, that was long. Hopefully I can convey my thinking to you properly even if you disapprove of it.
You guys end up turning these threads in cluster mess, argue with each other instead of just leaving some input with suggestions. Its like everyone has to agree with everyone else. Then wonder why they close the threads.
I hope Funcom takes the initiative to thoroughly research and make independent decisions, rather than follow whatever the majority of the vocal community tasks for. With that said, I agree with you. I’m convinced that a land block on official servers through an in-game mechanic is the only viable solution. Moderation of servers and a “documentation” that users must read and follow while playing is a nightmare of any product and simply will not work, ever (and yes, this is a fact. It’s an awful game design and has never worked).
A monthly fee would kill of the game completely while solving absolutely nothing and only increasing the frustration of justly or unjustly banned players who subscribed.
That’s a question with a simple answer: no, it wasn’t. Let me tell you about it.
I’ve started playing in February of 2017, but I only played in singleplayer until the official release in May of 2018. Back then, they offered the official servers without any moderation whatsoever. The only times I’ve ever seen them intervene during that period was when someone walled off all the desert spawns for new characters.
Anything else was permitted. You could get walled in by another player for something you said in chat and that was it. People would regularly squabble over building spots and harass each other with foundation spam. Overbuilding was so rampant that it would have given @DeaconElie an ulcer. To give you an example, one of my clanmates was an incredibly prolific and talented builder, and one of the many things he built on that servers was an X-Wing fighter replica.
You get the picture, I hope.
They only changed their stance because a lot of people on the forums kept pestering them to offer some kind of moderation. I was one of the more persistent voices, but I was far from alone.
So there you have it: on release, they did not think of server moderation as part of the cost. Just offering the official servers free of subscription was costly enough for them.
Again, taxes were just one example of paying for something people consider to be “free”. Another is how Google search is “free”. There’s always a cost, and it always has to be paid somehow.
And yeah, there are costs that aren’t as easily quantifiable in terms of money, but they’re still costs. Even if your solution is “let’s give our employees more responsibilities and make them work harder without raising their salaries”, that also has a cost. Exploitation takes a toll on people’s lives, and the cost they pay eventually gets propagated back to you.
I’m not sure what you’re suggesting here. If you’re suggesting that the official server moderation could work if they only changed their internal processes and organization, then you might be right. That also has a cost, but maybe it’s a one-off cost, and it’s doable.
Personally, I don’t think so at all. Even the one improvement that I’ve been suggesting all this time – just give people a more concrete explanation for why they got suspended or banned when they ask – has its costs.
I suspect that’s the biggest disagreement between you and me. It seems to me like you consider things to be simpler than they are, because they seem simple when you say them. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my lifetime is that things are almost never as simple as people who come up with them think they should be. There’s a very long and ranty blog post that takes you on the journey of thinking through the details of a “simple” idea. If you have the time, I would suggest trying to read it. Steve Yegge has a way with words and it’s a rather entertaining read.
If what makes those servers special is better moderation, then yes, the money will have to go to better moderation. If it doesn’t, people will stop paying for them.
I guess that’s another difference between us. I’ve played long enough to know the history of the topic we’re discussing. I hope the explanation I offered at the beginning of this reply has helped
Because Funcom keeps our suggestions in mind when they work on the game, maybe that is why we are so adamant to express ourselves, be it to back up an idea which sounds nice, or to oppose one.
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